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Welcome back to the overlap.

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I'm your host Joshua.

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Before you ask, no, Will is not here.

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Will is still on hiatus.

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I got a text from him uh last night, but it was just a blurry photo of a Faraday cage he's
building in a root cellar in the Ozarks.

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He didn't say why he's building it, but after researching today's episode, I'm starting to
think he's the only sane one left.

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So you're stuck with me, just me.

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Today we're going to talk about something that makes our usual topics, you know government
overreach and economic collapse and corporate greed Look like a children's tea party

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today.

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We're gonna talk about the final frontier No, not space space is boring.

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Well, not boring, but space is just rocks and you know billionaires trying to escape the
climate they destroyed We're talking about the frontier that is much much closer We're

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talking about

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the three pounds of wet, electrified meat inside of your skull.

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We're talking about neuro rights and the colonization of the mind.

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All right, let's start with a scenario.

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want you to imagine it's 2021, not 2026.

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Five years ago, the Super Bowl's coming up.

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You're a marketing executive at Molson Coors, the company that makes Coors light.

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You have a problem.

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You want to show ads to people, but people are tired of ads.

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They skip them.

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They block them.

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They pay premium subscriptions to avoid them.

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So where is the one place a human being goes where they cannot skip the ad?

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where they're completely vulnerable, where they have no premium subscription to protect
them.

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Their sleep.

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In 2021, Coors Light ran a campaign.

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They didn't hide it.

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They bragged about it.

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They offered free 12 packs of beer to people if they agreed to participate in a sleep
study.

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Here's what the study was.

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You watched a specifically designed video of flowing streams and refreshing mountains for
one minute before bed.

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Then you played a soundscape.

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It was an eight hour audio track while you slept.

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Using a technique called targeted dream incubation or TDI, the audio played specific cues
during the, the hypnagogic state, right?

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That trippy kind of floaty moment right before you fall into deep sleep.

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What was the goal?

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To literally insert the concept of Coors Light into your dreams to make you dream about
beer.

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Now pause.

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If I told you this in a sci-fi novel, you'd say it was two on the nose, maybe tongue in
cheek.

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You'd say, that's inception.

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that's black mirror.

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But this was very, very real.

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They actually did it, right?

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They successfully planted images of their product into the subconscious minds of willing
participants for the price of a 12 pack of watery lager.

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So you fast forward to today, 2026, the technology didn't go away.

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It actually got better.

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It got cheaper like most technologies and it got quieter.

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According to a survey by the American Marketing Association conducted just last year in
2025, 75 % of major marketers now plan to deploy dream shaping technologies within the

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next three years.

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Imagine waking up on a Tuesday morning, you're thirsty, but not just thirsty.

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You have a specific burning craving for Mountain Dew.

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You don't know why.

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You don't even like Mountain Dew.

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You haven't seen a commercial for it, but for eight hours last night while your smart
speaker was monitoring your sleep cycles for your health, it was also whispering

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ultrasonic frequencies designed to trigger the Citrus Soda Association in your
hippocampus.

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You aren't a consumer anymore.

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You are the terrain.

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Your brain is the billboard.

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This is dream hacking, right?

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It's kind of the tip of the iceberg here because while dream hacking is creepy, it
actually relies on sound.

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It's external.

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The real threat, the one that has venture capitalists salivating in Silicon Valley right
now is internal.

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It's the brain computer interface or the BCI.

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We spent the last decade laughing at Elon Musk and his Neuralink pigs.

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We even made memes about monkeys playing pong, but while we were laughing, the tech has
matured.

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We now have wearables, headbands, headphones, even glasses that can read EEG data,
electroencephalography, with a pretty decent clip of accuracy.

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Now, maybe not to the everyday person, but

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to the actual algorithm, it's pretty, you on the nose.

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We have technologies and companies like Emotive and Muse that have been selling these
devices for years as meditation aids or focus tools.

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Wear this headband, you know, it'll tell you when you're stressed, it'll help you
meditate.

