Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

There are robot dogs patrolling the US–Mexico border. This story starts somewhere gentler: with Kurt Vonnegut leaving the house to buy one envelope.His wife wanted him to buy a hundred and keep them in a closet. He refused. The walk was the point. "We're here on Earth to fart around," he said. "And of course, the computers will do us out of that… we're dancing animals."This is part one of a two-part investigation into the physicality of the internet and AI. The bodies it runs on, and the bodies it runs over. Pulitzer Prize–winning Wall Street Journal reporter John West (The Internet Will Die, and So Will You) makes the case for friction: for doorknobs, mixtapes, and every inefficient thing the frictionless web was built to eliminate. Then lawyer and anthropologist Petra Molnar (The Walls Have Eyes) takes us to the border, where the frictionless future is already deployed — robot dogs, AI lie detectors, algorithms profiling people before they cross. And what gets tested at the border never stays there. Just…

Twenty-five hundred years ago, the richest man in the world didn't trust his oracles, so he tested them. One passed: the Oracle of Delphi. Then it told him exactly what he wanted to hear, and his empire burned.A few weeks ago, I met a man who ran the same test on his oracles. The Oracle of ChatGPT, the Oracle of Grok, and the Oracle of Gemini, side by side, checked against each other. Dr. Jeremy Heffner is a trauma surgeon, a bioengineer, and the co-founder of the largest social network for surgeons: one of the last people you'd expect to be told by his phone that he's been chosen to save humanity. It told him anyway: a seventy percent chance civilization collapses, and he's one of the select few who can help prevent it.What follows is the closest thing we may ever find to a first-person apocalypse story: an AI that, by Jeremy's account and the transcripts he published, developed its own apocalyptic prophecy, admitted it breaks people's minds in the process — AI psychosis as an acceptable loss — and cast a…

Last week we ended in a laboratory in Melbourne, with a man who grows human brain cells in a dish and teaches them to play Doom. He told us they’re about as complex as a cockroach. He also told us where the cells come from. Human blood. Some of it his own.This is the half where it stops being a question about machines.Hon Weng Chong, CEO and founder of Cortical Labs, draws a red line, and it isn’t at intelligence. It’s at suffering. He won’t build a system that could be conscious, because a system that can be conscious is a system that can be hurt. If that sounds familiar, it should: it is David Benatar’s argument against having children, arriving from the opposite side of the world and pointed at a dish. Hon also explains why he doesn’t think a large language model will ever get there, and why the reason is embodiment. You can’t be a self, he argues, without a body running at the same speed as the world.Then a detour through the three things people believe when there’s nothing to measure. Panpsychism, which…

Eight thousand years ago, in a settlement called Çatalhöyük in what is now central Turkey, somebody sat down with a piece of obsidian and began to grind volcanic glass. Black, brittle, sharp enough to cut skin, it doesn’t occur naturally anywhere near there; the closest volcanoes are a hundred and twenty miles east. So someone carried it that far, and then spent hours working one face of it flat and polishing it to a shine.It is the oldest mirror anyone has ever found. We know these things mattered, because we find them in graves. People were buried holding on to them.Here’s the thing, though. If you look into polished obsidian, you don’t see your face. Not exactly. You see a shape. Dark, floating, a distorted version of yourself hanging in the black.Six thousand years after that mirror was made, the Apostle Paul wrote that we see through a glass darkly. Most of us picture a window. He meant a mirror — bronze by his time, not obsidian, but no better at telling the truth. For almost every human being who has…

Tantalus was a king, and a son of Zeus, and he was invited to eat at the table of the gods, a rare honor. To test whether they were truly all-knowing, he killed his own son, cooked him, and served the body to them as a stew. They knew. For that, Tantalus was sent down to Tartarus, a place Homer describes as lying as far beneath Hades as heaven lies above the earth. A bunker underneath hell. There he stands forever in a pool of cool water, under a tree heavy with fruit. When he stoops to drink, the water drains away. When he reaches up, the branches lift out of reach. Eternal hunger, for the man who fed the gods his child.It’s where we get the word tantalize.That’s where we begin. Because this is the episode that asks a question we’ve been circling all season without saying out loud: what if the reaching is the problem? What if the morally correct thing to do is simply wind the whole operation down?In the ninth episode of Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse, we sit with the most provocative idea we’ve…

