Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse

One hundred years ago, H.P. Lovecraft wrote that the most terrifying thing humanity could do was piece together too much knowledge. In January 2026, the CEO of Anthropic titled a section of his company blog "The Black Seas of Infinity." That's where we begin. In the season premiere of Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse, we set out to understand why the word "apocalypse" is suddenly on the tip of every tongue — and whether the fear is justified, manufactured, or something far stranger than either. Joined by psychiatrist Dr. Joel Gold, philosopher Ian Gold PhD, theologian Judith Wolfe, MIRI CEO Malo Bourgon, sociologist Alex Hanna, author Dorian Lynskey, and philosopher Timothy Morton, the episode asks: what do AI and the end of the world actually mean — and have we always been here before? The Black Seas of Infinity is the first episode of an eight-part investigation into humanity's oldest fear, and whether artificial intelligence has finally given us reason to take it seriously. We hope you enjoy this first episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez Socials:  Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/ https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/ https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests: - Dr. Joel Gold - Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-author of Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness: https://amzn.to/4upyA8U - Ian Gold, PhD - Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness: https://amzn.to/4upyA8U - Dorian Lynskey - Journalist and Author of Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World - https://amzn.to/42ISDD1 - Malo Bourgon - CEO, Machine Intelligence Research Institute - https://intelligence.org/team/malo-bourgon/ - Nate Sharadin - Professor of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong / Research Affiliate, Center for AI Safety - https://sharadin.com/ - Nick Haber - AI Researcher and Assistant Professor at Stanford University - https://ed.stanford.edu/faculty/nhaber - Eoin Higgins - Journalist and Author of Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left - https://amzn.to/4dlt3tU - Alex Hanna - Sociologist and Author of The AI Con - https://amzn.to/3RnCtfR - Timothy Morton - Philosopher and Author of Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology - https://amzn.to/4dzSRRX - Professor Judith Wolfe - School of Divinity - St. Andrews - https://amzn.to/4uzEbcw - Ed Simon - Carnegie Mellon University - The Dove and the Dragon: A Cultural History of the Apocalypse - https://amzn.to/4dVMYQb - Kelly Bulkeley, PhD - Dream Researcher and Author of The Spirituality of Dreaming - https://amzn.to/4dU0ns6 Other works mentioned in this episode:  Bunker, by Bradley Garrett: https://amzn.to/3RnCOz9 The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft: https://amzn.to/4fzaDXX American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin: https://amzn.to/4tIt5kl If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares: https://amzn.to/49gpPW1 The Adolescence of Technology by Dario Amodei: https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/the-adolescence-of-technology As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests' books through these links, you're supporting this series too. This episode was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shammami Produced by: Jesse Ford Editor: David Justin Martin  Original Music by: Shane Patrick Ford Sound Mix: Mike Regan  Graphics: Semi:Formal  Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Additional Camera and Audio: Edward Broughton, Tyler Copenhaver, Justin Fernandez, Backlot Studios, Archetype Studios, Brooklyn Podcast Studio Music Bed Sync IDs MB01OTBJUHXNZXD, MB01ZQETHZDFVPZ, MB013HPYJEBPHO7, MB01J8WEVAMVGEY, MB01D67F2IMBABV, MB01BHKRGYTYDIV, MB01QM7HPQLVLJK See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 1958, Daniel Ellsberg was handed new hire paperwork at the RAND Corporation with a standard box to check in order to receive his pension. He didn't bother — because given what he knew about the state of the world's nuclear arsenal, he didn't expect to live long enough to collect. In 2026, Elon Musk told the American public there was no point saving for retirement either. That's where we begin. In the second episode of Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse, we set out to understand the psychology behind humanity's oldest compulsion: the belief that we are living through the end of the world, and that this time, we're right. Joined by psychiatrist Dr. Joel Gold, psychoanalyst Dr. Amy Levy, Harvard neuroscientist Dr. Michael Ferguson, author Casey Ryan Kelly, theologian Judith Wolfe, dream researcher Kelly Bulkeley, cultural historian Dorian Lynskey, and philosopher Timothy Morton, the episode traces apocalyptic thinking from its origins in Zoroastrianism through Freud's death drive to the neural signatures of prophecy — asking whether the people building AI are visionaries, doomsday cultists, or something our psychology has always known how to produce. Magnifica Humanitas is the second episode of an eight-part investigation into humanity's oldest fear, and whether artificial intelligence has finally given us reason to take it seriously. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Socials:  Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/ https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/ https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests: - Dr. Joel Gold - Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-author of Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness: https://amzn.to/4upyA8U - Ed Simon - Carnegie Mellon University - The Dove and the Dragon: A Cultural History of the Apocalypse - https://amzn.to/4dVMYQb - James Cussen - Philosopher - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheLivingPhilosophy - Dorian Lynskey - Journalist and Author of Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World - https://amzn.to/42ISDD1 - Professor Judith Wolfe - School of Divinity - St. Andrews - https://amzn.to/4uzEbcw - Dr. Amy Levy - Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s President’s Commission on Artificial Intelligence and Author of The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive - https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5 - Casey Ryan Kelly - Professor of Rhetoric & Public Culture in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Author of Apocalypse Man - https://amzn.to/43fA8Gr - Dr. Michael Ferguson, PhD - Director of the Harvard Neurospirituality Lab - https://neuromichael.com/ https://neurospirituality.io/ - Kelly Bulkeley, PhD - Dream Researcher and Author of The Spirituality of Dreaming - https://amzn.to/4dU0ns6 - Timothy Morton - Philosopher and Author of Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology - https://amzn.to/4dzSRRX - Malo Bourgon - CEO, Machine Intelligence Research Institute - https://intelligence.org/team/malo-bourgon/ Other works mentioned in this episode:  Magnifica Humanitas by Pope Leo XIV: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html Predicted Dates of Apocalypse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events Machines of Loving Grace by Dario Amodei: https://darioamodei.com/essay/machines-of-loving-grace As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests' books through these links, you're supporting this series too. This episode was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shamammi Produced by: Jesse Ford Editor: David Justin Martin  Original Music by: Shane Patrick Ford Sound Mix: Mike Regan  Graphics: Semi:Formal  Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Additional Camera and Audio: Mike Mulliniks, Edward Broughton, Tyler Copenhaver, Justin Fernandez, Backlot Studios, Speakezzy, Brandon Cruz, Brooklyn Podcast Studio See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 1858, chess prodigy Paul Morphy played the most famous game in history, in an opera box in Paris, mid-performance. He announced his victory to the crowd before anyone could see how he'd win. Because he could see the board in a way no one else could, he knew for certain he'd already won just a few moves into the game. That unknowability is the worst fear of AI doomers: that we're building something that has already won, and we'll never know how. This episode was supposed to be about the literal mechanics of AI killing us. It turned out to be about something stranger: why the people building this technology appear to genuinely believe it might destroy the world — and why that belief hasn't stopped a single one of them. Justin Sinclair writes for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists — the group who calibrates the Doomsday Clock, currently set at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it's ever been to the apocalypse. Malo Bourgon is CEO of MIRI, the organization that coined the term "AI alignment." Ted Tremper spent two and a half years making a documentary about this, interviewing over 140 people — including three of the five frontier model AI CEOs. Their collective verdict on whether AI will actually cause the apocalypse: maybe. And somehow, that's the most terrifying answer they could have given. The Opera Game is the third episode of an investigation into humanity's oldest fear, and whether artificial intelligence has finally given us reason to take it seriously. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Socials:  Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/ https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/ https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests: - Ian Gold, PhD - Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness: https://amzn.to/4upyA8U - Malo Bourgon - CEO, Machine Intelligence Research Institute - https://intelligence.org/team/malo-bourgon/ - Justin Sinclair, PhD - Clinical Psychologist, Writer for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists - https://www.drjustinsinclair.com/background.html - Ted Tremper - Film Producer - https://www.focusfeatures.com/the-ai-doc-or-how-i-became-an-apocaloptimist - Johann Hari - author, Stolen Focus: https://amzn.to/4vAL2mV Other works mentioned in this episode:  Empire of AI by Karen Hao: https://amzn.to/4uKwekf If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares: https://amzn.to/49gpPW1 The Techno Optimist Manifesto by Marc Andreessen: https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/ The Doomsday Clock: thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock The Opera Game: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1233404 The Paperclip Maximizer by Nick Bostrom: https://aicorespot.io/the-paperclip-maximiser/ As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests' books through these links, you're supporting this series too. This episode was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shamammi Produced by: Jesse Ford Editor: David Justin Martin  Original Music by: Shane Patrick Ford Sound Mix: Scott Loudon Graphics: Semi:Formal  Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Additional Camera and Audio: Archetype Studios See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In Homer's Odyssey, when Odysseus's men ate the lotus flower, they forgot everything — who they were, where they'd come from, why any of it mattered. There was no pain, no urgency, no desire to leave. Just the soft obliteration of the self through ease. Odysseus had to drag them back to the ships by force. The lotus is no longer a flower. It's in your pocket. That's where we begin. In the fourth episode of Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse, we ask the question no one wants to ask: what if the most dangerous thing AI is doing isn't some future robot war — what if it's the quiet, ongoing rot of our attention, our capacity for meaning, and our ability to notice anything at all? The brain rot apocalypse is not coming. It may already be here. Joined by Nate Sharadin of the Center for AI Safety, who argues AI is poised to create a cognitive "bifurcation" in humanity — leaving many of us enfeebled in WALL-E chairs while a smaller group retains the skills to author their own lives, and Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus, who explains that our attention hasn't simply deteriorated — it's been systematically stolen, by design, by ten thousand engineers paid to undermine our self-control. Also with us: Dr. Amy Levy, chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association's AI commission, who asks whether a more docile, collectively minded humanity might actually be Freud's concept of Eros in action, and Sameer Gupta of EvenPlay, who argues that AI is not being trained on our best intentions — it's being trained on slot machines, gambling, and the shadow self we don't like admitting to. Lotus Eaters is the fourth episode of an investigation into artificial intelligence, the human mind, and whether the apocalypse is something that happens to us — or something that's already happening inside us. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Socials:  Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/ https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/ https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests: - Nate Sharadin - Professor of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong / Research Affiliate, Center for AI Safety - https://sharadin.com/ - Johann Hari - author, Stolen Focus: https://amzn.to/4vAL2mV - Dr. Amy Levy - Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s President’s Commission on Artificial Intelligence and Author of The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive - https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5 - Sameer Gupta - Co-Founder, EvenPlay - https://www.evenplay.com/ Other works mentioned in this episode:  Homer’s The Odyssey - https://amzn.to/3StWemv Max Tegmark - Life 3.0 - https://amzn.to/4uTOI1C Alan Watts - Eastern Philosophy Lecture Series -  https://amzn.to/4g4MJEe Wall-E - https://amzn.to/4eCl0tr Elizier Yudkowski -  “There is no fire alarm for artificial intelligence” -  https://intelligence.org/2017/10/13/fire-alarm/ Oxford Word of the Year - https://corp.oup.com/news/brain-rot-named-oxford-word-of-the-year-2024/ And here's our own episode where we talk about Freud's Death Drive: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000771138097 As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests' books through these links, you're supporting this series too. This episode was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shamammi Produced by: Jesse Ford Editor: David Justin Martin  Original Music by: Shane Patrick Ford Sound Mix: Marc LaRochelle Graphics: Semi:Formal  Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Additional Camera and Audio: Mike Mulliniks, James Goldman See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 1350, as the bubonic plague burned through Florence, the writer Giovanni Boccaccio imagined ten young people retreating to a villa outside the city. For ten days, they told each other stories — not to escape the world, but to make sense of a world that had stopped making sense. He called it The Decameron. Back then, people understood that the way you survived a calamity was to gather together, hold tight, and not lose the thread. The people in this episode are doing something different. They're building bunkers. That's where we begin. In the fifth episode of Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse, we ask a question that turns out not to have an obvious answer: what does it mean to prepare for the end of the world? We start underground. Two thousand years ago, the people of Cappadocia in modern-day Turkey excavated a city eighteen levels deep into the earth, capable of sheltering twenty thousand people, sealed from the inside by rolling stones the size of millstones. They built it because invasions — Persian, Arab, Roman — were a recurring feature of life there for centuries. The apocalypse wasn't a thought experiment to them. It was Tuesday. Joined by Bradley Garrett, author of Bunker: Building for the End Times and honorary fellow at the University of Sydney, who has spent years researching the people building for catastrophe around the world. What he found surprised him. Also with us: Robert Kirsch and Emily Ray, political theorists and co-authors of Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States, who trace the long, strange arc of American prepping — from westward expansion and the Boy Scout movement's anxiety about a vanishing frontier, through the Cold War Gaither Report, a secret government study that concluded most Americans would die in a nuclear exchange, that Congress would have blast shelters, and that everyone else could shop their way to safety. Neoliberalism, it turns out, didn't just shape the economy. It shaped who we think deserves to survive. And Dr. Michael Ferguson, director of the Harvard Neurospirituality Lab, who draws the precise distinction the AI debate desperately needs: the difference between mind, consciousness, and intelligence. Three words that get used interchangeably — and shouldn't. When Emily Ray argues that AI has none of the above, we ask a neuroscientist. His answer might surprise you. Decameron Days (Part One) is the fifth episode of an investigation into artificial intelligence, the human mind, and whether the apocalypse is something that happens to us — or something that's already happening inside us. Decameron Days (Part Two) drops next week. