What does it actually mean to "touch grass"? Venkatesh Rao traces lawns, meadows, stargazing, and little histories towards a deeper feeling: the difference between fighting for agency and simply being present in time.

Rusty Guinn joins Matt Zeigler to discuss The Almanac and the Ambulance, AI, writing, creativity, and the productivity problem with large language models. They explore how writers can use AI as a thinking partner without losing the human judgment, metaphor, and meaning that make good writing work.

Every transformational technology gets misused for years and years before anyone figures out what it's actually for. Rusty Guinn traces that pattern from a WWI-era mathematician forecasting weather in a hay bale to the media monitoring industry's very expensive word clouds and asks why the tool most perfectly suited to measuring narrative and reputation is still being used like a fancy almanac.

In this episode of Epsilon Theory Unplugged, Matt Zeigler talks with Brent Donnelly about his essay I Want It, But I Don’t Like It and the hidden costs of smartphones, Twitter, social media addiction, and attention capture. They discuss why phones can create a “dark zone” similar to gambling addiction, how boredom can be useful, and how Brent structures his writing process without letting AI take over his voice.