Walking conversations where open source and faith share the path.
Hope in Source records unscripted conversations, several of them on foot in Prospect Park, on an icy path, or in a Columbus Circle mall, where the scenery helps steer the talk. Subjects run from lone open-source maintainers and AI coding to ceaseless prayer, C.S. Lewis, and what happens when words disappear.
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Hope in Source keeps its agenda simple, and one episode spells it out: walking and talking. Several conversations are recorded on foot, with the microphone in hand and the route chosen on a hunch. One starts at the 15th Street entrance to Prospect Park, with an iced coffee in one hand and a cord dangling from a backpack. Another begins in a mall at Columbus Circle, and another picks its way along an icy park path with a warning not to slip. The surroundings become part of the material. Cherry blossoms, statues that feel native to the place, and a tree worth photographing all get their moment. At the close of one walk, a speaker says the surroundings are steering the conversation along with the talkers, and calls that part of the openness. Under the stroll sit two serious interests. The first is software. In 'Internet Checkpoint (Melody Kim)', a YouTube video of Donkey Kong music that Henry shared to a group chat leads into vibe coding, into which dependencies still matter once AI can build things from scratch, and into the xkcd comic about one person maintaining a project forever. A speaker says Babel was that project for them. In a second conversation with Melody Kim, someone admits to expecting to feel left out by AI coding tools and then finding everything fine, and a claim comes up that AI will generate plenty of background while the foreground stays out of its reach. Both of those conversations use the idea of an 'internet checkpoint', a dated snapshot of the moment kept for looking back on. The second interest is faith. In 'Salience (Sonya Mann)', the talk runs from a line of scripture and Augustine to The Way of a Pilgrim and its idea of ceaseless prayer, then to a C.S. Lewis passage about the urge to honor what we love. It also makes room for a plainer thought: discomfort and pain can be lived through. That episode ends on the image of faith as a sacred pattern stretching through time. Other walks go further afield. One takes in doublespeak from 1984, Basic English, and the worry that lost words take certain thoughts with them, like a tech tree run in reverse. With Laurel Schwulst the subject is screenshots, and how a screenshot of a screenshot stacks layers of time and space, along with how the idea of a walking podcast came about. With Brendan it is game design, with its levers and lenses, a GitHub list of game talks, and a nerd basketball crew. At the end of one walk the speakers ask for thoughts on their 'chaotic format', then joke that they will ignore the feedback anyway. For the faith thread, start with the Sonya Mann conversation; for code and the internet, start with Melody Kim.
Made for: Suits a listener who enjoys meandering conversation recorded on the move, and who would welcome talk about open-source maintenance and AI coding next to prayer, C.S. Lewis, and the fate of words.
What sets it apart: The route works almost like a co-author: conversations start wherever the walkers are and let the scenery break in. Along the way, worries about lone open-source maintainers come up alongside ceaseless prayer and Augustine.
What are the parallels between faith and open source software? Join Henry Zhu for an off-the-cuff conversation between friends. Check out hopeinsource.com and nadiaeghbal.com/public-faith for the backstory!
A Windows 98 stylesheet gets you thinking about the less nostalgic work of maintaining it.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A Prospect Park walk turns game design into a loose, thoughtful conversation about rules, tools, and playful systems.
A walk through Prospect Park turns into a relaxed look at how games get made, changed, and tested. Brendan talks through constraint-based basketball, from five-second shots to no-dribbling versions, and the pleasure of adjusting rules even when the result may not be as fun as…
A thoughtful, wandering episode about language, lost concepts, and how the world keeps reshaping thought.
Words are Totems (of Etymology) treats language as a working map for thought, then keeps testing that map against the world around it. Moving through cherry-blossom-lined streets and an airport filled with statues, fake bird sounds, and water, the host and guest circle a…
A wintry walking-vlog checkpoint on AI FOMO, time away, and coming back to find everything was fine.