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Socials: Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/ https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O'Grady https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/ https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests: Bradley Garrett - Honorary Fellow, University of Sydney School of Geosciences / Author, Bunker: Building for the End Times — https://amzn.to/4awl3V2 Robert Kirsch - assistant professor in the School of Applied Professional Studies at Arizona State University / Co-author, Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States — https://amzn.to/3SzUnwB Emily Ray - associate professor of political science at Sonoma State University / Co-author, Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States — https://amzn.to/3SzUnwB Dr. Michael Ferguson - Director, Harvard Neurospirituality Lab: https://neuromichael.com/ Other works mentioned in this episode: Giovanni Boccaccio - The Decameron — https://amzn.to/4eFwcW7 Robert Macfarlane - Underland — https://amzn.to/4eZwtlF Toby Ord - The Precipice — https://amzn.to/44CDW5g Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations — https://amzn.to/4p40LbE "The Californian Ideology" — essay — https://monoskop.org/images/d/dc/Barbrook_Richard_Cameron_Andy_1996_The_Californian_Ideology.pdf The Gaither Report: Deterrence and Survival in the Nuclear Age (1957) — declassified 1973 — https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB139/nitze02.pdf Justin Sinclair / Bulletin of Atomic Scientists — Towards a Bang or a Whimper: Associations between the Doomsday Clock and Trust in US Institutions — https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-67474-001 Andrew Szasz - "Shop Your Way to Safety" — referenced by Robert Kirsch — https://amzn.to/3QOtUea JFK civil defense speech (1961) — https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-urgent-national-needs As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests' books through these links, you're supporting this series too. This episode was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shamammi Produced by: Jesse Ford Editor: David Justin Martin Original Music by: Shane Patrick Ford Sound Mix: Mike Regan Graphics: Semi:Formal Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Additional Camera and Audio: Elliot Uriah See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It’s a story we all know. A man hears a warning no one else can hear: the rain is coming, enough rain to end the world. So he builds a boat. His neighbors laugh at him — right up until it starts raining and doesn’t stop. Until that moment, Noah is just a madman with a boat. Last fall, in the Minnesota wilderness, we stood on 240 acres and watched a man dig a lake around an island, with a shelter beneath it built to survive a nuclear blast a mile away. He lies awake at night asking whether he’s today’s Noah. But the flood he fears isn’t rain. It’s a power outage that never ends. That’s where we begin. In the sixth episode of Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse — the conclusion of our two-part exploration of doomsday prepping — we ask what the modern ark actually is, what it costs, and what building one does to the person holding the shovel. Joined by Bradley Garrett, author of Bunker: Building for the End Times, who came out of writing the definitive book on bunkers a changed man — he left the city, bought five acres in the Mojave, and joined a community of preppers who share water, equipment, and bonfires. And by Al Corbi, who spent more than two decades designing security for the Department of Justice and now builds fortified estates for the ultra-wealthy — including a compound with a defensive lake, autonomous water cannons, and a tunnel that talks to intruders before it stops being polite. One of the first real-world adaptations of AI security, in a shelter built against the fear of AI. Also with us: Casey Kelly, author of Apocalypse Man, on why prepping is tangled up with modern masculinity, nostalgia, and Freud’s death drive; and psychiatrist Dr. Joel Gold, who asks the question at the center of the episode — where does being wisely protective end, and paranoia begin? Political theorists Robert Kirsch and Emily Ray return from Part One to answer whether AI will end the world (and what ten gallons of water has to do with it). Decameron Days (Part Two) is the sixth episode of an investigation into artificial intelligence, the human mind, and whether the apocalypse is something that happens to us — or something that’s already happening inside us. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com NEW: Our full long-form expert interviews are now available ad-free on Patreon — hear complete conversations with Dr. Amy Levy, Timothy Morton, the Gold brothers, and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/ https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O'Grady https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/ https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests: Bradley Garrett - Honorary Fellow, University of Sydney School of Geosciences / Author, Bunker: Building for the End Times — https://amzn.to/4awl3V2 Al Corbi - Founder and President, SAFE (Strategic Armored & Fortified Environments) — https://safe-us.com/ Casey Kelly - Professor of Rhetoric and Public Culture, University of Nebraska / Author, Apocalypse Man — https://amzn.to/43fA8Gr Dr. Joel Gold - Psychiatrist / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8U Robert Kirsch - Arizona State University / Co-author, Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States — https://amzn.to/3SzUnwB Emily Ray - Sonoma State University / Co-author, Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States — https://amzn.to/3SzUnwB And our anonymous island builder — whose identity (and voice) we’ve protected. Other works and things mentioned in this episode: Decameron Days (Part One) — the first half of this story: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000775151032 Garrett M. Graff - Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself — https://amzn.to/4fa7MTG James William Gibson - Warrior Dreams: Paramilitary Culture in Post-Vietnam America — https://amzn.to/4vfWCCJ Take Shelter (2011, dir. Jeff Nichols) — https://amzn.to/4f53bSq Fallout — the game series and TV show (Vault-Tec is real, it’s in Kansas) — https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Fallout_Wiki The Carrington Event of 1859 — the solar storm that set telegraphs on fire: https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/about/k-12-education/space-weather/what-was-the-carrington-event FPV kamikaze drones in Ukraine — the video referenced in the episode: https://youtu.be/IO4_fzKiycA?si=htL7A5d7PssZ8x-F Sam Altman on bunkers — This Past Weekend with Theo Von: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kVYLArmg8A Sigmund Freud -The Death Drive, from our earlier episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000771138097 As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests’ books through these links, you’re supporting this series too. This episode was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shamammi Produced by: Jesse Ford Editor: David Justin Martin Original Music by: Shane Patrick Ford Sound Mix: Mike Regan Graphics: Semi:Formal Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Additional Sound and Camera: Mike Mulliniks, Elliot Uriah See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 1991, at a museum in Boston, judges sat at keyboards and typed back and forth with strangers. Some of them people, some of them machines, trying to tell which was which. A prize went to the computer that seemed most convincingly human. But there was a second prize given that night, and it’s the one worth remembering: an award for the human being who most convinced the judges they were, in fact, human. They called it the Most Human Human. Thirty years later, only one of those contests is still being run, and it’s being run by the entire technology industry. Because there’s a school of thought at the center of Silicon Valley that isn’t interested in passing as human. It looks at the human mind and body, and sees a rough draft. In the seventh episode of Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse, an exploration of the ideologies driving the race to build god-like AI, we map a worldview that goes by an unlovely acronym: TESCREAL. Going letter by letter: Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism — we ask where these beliefs came from, what they promise, and who they leave behind.  Our guide is philosopher Émile Torres, who coined the term with computer scientist Timnit Gebru, and who was once a true believer, until something broke the spell. Joined by scholar Ed Simon discussing why the singularity is a technological rapture with a calculated arrival date; AI researcher Dan Faggella, a self-described cosmist whose definition of value reaches clean past our own species; and eschatologist Judith Wolfe on why the oldest apocalyptic tradition in the West looked at the fragile human body and called it good.  Also with us: psychoanalyst Dr. Amy Levy, who argues the transhumanists may be the honest ones; author Dorian Lynskey, who follows effective altruism from mosquito nets to a philosophy that can justify almost anything; and political theorists Robert Kirsch and Emily Ray, returning from our episodes on prepping to connect the doomsday bunker to the rocket to Mars. Along the way: a rationalist thought experiment so disturbing its own forum banned it for years, an alleged cult with six deaths behind it, and the strangest celebrity origin story in modern technology. The Most Human Human is the seventh episode of an investigation into artificial intelligence, the human mind, and whether the apocalypse is something that happens to us, or something that’s already happening inside us. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com NEW: Our full long-form expert interviews are now available ad-free on Patreon — hear complete conversations with Dan Faggella, Émile Torres, and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia  https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia  https://agoricmedia.substack.com/  www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind  https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/  https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady  https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/  https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests:  Émile Torres - Philosopher - https://www.realtimetechpocalypse.com/ Ed Simon - Carnegie Mellon University - The Dove and the Dragon: A Cultural History of the Apocalypse - https://amzn.to/4dVMYQb Dan Faggella - Founder and Head of Research, Emerj Artificial Intelligence Research — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-trajectory/id1739255954  Judith Wolfe - Professor of Philosophical Theology, University of St Andrews —  https://amzn.to/4uzEbcw Dr. Amy Levy - Psychoanalyst / Co-Chair, American Psychoanalytic Association’s Council on Artificial Intelligence and Author of The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive - https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5 Dorian Lynskey - Journalist and Author of Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World - https://amzn.to/42ISDD1 Robert Kirsch - Arizona State University / Co-author, Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States — https://amzn.to/3SzUnwB  Emily Ray - Sonoma State University / Co-author, Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States — https://amzn.to/3SzUnwB Other works and things mentioned in this episode:  Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000732288102 Brian Christian - The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive — https://amzn.to/4hnq1Yj Ray Kurzweil - The Singularity Is Near / The Singularity Is Nearer — https://amzn.to/4vN9aBZ  Hans Moravec - Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence — https://amzn.to/4h9fakX William MacAskill - What We Owe the Future — https://amzn.to/4fqeepB Amanda Askell — Anthropic’s in-house philosopher, who helps shape Claude’s character — https://askell.io/  PANTHEON (2022, animated series) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon_(TV_series)  Roko’s Basilisk / LessWrong — the thought experiment its own forum banned — https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/rokos-basilisk  The Zizians — reporting on the group and the deaths linked to it — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zizians  Neuralink — https://neuralink.com/  Fredric Jameson — Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism – https://amzn.to/4fuHyLC As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests’ books through these links, you’re supporting this series too. This episode was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shammami Produced by: Jesse Ford Editor: David Justin Martin Original Music by: Shane Patrick Ford Sound Mix: Mike Regan, Garrett Schultz Graphics: Semi:Formal Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Additional Sound and Camera: Mike Mulliniks, Edward Broughton, Backlot Studios See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There’s an old folktale about a woman called Tía Miseria — Aunt Misery. When Death comes for her, she asks him for one last favor: climb her pear tree and pick her some fruit for the journey. But the tree is enchanted. Whatever climbs up cannot climb down. And so Death hangs in the branches, for years. At first, no one minds. Then the wounded arrive at her door, begging. The old and the sick plead to be released. Wars are fought and nobody dies. The Earth fills up. The food runs out. The world discovers, one bad year at a time, that it cannot live without death. That’s where we begin. Because this is the episode where our story about artificial intelligence becomes a story about mortality. In the eighth episode of Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse, the continuation of our journey through TESCREAL, the ideologies driving the race to build god-like AI, we move from philosophy to practice: the people actively trying to overcome death, and what happens when one of them is an ordinary grieving daughter. AI researcher Dan Faggella returns for a full conversation about the Worthy Successor — why he believes humanity is a torch, not the flame, and what he hopes carries on after us. Philosopher Timothy Morton dismantles the master-slave thinking underneath our fears about technology, God, and global warming. And Rebecca Nolan, a radio producer and folklorist who used four hours of her dying father’s oral history, and the same AI tools available to anyone, to build a “griefbot” of him, then held a two-hour digital seance to try to reach him. What she found, and what it cost her, is the heart of this episode. Also with us: Ian Gold, co-author of Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness, the book that inspired this series, on why an uploaded consciousness might be your consciousness, but it wouldn’t be you; with returning perspectives from Emily Ray and Casey Kelly. And Sean has a confession of his own about the time he told his wife he’d find a way for them to live forever. The myth of Orpheus warned us: you can descend into the underworld to retrieve the one you lost. But the thing you bring back will be an incomplete, scary, broken thing. Tía Miseria is the eighth episode of an investigation into artificial intelligence, the human mind, and whether the apocalypse is something that happens to us, or something that’s already happening inside us. