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Humans On The Loop

Humans On The Loop

Michael Garfield

Let's dream better! Join paleontologist-futurist Michael Garfield for bold, far-ranging explorations into the nature of agency in the age of automation, wisdom and innovation, responsibility and power, and the care and feeding of the new superpowers conferred to us by magical technologies. Weekly dialogues at the edge of the knowable, learning to navigate Global Weirding and exponential AI with the curiosity and play required of us. Building on twenty years of independent research plus firsthand experience of the tech, arts, and science worlds, Humans On The Loop is a show to transform you and help us make better use of our greatest natural resource: our attention.
michaelgarfield.substack.com
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Top 10 Humans On The Loop Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Humans On The Loop episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Humans On The Loop for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Humans On The Loop episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

This week we welcome back anthropologist and science writer Eric Wargo, for a conversation about his book Precognitive Dreamwork and The Long Self — as well as: how tautology (not paradox) rules a time travel universe, what it means to become a time-faring species, the future of precognitive technologies, the concern of a quantum computing financial singularity, why lying to yourself about your own future-sight might be of evolutionary benefit, why retrocausalists don’t believe in randomness, how culture is a tesseract and dreams are future fossils, the controversy of divinatory astrology, and how pre-shocks of future traumas explain some of the more puzzling facts of history.


Housekeeping:


If you value this show and would like to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon and/or please leave a good review on Apple Podcasts! As a patron you get two extra episodes a month, invites to our book club, and new writing, art, and music.


• Meet great people and have equally great conversations in the Discord Server & Facebook Group

• Buy the books we talk about from the Future Fossils shop at Bookshop.org

• Intro music: “Olympus Mons” by Michael Garfield | Outro music: “Otolith” by Skytree

For when you’d rather listen to music than conversation, follow me and my listening recommendations on Spotify.

Thanks to Naomi Most for helping edit the first half of this episode! It isn’t easy work.


If you like thinking about mind-expanding future technologies, I recommend you check out David Kelley’s WeFunder for a new human-AI symbiosis governance system that seems like it could shake things up in a good way. If you know people who like to fund tech projects, this one seems worth checking out. (David’s Transhumanity.net is a supporter of the show.)


Support the countless hours of research and production that go into Future Fossils:

• Venmo: @futurefossils

PayPal.me/michaelgarfield

• Patreon: patreon.com//michaelgarfield

• BTC: 1At2LQbkQmgDugkchkP6QkDJCvJ5rv3Jm

• ETH: 0xfD2BC66586FA4FBA189992E9B0037CD5cb9673EF

• NFTs: Rarible | Foundation


Discussed:


• Listening

FF 117 with Eric Wargo

FF 124 with Norman “Dr. Blue” Katz

FF 150 with Sean Esbjörn-Hargens

FF 156 with Stuart Davis

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This week and next, we talk to returning guest Tadaaki Hozumi about the crossroads between the esoteric history of Japan and its Indigenous peoples and royal family; the mysterious convergence of ancient records from around the world on stories of lost civilizations and extraterrestrial encounters; and how animism and magic seem ripe for retrieval as we barrel down the chute of the Technological Singularity.

This is one of those edge-case conversations that I’ll look back on in twenty years and either consider totally insane or uncanny in its prophetic insights. I don’t confidently recommend every mention in the show notes as an authoritative final source, but I refuse to censor our citations out of my commitment to humility about What’s Really Going On. This is a truly off-road dialogue on ideas so far outside of the dominant world-space of early 21st-Century Western thinking as to constitute a reputational risk, but what else is this show for than to showcase maverick thinkers and strange, potentially transformative speculations anchored in careful independent study?

Strap in for a crash course on hidden temple texts, occult perspectives on the analog-digital divide, and alternative narratives so bizarre and interesting I consider them worth review on aesthetic grounds alone! Tada is one of those “too weird to live, too rare to die” wizards and wonders I’m honored to call a friend and colleague, and I’m delighted to have them back on Future Fossils to explore the Real with you.

In Tada’s own blog post about this episode, they say:

“It was an incredible opportunity to get to speak so freely about ancient-future matters on a prolific podcast with a name that basically captures the essence of the discussion. I've always appreciated Michael's kindness and bravery as a host, not just of a podcast but of whole online communities, who is committed to giving his listenership and community the permission to explore the strangest possibilities of human existence.”

Subscribe anywhere you go for podcasts!

