Happy Holidays, everyone! For the five of you who see this overdue update amidst the avalanche of promotional nonsense, thank you so much for taking the time to scan the news and absorb what I have to bestow upon you.
I hope you find real value here, and appreciate the change of pace — the new work is this update are REAL offerings, not just a blitz to score your year-end dough. I don't have the heart to beg like that. But if you DO want to help me keep my family warm and fed this winter, there are many good ways to do so. More on that down below...
Onward! Major new works in just about every quadrant, starting with a temporary return from live painting retirement for the Santa Fe Institute's InterPlanetary Festival:
First New Live Painting Since Before The Pandemic
Xenodendron
(Original painting is up for grabs if you want a piece of SFI history — I'm fairly certain this was the first time in 38 years anybody painted live at one of the Institute's events.)
New Song & Unplugged Performance:
"The Luminous Night"
"The Luminous Night"
Enjoy this demo of a new song written after a soak in the healing hot mineral springs at Ojo Caliente, New Mexico — and performed live for the first time at The Santa Fe Institute. This is the last studio recording with my beloved 2001 Martin D-35 "Marianne" before boxing it up to send to its new owner.
This take is rough as hell, but so too have I been. (Recorded not long before my surgery for a premature cataract...) At least I have the song on file and can promise a cleaner official studio take on the horizon — but first, demos of TWO MORE new songs coming soon! Hardship is indeed great fertilizer for the muses.
Find the lyrics — and the story about parting with a beloved legacy axe that has appeared in my videos and albums since I started recording in 2001 — on Patreon:
New Future Fossils Podcast Episodes
Wish me luck or say a little prayer if you're inclined. This opportunity would be transformative — and finally empower me to hire a whole web of awesome friends to help build out the show as the immersive, community-focused transmedia project it was always meant to be. Cheers to BIG questions!
And now SIX very potent new episodes:
How much of natural history is inevitable, and how much is the result of chance? Do mass extinctions slow the evolution of the biosphere, or speed it up? These are two of the six great questions of biology explored by Simon Conway Morris, famous evolutionary theorist and Cambridge Emeritus Professor, in his latest book. From Extraterrestrials to Animal Minds: Six Myths of Evolution (Templeton Press) is a meticulously researched, cheeky and inspiring romp through both the living and extinct worlds, challenging a handful of widespread beliefs and offering provocative alternatives. Conway Morris is a character, even amidst the strange ranks of his fellow natural history researchers, and his arguments bear careful scrutiny. As someone drawn to mavericks and weirdos and enamored by contrarian perspectives, I can’t help but like his work — and reading him forced me to reconsider some of my assumptions even as it validated other long-held hunches.
In this episode, we talk about his book and what his work implies — and I get fanboy on him and assault him with a bunch of lengthy questions like Tim Murphy in Jurassic Park. Strap in for a deep dive into evolution’s laziness, complexity and process, cooption and repurposing of novel traits, great puzzles in prehistory, ancient food webs, evolutionary radiation, symbiosis, flowers, death, and more… And when you’re done, go read his book and dig a dozen more related episodes in the show notes!
I've recorded over 300 podcast episodes and this one is for sure the most deep-diving and far-reaching conversation I've had about evolutionary theory on ANY of them. Certain that there is new material covered here even for people intimately acquainted with Simon's work — I use the extensive research reviewed in his latest book as a springboard to posit some of my own most provocative and long-brewing hypotheses about prehistory and the nature of evolution and extinction.
Very eager to share this — and amazed that Templeton Press reached out to me to have him on Future Fossils Podcast, and glad we finally made it happen! And YES this is an invitation to listen and offer your reflections, because it's clear to me now that these questions are FAR too big to be settled in the span of a 90-minute dialogue...
This week I talk with environmental philosopher and Santa Clara University Assistant Professor Kimberly Dill, an old friend of mine from Austin, Texas whom I met at Bouldin Creek Coffee over lemon maté sours and a deep dive into Eastern nondual traditions while she was in school studying arguments against free will under acclaimed analytic philosopher Galen Strawson. She has since grown into a formidable scholar and ethics instructor in her own right and positively exudes a studious, diligent, caring, and starry-eyed vibe at all times…an utterly unique and finely-honed heart and intellect who stands out from the rest of my belovedly strange cohort of Austin festival-going slacker friends.
I’ve been chasing her down to be on the podcast for years and am delighted she and I finally managed to link up to record this potent dialogue on the relationality of humankind and the wild world in which we are inextricably entangled, the substantive differences between our simulations and the originals they fail to fully reproduce, the importance of forests and dark skies to our psychospiritual well-being, where modern Western festival culture fails in its declared goal of delivering us back into right relations and ecstatic harmony with our kosmos…plus much else.
My big, BIG thanks to everyone for being so patient with me while my family and I suffered through some extraordinary challenges over the last months. I can’t tell you enough how much it means to me to have retained nearly everyone’s Patreon support while my wife and I dealt with two constantly sick kids, a number of our own health issues, and major upgrades to our home and big transitions at work.
So, again, thanks for your subscriptions, your glowing Apple Podcasts reviews, and your engagement in the Future Fossils Facebook group…and stay tuned for several exciting big announcements soon!
And if that's not enough, I just appeared on two superb podcasts —starting with SEMFILOQUIA with host Carlos Zapata and co-guest Curt Jaimungal of the Theories of Everything Podcast to discuss the rise of science podcasting:
...and then there's my "Lost Episode" of the Self Portraits As Other People Podcast, hosted by my wonderful friend Michael R. Jacobs aka The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo. This is a patrons-only deal but his feed is definitely worth your subscription — a kindred spirit and wonderful weirdo genius:
...and then there's my "Lost Episode" of the Self Portraits As Other People Podcast, hosted by my wonderful friend Michael R. Jacobs aka The Ungoogleable Michaelangelo. This is a patrons-only deal but his feed is definitely worth your subscription — a kindred spirit and wonderful weirdo genius:
Extra Credit:
Three Social Media Threads Worth Bookmarking
Three Social Media Threads Worth Bookmarking
In hindsight it's strange that some of my finest work in the last seventeen years to curating public discussions on Facebook and Twitter and yet I haven't bothered to archive those anywhere for posterity. Here are three threads I guarantee to enrich your thinking on art, technology, and economics if you ever find the time for them. And if not, feed them into your digital clone for later enjoyment!
And then, amazingly rich Facebook comments threads on AI artwork, capitalist expropriation, the restoration of the commons, and the future of the creative economy:
And that's that. Thanks for reading!
Stuff Worth Grabbing If You're In A Grabbing Mood
Prints & Originals
Various Print-On-Demand Items
Original Music
Even when I’m in this solemn and absurd
role: I am still the place
where creation works on itself."
- Tomas Tranströmer, "Guard Duty"
