Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse

In February 1945, an American prisoner of war was locked in an underground slaughterhouse in Dresden while the city above him burned. Twenty-four years later, the prisoner, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, turned that night into his breakthrough novel Slaughterhouse-Five. So it goes.Part Two of our series on art and the apocalypse is about the people who didn't have to imagine the end of the world, and what they made afterward. The episode features Dorian Lynskey (Everything Must Go) on Vonnegut, on John Wyndham walking out of the war into an empty London, on James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow as the Mary Shelley and Lord Byron of Hollywood, and on the entire history of apocalyptic thinking, from Zoroaster to the doomers, delivered with a straight face in answer to the longest question I have ever asked. Dream researcher Kelly Bulkeley on the hero's journey and its regressive twin, the apocalyptic fantasy, with a detour through Black Sabbath I was morally obligated to leave in. Psychoanalyst Amy Levy on why a species that wants so badly to live keeps imagining its own ending, and what we're really afraid of when we fear the machines. Ed Simon (The Dove and the Dragon) on the original meaning of the word apocalypse, which isn't an ending at all, and on how the printing press turned the Book of Revelation into some of the first viral images.Also included: my grandfather, the USS Cabot, and a book called First Mile, Last Mile; the Zoroastrian end of the world, in which the wicked wade through molten metal and the righteous through warm milk; Dürer, Bosch, John Martin, and the volcano in Turner's sunsets; the Halifax Explosion and the first study of how people actually behave in a disaster (they help); Station Eleven and the three words painted on the wagon; and the movie I made about a family in a bathroom at the end of the world, and the conversation with my dad that made me want to make it.Next episode, Part Three: what happens when the art isn't made by humans at all. A composer on what the machines are doing to his work, the film After Yang, S1m0ne, and the one thing an AI refused to reproduce for me.A correction: in An Enormous Mistake (Part Three), I described Dan Faggella as having engaged with Nick Land early and later distanced himself, and lumped him in with accelerationists. He did neither, and he doesn't describe himself as one. This was an error on our part. The line will be removed from that episode, and I address it at the end of this one.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.comMany of our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMediaA Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionAgoric Mediahttps://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmediahttps://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmediahttps://agoricmedia.substack.com/https://www.agoricmedia.comWondermindhttps://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/https://www.wondermind.com/Host and Creator: Sean King O'Gradyhttps://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/https://seankingogrady.substack.com/Guests (in order of appearance):Dorian Lynskey — Journalist / Author, Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World — https://amzn.to/42ISDD1Kelly Bulkeley, PhD - Dream Researcher and Author of The Spirituality of Dreaming - https://amzn.to/4dU0ns6Ed Simon — - Ed Simon - Carnegie Mellon University - The Dove and the Dragon: A Cultural History of the Apocalypse - https://amzn.to/4dVMYQbDr. Amy Levy — Psychoanalyst / Chair, American Psychoanalytic Association's Commission on Artificial Intelligence / Author of The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive — https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5Other works and things mentioned:THE WRITERS WHO WERE THEREKurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) — https://link.amazon/B08gTirgvVonnegut's May 1945 letter home from a POW camp ("Bayonets aren't much good against tanks"), reprinted in Armageddon in Retrospect (2008) — https://link.amazon/B06x6QRCUThe bombing of Dresden, February 13–15, 1945 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden (the death toll Vonnegut repeated, 250,000, is roughly ten times the figure historians now accept)J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun (1984) — https://link.amazon/B0igeKej5John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids (1951) — https://link.amazon/B051yFBl2; the 1962 film — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Triffids_(1962_film)28 Days Later (2002), dir. Danny Boyle — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_LaterTHE HERO'S JOURNEY AND ITS TWINJoseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) — https://amzn.to/4zTkaRABlack Sabbath, "War Pigs" (Paranoid, 1970) — https://open.spotify.com/track/0HVQuuXGAcQ2P5mBN521aeHOLLYWOOD'S SHELLEY AND BYRONJames Cameron, The Terminator (1984) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_TerminatorKathryn Bigelow, Strange Days (1995), written by James Cameron — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Days_(film)Kathryn Bigelow, A House of Dynamite (2025) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_House_of_DynamiteTHE USS CABOTUSS Cabot (CVL-28), Independence-class light aircraft carrier — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Cabot_(CVL-28)First Mile, Last Mile - I can’t find a reliable source to the book online, so apologies for being morbid, but here’s my grandfather’s obituary – it’s a source?  – https://obits.mlive.com/us/obituaries/saginaw/name/thomas-o-grady-obituary?id=14323962THE HISTORY OF THE ENDZoroastrianism and Frashokereti, the renovation of the world — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FrashokeretiThe Book of Revelation — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10 (King James Bible)Our Episode 2, with Judith Wolfe and Dorian Lynskey on where apocalyptic thinking comes from — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000771138097Albrecht Dürer, The Apocalypse (1498), the fifteen woodcuts — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_(Dürer)Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights (c. 1490–1510) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_DelightsJohn Martin, the Last Judgment triptych (1851–1853) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Martin_(painter)J.M.W. Turner's sunsets and the Tambora ash (Zerefos et al., 2007) — https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/7/4027/2007/The Year Without a Summer (Part One), last week's episode — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000798680356DOOMERS, DISASTERS, AND WHAT WE'D KEEPEmily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (2014) — https://link.amazon/B04ujzxYn; the HBO Max series (2021) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_Eleven_(miniseries)Cormac McCarthy, The Road (2006) — https://link.amazon/B07GOYcdvLars von Trier, Melancholia (2011) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melancholia_(2011_film)Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell (2009) — https://link.amazon/B0arqMw4kThe Halifax Explosion, December 6, 1917 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_ExplosionSamuel Henry Prince, Catastrophe and Social Change (1920), the first systematic study of disaster behavior — https://archive.org/details/catastrophesocia00prinRutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History (2020) — https://link.amazon/B09Ad9sPSPat Frank, Alas, Babylon (1959) — https://link.amazon/B0dafOkc9Don McKellar,, Last Night (1998) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Night_(1998_film)WE NEED TO DO SOMETHINGWe Need to Do Something (2021), directed by Sean King O'Grady — https://youtu.be/TcmfY_ApDxU?si=q0uvbsboB7BV8rjxT.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men" (1925) — https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47254/the-hollow-men (the line is "not with a bang but a whimper")ALSO MENTIONEDThe Epic of Gilgamesh — https://amzn.to/4zFpHuPAvengers: Doomsday (2026), for scale — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avengers:_DoomsdayAs 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. ShammamiProduced by: Jesse FordEditor: David Justin MartinOriginal Music: Shane Patrick FordSound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul BennettGraphics: Semi:FormalFilm/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PRPodcast PR: Tink Media (Shreya Sharma and Holly Brown)Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma WrightAdditional Camera and Audio: Mike Mulliniks, StudioME Productions, Speakezzy, Brandon CruzSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In April 1815 a volcano in Indonesia erupted so violently that the next summer never arrived. The sky over Europe went dark, the crops failed, prophets wandered the continent announcing the end, and five people took refuge from the rain in a rented house on Lake Geneva and decided to write ghost stories. One of them was eighteen years old. Her story was Frankenstein.Our first-ever Halloween episode is about what came out of that house, which turns out to be most of the way we still think about the end of the world. Dorian Lynskey (Everything Must Go) on Tambora, the millenarian panic of 1816, and why Byron's poem "Darkness" is, as far as anyone can tell, the first vision of the apocalypse with no God in it. Alexis Chema of the University of Chicago on the Frankenstein nobody remembers from the movies: a creature who teaches himself to read, quotes Milton to his maker, and is abandoned for it. And her pushback, which I didn't see coming, on the comparison everyone makes between that creature and AI. Psychoanalyst Amy Levy on the line that keeps the book alive, "You are my creator, but I am your master," and on who, in 2026, reminds her of Victor Frankenstein. (It's a compliment, believe it or not)Then the part I still can't quite believe. Byron fled England that year because he'd blown up his marriage, leaving behind a baby daughter he would never see again. Her name was Ada Lovelace. She grew up to work on the first computer, and to write the objection Alan Turing had to answer a century later before he could invent AI. I've started calling it Lord Byron's Lady Lovelace Paradox, and I explain why.Also included: Mary Shelley's The Last Man, the post-apocalyptic novel she wrote after everyone she loved was dead; Isaac Asimov's laws; the Luddites, the loom, and the punch cards that became the computer; the vampire that came out of the same ghost-story contest; and why we make apocalyptic art at all. I can't promise it won't be spooky.Next week, Part Two: art and the apocalypse. The