Friends,

Last night I was on Fox to talk about Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical on AI. About four minutes of airtime. Plenty I didn't get to say.

This is the long version. I wrote it for you first.

A framework, a 135-year-old echo, and a question I asked my high school senior.

Last night I sat down on the news to talk about Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical — Magnifica Humanitas. Magnificent Humanity. Published last month. Already viral.

For a television segment, you get about four minutes. Some of what I wanted to say didn't make it. Here's the long version.

The most important thing to understand about Magnifica Humanitas is that it's not a regulatory proposal. It's not a debate position. It's a framework — like the Ten Commandments. The Pope laid it out. He's not asking for a vote. He's saying: here is the moral architecture for the age we just walked into. Take it or leave it.

The last time the Catholic Church did this was 1891. Pope Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum — the Church's first major statement on industrial capitalism. It defined the moral framework for the Industrial Revolution. Leo XIV signed Magnifica Humanitas on the 135th anniversary of that exact document.

That's not a coincidence. He's telling us: this is the second Industrial Revolution. And the moral vacuum is back.

The Pope is not a fool. He understands there's an AI arms race. He understands there's military competition. He understands the genie is out of the bottle.

His warning isn't "don't build it." His warning is "don't let it take you over." Don't let it consolidate power into the hands of a few. Don't let it replace your judgment. Don't lose your humanity in the process.

The title is the thesis. Magnificent Humanity. Everything in the document radiates from that.

The most underreported moment of the rollout: Chris Olah — co-founder of Anthropic and one of the most thoughtful AI researchers alive — flew to Rome to attend the presentation. Sat in the front row.

That changes the whole frame. This isn't Church versus Tech. It's Church and Tech, finally having the conversation we should have been having five years ago. The serious people in AI are showing up to this.

The AI conversation has been dominated by two voices: the doomers who say it will kill us, and the boomers who say it will save us. The Pope just introduced a third voice — the humanist.

Not anti-progress. Not naive about danger. Anchored in human dignity.

That voice has been missing.

The tech side says he's out of his depth. The conservative side says he's too soft. When you're getting hit from both sides, you're usually in the right place.

The line that landed hardest with me — as a father.

I have two daughters in high school. A senior and a freshman.

The Pope writes that AI risks "extinguishing the desire to ask questions." That if children get used to instant, perfect answers, they may never develop the muscle of inquiry. They may never learn to sit with a hard question long enough to discover what they actually think.

When I read that, I thought about my girls. About every assignment they'll be tempted to outsource. About every interesting question they'll be tempted to skip past.

I'm not scared of AI. I build with AI for a living. But if those two young women lose the desire to ask questions, that's a loss I cannot price.

That's the loss the Pope is warning about.

I co-founded PodStreet with Avi Savar. We ingest hundreds of business podcasts and turn them into intelligence briefs. Twenty hours of audio becomes a five-minute read.

That's enhancement, not replacement. The thinking comes from humans — operators, founders, researchers, journalists — who go on these podcasts and share their experience. Our job is to lower the friction so more humans can absorb more human thinking, faster.

That's the version of AI Pope Leo is endorsing. That's the version of AI worth building.

For anyone watching at home — not a tech worker, not a theologian:

Be awake. Not afraid — awake.

Know what's being built. Know who benefits. Know what kind of human you want to be on the other side of this technology.

That's good citizenship in the age of AI. The Pope just gave us a framework for it.

One last line.

I closed the segment last night with two words. They're a Catholic phrase, but they're for everyone:

Learn the technology. Use it to enhance your work, your craft, your curiosity. Don't outsource your humanity to it. That's the deal.

The Pope just gave the AI industry the gift of seriousness. Now it's our turn to be worthy of it.

Watch the full segment here:

If you watched the segment last night and want the long version of any answer, hit reply. I read every one.

— Chris

Co-Founder Podstreet.AI

[email protected]

P.S. If you want to see what we built — the AI tool I talked about that turns 20 hours of podcasts into a 5-minute read — it's at podstreet.ai. We also just shipped Terminal, a chat-and-tracking layer over every podcast we monitor. Tinker here: https://app.podstreet.ai/