Afleveringen
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David Foster Wallace was not a futurist, technologist, or academic theorist. Yet, few writers captured the emotional and existential toll of modern life as presciently as he did. With a mind equal parts linguistic gymnast and moral philosopher, Wallace wrote about addiction, irony, attention, loneliness, and the quiet, often unbearable burden of being awake to the world. His sprawling 1996 novel Infinite Jest imagined a society paralyzed by its own entertainment, long before anyone had a smartphone in their pocket. His nonfiction work probed American culture with humor and precision. And his 2005 commencement address, âThis Is Water,â remains a singular meditation on awareness, compassion, and choice.
In resurrecting him for this podcast, we arenât indulging in nostalgia â weâre acknowledging that Wallace may have been the first writer of the post-internet condition. And we didnât even notice until it was too late.
More information:
â They Tried to Warn Us, the bookâ : More info on each podcast interview subject, along with 15 more interviews.
â They Tried to Warn Us, the newsletterâ : Follow the action on Ray's Substack.
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In his 1964 masterwork One-Dimensional Man, Herbert Marcuse described a society where dissent was smothered not by overt oppression but by consumer satisfaction; where entertainment replaced engagement and even protest became another lifestyle brand. He worried that the very tools that could free us â technology, language, imagination â were being hijacked to make us complicit. Marcuse, who died in 1979, transports to 2025 to talk about a world where the machine doesn't need to suppress us; it just needs to make sure we never pause long enough to notice we're already being subdued.
More information:
â They Tried to Warn Us, the bookâ : More info on each podcast interview subject, along with 15 more interviews.
â They Tried to Warn Us, the newsletterâ : Follow the action on Ray's Substack.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Mary Shelley didnât just invent science fiction. She wrote a blueprint for the age of innovation without accountability. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was a parable of invention, creation, and catastrophic responsibility. It asked what happens when we build something because we can, without asking whether we should. In 2025, we brought her back. She was not impressed. "Youâve now replaced horror with convenience. Awe with speed. Soul with scale. You still believe your cleverness exempts you from consequences. It doesnât."
More information:
They Tried to Warn Us, the book: More info on each podcast interview subject, along with 15 more interviews.
They Tried to Warn Us, the newsletter: Follow the action on Ray's Substack.
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When we think of dystopia, we often imagine Orwellâs jackboot: surveillance, censorship, control through terror. But Aldous Huxley offered a different nightmare â one where oppression wears a grin. In Brave New World (1932), Huxley imagined a world pacified not by fear but by pleasure. A world where citizens are kept docile through engineered happiness,endless distractions, and a little pill called soma. His warning wasnât about totalitarianism. It was about triviality. A society so inundated with comfort, entertainment, and consumerism that it forgets what it means to be human. Fast-forward to 2025. We live in the dopamine economy. Algorithms serve what we crave. Discomfort is avoided, curated, anesthetized. Huxley saw it coming â and we brought him forward to see what weâve done with his prophecy.
More information:
They Tried to Warn Us, the book: More info on each podcast interview subject, along with 15 more interviews.
They Tried to Warn Us, the newsletter: Follow the action on Ray's Substack.
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He cracked the Nazi Enigma codeâand may have shortened World War II by two years. He helped invent the modern computerâbefore the term even existed. He asked a question no one had dared to ask: âCan machines think?â And then set out to answer it.
His name was Alan Turing. A Cambridge mathematician turned wartime cryptanalyst, Turing worked in secret at Bletchley Park, leading the effort to break Germanyâs unbreakable code. After WWII he turned his mind to the next frontier: intelligent machines and proposed the Imitation Gameâwhat we now call the Turing Testâas a way to measure whether a machine could convincingly mimic human conversation.
We brought Alan Turing to 2025 to ask what he thinks of his legacy. We may not be happy with his response.
More information:
They Tried to Warn Us, the book: More info on each podcast interview subject, along with 15 more interviews.
They Tried to Warn Us, the newsletter: Follow the action on Ray's Substack.
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Guy Debord was a Marxist filmmaker and founder of the Situationist International, a group of radical artists and thinkers who believed that modern life had been hijacked by appearances. Debord saw not just the rise of media, but the rise of mediation - and it terrified him. He died in 1994, just before the Internet fully absorbed us, so we brought him back to view an era where the spectacle is not a theory, but an operating system. He took one look at TikTok influencers livestreaming staged protests and muttered: "It's worse than I imagined."
More information:
They Tried to Warn Us, the book: More info on each podcast interview subject, along with 15 more interviews.
They Tried to Warn Us, the newsletter: Follow the action on Ray's Substack.
