What Is a Leader For, When AI Does the Thinking?

Episode 1 of Back to Human, recorded at the Bashakill on October 31, 2026. Watch below, or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Substack.

When AI can write the strategy, the board memo and the performance review by Monday morning, what is a leader for? Root Astro co-founders Lee Arthur and Marsha Prospere sit by the Bashakill marsh and work it through: what AI reveals about leaders, why will cannot be simulated and why will alone is not enough, where the human edge lives, and why it is built through chosen hard things and through rest and attention.

Chapters

• 0:00 What is a leader for?
• 3:35 What AI reveals about leaders
• 8:43 Will, and where it runs out
• 13:52 What's going soft
• 17:26 Not broken, blunted: Lee's story
• 22:49 Answer machine or sparring partner
• 25:39 Where the human edge lives
• 29:10 Why does it have to be hard?
• 32:46 Rest that fortifies
• 34:46 The fully present leader
• 40:01 Leading through the cuts
• 45:25 Who looks after the leader
• 49:06 Going device-free
• 55:06 One thing this week, and a year from now
• 60:02 The question to sit with

Mentioned in this episode

• HARD: Building Your Inner Citadel by Lee Arthur (rootastro.org/book)
• The Fieldstone Letter (rootastro.org/subscribe)
• Andrew Huberman's conversation with David Goggins on the anterior mid-cingulate cortex and willpower (YouTube)
• Gloria Mark's research on interruption and refocus time

Listen on the go

Back to Human is on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Substack. Search "Back to Human" in your podcast app.

Back to Human is a Root Astro production. Root Astro runs device-free leadership retreats on 7 acres of private land within the Shawangunk State Forest, 90 minutes from New York City. The first cohorts run from May 1, 2027.

New episodes and the Fieldstone Letter land in one place: subscribe at rootastro.org/subscribe.