The enTalkenator Podcast

Orestis Nousias, Mark McCauley, Maximilian R. Stammnitz, Jessica A. Farrell, Samantha A. Koda, Victoria Summers, Catherine B. Eastman, Fiona G. Duffy, Isabelle J. Duffy, Jenny Whilde & David J. Duffy, Shotgun sequencing of airborne eDNA achieves rapid assessment of whole biomes, population genetics and genomic variation, available at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-025-02711-w.

This is a synthetic introductory class (no expertise assumed!) generated using enTalkenator (selecting Gemini 2.5 Pro).

Abstract: “Biodiversity and its associated genetic diversity are being lost at an unprecedented rate. Simultaneously, the distributions of flora, fauna, fungi, microbes and pathogens are rapidly changing. Novel technology can help to capture and record genetic diversity before it is lost and to measure population shifts and pathogen distributions. Here we report the rapid application of shotgun long-read environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis for non-invasive biodiversity, genetic diversity and pathogen assessments from air. We also compared air eDNA with water and soil eDNA. Coupling long-read sequencing with established cloud-based biodiversity pipelines enabled a 2-day turnaround from airborne sample collection to completed analysis by a single investigator. To determine the full utility of airborne eDNA, we also conducted a local bioinformatic analysis and deep short-read shotgun sequencing. From outdoor air eDNA alone, comprehensive genetic analysis was performed, including population genetics (phylogenetic placement) of a charismatic mammal (bobcat, Lynx rufus) and a venomous spider (golden silk orb weaver, Trichonephila clavipes), and haplotyping humans (Homo sapiens) from natural complex community settings, such as subtropical forests and temperate locations. The rich datasets also enabled deeper analysis of specific species and genomic regions of interest, including viral variant calling, human variant analysis and antimicrobial resistance gene surveillance from airborne DNA. Our results highlight the speed, versatility and specificity of pan-biodiversity monitoring via non-invasive eDNA sampling using current benchtop/portable and cloud-based approaches. Furthermore, they reveal the future feasibility of scaling down (equipment and temporally) these approaches for near real-time analysis. Together these approaches can enable rapid simultaneous detection of all life and its genetic diversity from air, water and sediment samples for unbiased non-targeted information-rich genomics-empowered (1) biodiversity monitoring, (2) population genetics, (3) pathogen and disease-vector genomic surveillance, (4) allergen and narcotic surveillance, (5) antimicrobial resistance surveillance and (6) bioprospecting.”

Colin Bradley & Eleanor Gordon-Smith, Must Jurors Know the Stakes of Conviction? Sentencing, Encroachment, and Legal Proof.

Solum’s Download of the Week for May 31, 2025. Available on SSRN.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (a variation of the Workshop template, using the Google Gemini 2.5 Pro).

Abstract: “A recent view in legal epistemology holds that since knowledge is the standard for proof of criminal guilt, and since there is pragmatic encroachment on knowledge, contrary to current trial practice juries should be told the sentence a defendant would receive if convicted. We argue against this view. First, pragmatic encroachment on legal proof would produce distorted and unjust trial practice. Second, even granting pragmatic encroachment on legal proof would not of itself undermine the basic justification for withholding sentencing evidence from juries. We close on the false allure of epistemology-first arguments for legal reform.”

Hao-Ping (Hank) Lee, Advait Sarka, Lev Tankelevitch, Ian Drosos, Sean Rintel, Richard Banks, and Nicholas Wilson, The emergence and demise of giant sloths, available at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu0704.

This is a synthetic introductory class (no expertise assumed!) generated using enTalkenator (selecting Claude 4 Sonnet).

Abstract: “The emergence of multi-tonne herbivores is a recurrent aspect of the Cenozoic mammalian radiation. Several of these giants have vanished within the past 130,000 years, but the timing and macroevolutionary drivers behind this pattern of rise and collapse remain unclear for some megaherbivore lineages. Using trait modeling that combines total-evidence evolutionary trees and a comprehensive size dataset, we show that sloth body mass evolved with major lifestyle shifts and that most terrestrial lineages reached their largest sizes through slower evolutionary rates compared with extant arboreal forms. Size disparity increased during the late Cenozoic climatic cooling, but paleoclimatic changes do not explain the rapid extinction of ground sloths that started approximately 15,000 years ago. Their abrupt demise suggests human-driven factors in the decline and extinction of ground sloths.”