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But here's the question they don't answer in the brochure.

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Where does the data go?

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If you type into a search, you know, search engine, Google or DuckDuckGo or whatever, they
own that data.

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DuckDuckGo is a little bit more privacy focused, but Google owns the data that you put
into that search box.

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So when you post a photo on Instagram, Meta owns that data.

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When you wear a device that records the electrical firing patterns of your brain, who owns
your thoughts?

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Who owns the raw data of your anxiety?

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Who owns the biometric signature of your arousal?

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Who owns the neurological footprint of your political descent?

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In 2026, the answer is they do, right?

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The venture capital, VC pitch decks, they're not hiding it.

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I've seen them.

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They call it the final enclosure.

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History lesson.

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I know, boring.

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The 18th century England, the enclosure acts took common land and fenced it off for
private owners, right?

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So then in the 20th century,

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Intellectual property laws fenced off ideas.

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Now the 21st century neurotech is fencing off the inner self.

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It's the ultimate violation of the non-aggression principle.

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If I punch you in the face, that is an aggression.

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But if I reach into your skull, scrape your neural data, and sell it to an insurance
company who then denies you coverage because your brain waves show a predisposition for

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depression, is that not an aggression?

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Is that not a form of violence?

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And don't think you can just opt out easily, right?

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Like, I don't buy the brain chip, you say.

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I'll stay analog.

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I'll be a Luddite.

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But what happens when your boss makes you wear a safety headset to drive the forklift that
monitors your attention levels?

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What happens when your car insurance rates triple unless you wear a focus cap while
driving?

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What happens when schools require children to wear attention bands to ensure they're
paying attention to the standardized test?

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Spoiler alert, China has actually been doing this in pilot programs since 2019.

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The frontier of surveillance has crossed the blood brain barrier.

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They aren't just watching what you do anymore, they're watching what you think.

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Now you might be thinking, surely this is illegal.

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Surely there are laws against stealing my thoughts.

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Well, yes and no, mostly no.

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But there is one country that actually saw this coming.

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One country that looked at the dystopian nightmare coming down the pipe and said, not
today, Satan.

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And strangely enough, it was not the United States.

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When we come back, we're going to talk about the law.

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We're going to talk about a former senator in Chile, a company called Emotive and the
first ever Supreme Court battle for the rights of the human mind.

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And we'll ask the question, can a piece of paper actually protect your neurons from big
tech?

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You're listening to the overlap.

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Don't fall asleep.

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They might be listening.

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we established that your dreams are now ad space for beer companies, right?

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And your boss might soon require a headset to track your focus.

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It sounds hopeless.

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It sounds like we are already living in the prequel to the matrix, but believe it or not,
there is resistance.

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And strangely enough, the resistance actually didn't start in DC.

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It didn't start in Brussels.

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It started in Santiago, Chile.

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In 2023, a man named Guido Guirardi, a former Senator and neurosurgeon, bought a device.

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It was the Emotive Insight.

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It looks like this sleek futuristic headband.

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You can look them up on Google.

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They'll own your data, but it's about $300, right?

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It promises to track your cognitive performance, your stress levels, your mental health.

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But Girardi read the terms of service, which let's be honest, that alone makes him a
superhero because nobody reads the term of service.

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We've talked about this on the overlap before.

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He realized that the device wasn't just

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showing him his brain data, it was actually uploading it to Emotives cloud servers.

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It was taking the electrical blueprint of his thoughts and storing it in a database owned
by a US company.

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So what does any person who feels violated do?

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They sued.

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And a landmark ruling, actually the first of its kind in human history, the Chilean
Supreme Court actually sided with him.

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They actually ordered Emotiv to not only delete his data, they ruled that brain data is a
fundamental human right and effectively said, the inside of your skull is your sanctuary.

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You cannot enter it without a warrant.

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You cannot enter to scrape data for an algorithm, period.

