The Overlap

Your friend sends you a beautiful, thoughtful text. Then you find out ChatGPT wrote it. Does it still count? Joshua went digging for the AI story nobody’s telling: not jobs or water, but what it’s doing to how we treat each other. Friends, coworkers, classrooms, total strangers. Will heard none of it until we hit record, and some of what turned up caught us both off guard. Plus a song that made someone cry, a brand new word for the AI age, and a deal between friends. [email protected] https://fof.foundation [email protected]

We recorded a whole episode Tuesday called “Will These Be the Last Midterm Elections?” The results started coming in while we were still talking, so we threw it out. Democrats took the House and the Senate. Susan Collins is out after 30 years. Texas elected a Democratic senator, governor, attorney general, lieutenant governor and, Thor and Cthulhu help us all, railroad commissioner. A $7,500 map drawn to win Republicans five seats lost four of them. Here in Oklahoma, the top of the ticket stayed red and the House majority whip lost anyway. Then the bill. Trump still has a veto, 17 states’ voter files are still out there, the ACA subsidies are still gone, and some of the people holding the scalpel made money off the infection. We get into what a majority buys, what it doesn’t, and why we’re skipping the third impeachment. Enjoy it today. Scrub in tomorrow. https://fof.foundation [email protected]

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 [email protected]

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 [email protected]

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 [email protected]