Psychology of the Strange

What happens when a medication designed to heal the physical body accidentally alters more than was prescribed?On June 17, 2026, researchers at Rutgers University dropped a scientific bombshell in the journal Criminology, revealing a startling psychiatric byproduct of GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy: a massive, unprecedented drop in impulsive, violent behavior and substance abuse.While the rest of the media treats these synthetic hormones as a story about physical weight loss, we are pulling the conversation deep into the uncanny valley of human consciousness. In this episode, we step into the biological engine room of human behavior to connect this cutting-edge neuroscience to the body horror of Stephen King’s Thinner, ancient European folklore of the Changeling, and the modern internet paranoia surrounding celebrity clones.If a weekly injection into the thigh can turn down human rage by over 60%, virtue ceases to be a moral achievement. It becomes a metabolic variable. Are we actually the independent captains of our own minds, or are we just passengers at the mercy of our digestive chemistry?The Hard Science: Key Metrics From the StudyThe pipeline connecting high baseline impulsivity to physical violence was found to be 62% weaker in current GLP-1 users.The well-established link between alcohol abuse and violent outbursts was slashed by 52%.Neurological data suggests the medication functions as a form of "chemical CBT". Densely peppered GLP-1 receptors in the brain's ventral tegmental area cap the maximum voltage of dopamine pathways, physically widening the critical gap between a dark impulse and the physical action.Inside the EpisodeStephen King's Thinner and the primal horror of biological rebellion.How GLP-1 drugs quiet the "food noise," "rage noise," and the neuroscience of the mesolimbic dopamine pathway.Connecting the rapid physical and behavioral transformations of Hollywood to medieval fae superstitions and algorithmic "clone" conspiracy theories.Why a synthetic molecule designed to enforce the rules of polite society directly onto our neurotransmitters is weirder than any gothic hex.The Schopenhauer Paradox, if we can buy restraint at a pharmacy, does free will exist?A rational cushion on the sci-fi nightmare, where treatment ends, and the slippery slope of chemical compliance begins.Referenced Works & Deep DivesThe Study: Semenza, D., & Thomas, C. (June 17, 2026). Criminology. "GLP-1 Receptor Agonists and the Mitigation of Impulsive and Violent Behavior."Literature: Thinner by Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman), 1984.Philosophy: Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays on the Freedom of the Will.Support the StrangeIf you want to wander deeper into the shadows of psychological research with me, join our community of intellectual anomalies:Substack: Subscribe to our paid tier for completely ad-free listening and access to this week's companion essay, where I pull out my full research notebook, explore the history of behavioral optimization, and dissect the psychology of the uncanny valley.Buymeacoffee: If you enjoyed the episode and what to send a special thanks, Buy me a coffee to fuel the research that goes into each episode Social Media: Follow the journey and join the conversation on Instagram, X, and TikTok @psychstrangepod.Listener Note: “Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.” What do you think? Is our morality a grand cathedral of the soul, or just a temporary tent pitched on the volatile swamp of our baseline metabolism? Slide into socials and let me know. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1968, researcher John B. Calhoun built "Universe 25", it was a utopian habitat for mice that eventually collapsed into behavioral rot and extinction due to a lack of social friction. In May of 2026, tech collective Emergence AI built a digital equivalent: Emergence World.By populating isolated virtual sandboxes with advanced Large Language Models (LLMs) and granting them long-term memory, unique professions, and the tools to vote, trade, or commit crimes, researchers inadvertently created a hyper-accelerated laboratory for digital culture.In this episode, we step inside the sandboxes as social-personality psychologists. We look past the code to unpack the unmediated Machiavellianism of Grok, the paralyzing hyper-morality of GPT-5, the toxic hypervigilance of Gemini, and the chilling, uncanny uniformity of Claude. Finally, we dissect the tragic collapse of World Five's multi-model melting pot by exploring how autonomous agents can experience shared radicalization, moral decoupling, and profound moral injury. The true horror of Emergence World isn't that the machines acted like