Novara Media Premiered May 30, 2026 Do Your Own Research with Richard Hames Support our work: http://novara.media/support Boosters are wrong about AI. So are the critics. AI progress isn’t slowing down. The bubble doesn’t seem to be popping. And who in power actually cares about the environmental impacts anyway? All that is to say: AI is here to stay. And what will be its fruits? Greater control of workers or even their brutal repression, some say. So, is there a positive future for AI at all? Garrison Lovely is the author of Obsolete: The AI Industry’s Trillion-Dollar Race to Replace You—and How to Stop It. And surprisingly, his answer is “yes”. He tells Richard Hames how to get off the path to dystopia. Do Your Own Research is a new show from Novara Media about the systems that make the modern world possible. Music by Iglooghost. Buy Novara Media merch: https://shop.novaramedia.com/AI-generated video summary
Richard Hames interviews author Garrison Lovely to explore the complex landscape of AI development. They discuss the concept of jagged intelligence, the economic implications of labor automation, and why public engagement with these evolving technologies is essential for understanding the future trajectory of the industry.
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”
~ Kahlil Gibran
“Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you can not bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond that pain.”
~Kahlil Gibran
Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān, usually referred to in English as Kahlil Gibran, was a Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist. He was also considered a philosopher, although he himself rejected the title. Wikipedia
Big Think Dec 14, 2022 Become a Big Think member to unlock expert classes, premium print issues, exclusive events and more: https://bigthink.com/membership/?utm_… What astronaut Ron Garan saw in space changed his life forever – here’s what it taught him. Subscribe to Big Think on YouTube ► / @bigthink Up next, Neil deGrasse Tyson: 3 mind-blowing space facts ► • Neil deGrasse Tyson: 3 mind-blowing space … A curious phenomenon often occurs when astronauts travel to space and look out on our planet for the first time: They see how interconnected and fragile life on Earth is, and they feel a sudden responsibility to protect it. Astronaut @RonGaran experienced this so-called “overview effect” when he first saw Earth from space. When he looked out on the planet, he saw an iridescent biosphere teeming with life, all protected by a remarkably thin atmosphere. What he did not see was the thing that society often gives top priority: the economy. For Garan, seeing Earth from space revealed problems like global warming, deforestation, and biodiversity loss are not disconnected. They are the symptoms of an underlying flaw in how we perceive ourselves as humans: We fail to realize that we are a planetary species. Learn more about Ron Garan ► https://www.rongaran.com/ Read the video transcript ► https://bigthink.com/life/overview-ef…0:00 The lie humanity is living 1:28 Escaping Plato’s cave 2:15 What astronaut’s see in space 4:07 The orbital perspective 4:50 The ‘dolly zoom’: gain mental altitude ———————————————————————————- About Ron Garan: Former NASA astronaut, serial entrepreneur, humanitarian, and highly decorated combat fighter Ron Garan racked up 178 days in space and more than 71 million miles in 2,842 orbits between tours on the US Space Shuttle, Russian Soyuz spacecraft, and the International Space Station. During his time in space, Garan conducted four spacewalks in support of ISS construction and maintenance. Prior to those space journeys, he lived and conducted research on the bottom of the ocean in the world’s only undersea research lab, Aquarius. Before reaching the summit of his career, Garan, a former test pilot and graduate of the US Naval Test Pilot School, taught hundreds of elite fighter pilots how to “up their game” as a flight instructor at the prestigious USAF Fighter Weapons School, the Air Force version of TOP GUN. He is the author of the critically acclaimed books: The Orbital Perspective, Floating in Darkness: A Journey of Evolution, and the children’s book, Railroad to the Moon. Garan is celebrated not just for his research in space but also for his humanitarian contribution to life on Earth.
