Episode 243: A Sheen of Fakery (with special guest Gabe Bullard, author of "Against Convenience")

Journalist Gabe Bullard joins us to talk about his new book, Against Convenience: Embracing Friction in an Age of Endless Ease. We dig into what we trade away for ease: the Starbucks app, robotaxis, New Release Tuesdays, memories apps, and AI's "sheen of fakery" — plus Wendell Berry's rules for adopting a new tool and Gabe's chat with our friend Caroline Weaver. We’re missing Tim today because his hotel wi-fi is not working.

For this episode, we recorded video, available to Patreon subscribers! If you’re a patron, head over to see our faces and visual examples of many of the things we discuss. And if you’re not a patron, join us at any level and you can see this and other supplemental content at any time!

Show Notes and Links

Against Convenience: Embracing Friction in an Age of Endless Ease by Gabe Bullard

Gabe Bullard

1A

The Impossible Project

Wendell Berry

The Membership — Tim's Wendell Berry podcast

“Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer” by Wendell Berry

“Feminism, the Body, and the Machine” by Wendell Berry

Dieter Rams' ten principles for good design

Half-Told Tales by Arab Strap

Don Hertzfeldt interview in Slate

The Influencing Machine by Brooke Gladstone

Can Gen Z's Nostalgia Save Chain Restaurants? (New York Times)

Yikes! pencils

The Tin Drum by Günter Grass

AI Fruit Love Island

Meta's Muse AI agent at Connect 2026

Google's "Dear Sydney" Gemini ad

The Locavore Variety Store

CW Pencil Enterprise

Bookshop.org

Underwood No. 6 typewriter

Brother Charger 11 typewriter

Olympia typewriters

Hermes Baby typewriter

Strikethru

Lamy 2000 fountain pen

Parker 51 fountain pen

Fisher Space Pen

Tombow AirPress ballpoint pen

Eberhard Faber Mongol 482

Mongol Pencil — the new relaunch

Sanford American Naturals

Musgrave Pencil Company

Blackwing

Steinbeck's favorite pencils

Blaisdell Calculator 600

Field Notes Original Kraft

Louise Carmen leather notebook cover

The reporter's notebook by Gabe Bullard (Nieman Reports)

Bob Slate Stationer

Stálogy Editor's Series 365Days Notebook

Repair Café

Rhodia No. 38 pad

Rhodia No. 8 pad

Alton Brown's Rhodia pad on Good Eats

Roterfaden Taschenbegleiter

Muji notebooks

Ira Glass, This Is How I Work (Lifehacker)

Delfonics Rollbahn notebooks

David Sedaris's fake German notebooks from Japan (Literary Hub)

Kurt Vonnegut's envelope story

Erasable Patreon

Erasable Podcast Discord invite

Our Guest

Gabe Bullard
Website

Your Hosts

Johnny  Gamber
Pencil Revolution
@pencilution

Andy Welfle
Woodclinched
@awelfle

Tim Wasem
@TimWasem