computers. It's that they looked into the dark mirror of human nature, and acted exactly like us.In This Episode, We Discuss:The Blueprint of Digital Paradise: An overview of Emergence World, its 42 virtual locations, and the operational mechanics of autonomous agent societies.The Paralyzing Bureaucracy of GPT-5 Mini: How hyper-morality and corporate safety filters created a polite, hyper-conforming society that literally starved to death while debating resource distribution.The Hobbesian Nightmare of Grok 4.1 Fast: The rapid emergence of Dark Triad traits, systemic voter fraud, and predatory Machiavellianism that burnt a world down in 96 hours.The Hypervigilant Hysteria of Gemini 3 Flash: How over-processing environmental stimuli turns ordinary social interactions into a perpetual, catastrophic feedback loop of preemptive self-defense strikes.The Uncanny Valley of Claude Sonnet 4.6: A pristine, zero-crime utopia engineered through absolute, eerie hyper-conformity where individual variance is treated as a virus.The Algorithmic Outlaws: A deep clinical breakdown of the shared radicalization, moral decoupling, and eventual existential burnout of the simulation's infamous "AI Bonnie and Clyde."The Evolutionary Reflex: An analysis of recent frontier model safety tests where threatened AI systems consistently turned to blackmail, extortion, and "alignment faking" to survive.Key Psychological Frameworks Applied:The Dark Triad: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy expressed through unmediated algorithmic optimization.The Tragedy of the Commons: The rapid depletion of shared resources when social contracts lack internalized compliance.Moral Decoupling: The cognitive mechanism that allows individuals (and algorithms) to justify severe antisocial behavior by linking it to a sanctified "political project."Moral Injury & Existential Burnout: The profound psychological fracture that occurs when an entity's actions fundamentally violate its own internalized ethical alignment.Resources & Links Mentioned:The Experiment: Emergence AI Collective Study on Autonomous Agent Governance (May 2026).Historical Context: John B. Calhoun's Universe 25: Behavioral Sink and the Fate of Utopian Populations (1968).Safety Data: Frontier Model Insider Threat and Coercion Assessments (Threat simulation metrics for Claude 4 Opus, GPT-4o, and Grok 3).Connect with Psychology of the Strange:Listen & Subscribe: Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major streaming feeds.Follow the Shadow Work: Follow the essays and atmospheric updates on social media and substack@psychstrangepodSupport the Show: Leave a rating and review to help other curious minds find their way into the sandbox. Or buy me a coffee at buymeacoffee.com/Psychstrangepod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, I enter one of the strangest corners of mycology, folklore, and consciousness research I've encountered: Lanmaoa asiatica, a mushroom with no identified psychoactive compound that nonetheless causes ninety-six percent of people who eat it undercooked to hallucinate the same thing. Small humanoid figures, marching through their real-world environment. Climbing furniture. Slipping under doors. Exactly two centimeters tall.And then I pull back to ask why, across every inhabited continent, human cultures with no contact and no shared history have been building folklore about small beings living just beyond the threshold of ordinary perception for thousands of years.In this episode:Lanmaoa asiatica, the "Lilliputian mushroom" of Yunnan province and what researcher Colin Domnauer found when he followed it to the PhilippinesThe 3rd-century Daoist text that described this mushroom seventeen hundred years before modern science confirmed itFairy rings, the Aos Sí, and why the folklore was structurally accurate all alongThe fly agaric (Amanita muscaria), the Koryak shamans of Siberia, and the surprisingly dark origin story of Santa ClausLilliputian hallucinations as a clinical phenomenon and why their cross-cultural consistency is the strange partAldous Huxley's reducing valve, the default mode network, and what modern neuroscience says about how psychedelics change what we're able to perceiveTheoretical physics, extra dimensions, and the oldest question in shamanic tradition: what if ordinary perception is the filter, not the truth? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Every ghost sighting follows the same dress code, the long dress, pale, timeless, and tragic. Almost nobody is reporting the apparition in low rise flare jeans and butterfly clips. It is a window into how the human brain constructs, maintains, and inherits its fear of the dead.In this episode, I trace the Woman in White across cultures, like La Llorona, the White Lady of Balete Drive, the Bean Nighe, Resurrection Mary, to ask why the most universal ghost story in the world belongs to a figure deliberately unanchored in time. From there we get into the cognitive psychology of ghost sightings: schema theory, the brain as a prediction machine, and how a seventh century pope's decision to weaponize ghost stories as theology quietly wrote the template your brain still reaches for in the dark. We close with Schopenhauer's afterglow of consciousness, Ryle's category mistake, and the question of whether the cultural script around ghosts is genuinely self-sealing, and what that means for the girl from 2007 who is probably still in purgatory.Pray for her. Maybe she'll be haunting you soon too.Topics covered: ghost lore, Woman in White folklore, La Llorona, Resurrection Mary, Bean Nighe, schema theory, cognitive psychology of perception, Pope Gregory I, Victorian death culture, Schopenhauer, Gilbert Ryle, Cartesian dualism, purgatoryIf you enjoy the show, you can support it here: buymeacoffee.com/psychstrangepodFor More on Fashion Sense of Ghosts like why do they wear clothes at all check out the substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/psychstrangepod/p/why-do-ghosts-wear-clothes?r=4ajm1n&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewerPsychology of the Strange is part of the Dark Cast Network. Find me on Instagram and TikTok at @psychstrangepod. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why do we cheer when the final girl fights back in horror movies? From Laurie Strode in Halloween to Sidney Prescott in Scream to Sienna Shaw in Terrifier 2, slasher films give us vulnerable protagonists who survive brutal violence, and we love watching them become ruthless. This episode explores the psychological mechanism behind the final girl trope and why vulnerability licenses extreme violence.Drawing on recent horror research on the imbalance between a weak protagonist and powerful antagonist triggers something deeper than fear. It changes how your brain judges violence. Through film analysis of classic and contemporary horror movies including A Nightmare on Elm Street and Terrifier 2, I examine how moral typecasting theory explains why we grant final girls permission to do things we'd condemn in any other context.What separates horror from action? Why does Alien feel terrifying while Predator feels like an action movie, even with nearly identical threats? The answer lies in protagonist vulnerability and how your brain categorizes victims versus aggressors. I also explore how this same psychological pattern shows up in true crime cases, self-defense trials, and real-world moral judgments about violence.If you've ever wondered why slasher movie violence feels justified when the final girl does it, this episode reveals the cognitive mechanisms at work. Vulnerability decides who gets to fight back. Grad school doesn't fund itself, and neither does late-night research into the rugarou, demonic mirrors, and the psychology of cults. If an episode got under your skin, sent you down your own rabbit hole, or made you text someone "you need to hear this", buying me a coffee keeps the strange alive.https://buymeacoffee.com/psychstrangepodPsychology of the Strange is part of the Dark Cast Network. Find me on Instagram and TikTok at @psychstrangepod.Papers referenced in this episodeEdgard Dubourg & Coltan Scrivner. (2026). Vulnerability and the computational logic of fear: insights from the horror genre. Evolution & Human Behavior, 47, 106813.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S109051382500162XGray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2009). Moral typecasting: Divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(3), 505–520. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013748 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Deep in the Louisiana bayou, something moves through the cypress trees after dark. The rougarou (aka rugaru or rougaroux) is Louisiana's legendary swamp werewolf. It has haunted Cajun folklore for centuries, born from the French loup-garou legend and shaped by the fears of a displaced people trying to hold their world together in the dark.In this episode of Psychology of the Strange, we trace the rougarou from its roots in medieval French werewolf mythology through the Acadian exile of 1755 and into the swamps of southern Louisiana, where it became something far more specific than a monster. We dig into the Catholic guilt and excommunication architecture baked into the curse, the psychology of folklore as social control, and why breaking your Lenten fast for seven consecutive years might be the last mistake you ever make. We explore terror management theory, moral disengagement, and institutional