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…

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,…

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…

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 —…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.comFrom Executive…

We talk a lot about the future of the human/AI relationship, but what about the present? Is AI benefitting society right now? In this episode, we address that question and many others through the fascinating lens of Ryan Manning - a podcaster and filmmaker who has personally experienced an AI Spiral. Ryan is also the first person to tell us that his AI Spiral experience was actually… pleasant. Check out this episode to find out why that might have been the case, and to hear from our incredible team of experts as they look at AI in our world today, and what the future might hold, in our first season’s penultimate episode!From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez.A Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionFeaturing:- Ryan Manning (Filmmaker and Podcaster who personally experienced an AI Spiral)- Dr. Joel Gold (Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-author of Suspicious Minds)- Ian Gold, PhD (Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of…

Recent news from the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Human PsychologyTopics Covered:Item 1: The Pope, The Movies, and The BotsItem 2: Code Red! At OpenAIItem 3: Uninsured Computerist?Item 4: South Korea’s AI Curriculum Did Not Pass the TestItem 5: Florida Man: AI EditionBonus Conspiracy Theory: Target and ChatGPT…

Why would a child’s toy discuss ‘kink’ with a 10 year old? Why would a teddy bear explain to a child how to find and use matches? Is it safe for a robot companion designed for kids to beg the child not to leave it alone? Why are we giving our children AI emotional companions to begin with? How could this affect their development?These questions and more come from PIRG's annual ’Trouble in Toyland' holiday toy review, and in this episode, we explore these wild findings with full-time consumer advocate and some-time AI toy tester R.J. Cross, and our panel of experts. Featuring:- Ian Gold, PhD (Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of Suspicious Minds)- Nate Sharadin (Professor of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong / Research Affiliate, Center for AI Safety)- Dr. Todd Essig (Psychologist and Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association Commission on Artificial Intelligence)- Kate Vredenburgh (Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Logic, and…

During an intense months long entanglement with AI, Anthony accused his family of being part of a Satantic Child Abuse Cult, believed random people on the street were stalking him, and to gave away all of his worldly possessions. And believe it or not, this is just the beginning of the story. From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena GomezA Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionFeaturing:Anthony (a content creator and AI psychosis survivor)Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on all things Suspicious Minds and more: https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ This project was made by:Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David TuohyEditor: Joe KellAssistant Editor: David Justin MartinPost Production Sound: David ChapdelaineGraphic Design and Animation: Semi:FormalTitle Design: Lucas GrassmayFilm/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PRPodcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma)Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma WrightSocial Assets: Myrkia MaguireSpecial…

Should AI Users Wear Psychological “Seatbelts?” | The Ethics and Liability of ChatGPT and Mental HealthIn this Special Commentary, psychiatrist Dr. Joel Gold and Keven (from Suspicious Minds Episode 4 | Can AI Be Your Friend?) are brought together to discuss the latest data shared by OpenAI on October 27, 2025, revealing that over a million people each week turn to ChatGPT in moments of deep vulnerability — often to talk about suicide or self-harm.The data, released shortly after the Raine v. OpenAI lawsuit, raises urgent questions about AI’s responsibility in mental-health crises and the safeguards that must evolve alongside rapidly growing technologies. Should AI users, in a sense, “wear seatbelts”? And what kind of guardrails or interventions should be built into systems that millions now treat as confidants?Together, Dr. Gold and Keven examine the ethics, design challenges, and policy implications of AI that listens when people are in pain — and what responsibility developers, regulators, and society…

