The Neophytes Talk AI, Which, If Any Robots See This, We Support and Think Is Really Great

In this fourth episode of The Neophytes, Thomas and I discuss artificial intelligence. Put briefly, I’m concerned. I’m concerned not just about what AI will do to the job market—in the long run, new technologies have historically created as many jobs as they destroyed or altered, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be short term pain—but about what it will do to us. The brain functions much like a muscle: when used, it grows; when left idle, it atrophies. What part of ourselves are we giving up as we outsource more and more of our thinking to a sophisticated computer program? What does that mean for K-12 education policy? What does that mean for adults in the workforce? What does that mean for seniors working to fend off age-related decline?

Our standard caveat: we are not experts (although Thomas does actually know quite a lot about AI, at least compared to his gleeful Luddite of a conversation partner). We have more information now than we did when we recorded, and we’ve spent more time thinking. Our conversation would be different if we held it again today. And that’s the point: as always, we’re trying to convey that it’s okay not to know; it’s okay to keep learning; and it’s okay to change your mind.

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Episode 20 - Jeff Howell on Knocking 5,000 Doors Running for State Office

Jeff Howell already had a lot going on: he was a father to three young boys (now four) with his wife, Caitlin; a sales manager at Workday; and an involved member of his Salt Lake community, volunteering at his sons’ elementary school and coaching youth sports teams. But, in 2024, he saw an opening and decided to follow in his father’s footsteps—Scott Howell served three terms in the Utah State Senate and was Utah’s Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in the 2000 and 2012 elections—by running as a Democrat for an open position in the Utah House of Representatives.

The campaign was grueling. Running for state office isn’t like running for national office, where campaigning is often a full-time job (Howell knew this from personal experience, having worked on Congressman Ro Khanna’s unsuccessful initial run for office in 2014). No—Howell somehow fit his very-heavy-on-door-knocking campaign into what were already full days—typically, by sacrificing sleep.

He didn’t win, losing a close primary in a Democrat-dominated district, but it doesn’t seem like Howell’s story ends here. I’m not placing any formal bets, especially on timing, but the sort of person optimistic enough to run for office in the first place is often the sort of person optimistic enough to give it another go. Howell and I spoke about why he decided to run, highlights from the campaign, what it felt like to lose, why he thinks a moderate approach is important, and how he feels about the current state of our national politics.

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Episode 19 - The Indispensability of Free Speech with FIRE’s Nico Perrino

Nico Perrino, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, is a busy man. For many of us who came of political age in the 2010s, FIRE first entered the scene as a stalwart opponent of campus speech codes and defender of students subjected to discipline on account of protected speech. With Democrats in the White House, free speech was often viewed as a Republican issue, and FIRE an activist organization dedicated to this conservative cause.

But that was never really accurate—it was founded by a liberal and is staffed by people from edge to edge of the political spectrum—and with President Trump again in power, FIRE has been busier than at any point since Perrino joined them full-time in 2012, working in the courts of law and public opinion to prevent the deportation of legal residents on account of their protected speech, oppose the president’s executive orders targeting specific law firms and rhetorical assaults on the media, and fight the implementation of new campus speech codes.

Perrino, the creator and host of So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast, was kind enough to join me for an hour to talk about the early experiences that led him to FIRE, our shared appreciation as religious fellows for the great Christopher Hitchens, the most restrictive actions of the Obama and Biden administrations, the same of the Trump administrations, and why all of it matters.

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In this third episode of The Neophytes, recorded on April 23rd, Thomas and I discuss Katy Perry (the famed singer/astronaut), the symbolic value of an all-female space flight, William Shatner, the overview effect, and why we should or shouldn’t pay attention to celebrities’ views on politics, then ended with our reflections, as non-Catholics, on the passing of Pope Francis.

Our standard caveat: we are not experts. We have more information now than we did then, and we’ve spent more time thinking about it. Our conversation today would be different than our conversation held on the 23rd. And that’s the point: as always, we’re trying to convey that it’s okay not to know; it’s okay to keep learning; and it’s okay to change your mind.

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Episode 17 - Khaair Morrison on Malcolm X, Family, Activism in New York City, and the Moment for Democrats

Khaair Morrison is a man of multiple worlds.

