Alex McDowell - A master class in worldbuilding and designing holistic spaces

Origins Podcast with Ryan McGranaghan

Alex McDowell is a worldbuilder. He builds future realities to envision worlds that don't yet exist. By working across disciplines to imagine the future, his worlds inform and inspire stories and open eyes to new possibilities.
Origins Podcast website
Show Notes:

• Quaker meeting (09:40)
  • Empowerment
• The skills of listening and gathering (11:40)
• The politics of your social experience (12:10)
• Worldbuilding
  • "Storytelling Shapes the Future"
  • Every world is a holistic system at multiple scales
• Minority Report (22:00)
• Triangle of narrative design (27:00)
• Relationship to complex systems (27:30)
• Counterfactuals to explore a world (27:50)
• Cultivating interdisciplinary collaboration in teams (28:00)
• Scenius (29:00)
• Building enough of a framework to know what we don't know (31:00)
• Teaching (40:00)
  • The literacies of worldbuilding
  • Work collaboratively in the space of uncertainty
• Experimental Design company (44:30)
• Great 'Askers' (49:00)
• Balancing curiosity and boredom (51:00)
• MIT Media Lab (52:00)
• Scott Fisher (52:30)
• Falling forward (55:00)
• Lightning round (55:15)
  • Book: Neuromancer by William Gibson
    • Cognitive estrangement
  • Passion: Guitar
  • Heart sing: New language for molecular biology
  • Screwed up: Graphic design for record labels
• Find Alex online:
  • Twitter: @worldbldg
  • Website: https://alexmcdowell.design/
• 'Five-Cut Fridays’ five-song music playlist series
  • Alex’s playlist