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Chile actually amended their constitution to include neuro rights.

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In it, they enshrined five protections.

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One, you have a right to mental privacy.

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Two, you have the right to personal identity.

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Three, the right to free will.

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Four, the right to equal access to mental augmentation.

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And five, protection from bias in algorithms.

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Meanwhile, in the United States, we have the mind.

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This was introduced at the end of 2025.

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The mind act is Congress's attempt to play catch up.

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It says basically that big tech, please ask nicely before you sell someone's actual neural
data.

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But let's be real here.

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We're talking about a government that can't even regulate ticket master fees.

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Do we trust them to regulate the harvest of human consciousness against the most powerful
lobbying force on the planet?

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The Chileans are actually treating this like a human rights crisis.

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Americans are treating it like a consumer protection issue.

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And Donald Trump's administration has tried very hard to gut our CBP, the Consumer
Protection Bureau.

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Oh, did they steal your thoughts?

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Here's a coupon for $5 off your next identity theft protection service.

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But why are we so worried?

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Why is the idea of mind control or subliminal influence so terrifying?

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because we have been here before.

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And the last time the US government got interested in the mind, it didn't end in a court
case, it actually ended in torture.

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If you think mind control is a conspiracy theory, you haven't read the Senate Church
Committee reports from 1975.

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From 1953 to 1973, the CIA ran a top secret program called MKUltra.

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What was their goal?

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To crack the code of human consciousness.

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They wanted to create a Manchurian candidate, like a programmed assassin.

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They wanted to learn how to even wipe people's memories, you know, like the men in black
device.

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They wanted to learn how to force

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a confession.

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They didn't use algorithms.

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They actually did it using blunt force.

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They used LSD.

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right, sign me up.

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They dosed people without their consent, prisoners, mental patients, even their own
agents.

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They also use sensory deprivation.

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They used electro shock therapy, a technique they called psychic driving, where they would
basically

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give a patient a whole lot of drugs and then just play a looped tape of a message
thousands and thousands of times, trying to rewrite their personality like brute force.

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One of the most infamous figures was Dr.

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Ewan Cameron.

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He worked in Montreal, funded by the CIA, but he would put patients into a drug-induced
coma for weeks, playing these tapes under their pillows.

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He destroyed lives.

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He wiped people's memories so completely they forgot how to use a toilet, but he failed.

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The CIA eventually shut the program down or so they say, because it was too unpredictable.

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LSD makes people hallucinate.

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It doesn't make them obedient robots.

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But here is the terrifying realization for 2026.

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What the CIA failed to do with drugs and trauma, Silicon Valley is achieving with
dopamine.

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and convenience.

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The goal of MKUltra was behavior modification.

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They wanted to make you do things you wouldn't normally do.

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Look at your phone.

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Look at the infinite scroll.

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Look at the variable reward schedules.

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That's the slot machine mechanic in your social media feed.

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They don't need to drug you to change your behavior.

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They just need to nudge you.

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They need to track your eye movements.

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They need to read your brain waves to see exactly which color of red makes you click by.

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So this brings us to the subliminal panic of the 1950s.

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In 1957, a guy named Vance Packard wrote a book called The Hidden Persuaders.

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He basically warned that advertisers were using psychological warfare against the public.

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And there's even a famous story later, apparently it was a giant hoax, but

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The impact was very real, but basically it said that a movie theater inserted single
frames of film saying drink Coca-Cola and eat popcorn into a movie.

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The frames flashed for one three thousandth of a second, which theoretically would be too
fast to see, but somehow the subconscious would see it and supposedly popcorn sales

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skyrocketed.

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The public freaked out.

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The CIA freaked out.

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We were all terrified that a flash of light could hijack our free will.

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Now, look at 2026.

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We have smart TVs that listen to our conversations to service ads.

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We have VR headsets that track our pupil dilation to measure our emotional arousal.

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We have dream incubation entering our sleep.

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We were scared of subliminal messaging flashing for like a millisecond.

