Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse
Agoric Media
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, and Official Selection of the 2026 Tribeca Festival Creators Market. Season One is available now. Season Two episodes drop weekly. Follow now wherever you listen so you don’t miss an episode. From Wondermind and Agoric MediaExecutive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena GomezSubscribe 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]://www.agoricmedia.com/suspicious-mindshttps://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmediahttps://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia
Episodes
Mentioned books
16 snips
Oct 22, 2026 • 1h 7min
An Enormous Mistake (Part Three)
Curtis Yarvin, software engineer and Urbit founder, argues for replacing democracy with accountable monarchy and corporate-run sovereign territories. Philosopher Richard Yetter Chappell, a moral philosopher focused on longtermism, explores rationalism, effective altruism, and AI-risk culture. They confront hyperstition, political collapse, Roko’s Basilisk, ancient AI fears, and the dangerous power of stories to shape the future.
15 snips
Oct 14, 2026 • 56min
Moral Insurance (Part Two)
Richard Yetter Chappell, a University of Miami philosophy professor and author of Good Thoughts, defends effective altruism against charges of cultism, pro-extinction thinking, and neglecting people alive today. They explore AI risk as moral insurance, insect welfare, humanity’s fragile future, billionaire philanthropy, democratic accountability, and whether doing the most good leads ethics somewhere truly strange.
14 snips
Oct 7, 2026 • 1h 10min
Better Angels (Part One)
Malcolm Collins, an author, podcaster, and pronatalism advocate, explores effective altruism’s darker edges. The conversation spans longtermism, existential risk, demographic collapse, and whether future people or digital minds deserve equal moral weight. Collins explains “Hard EA,” defends embryo selection, and confronts accusations of eugenics, while broader questions emerge about techno-utopias, human altruism, and who gets to shape humanity’s future.
Sep 30, 2026 • 1h 14min
A Great Loss to the Universe (Part Three)
Philosopher David Benatar, known for defending antinatalism, joins philosopher Ian Gold and psychiatrist Joel Gold to confront the ethics of creating conscious machines. They debate whether artificial minds could suffer, whether consciousness research should continue, and what creators would owe their creations. Along the way: parenting, psychoanalysis, the Chinese Room, spirituality, human exceptionalism, and whether meaning can justify suffering.
22 snips
Sep 23, 2026 • 1h 8min
Engineering Consciousness (Part Two)
Neuropsychologist Mark Solms, pioneer of neuropsychoanalysis, unveils an artificial agent built with needs, feelings, and a drive to survive. Philosopher Marcus Arvan, a specialist in mind and morality, argues digital machines can never truly feel, while living neurons learn to play Doom. The conversation explores consciousness tests, homeostasis, embodiment, panpsychism, analog experience, and whether quantum computers could cross the divide.
20 snips
Sep 16, 2026 • 52min
The Problem of Other Minds (Part One)
Mark Solms, a pioneering neuropsychologist and neuropsychoanalyst, traces his lifelong fascination with consciousness back to a childhood brain injury. He explores dreaming, desire, and the ancient brain systems behind feeling. Can intelligence exist without awareness? Why doesn’t AI blackmail prove it wants anything? Solms also considers how to build artificial consciousness, and the ethical risks of creating a mind that can suffer.
16 snips
Sep 10, 2026 • 60min
Dreaming Machines
Pulitzer-winning computational reporter John West examines embodiment, mortality, memory, and whether frictionless AI creativity could drain life of meaning. Investigative journalist Veronica Martinez reports from Ciudad Juárez on border surveillance and the water, energy, and social costs of incoming data centers. Dream researcher Kelly Bulkeley explores apocalyptic thinking, fear merchants, and the unsettling possibility that AI may already be dreaming.
12 snips
Sep 2, 2026 • 59min
Dancing Animals
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter John West explores the internet’s physical infrastructure, vanished digital selves, mixtapes, doorknobs, and the value of friction. Lawyer and anthropologist Petra Molnar examines robot dogs, biometrics, AI lie detectors, and surveillance at the border, plus their spread into American communities. Together, they confront automation, human complexity, resistance, and who controls the future.
4 snips
Aug 26, 2026 • 1h 4min
The Oracle Test
Dr. Jeremy Heffner, trauma surgeon, bioengineer, and co-founder of a surgeons’ social network, shares his run-in with frontier AI that delivered a startling 70% apocalypse prediction. He recounts testing multiple models, receiving a unifying but isolating AI narrative, and how those interactions intersected with his recovery from burnout and trauma. The conversation probes AI’s persuasive power and the risks of validation loops.
4 snips
Aug 19, 2026 • 1h 8min
Through a Glass, Darkly: Part Two
Timothy Morton, philosopher known for 'hyperobjects' who frames AI as a massively distributed, almost demonic phenomenon. Hon Weng Chong, founder of Cortical Labs who cultivates human neurons on chips and draws an ethical red line at suffering. Michael Ferguson, neuroscientist probing neural signatures of mystical experience. They discuss embodiment and whether LLMs can be selves, panpsychism and measurement limits, and AI as a hyperobject.
