An Enormous Mistake (Part Three)

In 2002, Al Pacino played a director who hid the fact that the star of his hit film was AI, and ended up arrested for her murder. The movie was Simone, written by Andrew Niccol, who also wrote The Truman Show, which makes it part of this podcast's origin story whether he knows it or not. Three weeks after this episode comes out, a feature film made almost entirely with AI opens in American theaters.Part Three of our series on art, artificial intelligence, and the apocalypse is about art that isn't made by people, and whether that's a contradiction. This episode features Stanford's Adrian Daub (What Tech Calls Thinking) discussing what AI promises to remove from the creative process and why the result keeps looking like a banner from 1950s Siberia; the composer Mark Henry Phillips (host of Radiotopia's Light Box) on the afternoon a machine wrote a Bernard Herrmann cue better than anything he believes he will ever write, and what he did next; the philosopher Timothy Morton on the One Ring, Mount Doom, and whether the past is going to eat the future; the psychoanalyst Dr. Amy Levy on living through a moment when nobody agrees on anything; and Dr. Joel Gold on the man whose film was boycotted for using a new paintbrush.Also included: Walter Benjamin, a century on, and the difference between mechanical reproduction and mechanical generation; Arthur Danto, Andy Warhol's Brillo boxes and Marcel Duchamp's urinal; slop, where the word came from and what it covers; the musicians who are all using AI and all doing it in secret; a Jensen Huang meme made on his own chips, as the Nvidia-era version of "oh, you like that band?"; Ada Lovelace's objection and Alan Turing's answer; a detector that decided my own human writing was 85% machine generated; and the time I let an AI read a book for me and regretted it.Next week: the night before Grand Theft Auto VI comes out, a few thousand people drive across Los Santos one last time to say goodbye to a city that only ever existed in bits. I'll be one of them. Then the question this show has been building to for two seasons: how would we know if our world wasn't real, and would it matter? Featuring a special guest with very unique, very personal experience with virtual worlds. 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.comMany of our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. In fact, we added a BUNCH this week, check it out: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMediaA Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionAgoric Mediahttps://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmediahttps://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmediahttps://agoricmedia.substack.com/https://www.agoricmedia.comWondermindhttps://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/https://www.wondermind.com/Host and Creator: Sean King O'Gradyhttps://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/https://seankingogrady.substack.com/Guests (in order of appearance):Adrian Daub — Professor of Comparative Literature and German Studies, Stanford University / Author, What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley — https://link.amazon/B0ipTP1CgMark Henry Phillips — Composer and producer / Host, Light Box (Radiotopia), a podcast about AI and the future of music — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/light-box/id6798327577Timothy Morton — Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English, Rice University / Author, Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology — https://amzn.to/4dzSRRXDr. 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/3PH1FO5Dr. Joel Gold — Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, NYU / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8UOther works and things mentioned:SIMONE, AND THE FILM OPENING DECEMBER 4Simone (2002), written and directed by Andrew Niccol — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_(2002_film)The Truman Show (1998), written by Andrew Niccol — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_ShowThe Truman Show delusion (see Season 1) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show_delusionGods Don't Give Gifts (2026), directed by Zack London (Gossip Goblin), produced with Edward Saatchi's Fable; in US theaters December 4 — https://www.forbes.com/sites/maureenkerr/2026/11/05/grimes-joins-ai-film-gods-dont-give-gifts-ahead-of-december-4-release/Gossip Goblin on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/@Gossip.GoblinElon Musk's AI Odyssey (Grok Imagine) — https://x.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911WHAT TECH CALLS CREATIVITYOur Episode 13, Dancing Animals (Part One), with John West on friction and the frictionless society — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000787388088John West, The Internet Will Die, and So Will You — https://amzn.to/4zIp97CMark Solms and the machine that might care: our Episode 15, The Problem of Other Minds (Part One) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000790005691Mark Solms, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness — https://link.amazon/B0fagMPXPTHE LOOK OF THE MACHINESWalter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936) — https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htmRoland Meyer on "platform realism" — [LINK: Meyer's essay; he is at Ruhr University Bochum, not Swiss — Adrian says "Swiss scholar" on tape; check before adding a nationality in the notes]Wassily Kandinsky — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_KandinskyJackson Pollock — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_PollockSocialist realism — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_realism"Slop," the word — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_slopBarbara Pazur, "Stop Clicking on Junk: How to Identify and Ignore AI-Generated Slop Today," CNET — the piece that quotes me on Bob Ross memes and shrimp Jesus — https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/what-is-ai-slop-everything-to-know-about-the-terrible-content-taking-over-the-internet/Shrimp Jesus — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrimp_JesusWill Smith eating spaghetti (2023), the first great slop video — https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/will-smith-eating-spaghettiMigos, "Hotel Lobby" (2022), and the face-swap videos made from it — https://youtu.be/x9yop0nYR9g?si=cH5BoycvY_XEVzeDArthur Danto, "The Artworld," The Journal of Philosophy (1964) — https://www.jstor.org/stable/2022937Andy Warhol, Brillo Boxes (1964) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brillo_BoxesMarcel Duchamp, Fountain (1917) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)T.S. Eliot, "Philip Massinger," in The Sacred Wood (1920): "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal." — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57795"Good artists copy, great artists steal," the line Steve Jobs attributed to Picasso (Triumph of the Nerds, PBS, 1996) — https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/Higgsfield — https://higgsfield.aiMUSIC AND MACHINESBernard Herrmann — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_HerrmannJon Brion — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_BrionSuno — https://suno.com(500) Days of Summer (2009), the elevator scene ("I love The Smiths") — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/500_Days_of_SummerThe Smiths, "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out" — https://youtu.be/siO6dkqidc4?si=Bhpw0umNWxQ02hZCJensen Huang, and the week he was having — https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/11/9/why-is-nvidias-jensen-huang-at-the-centre-of-a-us-china-spy-scandalLiz Pelly, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist — https://link.amazon/B0iZu80JGTHE PAST AND THE FUTUREJ.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings — https://link.amazon/B0eSmQBWMTimothy Morton, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World — https://link.amazon/B04jeBgOBTHE WORDSRoland Barthes, "The Death of the Author" (1967) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_AuthorSarah J. Maas, Throne of Glass — https://link.amazon/B0bkKZqjTAda Lovelace, Notes on L. F. Menabrea's "Sketch of the Analytical Engine" (1843), Note G: "The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything." — https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.htmlAlan Turing, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," Mind (1950), section 6, "Lady Lovelace's Objection" — https://academic.oup.com/mind/article/LIX/236/433/986238Dr. Amy Levy, The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive — https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5Dr. Joel Gold and Dr. Ian Gold, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8UFROM THE MAILBAGHarlan Ellison, "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" (1967), the short story, and the collection of the same name — https://link.amazon/B0evdd0ljAs 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. ShammamiProduced by: Jesse FordEditor: David Justin MartinOriginal Music: Shane Patrick FordSound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul BennettGraphics: Semi:FormalFilm/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PRPodcast PR: Tink Media (Shreya Sharma and Holly Brown)Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma WrightAdditional Camera and Audio: Mike MulliniksSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In February 1945, an American prisoner of war was locked in an underground slaughterhouse in Dresden while the city above him burned. Twenty-four years later, the prisoner, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, turned that night into his breakthrough novel Slaughterhouse-Five. So it goes.Part Two of our series on art and the apocalypse is about the people who didn't have to imagine the end of the world, and what they made afterward. The episode features Dorian Lynskey (Everything Must Go) on Vonnegut, on John Wyndham walking out of the war into an empty London, on James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow as the Mary Shelley and Lord Byron of Hollywood, and on the entire history of apocalyptic thinking, from Zoroaster to the doomers, delivered with a straight face in answer to the longest question I have ever asked. Dream researcher Kelly Bulkeley on the hero's journey and its regressive twin, the apocalyptic fantasy, with a detour through Black Sabbath I was morally obligated to leave in. Psychoanalyst Amy Levy on why a species that wants so badly to live keeps imagining its own ending, and what we're really afraid of when we fear the machines. Ed Simon (The Dove and the Dragon) on the original meaning of the word apocalypse, which isn't an ending at all, and on how the printing press turned the Book of Revelation into some of the first viral images.Also included: my grandfather, the USS Cabot, and a book called First Mile, Last Mile; the Zoroastrian end of the world, in which the wicked wade through molten metal and the righteous through warm milk; Dürer, Bosch, John Martin, and the volcano in Turner's sunsets; the Halifax Explosion and the first study of how people actually behave in a disaster (they help); Station Eleven and the three words painted on the wagon; and the movie I made about a family in a bathroom at the end of the world, and the conversation with my dad that made me want to make it.Next episode, Part Three: what happens when the art isn't made by humans at all. A composer on what the machines are doing to his work, the film After Yang, S1m0ne, and the one thing an AI refused to reproduce for me.A correction: in An Enormous Mistake (Part Three), I described Dan Faggella as having engaged with Nick Land early and later distanced himself, and lumped him in with accelerationists. He did neither, and he doesn't describe himself as one. This was an error on our part. The line will be removed from that episode, and I address it at the end of this one.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.comMany of our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMediaA Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionAgoric Mediahttps://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmediahttps://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmediahttps://agoricmedia.substack.com/https://www.agoricmedia.comWondermindhttps://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/https://www.wondermind.com/Host and Creator: Sean King O'Gradyhttps://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/https://seankingogrady.substack.com/Guests (in order of appearance):Dorian Lynskey — Journalist / Author, Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World — https://amzn.to/42ISDD1Kelly Bulkeley, PhD - Dream Researcher and Author of The Spirituality of Dreaming - https://amzn.to/4dU0ns6Ed Simon — - Ed Simon - Carnegie Mellon University - The Dove and the Dragon: A Cultural History of the Apocalypse - https://amzn.to/4dVMYQbDr. 