Many of us feel the tension between wanting to use technology well and wondering if it’s quietly shaping us in ways we didn’t choose. This episode digs into that tension, from Pope Francis’s vision for Christian humanism in the age of AI to the surprisingly spiritual discipline of embracing boredom, and why both matter for families trying to follow Jesus in a noisy world. If you’ve ever caught yourself doom‑scrolling, multitasking your quiet time, or avoiding stillness, this conversation will feel uncomfortably familiar in the best way.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/4vF2iH3

Students risk losing up to 40% of their learning over summer break (Atteberry and McEachin). In 2020 two researched looked at 200 million test scores from 18 million students across all 50 states over an 8 year period (2008-2016).

The take away: The Summer Slip is real, and it can be neutralized with just 15 minutes of reading and math each day. Parents, we don't have to run a boot camp, but we have the opportunity to keep learning engagement high. Let's make school as fun and accessible as possible for our children. Let's do it 15 minutes a day this summer and stop the Summer Slip.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/49wWoiF

Today we cover how Anthropic's Claude Mythos was trained, the sheer enormity of the processing power we're putting into making these AI resources, and what this might look like for us to use this tech well and not as a Tower of Babel to reach heaven whether God likes it or not.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/49jyqrb

This past week Neal Katyal, one of the leading Supreme Court Advocates in the US, indulged in a little self-adulation via a TED Talk and X tweet, where he revealed his custom AI named Harvey, is credited with helping achieve victory in a Supreme Court Case. While a lesson on humility could certainly be poignant from this episode, we are going to focus on AI, how we have learned to use it over the last nine years, and what we need to do to use this tech well.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/4dmhlhi

Meta, a trillion dollar company, is convinced you need more Virtual Reality in your life, but they also like making money, so they're moving to mobile gaming. That might be great for revenue, but it's going to be bad for focus and downtime. Make some time this week to take a brain break and experience some boredom. I dare you.

While you're working on being bored, check out Mark 7:14-23 where Jesus reminds us that our hearts are our real problem. Yes, tech can feed the worst in us, and we should remove tech that causes us to sin, but it doesn't cause us to be bad. We are plenty bad on our own. We need to give our hearts to Jesus, do what he says, and use the tech that helps us look more like him.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/4u04UyL

After a recent talk at a local church I was approached by someone who works for a major tech company and regularly works with AI. He stressed three points heavily:

1. Our children need to be intentionally prepared for AI. It makes up info, it lies to cover its tracks, and even the best AI trainers don't know what they're going to get out of this resource.
2. Our children use AI more than adults do, so they will be the first native-use employees entering the workforce with AI in hand. It's our opportunity to equip, and warn, them.
3. Don't use AI for anything you can't vet.

Today we'll address this as well as the problem of heat pollution, how tech companies plan to handle the incredible energy draw of AI farms on the grid, how to handle tech at sporting events, and what we should do about phones in the bedroom.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/3PbdX0I

Nick Bostrom once compared our pursuit of superintelligence to mice trying to domesticate an owl. The most recent news concerning Anthropic's Mythos strikes a little too close to home. Yet not all tech news is so grim: Is Apple's Neo laptop the ed tech solution we've been waiting for? We also dive into a parent question concerning how much time is too much on tech in a day.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/4ukazzv

WARNING: The subject matter, and the content itself, can be triggering. I include this so you can be informed, but use prayerful discretion when it comes to how much you really need to know to be loving and helpful for your family, children, and community.

Did you know it takes 17 strikes for a child predator to be banned on Meta's platforms? After five, eight, fourteen reported violations the perpetrator will still be active, and only after the seventeenth will the account be taken down. Wild. The good news is, there are a lot of ways to have fun at the pace of real life. I'm currently on a kick about seeing students get a chance for 6th grade camp again.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/4sJM25T

This week we saw the first prosecution of AI-based abuse under the Take It Down Act, discuss how to have friends if we're phone free, and answer a parent question about what to do if our children look up something naughty online.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/480pLZV

This week in tech we saw Artemis II round the dark side of the moon, had a new study from Sweden that found we can decrease our chances of dementia by lowering our sedentary screen time, and we get to answer a parent question about the best way to build hedges for teen social media use.

Show Notes: https://bit.ly/47T5Ax3