This month, Unfinished Live will host leading technologists, journalists, artists, entrepreneurs, and other changemakers for two days of dynamic talks on our rapidly changing world. And we want you to be part of it.
Join us on September 23 and 24 for unique audio experiments led by host Anna Sale (WNYC’s “Death, Sex and Money”, “Let’s Talk About Hard Things”). Audience members — joined by special guests — will be full participants in conversations on topics like the remote workplace, the creator economy, and finding community in a decentralized world. The sessions are designed to be fully collaborative and, with the help of some complimentary noise-makers, maybe even delightfully raucous.
What’s the experiment?
Sometimes the best way to get a handle on a thorny topic is to listen to people who know a lot about it. But sometimes passively listening to experts isn’t enough. This audio experiment seeks to find new ways to bring people together and gain deeper understanding of complex subject matters. How does that understanding change when the audience is deeply involved in all aspects of the conversation? What happens when we try to decentralize the discussion, and level the status between the people talking? And how do we activate the kind of cognition that goes beyond our intellectual brains? With your help, we’re going to try and find out. Oh, and it will involve cowbells.
Here’s the full rundown:
The Decentralized Workplace — Thursday, 9/23, at 1:00pm ET
The central office disappeared during the pandemic. But what happens next is still a work in progress. As we negotiate a return to the workplace, we’re starting to see the parts of office culture we might prefer to leave behind. Do workers really have more of the power now? What will the lasting change be after the pandemic? How do we do remote work right? We’ll navigate these questions through personal experiences and our epiphanies from the past 18 months. Anna will be joined by Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel, authors of the upcoming book Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home.
The Decentralized Creative Economy — Thursday, 9/23, at 5:30pm ET
The internet has created new opportunities for writers and artists to get paid for their work. But the large tech platforms still see most of the financial rewards. Can the decentralized web shift this power imbalance? Do NFTs make it possible for more digital artists and internet meme creators to cash in? And will platforms like Substack make it possible for writers to sustain their careers? We’ll hear from artists — some who made it big with new tech, and others who are still trying to figure it out — and explore other stories about making a living through creative work.
Decentralized Community — Friday, 9/24, 10:00am ET
The traditional institutions that used to represent community are losing relevance in our lives. Now, the burden is on us to define where and how we connect with other people. What communities do we choose to belong to and how are we finding them in a decentralized world? We’ll explore the building blocks of strong communities — and try to make our own, live. Featuring Chloe Valdary, founder of Theory of Enchantment and a leading Diversity Equity and Inclusion coach, and Chris Stedman, author of IRL: Finding Realness, Meaning, and Belonging in Our Digital Lives.
What Comes Next? — Friday, 9/24, at 2:00pm ET
Can we imagine what the future looks like as more aspects of life become decentralized? Will our modern conceptions of money, power, ecology, labor, creativity, and collaboration hold in the future? What possibilities lie ahead? Anna and the audience will be joined by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood for a vibrant conversation about what’s to come.
Get your tickets today at live.unfinished.com.
Executive Producers: Jim Colgan and Benjamen Walker
Jim Colgan and Benjamen Walker have been thinking about have been thinking about the relationship between audio and the listener for some time. Jim, as a 2020 John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University and throughout a 20-year career in live and on-demand audio. His crowdsourcing initiatives at WNYC brought the station’s listeners into the reporting process and helped explore a new way to do listener-driven journalism. Benjamen, as an early pioneer in podcasting and a founding member of the Radiotopia podcast collective, and through his show, “Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything.”