Superhuman - From Engineered Desire to Engineered Consent

Aaron Ping
  • 5.0 (21)
  • TRUE CRIME
  • SERIES

A grieving father’s search for answers and the century-long con that sold corporate freedom as our own.  When my son died, I started asking questions. The answers led me to places I never expected: a dinner party in Vienna, a railroad case nobody remembers, our constitutional rights hijacked as an excuse to look away while children die. Superhuman is my search for what happened. Not just to my son, but to all of us.

Season 1

  1. EPISODE 1

    Two Stacks

    Send us a text  The episode opens by introducing the Superhuman series—how corporations became entities with more legal rights than humans but none of the accountability. This isn't just about technology or social media—it's about power, who wields it, and how we built a system where companies can harm children at scale and face no consequences. Then Laura Marquez-Garrett of the Social Media Victims Law Center, who represents over 4,000 families harmed by social media, walks us through the massive gap between what platforms claim and what actually happens. She exposes the hidden realities no safety guide mentions—what law enforcement knows but parents don't, why evidence vanishes by design, and how platforms' actual practices contradict their public promises. When my 15-year-old son Avery convinced me to let him use Snapchat in 10th grade, I thought I understood the risks. I'd read "The Anxious Generation." I worried about screen time and social pressure. I had no idea what was really happening on the platform. This episode covers the information I wish had been made more publicly available, so that I would have known what I was dealing with. 00:00 - Two Stacks of Paper (Season Introduction) 11:05 - Laura Introducton 13:05 - Snapchat Knew 18:04 - Colorado SB 86  23:35 - Product Design 29:15 - Reporting Criminal Activity to Snapchat 32:21 - Perla Mendoza's Hunt for Justice 39:13 - Unreported Crimes 44:36 - Parents Can't Fathom the Truth Content warning: teen death, drug sales, and exploitation.

    52 min

  2. EPISODE 2

    The Machine

    Send us a text  This Episode explores how a century of manipulation techniques became smartphone features, through conversations with Jean Cavendish, a clinical psychiatrist who spent decades helping people escape cult programming. Jean died on November 17, 2025, a month after recording. This episode is a dedication to her life and work. The episode features testimony from Lori Schott about how Meta targets children's insecurities, and Taj Jensen, a fellow parent who lost his son to fentanyl purchased on Snapchat. At its core, this is about recognizing the systems designed to keep us scrolling, buying, and reacting—and asking the question that matters: What are you really hungry for? 00:00 — Opening Reflection 03:46 — The Birth of Influence 07:26 — The King of the Engineers 11:18 — The Toolkit of Persuasion 13:03 — Selling Our Own Destruction 14:29 — The Shame Machine ( testimony from Lori Schott) 21:06 — Fear as a Business Model 25:54 — The Science of Addiction 30:55 — The Human Cost 32:32 — The Wisdom of Jean Cavendish 36:12 — The Teenage Brain 38:15 — Hooked Forever 43:08 — Receipts and Responsibility 45:06 — Tanner’s Story (Guest Taj Jenson) 50:19 — Breaking the Cycle Content warning: teen death, drug sales, and exploitation. Music by: Kjartan Abel CC BY-SA 4.0 https://kjartan-abel.com

    56 min

  3. EPISODE 3

    Jeffersons Nightmare

    Send us a text How did corporations get more constitutional rights than your children? When a bookshelf tips over and harms one child, there's an immediate recall. When platform algorithms push suicide content to depressed teens, they claim First Amendment protection. To understand how we got here, Aaron traces the path from Jefferson's worst fears to today's reality. In 1886, a court reporter's unauthorized footnote gave corporations personhood. In 1971, the Powell Memo blueprinted corporate capture of democracy. In 2010, Citizens United unleashed unlimited dark money—corporations buying elections while hiding in shadows. These aren't ancient developments. You or your parents lived through most of this. The same First Amendment that platforms use to avoid accountability when children die is the one they use to pour millions into elections—anonymously. We traded away our democracy piece by piece, precedent by precedent. To reclaim it, we first have to see how we lost it. 00:00  Cold Open — The Platform Claims the Right to Look Away 02:10  Jefferson’s Nightmare & the Corporate Empires That Came Before 06:52  The Tea That Started a Revolution 10:00  Jefferson’s Vision & the Original Corporate Chains 17:20  The Pendulum of Power — People vs. Corporations 23:15  The Powell Memo — How Business Fought Back 29:38  Citizens United & the Age of Corporate Speech 36:45  The Tech Takeover — Lobbying, Loopholes, Immunity 47:47  Section 230 & the Right to Look Away Social Media Online Child Sexual Exploitation Audio clips from C-SPAN