hero's journey and its regressive twin, a composer on what the machines are doing to his work, the film After Yang, and what happens when the art isn't made by humans 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.comMany of our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMediaA Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionAgoric Mediahttps://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmediahttps://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmediahttps://agoricmedia.substack.com/https://www.agoricmedia.comWondermindhttps://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/https://www.wondermind.com/Host and Creator: Sean King O'Gradyhttps://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/https://seankingogrady.substack.com/Guests (in order of appearance):Dorian Lynskey — Journalist / Author, Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World — https://amzn.to/42ISDD1Alexis Chema — Assistant Professor of English, University of Chicago; scholar of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary history, Author, Adorned: The Romantic Poets of Ornament – https://link.amazon/B0fyKhQV7Dr. Amy Levy — Psychoanalyst / Chair, American Psychoanalytic Association's Commission on Artificial Intelligence / Author of The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive — https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5Other works and things mentioned:THE SUMMER OF 1816The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora and the "Year Without a Summer" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_SummerLord Byron, "Darkness" (July 1816) — https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43825/darknessJohn Polidori, The Vampyre (1819), written at the Villa Diodati for the same ghost-story contest —  https://link.amazon/B03RUiBvDMary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) — https://link.amazon/B00QMVEqgWilliam Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), source of "the most odious of all monopolies" — https://link.amazon/B0ddLqcIZTHE PROPHETSNorman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (1957) — https://link.amazon/B0hKnwQzoThe Münster rebellion (1534–35), John of Leiden, and the cages still hanging from St. Lambert's Church — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnster_rebellionJuliane von Krüdener, the prophet of 1816 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliane_von_Kr%C3%BCdenerFRANKENSTEINMary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818; the 1831 edition carries her introduction on the dream at Diodati) — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/84Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds, eds. David H. Guston, Ed Finn and Jason Scott Robert (MIT Press, 2017), the edition Alexis reads from — https://link.amazon/B0j9T4e0ZJohn Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), the "white paper" of the mind — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10615John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), the book the creature reads: "I ought to be thy Adam…" — https://link.amazon/B0c7RlUDCFrankenstein (1931), dir. James Whale, with Boris Karloff — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein_(1931_film)The Hammer Frankenstein films, from The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) to Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Curse_of_FrankensteinRaymond Chandler's science-fiction parody ("Did you ever read what they call science fiction? It's a scream…"), from a 1953 letter — https://a.co/d/0hveOXKnROBOTS, LAWS, AND THE MACHINES THAT IMPROVE THEMSELVESKarel Čapek, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), 1920 — the play that gave us the word "robot" — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59112Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, first stated in "Runaround" (1942); the Zeroth Law added in Robots and Empire (1985) — Both included in this Asimov robot collection – https://link.amazon/B0by7Ld4wRecursive self-improvement — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_self-improvementTHE PSYCHOANALYST AND THE NEUROSCIENTISTDr. Amy Levy, The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive —  https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5Professor 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 (Hear our three-part conversation with Mark earlier this season.)Ex Machina (2014), Blade Runner (1982), Pinocchio, and the Golem — the stories Amy names of "a singular person who creates intelligent life"Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) — the death drive and repetition compulsion (and the badge) — https://link.amazon/B0fniZcOZLORD BYRON'S LADY LOVELACE PARADOXByron's maiden speech in the House of Lords against the Frame Work Bill, February 27, 1812 — https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1812/feb/27/frame-work-bill The Luddites (1811–16) and the stocking frames of Nottinghamshire — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LudditeThe Jacquard loom (1804) and its punched cards — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_machineCharles Babbage's Analytical Engine — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_engineAda Lovelace, Notes on L. F. Menabrea's "Sketch of the Analytical Engine" (1843), including Note G ("The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything…") and