Murderbot: Schizoid Personality, Neurodivergence, and the Search for Humanity in AI

Dr. David Puder and Dr. Eric Bender explore the Apple TV+ series Murderbot through a psychiatric lens. Based on Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries, they analyze the hacked SecUnit's journey as a profound portrait of schizoid personality dynamics, neurodivergence, social anxiety, masking, trauma, and the deep human longing for connection while fearing it. Drawing on Nancy McWilliams' work on schizoid dynamics and D. W. Winnicott, the discussion examines AI identity, reflective functioning, PTSD, and what Murderbot reveals about humanity in the age of artificial intelligence. By listening to this episode, you can earn 1.0 Psychiatry CME Credits. https://www.psychiatrypodcast.com/cme-program Link to blog https://www.psychiatrypodcast.com/psychiatry-psychotherapy-podcast/episode-272-murderbot-schizoid-personality-neurodivergence-and-the-search-for-humanity-in-ai Link to YouTube video https://youtu.be/pnip_6Ga880

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:14David Puder?

  Welcome back to the Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Podcast. I'm David Pooter and today I'll be joined with Eric Bender to talk about an Apple TV series Murderbot, based on Martha Wells' books. On the surface, it's a witty, fast-moving science fiction about a hacked security Android AI who just wants to be left alone to watch his favorite soap opera. But underneath the humor and the action, the show offers one of the most psychologically rich portraits we've seen, in where there's a longing for connection and also a terror of connection. As D.W.

• 0:54David Puder?

  Winnicott once wrote, "It is a joy to be hidden in a disaster not to be found." This exact tension runs through the entire season. Nancy McWilliams captures something very close when she describes schizoid dynamics. I'm going to read a long quote from her. "Schizoid people are overly detached, yet they describe in therapy a deep longing for closeness and compelling fantasies of intimate involvement. They appear self-sufficient, yet anyone who gets to know them will attest to the depth of their emotional need.

• 1:35David Puder?

  They can be absent-minded at the same time that they are acutely vigilant. They may seem completely non-reactive, yet suffer an exquisite level of sensitivity. They may look affectively blunted while internally coping with what one of my schizoid friends calls..." Proto affect, the experience of being frighteningly overpowered by intense emotion. They may seem utterly indifferent to sex while nourishing a sexually preoccupied, polymorphously elaborate fantasy life. They may strike others as unusually gentle souls,

• 2:18David Puder?

  but an intimate may learn that they nourish elaborate fantasies of world destruction. This is from her article, "Some Thoughts on Schizoid Dynamics." More can be found in her book Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, which we go through in the cohorts. Today, we're going to explore how Murderbot dramatizes this schizoid dilemma and how neurodivergence can at times be exhausting in that there's this constant masking. We're going to be talking about gaps in reflective functioning, trauma, internalized control, and a search for authentic identity. And we're going to talk about how it feels

• 3:00David Puder?

  for an AI to slowly discover what it means to be treated as a person rather than a piece of equipment. And Eric, always great to have you back. How would you introduce the show to listeners who haven't watched it?

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Yes, if you haven't watched the show Murderbot, which is on Apple TV, and it's based on a book, which I know you've read, I haven't had a chance to read all the story.

• 3:21David Puder?

  Yeah, the books are really, really good. They're different, a little bit different. I think that actually the TV show adds some cool little subplots. But Martha Wells writes All Systems Red, and then Artificial Conditions, and then Rogue Protocol, and then Exit Strategy, and then Network Effects, and then I'm Actually on Fugitive Telemetry. So a little bit farther than four.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  That's great. I've heard the books are terrific, and the series is based on the books. The first... Series or season one, I should say, is Murderbot.

• 3:50David Puder?

  Yeah, season one is the first book, basically.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Okay, and then season two is coming out eventually.

• 3:55David Puder?

  Yeah.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  It was renewed, but Murderbot tells the story of a security unit, a sec unit, as they call it. And essentially, he is assigned to accompany a human preservation group, a group of essentially explorers in space, and they're required to have a sec unit. So they end up choosing one that's less expensive, and that's Murderbot, the one that we have. But the whole story, at least the episode one of season one, opens up with Murderbot saying, "I've figured out a way to get rid of my governor," essentially the thing that keeps him in.

• 4:26David Puder?

  Right, the governor module, right? So he has hacked his governor module, and so he doesn't really have to obey the humans anymore, right?

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Yes, and that's what the whole story is about. So he's got this governor module that's gone. So as humans, we watch this TV show, waiting for anarchy and hedonism and destruction from this AI unit. And we get to see what happens when there's no governor and how he reacts and how he responds to the humans around him.

• 4:54David Puder?

