Demon Seed
March 26, 2026
We dig into Donald Cammell’s Demon Seed, the Thinking Machines series entry where AI gets personal—hubris, a smart home turned prison, Julie Christie, and a genuinely bonkers ending.
Pete Wright is a podcaster, author, and co-founder of TruStory FM. He's been behind a microphone for over thirty years and has logged thousands of episodes across three dozen shows covering film, ADHD, creative process, and the craft of storytelling. He spent fifteen years teaching graduate students and has consulted on brand communications for organizations ranging from global brands to one-person shops. His debut science fiction novella, Lattice, was published in 2026. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Pete has hosted as well as been a panelist on a number of episodes.
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See episodes where Pete has been a panelist right here.
We dig into Donald Cammell’s Demon Seed, the Thinking Machines series entry where AI gets personal—hubris, a smart home turned prison, Julie Christie, and a genuinely bonkers ending.
Turns out quitting your job isn’t just a career decision — it’s a psychological eviction notice served on the version of yourself you built at work. Pete and Tommy explore why leaving is harder than it looks, and why one flight attendant’s emergency exit is frankly the most honest thing any of us has ever done.
This week, Craft and Chaos declares a brief ceasefire with the howling void and asks a genuinely radical question: what do you do that has absolutely no purpose except that it makes you happy? The answers involve a lathe, a murder, a harmonica, and the strongest case ever made for a 2002 kung fu parody that bombed so hard at the box office it practically cratered the earth.
You’ve been calling them friends before they’ve earned it — and that’s where the hurt comes from. Caroline Maguire is here to rewrite the whole friendship map.
The machine does exactly what we designed—and that’s the problem. We dig into “Colossus: The Forbin Project,” the Thinking Machines series opener about Cold War AI and the danger of indifference.
Manufacturing HR doesn’t get the luxury of being theoretical — the challenges are physical, immediate, and happening across three shifts while you’re asleep. This episode, Terry Cook and Stacey Wenczel break down the real compliance weight of plant life, from donning and doffing to accommodation requests in roles where “work from home” isn’t a option.
This week, Pete and Tommy explore the two most emotionally loaded things you can give another person — your money and your gratitude — and discover they’ve both been doing it sorta wrong, for completely understandable reasons.
Captain America takes down fifteen pirates with his bare hands and a shield, and raises exactly zero moral questions about it — so Matthew did it for him. Pete, Matthew, and Rob work through the Lemurian Star assault minute by minute, debating kill probability, 90s action cinema homage, and whether vibranium is, at the end of the day, just a video game mechanic.
Aging is inevitable. Weakness is not. This week, Pete and Srdjan dismantle the myth that getting older means getting weaker — and make the case that the gym might be the most powerful longevity tool you’re not using.
In the Magicians series, cinematographer Caleb Deschanel’s feature directorial debut “The Escape Artist” pits two sons against their fathers, with real magic in between.