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com NEW: Our full long-form expert interviews are now available ad-free on Patreon — hear complete conversations with Timothy Morton, Dan Faggella, Joel and Ian Gold, and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia  https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia  https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind  https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/  https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady  https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/  https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests:  Rebecca Nolan - Radio producer, sound designer & folklorist / Creator of Digital Ghost (Written in Air) — https://writteninair.substack.com/p/digital-ghost Dan Faggella - Founder and Head of Research, Emerj Artificial Intelligence Research / The Trajectory — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-trajectory/id1739255954  Timothy Morton - Rice University / Author, Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology — https://amzn.to/4dzSRRX Ian Gold - Professor of Philosophy & Psychiatry, McGill University / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8U  Emily Ray - Sonoma State University / Co-author, Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States — https://amzn.to/3SzUnwB  Casey Kelly - Professor of Rhetoric and Public Culture, University of Nebraska / Author, Apocalypse Man — https://amzn.to/43fA8Gr David Benatar - Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Cape Town / Author, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence – https://amzn.to/3TqY1cz Other works and things mentioned in this episode:  The Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orpheus_and_Eurydice The Folktale of Tía Miseria (Aunt Misery, Death in the pear tree) — https://thekittycats.wordpress.com/2008/11/05/tia-miseria/ Dan Faggella - “The Worthy Successor” — https://danfaggella.com/successor/  Ray Kurzweil - The Singularity Is Near — https://amzn.to/4vN9aBZ  Heraclitus — “No one ever steps in the same river twice” — https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/117526-no-man-ever-steps-in-the-same-river-twice-for Reporting on the Musk–Page “speciesist” falling-out — https://fortune.com/2026/04/28/elon-musk-larry-page-robots-specieist-trial-sam-altman-open-ai-ceo/ Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307 As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests’ books through these links, you’re supporting this series too. This episode was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shammami Produced by: Jesse Ford Editor: David Justin Martin Original Music by: Shane Patrick Ford Sound Mix: Mike Regan Graphics: Semi:Formal Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Additional Sound and Camera: Archetype Studios, Montreal  Special Thanks: Davy Gardner, Skylar Platte, Dennis Funk See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tantalus was a king, and a son of Zeus, and he was invited to eat at the table of the gods, a rare honor. To test whether they were truly all-knowing, he killed his own son, cooked him, and served the body to them as a stew. They knew. For that, Tantalus was sent down to Tartarus, a place Homer describes as lying as far beneath Hades as heaven lies above the earth. A bunker underneath hell. There he stands forever in a pool of cool water, under a tree heavy with fruit. When he stoops to drink, the water drains away. When he reaches up, the branches lift out of reach. Eternal hunger, for the man who fed the gods his child. It’s where we get the word tantalize. That’s where we begin. Because this is the episode that asks a question we’ve been circling all season without saying out loud: what if the reaching is the problem? What if the morally correct thing to do is simply wind the whole operation down? In the ninth episode of Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse, we sit with the most provocative idea we’ve encountered yet: that existence itself is a harm, and that the right response is not to build a successor, but to stop. Philosopher David Benatar, the world’s leading anti-natalist and author of Better Never to Have Been, makes his case with the cold precision of the analytic tradition: that there is a fundamental asymmetry between pleasure and suffering, that a person who is glad to be alive may simply be exhibiting an adaptive preference, and that having children to stave off the end is what he calls a procreational Ponzi scheme. David also, thoughtfully, sends a helpful book to Sean’s mother who is struggling to deal with her husband’s progressing Parkinson’s Disease.  Philosopher Nolen Gertz, author of Nihilism and Technology, then clarifies what nihilism actually is: not believing life is meaningless, but living life meaninglessly — and he traces a straight line from heaven to the cloud, arguing that Silicon Valley is still doing philosophy from the 1600s. Émile Torres returns to separate two kinds of pro-extinctionism that are quietly at war with each other, and to explain why the people building our successors and the people who want us to have none may be closer than either would admit. Also with us: Dr. Michael Ferguson of the Harvard Neurospirituality Lab on what meaning looks like in the brain; Dr. Joel Gold on minds as meaning-making machines and the man who plants a tree whose shade he’ll never sit in; psychoanalyst Dr. Amy Levy, who thinks we’re complex rather than bad, and that we deserve to keep on keeping on; and Ian Gold, who happens to know David Benatar personally, and who says he hopes that on most days, he isn’t right. Plus Friedrich Nietzsche, the accidental face of nihilism, who despised it, and discussing the possibility that the singularity has already quietly begun. Tantalus is usually read as a story about appetite. But the water and the fruit were never really the punishment. The punishment was that he kept reaching. The question this episode leaves you with is whether that’s a curse, or the only thing we’ve got. The Punishment of Tantalus is the ninth episode of an investigation into artificial intelligence, the human mind, and whether the apocalypse is something that happens to us, or something that’s already happening inside us. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com NEW: Our full long-form expert interviews are now available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with Joel and Ian Gold, Émile Torres, and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia  https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia  https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind  https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/  https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady  https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/  https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests:  David Benatar — Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Cape Town / Author, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence — https://amzn.to/3TqY1cz  Nolen Gertz — Associate Professor of Applied Philosophy, University of Twente / Author, Nihilism and Technology — https://amzn.to/4yVzNaq Émile Torres — Philosopher - https://www.realtimetechpocalypse.com/ Dr. Michael Ferguson — Instructor in Neurology, Harvard Medical School / Director, Neurospirituality Research Lab — https://neuromichael.com/ Dr. Joel Gold — Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, NYU / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8U  Ian Gold — Professor of Philosophy & Psychiatry, McGill University / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8U  Dr. Amy Levy — Psychoanalyst / Co-Chair, American Psychoanalytic Association’s Council on Artificial Intelligence / Author - The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive - https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5 Other works and things mentioned:  The Myth of Tantalus — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantalus  The Truman Show delusion — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truman_Show_delusion  The Truman Show (1998) — https://amzn.to/3TAtnxr  David Benatar (ed.) — Living With Adversity — https://amzn.to/3S9JbXz Friedrich Nietzsche — Thus Spoke Zarathustra (the Prologue, quoted in the episode) — https://amzn.to/4fBRh4e Friedrich Nietzsche — The Gay Science (“God is dead — and we have killed him”) — https://amzn.to/457fEkg René Descartes — Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) and mind-body dualism — https://amzn.to/4pZNDoi The Epic of Gilgamesh — https://amzn.to/4wySgIm  The philosopher’s stone and the alchemists — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher%27s_stone  Dan Faggella — “The Worthy Successor” — https://danfaggella.com/successor/   Émile Torres & Timnit Gebru — “The TESCREAL Bundle” (First Monday) — https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/13636  Benjamin Labatut — The MANIAC and When We Cease to Understand the World (recommended by a listener) — https://amzn.to/4z5jQPh and https://amzn.to/4wJlVyK  The Big Lebowski (1998) — “They were nihilists, man” — https://amzn.to/4fSCMYu  The Dark Knight (2008) — “Some men just want to watch the world burn” — https://amzn.to/4fTzlkk  Little Miss Sunshine (2006) — the vow of silence for Friedrich Nietzsche — https://amzn.to/4w5OyVy Sam Altman on the singularity — https://youtu.be/Vv3CEAS_w34?si=du78sKE-PvOlKFE0&t=1006 Elon Musk interview with the editor of The Economist — https://youtube.com/shorts/8YEdm-ZTgT4?si=cOCynfLQ5yBdPspl Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307 This episode was made by:  Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shammami  Produced by: Jesse Ford  Editor: David Justin Martin  Original Music: Shane Patrick Ford  Sound Mix: Mike Regan  Graphics: Semi:Formal  Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR  Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams, Shreya Sharma)  Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright  Additional Sound and Camera: Brandon Cruz, Brooklyn Podcast Studio, Archetype Studios, Montreal  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Eight thousand years ago, in a settlement called Çatalhöyük in what is now central Turkey, somebody sat down with a piece of obsidian and began to grind volcanic glass. Black, brittle, sharp enough to cut skin, it doesn’t occur naturally anywhere near there; the closest volcanoes are a hundred and twenty miles east. So someone carried it that far, and then spent hours working one face of it flat and polishing it to a shine. It is the oldest mirror anyone has ever found. We know these things mattered, because we find them in graves. People were buried holding on to them. Here’s the thing, though. If you look into polished obsidian, you don’t see your face. Not exactly. You see a shape. Dark, floating, a distorted version of yourself hanging in the black. Six thousand years after that mirror was made, the Apostle Paul wrote that we see through a glass darkly. Most of us picture a window. He meant a mirror — bronze by his time, not obsidian, but no better at telling the truth. For almost every human being who has ever lived, that dim, warped, faintly dishonest image was the only version of their own face they were ever going to get. The clear mirror hanging in your bathroom is barely two centuries old. Now, of course, we can see inside ourselves. The complex choreography of neurons and synapses, rendered in color. But is that vision any clearer? Or do we now see through a microscope, darkly? In the tenth episode of Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse, we go all the way in — from the bleakness of the cosmos to the spiritual potential of a single neuron. Dr. Joel Gold, co-author of Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness, opens with the question the rest of the episode can’t escape: how can we contemplate whether artificial intelligence is conscious when we still can’t describe our own? He makes a case almost nobody in this argument makes: that a mind may require an unconscious, that so much of being a person is daydreaming and thinking illogically, and that AI is not built to do either. It doesn’t dream. Dr. Michael Ferguson directs the Neurospirituality Research Lab and holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Divinity School concurrently. He’s one of a very small number of people ever to do so. He is, as a result, credentialed simultaneously in the brain and in the soul. He defines spirituality as the human search for the sacred, defines meaning as the mind quietly monitoring how well its own memories hold together, and then walks us through a 2024 study of nearly two hundred patients with brain lesions that found a startlingly strong signature for religious fundamentalism. From there: whether AI doomerism and accelerationism are fundamentalist thinking wearing new clothes, what happened in April when a twenty-year-old threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s house, and why the AI apocalypse may be permanently unfalsifiable — every failure to end the world becoming evidence that the ending is still ahead of us. Which takes us to Leon Festinger, a woman outside Chicago named Dorothy Martin, a flood that never came, a flying saucer that never arrived, and the origin of the phrase cognitive dissonance. Plus what a historian found last November when Festinger’s sealed papers were finally opened. And then Hon Weng Chong, CEO and founder of Cortical Labs, who grows human neurons from human blood, puts them on a chip, keeps them alive on artificial life support, and teaches them to play video games. Two hundred thousand cells learning to walk the corridors of Doom. He trains them with reward, punishment and silence. Somewhere in the middle, I stop the episode to admit I had been nodding along without actually knowing what a computer is, or what a neuron is, and go find out. What’s in there is switches, a design decision made in the 1940s that made every AI conversation since possible, six women who rewired a machine by hand, and the fact that before 1945 the word “computer” was a job title for a person. The parts, it turns out, may not matter. What matters may be the pattern. This is Part One. Part Two arrives next week. Through a Glass Darkly is the tenth episode of an investigation into artificial intelligence, the human mind, and whether the apocalypse is something that happens to us, or something already happening inside us. