Ever notice how the most confident take online feels right—until ten minutes later you find someone just as confident saying the opposite? In Ep. 16, Mark and Doug unpack why “authority theater” hooks us, how fear-based media warps our risk radar, and what AI is doing to our info diet. We move from Ishmael’s story-lens to availability bias and moral panics (satanic preschool myths, Pizzagate), then into AI: hallucinations (like the “Chomsky is dead” flub), model collapse (AIs training on AI output), and the emerging class divide between free, pro, and enterprise tools. We also talk reading in the phone era, ritual hunger in modern life, SNAP outrage vs. wage reality, and the difference between reacting and responding.