Listener stats
About
Cargo Cult is a podcast hosted by Naomi Karavani and Michele Greenstein that pulls back the curtain on these often forgotten forces shaping our digital world.A cargo cult is what happens when people copy the visible parts of something they think is successful — without understanding the deeper systems that actually make it work.The term comes from World War II. Allied forces landed on remote Pacific islands, bringing with them cargo: food, medicine, equipment, and more. To the islanders, this sudden arrival of wealth and technology seemed magical. They noticed planes landing on runways, soldiers in uniforms, and people waving flags. After the war ended and the soldiers left, some islanders built fake airstrips and wooden control towers, hoping the cargo would return. They copied the form, not the function.Today, “cargo cult” is used as a metaphor — especially in science, business, and tech — to describe similar behavior: loving the surface level symbols of surface of success but mis