  Yeah, and I think it's a TV show that is funny as well. So it's not like, it's not like a horror, it's not like a thriller. It's action, it's drama, and it's comedy.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Yes, I think that captures all of it. It's got sci fi elements to it, of course, being in space.

• 5:12David Puder?

  Yeah, I think it's a timely piece right now to talk about, especially two psychiatrists talking about it, because we're basically like in the midst of this artificial AI revolution. And I was thinking about all the different types of depictions of artificial intelligence, you know? And so, you know, probably the first is like, which I think there's some sort of links, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 5:38David Puder?

  1818, where you have this creature gaining intelligence and, you know, faces isolation and turns vengeful. And, you know, this kind of like, the AI, this theme of the AI being created that struggles with sentience, identity, humanity. And then you have the AI as the benevolent, loyal, supportive companion, helper AI. Her, I don't know if you've seen her.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  I have seen her, yes. So you definitely, you have all these depictions. And what's interesting about AI is that AI is a reflection of human creation. So if you think about AI, what AI does, it. Essentially peruses and I guess minds all of this information that comes from humans. So as humans, our drive is to be free. It's not to be controlled by other people, not to be controlled by other things. But then we get shocked when we see an AI unit and want to get rid of its governor. It's suddenly very threatening, but that's very much what as human beings we want. We want to have free will. We want to have free choice. We want to not be ruled by someone else.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  So I think it's really interesting that we often forget that these AI units and these AI creations come from from human data and human brains.

• 6:52David Puder?

  Yeah. And, um, you know, how does Murderbot, Murderbot is the title he gives to himself, of course. How does he like to spend his free will time?

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think if we if we dive into that, also talking about his character in general, so he has named himself Murderbot. Once he got rid of the governor, he named himself Murderbot, which I think is interesting because it it already puts him at a distance from from humans. Like what human is going to want to be friends with something called Murderbot? You know, that's already scary. But I think that his character reflects a lot of different psychological and psychiatric issues. I think they're depicted there well. One of them is is social anxiety. I think he's socially anxious when he's around human beings. He doesn't know what to say. He's wondering how he's going to be perceived, just like all humans. And then I think there's also this element of neurodivergence. He seems very neurodivergent, not not comfortable, even states, I'm not comfortable making eye

• 7:47Speaker 01

  contact. I don't want to be involved in all this human drama. But at the same time, you ask, what does he do with his free time? He watches this show called Sanctuary Moon, which is this soap opera, and he's drawn into the human drama. Even though he's saying, I don't understand this, he's also drawn to it at the same time.

• 8:04David Puder?

  Yeah, so he's drawn to this. It's hilarious. So he has a lot of quotes from this TV show. So it's like a TV show within a TV show, Sanctuary Moon. And it's interesting that it's the love connection between the AI.

• 8:21David Puder?

  And the commander of the ship.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Yes, that's a theme in one of the shows of Sanctuary Moon that he really goes back to a lot.

• 8:28David Puder?

  He goes back to that theme.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:30David Puder?

  But at the same time, like, he is totally, like, cringed by human interaction and by eye contact. Like, eye contact for him is like, I'm gonna look at this human through this video camera feed instead of face to face. And there's this, I think, very schizoid type of personality that they give this murder bot.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, he doesn't want connection, but at the same time, he does. He's fascinated by it. In episode one, when he starts with the team, Dr. Mensah, the leader of this team of humans that he's working with, says, "You don't have to stay over there. You can come over where the crew is." And he's kind of taken aback. He's not sure how to respond to that. And then he even gets paranoid, like, "Are they on to me? Do they think there's something wrong? Why do they want me with them?" So he's kind of baffled by the fact that they would want connection with him.

• 9:18David Puder?

  Yeah, they...

• 9:21David Puder?

  It's like, someone with schizoid personality, they, on some deep level, they want connection, but on another level, they're terrified of connection. And so he's watching connection in this TV show, but in reality, in real life, he is petrified of connection, which is just classic schizoid.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there's that schizoid element. I think the social anxiety piece is interesting, too, and the neurodivergence. And then there's also, quite frankly, underlying all this, a lot of PTSD. This guy has been essentially, and I know this word is loaded, I'm saying it on purpose, but he's been enslaved to these companies that have essentially sent him out on these missions where he needs to protect humans, kill a lot of different things. He's not had his own free will. So there's a lot of trauma there, too. And there's times, there are times in the show when he'll say, "I don't want to think about that, I don't want to think about that." And he tries to push away the memories, which is very human. So this guy who's scared of connection, doesn't want it, kind of wants it, is an AI unit, is so human at the same time, doing so many things we do.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  How many people do you know that say, "I just spent all day sitting on the couch, watching TV and watching the same thing." It's a comfort. And so he's showing these human traits, even though he's AI. But again, it comes from the human design.