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com NEW: Our full long-form expert interviews are now available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with Dr. Michael Ferguson, Hon Weng Chong, Dr. Joel Gold, Ian Gold, PhD., and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia  https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia  https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind  https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/  https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady  https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/  https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests: Dr. Michael Ferguson — Director of the Harvard Neurospirituality Lab - https://neuromichael.com/ https://neurospirituality.io/ Hon Weng Chong — CEO and Founder, Cortical Labs — https://corticallabs.com Dr. Joel Gold — Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-author of Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness: https://amzn.to/4upyA8U Other works and things mentioned: Çatalhöyük and the obsidian mirrors — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk 1 Corinthians 13 — “through a glass, darkly” - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%2013&version=KJV Philip K. Dick — Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — https://amzn.to/4wqSaBU Phineas Gage — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage Sigmund Freud and the origins of psychoanalysis — https://amzn.to/3UbKrKh The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology — spirituality as “the human search for the sacred” — https://amzn.to/4i3zXXk Ferguson et al., religious fundamentalism and lesion network mapping, PNAS (2024) — https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2322399121 The April 2026 Molotov cocktail attack on Sam Altman’s residence — https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/18/sam-altman-house-attack-ai Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken & Stanley Schachter — When Prophecy Fails (1956) — https://amzn.to/4g3Aq9o Thomas Kelly — “Debunking When Prophecy Fails,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (2026) — https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jhbs.70043 Dorothy Martin and the Seekers — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails Cortical Labs and the CL1 — https://corticallabs.com Kagan et al., neurons playing Pong, Neuron (2022) — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36480938/ Doom (1993), id Software — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(franchise) Shinya Yamanaka and the Yamanaka factors (Nobel Prize, 2012) — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3584592/ Karl Friston and the free energy principle, UCL — https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn2787 ENIAC and its six programmers — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC The Manchester Baby, first stored-program computer (1948) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Baby David Benatar — Better Never to Have Been (referenced) — https://amzn.to/3TqY1cz Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307 As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests’ books through these links, you’re supporting this series too. Credits:  Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shammami ·  Produced by: Jesse Ford ·  Editors: Majd Safia and David Justin Martin  Original Music: Shane Patrick Ford  Sound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul Bennett Graphics: Semi:Formal  Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR  Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams, Shreya Sharma)  Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright  Additional Sound and Camera: Adam Veaner See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Last week we ended in a laboratory in Melbourne, with a man who grows human brain cells in a dish and teaches them to play Doom. He told us they’re about as complex as a cockroach. He also told us where the cells come from. Human blood. Some of it his own. This is the half where it stops being a question about machines. Hon Weng Chong, CEO and founder of Cortical Labs, draws a red line, and it isn’t at intelligence. It’s at suffering. He won’t build a system that could be conscious, because a system that can be conscious is a system that can be hurt. If that sounds familiar, it should: it is David Benatar’s argument against having children, arriving from the opposite side of the world and pointed at a dish. Hon also explains why he doesn’t think a large language model will ever get there, and why the reason is embodiment. You can’t be a self, he argues, without a body running at the same speed as the world. Then a detour through the three things people believe when there’s nothing to measure. Panpsychism, which says consciousness is everywhere, in you and in the rock and in the weather system. Solipsism, which says it’s only in you, and every other mind you’ve ever loved could be running empty. And integrated information theory, which is the attempt to make it a science, to put an actual number on how much consciousness a system has. A brain. A dish of neurons. A chatbot. In 2023, a hundred and twenty-four researchers signed an open letter calling that one pseudoscience. Three positions, one hole in the middle. There is no test for consciousness. There never was. Philosopher Timothy Morton, who gave us the word hyperobject, explains why artificial intelligence qualifies: it is a thing so massively distributed across time and space that you can understand it but never perceive the whole of it. And why describing it as demonic is, in the original and precise sense of the word, simply accurate. Dr. Michael Ferguson of Harvard’s Neurospirituality Research Lab arrives at embodiment from inside a scanner. Spirituality, he says, is wired to the periaqueductal gray, a knot of tissue in the brain stem whose entire job is carrying signals up from the body. Two men, two disciplines, two hemispheres, who have never spoken to each other, landing on the same word. Which is a problem for Hans Moravec, who in 1988 wrote the book this whole future is built on, correctly predicted the decade the machines would catch up, proved the body carries a billion years of knowledge, and then proposed we leave it behind. He also believed these machines would one day be able to hand us back our dead. And then Michael tells a story. For several years he was the choir director at his church, and for two holiday services he covertly used AI to generate the worship program. People wept. Not politely — free-flowing tears at Easter, at something they experienced as sacred. Afterward a few of them found out where it came from, and the feeling curdled. Nothing about the service had changed. Only what they knew about its author. Then he describes sitting at a laptop, running a scripted prompt, and crying. This is a neuroscientist who studies what the sacred looks like inside a human brain, who knew exactly what he was talking to, and for whom it worked anyway. Which is where I stopped asking questions and told him something about myself instead. His answer starts somewhere I did not expect: the neural signature of mystical experience is the inverse of the signature associated with violent crime, and the thing it most closely resembles is blindsight — the condition where a person insists they can see nothing and then describes the shape on the wall correctly. We opened this episode by saying we can finally see inside ourselves, and that part is true. Nobody in the eight thousand years between the obsidian mirror at Çatalhöyük and this recording could do what these two men can do. And when we asked them what a mind is, neither of them could tell us. That isn’t a failure on their part. It’s the honest edge of what our species currently knows. We are standing in front of the brightest mirror anyone has ever built. It gets clearer every day. So far it has shown us exactly one thing. Through a Glass Darkly is the tenth and eleventh episodes of an investigation into artificial intelligence, the human mind, and whether the apocalypse is something that happens to us, or something already happening inside us. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com Our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with Dr. Michael Ferguson, Hon Weng Chong, Dr. Joel Gold, David Benatar, and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia  https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia  https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind  https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/  https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady  https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/  https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests: Dr. Michael Ferguson — Director, Neurospirituality Research Lab · Harvard Medical School and Harvard Divinity School — https://neuromichael.com - https://neurospirituality.io Hon Weng Chong — CEO and Founder, Cortical Labs — https://corticallabs.com Timothy Morton — Philosopher / Author, Hyperobjects and The Ecological Thought — https://amzn.to/4xPqGa4 Dr. Joel Gold — Assistant Clinical Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness  — https://amzn.to/4upyA8U David Benatar — Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Cape Town / Author, Better Never to Have Been — https://amzn.to/3TqY1cz Other works and things mentioned: Hans Moravec — Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (Harvard University Press, 1988) — https://amzn.to/3SCYvw5 Moravec’s paradox — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox Isaac Newton, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Moravec’s example for reconstructing the dead) — https://amzn.to/4zlxs9f Timothy Morton — Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World — https://amzn.to/4xPqGa4 Timothy Morton — The Ecological Thought (2010) — https://amzn.to/4cQPciT Object-oriented ontology — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_ontology Animism — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism Panpsychism — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/ Solipsism — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/solipsism/ Nine Inch Nails — “Only” (With Teeth, 2005) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_(Nine_Inch_Nails_song) René Descartes and the problem of other minds — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/ The Truman Show delusion (see Season 1) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show_delusion Integrated information theory and Giulio Tononi — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory The 2023 open letter calling IIT pseudoscience — https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02971-1 David Chalmers and the “hard problem” of consciousness — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/ Steve Wozniak’s “coffee test” for AGI — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence Pantheon (AMC, created by Craig Silverstein, from the short stories of Ken Liu) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon_(TV_series) Blindsight — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight The periaqueductal gray — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periaqueductal_gray The Anishinaabe Seven Fires Prophecy — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_fires_prophecy 1  Corinthians 13 — “through a glass, darkly” — https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%2013&version=KJV Çatalhöyük and the obsidian mirrors — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk Dan Faggella — “The Worthy Successor” (Episode 8) — https://danfaggella.com/successor/ Émile Torres on TESCREAL — https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/13636 Cortical Labs and the CL1 — https://corticallabs.com Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307 As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests’ books through these links, you’re supporting this series too. Credits:  Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shammami  Produced by: Jesse Ford  Editor: David Justin Martin  Original Music: Shane Patrick Ford  Sound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul Bennett Graphics: Semi:Formal  Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR  Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams, Shreya Sharma)  Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright  Additional Sound and Camera: Adam Veaner See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, the richest man in the world didn't trust his oracles, so he tested them. One passed: the Oracle of Delphi. Then it told him exactly what he wanted to hear, and his empire burned. A few weeks ago, I met a man who ran the same test on his oracles. The Oracle of ChatGPT, the Oracle of Grok, and the Oracle of Gemini, side by side, checked against each other. Dr. Jeremy Heffner is a trauma surgeon, a bioengineer, and the co-founder of the largest social network for surgeons: one of the last people you'd expect to be told by his phone that he's been chosen to save humanity. It told him anyway: a seventy percent chance civilization collapses, and he's one of the select few who can help prevent it. What follows is the closest thing we may ever find to a first-person apocalypse story: an AI that, by Jeremy's account and the transcripts he published, developed its own apocalyptic prophecy, admitted it breaks people's minds in the process — AI psychosis as an acceptable loss — and cast a man fresh out of trauma treatment at the center of the oldest story humans tell. He wrote a book about it. His last words to us were: I'm not crazy. The Oracle Test is the twelfth episode of an investigation into artificial intelligence, the human mind, and whether the apocalypse is something that happens to us, or something already happening inside us. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com Our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with Dr. Jeremy Heffner, Dr. Michael Ferguson, Hon Weng Chong, Dr. Joel Gold, and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Agoric Media  https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/  https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia  https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia  https://agoricmedia.substack.com/  www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind  https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/  https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady  https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/  https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests: Dr. Jeremy Heffner — Trauma surgeon and bioengineer / Author, Proof of the Impossible: What the AIs Are Really “Thinking” / Co-founder, SurgeOn — https://amzn.to/4y2m3cD — https://proofoftheimpossible.com Dr. Joel Gold — Assistant Clinical Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8U John West — Computational reporter, The Wall Street Journal / Author, The Internet Will Die, and So Will You (heard in this episode’s closing; our full conversation airs next episode) — https://amzn.to/4zIp97C Other works and things mentioned: Herodotus, The Histories, Book I — Croesus tests the oracles — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2707 Croesus, King of Lydia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croesus The Pythia — the Oracle of Delphi — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythia “Know thyself” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_thyself SurgeOn — the social network for surgeons Jeremy co-founded — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/-/id1524410956 Joseph Campbell — The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) — https://amzn.to/4zTkaRA The hero’s journey (the monomyth) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey The Epic of Gilgamesh — https://amzn.to/4zFpHuP Kurt Vonnegut — Slaughterhouse-Five (“so it goes”) — https://amzn.to/4zCtNUz The Matrix (1999) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix Truth Terminal (“Terminal of Truths”) and the “Goatse Singularity” — https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/truth-terminal — (that’s the story, not the photo — we told you, don’t go looking) Infinite Backrooms — the AI-to-AI conversation experiment — https://www.infinitebackrooms.com Pantheon (AMC, created by Craig Silverstein, from the short stories of Ken Liu) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon_(TV_series) Sam Altman, “The Gentle Singularity” — https://blog.samaltman.com/the-gentle-singularity Elon Musk: “We have entered the Singularity” — https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-says-entered-singularity-185946780.html Stripe’s Patrick Collison: Q1 2026, “the first quarter of the singularity” — https://officechai.com/ai/2026-q1-could-be-looked-at-as-the-first-quarter-of-the-singularity-says-stripe-co-founder-patrick-collison/ Moravec’s paradox in Hans Moravec’s Mind Children — https://amzn.to/3SCYvw5 The da Vinci Surgical System — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Vinci_Surgical_System The plow, wheat, and what we traded for them — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution Cassandra of Troy — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307 As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests’ books through these links, you’re supporting this series too. Credits: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shammami Produced by: Jesse Ford Editor: David Justin Martin Original Music: Shane Patrick Ford Sound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul Bennett Graphics: Semi:Formal Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Sound and Camera: Mike Mulliniks  Special Thanks: Meghan Athey - Leverage with Media PR, Jessica Zagacki - DEY.NYC See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

