At this very moment, in glass-walled conference rooms and cramped mediation offices around the world, people are fighting over things they actually agree about. The scale of these phantom wars—conflicts that exist only because we cannot see our own common ground—dwarfs the GDP of most nations.
But what if most human conflict is unnecessary? What if the deal that satisfies everyone already exists, hidden beneath stated positions, waiting to be found?
This episode traces four thousand years of humanity's quest to solve this puzzle: from King Solomon's famous judgment where the sword never fell, to medieval merchants resolving disputes in hours at trade fairs, to eBay's algorithms processing sixty million conflicts per year, to AI systems that can now surface agreements humans cannot see.
FEATURED STORIES:
• Solomon and the two mothers—how the threat of violence revealed truth without violence
• The Temple of Shamash in ancient Babylon, where priests arbitrated copper disputes with divine authority
• Roger Fisher and William Ury at Harvard, codifying the wisdom of "interests, not positions" into a framework that trained a generation
• Colin Rule at eBay, building the largest dispute resolution system in human history—and discovering that most "conflicts" were actually misunderstandings
THE CENTRAL INSIGHT:
Throughout history, whenever societies needed strangers to cooperate, they invented neutral third parties who could see what adversaries could not. The form changed—priest, merchant, professor, algorithm—but the function remained constant: finding the deal that already exists.
The phantom wars that consumed so much of human history need not consume our future. The deals are there. The question is whether we'll learn to find them.
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T Cubed is brought to you by T³ Law (Taylor Technologies & Transactional Law)—a law firm built on cutting-edge AI that delivers partner-level legal analysis at startup-friendly prices.
Visit t3-law.com to learn more.

At 11:47 PM on a Tuesday in Austin, Texas, a solo attorney stares at an 87-page vendor agreement. Her startup client needs it signed by Friday. She can't afford the $30,000 BigLaw would charge to review it properly. She'll have to wing it. Again.

But first, we need to understand what a champion is—and why strangers have always needed people willing to fight for them.
This episode traces the 3,000-year evolution of legal champions: from Wulfric oiling his blade in a Germanic forest clearing in 847 AD, to Cicero's trembling hands in the Roman Forum, to the last attempted trial by combat in England in 1818, to a BigLaw associate working through the night on due diligence, to AI systems that never sleep.

FEATURED STORIES:
• Wulfric, a professional judicial combat champion, risks his life for a widow he's never met—and grapples with whether God guides his sword or just his skill
• Cicero's first major case: defending an innocent man against Sulla's corrupt freedmen when no established advocate would take the case
• Abraham Thornton throwing down a gauntlet in 1818 Westminster, invoking trial by battle for the last time in English history
• Maya, a modern BigLaw associate, discovering the human cost of being a paper champion at 3 AM

THE CENTRAL INSIGHT:
For three thousand years, the adversarial system promised equal representation—but delivered it only to those who could afford champions. The sword became a pen became a keyboard, but the role never changed: to fight, professionally, for someone else's cause.
Now, for the first time in human history, technology is making it possible to keep that promise for everyone.
Your champion is ready. The question is: what will you ask them to fight for?

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T Cubed is brought to you by T³ Law (Taylor Technologies & Transactional Law)—a law firm built on cutting-edge AI that delivers partner-level legal analysis at startup-friendly prices.
Visit t3-law.com to learn more.