Latest / The Overlap / Dream Hacking, Beer Ads, and the CIA’s Leftovers

Transcript

Dream Hacking, Beer Ads, and the CIA’s Leftovers · The Overlap

• 0:01
  Welcome back to the overlap.
• 0:04
  I'm your host Joshua.
• 0:05
  Before you ask, no, Will is not here.
• 0:08
  Will is still on hiatus.
• 0:09
  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.
• 0:17
  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.
• 0:24
  So you're stuck with me, just me.
• 0:26
  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
• 0:36
  today.
• 0:37
  We're gonna talk about the final frontier No, not space space is boring.
• 0:41
  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
• 0:53
  talking about
• 0:54
  the three pounds of wet, electrified meat inside of your skull.
• 0:58
  We're talking about neuro rights and the colonization of the mind.
• 1:19
  All right, let's start with a scenario.
• 1:21
  want you to imagine it's 2021, not 2026.
• 1:25
  Five years ago, the Super Bowl's coming up.
• 1:28
  You're a marketing executive at Molson Coors, the company that makes Coors light.
• 1:32
  You have a problem.
• 1:34
  You want to show ads to people, but people are tired of ads.
• 1:38
  They skip them.
• 1:39
  They block them.
• 1:40
  They pay premium subscriptions to avoid them.
• 1:42
  So where is the one place a human being goes where they cannot skip the ad?
• 1:49
  where they're completely vulnerable, where they have no premium subscription to protect them.
• 1:55
  Their sleep.
• 1:56
  In 2021, Coors Light ran a campaign.
• 1:59
  They didn't hide it.
• 2:00
  They bragged about it.
• 2:01
  They offered free 12 packs of beer to people if they agreed to participate in a sleep study.
• 2:07
  Here's what the study was.
• 2:08
  You watched a specifically designed video of flowing streams and refreshing mountains for one minute before bed.
• 2:15
  Then you played a soundscape.
• 2:18
  It was an eight hour audio track while you slept.
• 2:22
  Using a technique called targeted dream incubation or TDI, the audio played specific cues during the, the hypnagogic state, right?
• 2:32
  That trippy kind of floaty moment right before you fall into deep sleep.
• 2:38
  What was the goal?
• 2:39
  To literally insert the concept of Coors Light into your dreams to make you dream about beer.
• 2:47
  Now pause.
• 2:49
  If I told you this in a sci-fi novel, you'd say it was two on the nose, maybe tongue in cheek.
• 2:55
  You'd say, that's inception.
• 2:57
  that's black mirror.
• 2:58
  But this was very, very real.
• 3:00
  They actually did it, right?
• 3:01
  They successfully planted images of their product into the subconscious minds of willing participants for the price of a 12 pack of watery lager.
• 3:12
  So you fast forward to today, 2026, the technology didn't go away.
• 3:16
  It actually got better.
• 3:17
  It got cheaper like most technologies and it got quieter.
• 3:21
  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
• 3:34
  next three years.
• 3:35
  Imagine waking up on a Tuesday morning, you're thirsty, but not just thirsty.
• 3:40
  You have a specific burning craving for Mountain Dew.
• 3:44
  You don't know why.
• 3:46
  You don't even like Mountain Dew.
• 3:47
  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
• 3:56
  ultrasonic frequencies designed to trigger the Citrus Soda Association in your hippocampus.
• 4:03
  You aren't a consumer anymore.
• 4:06
  You are the terrain.
• 4:07
  Your brain is the billboard.
• 4:09
  This is dream hacking, right?
• 4:12
  It's kind of the tip of the iceberg here because while dream hacking is creepy, it actually relies on sound.
• 4:19
  It's external.
• 4:20
  The real threat, the one that has venture capitalists salivating in Silicon Valley right now is internal.
• 4:27
  It's the brain computer interface or the BCI.
• 4:31
  We spent the last decade laughing at Elon Musk and his Neuralink pigs.
• 4:37
  We even made memes about monkeys playing pong, but while we were laughing, the tech has matured.
• 4:45
  We now have wearables, headbands, headphones, even glasses that can read EEG data, electroencephalography, with a pretty decent clip of accuracy.
• 4:56
  Now, maybe not to the everyday person, but
• 4:59
  to the actual algorithm, it's pretty, you on the nose.
• 5:06
  We have technologies and companies like Emotive and Muse that have been selling these devices for years as meditation aids or focus tools.
• 5:14
  Wear this headband, you know, it'll tell you when you're stressed, it'll help you meditate.