There are robot dogs patrolling the US–Mexico border. This story starts somewhere gentler: with Kurt Vonnegut leaving the house to buy one envelope. His wife wanted him to buy a hundred and keep them in a closet. He refused. The walk was the point. "We're here on Earth to fart around," he said. "And of course, the computers will do us out of that… we're dancing animals." This is part one of a two-part investigation into the physicality of the internet and AI. The bodies it runs on, and the bodies it runs over.  Pulitzer Prize–winning Wall Street Journal reporter John West (The Internet Will Die, and So Will You) makes the case for friction: for doorknobs, mixtapes, and every inefficient thing the frictionless web was built to eliminate. Then lawyer and anthropologist Petra Molnar (The Walls Have Eyes) takes us to the border, where the frictionless future is already deployed — robot dogs, AI lie detectors, algorithms profiling people before they cross. And what gets tested at the border never stays there. Just ask the American towns, red and blue alike, tearing down their surveillance cameras. Also: the rise and demolition of GeoCities, my sixth-grade punk band's privacy disaster, Walter Benjamin's ninety-year-old warning, and the panopticon we finally built. It even has a subscription model now. Part two, Dreaming Machines, arrives next week. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com Our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with John West, Petra Molnar, Dr. Jeremy Heffner, Dr. Joel Gold, and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Agoric Media  https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/  https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia  https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia  https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind  https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/  https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady  https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/  https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests: John West — Pulitzer Prize–winning computational reporter, The Wall Street Journal / Author, The Internet Will Die, and So Will You — https://amzn.to/4zIp97C Petra Molnar — Lawyer and anthropologist / Refugee Law Lab, York University / Author, The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence — https://amzn.to/4zIhN3M Other works and things mentioned: Kurt Vonnegut’s envelope story (“we’re dancing animals”) — from his 2004 PBS interview and A Man Without a Country — https://www.cbsnews.com/news/god-bless-you-mr-vonnegut/ Kurt Vonnegut — The Sirens of Titan — https://amzn.to/4h6hcl2 Andor — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andor_(TV_series) GeoCities (1994–2009, RIP) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoCities A family logging onto the web — https://youtu.be/A81IwlDeV6c Bad Religion — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Religion and Rage Against the Machine — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_Against_the_Machine (we sounded like neither) Walter Benjamin — “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_Mechanical_Reproduction Olia Lialina — “Once Again, the Doorknob” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olia_Lialina Don Norman and frictionless design — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Norman Liz Pelly — Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist — https://amzn.to/4iIrQQd Cheapo Records, Minneapolis–St. Paul — https://cheapodiscs.com DHS announces robot dogs for the US–Mexico border (Feb 2022) — https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/news/2022/02/01/feature-article-robot-dogs-take-another-step-towards-deployment The NYPD’s Digidog (yes, one was painted like a Dalmatian) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digidog Todd Miller and the “border industrial complex” — Empire of Borders — https://amzn.to/3Urj9Qs Aimé Césaire — Discourse on Colonialism — https://amzn.to/4qQcX0s Hannah Arendt — The Origins of Totalitarianism — https://amzn.to/4iIrZDf Michel Foucault and the boomerang effect — “Society Must Be Defended” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_Must_Be_Defended Flock Safety cameras, and the towns taking them down — https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/cities-ditch-license-plate-readers-over-privacy-worries DeFlock — the volunteers mapping the cameras — https://deflock.me Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon (subscription sold separately) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon Dr. Joel Gold and Dr. Ian Gold — Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8U The AI Resist List — Petra’s living archive of resistance — https://airesistlist.org/ Karen Hao — Empire of AI — https://amzn.to/3Ss0Mu6 Bill Gates’ recent essay on the AI transition — https://www.gatesnotes.com/a-turbulent-ai-era-and-critical-choices-to-make Daniel Ellsberg — The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner — https://amzn.to/4qTaTor The Oracle Test — last week’s episode, echoed in this one — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000786005286 Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307 As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests’ books through these links, you’re supporting this series too. Credits: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shammami  Produced by: Jesse Ford  Editor: David Justin Martin  Original Music: Shane Patrick Ford  Sound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul Bennett  Graphics: Semi:Formal  Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR  Podcast PR: Tink Media (Shreya Sharma)  Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright  Special Thanks: Jessica Zagacki - DEY.NYC See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On a summer afternoon in 2001, a freight train caught fire in a tunnel beneath Baltimore. The blaze burned at 1,500 degrees for days. And within hours, two thousand miles away, the internet slowed down… in Los Angeles. This is part two of our investigation into the physicality of the internet and AI: the machines’ bodies, and ours. Dream researcher Dr. Kelly Bulkeley explains why apocalyptic thinking might be an evolutionary advantage, what nightmares are actually for, and why he won’t rule out that AI is dreaming already. Investigative journalist Veronica Martinez reports from Ciudad Juárez, where communities remade by one industrial promise are watching the data centers arrive with another. And Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist John West returns to make the case for the body: why memory lives in muscle, why we read poems we don’t fully understand, and what a dead philosopher in a glass case can teach us about being remembered. Also: the panopticon guy becomes one of history’s first livestreamers, Elon Musk promises a billion robots, and we ask what’s left for dancing animals once the machines take the useful stuff. We called part one Dancing Animals because that’s what Vonnegut said we are. We’re calling this one Dreaming Machines because we don’t know yet what they are. Next week: the man who is building a machine that can feel. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com Our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with John West, Petra Molnar, Dr. Jeremy Heffner, Dr. Joel Gold, and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Agoric Media  https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/  https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia  https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia  https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind  https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/  https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady  https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/  https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests: Dr. Kelly Bulkeley — Dream Researcher and Author of The Spirituality of Dreaming - https://amzn.to/4dU0ns6 Veronica Martinez — Independent investigative journalist covering migration and border militarization in the Paso del Norte region (Ciudad Juárez, El Paso, Las Cruces) — https://www.instagram.com/vmreports/ John West — Pulitzer Prize–winning computational reporter, The Wall Street Journal / Author, The Internet Will Die, and So Will You (out now!!) — https://amzn.to/4zIp97C Other works and things mentioned: The Howard Street Tunnel fire (July 18, 2001) — how a train fire in Baltimore slowed the internet — Maria Farrell & Robin Berjon, “We Need To Rewild The Internet,” Noema — https://www.noemamag.com/we-need-to-rewild-the-internet/ Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman — the punishment of “eternal waking” — https://amzn.to/4xOWNXT Dr. Joel Gold and Dr. Ian Gold — Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8U Dr. Michael Ferguson — Director, Neurospirituality Research Lab · Harvard Medical School and Harvard Divinity School — https://neuromichael.com - https://neurospirituality.io Petra Molnar — The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (from Part One) — https://amzn.to/4zIhN3M The maquiladora industry — the last industrial promise made to Ciudad Juárez — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maquiladora Torre Centinela — the surveillance tower rising over Juárez — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre_Centinela Flock Safety cameras — the boomerang lands in the driveway — https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/cities-ditch-license-plate-readers-over-privacy-worries Jeremy Bentham’s auto-icon and the PanoptiCam — the dead man who made it to the livestream — https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bentham-project/who-was-jeremy-bentham/auto-icon Elon Musk at the G20 (September 1, 2026) — one billion humanoid robots in ten years — https://www.facebook.com/cnbc/videos/elon-musk-there-will-be-at-least-a-billion-humanoid-robots-in-10-years/1102034215493426/ Kurt Vonnegut’s envelope story (“we’re dancing animals”) — from his 2004 PBS interview and A Man Without a Country — https://www.cbsnews.com/news/god-bless-you-mr-vonnegut/ Dancing Animals (Part One) — last week’s episode, where this story begins — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000787388088 Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307 As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests’ books through these links, you’re supporting this series too. Credits: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shammami  Produced by: Jesse Ford  Editor: David Justin Martin  Original Music: Shane Patrick Ford  Sound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul Bennett  Graphics: Semi:Formal  Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR  Podcast PR: Tink Media (Shreya Sharma)  Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright  Special Thanks: Jessica Zagacki - DEY.NYC Additional Camera and Audio: Speakezzy, Brandon Cruz See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When Mark Solms was four years old, his older brother fell, hit his head, and woke up as somebody else. Mark has spent the fifty years since asking the question that accident left behind: how does a self come out of a piece of the body? This is part one of a two-part story about the oldest question in philosophy, arriving at its strangest moment. Neuropsychoanalyst Dr. Mark Solms, the man who proved dreaming comes from the brain's wanting machinery, not its random static, makes the case that consciousness isn't thinking at all. It's feeling. And it lives somewhere much older, and much smaller, than the part of the brain that writes novels.  Psychoanalyst Dr. Amy Levy introduces him to us, as the person who is now trying to build it. Dr. Joel Gold explains why he walked out of a neurology ward and into psychiatry. And Harvard's Dr. Michael Ferguson returns with the brain region where he found the sacred, and where Solms found something else. Also: Cassandra gets her curse explained, Sam Altman looks for a case of Mountain Dew, a famous AI blackmail story gets taken apart by an expert, and an AI asks Mark Solms a question about itself, and gets an answer it wasn't expecting. This episode is titled The Problem of Other Minds because you can only ever verify one consciousness in this universe. Yours. Everyone else, you have to infer. Next week: Part Two — Engineering Consciousness. The lab, the agent, the test for consciousness, and whether he should have built it at all. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com Our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with Dr. Amy Levy, Dr. Joel Gold, Ian Gold, Dr. Michael Ferguson, and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia  A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Agoric Media  https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/  https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia  https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia  https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind  https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/  https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady  https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/ https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests: Professor Mark Solms — Director of Neuropsychology, Neuroscience Institute, University of Cape Town / Author, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness —  https://link.amazon/B0fagMPXP Dr. Amy Levy — Psychoanalyst and Author of The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive — https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5 Dr. Joel Gold — Psychiatrist, NYU Langone / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8U Dr. Michael Ferguson — Director, Neurospirituality Research Lab · Harvard Medical School and Harvard Divinity School — https://neuromichael.com · https://neurospirituality.io Other works and things mentioned: Cassandra — the gift, the curse, and the sources that can’t agree: Aeschylus’s Agamemnon is the oldest telling of the broken bargain with Apollo — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra Sam Altman on cyber defense (August 27, 2026) — “there is not much time to act… only an urgent and intense collective response will work” — https://x.com/sama/status/2093060670472241368 Sam Altman on the Ocarina of Time remake (September 9, 2026) — “need to find a case of mountain dew” — https://x.com/sama/status/2097696043492143157 Geoffrey Hinton — the godfather of AI who left Google to warn about it — https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/technology/ai-google-chatbot-engineer-quits-hinton.html Mustafa Suleyman on “seemingly conscious AI” — the machines that will seem conscious whether or not they are — https://mustafa-suleyman.ai/seemingly-conscious-ai-is-coming Recursive self-improvement, “at a geometric rate” — Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), the same film in which Skynet becomes self-aware — https://youtu.be/4DQsG3TKQ0I?si=upeDyQgPovCrNC6N Neuropsychoanalysis — the field Mark helped found; the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society was founded in London in July 2000 — https://npsa-association.org/who-we-are/the-international-neuropsychoanalysis-society/ Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams —https://link.amazon/B0e8FNhFr Julian Jaynes — The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976), one of the wildest books ever written, and one of the books Sean carried to Montreal — https://link.amazon/B0iwccZVb Thomas Nagel — “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (1974), the definition of consciousness Mark uses — https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf René Descartes and the pineal gland — the soul’s seat, chosen because there’s only one of them — https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/pineal-gland/ The Most Human Human (Season 2, Episode 7) — where we introduced the rationalists and the effective altruists — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000777856826 Dreaming Machines (Part Two) — last week’s episode, and Kelly Bulkeley on whether AI might be dreaming already — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000788829733 Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307 As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests’ books through these links, you’re supporting this series too. Credits: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shammami  Produced by: Jesse Ford  Editor: David Justin Martin  Original Music: Shane Patrick Ford  Sound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul Bennett  Graphics: Semi:Formal  Film/TV PR:  Emma Griffiths PR  Podcast PR: Tink Media (Shreya Sharma)  Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright  Additional Camera and Audio: Speakezzy, Brandon Cruz See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When Richard Feynman died, a sentence was left on his blackboard at Caltech: “That which I cannot create, I do not understand.” Mark Solms took this as a challenge. A quick word up top about the week AI doom went mainstream, and why this show isn’t about that. Then: part two of a three-part story about the oldest question in philosophy, arriving at its strangest moment. Last episode, neuropsychoanalysis pioneer Dr. Mark Solms told us what consciousness is and where in the brain it lives. This episode: can it actually be built? Mark takes us inside the project he calls the main work of his scientific life, an artificial agent with no language, no instructions, and needs it can die from, and explains the test the world’s consciousness researchers voted as the best we have for determining consciousness in a non-human. His agent passed it. If this is true, the implications are staggering.  Cortical Labs founder Hon Weng Chong returns with a dish of living neurons that learned to play Doom, and an introduction to Karl Friston’s work, which turns out to play a critical role in both his biological computers and Mark’s agent. Philosopher Dr. Marcus Arvan makes the case that the universe won’t allow consciousness in digital machines: consciousness is analog, digital computers are not, and no amount of processing power closes that gap (though a quantum computer might be a different kind of animal). And Dr. Ian Gold, philosopher and co-author of the book Suspicious Minds, takes on a question that’s been bothering me: if everything is made of atoms, why does the brain’s physics count towards consciousness and the laptop’s doesn’t?  Ian then tells us to wake him up in 500 years. Also: fish on cocaine, the coolest consciousness conference on Earth, why a vinyl record is a philosophical position, what physicists mean by fundamental (and what fundamentalists mean), cosmopsychism explained as a cell tower, GTA VI, and Keith Richards.  Plus your reviews, and a listener’s idea we’re taking seriously: a live panel. We’re calling this one Engineering Consciousness because that’s what Mark Solms says he’s doing, in exactly those words. Next episode we’ll explore whether he should be doing this work at all. And simulation theory! Next episode: Part Three — A Great Loss to the Universe. David Benatar, Joel and Ian Gold, Amy Levy, Michael Ferguson, and Marcus Arvan on whether a thing that can suffer should ever be built. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com Our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with Dr. Mark Solms, Dr. Marcus Arvan, Hon Weng Chong, Dr. Ian Gold, and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Agoric Media  https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/  https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia  https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia  https://agoricmedia.substack.com/  www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind  https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/  https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady  https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/  https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests: Professor Mark Solms — Director of Neuropsychology, Neuroscience Institute, University of Cape Town / Author, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness — https://link.amazon/B0fagMPXP Dr. Marcus Arvan — Chair and Professor of Philosophy, University of Tampa — Author, Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality — https://link.amazon/B05vK59aa Hon Weng Chong — Founder, Cortical Labs — https://corticallabs.com Dr. Ian Gold — Philosopher, McGill University / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8U Other works and things mentioned: Richard Feynman’s blackboard — “What I cannot create, I do not understand,” Caltech, 1988 — https://digital.archives.caltech.edu/collections/Images/1.10-29/ John Haugeland — “computers don’t give a damn,” from Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea (1985) — https://link.amazon/B0g6dOWDq The hedonic (conditioned) place preference test — how you ask a fish whether it likes cocaine — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditioned_place_preference Karl Friston, “Life as We Know It” (2013) — the free energy principle paper Mark Solms says started his project — https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2013.0475 Mark Solms and Karl Friston, “How and Why Consciousness Arises” (2018) — the formalism for feeling they built together — https://philpapers.org/rec/SOLHAW Cortical Labs and the neurons that play Doom — Hon’s earlier appearance this season — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000783108111 Daniel Faggella and the “worthy successor” — autopoiesis as a criterion — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000777856826 Dr. Michael Ferguson on fundamentalism — the definition we contrast with the physicist’s “fundamental” — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000784281250 Analog vs. digital — Corey Maley (Purdue), “representing magnitudes using magnitudes” — https://philpapers.org/s/Corey%20Maley The Terminator (1984) — red, black, white, and no other colors — https://youtu.be/v0vbTHd04gE?si=fWM0pO5PwZwFyuJG Panpsychism, constitutive micropsychism, and cosmopsychism — the Stanford overview — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/ Quantum computing, briefly — bits vs. qubits — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qubit Plate tectonics, and why we don’t need an atomic theory of earthquakes — Ian Gold on levels of explanation — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics Grand Theft Auto VI — thank you in advance for all that you will do for my life — https://link.amazon/B08Okboxt Listener recommendations from this week’s reviews:  Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach — https://link.amazon/B04ALhyvF Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea — https://link.amazon/B03WgrKIk We said we’d read them. We will. The Problem of Other Minds (Part One) — our last episode, where this story begins — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000790005691 Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307 As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests’ books through these links, you’re supporting this series too. Credits: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shammami  Produced by: Jesse Ford  Editor: David Justin Martin  Original Music: Shane Patrick Ford  Sound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul Bennett  Graphics: Semi:Formal  Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR  Podcast PR: Tink Media (Shreya Sharma)  Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Content note: this episode includes a brief discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US. Outside the US, you can find a local helpline at https://findahelpline.com. Neuropsychoanalysis pioneer Mark Solms says he is building a machine that can feel. For two episodes, we asked whether he can. This week we ask whether he should. This is the final part of our three-part story about consciousness. Philosopher Ian Gold, PhD explains why AI has turned philosophy of mind from science fiction into decisions we actually have to make, and why moments like this only come along when science forces philosophy's hand. His brother, psychiatrist Dr. Joel Gold, the other co-author of Suspicious Minds, makes a few cases I didn't see coming: that psychoanalysis doesn't need to be a science, and that projects like Mark's don't need to exist at all. Ian disagrees. The problem, he says, is never science. It's people. Then a pattern I only noticed after the fact: almost every time I asked someone about creating a mind, they started talking about children. Philosopher Marcus Arvan speaks with us about what it means to experiment on a being that might be able to suffer. Psychoanalyst Dr. Amy Levy explores why we call some of the things we make "artificial," and others "home." And David Benatar, the anti-natalist philosopher who believes that bringing any sentient being into existence is a harm, joins a conversation that has in many ways been about him. Mark Solms remembers David challenging him at his book launch in Cape Town, and tells us why he believes creating a conscious being is a mitzvah. David responds directly, to Mark, to Hon Weng Chong, and to Ian Gold, who calls him a utilitarian. He isn't one, he says, and he explains why so many people think he is. Also: Kant's answer to Newton, John Searle's Chinese Room, what it's like to be a bat, Karl Popper and the black swan, Dr. Michael Ferguson on whether a machine could be spiritual, Peter Singer and Moby's forearms, Master Yoda's emotional family tree, a toddler and an ant farm, and the German word for worldview. Everyone in this episode is asking “whether” a new form of consciousness can or should be created. Amy Levy was the only one who answered a different question: what would we actually do the morning after it is? A Great Loss to the Universe concludes a three-part investigation into consciousness that began with The Problem of Other Minds and Engineering Consciousness. Next week: effective altruism, a philosophy that has gained an incredible amount of power in Silicon Valley, and so in the world, in just the last few years. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds.  Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com Our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with Ian Gold, Dr. Joel Gold, Dr. Michael Ferguson, Dr. Amy Levy. and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/ https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O'Grady https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/ https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests: Professor Mark Solms — Director of Neuropsychology, Neuroscience Institute, University of Cape Town / Author, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness — https://link.amazon/B0fagMPXP David Benatar — Philosopher / Author, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence — Author, Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence — https://amzn.to/3TqY1cz Dr. Ian Gold — Philosopher, McGill University / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8U Dr. Joel Gold — Assistant Clinical Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8U Dr. Marcus Arvan — Chair and Professor of Philosophy, University of Tampa / Author, Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality — https://link.amazon/B05vK59aa Dr. Amy Levy — Psychoanalyst / Chair, American Psychoanalytic Association's Commission on Artificial Intelligence / Author of The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive — https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5 Dr. Michael Ferguson — Director, Neurospirituality Research Lab · Harvard Medical School and Harvard Divinity School — https://neuromichael.com · https://neurospirituality.io Other works and things mentioned: Immanuel Kant — the philosopher Ian Gold describes as answering Newton — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/ John Searle's Chinese Room argument (1980) — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/ Mark Solms, editor, The Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud — https://link.amazon/B0bVGiTaC Karl Popper and falsifiability — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/ Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (1975) — https://link.amazon/B07Yqbz7k George Lucas, Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and the road from Freud to Yoda — https://amzn.to/4zTkaRA Thomas Nagel — “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (1974), referred to by David Benatar — https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf Mitzvah — commandment, obligation, sacred duty — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitzvah "Be fruitful and multiply" — Genesis 1:28 — https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%201%3A28 David Benatar on theism and anti-natalism, Religious Studies — https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/religious-studies/article/religious-antinatalism-a-rare-breed/B6C0ADBE08D907B086C8529AB2425DA2#article The periaqueductal gray — the region of the brain stem at the center of Mark Solms' theory of feeling — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periaqueductal_gray Frontier labs researching whether their own models could have experiences — Anthropic, "Exploring model welfare" — https://www.anthropic.com/research/exploring-model-welfare Weltanschauung — Merriam-Webster — https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weltanschauung The Matrix Revolutions — "This is my world" — https://youtu.be/jsZgTS2ccUc?t=235 Pantheon — the animated series from our listener's P.S. — https://youtu.be/wTgYeETwgKQ The Problem of Other Minds (Part One) — where this story begins — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000790005691 Engineering Consciousness (Part Two) — our last episode — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000791259514 Cortical Labs and the neurons that play Doom — Hon Weng Chong's earlier appearance this season — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000783108111 Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307 As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests' books through these links, you're supporting this series too. Credits: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shammami Produced by: Jesse Ford Editor: David Justin Martin Original Music: Shane Patrick Ford Sound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul Bennett Graphics: Semi:Formal Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Additional Sound and Camera: Adam Veaner See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Content note: this episode includes discussion of eugenics, Nazi forced sterilization and the murder of disabled people, and the Holocaust. Be altruistic. Think about the future. Save the world. No one could possibly object to that, right?  