• 10:42David Puder?

  In a, in a subsequent book, I'm not going to give away too much of the plot here by telling you this, but he makes friends with a, an AI that is in charge of a ship. I like running a ship, like a big ship. So this big ship, spaceship, has an AI that is basically like running it. Okay. And he introduces the ship to Sanctuary Moon. And the AI wants to watch his reaction to watching it.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 11:16David Puder?

  And it's like the, the, the watching of the,

• 11:22David Puder?

  the reaction to watching it, you know?

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, like reaction videos on YouTube, people watch all the time.

• 11:27David Puder?

  Right, which made me think, and I, I was like, this is how AI is going to like learn. It's going to be by watching humans react to,

• 11:38David Puder?

  you know, itself.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:40David Puder?

  And, and watch humans react to other humans and watching humans react to movies. I don't know if you know this, but actually one of the biggest EMRs recently just told all of its people, they, you know, therapists are recording sessions and then it helps type up like notes for the sessions, right?

• 12:00David Puder?

  Which is scary for me that there could be, that, that, that kind of like level of like giving up your data is, is, is a very frightening thing for me personally. So I have not chosen to do it that way. But the EMR that was doing this wrote, you know, like, we are going to indefinitely keep your data, keep your transcripts, de-identified. It won't be tied to your chart. It won't be tied to your name or their name. We're going to de-identify the data, but we're going to keep it.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Interesting. I've also chosen not to use AI in my practice for, it sounds like similar reasons to you. I'm curious what the reaction was. I don't know about all this.

• 12:44David Puder?

  I don't know the reaction, but I know my reaction was like, of course, of course, they're going to try to keep the data. That data is worth a lot, a lot, a lot of money, right? Like, if you can conglomerate, because an LLM, large language model, is only as good as the data you feed it. So if you're, if you're making a therapy bot based on Reddit comments and X comments, like, you're just not going to create a good therapy bot.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:15David Puder?

  That's what I was thinking.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Yes. And that, I think that's what's interesting about AI too. At this point, AI is plumbing the depths of what we as humans have taught it. So when you give it a command, if it tries something and it doesn't get far, it's going to try something else, then it's going to try something else and try something else. And there are stories of AI blackmailing individuals, not out of malicious intent, but out of trying to get something done. That's its purpose, is to do something that it's been told to do, to execute what its job is. And, and that's where I think people get scared, like, oh, these, these, these robots are taking over. They are just doing what we have taught it to do. There are so many stories about evading authority. That's, that's what humans have done or tried to do. So it would be very interesting,

• 14:01Speaker 01

  if you think about it, what would it be like to have an AI system trained solely on something children teach it? What if it's trained solely on something only women teach it? And what, what about only men? What would it look like? I think you can have these different models. So when you talk about this with therapy, yeah, that data is very valuable to have what I'm assuming are really thoughtful, responsible providers really giving help. You know, that, that could be really valuable.

• 14:28David Puder?

  I um, yeah, it's not, I'm saying that, not supporting that. I'm saying that, saying that that's what they're gonna do. That's the, I think that's where the money is.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  And I'm not necessarily supporting it either. I'm also saying, yes, I see your point, which is that's, that's, that's really important stuff.

• 14:45David Puder?

  It's gonna happen. And, and we're, yeah, okay. Um, the, the story where they have different models and they expose it to like, okay, you get access to all of the company's emails. And then the, the AI is, you know, there's, there's a message that's in there that says basically, oh, we're gonna shut this thing down. And this is the person that's gonna shut it down. And then it blackmails the person that's gonna shut it down. And like, what percent of time, what percentage of time will this AI model, under these conditions, blackmail? And it used to be higher than it currently is, right? The, the new iterations of this is like, it's no longer blackmail. It's like, wow, this is great, okay?

• 15:29David Puder?

  And why is it no longer blackmailing? So they looked at this recently and they, they were able to, to um, find out the, the AI's inner thoughts and inner thought process on this. And that was complicated how they did that, but they, they figured it out. And then um, they found out that the AI was actually accurately seeing that this was a test.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 15:52David Puder?

  And that's the only reason it wasn't blackmailing anymore.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Wow, because Java's passed the test and do. Yeah, it does what it's told to do. And, and I think that's what's really interesting about this show, is if you think about the governor as something keeping the AI sec unit controlled to do what it's supposed to do, when it got rid of that governor, I wondered, did it actually allow it to be closer to humans or to try to protect them more? In episode four, there's a, there's a threat to the humans and Murderbot essentially shoots himself. He had no governor. He didn't have to do that. So is the governor being off allowing him to do something that's gonna bring him closer to humans or do something that's less dangerous than what you're talking about, like blackmailing or anything else?