the line about weaving "algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves" — https://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.htmlAlan Turing, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," Mind (1950), section 6, "Lady Lovelace's Objection" — https://academic.oup.com/mind/article/LIX/236/433/986238THE LAST MANMary Shelley, The Last Man (1826) — https://link.amazon/B0ihzvSP2Mary Shelley's journal, May 14, 1824, on hearing of Byron's death: "The last man! Yes I may well describe that solitary being's feelings…" The Cumaean Sibyl and the Sibylline leaves — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumaean_SibylOur episode with Dr. Jeremy Heffner on the Oracle of Delphi and the chatbots — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000786005286David Benatar's "phased extinction," from our earlier episode — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000778871399The Omega Man (1971) and I Am Legend (2007), both adapted from Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (1954) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Legend_(novel)ALSO MENTIONEDDavid Koresh and the Branch Davidians (Waco, 1993) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waco_siegeSpirit Halloween, which if there's an AI jobs-pocalypse will be every single storefront on EarthAs 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 FordEditor: David Justin MartinOriginal Music: Shane Patrick FordSound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul BennettGraphics: Semi:FormalFilm/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PRPodcast PR: Tink Media (Shreya Sharma and Holly Brown)Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma WrightAdditional Camera and Audio: Mike MulliniksSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 hours from a parked car in the sun with his laptop overheating. I brought our frequent contributors’ critiques to him one by one: Emily Ray’s “who loses,” in a collapse, Robert Kirsch’s GovCorp, Ed Simon’s pondering whether Yarvin ends up being seen as “Rasputin or a footnote.” He explains why a country should be run like Apple, what a king does when a hurricane hits, why he thinks AI doom is the oldest story humans tell, and what an Elizabethan economist knew that we’ve long since forgotten. His critics get their say, and so does he.Also included: rationalism, LessWrong, and Roko’s Basilisk, the thought experiment that was taken down for being too dangerous to read. Malo Bourgon of MIRI tells the story, and I tell you about the hell I grew up afraid of. Then Timothy Morton on why meaning comes from the future, and at the very end, Donald Rumsfeld, Joel Gold, and the can’t-be-knowns.COMING SOON, A BONUS EPISODE: “Moral Luck.” Philosopher Richard Yetter Chappell on why effective altruism isn’t utilitarianism, the difference between consequentialism and “naive instrumentalism” (rob a bank, give the money to charity), the thought experiments philosophers keep on hand, and what happens when one of them walks out of the classroom and into a courtroom. Plus the contrarian take on Sam Bankman-Fried I promised you, whether FTX customers got their money back, and the name philosophers have for the discomfort that follows. It didn’t fit in this episode, but it was too good to stay on the cutting room floor.Next episode: our first ever Halloween episode. Mary Shelley, The Last Man, the original post-apocalyptic novel, and of course Frankenstein. I can’t promise it won’t be spooky. 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.comMany of our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMediaA Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionAgoric Mediahttps://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmediahttps://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmediahttps://agoricmedia.substack.com/https://www.agoricmedia.comWondermindhttps://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/https://www.wondermind.com/Host and Creator: Sean King O'Gradyhttps://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/https://seankingogrady.substack.com/Guests:Curtis Yarvin — Writer, Gray Mirror; founder, Urbit — https://graymirror.substack.comRichard Yetter Chappell — Professor of Philosophy, University of Miami / Author of the blog Good Thoughts — https://www.goodthoughts.blog/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/3SzUnwBEmily Ray - associate professor of political science at Sonoma State University / Co-author, Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States — https://amzn.to/3SzUnwBEd Simon - Carnegie Mellon University - The Dove and the Dragon: A Cultural History of the Apocalypse - https://amzn.to/4dVMYQbMalo Bourgon — CEO, Machine Intelligence Research Institute — https://intelligence.orgDan Faggella — CEO and Head of Research, Emerj Artificial Intelligence Research — https://emerj.comTimothy Morton — Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English, Rice University / Author, Hyperobjects — https://amzn.to/4xPqGa4Dr. 