The Overlap

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The Overlap is a podcast brought to you by the Friends of the Future Foundation. We believe that the majority of folks wish for the best future for themselves and future generations, we want to gather that majority, help them identify each other, coordinate together, educate, and equip them to ensure the best future for ourselves and future generations.

  1. 2d ago

    The Industrialization of Disappointment 😥

    Something in your laundry room has been lying to you since 2014, and the company put the confession in writing. This week we find out why your cake mix, your toilet paper and a $3,500 fridge are in on it too. GAO, “Consumer Prices: Product Downsizing,” report GAO-25-107451 (July 2025): https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107451 Hostess Brands Q4 2021 earnings call, March 1, 2022 (CEO Andy Callahan) U.S. PIRG, iFixit and Repair.org survey of 50 appliance manufacturers (January 2023) Glover, Mustre-del-Río and von Ende-Becker, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, on corporate markups and 2021 inflation (January 2023, with a May 2023 follow-up) Leduc, Li and Liu, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, on economy-wide markups (May 2024) Shrinkflation Prevention Act, introduced by Sen. Bob Casey, February 28, 2024 Rep. Lou Correa’s House shrinkflation bill (September 2025) Steve Bannon to Michael Lewis (2018) https://fof.foundation theoverlap@fof.foundation

  2. Oct 22

    Japan Ruined America: We Can Fix It!

    Joshua went to Japan for his 10th anniversary and came home with a lot to say. It starts at a basement gate at LAX. From there it goes places you won’t see coming: a parking meter deal in Chicago, a toll road in Norman named after a man who fought it, a city council job that pays less than you’d guess, a tax decision older than most of the people listening, a generation of lonely young men, a 150-year-old Japanese habit, the question of who owns AI, and what historians say happens when nothing changes. It’s all connected. You’ll see how by the end. William sat this one out. He wanted plausible deniability. MENTIONED Unf*cking the Republic, “5NN: This Is How We Win” https://omny.fm/shows/unf-cking-the-republic/5nn-this-is-how-we-win-the-5-non-negotiables-of-the-left SOURCES KGOU: https://www.kgou.org/politics-and-government/2022-05-23/norman-area-residents-allege-open-meetings-act-violations-in-lawsuit-against-oklahoma-turnpike-authority KFOR: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/norman-residents-upset-turnpike-named-040052152.html OU Daily: https://www.oudaily.com/news/norman-voters-approve-6-norman-city-council-charter-changes-reject-3/article_9f795438-2311-11ed-8786-8fd150cdb05a.html Nippon.com: https://www.nippon.com/en/currents/d00391/ NBC News poll (via Press Enterprise): https://www.pressenterpriseonline.com/node/1297763 Gallup: https://news.gallup.com/poll/690788/younger-men-among-loneliest-west.aspx KFF 2025: https://www.kff.org/health-costs/report/2025-employer-health-benefits-survey/ AAA 2026: https://www.fingerlakes1.com/2026/09/15/aaa-estimates-new-vehicle-ownership-costs-at-12863-a-year/ Peterson-KFF: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-spending-u-s-compare-countries/ OECD 2025: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/health-at-a-glance-2025_15a55280-en/japan_319bfc39-en.html Sen. Warren: https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/senator-warren-unveils-proposal-to-tax-wealth-of-ultra-rich-americans WBEZ: https://www.wbez.org/politics/2023/06/21/parking-meter-deal-keeps-on-giving-for-private-investors-not-chicago-taxpayers International Railway Journal: https://www.railjournal.com/passenger/high-speed/spanish-high-speed-competition-drives-passenger-numbers-up-by-a-third/ Japan Cabinet Office: https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/stmain/20260619ai/aiplan_2601_draft_en.pdf BOOKS AND RESEARCH Walter Scheidel, The Great Leveler (2017) Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works (2011) Barbara F. Walter, How Civil Wars Start (2022) Peter Turchin, End Times (2023) Raj Chetty et al., Opportunity Insights Alesina, Stantcheva, and Teso, American Economic Review (2018) https://fof.foundation theoverlap@fof.foundation

  3. Oct 14

    Private Jets for Jesus: The Tax-Free Gospel

    Bonnie Parker gave Kenneth Copeland’s ministry tens of thousands of dollars, possibly hundreds of thousands, hoping to be healed. She died believing she hadn’t given enough. When her family asked where the money went, they got an accounting firm’s opinion about a $20 million jet. Joshua and Will dig into the prosperity gospel’s flying fleet: Copeland’s five aircraft and private airport, Creflo Dollar’s Project G650, Jesse Duplantis’s Falcon 7X, and a Gulfstream bought from Tyler Perry. They also cover the laws that keep the books shut. That includes a Senate investigation that ended without a single subpoena, a 1984 law that ties the IRS’s hands, one church audit in all of fiscal 2014, and an 18,000-square-foot “parsonage” that pays no property tax. Nobody has proven any of this illegal. That’s sort of the point. https://fof.foundation theoverlap@fof.foundation

