Reading the Bible with AI?: A Conversation with John Kaag, Philosopher and Co-Founder of Rebind AI
Rebind combines reading with AI-chat to deepen learning and simulate the experience of conversing with some of the greatest scholars and thinkers. With Rebind, you can read A Tale of Two Cities with Margaret Atwood, Huck Finn with Marlon James, and Candide with Salman Rushdie. John and his team have recently launched the Rebind Study Bible, an interactive way to read, listen, and interpret the Bible with insight from scholars. As we head further into a world augmented by AI tools, Rebind is on the frontlines of embracing AI without destroying the art of deep, contemplative engagement. To give so insight into how Rebind is marrying scholarship with AI tools, I’m thrilled today to have John Kaag on the podcast.
For a free 7-day trial, visit this link
John Kaag is an American philosopher and chair and professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He is co-founder of Rebind Publishing.
Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.
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Jimmy Wales with Dan Gardner, "The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last" (Crown Currency, 2025)
In my interview with Jimmy Wales, father of Wikipedia, we celebrate his new book, The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last (Crown Currency Publishing, 2025). We talk about how the book came about, how Wikipedia took flight, and how the challenges of maintaining trust and preserving neutrality shape the key to Wikipedia's future.
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Elisabetta Ferrari, "Appropriate, Negotiate, Challenge: Activist Imaginaries and the Politics of Digital Technologies" (U California Press, 2024)
Activists utilize digital technologies to communicate, coordinate, and organize for social change. In Appropriate, Negotiate, Challenge: Activist Imaginaries and the Politics of Digital Technologies (U California Press, 2024) Elisabetta Ferrari examines both the politics of Silicon Valley's technological imaginary and how leftist activists appropriate, negotiate, and challenge Silicon Valley's vision of technology. Researching movements in Italy, Hungary, and the United States, Ferrari shows how activists construct their own activist technological imaginaries that reflect and shape the politics of social movement how activists think about their political possibilities. Ultimately, Ferrari centers the political and imaginative work that activists need to perform in order to navigate the politics of mainstream digital technologies.
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Samuel Arbesman, "The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World—and Shapes Our Future" (PublicAffairs, 2025)
In the tradition of classics such as The Lives of a Cell, a bold reframing of our relationship with technology that argues code is "a universal force--swirling through disciplines, absorbing ideas, and connecting worlds" (Linda Liukas).
In the digital world, code is the essential primary building block, the equivalent of the cell or DNA in the biological sphere--and almost as mysterious. Code can create entire worlds, real and virtual; it allows us to connect instantly to people and places around the globe; and it performs tasks that were once only possible in science fiction. It is a superpower, and not just in a technical sense. It is also a gateway to ideas. As vividly illustrated by Samuel Arbesman in The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World—and Shapes Our Future (PublicAffairs, 2025), it is the ultimate connector, providing new insight and meaning into how everything from language and mythology to biblical texts, biology, and even our patterns of thought connect with the history and nature of computing.
While the building block of code can be used for many wondrous things it can also create deeper wedges in our society and be weaponized to cause damage to our planet or our civilization. Code and computing are too important to be left to the tech community; it is essential that each of us engage with it. And we fail to understand it to our detriment.
By providing us with a framework to think about coding and its effects upon the world and placing the past, current, and future developments in computing into its broader setting we see how software and computers can work for people as opposed to against our needs. With this deeper understanding into the "why" of coding we can be masters of technology rather than its subjects.
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Human Leadership for Humane Technology
In this episode, we spoke with Cornelia C. Walther about her three books examining technology's role in society. Walther, who spent nearly two decades with UNICEF and the World Food Program before joining Wharton's AI & Analytics Initiative, brings field experience from West Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean to her analysis of how human choices shape technological outcomes.
The conversation covered her work on COVID-19's impact on digital inequality, her framework for understanding how values get embedded in AI systems, and her concept of "Aspirational Algorithms"—technology designed to enhance rather than exploit human capabilities. We discussed practical questions about AI governance, who participates in technology development, and how different communities approach technological change. Walther's "Values In, Values Out" framework provided a useful lens for examining how the data and assumptions we feed into AI systems shape their outputs.
The discussion examined the relationship between technology design, social structures, and human agency. We explored how pandemic technologies became normalized, whose voices are included in AI development, and what it means to create "prosocial" technology in practice.
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Interviews with digital humanists about their new work
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