Whoa, Vol. 3: Humanmaxxing

Sublime
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  • Philosophy

How to thrive in the age of machines Most of what we hear about AI is a story of loss: slop everywhere, our thinking outsourced to machines, our livelihoods destroyed. But there’s another version of this story. Some of the most interesting people we know aren’t taking the bait on the “human vs. AI” debate. They’re doing their thing and leaning harder into themselves. We think they’re a window into a future where advances in machines will usher in an era of re-enchantment where we will become freer, stranger, more creative, more idiosyncratic, more alive.

Episodes

  1. 5d ago

    Nadia Asparouhova

    Nadia Asparouhova is a writer and researcher who has spent her career in service of the question: ‘what’s happening here?’ across various parts of the internet. She’s worked at Substack, Protocol Labs, and Github, and has written extensively on Silicon Valley Culture; the importance of ideas and institutions; consciousness, attention, meditation, and more. Her most recent book, Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading is probably the book I reference most in casual conversations. In this conversation, we get into the parts of AI that almost no one is talking about. What happens to the public commons when our most transformative conversations are happening privately with machines? Why is a culture built around measurement and progress so bad at producing human flourishing? If AI removes the work that once put us into flow, what happens to our brains? We also talk about San Francisco’s new nihilism, the emptiness of viral X articles, jhanas, and the part of her creative process she refuses to let AI touch: “the poetic, numinous part of me. The part that touches God.” - Check out the Granola Notes for this conversation ⁠here⁠. Follow along on ⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠ This episode is brought to you by ⁠⁠Granola⁠⁠, the AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings. Use code SUBLIME to get 3 months free. Hosted by Alex Dobrenko, creator of Code for Creatives, a course for creative people learning to build with AI. Apply to Cohort 4 ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. ⁠⁠Sublime⁠⁠, the inspiration management tool creatives use to collect, connect, and create with their inspiration.

    Nadia Asparouhova

  2. Sep 14

    Rachel Karten

    Rachel Karten is the social media strategist, writer, and creator of the must-read (and top five newsletter by startup spend) Link in Bio. We love Rachel’s takes. You get the sense that the insights she shares could only have come from her putting in the time, knowing who to know, having lots of conversations, and going DEEP. In this conversation, Rachel covers why the best social media strategy might require posting less, why audiences can smell shortcuts, what brands still misunderstand about the internet, and lots more… Check out the Granola Notes for this conversation here. Follow along on ⁠Substack⁠ This episode is brought to you by ⁠Granola⁠, the AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings. Use code SUBLIME to get 3 months free. Hosted by Alex Dobrenko, creator of Code for Creatives, a course for creative people learning to build with AI. Apply to Cohort 4 ⁠here⁠. ⁠Sublime⁠, the inspiration management tool creatives use to collect, connect, and create with their inspiration.

    Rachel Karten

  3. Sep 2

    Jeanette Winterson

    Jeanette Winterson published her first novel at 24 and has since written more than 26 books, with her work frequently published in the Guardian, Observer, and New York Times. Her most recent work has explored our relationship with technology — the boundaries between humans and machines, the consequences of transhumanism, and the moral, societal, and spiritual implications of AI. We first discovered Jeanette through her keynote at the Sana AI Summit, where she drew a fascinating parallel between our ancient ideas of God and the emergence of AI as a new form of non-biological intelligence. In a conversation dominated by doom on one side and tech bro productivity maximalism on the other, Jeanette is one of the few humanist voices offering a compelling vision for an AI future.Check out the Granola Notes for this conversation here. Follow along on Substack. This episode is brought to you by Granola, the AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings. Use code SUBLIME to get 3 months free. Hosted by Alex Dobrenko, creator of Code for Creatives, a course for creative people learning to build with AI. Apply to Cohort 4 here. Sublime, the inspiration management tool creatives use to collect, connect, and create with their inspiration.

    Jeanette Winterson

  4. Aug 24

    Adam Mastroianni

    Adam Mastroianni is the creator of the hit Substack Experimental History and our definition of an unLLMable writer. In this conversation, he talks about how he knows when an idea is actually interesting, why having a machine as a competitor has clarified the kind of writer he wants to be, what reading Moby Dick taught him, and why some obvious things have never actually been said. You can watch full conversation on YouTube and thanks to Granola, you can chat with the conversation here. Also, Adam’s debut book, The Strangest Idea in the World, is coming soon, and it’s one of three books we can’t wait to get our hands on (the two others are Robert Greene’s book on the sublime and Kyle Chayka How to Be Moved). It’s about why breakthroughs take so absurdly long (it took us 300,000 years to invent the toilet!) and the ways of thinking that lead to one. You can preorder a copy here.