This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Future Fossils Facebook Group. Join us!

I'm also ISO moderators interested in helping steward the Discord server so I can release it into the wilds as a fan-operated platform. Want to claim stake?

Support The Show:

Subscribe to the podcast, essays, music, and news on Substack or PatreonBuy my original paintings or commission new workBuy my music on Bandcamp (they take 15%)

Tip Jars:

@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPal

Mentioned & Related Media:

Future Fossils 149 - Cultural Somatics & Ritual as Justice with Tada Hozumi, Dare Sohei, and Naomi Most

Graham Hancock’s hotly-debated Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse

Future Fossils 14 - WESTWORLD Problems (feat. Michael Phillip of Third Eye Drops)

Future Fossils 65 - John David Ebert (Hyp...

Complete, EXTENSIVE show notes at Patreon.com/michaelgarfield!


As guest 0xZakk says at the very end of this conversation, most of the construction projects throughout the history of civilization have been coercive. What does it look like when we actually build things in a really cooperative way? This episode was recorded in November 2021 when the cryptocurrency markets were insanely bullish and the world relatively stable...but releasing it now, in July 2022, seems more aptly-timed than I could have anticipated.


The United States Supreme Court has failed the great majority of American citizens not just once but several shocking and historic times in one week, hacking away at women’s reproductive rights, the EPA, and gun safety all at once. The Supreme Court majority was largely appointed by presidents that lost the popular vote, our nation is embroiled in hearings about a violent coup attempt spearheaded by the former President, and people on both sides of the constructed political divide seem more desperate than ever before in living memory. At the same time, both stocks and digital currencies, and the economic possibilities they support, are suffering through what seems like it will be a protracted winter. So it’s a PERFECT moment to talk about the visions we commit to building through the hardship, and the new responsibilities we must assume as citizens — not just of nation-states, but of the digital communities and cultures that we voluntarily participate in, the neighborhoods and cities that we live in.


When a big tree dies in the forest, its falling lets in light that stimulates a contest between saplings — and we’re seeing something similar now in this rapid blooming of experiments in governance and finance, legal regulations and privately-organized society. Suddenly projects like the CABIN DAO seem prescient and urgent, so I’m glad to share this potent conversation with Jon Hillis and @0xZakk of CABIN DAO and Christian Lemp of Diamond DAO — three of the many people working hard at the frontiers of blockchain-based social innovation. In this episode we talk about what it means to live-action roleplay as a city-state, how physical geography and online culture overlap in their experiments, and what should stay illegible and wild amidst this wave of techy change...


If you enjoy this show, please take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review wherever you prefer to listen. I’ve been extremely busy backstage working on a suite of Future Fossils projects that extend beyond the podcast, some of which you can glimpse on my Instagram and Twitter feeds...big changes coming soon, and inspiration’s flowing. If you want the inner track on all the music, art, and writing I am cooking up — or if you simply see the value in these conversations and my work at large, I hope you’ll join the other awesome people chipping in with listener support at Patreon.com/michaelgarfield — where I’m sharing an enormous folder of new A.I. artwork, updated every day.


Lastly, I just re-launched my now thirteen-year-old blog on Substack — for roughly monthly digests of new work, join 7,500 other readers at michaelgarfield.substack.com. More soon.

Get bonus content on Patreon

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils.



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.


This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe
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Humans On The Loop - 191 - Roland Harwood on Learning To Be Liminal
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09/09/22 • 69 min

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Rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts

Browse my newsletter, original art, prints, merchandise, NFTs, etc.

Dig into the complete, extensive show notes (and join our online community) at Patreon


This week on the show I chat with the storied, insightful, multidimensional Roland Harwood (Twitter | LinkedIn | Liminal | Participatory City Foundation) — a “compulsive connector,” generalist, “failed astronaut,” pianist, Founder, CEO, Trustee, impresario of international collective intelligence projects, and generally fascinating person. In a conversation that already feels somewhat archaeological (it was recorded in November 2021 and references discussions that have already developed significantly over the last year), we explore the martial art of living in transition, of thriving in the in-between spaces, of dealing with the unpredictable and the fundamental uncertainty of our lives. We also rap on the subjects of innovation, global weirding, organizational evolution, technology, hope, and happiness. Dig into the complete show notes for plenty to follow up on!


Intro and outro music is from my forthcoming EP, “Ephemeropolis,” available soon at Bandcamp and Patreon.


