Michael Bothwell, one of the show’s new speakers, wrote his paper for Andrew’s technology course on gluttony, and joins the hosts to define it. Calorie trackers, Strava, a smart scale and a keto diet; whether the drive-thru is really the problem; why churches that fast also need to feast; and how two of the hosts changed their minds about Ozempic and GLP-1 drugs.
Andrew and Joel trade summer reading, seven books that shaped how they build. Range and kind vs wicked worlds, The Lean Startup on testing a hypothesis instead of debating it, Culture Making on why creating beats critiquing, and the evolutionary neuroscience the frontier labs are mining for the next breakthrough.
Wyatt Graham returns to read Pope Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas — not the Pope “coming out against AI” but Catholic social teaching applied to the new thing. Technology is never neutral under the condition of the conditioners, the few oppress the many through its instruments, and prudential reasoning is the one thing AI cannot do.