Adam McKay: We've Already Left the Holocene
About this episode
Adam McKay discusses the intersection of culture, politics, and climate change in a post-Holocene world with Douglas Rushkoff.
"The most useful framework is that our country’s been invaded. But like all great invasions, it involves new techniques." - Adam McKay Academy Award-winning filmmaker Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up, The Big Short, Succession) dissects the urgent cultural, political, and planetary moment we are living through. McKay brings a massive unified theory exploring how our prehistoric evolutionary limits - and the constraints of Dunbar’s Number - are colliding with a collapsing Holocene and modern corporate media systems designed to abstract us from reality. From Leonardo DiCaprio's ad-libbed line that broke the crew on the set of "Don’t Look Up" to a clear-eyed diagnosis of the macro "Hail Mary" phase of climate adaptation, Rushkoff and McKay chart a path through doomerism. Together, they argue that surviving a post-Holocene world requires breaking the digital illusion, reclaiming pro-social local networks, and finding the holy act of mutual connection on the deck of the Titanic. 🌍 Your support keeps Team Human alive! Support the show to receive ad-free access to videos, livestream Q&As with Rushkoff, access to the community Discord and more: https://www.patreon.com/teamhuman 🤝 Team…
People in this episode
Host: Douglas Rushkoff
Guest: Adam McKay
Topics covered
- cultural analysis
- climate change
- media critique
- evolutionary psychology
- social networks
- post-Holocene survival
Sponsors
Groucho
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Team Human
Books & works: Don’t Look Up, The Big Short, Succession
More episodes of Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff
- Is AI Development Modern Chaos Magic? (w/ Trevor Paglen)
- How to Glitch the AI System (w/ Sophie Strand)
- Carnival vs. Coliseum: Reclaiming Our Shared Civics
- Formulas Against the False Self: Mitch Horowitz on Left-Hand Path Magic
- The Shoggoth in the Machine: AI, ARGs, and the Future of Play (w/ Reed Berkowitz)
- The Trap of Living Forever (And the Bliss of Letting Go)
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