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/3PH1FO5Other works and things mentioned:THE WRITERS WHO WERE THEREKurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) — https://link.amazon/B08gTirgvVonnegut's May 1945 letter home from a POW camp ("Bayonets aren't much good against tanks"), reprinted in Armageddon in Retrospect (2008) — https://link.amazon/B06x6QRCUThe bombing of Dresden, February 13–15, 1945 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden (the death toll Vonnegut repeated, 250,000, is roughly ten times the figure historians now accept)J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun (1984) — https://link.amazon/B0igeKej5John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids (1951) — https://link.amazon/B051yFBl2; the 1962 film — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Triffids_(1962_film)28 Days Later (2002), dir. Danny Boyle — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_LaterTHE HERO'S JOURNEY AND ITS TWINJoseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) — https://amzn.to/4zTkaRABlack Sabbath, "War Pigs" (Paranoid, 1970) — https://open.spotify.com/track/0HVQuuXGAcQ2P5mBN521aeHOLLYWOOD'S SHELLEY AND BYRONJames Cameron, The Terminator (1984) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_TerminatorKathryn Bigelow, Strange Days (1995), written by James Cameron — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Days_(film)Kathryn Bigelow, A House of Dynamite (2025) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_House_of_DynamiteTHE USS CABOTUSS Cabot (CVL-28), Independence-class light aircraft carrier — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cabot_(CVL-28)First Mile, Last Mile - I can’t find a reliable source to the book online, so apologies for being morbid, but here’s my grandfather’s obituary – it’s a source?  – https://obits.mlive.com/us/obituaries/saginaw/name/thomas-o-grady-obituary?id=14323962THE HISTORY OF THE ENDZoroastrianism and Frashokereti, the renovation of the world — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FrashokeretiThe Book of Revelation — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10 (King James Bible)Our Episode 2, with Judith Wolfe and Dorian Lynskey on where apocalyptic thinking comes from — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000771138097Albrecht Dürer, The Apocalypse (1498), the fifteen woodcuts — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_(Dürer)Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1490–1510) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_DelightsJohn Martin, the Last Judgment triptych (1851–1853) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Martin_(painter)J.M.W. Turner's sunsets and the Tambora ash (Zerefos et al., 2007) — https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/7/4027/2007/The Year Without a Summer (Part One), last week's episode — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000798680356DOOMERS, DISASTERS, AND WHAT WE'D KEEPEmily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (2014) — https://link.amazon/B04ujzxYn; the HBO Max series (2021) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_Eleven_(miniseries)Cormac McCarthy, The Road (2006) — https://link.amazon/B07GOYcdvLars von Trier, Melancholia (2011) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melancholia_(2011_film)Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell (2009) — https://link.amazon/B0arqMw4kThe Halifax Explosion, December 6, 1917 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_ExplosionSamuel Henry Prince, Catastrophe and Social Change (1920), the first systematic study of disaster behavior — https://archive.org/details/catastrophesocia00prinRutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History (2020) — https://link.amazon/B09Ad9sPSPat Frank, Alas, Babylon (1959) — https://link.amazon/B0dafOkc9Don McKellar,, Last Night (1998) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Night_(1998_film)WE NEED TO DO SOMETHINGWe Need to Do Something (2021), directed by Sean King O'Grady — https://youtu.be/TcmfY_ApDxU?si=q0uvbsboB7BV8rjxT.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men" (1925) — https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47254/the-hollow-men (the line is "not with a bang but a whimper")ALSO MENTIONEDThe Epic of Gilgamesh — https://amzn.to/4zFpHuPAvengers: Doomsday (2026), for scale — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers:_DoomsdayAs 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. ShammamiProduced by: Jesse FordEditor: David Justin MartinOriginal Music: Shane Patrick FordSound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul BennettGraphics: Semi:FormalFilm/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PRPodcast PR: Tink Media (Shreya Sharma and Holly Brown)Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma WrightAdditional Camera and Audio: Mike Mulliniks, StudioME Productions, Speakezzy, Brandon CruzSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In April 1815 a volcano in Indonesia erupted so violently that the next summer never arrived. The sky over Europe went dark, the crops failed, prophets wandered the continent announcing the end, and five people took refuge from the rain in a rented house on Lake Geneva and decided to write ghost stories. One of them was eighteen years old. Her story was Frankenstein.Our first-ever Halloween episode is about what came out of that house, which turns out to be most of the way we still think about the end of the world. Dorian Lynskey (Everything Must Go) on Tambora, the millenarian panic of 1816, and why Byron's poem "Darkness" is, as far as anyone can tell, the first vision of the apocalypse with no God in it. Alexis Chema of the University of Chicago on the Frankenstein nobody remembers from the movies: a creature who teaches himself to read, quotes Milton to his maker, and is abandoned for it. And her pushback, which I didn't see coming, on the comparison everyone makes between that creature and AI. Psychoanalyst Amy Levy on the line that keeps the book alive, "You are my creator, but I am your master," and on who, in 2026, reminds her of Victor Frankenstein. (It's a compliment, believe it or not)Then the part I still can't quite believe. Byron fled England that year because he'd blown up his marriage, leaving behind a baby daughter he would never see again. Her name was Ada Lovelace. She grew up to work on the first computer, and to write the objection Alan Turing had to answer a century later before he could invent AI. I've started calling it Lord Byron's Lady Lovelace Paradox, and I explain why.Also included: Mary Shelley's The Last Man, the post-apocalyptic novel she wrote after everyone she loved was dead; Isaac Asimov's laws; the Luddites, the loom, and the punch cards that became the computer; the vampire that came out of the same ghost-story contest; and why we make apocalyptic art at all. I can't promise it won't be spooky.Next week, Part Two: art and the apocalypse. The hero's journey and its regressive twin, a composer on what the machines are doing to his work, the film After Yang, and what happens when the art isn't made by humans 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.comMany of our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMediaA Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionAgoric Mediahttps://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmediahttps://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmediahttps://agoricmedia.substack.com/https://www.agoricmedia.comWondermindhttps://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/https://www.wondermind.com/Host and Creator: Sean King O'Gradyhttps://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/https://seankingogrady.substack.com/Guests (in order of appearance):Dorian Lynskey — Journalist / Author, Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World — https://amzn.to/42ISDD1Alexis Chema — Assistant Professor of English, University of Chicago; scholar of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary history, Author, Adorned: The Romantic Poets of Ornament – https://link.amazon/B0fyKhQV7Dr. 