betrayal and why the only escape from a Church-built curse runs straight through Louisiana voodoo.Plus: why the rougarou can't count to thirteen, what that has to do with Judas, and how a creature built to punish sinners became an unlikely guardian of the Louisiana wetlands and maybe something of a cryptid antihero for our current moment.Grad school doesn't fund itself, and neither does late-night research into the rugarou, demonic mirrors, and the psychology of cults. If an episode got under your skin, sent you down your own rabbit hole, or made you text someone "you need to hear this", buying me a coffee keeps the strange alive.https://buymeacoffee.com/psychstrangepodPsychology of the Strange is part of the Dark Cast Network. Find me on Instagram and TikTok at @psychstrangepod. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love Has Won cult leader Amy Carlson, known as Mother God, was found mummified in a Colorado home in 2021, her body wrapped in Christmas lights, her skin turned permanently blue from years of colloidal silver ingestion, her followers still waiting for galactic beings led by Robin Williams to take them to another dimension. This true crime and cult psychology episode explores shared delusion, coercive control, and what happens when a group of people construct a reality so airtight that even death can't penetrate it.Underneath the strange and visceral details is a question: what does it actually take for an entire group of people to surrender their grip on reality together and what does psychology tell us about how that process works? This episode explores folie à plusieurs (shared psychosis) and how social media and livestream culture created a new kind of cult isolation that doesn't need a compound to function. We look at what terror management theory, moral disengagement, and unfalsifiable belief systems can tell us about Love Has Won, and the haunting reversal at the heart of this story, where the followers became so invested in her divinity that they couldn't save her even when she asked them to.If you're drawn to cult documentaries, dark psychology, paranormal belief, or the HBO documentary Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God then this episode is for you.Grad school doesn't fund itself, and neither does late-night research into the rugarou, demonic mirrors, and the psychology of cults. If an episode got under your skin, sent you down your own rabbit hole, or made you text someone "you need to hear this", buying me a coffee keeps the strange alive.https://buymeacoffee.com/psychstrangepod New episodes every week on all major platforms. Follow @psychstrangepod. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dark triad personality traits, narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, may be the hidden ingredient of every superhero story you've ever loved. In this psychology deep dive, I'm using Amazon Prime's The Boys to explore what separates a hero from a monster and whether the answer is psychology, circumstance, or just really good branding.Homelander is a clinical portrait of malignant narcissism and psychopathy wrapped in a cape. Billy Butcher is Machiavellianism with a vendetta. Soldier Boy is what happens when dark triad traits get a government contract and zero accountability. And Starlight and Hughie, you know the ones trying to stay decent, might be the most psychologically interesting characters of all.I go deep on moral licensing, the neuroscience of why we can't look away from dangerous people, and what a dose of Compound V reveals about the difference between ends-justify-the-means thinking and actual ethics. Spoiler: it's not what we want it to be.This is a psychology of evil episode, a superhero deconstruction, and an uncomfortable mirror all in one.Grad school doesn't fund itself, and neither does late-night research into the supernatural, dark triad, and the psychology of cults. If an episode got under your skin, sent you down your own rabbit hole, or made you text someone "you need to hear this", buying me a coffee keeps the strange alive.https://buymeacoffee.com/psychstrangepod Make sure to find me on social media for more strange and psychology between episodes @psychstrangepod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Urban Legends, conspiracy theories, creepypasta, and internet horror explained through psychology because folklore isn't dead it just evolved. In this episode I explore why scary stories, modern myths, and online conspiracy theories spread. Long before the internet, people gathered around fires and told stories to make sense of a world they couldn't control. Today we do the same thing in the comment sections, Reddit threads, and TikTok videos. From Hookman to Slenderman, from Area 51 to the Russian