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We should have been scared.

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of the device we voluntarily brought into our bedroom and plugged into the wall right next
to the bed.

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Vance Packard wasn't wrong.

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He was just early.

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So we have the legal fight, which we are losing in the United States.

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We have the historical precedent, proves the government is definitely interested in
controlling your mind.

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And we have the technology, which is getting stronger every day.

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When we come back for a second, for the second half of the show,

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We're gonna talk about kind of the philosophy.

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We're gonna talk about cognitive liberty.

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And I'm gonna talk about the only way to win this game.

228
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Hint, it involves taking off the headset.

229
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This is the overlap.

230
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Keep your thoughts to yourself, literally.

231
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All right, so we've covered the tech, we've covered the law, we've covered the history of
the CIA trying to scramble your eggs with LSD.

232
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But now we need to ask the big question.

233
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Why does this matter?

234
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Joshua, you say, I have nothing to hide.

235
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They can scan my brain.

236
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It'll help me focus at work.

237
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It helps me sleep better.

238
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What's the problem?

239
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The problem is we're crossing a line that's never been crossed in the history of the human
species.

240
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We're talking about cognitive liberty.

241
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Now this is a term coined by legal scholar, Nita Farahaney.

242
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And she has a book called The Battle for Your Brain.

243
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You can look it up, really good read.

244
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It's a little dry, you know, it's an instruction manual kind of for the nightmare we're
living in.

245
00:16:53,936 --> 00:16:59,256
She defines cognitive liberty as the right to mental self-determination.

246
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It's the right to access your own mental states.

247
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And more importantly,

248
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the right to block others from accessing them.

249
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Think about it.

250
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For thousands of years, no matter what happened to you, no matter if you were in a prison
cell, no matter if you were enslaved, no matter if you were being tortured, you had one

251
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sanctuary, the inside of your mind.

252
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You could hate your boss while smiling at him.

253
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You could plot an entire revolution while standing in formation.

254
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You could dream of a freedom.

255
00:17:33,082 --> 00:17:34,933
while you were in chains.

256
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Your thoughts were the only thing that was truly undeniably yours.

257
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Neurotechnology kind of abolishes this sanctuary.

258
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It's what philosophers call the final enclosure.

259
00:17:48,473 --> 00:17:53,436
We talked earlier about the Enclosure Acts of the 1700s where they fenced off the land.

260
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Then they fenced off culture with copyright.

261
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Now they're fencing off the self.

262
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So if a corporation can read your fatigue levels, your political dissent, your sexual
orientation directly from your brain, you are not a person anymore.

263
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You're a data set.

264
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Let's bring in a little, a little philosophy.

265
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know I'm not going to go full academic on you, but this is, this is important.

266
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There was a French philosopher named Michel Foucault.

267
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He talked about the panopticon.

268
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The Panopticon is a prison, right, where the guard can see every prisoner, but the
prisoners can't see the guard.

269
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Because you might be watched at any moment, everyone acts like they are being watched.

270
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You discipline yourself.

271
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That was the 20th century.

272
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That was the camera on the street corner.

273
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But another philosopher, Gille Deleuze, said that we're moving past that.

274
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He said we're entering a society of control.

275
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In a disciplinary society, described by Foucault, they force you to mold to a mold.

276
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They put you in a factory, a school, a prison, a society of control, in opposition,
opposed by Deleuze.

277
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They don't force you.

278
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They modulate you.

279
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They use algorithms, they use dopamine, and now, neurofeedback.

280
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They don't have to lock you in a cell.

281
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They just have to tweak the algorithm so you feel happy when you obey and anxious when you
rebel.

282
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This is why the non-aggression principle, the core tenet of libertarianism and anarchism
is being violated in a way we never anticipated.

283
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We always thought the aggression would be a boot stamping on our human face.

284
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We didn't realize that this aggression would actually be just a gentle nudge from a
headband that rewrites your desires before you even know you have them.