This single-episode review takes a wintry park walk and turns it into a loose internet checkpoint on AI anxiety. The speakers test a walking-podcast, or sauntercast, shape while drifting through open claw, Clawed code, distillation, Meta super intelligence, background versus…
A reflective episode on prayer, altered perception, praise, and belonging within a sacred pattern.
The episode links prayer with perception, tracing how rereading something once powerful can open into a broader idea: that ceaseless prayer may alter the way the world appears.
A raw internet conversation links vulnerable comment threads with AI coding, software dependencies, and stubbornly human problems.
Internet Checkpoint treats the web as a place where strangers can briefly drop their guard. A Japanese YouTube video, marked by a vine-like image and Donkey Kong music, opens into a broader look at comment sections where anonymous users and named accounts share vulnerable…
A speaker lands on 'Words are totems' after comparing Chinese characters to a totem pole and treating etymology as visible history.
Hope in Source’s “Infrastructure as Play” follows Brendan and the host walking through Prospect Park while discussing place-based podcasts, social annotations, and digital memory.
Hope in Source's “Snow is a Commons (Melody Kim)” follows Melody and Henry through Prospect Park as they discuss OpenClaw, Claude Code, and open-source governance.
Hope in Source's "Salience" starts with Sonya Mann and the Gospel line, "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also," before turning to The Way of a Pilgrim.
Hope in Source’s “Internet Checkpoint” features Melody Kim and Henry discussing an online comment ritual, Claude Code, and the emotional experience of rapid technological change.
Hope in Source’s “An Ordinary Walk” follows Laurel Schwulst and Henry through Central Park as they test a walking podcast linked to GPS, timestamps, photographs, and a 3D map.
Hope in Source’s “The Façade of Control” brings Melody Kim into a conversation about faith, technology, AI, and the social pressure to follow predictable life paths.
Hope in Source features Joseph Choi examining how commitment, Christian belief, and modern optionality shape identity, relationships, and community.
Hope in Source: Sacred Charity features Austin Chen describing how Catholic practices of donating 10% and attending mass shaped his later commitment to effective altruism.
Hope in Source’s “Right Feeling” begins with Henry and Sonya Mann reading Matthew 20, where vineyard workers hired at different times receive the same denarius.
In Hope in Source's “Artificial Physicality,” Drew Austin examines how New York, digital media, and urban planning reveal the relationship between physical environments and online platforms.
Hope in Source examines why L.M.
Hope in Source examines burnout as a problem of time, identity, and constant pressure to respond to every new movement or crisis.
Hope in Source’s “Digital Communion” connects Babbel’s JavaScript translation work with James Joyce’s layered writing and Marshall McLuhan’s theory that media environments transform people.
Hope in Source's “History is Necromancy” brings software engineer David Elikwu into conversation with David Cayley about Ivan Illich, open-source software, and public broadcasting.
In Hope in Source's conversation about personal reality, Esther Meek and Henry connect open-source programming, Christian hope, and Michael Polanyi's account of knowing.
Hope in Source interviews Conley Owens about “The Dorean Principle,” his argument that Christian ministry should be given freely and funded by co-laborers rather than customers.
Hope in Source features Henry interviewing Michael Sacasas about Ivan Illich, silence, attention, technology, and several related newsletter essays.
Hope in Source's “Ivan Illich (L.M.
Hope in Source examines digital disembodiment through a conversation about Maggie Appleton's deferred MSc in Digital Anthropology and the limits of studying digital culture by scraping forums or Twitter.
Hope in Source’s “Software Tetris” connects Stephen Kell’s work on Babel and software-interface translation with Ivan Illich’s criticism of escalation, institutions, and radical monopoly.
Hope in Source’s discussion of TabFS with Omar Rizwan examines why browser tabs became the project’s public example even though tab management was not his original goal.
Hope in Source’s “Essence” features Sonya Mann discussing how Christianity, baptism, and “born again” transformation provide different mental tools for interpreting reality.