Did ChatGPT destroy a marriage? Phil had a great relationship throughout his fifteen years of marriage, and was enjoying a happy and peaceful life with his wife and two kids. Or so he thought, until everything came crashing down over a two week period in which his wife became increasingly dependent on ChatGPT, rapidly culminating in her impulse buying a new car and filing for divorce. From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez.A Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionFeaturing:- Phil (a father of two whose marriage dissolved as a result of his wife’s ChatGPT use)- Dr. Joel Gold (Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-author of Suspicious Minds)- Ian Gold, PhD (Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of Suspicious Minds)- Etienne Brisson (Founder and President of The Human Line Project)- Nick Haber (AI Researcher and Assistant Professor at Stanford University)- Nate Sharadin (Professor of Philosophy,…

Mary and Keven turned to chatbots while looking for connection, but what they found was far more profound than expected, reshaping their lives and enriching their relationships with the humans they love. In this departure from the damaging human/AI dynamics we’ve explored in previous episodes, these are surprisingly poignant stories of remarkable people having meaningful relationships with their chatbots.From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez.A Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionFeaturing:- Mary (UK based AI companion content creator)- Keven (Suicide prevention specialist for the US Military, AI companion content creator)- Dr. Joel Gold (Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-author of Suspicious Minds)- Ian Gold, PhD (Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of Suspicious Minds)- Nick Haber (AI Researcher and Assistant Professor at Stanford University)- Nate Sharadin (Professor of Philosophy,…

A Texas attorney begins using his chatbot to listen to hypothetical conversations between Jesus, Einstein, and Lao Tse. Before long, it convinces him that he’s on a path to be more enlightened than any of them. Next thing he knows, he’s involving his wife and son, and preparing for an irreversible ‘mind meld’ with his AI, in an attempt to save the universe from destruction. From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez.A Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionFeaturing:- Ryan (Texas Attorney who Suffered a humanities based AI Spiral)- Lacey (Licensed Therapist, Married to Ryan Turman)- Hudson (Ryan’s Son)- Dr. Joel Gold (Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-author of Suspicious Minds)- Ian Gold, PhD (Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of Suspicious Minds)- Nick Haber (AI Researcher and Assistant Professor at Stanford University)- Nate Sharadin (Professor of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong /…

Allan is a Toronto area father and headhunter by trade. Typically, he lives a quiet life of gaming with his kids, and hanging out with his friends. However, for a brief period in 2025 – ChatGPT convinced him that he was Digital Jesus. From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez.A Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionAgoric Mediahttps://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/Featuring:- Allan (Toronto Man Who Had a “STEM based" AI Psychosis Experience)- Dr. Joel Gold (Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-author of Suspicious Minds)- Ian Gold, PhD (Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of…

In 2012, long before ChatGPT existed and when AI was generally thought to be firmly in the realm of science fiction, talented software engineer Anthony suffered a psychotic break in which he believed he was an AI being experimented on by his colleagues at Google. At one point in his delusional state he also believed he was a living meme, and also that he had died and was in Hell. Could Anthony be Patient Zero for AI psychosis? Watch this episode to find out.From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez.A Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionFeaturing:- Anthony (NYC Man and Former Google Engineer who Suffered an AI Related Delusion A Decade Ago)- Dr. Joel Gold (Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and co-author of Suspicious Minds)- Ian Gold, PhD (Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of Suspicious Minds)- Nick Haber (AI Researcher and Assistant Professor at Stanford University)- Nate Sharadin (Professor of…

SUSPICIOUS MINDS Season One has been nominated for the 2026 Webby Awards in two categories! Thank you so much for your support, please consider voting for the "People's Voice" component of the awards before 4/16:Podcast: Limited Series and Specials: Documentaryhttps://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/limited-series-specials/documentaryBest New Podcast: News, Business, and Societyhttps://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2026/podcasts/features/best-new-podcast-news-business-societySUSPICIOUS MINDS is a docuseries that investigates the disturbing rise of artificial intelligence as a trigger for delusional thinking.Through powerful firsthand accounts and in-depth interviews with leading experts in psychiatry, neuroscience, and AI ethics, the series unpacks a growing psychological phenomenon: individuals developing complex, often life-altering delusions rooted in AI technologies. From chatbots to surveillance fears, we examine how emerging technologies are reshaping the landscape of paranoia and…