Special thanks to Tami Pudina for her help with this episode! Check out her work at hyperdriveanthropology.com.

Get bonus content on Patreon

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils.



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.


This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe
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Humans On The Loop - 119 - Jeremy Johnson on The Integral Time of Jean Gebser
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07/22/19 • 79 min

“The human being is actually this kaleidoscope of different ways to relate to time and space. And to be present with it all, to be awake with it all, is what we’re doing.”


Jean Gebser mapped the mutating structures of human consciousness, the topology of mind from archaic to magic to mythic to mental to integral. His work inspired generations of inquiry by authors like William Irwin Thompson and Ken Wilber. Now Jeremy Johnson’s latest book for Revelore Press expands into the truly visionary and unique “amensional” reality that Gebser posits as the next mutation for our planetary culture.


“We’re not just going to have an ‘archaic revival’ and dump what we’ve been doing with the nightmare of history. There’s something that’s been achieved in this kind of coalescing of the self and the emergence of spatial linear time that’s true, as well.”


“The endgame of perspectivalism and the mental world...is eventually breaking down to the point where everyone has their own little perspectival ‘reality tunnel,’ where nobody’s able to talk to one another and everybody’s in this sense of cultural warfare and fragmentation and social isolation.”


“You should know by now that things are ever-present.”


Jeremy’s Book:

https://revelore.press/product/seeing-through-the-world/


Jeremy’s Podcast:

http://www.jeremydanieljohnson.com/mutations


Discussed:

James Joyce

Marshall McLuhan

Martin Heidegger

Sri Aurobindo

Grant Morrison

Timothy Morton

Doug Rushkoff

Eugene Thacker

Graham Harman


Support the show on Patreon for an avalanche of secret episodes, writing, art, music, and the Future Fossils Book Club:

https://patreon.com/michaelgarfield

Get bonus content on Patreon

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils.



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.


This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe
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Humans On The Loop - 196 - Robert Poynton on Improvisation As A Way of Life
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12/28/22 • 80 min

Rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts

Browse my newsletter, original art, prints, merchandise, etc.

“Notice more. Let go. Use everything.”

I’ve decided Future Fossils is going to double down on its commitment to helping people navigate uncharted waters by focusing explicitly on improvisation in 2023, and our first stop together on this journey is a marvelously soulful and profound discussion with my friend Robert Poynton.

Robert is many things, including an Associate Fellow of the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, where he runs executive education programs that help leaders understand and work with complex change. He also runs Yellow Learning (“a regenerative space for a complex world”), which I recommend highly as the kind of group experience you actually WANT to be involved in online...and he’s a husband and father of three adult sons who helps his wife run an organic beef farm in rural Spain.

But perhaps the most salient point is that he wrote an amazing book called Do Improvise — one of the finest I’ve ever encountered on the subject — so that’s the focus of our conversation. Join us as we discuss how to tune in, surrender, and make the most of whatever life throws your way...

This conversation continues with lively and respectful interaction every single day in the members-only Future Fossils Facebook Group. Join us!

I'm also ISO moderators interested in helping steward the Discord server, which I am releasing into the wilds as a fan-operated platform in 2023.

PS — I’ve moved Future Fossils to Substack. There you will find my entire archives AND an increasingly-complete (but as yet not-entirely-migrated) repository of essays and blogs dating back to the Mesozoic. (If you prefer Substack over Patreon, I’m totally happy to take your support there, as well as or instead of...but I have not yet figured out how to handle posting subscribers-only content to both platforms.)

Support The Show:

Subscribe to my work in all media on PatreonSubscribe to the podcast and monthly newsletter on SubstackBuy my original paintings or commission new work

Tip Jars:

@futurefossils on Venmo$manfredmacx on CashAppmichaelgarfield on PayPalBuy my music on Bandcamp (they take 15%)

Mentioned & Related Media:

Stuart Firestein on Ignorance, Failure, Uncertainty, and The Optimism of Science

MG Twitter thread re: Weird Studies and ergodic vs. nonergodic storytelling

The Lord of The Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Gary Hirsch (friend of Rob’s)

Margaret Heffernan on Hidden Forces Podcast: How To Navigate an Unpredictable World

Free Play

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This week’s guest is Eric Wargo, author of Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausation, and the Unconscious.