    Adam Mastroianni

  5. Aug 12

    Jack Butcher

    Welcome to Humanmaxxing, an interview series on thriving in the age of machines. You can follow along on ⁠⁠Substack⁠⁠, ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠. Jack Butcher has built one of the most singular careers on the internet. He first became known for Visualize Value, where he distilled complex ideas about business and creativity into a visual language that traveled everywhere, then turned that attention into an independent education business. More recently, his work has expanded into digital and participatory art. At Art Basel Miami Beach in 2025, his installation Self Checkout invited visitors to pay whatever they wanted for a receipt and made the project’s costs and profits visible in real time. A display began at –$74,211, the cost of producing the exhibition, and updated with every purchase; by the end, 5,837 receipts had generated nearly $189,000 in revenue. Throughout everything he does, Jack’s genius is bridging design, markets, psychology, and technological advancement to challenge and expand our understanding of value in the modern world. In this conversation, Jack talks about how AI is changing his creative process, why he open-sourced his entire writing history, where creative value lives now, and why dismissing new formats (even brain rot) can prevent us from evolving creatively.

    Jack Butcher

  6. Aug 5

    Cate Hall

    Welcome to Humanmaxxing, an interview series on thriving in the age of machines. You can follow along on ⁠Substack⁠, ⁠YouTube⁠, and ⁠Apple Podcasts⁠. Cate Hall is a former Supreme Court attorney and once the world’s top-ranked female poker player who went from the throes of addiction to leading a multibillion-dollar foundation. Her life is proof that even the most trapped among us can discover a path to fulfillment. There must be something like the opposite of suicide, whereby a person radically and abruptly decides to start living, or rescue their own life from destruction/obscurity. If there’s one book I’d bet on to catalyze that reaction, it’s Cate Hall’s You Can Just Do Things. In this conversation, Alex and Cate talk about what it means to live agentically, touching on God, AI surrender, meaning, and her #1 piece of advice for becoming more agentic.Chat with the Granola Notes for this conversation ⁠here⁠. Subscribe to the ⁠Sublime Newsletter⁠ for access to the full Humanmaxxing interview series. This episode is brought to you by Granola, the AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.granola.ai/sublime⁠ and use code SUBLIME to get 3 months free. ⁠sublime.app⁠ is the inspiration management tool creatives use to collect, connect, and create with their inspiration. Hosted by Alex Dobrenko, creator of Code for Creatives, a course for creative people learning to build with AI. ⁠Join the waitlist for Cohort 4⁠.

    Cate Hall

  7. Jul 26

    Henrik Karlsson

    Welcome to Humanmaxxing, an interview series on thriving in the age of machines. You can follow along on Substack, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. Henrik Karlsson is Substack-famous, but he is still our answer when people ask who the most underrated writer in the world is. In this conversation, Henrik joins Alex Dobrenko to discuss: The pressures of internet fame, feedback, and monetizing creative workWhy AI has pushed him to become more human, weird, and playfulWhy he doesn’t understand people who don’t marvel at LLMsHis Radiohead vs. Coldplay theory of creative careersWhy his online persona is more aspirational than accurateand lots more… Chat with the Granola Notes for this conversation here. Subscribe to the Sublime Newsletter for access to the full Humanmaxxing interview series. This episode is brought to you by Granola, the AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings: https://www.granola.ai/sublime and use code SUBLIME to get 3 months free. sublime.app is the inspiration management tool creatives use to collect, connect, and create with their inspiration. Featuring Henrik Karlsson https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/https://x.com/phokarlsson Hosted by Alex Dobrenko, creator of Code for Creatives, a course for creative people learning to build with AI. Join the waitlist for Cohort 4.

    Henrik Karlsson
  • 7 Episodes

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How to thrive in the age of machines Most of what we hear about AI is a story of loss: slop everywhere, our thinking outsourced to machines, our livelihoods destroyed. But there’s another version of this story. Some of the most interesting people we know aren’t taking the bait on the “human vs. AI” debate. They’re doing their thing and leaning harder into themselves. We think they’re a window into a future where advances in machines will usher in an era of re-enchantment where we will become freer, stranger, more creative, more idiosyncratic, more alive.

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