Tag: judeofuturism podcast

  • Episode 8: Speed Kills : Why Every futurist must confront the past

    Episode 8: Speed Kills : Why Every futurist must confront the past

    The Jewish futurism Lab
    The Jewish futurism Lab
    Episode 8: Speed Kills : Why Every futurist must confront the past
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    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 with acceleration became political extremism, and how the rhetoric of disruption can mask ethical blind spots. For today’s futurists working in AI, design, and innovation, the lesson is clear: progress without moral grounding is dangerous. If you build the future, you are responsible for its consequences.

    Essay referenced: What Went Wrong with Italian Futurism and Why Every futurist Needs to Know More About It

  • Episode 6: Ethical AI and Jewish Art

    Episode 6: Ethical AI and Jewish Art

    The Jewish futurism Lab
    The Jewish futurism Lab
    Episode 6: Ethical AI and Jewish Art
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    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 credit when AI systems remix Jewish symbols and styles at scale, and I ask what happens to kavannah, memory, and responsibility when part of the “hand” in Jewish art is computational. Throughout, I frame AI as both a powerful tool for midrashic reinterpretation and speculative Jewish futures, and a disruptive force that can flatten nuance, decontextualize heritage, or sideline human makers if we do not respond with clear ethical commitments.

    Let’s not wrestle with this golem alone. Check out this episode.

    Software referenced:

    DiffusionBee

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  • Episode 5: The Jewish Art of Alex Woz

    Episode 5: The Jewish Art of Alex Woz

    The Jewish futurism Lab
    The Jewish futurism Lab
    Episode 5: The Jewish Art of Alex Woz
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    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 make.

    Alex grew up in an antisemitic city and turned that experience into an artistic mission. We explore the weird parallels between cutting and pasting found images and prompting AI, what makes art original, and how we’re both in conversation with Jewish creative lineage from Moritz Daniel Oppenheim to today.

    This conversation goes deep on legacy: What are we leaving behind for our descendants? What does Jewish creativity look like when it refuses to disappear? And why is Alex a practitioner of Jewish futurism, even if he works with analog and digital hand tools instead of code ?

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  • Episode 4: Shabbat Against The Machine

    Episode 4: Shabbat Against The Machine

    The Jewish futurism Lab
    The Jewish futurism Lab
    Episode 4: Shabbat Against The Machine
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    What happens when flow has no boundaries? In Episode 4 of The Jewish Futurism Lab, I explore how creativity without limits turns into exhaustion, addiction, or production without reflection. This episode introduces Shabbat not just as religious practice, but as a design principle: a refusal built into time that prevents work from consuming the people inside it.

    Drawing connections between Mussar ethics, inclusive design, and systems thinking, I examine how Jewish tradition offers practical frameworks for sustainable creativity. From classroom constraints that sharpen student focus to the Golem story’s “erase key,” this episode asks: Where is your pause? Where do you step back before momentum takes over?

    Join me as I unpack why limits aren’t the enemy of creativity. They’re what make creativity sustainable and accountable.

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  • Episode 3: Practicing Jewish futurism

    Episode 3: Practicing Jewish futurism

    The Jewish futurism Lab
    The Jewish futurism Lab
    Episode 3: Practicing Jewish futurism
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    In this episode, I move from defining Jewish futurism to actually doing it. What does it look like to practice Jewish futurism in your creative work, your teaching, your community building, or your daily life? How do Jewish texts, rituals, and patterns of thought become tools for imagining futures rather than artifacts of the past?

    I explore Jewish futurism as a lived methodology. One that shows up through design, storytelling, ritual adaptation, speculative thinking, and creative constraint. Drawing from Torah, rabbinic interpretation, art practice, and my own community-based projects, this episode looks at how Jews have always practiced futurism by rehearsing futures, holding multiple meanings at once, and designing systems meant to survive change.

    This episode is an invitation. Not to agree with a definition, but to experiment. To treat Jewish tradition as a living design system. And to ask how your own creative practice might become a site where past, present, and future meet.

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  • Episode 2: Jews Have Always Been futurists

    Episode 2: Jews Have Always Been futurists

    The Jewish futurism Lab
    The Jewish futurism Lab
    Episode 2: Jews Have Always Been futurists
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    In this episode, I make the case that Jewish futurism isn’t new at all. Long before rockets, algorithms, or AI, Jewish tradition was already asking future-oriented questions about survival, ethics, memory, and change. From Noah and Enoch to Babel, Joseph, exile, and Shabbat, this episode traces how Torah stories are structured around anticipating disruption, redesigning meaning, and passing responsibility forward to people we will never meet. Jewish futurism, I argue, isn’t about predicting the future. It’s about preparing us to meet it awake, accountable, and in relationship.

    You can read about this in more detail in my article A Brief History of Jewish futurism.

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  • Episode 1: Welcome to The Jewish futurism Lab: Torah, Tech, Tomorrow

    Episode 1: Welcome to The Jewish futurism Lab: Torah, Tech, Tomorrow

    The Jewish futurism Lab
    The Jewish futurism Lab
    Episode 1: Welcome to The Jewish futurism Lab: Torah, Tech, Tomorrow
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    In this first episode, I’m introducing The Jewish futurism Lab and what this podcast is here to build: a space where Torah learning, creative practice, and emerging technology meet. I’ll share a quick bit about who I am, what Jewish futurism is, and why I’m drawn to Jewish futurism, then lay out what you can expect in future episodes, essays, and projects connected to my work at mikewirthart.com. We’ll start with the foundation, what Jewish futurism is, why it matters right now, and how we can imagine bold, ethical Jewish futures without losing our roots.

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