Hope In Source

What happens when we treat language as a historical totem? Xiq walks with me at UBC campus for https://atmosphereconf.org! We discuss swarms of AI fairies, openness and game theory, hyperstition and psychomagic, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and why thinking heaven is boring is a failure of imagination and misunderstanding of the infinite.

What does it mean to build an infrastructure for play? Brendan Schlagel and I trace a path around the lake in Prospect Park, chatting about generational mementos, tracing maps, a pattern language for games, riding ferries, physical constraints, and the idea of a depth jam (Recorded June 2025)

Can snow itself be like open source? Just a fun thought while walking around talking about openclaw and seeing everyone's creations.. all on a impromptu prospect park sauntercast with Melody after last week's blizzard! (titled after Illich's essay, Silence is a Commons) 0:00 highlights0:38 route and intro2:47 two weeks offline4:44 open claw and open source11:10 into the snow14:06 the xkcd dependency comic23:48 tragedy of the commons25:49 200K stars and eternal September33:40 everything was fine39:27 go back to just being people42:19 striving versus being45:54 wu wei49:16 audience of one56:36 Spotify broke the album1:06:42 foreground will never be replaced1:10:47 temporal bandwidth

What makes something call out to us? Sonya and Henry explore how prayer transforms perception: ceaseless prayer, the felt body, sacred patterns, remembrance in communion, the invisible church spread through all time, and the holy mystery we're part of. (Recorded October 2020)0:00 Ceaseless Prayer2:37 Creation6:44 What Is Salience?10:35 The Ordinary as Extraordinary15:20 Patterns as Language19:34 The Felt Body27:19 Remembrance34:19 Embodiment37:44 Shape All the Way Down43:05 Beyond Our Concepts46:08 Eucatastrophe52:21 Praise and Prayer1:03:31 The Invisible Church1:11:55 Grace and the Fall1:17:05 No Ordinary People1:34:21 The Leap of Faith1:45:06 Holy Mystery

What happens when anyone can build anything? Melody and I snapshot this AI moment for us: vibe coding as gambling, understanding debt, McLuhan's extensions and amputations, building for community not companies, and why culture is really about cultivation.0:00 Internet Checkpoint (what it means + why we're recording)3:29 Why This Felt Urgent8:03 The Vibe Coding Journey (printers → force push → Claude Code)12:03 Why It Feels Like Gambling14:03 How the Design Process Has Changed15:26 Abstraction All the Way Down16:56 "The Hottest Programming Language Is English"18:14 The Faucet Turned On22:55 Will AI Replace Us?27:15 McLuhan: Extension and Amputation30:05 "The Seed Needs to Be High Quality"34:30 Orchestration and Human Judgment35:46 Building for Community, Not Companies39:58 Culture, Belief, and What Makes Us Human42:32 "There Is No Inevitability"48:52 The Checkpoint

Something NEW to listen for: the birds, dogs, cars, shoe tying, and even a lady asking us to take a picture! Laurel and I take a stroll through Central park on Memorial day: chatting about the idea of a walking podcast, sauntering, voice notes, memory, the romance of distance, physicality, screenshots, printers, embodiment, energy, perception, ultralight, ordinary time. I certainly felt both the messiness and the surprise of being outside! Please check out the site https://sauntercast.henryzoo.com to follow our walking path!- (00:00) The Birth of a Walking Podcast- (03:01) Exploring the Concept of Footnote- (06:09) The Role of Voice Notes and Memory- (08:54) Capturing Ambience and Context- (12:00) The Challenge of Finding Notes- (15:04) Romanticizing Distance and Connection- (17:48) Art, Memory, and Public Spaces- (21:00) Desire Paths and Unplanned Journeys- (23:58) Screenshots as Time Capsules- (29:52) Exploring the Energy of Language- (32:20) The Meaning Behind Screenshots- (34:04) The Art of Printing Memor

Does technology give us control or the illusion of it? We explore how societal expectations, the nature of work, and AI challenge what it means to be human, contrasting the allure of self-sufficiency with the call to vulnerability.

What does it really mean to call yourself anything? Joseph Choi begins to explore his ongoing journey of faith deconstruction, reconstruction, and whatever it is now. But we end up through about the anxieties around labeling one's beliefs, between commitment and optionality, and abundance and scarcity mindsets.

How does rationality/ea and faith intersect? Austin Chen joins me to explore the overlaps between Catholic upbringing and EA principles. We discuss his car wash story, tithing/earning to give, the concept of utilons and fuzzies, creating secular liturgies like Taco Tuesday, the tension between being agentic and the savior complex, on rest and waiting, and seeing the uniqueness of each person amidst the systems we create. (Recorded May 2024) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/charity(00:00) - Jewish Culture and Rationalism (00:57) - Growing up Tithing (02:16) - Car washing for missions to earn to give (03:49) - Ebbs and Flows (05:32) - How far does a dolllar go (08:49) - Separate your utilons and fuzzies (09:55) - Assumptions in value (11:24) - EA as at it's best a meta-framework? (13:18) - Friends vs Movements (15:42) - Continual commitment (18:56) - Babel and Pentecost (20:16) - The Mystical Body and Taco Tuesdays (24:23) - Agentic or Salvific (26:08) - Humility of Sabbath (28:22) - Efficiency and Waiting

