Uncomfortable Collisions with Reality

About Uncomfortable Collisions with Reality

In this podcast, Nicholas Gruen discusses the issues of today in a unique way. The three questions we've always got an eye to are 1) What's missing in the way people normally talk about these issues? 2) Where do they fit in the bigger picture, whether that's * the long history of our species or * the deeper aspects of the way we're thinking about it and 3) Do these ways of thinking help us improve the world we live in? (Which we often focus on in our shorter 'Policy Provocations' podcasts.)

Publisher

Nicholas Gruen

Category

government

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

21 Jul 2023

Latest episode

16 Jul 2026

Latest episodes

6 of 34 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   16 Jul 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Digital Public Goods and Common Purpose: Part 1

   Nicholas Gruen and Gene Tunny discuss the evolving definition of digital public goods and their role in society, exploring AI's potential and risks.

2. 

   15 May 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Austerity of the imagination

   Host [Host Name] interviews author Luca Tiratelli about the exhaustion of modern policy, exploring why radical solutions feel impossible and how utopian thinking can drive reform.

3. 

   11 Sept 2025TRANSCRIPT

   Shouldn't tech help us build society, not destroy it? This tech does! - Part 2

   What if technology stopped keeping us apart and started bringing us back together? In this, part 2 of my conversation with Jim Savage, we turn from diagnosing the problem of loneliness to what we’re doing about it. Jim introduces Feather, the platform he founded to make real-world connection easier, richer, and more meaningful. Unlike traditional social media, Feather is built to help enrich our social interactions in real life, in studios, clubs, dinner parties, and shared experiences IRL. We discuss how Feather is building pro social design into technology: lowering the barriers to invitation, helping organisers thrive, and fostering communities that outlast the events themselves. From acrobats in North America to local yoga studios and comedy clubs, Feather is already showing how digital tools can nurture and repair the fabric of social life. If part 1 (https://open.spotify.com/episode/6fUoxJXjSiSmhxEVUq2jgF?si=HYKawZdSRSqvZ812BmDvOQ) asked why loneliness has spread, part 2 asks: what would it look like to build technology that heals society rather than harms it? Here is the link to watch the video version of this conversation (https://youtu.be/Bkx9PAmw-2s ).

Inside a recent episode

Digital Public Goods and Common Purpose: Part 1

Published 16 Jul 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] And when you develop open source software, you've just developed these global public goods. Just bang, there they are. So Google itself runs on Linux. Its internal running works on Linux. And of course, they came up with this fabulous strategy where they were not dominant. They would try to build dominant open source alternatives. So Apple's got its iPhone and it thinks, well, maybe we can do something... Maybe we can be competitive against Apple, not by trying to make as much money as Apple, but at least if we can develop the Android software system, largely open source with little private, with little closed source applications that people can build on it. […]

Podcast Authority Score: 33 / 100

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Quality

56

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

27

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