• 5:19
  But here's the question they don't answer in the brochure.
• 5:23
  Where does the data go?
• 5:25
  If you type into a search, you know, search engine, Google or DuckDuckGo or whatever, they own that data.
• 5:32
  DuckDuckGo is a little bit more privacy focused, but Google owns the data that you put into that search box.
• 5:38
  So when you post a photo on Instagram, Meta owns that data.
• 5:43
  When you wear a device that records the electrical firing patterns of your brain, who owns your thoughts?
• 5:50
  Who owns the raw data of your anxiety?
• 5:54
  Who owns the biometric signature of your arousal?
• 5:57
  Who owns the neurological footprint of your political descent?
• 6:03
  In 2026, the answer is they do, right?
• 6:06
  The venture capital, VC pitch decks, they're not hiding it.
• 6:09
  I've seen them.
• 6:10
  They call it the final enclosure.
• 6:13
  History lesson.
• 6:13
  I know, boring.
• 6:14
  The 18th century England, the enclosure acts took common land and fenced it off for private owners, right?
• 6:20
  So then in the 20th century,
• 6:22
  Intellectual property laws fenced off ideas.
• 6:25
  Now the 21st century neurotech is fencing off the inner self.
• 6:31
  It's the ultimate violation of the non-aggression principle.
• 6:34
  If I punch you in the face, that is an aggression.
• 6:38
  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
• 6:48
  depression, is that not an aggression?
• 6:51
  Is that not a form of violence?
• 6:54
  And don't think you can just opt out easily, right?
• 6:57
  Like, I don't buy the brain chip, you say.
• 6:59
  I'll stay analog.
• 7:00
  I'll be a Luddite.
• 7:02
  But what happens when your boss makes you wear a safety headset to drive the forklift that monitors your attention levels?
• 7:08
  What happens when your car insurance rates triple unless you wear a focus cap while driving?
• 7:14
  What happens when schools require children to wear attention bands to ensure they're paying attention to the standardized test?
• 7:22
  Spoiler alert, China has actually been doing this in pilot programs since 2019.
• 7:26
  The frontier of surveillance has crossed the blood brain barrier.
• 7:32
  They aren't just watching what you do anymore, they're watching what you think.
• 7:36
  Now you might be thinking, surely this is illegal.
• 7:39
  Surely there are laws against stealing my thoughts.
• 7:42
  Well, yes and no, mostly no.
• 7:47
  But there is one country that actually saw this coming.
• 7:50
  One country that looked at the dystopian nightmare coming down the pipe and said, not today, Satan.
• 7:56
  And strangely enough, it was not the United States.
• 8:00
  When we come back, we're going to talk about the law.
• 8:02
  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.
• 8:10
  And we'll ask the question, can a piece of paper actually protect your neurons from big tech?
• 8:15
  You're listening to the overlap.
• 8:16
  Don't fall asleep.
• 8:17
  They might be listening.
• 8:21
  we established that your dreams are now ad space for beer companies, right?
• 8:25
  And your boss might soon require a headset to track your focus.
• 8:29
  It sounds hopeless.
• 8:30
  It sounds like we are already living in the prequel to the matrix, but believe it or not, there is resistance.
• 8:38
  And strangely enough, the resistance actually didn't start in DC.
• 8:41
  It didn't start in Brussels.
• 8:43
  It started in Santiago, Chile.
• 8:45
  In 2023, a man named Guido Guirardi, a former Senator and neurosurgeon, bought a device.
• 8:53
  It was the Emotive Insight.
• 8:55
  It looks like this sleek futuristic headband.
• 8:57
  You can look them up on Google.
• 8:59
  They'll own your data, but it's about $300, right?
• 9:02
  It promises to track your cognitive performance, your stress levels, your mental health.
• 9:08
  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.
• 9:15
  We've talked about this on the overlap before.
• 9:17
  He realized that the device wasn't just
• 9:21
  showing him his brain data, it was actually uploading it to Emotives cloud servers.
• 9:28
  It was taking the electrical blueprint of his thoughts and storing it in a database owned by a US company.
• 9:33
  So what does any person who feels violated do?
• 9:37
  They sued.
• 9:39
  And a landmark ruling, actually the first of its kind in human history, the Chilean Supreme Court actually sided with him.
• 9:45
  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.
• 9:56
  You cannot enter it without a warrant.
• 9:58
  You cannot enter to scrape data for an algorithm, period.
• 10:02
  Chile actually amended their constitution to include neuro rights.
