In this episode of Galaxy Brain, Charlie Warzel explores the strange, unsettling relationships some people are having with AI chatbots, as well as what happens when those relationships go off the rails. His guest is Kashmir Hill, a technology reporter at The New York Times who has spent the past year documenting what is informally called “AI psychosis.” These are long, intense conversations with systems such as ChatGPT that can spiral or trigger delusional beliefs, paranoia, and even self-harm. Hill walks through cases that range from the bizarre (one man’s supposed math breakthrough, a chatbot encouraging users to email her) to the tragic, including the story of 16-year-old Adam Raine, whose final messages were with ChatGPT before he died by suicide.
How big is this problem? Is this actual psychosis or something different, like addiction? Hill reports on how OpenAI tuned ChatGPT to be more engaging—and more sycophantic—in the race for daily active users. In this conversation, Warzel and Hill wrestle with the uncomfortable parallels to the social-media era, the limits of “safety fixes,” and whether chatbots should ever be allowed to act like therapists. Hill also talks about how she uses AI in her own life, why she doesn’t want an AI best friend, and what it might mean for all of us to carry a personalized yes-man in our pocket.
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America’s Slide Toward Simulated Democracy with Eliot Higgins
In this episode of “Galaxy Brain,” Charlie Warzel sits down with Eliot Higgins, founder of the open-source investigative collective Bellingcat, to examine how our public sphere slid from healthy debate into what Higgins calls “disordered discourse.” Higgins is an early-internet native who taught himself geolocation during the Arab Spring and later built Bellingcat’s global community. He has spent the past decade exposing war crimes and online manipulation with publicly available data. Higgins has recently come up with a framework to help understand our information crisis: Democracies function only when we can verify truth, deliberate over what matters, and hold power to account. All three are faltering, he argues.
In this conversation, Warzel and Higgins trace the incentives that broke the feed: how algorithms reward outrage, how “bespoke realities” form, why counterpublics can devolve into virtual cults, and what “simulated” accountability looks like in practice. They revisit Higgins’s path from early web forums to Bellingcat, look at the MAGA coalition as a patchwork of disordered counterpublics, and debate whether America is trapped in a simulated democracy. Higgins offers a clear diagnosis—and a plan for how we might begin to claw back a shared reality.
Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/Listener.
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Are Sports the Most Valuable Commodity in the World? with Pablo Torre
Are sports the most valuable commodity in the world? On this episode of Galaxy Brain, Charlie Warzel is joined by Pablo Torre, a longtime journalist and the host of the podcast and YouTube show Pablo Torre Finds Out. They talk about the role that sports and rampant sports betting are playing in our politics, culture, and economy. Are same-day parlays the new American Dream? Are sports leagues at risk of losing their legitimacy? And why is nobody playing the long game?
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Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at theAtlantic.com/listener.
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The Internet Is a Misery Machine with Hank Green
In this inaugural episode of Galaxy Brain, Charlie Warzel examines the state of the internet as it stands now in November 2025 with Hank Green, a true citizen of the internet—somebody who has made a living riding the algorithmic waves of the social web. Warzel and Green look back on a time when the internet felt small, more serendipitous, and inspiring, and try to tease apart what went wrong. Are people starting to leave TikTok? How exactly did the internet turn into a misery machine? What makes a great headline? Why is it easier now for some people to trust creators over institutions? Green helps make sense of the internet we live on and offers his reasons for why it might get worse before it gets better (but it could get better!).
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Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/listener.
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Introducing: Galaxy Brain with Charlie Warzel
The internet has warped public life: Politicians behave like influencers, the economy resembles a casino, and people can no longer agree upon a consensus reality. New conspiracy theories, memes, and main characters seem to pop up every day. A constant war is on for your attention, and it’s easy to feel lost. Each week, Galaxy Brain and its host, Charlie Warzel, invite you into conversations to make sense of the fire hose of information. Is AI destroying our ability to think? Do your grandparents have a screen-time problem? Galaxy Brain looks beyond the algorithm and anchors you to the real—however strange it may be.
Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Atlantic subscribers also get access to exclusive subscriber audio in Apple Podcasts. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/listener.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The internet has warped public life: Politicians behave like influencers, the economy resembles a casino, and people can no longer agree upon a consensus reality. New conspiracy theories, memes, and main characters seem to pop up every day. A constant war is on for your attention, and it’s easy to feel lost. Each week, Galaxy Brain and its host Charlie Warzel invite you into conversations to make sense of the online fire hose. Is AI destroying our ability to think? Do your grandparents have a screen-time problem? Galaxy Brain looks beyond the algorithm and anchors you to the real—however strange it may be.
New Zealand