This is a bonus episode — a conversation I had with filmmaker and AI producer Quint Boa on his podcast, AI Script to Screen, reposted here with his permission.

What happens to truth when facts become optional? In this conversation we get into the difference between facts and truth, why journalism is changing but not dying, what Section 230 actually did to public discourse, and why AI is a brilliant tool but should never be mistaken for a substitute for human connection. We also get into the uncanny valley of digital resurrection, Christopher Nolan’s flip phone, and why a story about cemeteries in rural Virginia took me four months to report. Recorded in May 2026.

Have something to say? I'm all ears.

If this conversation meant something to you, share it — it's still the best way new listeners discover the show.

The podcast is free and always will be. If you'd like to support the reporting, essays and interviews behind these conversations, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Subscribe here

Want more between essays and episodes? Check out Below the Fold —dispatches on the stories worth paying attention to, from the people in my own backyard to those reshaping the wider world.

Watch clips and video previews on YouTube

Credits:

Host: Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson

Sound Editing: Dax Krishna and the team at SpeechDocs

Music: Ilya Kuznetsov

In conversation with Neal Wavra.

Neal Wavra was on track for a career in global trade policy — trained in commercial diplomacy, as well as conflict resolution at the Hague — when his government supervisor flicked a proposal back across her desk without reading it and told him they weren’t in the business of innovating.

That was twenty years ago. He's since attended the Culinary Institute of America, worked the floor at Charlie Trotter's in Chicago — at the time, the most demanding room in American fine dining, the place that trained a generation, ten James Beard Awards — and eventually found his way to a building on Main Street in Marshall, Virginia that's been feeding people since the 1800s.

He and his wife Star have been running it as Field & Main for ten years. In 2023 they bought Red Truck Bakery — the business across the street — twice listed among the New York Times’ best food purveyors in the country and a favourite of everyone from Oprah to the Obamas. This year, Neal was a James Beard Award finalist — the only one from the great state of Virginia.

But our conversation isn’t really about any of that. It’s about what happens when you decide the thing directly in front of you is enough — and the garden you’re standing in is worth the full force of your attention.

Neal has views on all of it — on farm-to-table as an alibi for mediocrity, on what genuine connection between a kitchen and its community actually requires, on whether excellence needs external recognition to be real — and they’re not what you’d expect.

Have something to say? I'm all ears.

If this conversation meant something to you, share it — it's still the best way new listeners discover the show.

The podcast is free and always will be. If you'd like to support the reporting, essays and interviews behind these conversations, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Subscribe here

Want more between essays and episodes? Check out Below the Fold —dispatches on the stories worth paying attention to, from the people in my own backyard to those reshaping the wider world.

Watch clips and video previews on YouTube

Credits:

Host: Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson

Sound Editing: Dax Krishna and the team at SpeechDocs

Music: Ilya Kuznetsov

A German biotech billionaire who injects himself daily is funding a sporting event where athletes are paid to take testosterone, Adderall and human growth hormone in pursuit of “superhumanity.”

Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr. are on the cap table.

Jeff Bezos has invested $100 million in a startup that claims it can identify the brain’s “core algorithm” and replicate it in silicon.

Meanwhile, public institutions, scientific research and foreign-aid programs are being hollowed out at the behest of many of the same political and ideological forces.

Naturally, I had to talk to the clever hosts of The Atlantic Current podcast about it all.

We discuss the Enhanced Games, biohacking billionaires, prescription drugs, consciousness research, regulatory capture, libertarianism, immortality and the increasingly popular idea that being human is a problem technology needs to solve.

Also: Andrew Carnegie, Mansa Musa, God, and whether Bryan Johnson is conducting cutting-edge science or simply having the world’s most expensive midlife crisis.

The Atlantic Current is hosted by Vince Martin, an economist and writer, and creator of Wall Street and Main, and Tull McAdoo of the Irish Politics Newsletter. It’s a smart, irreverent show and I love every minute chatting with these two.

For more, check out my original reporting on America’s prescription drug culture, The Bitter Pill, and my latest essay, Hold My Beer While I Upgrade Humanity.

Have something to say? I'm all ears.

If this conversation meant something to you, share it — it's still the best way new listeners discover the show.

The podcast is free and always will be. If you'd like to support the reporting, essays and interviews behind these conversations, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Subscribe here

Want more between essays and episodes? Check out Below the Fold —dispatches on the stories worth paying attention to, from the people in my own backyard to those reshaping the wider world.

Watch clips and video previews on YouTube

Credits:

Host: Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson

Sound Editing: Dax Krishna and the team at SpeechDocs

Music: Ilya Kuznetsov