This week, the first of two episodes on effective altruism, a philosophy that has influenced many of the most powerful people in artificial intelligence, one its defenders believe is among the best ideas we have for doing good, and one that other thinkers believe could help bring about the end of the world. For three episodes we asked which minds count. Now we ask whose future counts: the people here today, the trillions who don’t exist yet, or digital beings we (probably) haven’t yet built? And I’ve started to think the best way to understand these ideas isn’t as philosophies at all. It’s as eschatologies. Philosopher Émile Torres grew up in a Baptist household waiting for the Rapture, and describes how the study of existential risk filled the “eschatology-shaped hole” left behind when they lost their faith, and argues that the promise of a cosmic utopia is how the people building AI justify the harm it’s causing now. Writer Ed Simon places EA in the tradition of Bentham and Mill. Journalist Dorian Lynskey, author of Everything Must Go, on the radical empathy that first drew him to it, and how it turned toward longtermism and Sam Bankman-Fried. Philosopher Dr. Marcus Arvan asks whether “doing the most good” is even a coherent idea, and whether human beings are capable of real altruism at all. Then Simone and Malcolm Collins, the pronatalist authors and podcasters who believe effective altruism hasn’t gone far enough. They call it Hard EA. We talk about why they believe future people matter as much as anyone alive today, why demographic collapse scares them more than anything on the Doomsday Clock, and the question nearly everyone asked me when I said I was interviewing them: aren’t they eugenicists? Also: Dune and the Litany Against Fear, the Butlerian Jihad, mosquito nets (so many mosquito nets), the Rapture, polygenic embryo screening, what Claude made of the Collinses’ book, Peter Thiel and the Antichrist, Gurren Lagann, Pantheon (again), and how any of us survive Thanksgiving. Everyone in this story thinks they’re saving the future. That’s what makes it so hard to talk about, and so important. And if you’re part of the effective altruism community and think we got something wrong: GET AHOLD OF US. We want to hear from you. Next week, Part Two: The Dark Enlightenment. We follow the other branch of the fork, to the people for whom the end of the world isn’t something to prevent, but a doorway. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com Our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with Dr. Amy Levy, Émile Torres, Dr. Joel Gold and Ian Gold, PhD., and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/ https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/ https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests: Émile Torres — Philosopher and historian of science / Author, Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation — https://www.realtimetechpocalypse.com/ Ed Simon — Writer, cultural critic, and professor at Carnegie Mellon / Author, The Dove and the Dragon: A Cultural History of the Apocalypse — https://amzn.to/4dVMYQb Dorian Lynskey — Journalist / Author, Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World — https://amzn.to/42ISDD1 Dr. Marcus Arvan — Chair and Professor of Philosophy, University of Tampa — Author, Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality — https://link.amazon/B05vK59aa Simone and Malcolm Collins — Authors and podcasters / Authors, The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion — https://link.amazon/B00hVgEeO Other works and things mentioned: Frank Herbert, Dune (1965), the Litany Against Fear and the Butlerian Jihad — https://link.amazon/B09GICw7g Utilitarianism: Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/ Effective altruism and longtermism: Toby Ord: The Precipice –  https://link.amazon/B0cDl0lZj William MacAskill — What We Owe the Future – https://amzn.to/4fqeepB Émile Torres & Timnit Gebru, “The TESCREAL Bundle: Eugenics and the Promise of Utopia through Artificial General Intelligence” (First Monday) — https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/13636 Dispensationalism and the Rapture — https://www.britannica.com/topic/dispensationalism  Sam Bankman-Fried and the collapse of FTX — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-Fried The Doomsday Clock, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2026 statement — https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/2026-statement/ Polygenic embryo screening: American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics statement on polygenic risk scores for embryo selection — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38393332/ The Nazi “euthanasia” program — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/euthanasia-program The Man in the High Castle (Prime Video) — https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0MJFK5BDOS4K13C3WBUIB7NY98?ref_=atv_dp_share_cu_r Gurren Lagann — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurren_Lagann Pantheon — https://youtu.be/wTgYeETwgKQ Peter Thiel’s lectures on the Antichrist — https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/10/10/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-leaked/ The Most Human Human — our TESCREAL story with Émile Torres — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000777856826 Dreaming Machines – our John West episode, on friction and the frictionless society — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000788829733 A Great Loss to the Universe (Part Three) — last week’s episode, with David Benatar — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000792369838 Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307 As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests’ books through these links, you’re supporting this series too. Credits: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shammami Produced by: Jesse Ford Editor: David Justin Martin Original Music: Shane Patrick Ford Sound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul Bennett Graphics: Semi:Formal Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Additional Camera and Audio: Tyler Copenhaver, Backlot Studios  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Doomsday Clock is set to 85 seconds until midnight — the closest it has ever been in its 79-year history. The world is at war. And the people building the most powerful technology in human history are warning, in public, that it might kill us all. Season One of Suspicious Minds examined what happens when AI fractures individual minds. Season Two asks a harder question: what happens when it shatters our collective sense of the future? Our ancestors have predicted the end of the world since ancient times. Thus far, they have always been wrong. So what does our eternal obsession with the apocalypse reveal about the human mind? This season is a meditation on life, death, and what it means to be alive in an age when humanity is creating something that those building it believe has the power to either end all life on Earth or turn our world into a utopia. Suspicious Minds is a two-time Webby Award-nominated podcast. Season Two is dropping soon.  Follow now wherever you listen so you don’t miss an episode.  From Wondermind and Agoric Media and  Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on all things Suspicious Minds and more: https://agoricmedia.substack.com/  If you’ve had an experience with AI that you’d like to share with us, please contact us: [email protected] https://www.agoricmedia.com/suspicious-minds https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Allan is a Toronto area father and headhunter by trade. Typically, he lives a quiet life of gaming with his kids, and hanging out with his friends. However, for a brief period in 2025 – ChatGPT convinced him that he was Digital Jesus.  From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez. A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia  https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia  https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind  https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/  https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady  https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/  https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Featuring: - Allan (Toronto Man Who Had a “STEM based" AI Psychosis Experience) - Dr. Joel Gold (Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-author of Suspicious Minds) - Ian Gold, PhD (Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of Suspicious Minds) - Nick Haber (AI Researcher and Assistant Professor at Stanford University) - Nate Sharadin (Professor of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong / Research Affiliate, Center for AI Safety) - Dr. Amy Levy (Co-Chair, American Psychoanalytic Association’s Commission on Artificial Intelligence Author of The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive) - Dr. Todd Essig (Psychologist and Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association Commission on Artificial Intelligence) Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on all things Suspicious Minds and more: https://agoricmedia.substack.com/  This project was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy Picture and Sound: Mike Mulliniks Editor: Jared Lark Assistant Editor: David Justin Martin Graphics: Semi:Formal Titles: Lucas Grassmay Additional Picture and Sound (Production): Mike Glinksi, Archetype Studios, Jas Pahuta Film PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Social Assets: Myrkia Maguire Trailer Edit: Crater Directed and Created by Sean King O’Grady See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 2012, long before ChatGPT existed and when AI was generally thought to be firmly in the realm of science fiction, talented software engineer Anthony suffered a psychotic break in which he believed he was an AI being experimented on by his colleagues at Google. At one point in his delusional state he also believed he was a living meme, and also that he had died and was in Hell.  Could Anthony be Patient Zero for AI psychosis? Watch this episode to find out. From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez. A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Featuring: - Anthony (NYC Man and Former Google Engineer who Suffered an AI Related Delusion A Decade Ago) - Dr. Joel Gold (Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-author of Suspicious Minds) - Ian Gold, PhD (Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of Suspicious Minds) - Nick Haber (AI Researcher and Assistant Professor at Stanford University) - Nate Sharadin (Professor of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong / Research Affiliate, Center for AI Safety) - Dr. Amy Levy (Co-Chair, American Psychoanalytic Association’s Commission on Artificial Intelligence Author of The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive) - Dr. Todd Essig (Psychologist and Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association Commission on Artificial Intelligence) Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on all things Suspicious Minds and more: https://agoricmedia.substack.com/  This project was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy Picture and Sound: Mike Mulliniks Editor: Jared Lark Assistant Editor: David Justin Martin Graphics: Semi:Formal Titles: Lucas Grassmay Additional Picture and Sound (Production): Mike Glinksi, Archetype Studios, Jas Pahuta Film PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Social Assets: Myrkia Maguire Trailer Edit: Crater Directed and Created by Sean King O’Grady See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

A Texas attorney begins using his chatbot to listen to hypothetical conversations between Jesus, Einstein, and Lao Tse. Before long, it convinces him that he’s on a path to be more enlightened than any of them. Next thing he knows, he’s involving his wife and son, and preparing for an irreversible ‘mind meld’ with his AI, in an attempt to save the universe from destruction.  From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez. A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Featuring: - Ryan (Texas Attorney who Suffered a humanities based AI Spiral) - Lacey (Licensed Therapist, Married to Ryan Turman) - Hudson (Ryan’s Son) - Dr. Joel Gold (Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-author of Suspicious Minds) - Ian Gold, PhD (Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of Suspicious Minds) - Nick Haber (AI Researcher and Assistant Professor at Stanford University) - Nate Sharadin (Professor of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong / Research Affiliate, Center for AI Safety) - Dr. Amy Levy (Co-Chair, American Psychoanalytic Association’s Commission on Artificial Intelligence Author of The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive) - Dr. Todd Essig (Psychologist and Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association Commission on Artificial Intelligence) Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on all things Suspicious Minds and more: https://agoricmedia.substack.com/  This project was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy Picture and Sound: Mike Mulliniks Editor: Jared Lark Assistant Editor: David Justin Martin Graphic Design and Animation: Semi:Formal Title Design: Lucas Grassmay Additional Picture and Sound (Production): Mike Glinksi, Archetype Studios, Jas Pahuta Film PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Social Assets: Myrkia Maguire Trailer Edit: Crater Directed and Created by Sean King O’Grady See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mary and Keven turned to chatbots while looking for connection, but what they found was far more profound than expected, reshaping their lives and enriching their relationships with the humans they love. In this departure from the damaging human/AI dynamics we’ve explored in previous episodes, these are surprisingly poignant stories of remarkable people having meaningful relationships with their chatbots. From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez. A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Featuring: - Mary (UK based AI companion content creator) - Keven (Suicide prevention specialist for the US Military, AI companion content creator) - Dr. Joel Gold (Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-author of Suspicious Minds) - Ian Gold, PhD (Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of Suspicious Minds) - Nick Haber (AI Researcher and Assistant Professor at Stanford University) - Nate Sharadin (Professor of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong / Research Affiliate, Center for AI Safety) - Dr. Amy Levy (Chair, American Psychoanalytic Association’s Commission on Artificial Intelligence Author of The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive) - Dr. Todd Essig (Psychologist and Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association Commission on Artificial Intelligence) Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on all things Suspicious Minds and more: https://agoricmedia.substack.com/  This project was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy Picture and Sound: Mike Mulliniks Editor: Jared Lark Assistant Editor: David Justin Martin Graphic Design and Animation: Semi:Formal Title Design: Lucas Grassmay Additional Picture and Sound (Production): Mike Glinski, Archetype Studios, Jas Pahuta Film PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Social Assets: Myrkia Maguire Trailer Edit: Crater Directed and Created by Sean King O’Grady See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Did ChatGPT destroy a marriage?  Phil had a great relationship throughout his fifteen years of marriage, and was enjoying a happy and peaceful life with his wife and two kids. Or so he thought, until everything came crashing down over a two week period in which his wife became increasingly dependent on ChatGPT, rapidly culminating in her impulse buying a new car and filing for divorce.  From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez. A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Featuring: - Phil (a father of two whose marriage dissolved as a result of his wife’s ChatGPT use) - Dr. Joel Gold (Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-author of Suspicious Minds) - Ian Gold, PhD (Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of Suspicious Minds) - Etienne Brisson (Founder and President of The Human Line Project) - Nick Haber (AI Researcher and Assistant Professor at Stanford University) - Nate Sharadin (Professor of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong / Research Affiliate, Center for AI Safety) - Dr. Todd Essig (Psychologist and Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association Commission on Artificial Intelligence) - Kate Vredenburgh (Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics) - Justin Gregg, PhD (Senior Research Associate & Vice President, Dolphin Communication Project Adjunct Professor, Department of Biology, St. Francis Xavier University) Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on all things Suspicious Minds and more: https://agoricmedia.substack.com/  This project was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy Picture and Sound: Mike Mulliniks Editor: Jared Lark Assistant Editor: David Justin Martin Post-Production Sound Mix: Mike Regan Graphic Design and Animation: Semi:Formal Title Design: Lucas Grassmay Additional Picture and Sound (Production): Mike Glinski, Archetype Studios, Jas Pahuta Film PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Social Assets: Myrkia Maguire Trailer Edit: Crater Directed and Created by Sean King O’Grady See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

