We have the pleasure of having Howard Bloom as our guest today. As per Wikipedia:
Howard Bloom (born June 25, 1943) is an American author. He was a publicist in the 1970s and 1980s for singers and bands such as Prince,[1] Billy Joel,[2] and Styx.[3] In 1988 he became disabled with chronic fatigue syndrome.[4] Since then he has published three books on human evolution and group behavior, The Genius of the Beast, The Global Brain and The Lucifer Principle, which are informed by his ideas about what underlies the success of major rock and roll artists.[5]
Bloom left the music industry in 1988 due to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, reinventing himself as one of the world’s leading scientific experts on group dynamics, perceptual engineering, memetics, and popular culture. His best-selling book The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Exploration Into the Forces of History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995) was acclaimed by 22 major scientists upon its release, and is regarded as a landmark study of principles including memes, the pecking order, and the superorganism (group-mind). The book established Bloom as a scientific expert in mass behavior.
Bloom subsequently founded the prestigious International Paleopsychology Project, a growing assembly of scientists, theorists, and conceptual outsiders who critically examine contemporary society, drawing upon physics, microbiology, paleontology, endocrinology, neurobiology, anthropology, history and human ethology.
Bloom shows this remarkable interdisciplinary outlook in his latest book, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000), which argues for Group Selection Theory, and compellingly warns that humanity may face a bacterial apocalypse.