Can a conversation have a sense of place? 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.

Something NEW to listen for: the birds, dogs, cars, shoe tying, and even a lady asking us to take a picture! 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 Memories

- (36:52) The Journey of Receipt Printers

- (39:00) Layering Meaning in Screenshots

- (40:40) Walking the Internet, A New Perspective

- (47:40) Infrastructure and Awareness

- (51:01) The Energy of Open Source

- (58:50) The Evolution of Podcasting and Seasons

- (59:56) Understanding Open Source Philosophy

- (01:03:00) The Concept of Lightness and Ultralight

- (01:06:02) Art, Design, and Limitations

- (01:08:56) Games as a Medium for Creativity

- (01:12:03) The Importance of Rest and Time

- (01:14:59) Exploring Ordinary Time in Life

- (01:18:00) Creating Meaningful Spaces and Memories

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.

[05:18] Work Beyond the Title

[08:29] Unpredictability and Decision Frameworks

[11:02] Allure of Control

[13:35] Personhood

[16:18] Self-Control

[17:26] Self-Perception

[19:58] Technological Coping

[22:56] Deliberate Choices

[24:37] Unexamined Accelerationism

[28:01] The Proximity of Care

[30:56] Self-Sufficiency and Vulnerability

[33:08] Engineering Out Discomfort

[35:43] Hidden Labor

[42:26] Finitude

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
• (29:49) - Hope is trusting in people
• (32:06) - Knowledge Progression, Loose Structure

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 faith
• (30:18) - Auras: acceptable woo and phenomelogy
• (33:25) - Sacredness as a mode of being
• (37:26) - Communities of praise
• (40:05) - One can't help but laugh
• (41:34) - cheap grace, coming prepared for the wedding
• (44:09) - A vibration throughout the whole stack

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
• (31:28) - The commons as customs
• (33:43) - Airport Lounge-ification of Cities
• (37:03) - McDonalds as the only third place
• (39:51) - Reverse engineering bodegas
• (41:31) - Fake serendipity vs the city
• (44:17) - Can digital environments enable serendipity?
• (47:12) - Leaving a trace, a legacy, provenance
• (48:17) - Twitter as a waiting room

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 Online Life
• [31:23] Ambient Capture and Surveillance Culture
• [33:41] On the Terms of the Medium
• [35:41] Extraction of Private Life into Public Benefit
• [38:28] On Loneliness and Making a Living
• [41:45] Negotiating The Terms of Technology
• [43:45] The Gradience of Relationality in Sidewalk Life
• [45:12] Artificially Reconstituting Our Being in a Built Environment
• [48:07] A Gaze Turned Pastward