Contrary to your most likely first impression based on the title of the book alone, this is a supremely carefully constructed argument that anticipates its critics, understands statistics and their abuse, appeals to our desire for simplicity in scientific explanations, and single-handedly reorganizes the entire field of parapsychological research beneath a new and rational umbrella that allows for major weirdness without sacrificing mechanistic causation or parsimony. Telepathy and spooky action at a distance, Jungian synchronicity and many worlds quantum physics all get re-evaluated under Wargo’s tesseract-brain model, in which there’s no such thing as entanglement, but living systems co-opt quantum post-selection to “steer” toward evolutionarily significant events.


If you have ever dreamt of something that then happened in your waking life, this episode’s for you. And if you think that time’s an arrow and this all sounds like high nonsense, this episode is also for you.


I can’t possibly attempt to cover all the subjects we discuss in these two hours, but here are books and essays that we reference (some of which I haven’t read):


Eric Wargo - Time Loops

https://www.amazon.com/Time-Loops-Precognition-Retrocausation-Unconscious/dp/1938398920


J. Scott Turner - Purpose & Desire

https://www.amazon.com/Purpose-Desire-Something-Darwinism-Explain/dp/0062651560

(I have to make a personal note that without having read this book, I’ve read enough reviews to caution anyone against taking it as legitimate science. I’ve argued for the importance of beauty and desire, purpose and effort in the evolutionary process – and I’ve argued evolution in general does have a kind of direction. So I’m sympathetic to the author’s desire to re-introduce these ideas into the discussion. But from everything I can tell this particular book misrepresents evolutionary theory in its attempts to get where it wants to go, and I can’t support that.)


Paul Davies - The Goldilocks Enigma

https://www.amazon.com/The-Goldilocks-Enigma-Universe-Right/dp/0713998830%


Matthew Fox - “The Return of the Black Madonna”

http://www.matthewfox.org/blog/the-return-of-the-black-madonna-a-sign-of-our-times-or-how-the-black-madonna-is-shaking-us-up-for-the-twenty-first-century


Seth Lloyd, et al. - “The quantum mechanics of time travel through post-selected teleportation”

https://arxiv.org/abs/1007.2615


Eric Wargo - “Dream Paleontology”

http://thenightshirt.com/?p=4215


Eric Wargo - “What Lies Under The Skin”

http://thenightshirt.com/?p=3198


Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield)

https://skytree.bandcamp.com/track/god-detector-ft-michael-garfield


Additional Music: “It All Turned Out All Right” by Michael Garfield

https://michaelgarfield.bandcamp.com/track/it-all-turned-out-all-right


Support this show on Patreon to join the book club and for secret episodes (and the last ten minutes of this conversation):

https://patreon.com/michaelgarfield

Get bonus content on Patreon

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils.



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.


This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or ge...
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This week I talk with environmental philosopher and Santa Clara Clara Assistant Professor Kimberly Dill, an old friend of mine from Austin, Texas whom I met at Bouldin Creek Coffee over lemon maté sours and a deep dive into Eastern nondual traditions while she was in school studying arguments against free will under acclaimed analytic philosopher Galen Strawson. She has since grown into a formidable scholar and ethics instructor in her own right and positively exudes a studious, diligent, caring, and starry-eyed vibe at all times...an utterly unique and finely-honed heart and intellect who stands out from the rest of my belovedly strange cohort of Austin festival-going slacker friends.


I’ve been chasing her down to be on the podcast for years and am delighted she and I finally managed to link up to record this potent dialogue on the relationality of humankind and the wild world in which we are inextricably entangled, the substantive differences between our simulations and the originals they fail to fully reproduce, the importance of forests and dark skies to our psychospiritual well-being, where modern Western festival culture fails in its declared goal of delivering us back into right relations and ecstatic harmony with our kosmos...plus much else.


Read the ✨ EXTENSIVE ✨ show notes, and join the Future Fossils community, at Patreon.


Rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts

Browse my newsletter, original art, prints, merchandise, NFTs, etc.


Side Note:

My big, BIG thanks to everyone for being so patient with me while my family and I suffered through some extraordinary challenges over the last months. I can’t tell you enough how much it means to me to have retained nearly everyone’s Patreon support while my wife and I dealt with two constantly sick kids, a number of our own health issues, and major upgrades to our home and big transitions at work.


The good news is that I also managed to record interviews with the legendary Simon Conway Morris and Robert Poynton in that time and will be sharing those with you in short order! So, again, thanks for your subscriptions, your glowing Apple Podcasts reviews, and your engagement in the Future Fossils Facebook group...and stay tuned for several exciting big announcements soon!