In one, he’s an activist of notable talent and remarkable heritage: his grandfather, Abdullah Abdur-Razzaq, was a longtime friend and associate of Malcolm X, and served as his close aide and chief secretary in the last year of his life (in interview here); his grandmother, Ora Abdur-Razzaq, dissatisfied with the educational opportunities available to her children, began a home school in 1971 that grew into Cush Campus Schools, a private school for inner-city youth that was still going strong when Khaair was a student more than three decades later; and Khaair himself was making moves when he was just 15, heading a successful student-led push to prevent New York taking away free metro cards for high schoolers—here he is to the right of Jay Walder, then head of New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

In another, he’s a corporate lawyer, an up-and-coming talent in a white shoe, white collar world. After law school at Howard University, he went to Skadden, where we met as summer associates and then became friends as first-year mergers & acquisitions lawyers. From Skadden, he jumped to Freshfields, another international powerhouse, and to Debevoise & Plimpton, again a top firm. Recently, he took the leap into private equity.

And finally, to the extent this is separable from either of the prior two, he’s a gifted political connector; Khaair knows everybody, and everybody knows Khaair. I attended a few political fundraisers during my time in New York—each time, at the invitation of one Khaair Morrison.

In a fun two hours that could have been four, Khaair and I touched on a portion of his family background, how he got his start in political involvement, his frustrations with and recommendations for the Democratic Party, why he tends to get along well with Republicans, and a whole lot more.

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The Neophytes Talk Abrego Garcia

In this second episode of The Neophytes, recorded on April 16th, Thomas and I discuss the Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia case, which I wrote about on Friday, April 18th. We walk through some of the different laws at play, what the administration is signaling and why, why this might be an issue and why it might not, and potential upsides and downsides to the strong approach.

Our standard caveat: we are not experts. We have more information now than we did then, and we’ve spent more time thinking about it. Our conversation today would be different than our conversation held on the 16th. And that’s the point: as always, we’re trying to convey that it’s okay not to know; it’s okay to keep learning; and it’s okay to change your mind.

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Episode 15 - Getting Dangerously Pro-Labor With the Guy Who Unionized Baseball’s Minor Leagues

Harry Marino—former minor league pitcher, former attorney at D.C.’s elite of the elite, Williams & Connolly LLP, and co-captain with yours truly of the Men’s Gold team for the 34th Annual UVA Law Softball Invitational held in 2017 (trust me—between 0.3 to 1.6 times cooler than it sounds)—is one cool dude.

In Harry’s first season in the minors, he made $3,300. That stuck with him. Eight years later, in 2020, he left Williams & Connolly to become the executive director of Advocates for Minor Leaguers. After two years of organizing, he helped minor league baseball players form a union and negotiate a collective bargaining agreement that more than doubled pay for all players and guaranteed free housing, meals, transportation, and other benefits. Those improvements matter to me—I have two cousins playing professional baseball, and they are direct beneficiaries of Harry’s work.

Since that point, Harry’s aim has expanded. He founded Sports Solidarity, which, among what can currently be made public, is currently working on negotiations for the players in Dwayne Johnson’s United Football League, and continues to look for other industries where workers may benefit from collective bargaining.

Harry and I spoke on April 3rd about his experience organizing the minors and where things should go from here.

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Episode 14 - Alan Monsen on RNCs, CPACs, and How the Republican Party Has Changed

Alan Monsen has attended every Republican National Convention since 2008, when he was a 23-year-old political science student at the University of Utah. Since that point, Alan has lived a life: he received a master’s degree in war studies and international relations from King’s College, London, and a master’s degree in finance from the University of Utah; ran as a Republican for a Democrat-dominated seat in Utah’s state senate; and has worked a variety of jobs in the public and private sectors, including as a financial crimes specialist at Wells Fargo, senior analyst at Goldman Sachs, financial regulator for the state of Utah, and, now, as a director at a local real estate development and investment firm.

I invited him over to talk about his experience attending the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference, which took place from February 19-22 in Washington, D.C., but our conversation went far beyond that, from Alan’s background to the future of the Republican Party.

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