Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse

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

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

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

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

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