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.

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 

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 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.

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 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:

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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.

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

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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 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

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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 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.

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.

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]

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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.

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.