Agency Is Relational—Let's Meet
An opportunity to join an upcoming workshop, and an IRL gathering in northern California.
Friends,
First, some big personal news: the reason I haven’t been as active here lately as I was hoping is that our second daughter was born a little earlier than expected (shortly after Christmas), and nothing has brought me more joy than having two baby girls, one on each shoulder, grabbing each other’s faces and mine—but it’s also been a period of major adjustment and pure exhaustion.
Within 48 hours of my daughter being born, I received a round of last-minute edits on my upcoming book, The One and the Ninety-Nine (publishing contracts and schedules are unforgiving!)—so when I was up from 2-4 a.m. putting my toddler back to sleep, I was making edits on the manuscript before I went back to bed rather than writing here.
All that is to say: thank you for your patience with me. Life is rich, even when it’s exhausting—and probably especially when it’s exhausting.
I’ll have much more to say on the book here in the next few months. It’s the most important (and personal) thing I’ve ever written, and I’ve poured my heart into it for the past few years.
But first: I’d like to extend a special invitation to anyone who would like to dive deeper into the themes that will have become familiar to regular readers here—mimetic desire, agency, relationships, moral thickness, storytelling, anti-mimetic lives—in an intimate, cohort-based model with other great people over the course of 40 days. I’ve designed a workshop called The Foundations of Agency, which cuts through and deepens the bro-speak around the word ‘agency’ and explores seriously what freedom and responsibility really entail, and how you can exercise more in your own life.
Here is the kicker: Applicants who are accepted to the workshop will also receive a complimentary pass to an in-person conference that I’ll be hosting in northern California this summer (July 26-28, 2026) which explores the most fundamental question about the value and future of human life. We will go back to the basics and simply probe the questions: what is life? What is real and what is unreal? What does it mean to be fully alive? Conference tickets are $795, and are going fast. If you are part of the workshop, though, you attend at no extra cost.
If one or both of those things sound appealing to you, please read on.
Foundations of Agency + Fullness of Life
In an age increasingly dominated by AI and information, the future belongs to those who have a solid self, a strong sense of vocation, and a capacity to act in accordance with their highest ideals alongside others who love them.
People know more than ever about habits, productivity, psychology, and self-improvement—and yet many still feel stuck. They have an agency problem, not a knowledge problem.
This distance between knowing and doing has become one of the defining frustrations of modern life. In an attempt to close that distance, I’ve designed a small, intensive, online workshop: It draws on key insights from Athens, Jerusalem and Silicon Valley, and it’s called Foundations of Agency.
Participants are introduced to fifteen key ideas (you can see exactly what those key ideas are by clicking the link to the workshop website) and complete weekly challenges that actually encourage real growth—and which also allow us to get to know one another and form real friendships. Together, we work through questions about desire, attention, relationships, and decision-making in the context of the actual challenges we’re each facing in our lives, from burnout and parenting exhaustion to work-related goals or aspirations like writing a new book.
Here’s what just a few people from Cohort 1 had to say:
A limited offer for this spring:
For the upcoming spring cohort, which runs April 18 — June 1, we’re trying something new.
If you apply and are accepted to Foundations of Agency’s Cohort #2, you’ll also receive a complimentary pass to the Cluny Institute’s 2026 Zoë Conference in Napa, CA, from July 26-28 (individual tickets to the conference cost $795; if you are not able to participate in the workshop, you are welcome to reserve your slot at the conference separately).
Zoë is a gathering focused on one of the biggest questions of our time: What does it mean to live a fully human life in an artificial age? We’re bringing together people from technology, religion, philosophy, and culture who take that question seriously.
Early speakers that I can announce include: entrepreneur Bryan Johnson (Don’t Die), Fr. Luke Dysinger, OSB, novelist Tao Lin, and professor Catherine Pakaluk. It will also be an arts-filled gathering, with poetry by the former California Poet Laureate Dana Gioia, strings/jazz, more music by thinker/investor/author/DJ Jared Dillian, and some of the most brilliant engineers, founders, and writers from the Bay Area who are in generative contact with Athens and Jerusalem. I am also organizing a special seminar style session on one of the most unexplored aspects of René Girard’s thinking, featuring some of the leading Girard scholars in the world.
Many more speakers will be announced in the coming weeks.
All registrants will gain access to a private networking app two months prior to the event to get to know one another, set up meet-ups, and begin to dialogue about the themes that we will explore in depth when we gather in person.
Why pair these together?
Agency grows through models, relationships, environments, and encounters.
Zoë expands the themes of the workshop and will connect you to a wider network of thinkers and builders.
Together they create something closer to what many of us are actually looking for.
A few details
• The FoA spring cohort is limited in size (Cohort #1 had 24)
• Applications are reviewed carefully by me and my team
• The Zoë pass is included for all accepted participants in this round for anyone who applies by March 15.
If this resonates with you, I’d encourage you to apply. These groups tend to fill quickly.
Apply here: foundationsofagency.com
I look forward to hopefully meeting you this year. I’ll be back this coming week with much more, including a preview of things I’m thinking about as I embark to Rome for 2 weeks later this month to explore questions of technology, faith, and desire.
— Luke
