EP 14- Papayas on the Moon- My Chat with Alejandro Glatt
In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, I sit down with Mexican artist and papaya visionary Alejandro Glatt, the first Mexican artist to send a papaya to the Moon as part of the Lunaprise art museum project connected to NASA’s Artemis missions. Recorded on the day of the Artemis II launch, our conversation weaves together Jewish […]
Episode 13: How a Jewish Immigrant Named Hugo Created Sci-Fi
Before science fiction was a genre, Hugo Gernsback was already building the infrastructure for it: radio magazines, hobbyist communities, wild speculative stories, and the first publication devoted entirely to imagining tomorrow. A Jewish immigrant from Luxembourg, he launched Amazing Stories in 1926 and quietly trained a generation of readers and writers to think in futures, […]
Episode 12: Professors, Dads, and the Jewish future with Shai Davidai
In this episode of The Jewish Futurism Lab, Mike Wirth sits down with Shai Davidai, the Israeli‑born social psychologist and former Columbia Business School professor who became a prominent voice for Jewish students after October 7. Together they trace Shai’s journey from secular Israeli kid to public Jewish advocate, unpack what really happened for him […]
Episode 11: Jews, AI, and the Real Meaning of “Creative”
In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, Mike Wirth uses the 4C model of creativity to map out what we really mean by “creative” in an age of AI art and endless images. He traces his own journey from parametric code experiments to Jewish futurist murals, then layers in Jewish history, exile, and the […]
Episode 10 – From Utopia to Conspiracy: The Secret Battle Over Jewish Futures
In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, Jewish futurist and we’ll explore early Jewish futurism, Zionist art, and media history through Theodor Herzl’s Altneuland, Ephraim Moses Lilien’s Zionist Art Nouveau, and Boris Schatz’s Bezalel School in Jerusalem. He contrasts these utopian blueprints and design prototypes with the antisemitic hoax The Protocols of the Elders […]
Episode 9: From Cult to Code: Tracing the History of the Aura in Art
Walter Benjamin, AI, & the Aura of Art: In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, host Mike Wirth unpacks Walter Benjamin’s “aura” of art and asks what presence means when every image can be copied, remixed, and generated on demand. Moving from Byzantine icons and ritual objects to photography, social media, NFTs, and AI […]
Episode 8: Speed Kills : Why Every futurist must confront the past
In this episode, we confront the rise and collapse of Italian Futurism, the avant garde movement that worshiped speed, technology, youth, and rupture at any cost. What began as radical artistic rebellion under Filippo Tommaso Marinetti quickly blurred into nationalism and ultimately aligned itself with fascism. So what went wrong? We examine how aesthetic obsession […]
Episode 7: ADHD, Design, and Jewish futures with Alex Duchene
In this episode of The Jewish futurism Lab, Jewish futurist and community artist Mike Wirth sits down with graphic designer Alex Duchene to explore what it means to be a neurodivergent, Jewish creative. They talk about ADHD “neuro spicey super powers,” how neurodivergence shapes their design practice, and why stories are the throughline that connects their […]
Episode 6: Ethical AI and Jewish Art
In this episode, I look at how AI is impacting Jewish artistry itself: from how I and other Jewish artists research, sketch, and prototype with AI-generated imagery, to how algorithms are beginning to influence our visual language, ritual design, and the stories our communities tell about themselves. I raise concrete questions about authorship, ownership, and […]
Episode 5: The Jewish Art of Alex Woz
What does it mean to build a Jewish future through scissors, glue, and pixels? In this episode, I sit down with collage artist Alex Woz, who I met at the Jerusalem Biennale. We talk about the graphic design industry, swap stories about our favorite Jewish artists, and get honest about why we make what we […]