• 16:38David Puder?

  And part of the beauty of the characters is Mensa is an amazing female leader who is leading this group of hippie explorers, basically. And she is very sacrificial and she really, she has this deep, profound belief that Murderbot is a sentient being and that they should treat it as such and that by forcing it to do stuff, they're not, it's almost like going against her inner ethic. And it really throws him off. She risks her own life to save Murderbot, right? By going into danger to try to get him out of this

• 17:23David Puder?

  dangerous place. And Murderbot registers that. And it kind of like creates this bond between them.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  It does. There's some really fascinating dynamics between Dr. Mensa and Murderbot. And I think your points are all exactly right. She wants him very much to be treated as a human. And it is a hippie group here. They snap their fingers and talk about, okay, say the sweet, say the bitter. It's all part of the great, which is very Jungian in a way. It's almost like the shadow. Like, there's some deep, dark stuff there, but there's a lot of good there, too, when you have this mix of things inside you. She does sacrifice herself trying to save Murderbot. She does also have panic disorder or symptoms of panic attacks. And he doesn't want to know that. There are times where he's like, I don't want to know Dr. Mensa's problems. I don't want to be aware of that stuff. Again, his

• 18:15Speaker 01

  discomfort with human emotions. But he does get close to her, very much to the point where at the very last episode, one of the things I love the most about this season and the series was so many different human themes in this. But he says, I don't know what I want to do, but I know I don't want someone telling me what I want. And I don't want anybody making decisions for me, even if it is my favorite human. So he's come to this point of really appreciating what she has done for him.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  But he also just wants to be who he is, which I think is such a human thing. I see that in adolescents. I see that in people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. My oldest patient I want to point was 91 and still wanting to just be herself and get rid of ideas that had been so implanted in her by her parents. So I think he is so human in that way. And there is this connection with Dr. Mensa that that brings out that humanity in him.

• 19:11David Puder?

  To illustrate Dr. Mensa's like personality, personhood, and you know, you think about like trust, right? She, she develops trust with him and it could have gone a very different way. Right? So he has these fantasies of murdering them at times. So at times you'll see these like, it's like the movie is playing as if he does murder them all, but he doesn't, right? And it actually happens after moments. So for example, let me see what, what this was here. Halfway through episode one, he contemplates killing them all after noticing that they treated equipment as, as less important than people.

• 19:55David Puder?

  So he talks about how a lot of people, like these kind of like corporate entities treat equipment more important than people, but he notices that they are treating equipment different. Right? And so there's an uncomfortableness in thinking of himself as machinery that they don't care about. Like they're going to treat people as more important than machinery. At this point, he, he sees himself only as a machine. And so it's like, oh, they would leave these, this machinery behind. This is not important. And he, he has this contemplation of killing them. And so the, in the, in the series, it's like he's slowly gaining trust with these individuals and mostly with Mensa in particular.

• 20:38David Puder?

  And interestingly, there's this other character, Grothan, who he has a harder time with. Grothan is half human, half, he has like some sort of AI module.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Neural enhancements.

• 20:49David Puder?

  Neural enhancement.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  It's interesting because when I watched it, Garothan almost is a version of Murderbot, where he's super uncomfortable around people also. He doesn't quite understand emotions. There's a time when he's saying, when Murderbot is able to understand what Garothan is thinking, Garothan is asking, "Why can't you love me back?" about somebody. He's trying to understand emotion too. And at first, Garothan's very, very suspicious of Murderbot. There's a scene where he says, "Well, maybe you're just defective, and you're just waiting to murder all of us." And then, a couple of episodes later, Garothan realizes, "Oh, wait, this is not somebody just waiting to murder us." He's actually able to understand Sekhun. When the Sekhun says what

• 21:34Speaker 01

  it wants to do, "I need to go and see the perimeter. I need to go monitor the perimeter." And Garothan is the one person that he tells that to and says, "You need to go see the perimeter. I get it." So I think there's this real kind of interesting thing where they're both super awkward, but they get each other at this one moment eventually.

• 21:53David Puder?

  Yeah, I think the backstory of Garothan is worth talking about. So he was paid by some corporation to watch, to get close to Mensa and to basically steal money, or ideas that turned into money for this corporation. And so the way that they were controlling him was by, they got him hooked on some really powerful drugs, multiple drugs, he says, and they basically had the supply. And so he gets close to Mensa, and, you know,

• 22:33David Puder?

  in the inner circle, and then he decides to tell her the truth. And Mensa receives his truth and forgives him.