    51 min

  4. EPISODE 4

    In Good Faith

    Send us a text Twenty-six words written in 1996 gave platforms legal immunity. One court decision in 1997 turned that immunity into a business model. Attorney Carrie Goldberg shares what it's like representing hundreds of victims, from sextortion to cyberbullying to suicide, and watching nearly every case slam into the same wall. Brett Allred and Kristin Bride reveal what the absence of "good faith" looks like when platforms know the patterns but wait for children to die. And as Section 230 finally begins to crack, we expose the tech industry's next move: rebranding the same harmful systems as "AI" to claim a new decade of immunity. When courts won't look under the hood, we will. Content warning: Discussion of suicide, drug overdose, online exploitation 00:00:00 - Twenty-Six Words The three-week delay and Section 230's shield 00:03:29 - The Good Samaritan Betrayed What Congress intended vs. what courts decided 00:05:30 - Zeran's Inversion How one 1997 case changed everything 00:09:00 - The Business Model of Blindness Operating anatomy: Why platforms choose ignorance 00:11:00 - Carrie's Courtroom A decade fighting the same wall 00:18:30 - The Algorithm Problem Why Section 230's walls are finally cracking 00:22:00 - The AI Escape Hatch Tech's next immunity play 00:25:30 - Riley's Story When the website wishes you luck as you die 00:29:30 - What They Knew Evidence that leaked out anyway 00:34:30 - The Supreme Court Punts Gonzalez v. Google and the pattern they ignored 00:40:00 - The Tobacco Playbook Profitable ignorance at scale 00:45:30 - Carson's Story 220 million downloads of a documented deadly pattern 00:52:00 - The Privileged Defense Why people fight for platform immunity 00:57:00 - The Movement Survivor parents refusing to stay silent 01:02:30 - The Light We Hold Call to action: How to talk to your kids Music by: Kjartan Abel CC BY-SA 4.0 https://kjartan-abel.com

    1h 9m

  5. EPISODE 5

    Ideas and Reality

    Send us a text What happens when the news stops being news and starts behaving like marketing? In Episode 5, Aaron is joined by Jennie Desario to trace a line from early propaganda to modern algorithmic persuasion, where outrage is profitable and "both sides" can become a product feature. Together, they unpack how privatized media ecosystems shape what we believe, what we fear, and what we ignore, especially when child safety and accountability threaten growth. We're back earlier than expected because a recent executive order, branded as an "AI moratorium", threatens to roll back state-level child safety protections that parents and bipartisan legislators fought years to pass. This episode asks a simple question: if the loudest narratives are engineered, what's left underneath the noise, and who are these systems actually accountable to? (00:00) The Invisible Protest (03:36) The Binary Machine (10:45) Making Monsters Respectable (13:07) Growth at All Costs (20:05) Both Sides of the Same Coin (28:44) When Reality Inverts (31:12) Free Typing (33:34) Mason's Search for Help (40:27) The Adults in the Room (01:02:42) Ideas vs Reality Audio clips featured in this episode are sourced from the All-In Podcast and are included for commentary.

    1h 7m
  6. Taking Time to Remember - Bonus

    BONUS

    Taking Time to Remember - Bonus

    Send us a text Please sign up here to Rise With Us and protect childhood: https://parentsrise.org/ Visit scrolling2death and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts: https://www.scrolling2death.com/ Thank you again for listening. See you in January.

    5 min
  • 6 Episodes

5
out of 5
21 Ratings

About

A grieving father’s search for answers and the century-long con that sold corporate freedom as our own.  When my son died, I started asking questions. The answers led me to places I never expected: a dinner party in Vienna, a railroad case nobody remembers, our constitutional rights hijacked as an excuse to look away while children die. Superhuman is my search for what happened. Not just to my son, but to all of us.

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