Douglas Rushkoff: ”Survival of the Richest”

This week’s Playback gets into the psyche of some big-money overlords — the ones who can’t make it to Mars with Elon, anyway. In his wildly popular story “Survival of the Richest,” researcher Douglas Rushkoff starts off writing about an invitation he received last year to give a keynote speech to some wealthy investors at a deluxe private resort. On the face of it, they wanted Douglas’s advice on how to escape environmental collapse. But quickly, he realized that these one-percenters just shy of the .01 percent really sought an escape — and reliable protection from — human beings. Listen to the author read his story and then chat with host Manoush Zomorodi about apocalypse preparation and the history of digital technology’s relationship with individualism.