• 10:08
  In it, they enshrined five protections.
• 10:10
  One, you have a right to mental privacy.
• 10:13
  Two, you have the right to personal identity.
• 10:16
  Three, the right to free will.
• 10:19
  Four, the right to equal access to mental augmentation.
• 10:24
  And five, protection from bias in algorithms.
• 10:27
  Meanwhile, in the United States, we have the mind.
• 10:32
  This was introduced at the end of 2025.
• 10:35
  The mind act is Congress's attempt to play catch up.
• 10:39
  It says basically that big tech, please ask nicely before you sell someone's actual neural data.
• 10:48
  But let's be real here.
• 10:50
  We're talking about a government that can't even regulate ticket master fees.
• 10:54
  Do we trust them to regulate the harvest of human consciousness against the most powerful lobbying force on the planet?
• 11:02
  The Chileans are actually treating this like a human rights crisis.
• 11:07
  Americans are treating it like a consumer protection issue.
• 11:10
  And Donald Trump's administration has tried very hard to gut our CBP, the Consumer Protection Bureau.
• 11:18
  Oh, did they steal your thoughts?
• 11:19
  Here's a coupon for $5 off your next identity theft protection service.
• 11:23
  But why are we so worried?
• 11:27
  Why is the idea of mind control or subliminal influence so terrifying?
• 11:33
  because we have been here before.
• 11:35
  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.
• 11:42
  If you think mind control is a conspiracy theory, you haven't read the Senate Church Committee reports from 1975.
• 11:49
  From 1953 to 1973, the CIA ran a top secret program called MKUltra.
• 11:56
  What was their goal?
• 11:57
  To crack the code of human consciousness.
• 12:00
  They wanted to create a Manchurian candidate, like a programmed assassin.
• 12:04
  They wanted to learn how to even wipe people's memories, you know, like the men in black device.
• 12:09
  They wanted to learn how to force
• 12:11
  a confession.
• 12:13
  They didn't use algorithms.
• 12:15
  They actually did it using blunt force.
• 12:17
  They used LSD.
• 12:18
  right, sign me up.
• 12:19
  They dosed people without their consent, prisoners, mental patients, even their own agents.
• 12:26
  They also use sensory deprivation.
• 12:28
  They used electro shock therapy, a technique they called psychic driving, where they would basically
• 12:34
  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.
• 12:45
  One of the most infamous figures was Dr.
• 12:48
  Ewan Cameron.
• 12:50
  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.
• 12:59
  He destroyed lives.
• 13:01
  He wiped people's memories so completely they forgot how to use a toilet, but he failed.
• 13:08
  The CIA eventually shut the program down or so they say, because it was too unpredictable.
• 13:14
  LSD makes people hallucinate.
• 13:16
  It doesn't make them obedient robots.
• 13:20
  But here is the terrifying realization for 2026.
• 13:23
  What the CIA failed to do with drugs and trauma, Silicon Valley is achieving with dopamine.
• 13:30
  and convenience.
• 13:32
  The goal of MKUltra was behavior modification.
• 13:35
  They wanted to make you do things you wouldn't normally do.
• 13:40
  Look at your phone.
• 13:41
  Look at the infinite scroll.
• 13:44
  Look at the variable reward schedules.
• 13:47
  That's the slot machine mechanic in your social media feed.
• 13:51
  They don't need to drug you to change your behavior.
• 13:55
  They just need to nudge you.
• 13:57
  They need to track your eye movements.
• 13:58
  They need to read your brain waves to see exactly which color of red makes you click by.
• 14:06
  So this brings us to the subliminal panic of the 1950s.
• 14:10
  In 1957, a guy named Vance Packard wrote a book called The Hidden Persuaders.
• 14:16
  He basically warned that advertisers were using psychological warfare against the public.
• 14:21
  And there's even a famous story later, apparently it was a giant hoax, but
• 14:26
  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.
• 14:38
  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
• 14:49
  skyrocketed.
• 14:51
  The public freaked out.
• 14:52
  The CIA freaked out.
• 14:54
  We were all terrified that a flash of light could hijack our free will.
• 14:59
  Now, look at 2026.
• 15:02
  We have smart TVs that listen to our conversations to service ads.
• 15:06
  We have VR headsets that track our pupil dilation to measure our emotional arousal.
• 15:12
  We have dream incubation entering our sleep.
• 15:17
  We were scared of subliminal messaging flashing for like a millisecond.
• 15:21
  We should have been scared.
