Great Houses
The Great Houses series is a private discussion on the enduring structures of elite families, their strategies for generational continuity, and the practicalities of building a lasting legacy. Led by Gregory Treat, the series explores concepts like illegibility, patronage, feudal instincts, and the mechanisms by which great houses have persisted throughout history.
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31. Zack Fava of Methean.io Talks Great Houses
<p>In this episode of The Great Houses Forum, Gregory Treat sits down with Zack Fava, founder of Methian, an AI-powered homeschooling operating system built to give parents full sovereignty over their children's education. Zack shares his journey from 15 years in the Department of Defense to building a platform that handles curriculum creation, state compliance documentation, mastery-based tracking, and AI-assisted grading, all customizable to each family's principles and pedagogy. The conversation explores how AI can restore household sovereignty by replacing institutional dependence with parent-controlled tools, and how platforms like Methian and Runcible might eventually form an integrated household AI stack...
30. Cursus Honorum of the AI Future Part 3
<p>In Episode 30 of The Great Houses Forum, Gregory Treat continues his series on the “Cursus Honorum of the AI Future," arguing that AI will collapse today's thousands of specialized roles into three core skill sets: Code, Content, and Command. He stresses that humans are not obsolete, there is always a human in the loop, and that claims of "fully automated" systems really just mean people are insulated from responsibility, a legal doctrine he expects to fail under pressure. Gregory walks through industry vignettes showing this convergence in action, including Marc Andreessen's "Builder" role collapsing programmers, product managers, and designers in...
29. James McPherson Talks Great Houses
<p>In this episode of The Great Houses Forum, host Gregory Treat sits down with James McPherson, author of the Substack "Aegis of Zeus," a former teacher, and an edtech entrepreneur for a wide-ranging conversation rooted in the question of what gets lost when civilization loses its institutional memory. James traces his intellectual lineage from a Georgetown professor steeped in Aristotle and Hesiod, through years building boys' schools and launching STEM businesses, to his current work on AI solutions, weaving together themes of leadership, household economics, Catholic social capital, and the Zeus principle as a model for fatherhood and kingship...
28. Will Tanner Talks Great Houses
<p>Gregory Treat interviews Will Tanner about rebuilding “great houses” and why asset ownership matters more than wage income, using late-17th-century Virginia yeomen and planter society as a model of adaptation and competence. Tanner outlines a Virginia-style cursus honorum, from plantation management to unpaid church and county roles to the House of Burgesses, as a system for cultivating leadership, public virtue, and second- and third-order thinking. They contrast aristocracy with plutocracy and discuss how AI and emerging technologies may reward cross-domain “builders,” long-term legacy planning, and localized power.</p>
27. Cursus Honorum of the AI Future Part 2
<p>Gregory Treat continues his series on AI as an aristocratic technology, arguing that AI will collapse society's need for thousands of specialized roles down to a small handful of masterable skills — code, content, and command — allowing a single "prime" or small team to run what once required vast managerial bureaucracies. He illustrates this through military disruption: cheap drone operators using AI can now neutralize million-dollar tanks, jets, and infrastructure, meaning defense will increasingly depend on a small number of highly skilled, locally-present human commanders rather than large institutions. He argues this points toward the need for a modern cursus hono...
26. Cursus Honorum of the AI Future Part 1
<p>Gregory Treat launches a new series arguing that AI is an "aristocratic" technology — one where cheap access doesn't produce equality, but instead rewards rare skill and intensive training, creating steep, durable hierarchies. He traces this pattern through history (knights, longbowmen) and more recently through CAD/3D printing, which democratized tools but ultimately consolidated value around certified experts and dominant platforms like Autodesk and Dassault.</p>
25. The Architecture of Trust Part 4
<p>Gregory Treat argues that modern institutions (pensions, public schools, student loans) are failed substitutes for functions the household historically performed, and that society has run out of the trust needed to sustain them. Drawing on the ordo amoris(rightly ordered loves), the biblical concept of the "guarantor," and Ricardo's comparative advantage, he argues that mutually beneficial relationships require a shared ultimate authority — and that neoliberal economics abstracts away from the individual to the nation-state precisely because we've lost the will to sort people into roles despite being very good at it. He calls for rebuilding households, churches, and patron-client re...
24. The Valerian Gens Part 2
<p>This episode continues the story of Gens Valeria, one of Rome's oldest and most distinguished houses, tracing its arc from the height of the Republic through its decline under the Empire.</p>
23. The Valerian Gens Part 1
<p>Continuing the Ancient City Series, Gregory examines House Valerius — Rome's oldest patrician family and the architects of Roman liberty. From the founding oath sworn over Lucretia's body to the Lex Valeria (Rome's first right of citizen appeal), the Valerii built their power by publicly surrendering it. Gregory profiles Publicola, who demolished his own house to prove he wasn't a tyrant, and Corvus, who ended a military mutiny through amnesty rather than punishment. The episode argues that the Valerian method — converting power into trust through visible self-restraint — is the root technology of classical liberalism, and explores both its remarkable 500-year run an...
22. Mike Faulkner Talks Great Houses
<p>In this episode, Greg sits down with Mike Faulkner — a British-born financier who built and took multiple companies public — to explore the intersection of faith, wealth, and kingdom-minded leadership. The conversation centers on Romans 12 giftings as the foundation of good business: the leader's primary job is placing people in roles that match how God designed them. From there they discuss covenant as a practical technology for protecting families and businesses, the importance of "getting clean" before covenanting, and why unequal measures and fools in the org chart are the two most common deal-killers Mike sees. The episode closes with a vi...