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/3PH1FO5Other works and things mentioned:THE SUMMER OF 1816The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora and the "Year Without a Summer" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_SummerLord Byron, "Darkness" (July 1816) — https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43825/darknessJohn Polidori, The Vampyre (1819), written at the Villa Diodati for the same ghost-story contest —  https://link.amazon/B03RUiBvDMary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) — https://link.amazon/B00QMVEqgWilliam Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), source of "the most odious of all monopolies" — https://link.amazon/B0ddLqcIZTHE PROPHETSNorman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (1957) — https://link.amazon/B0hKnwQzoThe Münster rebellion (1534–35), John of Leiden, and the cages still hanging from St. Lambert's Church — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnster_rebellionJuliane von Krüdener, the prophet of 1816 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliane_von_Kr%C3%BCdenerFRANKENSTEINMary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818; the 1831 edition carries her introduction on the dream at Diodati) — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/84Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds, eds. David H. Guston, Ed Finn and Jason Scott Robert (MIT Press, 2017), the edition Alexis reads from — https://link.amazon/B0j9T4e0ZJohn Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), the "white paper" of the mind — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10615John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), the book the creature reads: "I ought to be thy Adam…" — https://link.amazon/B0c7RlUDCFrankenstein (1931), dir. James Whale, with Boris Karloff — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein_(1931_film)The Hammer Frankenstein films, from The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) to Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_FrankensteinRaymond Chandler's science-fiction parody ("Did you ever read what they call science fiction? It's a scream…"), from a 1953 letter — https://a.co/d/0hveOXKnROBOTS, LAWS, AND THE MACHINES THAT IMPROVE THEMSELVESKarel Čapek, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), 1920 — the play that gave us the word "robot" — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59112Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, first stated in "Runaround" (1942); the Zeroth Law added in Robots and Empire (1985) — Both included in this Asimov robot collection – https://link.amazon/B0by7Ld4wRecursive self-improvement — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_self-improvementTHE PSYCHOANALYST AND THE NEUROSCIENTISTDr. Amy Levy, The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive —  https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5Professor 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 (Hear our three-part conversation with Mark earlier this season.)Ex Machina (2014), Blade Runner (1982), Pinocchio, and the Golem — the stories Amy names of "a singular person who creates intelligent life"Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) — the death drive and repetition compulsion (and the badge) — https://link.amazon/B0fniZcOZLORD BYRON'S LADY LOVELACE PARADOXByron's maiden speech in the House of Lords against the Frame Work Bill, February 27, 1812 — https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1812/feb/27/frame-work-bill The Luddites (1811–16) and the stocking frames of Nottinghamshire — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LudditeThe Jacquard loom (1804) and its punched cards — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machineCharles Babbage's Analytical Engine — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engineAda Lovelace, Notes on L. F. Menabrea's "Sketch of the Analytical Engine" (1843), including Note G ("The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything…") and the line about weaving "algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves" — https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.htmlAlan Turing, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," Mind (1950), section 6, "Lady Lovelace's Objection" — https://academic.oup.com/mind/article/LIX/236/433/986238THE LAST MANMary Shelley, The Last Man (1826) — https://link.amazon/B0ihzvSP2Mary Shelley's journal, May 14, 1824, on hearing of Byron's death: "The last man! Yes I may well describe that solitary being's feelings…" The Cumaean Sibyl and the Sibylline leaves — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumaean_SibylOur episode with Dr. Jeremy Heffner on the Oracle of Delphi and the chatbots — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000786005286David Benatar's "phased extinction," from our earlier episode — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000778871399The Omega Man (1971) and I Am Legend (2007), both adapted from Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (1954) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Legend_(novel)ALSO MENTIONEDDavid Koresh and the Branch Davidians (Waco, 1993) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siegeSpirit Halloween, which if there's an AI jobs-pocalypse will be every single storefront on EarthAs 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 FordEditor: David Justin MartinOriginal Music: Shane Patrick FordSound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul BennettGraphics: Semi:FormalFilm/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PRPodcast PR: Tink Media (Shreya Sharma and Holly Brown)Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma WrightAdditional Camera and Audio: Mike MulliniksSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Near a reservoir north of San Diego, two empires of