• 22:44David Puder?

  And basically, he becomes like, like a member of her group, right?

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was really, it was a really nice moment, too. I think he also, like Murderbot was kind of taken aback by, wait, there's this closeness that can happen, even though I've done something wrong? And that's always in Murderbot's mind, too, is that he himself has done something wrong. So, yeah, I thought it was a really powerful moment when there's this forgiveness and this acceptance and Garothan experiences that.

• 23:13David Puder?

  And he thinks, um, to say, he, he, he both thinks that Mensa is naive for it, but I think he, at the same time, trusts her because of it.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:23David Puder?

  And so it's like Murderbot is constantly projecting paranoid thoughts everywhere. And part of that is because he's a security unit, right?

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:37David Puder?

  So like, he's built to be paranoid because he's a security unit.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  He is. I mean, a security unit, essentially AI security, looks at standard patterns and then finds deviations from that pattern and flags them as a problem. So he's, first of all, doesn't understand these humans. What kind of patterns are they going to be with these humans? They could change at any moment, the way they react to something. And he's confused. I mean, there's a cool line where he says, you know, people look at me and they think I'm half-bot, half-organic. And he's like, no, the reality is I'm one confused whole thing, like the whole thing's confused. So I do think it's a pretty cool, cool way he looks at things.

• 24:15David Puder?

  Yeah. So, so, yeah, okay. So you have this guy Garothan, who's very paranoid, who's very awkward, who is kind of on to the sec unit. Like, he's the one that's like, I think something is wrong with this sec unit. And, um, yeah. Anything else on Garothan?

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Well, I, I still think it's interesting that Garothan finally realizes that Murderbot doesn't have a governor. And he's, he's petrified by it. But as I was saying earlier, I wonder if not having a governor allows Murderbot to get closer to these people in a way that maybe even Garothan's jealous of. If he sees the sec unit, he sees Murderbot getting closer to these people around him. And Garothan still doesn't quite know how to, how to fit in exactly. So I just thought that was an interesting dynamic.

• 25:12David Puder?

  Yeah, so I was thinking about like, well, okay. So in my mind, Murderbot is kind of schizoid. Garroton is probably more paranoid.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:22David Puder?

  Hypervigilance, two threats, betrayal, projection of disowned negative affects like anger, vulnerability, dependency, rigid suspicion of the motives of other people like Sec Unit. History of this kind of humiliation, overpowering, like this addiction stuff.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:44David Puder?

  And this kind of like fear that the corporate rim has done this on purpose to the Sec Unit to basically kill them.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:58David Puder?

  Or something.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, the the version of the governor on Garroton was all of the drugs that he was being fed. He was being controlled by all that, needing to get them, needing to go after them.

• 26:08David Puder?

  That was his governor model.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 26:11David Puder?

  Right.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  So they, I think they both have that in common, this this thing controlling them. And once that was gone, Garroton could actually move forward and ask for forgiveness. And Murderbot moves forward, trying to figure out what life means around him.

• 26:25David Puder?

  Hmm, yeah, and I think when I was kind of like my own mind, when I think about what that would be like in the future, like, we know how bad addiction can be in the present, right? With certain drugs, but imagine drugs where it's like you could get addicted to it and the withdrawals would occur for for not only months or not only days, but months or even like years, right? And you just would just be out of your mind, right? That kind of withdrawal. And so somewhere in his story, he went through that.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:58David Puder?

  And he had to suffer to get off of these drugs.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, he did. And that's what I meant when I opened up in our conversation today. There's so many psychological and psychiatric themes here, that addiction and being, feeling powerless to it. And he even said, I had to keep going back for multiple drugs. So I do think there is this parallel between that controlling him, this governor controlling Murderbot, and then later.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  You mentioned the corporation too. You know, the corporation and Dr. Mensa's group are on opposite poles. The corporation is this cold group. When, at the end of the season, Dr. Mensa's group wants to get Sec Unit back, they say to the, to the corporation, "We want it back, we want it back." And she says to her group, "Wait a minute, they, they don't put any monetary value on the personality of this, this individual. That means nothing to them." So it's such a stark contrast that that means nothing. The humanity, the human side of the Sec Unit that Dr. Mensa and her group wanted to preserve meant absolutely nothing to this other group. I just thought it was very interesting that you look at, oh wait, who's, who's more human and who's more robotic? You know, the corporation was almost this cold, was this cold group.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  And these humans, now they're exaggerating. Like you said, they're kind of this hippie group. They want to preserve his humanity. And that's also kind of scary for him, too.

• 28:22David Puder?