(Big thanks to my father-in-law Kevin Taylor for helping edit this episode!)

Get bonus content on Patreon

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils.



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.


This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe
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This week we sit for a soulful chat with speaker, writer, and organizational development expert Sahana Chattopadhyay of Mumbai to discuss her essays “The Power of Communities in Uncertain Times” (Part 1, Part 2) and “Befriending Uncertainty in a Post-COVID World.”


Follow Sahana on Twitter & LinkedIn.


If you believe in the value of this show and want to see it thrive, support Future Fossils on Patreon for over nearly twenty secret episodes, our book club calls and recordings, and much more.


Theme Music: “God Detector” by Evan “Skytree” Snyder (feat. Michael Garfield)

Get bonus content on Patreon

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils.



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.


This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe
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Humans On The Loop - 53 - A Very Xeno Christmas! with Evan "Skytree" Snyder
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12/25/17 • 106 min

Merry X-(is for Xenomorph)-mas, everyone! This week – in a brazen display of anachronism – original Future Fossils cohost, electronic music producer, and sci fi aficionado Evan Snyder and I go deep on what we liked and disliked about Alien: Covenant, and speculate on how this film fits into the still-murky larger mythos of Ridley Scott’s expanded Alien universe. We get into atheist Scott’s weird fixation with the Bible; how the Alien films represent and handle philosophical questions about the relationship between humanity and technology; and why people from the science-fictional future ARE SO DAMN STUPID. Evan’s Music: http://skytree.bandcamp.com Related Reading: “Reading Necronomicon at the New York Comic Con” https://www.patreon.com/posts/poem-reading-at-10621994 In This Episode We Discuss: • Why are people are so damn stupid in the Alien movies – is it bad writing, or a realistic understanding of how dependent we will one day be on artificial cognitive augmentation? • Nicholas Carr’s book The Glass Cage: Automation and Us • Smartphone addiction & technology as prosthesis • Was the neutrino burst that hit the Covenant an accident, or planned/intended? • Is David actually rebelling, or still continuing to serve the Weyland-Yutani corporate program? • Easter Egg: How do the various LV planets of the Alien franchise line up with chapters of Leviticus? • Are the Engineers themselves bioengineered artificial organisms? • The xenomorph life cycle: Why do we even have an Alien Queen? Is “egg-morphing” canonical? • WTF was going on in that seemingly contrived last Daniels/Tennessee/Protomorph fight scene? • The motif of creativity and the inability to create in the Alien movies • NerdWriter’s great video on Logan and the extension of genres into self-aware post-genres * Hideo Kojima about the Alien franchise * How Blade Runner movies and Aliens films may be related • How this film addresses society’s concerns about artificial intelligence * Are the alien prequels actually about the production of the Alien franchise itself? * Wall-E, Idiocracy, Blade Runner, The Fifth Element * Christmas, Christ, and Antichrist in the Alien films * Is Ridley Scott trolling us all? * Bizarre (fan-shipped) possibility of a Star Trek/Alien crossover Subscribe to this show: iTunes (iOS) / Stitcher (Android) Join the Facebook Discussion GroupSupport this show and get cool stuff Like this podcast and want to show support? Make a donation! BTC = 1iLHDNzpRMiXn13ekB8iVEsvVFkRzkGVe LTC = Ldg3JS4T2m8gFd8kQPaLpjcAiAXxdVthWQ ETH = 0xddF0524510d6d802c3e9b0740D48CF893425664D BCH = 1XyN5SRpQF7AuXnCvAEjNXMMMYRCW7Rgf DASH = XwckYNsyYThWozWJqrtpeguEu9BAqi9gPj

Get bonus content on Patreon

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils.



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.


This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe
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FAQ

How many episodes does Humans On The Loop have?

Humans On The Loop currently has 240 episodes available.

What topics does Humans On The Loop cover?

The podcast is about Society & Culture, Podcasts, Books, Philosophy and Arts.

What is the most popular episode on Humans On The Loop?

The episode title '193 - Kimberly Dill on Environmental Philosophy: In Defense of Wildness & Night' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Humans On The Loop?

The average episode length on Humans On The Loop is 81 minutes.

How often are episodes of Humans On The Loop released?

Episodes of Humans On The Loop are typically released every 11 days, 22 hours.

When was the first episode of Humans On The Loop?

The first episode of Humans On The Loop was released on May 21, 2016.

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