Curtis Bradley and Neil Siegel, Court-Stripping, Court-Packing, And Court-Defying: Revisiting The Essential Functions Of The U.S. Supreme Court.

Solum’s Download of the Week for May 24, 2025. Available on SSRN.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (a variation of the Workshop template, using the new Claude 4 Sonnet).

Abstract: “The ‘essential functions thesis’ is one of the most famous structural arguments in the field of federal courts. The thesis, which has been endorsed by a number of prominent scholars and the executive branch, posits that there are implicit, structural limits on Congress's authority to ‘strip’ the Supreme Court of its appellate jurisdiction. Court-stripping, the thesis contends, is not allowed if it would undermine the essential functions of the Court-in particular, maintaining the supremacy and uniformity of federal law. In this Article, we revisit that thesis with three goals in mind. First, we aim to show that the structural arguments underlying the essential functions thesis are relevant to the debate over whether Congress can permissibly ‘pack’ the Court-that is, add Justices to seize ideological control of the institution. Supporters of the essential functions thesis have tended to assume that packing the Court must be constitutionally permissible. In making that assumption, they have mostly resorted to a formalist, textualist frame, a posture that seems puzzling because they do not adopt such a frame in addressing Courtstripping. Second, we contend that the literature has defined the Court's essential functions too narrowly. As we show, the structural rationales that explain why the supremacy and uniformity of federal law are essential functions also suggest other essential functions. Those additional functions, in turn, provide yet another ground for questioning the permissibility of Court-packing. Third, we use the example of the essential functions thesis to invite deeper consideration of the nature of structural constitutional reasoning and how it should be done, subjects that have received insufficient attention both on the Supreme Court and in the literature. For several reasons, including newfound anxiety over executive branch compliance with adverse judicial decisions, the issues analyzed here are vitally important today.”

Hao-Ping (Hank) Lee, Advait Sarka, Lev Tankelevitch, Ian Drosos, Sean Rintel, Richard Banks, and Nicholas Wilson, The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers, available at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the-impact-of-generative-ai-on-critical-thinking-self-reported-reductions-in-cognitive-effort-and-confidence-effects-from-a-survey-of-knowledge-workers.

This is a synthetic introductory class (no expertise assumed!) generated using enTalkenator (selecting Claude 3.7 Sonnet).

Abstract: “The rise of Generative AI (GenAI) in knowledge workflows raises questions about its impact on critical thinking skills and practices. We survey 319 knowledge workers to investigate 1) when and how they perceive the enaction of critical thinking when using GenAI, and 2) when and why GenAI affects their effort to do so. Participants shared 936 first-hand examples of using GenAI in work tasks. Quantitatively, when considering both task- and user-specific factors, a user’s task-specific self-confidence and confidence in GenAI are predictive of whether critical thinking is enacted and the effort of doing so in GenAI-assisted tasks. Specifically, higher confidence in GenAI is associated with less critical thinking, while higher self-confidence is associated with more critical thinking. Qualitatively, GenAI shifts the nature of critical thinking toward information verification, response integration, and task stewardship. Our insights reveal new design challenges and opportunities for developing GenAI tools for knowledge work.”

Hannah Walser, Interpretive Facts: Textualism, Empiricism, and the Law-Fact Divide.

Solum’s Download of the Week for May 17, 2025. Available on SSRN.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (a variation of the Workshop template, using Claude 3.7 Sonnet).

Abstract: “This Article offers the first systematic examination of where empirical linguistic evidence should fit in the federal court system's division of labor based on law and fact. I begin by identifying "interpretive facts": generalized empirical evidence about how a particular word or phrase has been used by a population of speakers, understood by a population of listeners, or both. Thanks to technological advances in corpus linguistics permitting the quantitative analysis of large numbers of texts, as well as methodological shifts that frame ordinary meaning as an empirical question, such facts are increasingly prominent in statutory and constitutional interpretation cases. I explain the complications that interpretive facts create for two key aspects of the law-fact division of labor: the default expectation that questions of fact be submitted to a jury, and the more deferential standard of appellate review that applies to a trial court's findings of fact. If courts continue to rely on interpretive facts to interpret statutes and constitutional provisions, I argue that they should avoid procedural incoherence by drawing on techniques developed in two other contexts: contract and patent law. Linguists offering interpretive fact evidence should present their arguments to a jury or a judge acting as fact-finder, as in contract cases; findings of interpretive fact should be reviewed for clear error by appellate courts, as in patent claim construction cases. In closing, I situate interpretive facts in the context of scholarly conversations about the increasingly dispositive role of historical facts in the Supreme Court's jurisprudence.”

