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 Wondermind and Agoric Media

and

Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez

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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, but we will keep you posted on the results.

Thanks again, and stay tuned to this feed for upcoming updates on Season Two!!

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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.com

From Executive Producers Mandy Teefey and Selena Gomez.

A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production

Featuring:

- 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)

This is a wild clip about Parasocial Relationships (Cambridge Dictionary's 2025 Word of the Year), in which the new anchors begin talking about their viewers' imagined parasocial relationships with... them: https://youtu.be/HVdOOWh31W4?si=8GojrfE2XcONYX3C&t=6

Here’s a recently published paper on ‘AI Associated Psychosis’, which seems like a fair descriptor, based on clinical research – one of few published thus far:

https://innovationscns.com/youre-not-crazy-a-case-of-new-onset-ai-associated-psychosis/

Don't forget to check out the book that started it all! Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness (The Truman Show Delusion and Other Strange Beliefs): https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Suspicious-Minds/Joel-Gold/9781439181577

This episode was made by:

Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy

Editor: Joe Kell

Assistant Editor: David Justin Martin

Graphic Design and Animation: Semi:Formal

Title Design: Lucas Grassmay

Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR

Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma)

Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright

Social Assets: Myrkia Maguire

Trailer Edit: Crater

Directed and Created by Sean King O’Grady

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.