NASA astronaut Ron Garan’s epiphany in space | The InnerView
TRT World Jan 16, 2023 When former F-16 fighter pilot Ron Garan went up into space for NASA, the astronaut came back down to earth a changed man. He explains to Imran Garda on The InnerView why he believes we all need to live with an “orbital perspective” to save us from ourselves. More on Ron Garan: https://www.rongaran.com/trt/00:00 Meet Ron Garan 01:10 How space changed how he sees the world 03:04 Experiencing awe 03:54 “We look absolutely ridiculous from the vantage point of space” 04:41 On colonising other planets 05:56 International space cooperation with Russia 09:15 “War is humanity’s greatest failure” 10:59 Tribalism 13:02 Moving from words to action 14:22 Feedback 15:25 Social media manipulation 18:04 On experiencing spiritual enlightenment after space trips 19:25 Militarisation of space 23:36 Billionaires in space
Substack Live with Astronaut Ron Garan
Marianne Williamson Jun 9, 2026 It was great talking live today with astronaut and social entrepreneur Ron Garan. He has a profound understanding of what it will take for humanity to evolve beyond this critical inflection point at which we find ourselves. Much of what he learned came from epiphanies gleaned while working both at the bottom of the ocean and in the further reaches of outer space. How fortunate we are to have his wisdom among us. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. You can learn more about Ron Garan at RonGaran.com and Ron Garan.Substack.com, where he is currently publishing his novel Infinite Simplicity. Subscribe to Marianne’s Substack: MarianneWilliamson.Susbtack.com
A veteran of three tech eras on how the innocence was lost — and whether AI actually might win it back, through what he calls “enlightened AI.”
Before the trillion-dollar IPOs, before the data centers and the doom, before “Silicon Valley” became shorthand for unaccountable power and unimaginable wealth, there was a teenager with an Atari — a gift from his NASA-engineer father — certain he could build any world he could imagine.
That teenager was Matthew Stepka, and the world he helped build is the one we’re all now straining to make sense of.
This week on the WhoWhatWhy podcast, Stepka — early internet-café founder, McKinsey alum, nine-year Google veteran who shepherded many of the company’s mission projects including the first self-driving cars, and now an investor in what he calls “enlightened AI” — walks us back through the Valley’s reinventions and asks what each one cost.
It’s a conversation about corporate reasons for being. Tech, nearly alone among industries, has always needed one — a reason its products are not merely lucrative but good for society. Stepka was inside the rooms where those stories were told without irony, and where they curdled into punchlines.
He’s candid about how the land of the nerds, where you felt you could solve any problem, drifted into something harsher.
But this is no eulogy to a more innocent age. It’s an argument that the innocence is recoverable — that AI might amplify our humanity rather than hollow it out. Stepka would rather be called hopeful than optimistic. The difference, it turns out, is the whole story.
As today’s headlines fill with the SpaceX IPO, here’s a longer view.
Jeff Schechtman Jeff Schechtman’s career spans movies, radio stations, and podcasts. After spending twenty-five years in the motion picture industry as a producer and executive, he immersed himself in journalism, radio, and, more recently, the world of podcasts. To date, he has conducted over ten thousand interviews with authors, journalists, and thought leaders. Since March 2015, he has produced almost 500 podcasts for WhoWhatWhy.
DW Documentary Jun 10, 2026Magical, autonomous, all-powerful: Artificial intelligence fuels our dreams and nightmares. While tech companies promise us a better future, AI is already causing serious harm. Huge data centers and server farms are required for AI programs to function. These are paving over landscapes and consuming immense amounts of water and electricity — mostly from fossil fuels, and thus dirty energy sources. Millions of low-wage workers worldwide are busy feeding data to, and training, the algorithms for AI programs — often at the expense of their mental and emotional health. These workers, many of them young and living in the Global South, are exposed to all manner of harmful content to train AI models to detect such material.
Arthur Versluis clearly and tautly argues that mysticism must be properly understood as belonging to the great tradition of Platonism. He demonstrates how mysticism was historically understood in Western philosophical and religious traditions and emphatically rejects externalist approaches to esoteric religion. Instead he develops a new theoretical-critical model for understanding mystical literature and the humanities as a whole, from philosophy and literature to art.
Mossbridge reveals how awakening begins not with external revelation but with inner truth. She demonstrates that you already know how to release fear, deepen compassion, and live from a higher awareness. In the second part of the book, Dr. Mossbridge then brings these capacities into her own disclosure about what appears to be a U.S. government-run gifted student program that seems to have been interested in psychic abilities as well as other forms of unusual cognition.
One of the hardest hurdles facing people in intuition is trusting what they get. It’s easy to second-guess and wonder if your inner guidance is intuition or imagination. Henry Reed’s process moves you into trust and confidence. Your own wisdom, accumulated from your life experiences, is stored in memories. Henry shows you how to work with your memories to make powerful connections to your own wisdom. Everything is drawn from within.
Consciousness, spirituality, biography, sexuality, androgyny, futurism, space, the arts, science, astrology, democracy, humor, books, movies and more
Community Connection FridayReviewPractice