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/4upyA8UOther works and things mentioned:ON THE ANTSSunamura et al., “Intercontinental union of Argentine ants: behavioral relationships among introduced populations in Europe, North America, and Asia,” Insectes Sociaux (2009) — https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00040-009-0001-9van Wilgenburg, Torres and Tsutsui, “The global expansion of a single ant supercolony,” Evolutionary Applications (2010) — https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3352483/“The Sun Never Sets on the Ant Empire,” Saltman Quarterly, UC San Diego (2019) — https://sqonline.ucsd.edu/2019/05/the-sun-never-sets-on-the-ant-empire/“The strange and turbulent global world of ant geopolitics,” Aeon — https://aeon.co/essays/the-strange-and-turbulent-global-world-of-ant-geopoliticsON THE DARK ENLIGHTENMENTNick Land, “The Dark Enlightenment” (2012) — https://fluidself.org/books/philosophy/the-dark-enlightenment Nick Land, “Meltdown” (1994), collected in Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987–2007 (Urbanomic, 2011) — https://link.amazon/B0fNYO378Curtis Yarvin (as Mencius Moldbug), “The Case Against Democracy: Ten Red Pills,” Unqualified Reservations (April 2007) — https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/04/case-against-democracy-ten-red-pills/Curtis Yarvin (as Mencius Moldbug), “Patchwork: A Political System for the 21st Century,” Unqualified Reservations (2008) — https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/pdfs/patchwork.pdf Unqualified Reservations, the full archive — https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/Curtis Yarvin, “How the USG should respond to AI,” Gray Mirror (September 16, 2026) — https://graymirror.substack.com/p/how-the-usg-should-respond-to-aiON HYPERSTITION (sort of):William Gibson, “Neuromancer” - https://link.amazon/B0e9N8llvPRESS ON YARVIN James Pogue, “Inside the New Right, Where Peter Thiel Is Placing His Biggest Bets,” Vanity Fair (April 20, 2022) — https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets Ava Kofman, “Curtis Yarvin’s Plot Against America,” The New Yorker (published online June 2, 2025; issue dated June 9, 2025) — https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/09/curtis-yarvin-profile David Marchese, “Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy Is Done. Powerful Conservatives Are Listening,” The New York Times Magazine / The Interview (January 18, 2025) — https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/magazine/curtis-yarvin-interview.html ALSO IN THE YARVIN SECTIONAlexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733–34): “For forms of government let fools contest; / Whate’er is best administer’d is best.” (Yarvin paraphrases it on air.)Karel Čapek, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), 1920 — the play that gave us the word “robot.” Aron Simanovich, Rasputin and the Jews: A Reminiscence — the memoir of Rasputin’s jeweler-turned-secretary – The Elizabethan “fish days”: the 1563 statute adding Wednesday as a fish day to support the fleet — https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00253359.2024.2331917#d1e151Elon Musk on humanity as “the biological bootloader for digital superintelligence” — https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1783959488481161491 ON THE BASILISKRoko’s Basilisk — the original 2010 LessWrong post and its removal. Context: David Auerbach, “Roko’s Basilisk: The most terrifying thought experiment of all time,” Slate (July 2014) — https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/rokos-basilisk-the-most-terrifying-thought-experiment-of-all-time.htmlNick Bostrom, “Information Hazards: A Typology of Potential Harms from Knowledge,” Review of Contemporary Philosophy (2011) — https://nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdfDavid Langford, “BLIT,” Interzone (1988); “comp.basilisk FAQ,” Nature (1999); “Different Kinds of Darkness” (2000) — https://ansible.uk/writing/c-b-faq.html and https://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/blit.htmPascal’s wager — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares: https://amzn.to/49gpPW1ALSO MENTIONEDDonald Rumsfeld, Department of Defense news briefing, February 12, 2002 (“known knowns”) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are_unknown_unknowns Errol Morris, The Unknown Known (2013), the Rumsfeld documentary — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unknown_KnownAs 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. ShammamiProduced by: Jesse FordEditor: David Justin MartinOriginal Music: Shane Patrick FordSound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul BennettGraphics: Semi:FormalFilm/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PRPodcast PR: Tink Media (Shreya Sharma and Holly Brown)Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma WrightAdditional Camera and Audio: Tyler Copenhaver, Backlot Studios, Elliot UriahSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 him. Ed Simon says the whole thing is a way of never changing anything. And I put the Bill Gates problem to Richard: taxed and spent democratically, or Gates decides?Also: that time our ancestors nearly went extinct, Pulvermacher’s electric chain and the Singularity Summit I should have attended. 