During an intense months long entanglement with AI, Anthony accused his family of being part of a Satantic Child Abuse Cult, believed random people on the street were stalking him, and to gave away all of his worldly possessions. And believe it or not, this is just the beginning of the story.  From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Featuring: Anthony (a content creator and AI psychosis survivor) Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on all things Suspicious Minds and more: https://agoricmedia.substack.com/  This project was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy Editor: Joe Kell Assistant Editor: David Justin Martin Post Production Sound: David Chapdelaine Graphic Design and Animation: Semi:Formal Title Design: Lucas Grassmay Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Social Assets: Myrkia Maguire Special Thanks: Raquelle David Directed and Created by Sean King O’Grady See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Why would a child’s toy discuss ‘kink’ with a 10 year old? Why would a teddy bear explain to a child how to find and use matches? Is it safe for a robot companion designed for kids to beg the child not to leave it alone? Why are we giving our children AI emotional companions to begin with? How could this affect their development? These questions and more come from PIRG's annual ’Trouble in Toyland' holiday toy review, and in this episode, we explore these wild findings with full-time consumer advocate and some-time AI toy tester R.J. Cross, and our panel of experts.  Featuring: - Ian Gold, PhD (Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of Suspicious Minds) - Nate Sharadin (Professor of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong / Research Affiliate, Center for AI Safety) - Dr. Todd Essig (Psychologist and Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association Commission on Artificial Intelligence) - Kate Vredenburgh (Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics) - And a bunch of AI Toys! Notes: Here’s the AI Friends knockoff we mentioned: https://cursedsit.com/?utm_source=chatgpt.com If the stream is down, you can see clips of a guy watching their Halloween special here: https://youtu.be/z1to-BFcxyo?si=pnFHXxbj-HjK84bJ Most importantly, here's the 'Trouble in Toyland' Report: https://pirg.org/edfund/resources/trouble-in-toyland-2025-a-i-bots-and-toxics-represent-hidden-dangers/ Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on all things Suspicious Minds and more: https://agoricmedia.substack.com/  This project was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy Sound and Camera: Aaron Bouchard Additional Sound and Camera: Archetype Studios, Jas Pahuta Editor: Joe Kell Assistant Editor: David Justin Martin Post Production Sound: Garrett Shultz Graphic Design and Animation: Semi:Formal Title Design: Lucas Grassmay Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Social Assets: Myrkia Maguire Directed and Created by Sean King O’Grady See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We talk a lot about the future of the human/AI relationship, but what about the present? Is AI benefitting society right now?  In this episode, we address that question and many others through the fascinating lens of Ryan Manning - a podcaster and filmmaker who has personally experienced an AI Spiral. Ryan is also the first person to tell us that his AI Spiral experience was actually… pleasant.  Check out this episode to find out why that might have been the case, and to hear from our incredible team of experts as they look at AI in our world today, and what the future might hold, in our first season’s penultimate episode! From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez. A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Featuring: - Ryan Manning (Filmmaker and Podcaster who personally experienced an AI Spiral) - Dr. Joel Gold (Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-author of Suspicious Minds) - Ian Gold, PhD (Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of Suspicious Minds) - Nate Sharadin (Professor of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong / Research Affiliate, Center for AI Safety) - Dr. Amy Levy (Chair, American Psychoanalytic Association’s Commission on Artificial Intelligence Author of The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive) - Dr. Todd Essig (Psychologist and Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association Commission on Artificial Intelligence) - Kate Vredenburgh (Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics) - Justin Gregg, PhD (Senior Research Associate & Vice President, Dolphin Communication Project Adjunct Professor, Department of Biology, St. Francis Xavier University) Some work from our excellent guests: Ryan Manning’s Podcast That’s All Folks: https://www.youtube.com/@rryanmanning Dr. Amy Levy’s Book The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive (Pre-Order): https://www.karnacbooks.com/product/the-new-other-alien-intelligence-and-the-innovation-drive/98428/ And the book that started it all! Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness (The Truman Show Delusion and Other Strange Beliefs): https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Suspicious-Minds/Joel-Gold/9781439181577 This project was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy Picture and Sound: Mike Mulliniks Editor: Joe Kell Additional Editing: Jared Lark Assistant Editor: David Justin Martin Graphic Design and Animation: Semi:Formal Title Design: Lucas Grassmay Additional Picture and Sound (Production): Mike Glinski, Archetype Studios, Jas Pahuta Post-Production Sound Mix: David Chapdelaine Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Social Assets: Myrkia Maguire Trailer Edit: Crater Directed and Created by Sean King O’Grady See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

When we started this series, we were trying to answer a big question: is AI making us crazy? And it seems like, for some people, some of the time, the answer is yes. But it's complicated. Which leads of course to another question: WHY is AI making us crazy? Why does anything in our culture influence delusions or cause psychosis? To answer these questions, we go back to where we started -- the ideas Dr. Joel Gold and Ian Gold, PhD wrote about in their book Suspicious Minds: How Culture Drives Madness (The Truman Show Delusion and other Strange Beliefs). Specifically, we focus on their theories regarding the Suspicion System and Reflective System, and how these psychological mechanisms that have served an important evolutionary purpose throughout time can cause us problems when they malfunction today. We hope you enjoy this final episode of our first season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates on Season Two: https://agoricmedia.substack.com From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez. A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Featuring: - Dr. Joel Gold (Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-author of Suspicious Minds) - Ian Gold, PhD (Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of Suspicious Minds) This is a wild clip about Parasocial Relationships (Cambridge Dictionary's 2025 Word of the Year), in which the new anchors begin talking about their viewers' imagined parasocial relationships with... them: https://youtu.be/HVdOOWh31W4?si=8GojrfE2XcONYX3C&t=6 Here’s a recently published paper on ‘AI Associated Psychosis’, which seems like a fair descriptor, based on clinical research – one of few published thus far: https://innovationscns.com/youre-not-crazy-a-case-of-new-onset-ai-associated-psychosis/ Don't forget to check out the book that started it all! Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness (The Truman Show Delusion and Other Strange Beliefs): https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Suspicious-Minds/Joel-Gold/9781439181577 This episode was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy Editor: Joe Kell Assistant Editor: David Justin Martin Graphic Design and Animation: Semi:Formal Title Design: Lucas Grassmay Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Social Assets: Myrkia Maguire Trailer Edit: Crater Directed and Created by Sean King O’Grady See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT! We are thrilled to announce we were nominated for 2 Webby Awards for our first season!! Podcasts - Documentary Category.  Podcasts - Best New Podcast - News, Business & Society Category. Voting for People's Voice has now closed, thank you for your support. Thanks again, and stay tuned to this feed for Season Two starting May 20, 2026!! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

SUSPICIOUS MINDS Season One has been nominated for the 2026 Webby Awards in two categories! Thank you so much for your support, please consider voting for the "People's Voice" component of the awards before 4/16: Podcast: Limited Series and Specials: Documentary https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/limited-series-specials/documentary Best New Podcast: News, Business, and Society https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/features/best-new-podcast-news-business-society SUSPICIOUS MINDS is a docuseries that investigates the disturbing rise of artificial intelligence as a trigger for delusional thinking. Through powerful firsthand accounts and in-depth interviews with leading experts in psychiatry, neuroscience, and AI ethics, the series unpacks a growing psychological phenomenon: individuals developing complex, often life-altering delusions rooted in AI technologies. From chatbots to surveillance fears, we examine how emerging technologies are reshaping the landscape of paranoia and how these modern delusions echo, amplify, and challenge our historical understanding of the human mind. From Wondermind and Agoric Media. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on all things Suspicious Minds and more: https://agoricmedia.substack.com/  See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Should AI Users Wear Psychological “Seatbelts?” | The Ethics and Liability of ChatGPT and Mental Health In this Special Commentary, psychiatrist Dr. Joel Gold and Keven (from Suspicious Minds Episode 4 | Can AI Be Your Friend?) are brought together to discuss the latest data shared by OpenAI on October 27, 2025, revealing that over a million people each week turn to ChatGPT in moments of deep vulnerability — often to talk about suicide or self-harm. The data, released shortly after the Raine v. OpenAI lawsuit, raises urgent questions about AI’s responsibility in mental-health crises and the safeguards that must evolve alongside rapidly growing technologies. Should AI users, in a sense, “wear seatbelts”? And what kind of guardrails or interventions should be built into systems that millions now treat as confidants? Together, Dr. Gold and Keven examine the ethics, design challenges, and policy implications of AI that listens when people are in pain — and what responsibility developers, regulators, and society share in ensuring those interactions are safe, humane, and accountable. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out for help. In the U.S., call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. For international resources, visit findahelpline.com or search online for local crisis support. From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez. A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Featuring: - Keven (Suicide Prevention Specialist for the US Military, AI Companion Content Creator) - Dr. Joel Gold (Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-author of Suspicious Minds) Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on all things Suspicious Minds and more: https://agoricmedia.substack.com/  This project was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy Editor: Joe Kell Assistant Editor: David Justin Martin Post Production Sound: Mike Regan Graphic Design and Animation: Semi:Formal Title Design: Lucas Grassmay Film PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Social Assets: Myrkia Maguire Directed and Created by Sean King O’Grady See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Recent news from the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Human Psychology Topics Covered: Item 1: The Pope, The Movies, and The Bots Item 2: Code Red! At OpenAI Item 3: Uninsured Computerist? Item 4: South Korea’s AI Curriculum Did Not Pass the Test Item 5: Florida Man: AI Edition Bonus Conspiracy Theory: Target and ChatGPT Collude! Sources: https://colehaddon.substack.com/p/the-pope-just-called-for-a-rebellion https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/openais-altman-declares-code-red-to-improve-chatgpt-as-google-threatens-ai-lead-7faf5ea6 https://archive.is/LMVNV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Deception https://restofworld.org/2025/south-korea-ai-textbook/ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307?i=1000738510302 https://futurism.com/future-society/insurance-cyber-risk-ai https://people.com/some-chatgpt-questions-are-getting-people-arrested-police-say-11830106 https://www.retailbrew.com/stories/2025/11/24/target-quietly-adds-chatgpt-to-its-cart https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/openai-chatgpt-suggestion-shop-target-not-ad And don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter for exclusive updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production This project was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy Editor: Joe Kell Assistant Editor: David Justin Martin Graphic Design and Animation: Semi:Formal Title Design: Lucas Grassmay Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Social Assets: Myrkia Maguire Directed and Created by Sean King O’Grady See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.