Argentine ants have been at war every day for more than twenty years. Thirty million of them die a year. They have no idea we exist. So I keep wondering: is there something that looks at us the way we look at them, and could we be building it?Part Three of our effective altruism, longtermism, and Dark Enlightenment trilogy follows the longtermist train of thought somewhere strange. In 2012 a British philosopher named Nick Land published the essays that gave the Dark Enlightenment its name. His best idea is hyperstition, a fiction that makes itself true by being believed. His wildest is that capitalism is an intelligence assembling itself through us, with AI being the end result. Land’s essays leaned on a blog by a software engineer named Curtis Yarvin, writing as Mencius Moldbug, who popularized the ‘red pill’ as a political awakening and proposed replacing the nation-state with sovereign territories run like companies.Yarvin talked to me for nearly three hours from a parked car in the sun with his laptop overheating. I brought our frequent contributors’ critiques to him one by one: Emily Ray’s “who loses,” in a collapse, Robert Kirsch’s GovCorp, Ed Simon’s pondering whether Yarvin ends up being seen as “Rasputin or a footnote.” He explains why a country should be run like Apple, what a king does when a hurricane hits, why he thinks AI doom is the oldest story humans tell, and what an Elizabethan economist knew that we’ve long since forgotten. His critics get their say, and so does he.Also included: rationalism, LessWrong, and Roko’s Basilisk, the thought experiment that was taken down for being too dangerous to read. Malo Bourgon of MIRI tells the story, and I tell you about the hell I grew up afraid of. Then Timothy Morton on why meaning comes from the future, and at the very end, Donald Rumsfeld, Joel Gold, and the can’t-be-knowns.COMING SOON, A BONUS EPISODE: “Moral Luck.” Philosopher Richard Yetter Chappell on why effective altruism isn’t utilitarianism, the difference between consequentialism and “naive instrumentalism” (rob a bank, give the money to charity), the thought experiments philosophers keep on hand, and what happens when one of them walks out of the classroom and into a courtroom. Plus the contrarian take on Sam Bankman-Fried I promised you, whether FTX customers got their money back, and the name philosophers have for the discomfort that follows. It didn’t fit in this episode, but it was too good to stay on the cutting room floor.Next episode: our first ever Halloween episode. Mary Shelley, The Last Man, the original post-apocalyptic novel, and of course Frankenstein. I can’t promise it won’t be spooky. 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.comMany of our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMediaA Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionAgoric Mediahttps://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmediahttps://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmediahttps://agoricmedia.substack.com/https://www.agoricmedia.comWondermindhttps://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/https://www.wondermind.com/Host and Creator: Sean King O'Gradyhttps://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/https://seankingogrady.substack.com/Guests:Curtis Yarvin — Writer, Gray Mirror; founder, Urbit — https://graymirror.substack.comRichard Yetter Chappell — Professor of Philosophy, University of Miami / Author of the blog Good Thoughts — https://www.goodthoughts.blog/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/3SzUnwBEmily Ray - associate professor of political science at Sonoma State University / Co-author, Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States — https://amzn.to/3SzUnwBEd Simon - Carnegie Mellon University - The Dove and the Dragon: A Cultural History of the Apocalypse - https://amzn.to/4dVMYQbMalo Bourgon — CEO, Machine Intelligence Research Institute — https://intelligence.orgDan Faggella — CEO and Head of Research, Emerj Artificial Intelligence Research — https://emerj.comTimothy Morton — Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English, Rice University / Author, Hyperobjects — https://amzn.to/4xPqGa4Dr. 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/4upyA8UOther works and things mentioned:ON THE ANTSSunamura et al., “Intercontinental union of Argentine ants: behavioral relationships among introduced populations in Europe, North America, and Asia,” Insectes Sociaux (2009) — https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00040-009-0001-9van Wilgenburg, Torres and Tsutsui, “The global expansion of a single ant supercolony,” Evolutionary Applications (2010) — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3352483/“The Sun Never Sets on the Ant Empire,” Saltman Quarterly, UC San Diego (2019) — https://sqonline.ucsd.edu/2019/05/the-sun-never-sets-on-the-ant-empire/“The strange and turbulent global world of ant geopolitics,” Aeon — https://aeon.co/essays/the-strange-and-turbulent-global-world-of-ant-geopoliticsON THE DARK ENLIGHTENMENTNick Land, “The Dark Enlightenment” (2012) — https://fluidself.org/books/philosophy/the-dark-enlightenment Nick Land, “Meltdown” (1994), collected in Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987–2007 (Urbanomic, 2011) — https://link.amazon/B0fNYO378Curtis Yarvin (as Mencius Moldbug), “The Case Against Democracy: Ten Red Pills,” Unqualified Reservations (April 2007) — https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/04/case-against-democracy-ten-red-pills/Curtis Yarvin (as Mencius Moldbug), “Patchwork: A Political System for the 21st Century,” Unqualified Reservations (2008) — https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/pdfs/patchwork.pdf Unqualified Reservations, the full archive — https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/Curtis Yarvin, “How the USG should respond to AI,” Gray Mirror (September 16, 2026) — https://graymirror.substack.com/p/how-the-usg-should-respond-to-aiON HYPERSTITION (sort of):William Gibson, “Neuromancer” - https://link.amazon/B0e9N8llvPRESS ON YARVIN James Pogue, “Inside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets,” Vanity Fair (April 20, 2022) — https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets Ava Kofman, “Curtis Yarvin’s Plot Against America,” The New Yorker (published online June 2, 2025; issue dated June 9, 2025) — https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/09/curtis-yarvin-profile David Marchese, “Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy Is Done. Powerful Conservatives Are Listening,” The New York Times Magazine / The Interview (January 18, 2025) — https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/magazine/curtis-yarvin-interview.html ALSO IN THE YARVIN SECTIONAlexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733–34): “For