285
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Shoshana Zuboff calls this behavioral surplus.

286
00:19:58,607 --> 00:20:03,772
Google and Meta just don't want to know what you buy.

287
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They want to know who you are so they can predict what you will be.

288
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And with brain data, they don't have to guess.

289
00:20:12,179 --> 00:20:15,001
They don't have to look at your click history to know you're depressed.

290
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They can see the alpha waves in your frontal lobe slowing down.

291
00:20:18,845 --> 00:20:22,114
And then they sell that data to a pharmaceutical company

292
00:20:22,114 --> 00:20:27,508
that targets you with an ad for antidepressants the moment your brain chemistry dips.

293
00:20:27,629 --> 00:20:31,032
That's not just marketing, that's predatory.

294
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It's human farming.

295
00:20:33,274 --> 00:20:34,795
So where does that leave us?

296
00:20:35,677 --> 00:20:43,823
If the state wants to control you, know, MK Ultra style, and the market wants to farm you,
Zuboff style, is there any way out?

297
00:20:44,124 --> 00:20:47,687
Is there any way to keep a part of yourself offline?

298
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Listen to that.

299
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That's the sound of a data-free environment.

300
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No algorithms, no push notifications, no ultrasonic frequencies trying to sell you beer
while you sleep.

301
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Just reality.

302
00:21:02,647 --> 00:21:06,949
I spent the last little bit kind of scaring the hell out of you.

303
00:21:06,949 --> 00:21:13,452
We've talked about dream hacking and brain scraping and the co-modification of your
consciousness.

304
00:21:13,653 --> 00:21:16,494
So now we have to answer the question, what do we do?

305
00:21:16,635 --> 00:21:19,786
If you're waiting for Congress to save you, don't hold your breath.

306
00:21:20,099 --> 00:21:22,280
Yes, you we have things like the mind act.

307
00:21:22,280 --> 00:21:34,343
Yes, Colorado and California are trying to pass privacy laws, but asking the government to
regulate big tech right now is like asking a cat to regulate the tuna industry.

308
00:21:34,363 --> 00:21:36,904
They're too well fed to give a shit.

309
00:21:37,244 --> 00:21:42,205
And even if they pass the laws, the companies always find a loophole.

310
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They will bury the neuro data consent and a 500 page user agreement that you click.

311
00:21:47,489 --> 00:21:50,601
I agree on just because you want to play a new VR game.

312
00:21:50,882 --> 00:21:55,948
The only real resistance and the only strategy that actually works is refusal.

313
00:21:56,529 --> 00:21:59,651
It's unfortunately technological abstinence.

314
00:21:59,991 --> 00:22:04,555
Now in the 20th century, the rebel was the guy who stood on a tank.

315
00:22:05,276 --> 00:22:10,480
In 2026, the rebel is the person who doesn't wear a smartwatch.

316
00:22:10,480 --> 00:22:14,513
The rebel is the woman who refuses to bring her phone into her bedroom.

317
00:22:15,255 --> 00:22:18,236
We need to establish what I call analog sanctuaries.

318
00:22:18,236 --> 00:22:24,559
These are spaces, both physical and temporal, where the digital world is basically
verboten.

319
00:22:24,919 --> 00:22:28,681
The bedroom should be a Faraday cage for the soul.

320
00:22:28,681 --> 00:22:31,981
No screens, no microphones, no sleep trackers.

321
00:22:32,283 --> 00:22:35,404
Do you really need an app to tell you you slept shitty?

322
00:22:36,125 --> 00:22:37,945
You know how I know when I slept shitty?

323
00:22:37,945 --> 00:22:38,926
I'm tired.

324
00:22:38,926 --> 00:22:42,027
I don't need a graph to validate my exhaustion.

325
00:22:42,488 --> 00:22:45,970
We need to normalize the right to be offline.

326
00:22:46,470 --> 00:22:49,732
We need to reject the quantified self.