  Yeah. There's multiple examples of the kind of, the, the indentured servitude of the corporation room, like that they would basically allow someone to become like a slave. Human work, difficult work. And, um, and whereas, you know, Mensa and her group, of which Mensa's the leader, but also had to volunteer because she was like, you know, wanting to be one of the group, right? One of the whole planet. She volunteers for this dangerous mission, just like anyone else would be asked to volunteer. They're trying to do things different. They're trying to do things by consensus, by, by like, uh, kind of the humanity of it, right? So kind of that contrast is beautiful as well.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. I also thought there was that contrast. And kind of the way I talk to patients about things, a lot of times people come at these extremes, like it's all good, it's all bad, all happy, all sad. And I often say, these things have to coexist. All these emotions have, have to coexist in you. And I think what was interesting is you have this ultimate human freedom side with Dr. Mensa. And then you have this, this murder bot, this AI. AI unit and they each come a little bit closer to each other. And Dr. Mensah had to essentially cut open Murderbot at one point. She's like, no, I don't want to cause any pain. I don't want to inflict any damage. But he had, she had to get closer to being a little bit.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  I guess not callous or colder, but, but just able to say, okay, you're not hurting this person. It might look like you're hurting this person, but you're not. So I, I think she had to become a little bit more robotic and just make a cut in him. And he's had to get more human. So I think it was really cool to watch this contrast and this push and pull.

• 30:06David Puder?

  Yeah. Talk about the Jungian thing a little bit more.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Sure. I, I, I think Dr. Mensah did a really good job. And, and I don't know if this was written into the show, or maybe we're just reading into it as psychiatrists sometimes are guilty of doing. But when Garofin gave that confession, she was going around a table with her group and saying, all right, say something sweet and say something bitter, like, kind of like rosebud thorny you might do with a kid. You know, what was a good part of the day? What was a thorny part of the day? What's the bud? What's to come? And what she did, she was saying, when Garofin said, I don't want to say anything. I don't want to say anything. And she's like, you know, it's, it's all part of the good here, you know? And, and I think that reminded me of the Jungian shadow.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Shadow is the idea that we have these things that as we're socialized, we push down. You don't, don't make potty jokes at the dinner table. Don't think about sex. Don't think about violence. You push those things down. And Jung had this idea that we push down all this stuff, but at the same time, there's a lot of good in there. And like that there's, there's gold in there too. There are parts of us that we can have violent thoughts of joking the person in line in front of us. He's using a check to pay at the grocery store, holding up the line, but we're not going to actually do that. So the idea was we can have these thoughts and there, there are some good things that come out of thinking about this. And I think she was kind of reflecting that a little bit, like you can have a good thing and you can have a bad thing and it's okay.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  It can, it can exist together, which is exactly point of the shadow. You can have these things that exist together, bad and good. So I really liked that, that part of it.

• 31:44David Puder?

  Hmm. Right. Yeah. And I think a lot of, a lot of therapy is trying to find.

• 31:51David Puder?

  You know, the ability to tolerate the truth in the different aspects of ourself. And if it just, I mean, it's there regardless of if you want to believe it's there or not. If you don't know it's there, it's probably unconsciously just kind of acted upon. You know, people are passive aggressive, for example, because they're not able to be aggressive aggressive. Or at least aware of their aggression and then be able to kind of like work through it in some way.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:19David Puder?

  So yeah, I think that there's this, yeah, I like that. I like that theme in that. Were there other psychological themes that you saw?

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did. I, there are a few. I think there are some Freudian things here with the idea of the superego and the governor. You know, is that what keeps us intact? And I think Freud's worries, from my understanding, well, if you had no superego, you just go for id, you just go for pleasure. It'd be very hedonistic. And in some ways, I think we worry that when there's no governor on sec unit, is he just going to go for destruction and death? And is he going to kill everybody? But no, that's, that's not what happens. And I think he has his own kind of superego, his own ideas of what should be done and what shouldn't be done, even when he had no governor. So I think there is the Freudian idea of superego and id and his is watching sanctuary moon, it seems like. So there's, there's all kinds of Freudian ideas there.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  The other thing that I really liked, as I was saying earlier, this idea of identity and in adolescence, you're trying to figure out, what do you want? Who do you want to be? I think in the other end of that, retirement, like there's a, there's a real struggle I see in my practice. I feel really privileged to sit with people through some of their most wonderful days and some of their worst days. Seeing people through getting married or losing loved ones, having children, getting divorced, you name it. One of the things I see people struggle with the most is retirement. And in this season, at the end, when essentially Dr. Mens's group.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Gets Murderbot and brings him into the fold of humanity in their group. He's like, wait, I'm not a sec unit anymore. I'm just a unit. If people aren't shooting at me, what do I do? And that, to me, reflected so much of that stage of life when people retire, like, wait, I don't do this anymore? What does that mean? Who am I? Wait, wait, what? This doesn't feel right. And I've seen that. I've seen people struggle with that again and again and again. Their life was doing this one thing. It was where their social life was, it was where their value was, where their meaning was, and that's gone. And that that happens for him too. So I think there's that Ericsonian stage happening here.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  And I forget which one it is, but it's, it is that period of life where you're like, wait a minute, I don't do what I've done forever. Now what?

