Superhuman - From Engineered Desire to Engineered Consent

 This Episode explores how a century of manipulation techniques became smartphone features, through conversations with Jean Cavendish, a clinical psychiatrist who spent decades helping people escape cult programming. Jean died on November 17, 2025, a month after recording. This episode is a dedication to her life and work.

The episode features testimony from Lori Schott about how Meta targets children's insecurities, and Taj Je...

How did corporations get more constitutional rights than your children?

When a bookshelf tips over and harms one child, there's an immediate recall. When platform algorithms push suicide content to depressed teens, they claim First Amendment protection.

To understand how we got here, Aaron traces the path from Jefferson's worst fears to today's reality. In 1886, a court reporter's unauthorized footnote gave corpor...

Twenty-six words written in 1996 gave platforms legal immunity. One court decision in 1997 turned that immunity into a business model.

Attorney Carrie Goldberg shares what it's like representing hundreds of victims, from sextortion to cyberbullying to suicide, and watching nearly every case slam into the same wall. Brett Allred and Kristin Bride reveal what the absence of "good faith" looks like when platforms know th...

I wasn’t planning to write or record this week, but the one-year angelversary and a lonely holiday got under my skin, and I couldn’t help myself. What follows is a bit of a spiral: a walk through the same spiral logic so many of us get pulled into, where fear and outrage compound, the feed “finishes” the story for us, and the loudest narratives start to feel like reality.

This is a companion episode to the main arc of the season, pa...

In “Muted Cases,” Aaron recounts the days after Avery’s death—the evidence scramble, and the slow, brutal realization that what the community most needs to understand can be narrowed, negotiated, and effectively erased from the official record. 

The episode expands beyond one family’s loss into a repeatable pattern: teen networks, platform mechanics, and legal structures that struggle to name what’s happening in plain language. Thro...

A bill can say “child safety” on the front and still protect the companies causing the harm. In Wolves and Children, Aaron traces how lobbying, legal misdirection, and manufactured public pressure shape the laws parents are told to trust. Featuring Brody Mullins, Julia Duncan, Sarah Gardner, and Lennon Torres.

Links and Resources

Brody Mullins

The Wolves of K Street Podcast

A companion podcast exploring lobbying, corporate influence, a...

In the season finale of Superhuman, Aaron brings on four guests for a closer look at the cracks in the system, at the incentives that put them there, and why remembering is the first step to fixing them.

Click here to watch a collection of video clips of Avery set to the music from Koyaanisqatsi.

Guests

Danica Noble www.electdanica.com

Brian Boland www.delta-fund.org

Julianna Arnold https://parentsrise.org/

Reiko Callner

Music

Joachim Cood...