forms of government let fools contest; / Whate’er is best administer’d is best.” (Yarvin paraphrases it on air.)Karel Čapek, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), 1920 — the play that gave us the word “robot.” Aron Simanovich, Rasputin and the Jews: A Reminiscence — the memoir of Rasputin’s jeweler-turned-secretary – The Elizabethan “fish days”: the 1563 statute adding Wednesday as a fish day to support the fleet — https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00253359.2024.2331917#d1e151Elon Musk on humanity as “the biological bootloader for digital superintelligence” — https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1783959488481161491 ON THE BASILISKRoko’s Basilisk — the original 2010 LessWrong post and its removal. Context: David Auerbach, “Roko’s Basilisk: The most terrifying thought experiment of all time,” Slate (July 2014) — https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/rokos-basilisk-the-most-terrifying-thought-experiment-of-all-time.htmlNick Bostrom, “Information Hazards: A Typology of Potential Harms from Knowledge,” Review of Contemporary Philosophy (2011) — https://nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdfDavid Langford, “BLIT,” Interzone (1988); “comp.basilisk FAQ,” Nature (1999); “Different Kinds of Darkness” (2000) — https://ansible.uk/writing/c-b-faq.html and https://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htmPascal’s wager — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares: https://amzn.to/49gpPW1ALSO MENTIONEDDonald Rumsfeld, Department of Defense news briefing, February 12, 2002 (“known knowns”) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_unknown_unknowns Errol Morris, The Unknown Known (2013), the Rumsfeld documentary — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unknown_KnownAs 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. ShammamiProduced by: Jesse FordEditor: David Justin MartinOriginal Music: Shane Patrick FordSound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul BennettGraphics: Semi:FormalFilm/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PRPodcast PR: Tink Media (Shreya Sharma and Holly Brown)Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma WrightAdditional Camera and Audio: Tyler Copenhaver, Backlot Studios, Elliot UriahSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The Secretary of War called it “defective altruism.” The New York Post called it a cult. The Economist put it on the cover and called it the most important social movement of the century. Hardly anyone in America has heard of it. So for this episode I did what I should have done before Part One: I sat down with an effective altruist.Richard Yetter Chappell is a philosophy professor at the University of Miami and the author of the blog Good Thoughts. He’d heard what our critics said last week, and he came ready to answer them: the charge that these are pro-extinctionist movements, “suffering now, paradise later,” and whether caring about future people means caring less about the people in front of you. Then the math also takes us somewhere strange, with a writer who argues that the welfare of insects outweighs the welfare of humans.We ask Richard the tough question: is effective altruism a cult? Then we follow the money. Émile Torres names the billionaires. Malo Bourgon of MIRI tells me who actually funds him. Ed Simon says the whole thing is a way of never changing anything. And I put the Bill Gates problem to Richard: taxed and spent democratically, or Gates decides?Also: that time our ancestors nearly went extinct, Pulvermacher’s electric chain and the Singularity Summit I should have attended. 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.comMany of our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMediaA Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionAgoric Mediahttps://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmediahttps://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmediahttps://agoricmedia.substack.com/https://www.agoricmedia.comWondermindhttps://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/https://www.wondermind.com/Host and Creator: Sean King O'Gradyhttps://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/https://seankingogrady.substack.com/Guests:Richard Yetter Chappell — Professor of Philosophy, University of Miami / Author of the blog Good Thoughts — https://www.goodthoughts.blog/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/4dVMYQbMalo Bourgon — CEO, Machine Intelligence Research Institute — https://intelligence.orgOther works and things mentioned:Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon and Anthropic (Feb 2026) — NPR/WBUR report: https://www.wbur.org/npr/nx-s1-5725327/pentagon-anthropic-hegseth-safetyThe New York Post on effective altruism and newsrooms (Sept 2026), drawing on Semafor's Dec 2025 report on the Tarbell Center — https://nypost.com/2026/05/14/media/cult-like-effective-altruism-spreading-its-message-among-the-influential-with-80-journalists-embedded-at-top-news-orgs/The Nation, David Futrelle on effective altruism (Sept 23, 2026) — https://www.thenation.com/article/society/effective-altruism-trump-ai/The Economist cover story on effective altruism (early Oct 2026; syndicated as "Effective altruism conquered the world, and may yet end it") — https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/10/01/effective-altruism-is-this-centurys-biggest-ideaRethink Priorities, how many Americans have heard of effective altruism (2022) — https://rethinkpriorities.org/research-area/how-many-people-have-heard-of-effective-altruism/On the ideas:Hu et al., "Genomic inference of a severe human bottleneck during the Early to Middle Pleistocene transition," Science (Aug 31, 2023) — https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487Bentham's Bulldog, the insects post (Substack, Sept 2026) — newsletter: https://benthams.substack.com/p/insects-matter-more-than-peopleRichard Yetter Chappell, "Babies, Bathwater, and Effective Altruism" (Good Thoughts) — https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/babies-bathwater-and-effective-altruismJeremy Bentham on animals, "Can they suffer?" — https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2022/03/18/bentham-on-animals/Jeremy Bentham's auto-icon, UCL — https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bentham-project/who-was-jeremy-bentham/auto-iconPulvermacher's chain, Science Museum Group collection — https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co136729On the cult question:The EA Forum (where the movement argues with itself in public) — https://forum.effectivealtruism.orgTime, Charlotte Alter (Feb 2023), on women's accounts of sexual harassment in parts of the EA community — https://time.com/6252617/effective-altruism-sexual-harassment/The Centre for Effective Altruism's response — https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XxXnPoGQ2eKsQx3FE/cea-s-response-to-sexual-harassmentEffective Ventures UK board statement on the resignation — https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9JCkkjKMNL4Hmg4qP/ev-uk-board-statement-on-owen-s-resignationEffective Ventures' investigation and its findings — https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4CBoJ5jgmGfdMFnAE/ev-investigation-into-owen-and-community-healthOn the money:Time, "Effective Altruist Leaders Were Repeatedly Warned About Sam Bankman-Fried Years Before FTX Collapsed" (Charlotte Alter, March 2023) — https://time.com/6262810/sam-bankman-fried-effective-altruism-alameda-ftx/EA Forum discussion of it: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/b83Zkz4amoaQC5Hpd/time-article-discussion-effective-altruist-leaders-were)The Singularity Summit (2006–2012) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_SummitThe AI super PACs: "The AI influence network's power players," Axios (Feb 27, 2026) — https://www.axios.com/2026/02/27/ai-influence-power-players · "Anthropic Puts $20 Million Into a Super PAC Operation to Counter OpenAI," Election Law Blog — https://electionlawblog.org/2026/anthropic-puts-20-million-into-a-super-pac-operation-to-counter-openai/Fredric Jameson, "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism" — https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii21/articles/fredric-jameson-future-cityOn the good it's done:Scott Alexander, "In Continued Defense of Effective Altruism" (Astral Codex Ten, 2023) — https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-continued-defense-of-effectiveGiveDirectly — https://www.givedirectly.orgAlso mentioned:Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies (2025) — https://amzn.to/49gpPW1Margaret Wertheim, The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet (1999), recommended by listener Corey Perla — https://link.amazon/B0c9FUtS7As 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. ShammamiProduced by: Jesse FordEditor: David Justin MartinOriginal Music: Shane Patrick FordSound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul BennettGraphics: Semi:FormalFilm/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PRPodcast PR: Tink Media (Shreya Sharma)Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma WrightAdditional Camera and Audio: Tyler Copenhaver, Backlot Studios Special Thanks: Caitlin Yardley, Mike Levine, Our Listener with Concerns about the Last EpisodeSee 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.comOur 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/AgoricMediaA Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionAgoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.comWondermind 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/4dVMYQbDorian Lynskey — Journalist / Author, Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World — https://amzn.to/42ISDD1Dr. Marcus Arvan — Chair and Professor of Philosophy, University of Tampa — Author, Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality — https://link.amazon/B05vK59aaSimone and Malcolm Collins — Authors and podcasters / Authors, The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion — https://link.amazon/B00hVgEeOOther works and things mentioned:Frank Herbert, Dune (1965), the Litany Against Fear and the Butlerian Jihad — https://link.amazon/B09GICw7gUtilitarianism: Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/Effective altruism and longtermism: Toby Ord: The Precipice –  https://link.amazon/B0cDl0lZjWilliam MacAskill — What We Owe the Future – https://amzn.to/4fqeepBÉmile 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/13636Dispensationalism and the Rapture — https://www.britannica.com/topic/dispensationalism Sam Bankman-Fried and the collapse of FTX — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-FriedThe 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-programThe Man in the High Castle (Prime Video) — https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0MJFK5BDOS4K13C3WBUIB7NY98?ref_=atv_dp_share_cu_rGurren Lagann — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurren_LagannPantheon — https://youtu.be/wTgYeETwgKQPeter 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=1000777856826Dreaming 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=1000788829733A 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=1000792369838Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307As 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.

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.comOur 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/AgoricMediaA Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionAgoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.comWondermind 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/B0fagMPXPDavid 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/3TqY1czDr. Ian Gold — Philosopher, McGill University / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8UDr. Joel Gold — Assistant Clinical Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8UDr. Marcus Arvan — Chair and Professor of Philosophy, University of Tampa / Author, Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality — https://link.amazon/B05vK59aaDr. 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/3PH1FO5Dr. Michael Ferguson — Director, Neurospirituality Research Lab · Harvard Medical School and Harvard Divinity School — https://neuromichael.com · https://neurospirituality.ioOther 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/B0bVGiTaCKarl Popper and falsifiability — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (1975) — https://link.amazon/B07Yqbz7kGeorge Lucas, Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and the road from Freud to Yoda — https://amzn.to/4zTkaRAThomas 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.pdfMitzvah — 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%3A28David Benatar on theism and anti-natalism, Religious Studies — https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/religious-studies/article/religious-antinatalism-a-rare-breed/B6C0ADBE08D907B086C8529AB2425DA2#articleThe periaqueductal gray — the region of the brain stem at the center of Mark Solms' theory of feeling — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periaqueductal_grayFrontier labs researching whether their own models could have experiences — Anthropic, "Exploring model welfare" — https://www.anthropic.com/research/exploring-model-welfareWeltanschauung — Merriam-Webster — https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weltanschauungThe Matrix Revolutions — "This is my