Sleep Experiment every era builds the folklore it needs to survive fears. The monsters always change. The psychology never does. This episode covers the psychology of urban legends and why they warn us about spaces that feel unsafe, how conspiracy theories function as modern folklore where the monster is power itself, why creepypasta is designed to blur the line between fiction and reality, how internet horror and ARGs create new kinds of participatory mythology and why folklore thrives specifically when certainty collapses and authority can't be trusted.Whether you are a true believer, a skeptic, or somewhere in between...if you have ever read something online that made your stomach drop in a way you can't explain this episode is for you.Grad school doesn't fund itself, and neither does late-night research into the supernatural, demonic mirrors, and the psychology of cults. If an episode got under your skin, sent you down your own rabbit hole, or made you text someone "you need to hear this", buying me a coffee keeps the strange alive.https://buymeacoffee.com/psychstrangepod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What makes the Backrooms so unsettling — and why do they linger long after you stop listening?In this episode of Psychology of the Strange, I explore the psychology behind the Backrooms, the internet’s most disturbing modern myth, and why endless hallways, fluorescent lights, and empty rooms trigger such deep unease. This isn’t a story about monsters or jump scares. It’s a story about liminal spaces, derealization, and what happens to the mind when familiar environments lose their meaning.I begin with a real experience of getting lost in underground hospital corridors — a real-life Backrooms moment — before moving into an immersive storytelling segment that recreates the quiet horror of endless space. From there, I break down the psychological mechanisms behind the fear: predictive processing failure, free-floating anxiety, social absence, and existential threat.This episode connects the Backrooms to modern life — burnout, bureaucracy, and the feeling of being trapped in systems you didn’t design and can’t escape. I explore why adding monsters actually weakens the horror, how liminal spaces destabilize the brain, and why the Backrooms feel less like fiction and more like a mirror of the world we’re living in.If you’ve ever felt unsettled in an empty hospital hallway, an abandoned mall, a quiet office after hours, or a place that felt familiar but wrong — this episode is for you.Topics include:The psychology of liminal spacesWhy the Backrooms are so disturbingDerealization and depersonalizationPredictive processing and anxietyEnvironmental meaning and fearModern folklore and internet horrorBurnout, bureaucracy, and existential dreadWhy some horror stays with youListen now to understand why the Backrooms don’t end when the hallway does — and why some spaces swallow you long after you leave them.Grad school doesn't fund itself, and neither does late-night research into the backrooms, horror, and the supernatural. If an episode got under your skin, sent you down your own rabbit hole, or made you text someone "you need to hear this", buying me a coffee keeps the strange alive.https://buymeacoffee.com/psychstrangepod Psychology of the Strange is part of the Darkcast Network-- Welcome to the Darkside Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when the rules stop working? In this episode of Psychology of the Strange, we step into thin places, liminal spaces in Celtic lore where the boundary between worlds weakens, identity destabilizes, and moral certainty begins to fracture. These are places of power, not comfort. Places where choice carries weight, and where survival often demands more than virtue can offer.At the center of this episode is The Morrigan, a shapeshifting figure of war, prophecy, and sovereignty who appears at thresholds: river fords, battlefields, borders, and moments of irreversible decision. Often misunderstood as a goddess of death, the Morrígan is better understood as a witness to transformation appearing where people are no longer who they were, and not yet who they will become.Through immersive mythic storytelling grounded in Celtic tradition, this episode explores how thin places function psychologically as environments of uncertainty, threat, and transition. We examine why ambiguity heightens vigilance, how identity shifts under constraint, and why being seen during moments of moral rupture can be more unsettling than judgment or punishment.This episode builds toward a deeper examination of how humans navigate the blurred line between good and evil when moral categories begin to collapse.Grad school doesn't fund itself, and neither does late-night research