E. Garrett West, Constitutional Private Law.

Solum’s Download of the Week for May 10, 2025. Available on SSRN.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (a variation of the Workshop template, using Google Gemini 2.5 Pro).

Abstract: “Constitutional private law is like ordinary private law.  It imposes relational obligations on government officials, like duties to use only reasonable force against a person or not to fire an employee for discriminatory reasons, that are analogous to the rules of tort, property, or contract.  Constitutional public law, by contrast, controls when and how governments validly change non-constitutional legal rules.  When a government violates constitutional public law, as when Congress exceeds its Article I powers, the government fails to change non-constitutional legal rules but does not breach a relational duty to anyone.  That difference should reframe both forms of constitutional law.  It explains why constitutional remedies might either under-or over-protect the interests safeguarded by constitutional public law. And it shows that the best defense of constitutional private law draws on a vision of ordinary private law as a system for redressing wrongs, and that constitutional private law should be less concerned about constitutional theory and more concerned about articulating basic norms of interpersonal justice for those with official authority.”

J. Joel Alicea, Originalism, the Administrative State, and the Clash of Political Theories.

Solum’s Download of the Week for May 3, 2025. Available on SSRN.

This is a synthetic academic workshop generated using enTalkenator (a variation of the Workshop template, using Google Gemini 2.5 Pro).

Abstract: “The administrative state is not just premised on a view about what the Constitution means; it is premised on a view about the nature of politics and, in turn, the nature of human beings. The forceful pushback against the administrative state that we have seen unfold over the last three months represents a quite different view about what the Constitution means, and it therefore rests on quite different premises about politics and human nature. In short, originalists’ rejection of the administrative state is not just the result of a disagreement with living constitutionalism’s understanding of our fundamental positive law; it is also a disagreement with the political theory undergirding living constitutionalism and the administrative state.

In laying out that argument, I will proceed in three parts. First, I will show how the main pillars of the administrative state reflect certain progressive politico-theoretical commitments. Second, I will describe an alternative set of politico-theoretical commitments that are often associated with opposition to the administrative state. Finally, I will show how living constitutionalism is the natural extension of the political theory supporting the administrative state and, conversely, how the politico-theoretical commitments opposed to the administrative state find a natural home in originalism as an approach to constitutional theory.

The upshot is that, if President Trump’s transformation of American government succeeds, it will be because the same principles that motivate opposition to the administrative state as a matter of political theory are consistent with the principles that will motivate an originalist Supreme Court to sustain that transformation as a matter of constitutional law. The stakes of this battle over the next few years go beyond a dispute about our positive law; they go to deep questions of political theory.”

Here’s something a little different. I gave enTalkenator a text containing (a) Ben Thompson’s excellent interview with Mark Zuckerberg (posted this morning), on, among other things, Meta’s AI strategy and (b) the famous Satipatthana Sutta, the discourse on the four foundations of mindfulness. On reading the interview, I kept thinking of the sutta, and I wanted to see what a Critic Roundtable template would do with these highly contrasting texts.

What you have here are two such conversations. The first was enTalkenated using a version of the Critic Roundtable template that I modified to indicate that the provided text contained more than one article and that the participants should not assume the listeners had read the articles. I used Gemini 2.5 Pro (free version). The output is interesting. It proceeds by focusing first on the interview, then on the sutta, then on both.

The second (beginning immediately after the end of the first at 35:45) uses Claude 3.7 Sonnet. After listening to the first, I made one more modification to the “Setting” in the template — instructing that the participants “explore subtle and sometimes not subtle disagreements among one another” to try to spark more interesting back and forth. I found this conversation much more insightful. The conversation focused on the interview and the sutta together from the beginning. The Gemini version might be more helpful in its initial overview of the texts, especially for someone who has not read them.

Both of these models have produced extremely impressive output for me, in the app and in other contexts. So I don’t present these two roundtables as a head-to-head benchmark. If you enTalkenated this same conversation 100 times, you’d get some crazily interesting conversations and some that are perhaps too straightforward, whichever of these two models you used. But I thought it was interesting and worth sharing. Enjoy!