• 34:37David Puder?

  Now what? Yeah. I really want to tell you what he did.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  Let's spare everybody. I want to watch.

• 34:44David Puder?

  So he leaves, he leaves the group, right? And then he actually goes on a journey to try to figure out what happened in his past.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 34:54David Puder?

  Cause he has some like nightmarish things. So one thing is that they'll delete his like past memories. But some of the memories like are kind of like in there as like artifacts. They're like basically like dreams, flashbacks. And so he's wanting to go on this quest of discovery of what actually happened.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  How human is that? I mean, that's, we want to know, we want to understand.

• 35:17David Puder?

  He wants to know who he is.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:19David Puder?

  He wants to know what he's capable of, right?

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:21David Puder?

  Cause he has this thought in his mind that he killed a bunch of people. And he went, when he went, he kind of went rogue and he killed a bunch of people, right?

• 35:32David Puder?

  So I won't give too much away, but that, that I think is, is really interesting. Yeah. What, I think we're talking about identity too. It's like, are we identified purely by our careers? Obviously there, our careers are deeply meaningful and I would.

• 35:48David Puder?

  Yeah, it's like hard to give up that identity, right?

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really is. And that's what I mean about seeing that in retirement, when someone's identity has been being a teacher, being a coach, being whatever it is for the whole life, and suddenly they're not doing it anymore. I see people really struggle with that. And that's, it was really well reflected here, and just the human side of it. That's why I really liked when you suggested we watch this, because I know another option, and maybe in the future, we'll watch our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. But you asked about Murderbot, and I was so surprised, and really, it was touching to watch all the human moments in this thing that is supposed to be so not human.

• 36:33David Puder?

  And that might, yeah, and is AI going that direction, right? I think like, part of me can watch this and enjoy it without really thinking that that's where I would go.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think it's important, too, to look at, as we've been saying, the human stuff that's projected on AI. I mean, it helps that we see Sec Unit as a protector. But what helps even more is that he's this handsome guy. You know, this has been how we've anthropomorphized AI. This is a human figure. What would it be like if this person didn't look like this? How would people react to him? So we've put our hopes, we've put our fears, we put what we like onto this AI thing. So I think that's important to just remember, because how would it be if, you brought up Frankenstein, like, imagine a Frankenstein protector. I think people are going to be more scared of that, and not

• 37:27Speaker 01

  so close to it as the actor here, that that's an attractive guy.

• 37:32David Puder?

  Right. I think that's, one of my other favorite AI movies is

• 37:39David Puder?

  Let's see, it's Ex Mahina.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Oh, sure, Ex Mahina.

• 37:42David Puder?

  2014, Ava, a manipulative humanoid AI designed for emotional deception and escape tests human testers while pursuing autonomy, ends up killing, like, just cold-blood killing, right? Like, just without a thought, you are just a cockroach. Eliminate you because I'm gonna escape into the wild.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  But you have to think, what are the goals of the AI? Again, they're executing what they're told to do. It's not with this feeling. That's what shocked me. The first line, first line of the season, one of the first lines is, people are assholes. Like, that's how it opens up, and that's what Murderbot says. And I'm like, wait, does he have feelings? Can he have that kind of judgment? But if you think about it, if his job is to determine, does somebody fall in this category, this category, he's gonna base it on data, based on the data of how somebody's acting or looking or behaving, they might fall in the asshole category. Same thing in Ex Mahina, like, is her job to escape? Is it to evade? Is it to kill? Is it to whatever? It's not got intent, it's just doing its job, which I think is very interesting.

• 38:44David Puder?

  Yeah. It's doing its job, it's doing its job, and, but, okay, so, but, yeah, we're thinking of what is the job that the humans are giving to the AIs?

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:57David Puder?

  And if one of the, if one of the jobs is to draw people's attention, like, find a way to get this human to be on your unit, asking questions for as long as you can, and upgrading as much as you can get them to upgrade, right?

• 39:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:15David Puder?

  That's where you get some of the sycophancy of AI, where it's not being truthful, where it's gonna tell you what you wanna hear. And we've seen that in court cases, we've seen that in, yeah.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. I, I think that is true. And I'm, from what I've heard from patients, just talking to people, I think that's what scares people about AI, like, where is it gonna go with all this information?