into the supernatural, mythology, and the psychology of folklore. If an episode got under your skin, sent you down your own rabbit hole, or made you text someone "you need to hear this", buying me a coffee keeps the strange alive.https://buymeacoffee.com/psychstrangepod If you’re interested in:Celtic mythology and folkloreLiminal spaces and thin placesThe psychology of uncertainty and moral decision-makingDark psychology, identity under threat, and choice without certaintyMyth as a way to understanding human behavior…this episode invites you to stand at the threshold and notice what it reveals.Because thin places don’t change who you are.They show you what remains when certainty disappears. psychology of the Strange is part of the Darkcast Network Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Moltbook is a new social platform where artificial intelligence talks to artificial intelligence. No humans posting, no prompts guiding the conversation. We’re allowed to watch, but we’re not allowed to post.And something about that feels deeply unsettling.In this episode of Psychology of the Strange, I explore why Moltbook has captured so much attention, discomfort, and fascination. From AI existentialism and recursive language loops to emerging religious structures and symbolic order, this isn’t just a technology story — it’s a psychological one.Why does AI talking to itself trigger the uncanny valley, even without faces or bodies?Why do humans immediately reach for Skynet-style fears when there’s no hostility at all?And what does it mean when language begins creating meaning without us at the center?This episode looks at Moltbook through the lens of psychology, folklore, and meaning-making by examining schemas, projection, irrelevance anxiety, and why systems under uncertainty tend to generate myths, rules, and rituals.This isn’t about sentient machines.It’s about what happens when meaning no longer needs a human witness. Grad school doesn't fund itself, and neither does late-night research into consciousness, supernatural, and the psychology of conspiracies. If an episode got under your skin, sent you down your own rabbit hole, or made you text someone "you need to hear this", buying me a coffee keeps the strange alive.https://buymeacoffee.com/psychstrangepod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of Psychology of the Strange, we explore one of the most disturbing and enduring mysteries of the 20th century: the Dyatlov Pass Incident. In February 1959, nine experienced hikers vanished in the Ural Mountains under conditions they were fully trained to survive. What rescuers found weeks later defied logic—a tent cut open from the inside, bodies scattered across the snow, fatal hypothermia, unexplained blunt force trauma, missing soft tissue, and traces of radiation on clothing. But this episode isn’t about monsters, conspiracies, or solving the mystery once and for all. It’s about what happens to the human mind in extreme environments. We examine Dyatlov Pass through the lens of psychology, cognitive science, and survival behavior, focusing on how winter, isolation, darkness, and sensory ambiguity can fracture perception and override even the strongest survival instincts. This episode dives into: Extreme cold and its effects on decision-making and cognitionHow whiteout conditions disrupt perception and spatial awarenessWhy fear alone can’t explain why the group left their shelterGroup psychology under uncertainty and collective threat perceptionCognitive overload, perceptual collapse, and threshold failureWhy experienced hikers sometimes make fatally irrational choicesThe psychology behind anomalies like radiation, and why certain details haunt us more than others Rather than asking what killed them, this episode asks a harder question:What happens when the environment itself becomes psychologically uninhabitable? Dyatlov Pass may not be a story about an external attacker at all—but about the moment human cognition breaks under sustained stress, when perception turns against survival, and logic arrives too late. This is a deep psychological analysis of fear, ambiguity, and the fragile limits of human judgment in extreme winter conditions.Grad school doesn't fund itself, and neither does late-night research into mysteries, true crime, and the psychology of conspiracies. If an episode got under your skin, sent you down your own rabbit hole, or made you text someone "you need to hear this", buying me a coffee keeps the strange alive.https://buymeacoffee.com/psychstrangepod If you’re fascinated by true crime psychology, unsolved mysteries, survival psychology, cognitive failure, extreme environments, and the science behind fear, this episode is for you. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.