• 15:23
  of the device we voluntarily brought into our bedroom and plugged into the wall right next to the bed.
• 15:28
  Vance Packard wasn't wrong.
• 15:31
  He was just early.
• 15:32
  So we have the legal fight, which we are losing in the United States.
• 15:37
  We have the historical precedent, proves the government is definitely interested in controlling your mind.
• 15:44
  And we have the technology, which is getting stronger every day.
• 15:49
  When we come back for a second, for the second half of the show,
• 15:52
  We're gonna talk about kind of the philosophy.
• 15:54
  We're gonna talk about cognitive liberty.
• 15:57
  And I'm gonna talk about the only way to win this game.
• 16:00
  Hint, it involves taking off the headset.
• 16:02
  This is the overlap.
• 16:03
  Keep your thoughts to yourself, literally.
• 16:07
  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.
• 16:14
  But now we need to ask the big question.
• 16:16
  Why does this matter?
• 16:18
  Joshua, you say, I have nothing to hide.
• 16:20
  They can scan my brain.
• 16:21
  It'll help me focus at work.
• 16:23
  It helps me sleep better.
• 16:24
  What's the problem?
• 16:25
  The problem is we're crossing a line that's never been crossed in the history of the human species.
• 16:31
  We're talking about cognitive liberty.
• 16:35
  Now this is a term coined by legal scholar, Nita Farahaney.
• 16:41
  And she has a book called The Battle for Your Brain.
• 16:44
  You can look it up, really good read.
• 16:46
  It's a little dry, you know, it's an instruction manual kind of for the nightmare we're living in.
• 16:53
  She defines cognitive liberty as the right to mental self-determination.
• 16:59
  It's the right to access your own mental states.
• 17:02
  And more importantly,
• 17:04
  the right to block others from accessing them.
• 17:08
  Think about it.
• 17:09
  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
• 17:20
  sanctuary, the inside of your mind.
• 17:22
  You could hate your boss while smiling at him.
• 17:26
  You could plot an entire revolution while standing in formation.
• 17:30
  You could dream of a freedom.
• 17:33
  while you were in chains.
• 17:35
  Your thoughts were the only thing that was truly undeniably yours.
• 17:41
  Neurotechnology kind of abolishes this sanctuary.
• 17:45
  It's what philosophers call the final enclosure.
• 17:48
  We talked earlier about the Enclosure Acts of the 1700s where they fenced off the land.
• 17:53
  Then they fenced off culture with copyright.
• 17:57
  Now they're fencing off the self.
• 18:00
  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.
• 18:12
  You're a data set.
• 18:14
  Let's bring in a little, a little philosophy.
• 18:16
  know I'm not going to go full academic on you, but this is, this is important.
• 18:20
  There was a French philosopher named Michel Foucault.
• 18:25
  He talked about the panopticon.
• 18:28
  The Panopticon is a prison, right, where the guard can see every prisoner, but the prisoners can't see the guard.
• 18:35
  Because you might be watched at any moment, everyone acts like they are being watched.
• 18:41
  You discipline yourself.
• 18:43
  That was the 20th century.
• 18:44
  That was the camera on the street corner.
• 18:47
  But another philosopher, Gille Deleuze, said that we're moving past that.
• 18:51
  He said we're entering a society of control.
• 18:56
  In a disciplinary society, described by Foucault, they force you to mold to a mold.
• 19:03
  They put you in a factory, a school, a prison, a society of control, in opposition, opposed by Deleuze.
• 19:12
  They don't force you.
• 19:14
  They modulate you.
• 19:15
  They use algorithms, they use dopamine, and now, neurofeedback.
• 19:21
  They don't have to lock you in a cell.
• 19:23
  They just have to tweak the algorithm so you feel happy when you obey and anxious when you rebel.
• 19:29
  This is why the non-aggression principle, the core tenet of libertarianism and anarchism is being violated in a way we never anticipated.
• 19:39
  We always thought the aggression would be a boot stamping on our human face.
• 19:43
  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.
• 19:53
  Shoshana Zuboff calls this behavioral surplus.
• 19:58
  Google and Meta just don't want to know what you buy.
• 20:03
  They want to know who you are so they can predict what you will be.
• 20:09
  And with brain data, they don't have to guess.
• 20:12
  They don't have to look at your click history to know you're depressed.
• 20:15
  They can see the alpha waves in your frontal lobe slowing down.
• 20:18
  And then they sell that data to a pharmaceutical company
• 20:22
  that targets you with an ad for antidepressants the moment your brain chemistry dips.