Sonia Mann describes returning to Christianity after years of atheism, beginning with renewed prayer, Bible reading, and a spiritual experience while reading First Corinthians.
Hope in Source hosts Henry and Alex Kim examine Advent as four weeks of preparation and waiting rather than simply a countdown to Christmas Day.
Hope in Source’s “Embodied Knowledge” uses Michael Polanyi’s concept of indwelling to argue that people integrate bodily experience, language, and environmental clues when forming knowledge.
Hope in Source examines technology as a process, using Dan Wang's distinction between tools, instructions, and communal process knowledge.
Hope in Source examines Ivan Illich’s idea of a convivial society through freedom, personal responsibility, and mutual dependence on friends, family, and neighbors.
Hope in Source’s “Natural Limits” features Michael Sikasas, writer of The Convivial Society, discussing Fortnite, parenting, technology, mortality, and Ivan Illich’s idea of thresholds.
In Hope in Source, Omar Rizwan examines how Dynamic Land shaped his objections to software defaults such as lists, boxes, and rigid interfaces.
Hope in Source revisits Philip Gee's decision to leave the public internet after he officially stopped publishing on July 1 and made popular articles and YouTube videos unlisted.
Philip Gee explains why he deleted Facebook, removed Twitter, reduced his website to professional information, and moved selected older work into an archive.
Hope in Source’s “MA 14: Shawn Wang on Open Knowledge” examines how open-source communities can distribute maintenance, documentation, and participation beyond one central organizer.
Hope in Source’s “Inhabiting a Space” brings Bernardo Robles, Henry, and Marita together in Bosch, a shared house in Brussels’s Marol neighborhood, to examine maintenance as a way of living.
Hope in Source features Nadia discussing her book Working in Public and the problem of managing open source projects whose users may number in the thousands or even billions.
Tara Isabel Burton discusses Strange Rites and argues that American religion is shifting between institutional structures and personal intuition rather than simply disappearing.
Hope in Source’s conversation with Nicole Williams examines how Christian faith intersects with technology careers and public identity on Twitter.
Hope in Source's “Legacy” follows Timothy Patitsis through questions about cultural inheritance, language loss, technology, and Christian faith.
Jordan Scales explains how he built 98.css, a single CSS file recreating Windows 98 interfaces from childhood nostalgia and pixel-perfect measurements.
Hope in Source’s “MA 12” features Maggie Appleton discussing how embodied metaphors shape programming, documentation, and open-source culture.
Maggie Appleton and Henry examine open source through anthropology, especially the contrast between gift economies and market economies.
Hope in Source’s “12: Haircut (Bonus)” records a conversation between the host and Jonathan while Jonathan cuts the host’s hair on Holy Saturday before Easter.
Jonathan Farbowitz, a Guggenheim fellow in the conservation of computer-based art, explains why software-based artworks require preservation planning when they are acquired.
Wendy Hagenmaier, digital collections archivist at Georgia Tech Library, explains why archives preserve unique records rather than simply old materials.
Anthony Giovannetti, co-founder of Seattle indie studio Megacrit, explains how Slay the Spire uses interactive systems, randomness, and mastery rather than a fixed winning strategy.
Philip Guo discusses “getting old on the web” after maintaining a personal website since 1997 and shifting from photography to academic writing, video, and podcasts.
Joy Burson describes how organizing W3C and TC39 meetings at Bocoup in 2011 led her to study the people, processes, and history behind technical standards.
Hope in Source: “MA 5: Evan You on Funding One's Freedom” examines how Evan You funds and governs Vue while keeping the project independent from startup-style growth.
Michael Rogers and the host discuss podcast formats before turning to open-source conferences, funding, governance, and cultural values.
Hope in Source examines how Stephanie Hurlburt and the host apply perceived value to open-source funding, salary, negotiation, and sales.