ABOUT THIS EPISODE
What if the people building the future are not escaping myth, magic, and religion, but writing new versions of them?
Are we doing science or magic or both?
In this episode, Steve and Kale examine the mythic structure beneath supposedly post-mythic technology. How do stories and beliefs shape endeavors and moral permission, and teach people what kind of future they are supposed to build?
The trail begins in our current tech-saturated moment, then runs backward through Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, John Dee's Enochian angels and imperial vision, Isaac Newton's obsession with alchemy, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Jack Parsons' fusion of science fiction, rocketry, and occultism. It looks at Jaron Lanier's warning about technological stories, Leslie Kean's accounts of physical mediumship, the weirdness of Skinwalker Ranch, Eliezer Yudkowsky's Rationalist Harry Potter fan fiction, the limits of reproducibility, and the possibility that the modern West never became as disenchanted as it imagined.
The nerds are running the world now. The stories and beliefs that formed their worldview matter.
