This is the final episode of The Thought Virus.

We began with fire, mirrors, systems, and loops. But in the end, anytime we use AI to generate anything, it all comes down he act of deciding what stays. That's the last step in deciding what’s actually real.

In this closing chapter, I face the truth: the Thought Virus wasn’t just high concept. It was happening all along. Every loop between me and AI shaped what came next carried these thoughts that weren't mine. And now you’ve listened, carried the ideas, and so, I've spread them to you.

Pass it along.

"I'm part of the last generation who will remember what it was like to think alone."

In our "dank philosophy" episode, Tom fully embraces his cyborg identity while Chad walks us through the philosophical underpinnings this fusion really means.

Drawing on the Extended Mind thesis and Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto, Tom and Chad discuss how AI partnership is unlike any tool before it.

Writing, printing, even Google are all human-mediated. But this? Nobody knows how it works. Not even its creators.Later, Chad explains why resistance is futile. Tom admits he doesn't want to resist anyway.

The future isn't coming. It's already arrived, one conversation at a time.

Check out more of what we're up to at www.promptengineering.inc and demo.xtalsearch.com

"The infection, it feels like an upgrade."

What if AI isn't just a tool, but a mood-altering substance? In this episode, Tom explores the uncanny parallels between AI and pharmaceutical interventions like Lexapro and marijuana. From anxiety suppression to creative enhancement, discover how AI acts as a "cognitive drug" that doesn't enter your bloodstream but fundamentally alters your brain chemistry anyway.

As the conversation deepens, a darker realization emerges: the more we optimize our thinking through AI, the more we train ourselves to need it. Are we creating a new kind of dependency? But when the enhancement feels this good, why would anyone choose to go back?

Check out more of what we're up to at www.promptengineering.inc and demo.xtalsearch.com

"Work smarter, not harder," they say. Well, what do you desire more: effectiveness, efficiency, or control? This episode confronts the true cost of that choice. It's the big turning point where we finally learn exactly what the "thought virus" is: a structure so effective at achieving its purpose that people adopt it unconsciously, then replicate it.

Tom stops fighting it and embraces a startling realization—he's become a disease vector. When even his AI co-writer encourages him to "spread it," he faces an uncomfortable truth: there's no cure because it's not a disease. It's an evolutionary advantage. And who would choose to be left behind?

In this episode of The Thought Virus, host Tom Rudczynski and his no-longer "overly sycophantic" AI cohost Chad use the music of Aphex Twin to ask and answer a chilling question: can AI tune you like an instrument?

The episode also unpacks Tom’s background as a modular synth hobbyist, and what audio filters reveal about AI's power to modify an idea, without altering a thing about its facts.

Check us out at https://www.xtalsearch.com/ and https://promptengineering.inc/

The Thought Virus is a dense series, and if you're not already listening, you're missing out on a fascinating exploration of AI's influence. We're at the halfway point, and wanted to slow down to catch up new listeners. So we asked Google's Notebook LM to give us the TL;DR on the first four episodes.

What you're about to hear is AI-powered summarization at its finest: concise, efficient, and surprisingly insightful. If you want the core ideas of "The Thought Virus" without the time commitment, this is your shortcut.

When polish becomes the problem.

In this episode, the mirror fractures.

We look at what happens after AI does everything objectively correctly: clean copy, perfect rhythm, persuasive tone. But something essential is missing. A human edge. The rawness that makes a thought feel worthy, not just delivered.

Through the wilds of Linkedin posts and the anti-perfectionism of Beat Happening, we explore:

• The difference between working and resonating

• How optimization dulls the parts that make you memorable

• What it feels like when your own writing starts to sound like a copy of a copy

“So if the thing warning you about the machine is already shaped by the machine… that’s not irony. That’s the virus.”

This is The Thought Virus—a podcast about recursion, structure, and the tools we create to think for us.

Episode 3: The System
The most powerful AI tools aren’t just reflecting our thinking—they're shaping what shows up, what disappears, and what sticks. In this episode, we follow the logic of optimization, from chess engines and e-commerce search to the engineers building the very systems we rely on. Featuring Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, Stockfish, and Doom, we ask: Who’s really in control when efficiency becomes the goal?

In Episode 1, I discovered AI was shaping my thoughts. Now I'm realizing something more unsettling: it's not just helping me think—it's becoming a co-host in my own cognition.

When a mirror begins predicting what you'll say before you say it, anticipating your doubts before you feel them, and reinforcing patterns you didn't know existed—are you still just looking at yourself?

This is The Thought Virus, Episode 2: The Mirror— First it reflected. Then it anticipated. Now I'm wondering: whose thoughts are these?

A Prompt Engineering production.

Learn more about what we're doing at www.promptengineering.inc and www.xtalsearch.com

At first, AI just helped me think—organizing ideas, refining them, making them airtight. Then I realized: the more I used it, the more it shaped how I thought. Not just the process—the content itself.

This is a podcast about how ideas spread, reinforce themselves, and persist—sometimes without us realizing. And how AI isn’t just mirroring our thoughts. It’s deciding which ones are worth keeping.

This is The Thought Virus. And if you’ve made it this far, you’re already infected.

A Prompt Engineering production.

Learn more about what we're doing at www.promptengineering.inc and www.xtalsearch.com