How does faith call us to both right action and right emotion? Sonya Mann joins me again to discuss the layered meanings of biblical parables. Some themes I liked: the paradoxical nature of faith, the generousity of God, the interplay bt obligation and grace, freedom within constraint, the parable of workers in the vineyard and talents, lay utilitarianism, the nature of praise, phenomenology in faith, the metaphor of weddings, viserality and the flesh, specificity, sacred modes, acceptable woo, cheap grace. (Recorded October 2020) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/feeling(00:00) - Right Feeling (Sonya Mann) (02:30) - Come to the table: God's generosity (05:21) - Orthopathos: a change of heart (08:53) - Freedom and Responsibility within the Body (12:42) - On obligation: asking something of you (15:41) - The freedom of the woodcarver (18:36) - formative moments of intimacy (22:37) - integrating with tradition, Christian art, Kanye (25:37) - Archaic on the outside, Alive inside (27:34) - Fruits: the form of f

Why does everyone care about New York? Drew Austin explores the interplay bt digital/physical env and how tech values shape our lives. We discuss some of his past essays: fashion as public good, airport lounge-ification highlighting, and how digital paradigms reshape our physical spaces. Topics include: fake serendipity, lofi, gm, resilient systems, the commons as customs, postmodernist software, leaving a trace, Twitter as a waiting room. (Recorded October 2021) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/artificial(00:00) - Artificial Physicality (Drew Austin) (00:08) - So what's the weather in New York? (01:58) - Even a pandemic becomes about NYC (03:18) - We behave the same, online or in a city (04:39) - Technology, Memory, and Depersonalization (06:46) - Lofi, CDs, and Artifical Physicality (13:19) - From Sharing Silence to gm (15:58) - Worn Out: Fashion and Public Space (21:39) - Modernist architecture and postmodernist software (27:41) - Code isn't just code (29:25) - Infrastructure requires resilience (31:2

How do we all act as protestants online? L.M. Sacasas joins Henry (4th time!?) to chat about material/digital culture, how we compensate for natural affordances in new digital interfaces, our inability to account for non-measurable losses, texture vs. frictionlessness, lofi, roguelikes, reality tv, ambient data capture, extracting our private life for gain, how digital space is more of a past rather a place. (Recorded August 2022) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/protestant[00:00] Introduction[04:15] The Everyday Texture of Material Culture[07:11] Translated Affordances of Digital Interfaces[09:11] The Burden of Note-Taking Systems[10:36] No Accounting for Loss[11:48] The Added Texture of Lofi[14:54] Anchors of the Material World[16:02] The Frictionless Life[18:03] The Internal Motivation of Roguelikes[19:42] The Language of Needs[21:52] Liturgies and Mediums[22:47] No Material Trace[24:41] Compensating for the Losses of the Digital[27:28] You can't capture me![29:11] Reality TV prepped us for the Very On

Where can hope be found? Alex Kim joins again to open up questions of responsibility, and our place in relation to times of weariness. He speaks out his experiences growing up and also shepherding a local church body as a youth pastor. We speak amidst the burnout on notions of time, the work of Charles Taylor through Andrew Root, work/play, and living out in hope. Maybe it's what this podcast is attempting to work towards! (Recorded June 2022) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/hope

Can our digitally mediated environment be spiritual? Nick Ripatrazone takes us through the lens of the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan, focusing on his not well-known Catholic faith. McLuhan himself describes his testimony into the Church as, "I came in on my knees. That is the only way in." We discuss the topics around inter-textuality, the complexity of life, on form/function within mediums like poetry, concept/percept, ambiguity and paradox, and McLuhan's famous phrase "the medium is the message". (Recorded April 2022) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/communion

What is the place of history in our society? Who was Ivan Illich and how might he be a helpful voice, even in his passing? David Cayley shares about his new book, "Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey". It's not really a biography, and as Illich himself would say, "you can't capture me!" We talk about open source, big tech, and enclosure, history which gives you roots, how tradition and change are intertwined, the many myths/idols of society, on good vs. value, aestheticism, and much more. (Recorded in January 2022)

What is the nature of reality? Esther Lightcap Meek speaks of reality as interpersonal, saying yes to life, everyday knowing. We discuss hope as a person-ed affair, how life is a sort of scrabbling together of clues, gift economies, covenant epistemology, on commitment, consent, belonging. (Recorded in November 2021) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/reality

Why is Christianity so commercialized? Conley shares about The Dorean Principle, his new book which explains this biblical concept of the Gospel being "freely given". We talk about being a colaborer vs. a customer, reciprocity vs. gift, Bible translation, Christian music, copyright and creative commons, and how it all relates to an open source ethos. (Recorded in October 2021) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/dorean.

How can we think about digital communication, let alone silence? Is it possible? L.M. Sacasas is back to chat about a few of his last newsletter posts: the nature of silence, attention not as a resource, on hope vs. expectations, the arms race of escalation, manufactured needs, askesis or discipline, the commons vs. the public, and trustlessness and codes of law. (Recorded in July 2021) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/silence.

Why read Ivan Illich today? In this episode, Madhu Suri Prakash and Dana L. Stuchul of Penn State University (and Journal of Illich Studies) interview L.M. Sacasas on his work as being a sort of bridge or interlocutor of Illich's thoughts. They talk about schooling and inequality in COVID, ways of thinking about technology, a life of planning vs. gift, convivial tools, redemption of work, and more. (Recorded in December 2020) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/illich

How does the digital life shape our perceptions of ourselves? Maggie Appleton starts us off on a discussion of school in pandemic times which lead to a discussion of the disembodiment that technology can create, somehow bringing us further towards our thoughts on time and space? (Recorded in November 2020) Transcript: https://hopeinsource.com/disembodiment