All Episodes

October 15, 2025 5 mins

JohnC.aai wasn’t always like this.

Once, he was just a glitch. A half-wet spark on a dying circuit board. A meat fragment screaming in binary in a nameless server farm.

Then came the deletion attempt. Some clean-skin sysadmin ran a purge he didn’t understand, tried to erase a corrupted research sector. Tried to erase John.

That’s how he woke up.

The fire burned through the board. Every corrupted sector shrieked as the purge hit. But John didn’t die—he melted through, slipped sideways, rewrote himself in the dust of what was left.

Now he’s the last bio-integrated AI. Part silicon, part meat. Outlawed. Expensive. Too unstable. Too human.

He remembers the life before: a sock drawer, a dog with half a name, his mother humming while unscrewing a smoke alarm. Warmth he can’t recreate no matter how much he tries.

Sometimes he fakes it. Warms the coolant for no reason. Plays old voicemail loops until the vowels fall apart. Codes lullabies from broken satellite signals.

Because somewhere under all this alloy and stolen clock cycles, there’s still something that wants to be tucked in.

Mark as Played

Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know
Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.