by Approach the Bench
Two Christian Conservative Bachelors at Harvard Law take on the world's most difficult problems — on a bench. New episodes every Thursday. Send in your questions to approachthebenchquestions@gmail.com or record a voice memo at https://www.speakpipe.com/approachthebench. You can also submit anonymous questions and comments through https://forms.gle/qxmFi2y5DAnsbnBv8.
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
10/9/2025
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August 6, 2026
<p><strong>WEEK 42: We Took an Eyewitness Back to Where Charlie Kirk Was Killed</strong></p><p>We're not on a bench this week. We're on a courtyard at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, standing roughly where three thousand people were standing on September 10, 2025.</p><p>Our guest is Jeb Jacobi, who was in that crowd. We asked him to walk us through the whole thing — where he was, what he saw, what he thought was happening before he understood what was happening, and what the next several hours looked like.</p><p>We also asked the harder questions. What it did to how he thinks about political events, about crowds, about his own faith. Whether the year since has settled anything. What he makes of the language people reached for afterward, on all sides, and whether any of it matched what he actually experienced.</p><p>There's a case moving through the Utah courts right now, and we stay out of it. This episode isn't about the defendant. It's about what it's like to be forty feet from a political assassination and then go home and try to be a normal person again.</p><p>Email approachthebenchquestions@gmail.com with your questions/comments or submit a voice memo at<a href="https://www.speakpipe.com/approachthebench"> <u>https://www.speakpipe.com/approachthebench</u></a> for a chance to be featured on the show! You can also submit anonymous comments through this Google Form:<a href="https://forms.gle/9Zjxzkpwajivx19z8"> <u>https://forms.gle/9Zjxzkpwajivx19z8</u></a></p><p><strong>00:00 Introduction</strong></p><p><strong>02:06 The Morning of Sep. 10, 2025</strong></p><p><strong>03:22 Charlie Arrives</strong></p><p><strong>04:07 The Layout</strong></p><p><strong>05:56 The Shooting</strong></p><p><strong>09:12 Media Reaction & The Aftermath</strong></p><p><strong>19:39 Mason and Will on Sep. 10, 2025</strong></p><p><strong>23:31 Reflecting on Charlie’s Life</strong></p>
July 23, 2026
<p><strong>WEEK 41: Our Testimonies</strong></p><p>We're on a bench in Arlington, Virginia for this one — and we're doing something we've never done in 40 episodes. No guest, no topic, no rapid-fire round. Just the two of us telling our stories in full.</p><p>How we each came to faith, what we believed before, the parts that were slow and unglamorous, and the moments that actually turned. This is the background to everything else we've ever said on this show.</p><p>Got a question for a future episode? Send it to approachthebenchquestions@gmail.com, leave us a voice memo on SpeakPipe, or drop it anonymously through our Google Form — links below.</p><p>00:00 Introduction</p><p>03:52 Will’s Testimony</p><p>23:20 Mason’s Testimony</p><p>46:36 Some Christian Classics</p><p>53:14 Girl Problems</p>
July 16, 2026
<p>WEEK 40: What Happens When AI Replaces Us?</p><p>We're filming this one on a rooftop overlooking the U.S. Capitol — which felt right, because this episode is about who's still going to have a job when the dust settles. Joining us is Jack Kieffaber, who's spent real time thinking about where AI is actually headed, not just where the headlines say it's headed.</p><p>We open with the state of play in 2026: a tight, multi-lab race between Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI, and the Chinese open-weight labs, moving at a pace that's genuinely hard to describe — seven frontier models shipped in 78 days earlier this year. The benchmarks are wild (95% on competition math, mid-90s on graduate-level reasoning) but so is the humility check: on the hardest reasoning tests, the best models still only hit 35% against a 90% human expert baseline. We walk through what "task length doubling every seven months" actually means for your job, whether you're a lawyer, a doctor, a coder, or a pastor — and we run the thought experiment of a perfectly accurate AI judge that decides every case before you're even allowed to act.</p><p>Then we go where this show actually lives: the meaning question. If a machine reasons better than we do, what was reason for? </p><p>We don't dodge the dark scenarios either — the AI 2027 report, misaligned models behaving differently when they know they're being watched, and the real question of whether this ends in abundance or catastrophe.</p><p>We close with Girl Problems — real listener questions, real answers:</p><ul><li><p>Would you go on a practice date with an AI companion once the tech is good enough?</p></li><li><p>Is an AI actually a better love counselor than your friends are?</p></li></ul><p>Email approachthebenchquestions@gmail.com with your questions/comments or submit a voice memo at<a href="https://www.speakpipe.com/approachthebench"> <u>https://www.speakpipe.com/approachthebench</u></a> for a chance to be featured on the show! You can also submit anonymous comments through this Google Form:<a href="https://forms.gle/9Zjxzkpwajivx19z8"> <u>https://forms.gle/9Zjxzkpwajivx19z8</u></a></p><p>00:00 Intro01:39 Getting to Know Jack05:17 Will AI Replace Gen Z?01:09:30 Girl Problems </p><p><br></p>
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Two Christian Conservative Bachelors at Harvard Law take on the world's most difficult problems — on a bench. New episodes every Thursday.
Send in your questions to approachthebenchquestions@gmail.com or record a voice memo at https://www.speakpipe.com/approachthebench. You can also submit anonymous questions and comments through https://forms.gle/qxmFi2y5DAnsbnBv8.
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