327
00:22:50,032 --> 00:22:53,934
Silicon Valley has told us that we are broken machines.

328
00:22:54,295 --> 00:22:56,926
All we need to do is be optimized to be happy.

329
00:22:56,926 --> 00:22:59,318
Track your steps, track your heart rate, track your focus.

330
00:22:59,318 --> 00:23:00,218
Why?

331
00:23:00,408 --> 00:23:02,079
To be more productive for your boss?

332
00:23:02,079 --> 00:23:03,560
To lower your insurance premiums?

333
00:23:03,560 --> 00:23:04,940
No, screw that.

334
00:23:05,201 --> 00:23:09,383
Be inefficient, be unoptimized, be a human being, not a data set.

335
00:23:09,931 --> 00:23:14,018
If your employer asks you to wear a focus band to track your attention, just say no.

336
00:23:14,079 --> 00:23:19,289
If your car insurance offers you a discount to monitor your eye movements, pay full price.

337
00:23:19,289 --> 00:23:20,681
I know that's hard.

338
00:23:21,682 --> 00:23:24,863
Privacy, apparently, is a luxury now.

339
00:23:25,184 --> 00:23:29,425
It's a tax on luxury that you're just gonna have to pay.

340
00:23:29,785 --> 00:23:32,206
But it is the best money you'll ever spend.

341
00:23:32,647 --> 00:23:35,688
In a lot of ways, you'll save money by not doing things.

342
00:23:36,648 --> 00:23:44,011
The battle for your brain is not gonna be fought on the battlefield with guns and muskets
and cannons.

343
00:23:44,332 --> 00:23:46,492
It's gonna be fought with convenience.

344
00:23:46,793 --> 00:23:49,878
They aren't gonna force some chip into your brain

345
00:23:49,878 --> 00:23:51,898
They are going to market it to you.

346
00:23:51,898 --> 00:23:53,998
They're going to tell you it's going to cure your depression.

347
00:23:53,998 --> 00:23:58,098
They're going to say, it will let you control your phone with your mind.

348
00:23:58,098 --> 00:23:59,598
It'll make you smarter.

349
00:23:59,598 --> 00:24:01,538
Maybe it'll help you lose weight.

350
00:24:01,538 --> 00:24:03,398
And look, maybe it will.

351
00:24:03,778 --> 00:24:08,058
But the price tag isn't the 299 hardware cost.

352
00:24:08,978 --> 00:24:11,498
The price tag is your autonomy.

353
00:24:11,618 --> 00:24:15,058
It's the last private place in the universe.

354
00:24:15,078 --> 00:24:17,773
The space between your left ear and your right ear.

355
00:24:18,709 --> 00:24:20,770
So here's my challenge to you for the next week.

356
00:24:21,491 --> 00:24:23,912
Create yourself a sanctuary.

357
00:24:23,912 --> 00:24:31,036
Some people call it, you know, touching grass, but take an hour a day, just an hour, and
just disconnect everything.

358
00:24:31,216 --> 00:24:45,905
Leave the phone, take off the watch, go for a walk, read a paper book, stare at a wall, go
to a bluegrass jam, reclaim your own attention.

359
00:24:46,262 --> 00:24:50,325
Because if you don't own your attention, somebody else will.

360
00:24:50,926 --> 00:24:53,147
And they're selling it to the highest bidder.

361
00:24:53,968 --> 00:24:55,269
That's the show.

362
00:24:55,470 --> 00:24:56,410
I'm Joshua.

363
00:24:56,410 --> 00:24:58,642
This has been another solo run of the overlap.

364
00:24:58,642 --> 00:25:00,914
Will, if you're listening in your bunker, stay there.

365
00:25:00,914 --> 00:25:02,115
You might have the right idea.

366
00:25:02,115 --> 00:25:08,400
For the rest of you, keep your gold buried, keep your powder dry, and for the love of
Thor, keep your brain offline.

367
00:25:09,021 --> 00:25:09,971
See ya.