This short one (6 min) is about how humans process grief and how we might show up for people in pain a bit better…by doing a bit less.

Scott is on holiday so we're on holiday from Scott. Everybody wins. Alan is pinch hitting in the studio this week and we're talking...

• King Louie the Cat
• Pets over parenthood and the economics of relationships
• How the Marlboro Man is a bad example and nobody talks about Tonto
• The art of being alone without feeling lonely
• Mates from home, social media buddies, and "disinvitations"
• Conferences: Education or Boondoggle?
• Remote Work: Chapter 458
• Perri's missing microphone
• The history of the Kalimotxo
• Breaking bread and reverse (reverse) innovation on restaurant menus
• AceJob again
• Are people with large heads more charismatic?
• And lastly, Alan's questionable airplane etiquette

In the Richmond studio before hopping an adhesively high plane to New York, we're talking...

• He who sets the colour tone settings...
• Your most worthy skill for friends.
• Clarifying arrest records.
• Phone-free pubs.
• Child denial
• Signal to Noise Ratio: We Make Kids Tired
• No Whining - It's not an effective negotiation tactic.
• Abseiling (rappelling) from Twitter to Threads.
• The DNA of engineering teams.
• The magnetism of AI without guardrails.
• AceJob
• The hotel where you can take home almost all you experience.
• Trapped on Mars, in Texas.
• The Book of Scott vs. The Book of Ace.
• When is winging it, appropriate?
• The poetry of being out of one's depth.
• We live in a wobbly universe.
• Global glue sniffing.

• Jolien leaping over hurdles for her Belgian team.
• Dead fish and camper vans versus yachts and helicopters.
• The Keeping up with Jones effect
• Can you do meaningful work and generate wealth simultaneously?
• Is the response to protest and riot dependent on depth of homogenous identity (France vs USA).
• Independence Day for the 6% and the “New Years Eve of the Summer”.
• Hydrating Ace in Europe and Scott’s bubbly water racism.
• Unlicensed space worms.
• You lead an airline, can you be proud and fly private? (but maybe it’s the Chief of Staff’s fault).
• Faraday cages for your phone.
• Affirmative action is overturned but legacy preference remains?… 
• What’s going on in the Supreme Court. Shepherding an explanation.
• Using livestock-human ratio to understand American culture.
• Donating to candidates to seed the platform.
• Soccer is life?
• Ace apologizes for New York, sort of.

While we're confirming rumours that Ace has been fired, Dr. Alan Dow joins Scott to debate...

• Ozempic changing ideas of what bodies should be and reducing exercise.
• Shifting focus from "shape" to health.
• Can we make incrementalism hot (probably not)?
• Former presidents as worm warriors and cracky uncles.
• Running teams at 85%: Breaking through the contradictions of flex work.
• Scott as the worst corporate employee.
• Rewarding the undramatic.
• Depression in the highest performers.
• The "cheering" experience.
• The best stories are no fun.
• Missing wads of cash.
• Totalitarian jerk scores.

See you next week, maybe.

From London and Washington DC, this week we're asking... Can hotels bring us a human touch? How do we value the lives that we try to save? Will AI democratize or mediocritize our life experiences. And we cover:

• Ace's love of Dutch hotels and their language.
• It’s not your fault if your dad is rubbish.
• Juneteenth: Freedom from the Free.
• (Economic) dominants in subs.
• If you just “think” an experiment, does it count?
• What will we do with the time freed up by AI?
• 5 Rants in 6 minutes.
• Blowing Maltesers.

This week, we change format a little and self-indulgently ask each other questions for the episode. It soon turns into a bit of a therapy session.

1. Why are we always the a**holes?
2. If you had to choose to die right now or live forever, which would you choose?
3. Is there a god and where do they live?
4. Which cryptid is most likely to actually exist?
5. Did it feel weird at the beach last week?
6. Snap your fingers and solve one societal issue, but you don’t get to design around any unintended consequences, what issue?
7. If you could be any nationality other than American/British, which would you choose and why?  Would you choose that over being US/UK?
8. Do you hug your mates?

This week's edition, sponsored by Bud Light, maybe.

From a rooftop in LA this week, discussing...

• When should we resist normalisation?
• Ratings are meaningless - we give five stars to be left alone.
• Apple Vision Pro - how to overcome looking ridiculous.
• What if 2nd amendment rights only applied to women?
• A school shooting doesn’t count if graduation is off-campus.
• If AI can precisely predict the life of our spouses, is it logical to hedge?
• Black language dictionaries.
• App improvements that will never happen.
• Wisdom to children from Uncle Ace and why he hates San Francisco.
• Will the backlash to Bud Light supporting trans influencers have stamina?

A total of 50 Euros worth of generative AI model building, 90 minutes of time, a few Instagram connections and we have digital “wallet litter” to suggest that we’re a married couple living in Key West, we had cameo parts in Peaky Blinders, and that Scott just got back from the G7 Summit in Hiroshima.

Every image on the page, every geotag, every statement is fake, presented as a primary source. The “Post-Truth Era”? Yes, we think we’re there already.

We discuss access to generative AI, along with coffee invitation etiquette… unisex bathrooms like the one in your house… drone warfare via Alibaba.com…. ignoring advice from those who offer it… and clone sex on this week’s Envoy Recorded Radio. 

If you don’t listen to the whole thing, listen to the last minute of the sounds of Kiev at night: a soundtrack appropriate to the week of Memorial Day

On this week's ERR...

• The killer trailer.
• The Penguin Rule.
• Chasing specificity (and stop with feedback sandwiches).
• Scott the racist.
• Cash as the next innovation.
• Subways and machetes - when is offense actually defense?
• Selfie fences... only the "right" type of tourists please.
• Digital cretin factories.
• Swinging too far... let authors be authors.
• Turns out Ace is a decent (rant) date.