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.comMany of our full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with our guests: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMediaA Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionAgoric Mediahttps://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmediahttps://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmediahttps://agoricmedia.substack.com/https://www.agoricmedia.comWondermindhttps://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/https://www.wondermind.com/Host and Creator: Sean King O'Gradyhttps://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/https://seankingogrady.substack.com/Guests:Richard Yetter Chappell — Professor of Philosophy, University of Miami / Author of the blog Good Thoughts — https://www.goodthoughts.blog/Émile Torres — Philosopher and historian of science / Author, Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation — https://www.realtimetechpocalypse.com/Ed Simon — Writer, cultural critic, and professor at Carnegie Mellon / Author, The Dove and the Dragon: A Cultural History of the Apocalypse — https://amzn.to/4dVMYQbMalo Bourgon — CEO, Machine Intelligence Research Institute — https://intelligence.orgOther works and things mentioned:Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon and Anthropic (Feb 2026) — NPR/WBUR report: https://www.wbur.org/npr/nx-s1-5725327/pentagon-anthropic-hegseth-safetyThe New York Post on effective altruism and newsrooms (Sept 2026), drawing on Semafor's Dec 2025 report on the Tarbell Center — https://nypost.com/2026/05/14/media/cult-like-effective-altruism-spreading-its-message-among-the-influential-with-80-journalists-embedded-at-top-news-orgs/The Nation, David Futrelle on effective altruism (Sept 23, 2026) — https://www.thenation.com/article/society/effective-altruism-trump-ai/The Economist cover story on effective altruism (early Oct 2026; syndicated as "Effective altruism conquered the world, and may yet end it") — https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/10/01/effective-altruism-is-this-centurys-biggest-ideaRethink Priorities, how many Americans have heard of effective altruism (2022) — https://rethinkpriorities.org/research-area/how-many-people-have-heard-of-effective-altruism/On the ideas:Hu et al., "Genomic inference of a severe human bottleneck during the Early to Middle Pleistocene transition," Science (Aug 31, 2023) — https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487Bentham's Bulldog, the insects post (Substack, Sept 2026) — newsletter: https://benthams.substack.com/p/insects-matter-more-than-peopleRichard Yetter Chappell, "Babies, Bathwater, and Effective Altruism" (Good Thoughts) — https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/babies-bathwater-and-effective-altruismJeremy Bentham on animals, "Can they suffer?" — https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2022/03/18/bentham-on-animals/Jeremy Bentham's auto-icon, UCL — https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bentham-project/who-was-jeremy-bentham/auto-iconPulvermacher's chain, Science Museum Group collection — https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co136729On the cult question:The EA Forum (where the movement argues with itself in public) — https://forum.effectivealtruism.orgTime, Charlotte Alter (Feb 2023), on women's accounts of sexual harassment in parts of the EA community — https://time.com/6252617/effective-altruism-sexual-harassment/The Centre for Effective Altruism's response — https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/XxXnPoGQ2eKsQx3FE/cea-s-response-to-sexual-harassmentEffective Ventures UK board statement on the resignation — https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/9JCkkjKMNL4Hmg4qP/ev-uk-board-statement-on-owen-s-resignationEffective Ventures' investigation and its findings — https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/4CBoJ5jgmGfdMFnAE/ev-investigation-into-owen-and-community-healthOn the money:Time, "Effective Altruist Leaders Were Repeatedly Warned About Sam Bankman-Fried Years Before FTX Collapsed" (Charlotte Alter, March 2023) — https://time.com/6262810/sam-bankman-fried-effective-altruism-alameda-ftx/EA Forum discussion of it: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/b83Zkz4amoaQC5Hpd/time-article-discussion-effective-altruist-leaders-were)The Singularity Summit (2006–2012) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_SummitThe AI super PACs: "The AI influence network's power players," Axios (Feb 27, 2026) — https://www.axios.com/2026/02/27/ai-influence-power-players · "Anthropic Puts $20 Million Into a Super PAC Operation to Counter OpenAI," Election Law Blog — https://electionlawblog.org/2026/anthropic-puts-20-million-into-a-super-pac-operation-to-counter-openai/Fredric Jameson, "It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism" — https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii21/articles/fredric-jameson-future-cityOn the good it's done:Scott Alexander, "In Continued Defense of Effective Altruism" (Astral Codex Ten, 2023) — https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-continued-defense-of-effectiveGiveDirectly — https://www.givedirectly.orgAlso mentioned:Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies (2025) — https://amzn.to/49gpPW1Margaret Wertheim, The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet (1999), recommended by listener Corey Perla — https://link.amazon/B0c9FUtS7As 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. ShammamiProduced by: Jesse FordEditor: David Justin MartinOriginal Music: Shane Patrick FordSound Mix: Mike Regan and Paul BennettGraphics: Semi:FormalFilm/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PRPodcast PR: Tink Media (Shreya Sharma)Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma WrightAdditional Camera and Audio: Tyler Copenhaver, Backlot Studios Special Thanks: Caitlin Yardley, Mike Levine, Our Listener with Concerns about the Last EpisodeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 behind when they lost their faith, and argues that the promise of a cosmic utopia is how the people building AI justify the harm it’s causing now. Writer Ed Simon places EA in the tradition of Bentham and Mill. Journalist Dorian Lynskey, author of Everything Must Go, on the radical empathy that first drew him to it, and how it turned toward longtermism and Sam Bankman-Fried. Philosopher Dr. Marcus Arvan asks whether “doing the most good” is even a coherent idea, and whether human beings are capable of real altruism at all.Then Simone and Malcolm Collins, the pronatalist authors and podcasters who believe effective altruism hasn’t gone far enough. They call it Hard EA. We talk about why they believe future people matter as much as anyone alive today, why demographic collapse scares them more than anything on the Doomsday Clock, and the question nearly everyone asked me when I said I was interviewing them: aren’t they eugenicists?Also: Dune and the Litany Against Fear, the Butlerian Jihad, mosquito nets (so many mosquito nets), the Rapture, polygenic embryo screening, what Claude made of the Collinses’ book, Peter Thiel and the Antichrist, Gurren Lagann, Pantheon (again), and how any of us survive Thanksgiving.Everyone in this story thinks they’re saving the future. That’s what makes it so hard to talk about, and so important. And if you’re part of the effective altruism community and think we got something wrong: GET AHOLD OF US. We want to hear from you.Next week, Part Two: The Dark Enlightenment. We follow the other branch of the fork, to the people for whom the end of the world isn’t something to prevent, but a doorway.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.comOur full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with Dr. Amy Levy, Émile Torres, Dr. Joel Gold and Ian Gold, PhD., and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMediaA Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionAgoric Media https://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/Guests:Émile Torres — Philosopher and historian of science / Author, Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation — https://www.realtimetechpocalypse.com/Ed Simon — Writer, cultural critic, and professor at Carnegie Mellon / Author, The Dove and the Dragon: A Cultural History of the Apocalypse — https://amzn.to/4dVMYQbDorian Lynskey — Journalist / Author, Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World — https://amzn.to/42ISDD1Dr. Marcus Arvan — Chair and Professor of Philosophy, University of Tampa — Author, Neurofunctional Prudence and Morality — https://link.amazon/B05vK59aaSimone and Malcolm Collins — Authors and podcasters / Authors, The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion — https://link.amazon/B00hVgEeOOther works and things mentioned:Frank Herbert, Dune (1965), the Litany Against Fear and the Butlerian Jihad — https://link.amazon/B09GICw7gUtilitarianism: Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/Effective altruism and longtermism: Toby Ord: The Precipice –  https://link.amazon/B0cDl0lZjWilliam MacAskill — What We Owe the Future – https://amzn.to/4fqeepBÉmile Torres & Timnit Gebru, “The TESCREAL Bundle: Eugenics and the Promise of Utopia through Artificial General Intelligence” (First Monday) — https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/13636Dispensationalism and the Rapture — https://www.britannica.com/topic/dispensationalism Sam Bankman-Fried and the collapse of FTX — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Bankman-FriedThe Doomsday Clock, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 2026 statement — https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/2026-statement/Polygenic embryo screening: American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics statement on polygenic risk scores for embryo selection — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38393332/The Nazi “euthanasia” program — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/euthanasia-programThe Man in the High Castle (Prime Video) — https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0MJFK5BDOS4K13C3WBUIB7NY98?ref_=atv_dp_share_cu_rGurren Lagann — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurren_LagannPantheon — https://youtu.be/wTgYeETwgKQPeter Thiel’s lectures on the Antichrist — https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/10/10/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-leaked/The Most Human Human — our TESCREAL story with Émile Torres — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000777856826Dreaming Machines – our John West episode, on friction and the frictionless society — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000788829733A Great Loss to the Universe (Part Three) — last week’s episode, with David Benatar — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000792369838Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis (Season 1) — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-psychosis/id1844631307As 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: Tyler Copenhaver, Backlot Studios See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.