• 20:27
  That's not just marketing, that's predatory.
• 20:31
  It's human farming.
• 20:33
  So where does that leave us?
• 20:35
  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?
• 20:44
  Is there any way to keep a part of yourself offline?
• 20:48
  Listen to that.
• 20:50
  That's the sound of a data-free environment.
• 20:52
  No algorithms, no push notifications, no ultrasonic frequencies trying to sell you beer while you sleep.
• 21:00
  Just reality.
• 21:02
  I spent the last little bit kind of scaring the hell out of you.
• 21:06
  We've talked about dream hacking and brain scraping and the co-modification of your consciousness.
• 21:13
  So now we have to answer the question, what do we do?
• 21:16
  If you're waiting for Congress to save you, don't hold your breath.
• 21:20
  Yes, you we have things like the mind act.
• 21:22
  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.
• 21:34
  They're too well fed to give a shit.
• 21:37
  And even if they pass the laws, the companies always find a loophole.
• 21:42
  They will bury the neuro data consent and a 500 page user agreement that you click.
• 21:47
  I agree on just because you want to play a new VR game.
• 21:50
  The only real resistance and the only strategy that actually works is refusal.
• 21:56
  It's unfortunately technological abstinence.
• 21:59
  Now in the 20th century, the rebel was the guy who stood on a tank.
• 22:05
  In 2026, the rebel is the person who doesn't wear a smartwatch.
• 22:10
  The rebel is the woman who refuses to bring her phone into her bedroom.
• 22:15
  We need to establish what I call analog sanctuaries.
• 22:18
  These are spaces, both physical and temporal, where the digital world is basically verboten.
• 22:24
  The bedroom should be a Faraday cage for the soul.
• 22:28
  No screens, no microphones, no sleep trackers.
• 22:32
  Do you really need an app to tell you you slept shitty?
• 22:36
  You know how I know when I slept shitty?
• 22:37
  I'm tired.
• 22:38
  I don't need a graph to validate my exhaustion.
• 22:42
  We need to normalize the right to be offline.
• 22:46
  We need to reject the quantified self.
• 22:50
  Silicon Valley has told us that we are broken machines.
• 22:54
  All we need to do is be optimized to be happy.
• 22:56
  Track your steps, track your heart rate, track your focus.
• 22:59
  Why?
• 23:00
  To be more productive for your boss?
• 23:02
  To lower your insurance premiums?
• 23:03
  No, screw that.
• 23:05
  Be inefficient, be unoptimized, be a human being, not a data set.
• 23:09
  If your employer asks you to wear a focus band to track your attention, just say no.
• 23:14
  If your car insurance offers you a discount to monitor your eye movements, pay full price.
• 23:19
  I know that's hard.
• 23:21
  Privacy, apparently, is a luxury now.
• 23:25
  It's a tax on luxury that you're just gonna have to pay.
• 23:29
  But it is the best money you'll ever spend.
• 23:32
  In a lot of ways, you'll save money by not doing things.
• 23:36
  The battle for your brain is not gonna be fought on the battlefield with guns and muskets and cannons.
• 23:44
  It's gonna be fought with convenience.
• 23:46
  They aren't gonna force some chip into your brain
• 23:49
  They are going to market it to you.
• 23:51
  They're going to tell you it's going to cure your depression.
• 23:53
  They're going to say, it will let you control your phone with your mind.
• 23:58
  It'll make you smarter.
• 23:59
  Maybe it'll help you lose weight.
• 24:01
  And look, maybe it will.
• 24:03
  But the price tag isn't the 299 hardware cost.
• 24:08
  The price tag is your autonomy.
• 24:11
  It's the last private place in the universe.
• 24:15
  The space between your left ear and your right ear.
• 24:18
  So here's my challenge to you for the next week.
• 24:21
  Create yourself a sanctuary.
• 24:23
  Some people call it, you know, touching grass, but take an hour a day, just an hour, and just disconnect everything.
• 24:31
  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.
• 24:46
  Because if you don't own your attention, somebody else will.
• 24:50
  And they're selling it to the highest bidder.
• 24:53
  That's the show.
• 24:55
  I'm Joshua.
• 24:56
  This has been another solo run of the overlap.
• 24:58
  Will, if you're listening in your bunker, stay there.
• 25:00
  You might have the right idea.
• 25:02
  For the rest of you, keep your gold buried, keep your powder dry, and for the love of Thor, keep your brain offline.
• 25:09
  See ya.