  4. Oct 8

    Digital Qualified Immunity: When Software Decides and Nobody Answers

    When the government hands a decision about your life to software, who answers for it — and how does anyone check its work? Joshua and Will borrow a real legal doctrine, qualified immunity, to name something newer: digital qualified immunity. The agency says the software decided. The vendor says the software is a trade secret. The person who lost their benefits or their job is left with nobody to question. In this episode: Arkansas ARChoices. A formula replaced nurses’ judgment and cut home care hours for disabled and elderly Medicaid recipients. A judge blocked it in 2018, not because the math was wrong, but because nobody was told the rules changed. Houston ISD. Teachers were rated and fired using SAS’s EVAAS scores, a model so secret that the district itself couldn’t check it. The case settled for $237,000, and the district stopped firing teachers on those scores. Michigan’s MiDAS. An automated system falsely accused tens of thousands of people of unemployment fraud. The state’s own review found a 93% error rate. That led to Bauserman, a $20 million settlement, and Cahoo v. SAS Analytics, where the vendors were sued by name. Due process 101. Goldberg v. Kelly, the Mathews v. Eldridge balancing test, and why private prison guards can’t claim qualified immunity. California SB 947, the “No Robo Bosses” Act. What “relies primarily” might mean, and whether a manager skimming an AI-written summary counts as human review. What the contract should say. No trade-secret shield against the person affected, reproducible versioned models that auditors can run, vendors sharing liability, and treating any change to scoring weights as a rule change. Consistent isn’t the same as correct. If software made a decision about your life this year, how would you know? Note: We ran into some audio/video sync issues during recording. You may notice drift or more crosstalk than usual in places. We fixed what we could in editing. Thanks for bearing with us. https://fof.foundation theoverlap@fof.foundation

  5. Oct 1

    The Bootstrap Con: How "You're On Your Own" Was Sold to Keep Us Apart

    The Bootstrap Con In 1834, a labor paper made fun of a man who could supposedly lift himself over a fence by his own bootstraps. It was a joke, because nobody can do that. Starting in 2027, it’s a Medicaid requirement. Will and Joshua trace how “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” went from punchline to moral test. The stops along the way are Hoover’s “rugged individualism,” Reagan’s welfare queen, the 1996 welfare law, and the drained public pools of Montgomery. Then they follow the test into the paperwork. In Arkansas, 18,000 people lost coverage in 2018 even though more than 95% of them were already working or should have been exempt. Georgia spent $54.2 million administering its “model” program and $26.1 million on actual care. Deloitte was paid more than $50 million for eligibility software that froze and wiped applicants’ information, and Maximus is telling investors the new federal rules mean growth. We hear out the other side, too: what the welfare-to-work research shows, and what it doesn’t. Then we ask the question underneath all of it. Who gets paid when needing help looks like a character flaw? https://fof.foundation theoverlap@fof.foundation

  6. Sep 24

    AI Data Centers on Public Land

    ederal agencies are quietly turning tens of thousands of acres of western public lands into expedited, cheap real estate for AI data centers. Between amended solar permits, 100-megawatt fast-track loopholes, thousands of unmonitored backup diesel generators, and 5,000-gallon chemical spills, the government is treating public ground as a permission slip for big tech rather than a shared resource. We break down the paper trail, local revolts, and who profits when compute meets land. https://fof.foundation theoverlap@fof.foundation

  7. Sep 17

    Killer Robots: The UN Autonomous Weapons Non-Treaty

    Twelve years, one dead human rights lawyer’s warning, and the UN just produced a document with all the teeth of a permission slip. The US and Russia agreed on something for once: delete the word “ethics” from the paragraph about robots that decide who dies. Meanwhile a defense startup raised $5 billion in May and is pouring concrete on a factory in Ohio. Nobody’s waiting for Geneva. We talk about why “we can’t tie our hands because China won’t” is exactly backwards, and why losing this fight in 2026 means losing it until 2034. https://fof.foundation theoverlap@fof.foundation

  8. Sep 10

    Space Force Guardians: Wardrobe Malfunction?

    An AI-generated Space Force uniform posted on Truth Social explicitly credits Starship Troopers as design inspiration. We trace the high-cost absurdity, institutional friction, and 90-year aesthetic lineage behind a viral post that mistook anti-fascist film satire for an aspirational dress code. https://fof.foundation theoverlap@fof.foundation

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About

The Overlap is a podcast brought to you by the Friends of the Future Foundation. We believe that the majority of folks wish for the best future for themselves and future generations, we want to gather that majority, help them identify each other, coordinate together, educate, and equip them to ensure the best future for ourselves and future generations.

Information

  • Creator
    FoFF
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    91
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright Reserved 2026
  • Show Website
    The Overlap