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What happens when the man who warned us about runaway technology comes back to see how it all turned out? In this episode, French philosopher Jacques Ellulâauthor of The Technological Societyâexplains why every innovation that can be made will be made, regardless of need or consequence. He introduces his concept of âtechnique,â showing how efficiency often trumps ethics, and why opting out of modern systems is nearly impossible. With sharp analysis and dry humor, Ellul reflects on how social media, AI, and our obsession with âprogressâ perfectly match his predictions.
More information:
They Tried to Warn Us, the book: More info on each podcast interview subject, along with 15 more interviews.
They Tried to Warn Us, the newsletter: Follow the action on Ray's Substack.
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Rachel Carson wasn't a politician, a futurist or a tech mogul. She was a marine biologist. Her 1962 book Silent Spring sounded the alarm that industry refused to hear. She was accused of being hysterical, anti-progress, even a threat to national security. She died before seeing her work become the foundation of the modern environmental movement.
What would she make of the age of carbon markets, eco-branding, microplastics and climate billionaires? We bring her back to see what she has to say.
More information:
They Tried to Warn Us, the book: More info on each podcast interview subject, along with 15 more interviews.
They Tried to Warn Us, the newsletter: Follow the action on Ray's Substack.
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Before memes, before iPhones, before your mom started texting in all capsâthere was Marshall McLuhan. The Canadian media theorist, cultural provocateur, and surprise cameo star in Annie Hall makes his ghostly return to decode the 21st-century media swamp he predicted decades ago.
In this episode, Ray sits down with the OG of media studies, a man who once said, âWe shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape usâ, then smiled smugly while the rest of us scrambled to keep up. McLuhan takes a long look at the digital age, tries to make sense of TikTok, and assesses whether weâve finally become the âdiscarnate beingsâ he once foretold.
Together, they explore:
Why McLuhan thinks Twitter is the logical extension of tribal drumming
What the âglobal villageâ actually feels like when everyoneâs shouting
How electric media rewired us into reactive, fragmented minds
Whether he regrets coining phrases people use but never understand
The real meaning behind âthe medium is the messageââand why your Kindle isnât fooling anyone
Why he might take MarshallGPT personally
And yes, how it felt to be more famous for one line in a Woody Allen movie than for reshaping the way we think about media
If youâve ever wondered why Instagram makes you feel overstimulated and underinformed, or why you read McLuhan quotes on Twitter without knowing who he was, this oneâs for you.
More information:
They Tried to Warn Us, the book: More info on each podcast interview subject, along with 15 more interviews.
They Tried to Warn Us, the newsletter: Follow the action on Ray's Substack.
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âWhat happens when the man who saw it all coming returns to tell us⊠we misunderstood the punchline?â
In this premiere episode of They Tried to Warn Us, we resurrect the voice and mind of media theorist Neil Postmanâthe man who warned us that entertainment would devour public discourse, and that we might laugh ourselves into tyranny.
Recorded from beyond the grave (donât worry, itâs not creepyâjust uncanny), Postman joins our host Ray Welling for a conversation that feels more relevant now than when Amusing Ourselves to Death first hit shelves in 1985. In fact, it may be more relevant today.
We ask Postman what he thinks of:
TikTok, Trump, and 24-hour news
Whether Orwell or Huxley got it right (spoiler: Postman was Team Huxley)
Why he thought the printing press created reason, and TV dismantled it
The meaning of his infamous phrase: âNow⊠this.â
What schools have forgottenâand why tech wonât save them
How algorithms shape belief
And what he thinks of our podcast dragging him back from the deadâŠ
Postman responds with the clarity, wit, and dry dismay that made him one of the most prescient cultural critics of the 20th century. This isnât nostalgia. Itâs a warning weâre finally ready to hear.
More information:
â They Tried to Warn Usâ â , â the book: More info on each podcast interview subject, along with 15 more interviews.
â They Tried to Warn Usâ , the newsletter: Follow the action on Ray's Substack.
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They Tried to Warn Us is the podcast that resurrects dead thinkersâwriters, theorists,prophets, poetsâand asks them what they make of the world weâve built.
Weâve used a little creative licenseâand a lot of historical researchâto bring back the voices of those who saw it all coming.
This season, we talk to ten prophetic voices from across historyâ from media theorists and science fiction authors to environmentalists, philosophers, and visionaries.
Each episode is part time-travel, part interview, part wake-up call.
So if you're feeling overwhelmed, confused, or just plain suspicious of your smartphone...Youâre not alone.Youâre not paranoid.Youâre living in the world they warned us about.
Subscribe now. Before itâs too lateâŠ
More information:
â They Tried to Warn Usâ â , â the book: More info on each podcast interview subject, along with 15 more interviews.
â They Tried to Warn Usâ , the newsletter: Follow the action on Ray's Substack.