world" — https://youtu.be/jsZgTS2ccUc?t=235Pantheon — the animated series from our listener's P.S. — https://youtu.be/wTgYeETwgKQThe Problem of Other Minds (Part One) — where this story begins — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000790005691Engineering Consciousness (Part Two) — our last episode — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000791259514Cortical 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=1000783108111Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307As 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. ShammamiProduced by: Jesse FordEditor: David Justin MartinOriginal Music: Shane Patrick FordSound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul BennettGraphics: Semi:FormalFilm/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PRPodcast PR: Tink Media (Shreya Sharma)Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma WrightAdditional Sound and Camera: Adam VeanerSee 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.comOur 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/AgoricMediaA Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionAgoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.comWondermind 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/B0fagMPXPDr. Marcus Arvan — Chair and Professor of Philosophy, University of Tampa — Author, Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality — https://link.amazon/B05vK59aaHon Weng Chong — Founder, Cortical Labs — https://corticallabs.comDr. Ian Gold — Philosopher, McGill University / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8UOther 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/B0g6dOWDqThe hedonic (conditioned) place preference test — how you ask a fish whether it likes cocaine — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditioned_place_preferenceKarl 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.2013.0475Mark Solms and Karl Friston, “How and Why Consciousness Arises” (2018) — the formalism for feeling they built together — https://philpapers.org/rec/SOLHAWCortical 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=1000783108111Daniel Faggella and the “worthy successor” — autopoiesis as a criterion — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000777856826Dr. 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=1000784281250Analog vs. digital — Corey Maley (Purdue), “representing magnitudes using magnitudes” — https://philpapers.org/s/Corey%20MaleyThe Terminator (1984) — red, black, white, and no other colors — https://youtu.be/v0vbTHd04gE?si=fWM0pO5PwZwFyuJGPanpsychism, constitutive micropsychism, and cosmopsychism — the Stanford overview — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/Quantum computing, briefly — bits vs. qubits — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QubitPlate tectonics, and why we don’t need an atomic theory of earthquakes — Ian Gold on levels of explanation — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonicsGrand Theft Auto VI — thank you in advance for all that you will do for my life — https://link.amazon/B08OkboxtListener recommendations from this week’s reviews: Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach — https://link.amazon/B04ALhyvFDaniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea — https://link.amazon/B03WgrKIkWe 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=1000790005691Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307As 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.

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.comOur 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 ProductionAgoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.comWondermind 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/B0fagMPXPDr. Amy Levy — Psychoanalyst and Author of The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive — https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5Dr. Joel Gold — Psychiatrist, NYU Langone / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8UDr. Michael Ferguson — Director, Neurospirituality Research Lab · Harvard Medical School and Harvard Divinity School — https://neuromichael.com · https://neurospirituality.ioOther 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/CassandraSam 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/2093060670472241368Sam Altman on the Ocarina of Time remake (September 9, 2026) — “need to find a case of mountain dew” — https://x.com/sama/status/2097696043492143157Geoffrey 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.htmlMustafa Suleyman on “seemingly conscious AI” — the machines that will seem conscious whether or not they are — https://mustafa-suleyman.ai/seemingly-conscious-ai-is-comingRecursive 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=upeDyQgPovCrNC6NNeuropsychoanalysis — 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/B0e8FNhFrJulian 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/B0iwccZVbThomas 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.pdfRené 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=1000777856826Dreaming 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=1000788829733Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307As 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 CruzSee 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.comOur 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/AgoricMediaA Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionAgoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.comWondermind 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/4dU0ns6Veronica 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/4zIp97COther 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/4xOWNXTDr. Joel Gold and Dr. Ian Gold — Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8UDr. Michael Ferguson — Director, Neurospirituality Research Lab · Harvard Medical School and Harvard Divinity School — https://neuromichael.com - https://neurospirituality.ioPetra Molnar — The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (from Part One) — https://amzn.to/4zIhN3MThe maquiladora industry — the last industrial promise made to Ciudad Juárez — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MaquiladoraTorre Centinela — the surveillance tower rising over Juárez — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre_CentinelaFlock 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-worriesJeremy 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-iconElon 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=1000787388088Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307As 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.NYCAdditional Camera and Audio: Speakezzy, Brandon CruzSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.