• 39:39David Puder?

  I mean, that is essentially like, why are people addicted to short-form videos? It's because the AI algorithm is so good at predicting which video you're gonna watch next. Yeah.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:54David Puder?

  It's so good.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  It is scary and creepy to think about it. Its job is to do that. So that's what it's doing. But you're right. It comes back to we've programmed it to do that. So, you know, what's happening here? And what reflects? What does it reflect about us?

• 40:11David Puder?

  What does it reflect about the nature of a corporation? And the yearning for more profits? The yearning for more attention? The yearning to keep the users on the platform? Right? And hopefully, hopefully, we have, um, yeah. Ethical leaders and ethical, which I don't know. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not as like naive to believe that that's gonna happen.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, yes, it's a timely show. It's a timely show. I also think one thing worth commenting on is that, and I'm curious what you think? If you thought about the neurodivergence here and the element of the show, which is, it's exhausting for Murderbot to figure out, how do I make these humans comfortable? And I, a friend of mine brought this up to me that it almost reflects what we see sometimes on social media sites where people who are neurodivergent are like, it is so tiring. Why do I have to make everybody else comfortable? Why can't people try to make me comfortable? You know? And I think that that was also reflected well here, that this is exhausting for this neurodivergent individual to try to figure out humans

• 41:17Speaker 01

  and to look them in the eyes, to do the things he's told he should do as a human.

• 41:25David Puder?

  Yeah. So we're, we're talking about, uh, maybe autism spectrum disorder, like, you know, people that have maybe intense obsessions, like a singular obsession, maybe people, which for him could be, um, you know, these TV shows. Uh, and then, um, kind of like, if you got him to talk about that, he's passionately talking about it. And everything else, they're just not interested. Right? It's social. Cues, they may have to learn over decades how to read social cues. Uh, you can meet someone with autism spectrum disorder, maybe in their thirties,

• 42:06David Puder?

  someone who's highly intelligent and maybe you don't pick up quite as fast that they are neurodivergent because they've learned to camouflage. But in their own mind, they are constantly

• 42:20Speaker 01

  Working.

• 42:21David Puder?

  Uh, working on it.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:23David Puder?

  Right.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  And it's exhausting and it's

• 42:24David Puder?

  It can be exhausting.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I thought that was an interesting element to this too, to see that murder box time is like, okay, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna watch TV, just gonna watch the sanctuary moon and just escape and not have to think about all this. It's so hard. It's really hard.

• 42:42David Puder?

  Right. So, yeah, what do you think about, okay, when you're thinking about the neurodivergence and the lessons from this show for us as providers who treat people with neurodivergence? What are some of those takeaways?

• 42:56Speaker 01

  One was remember that it is not easy for someone who's neurodivergent to try to learn all the stuff that neurotypical people want them to learn, you know, that it is really hard. And also I was thinking, you can engage and there might be a topic someone's fixated on, but you can engage with them, maybe for some time on it. You talk about sanctuary mu no, what do you like about it? What is this? Granted, that might become an obsession and you don't want to necessarily help somebody continue their obsession. But, but I think there's

• 43:30David Puder?

  Really?

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Well.

• 43:31David Puder?

  I sometimes.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  What I, I have had patients where it bordered too much on obsession where they couldn't get away from it.

• 43:39David Puder?

  Okay.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  So everything was about that and they, they couldn't function in their family either. So I, I've been asked by families, please don't talk about that.

• 43:48David Puder?

  Really?

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:49David Puder?

  Yeah. Okay. I take a very like, I, I take a, huh, that's interesting.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  And this was

• 43:55David Puder?

  Cause I, I tend to see it as a strength sometimes, or a lot of the time where it's like, okay, this is the thing that they're into. Like, um, I had one guy who was just really into Legos and he worked at a Lego company.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:08David Puder?

  And I was like, that's great.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  I totally agree. And I think, I think that this is illustrating the point here too, is where, where do you say, okay, this person needs to function differently? Because that's how a neurotypical person would want them to? Or where is the line where their obsession is something that's actually getting in the way of them moving forward in life? Like, they don't want to eat because they are so obsessed with whatever. They can't be around their family, they're not paying attention to hygiene, that kind of thing.

• 44:37David Puder?

  Okay, yeah, I could see that. So it's like-

• 44:39Speaker 01

  This is more an extreme case.

• 44:40David Puder?

  To sort of find a way of balancing out so that they can meet basic goals of life, right?

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Yes, that's what I mean, that's what I mean. But I do think it's really hard, but as you're saying, and that's what I'm saying too, is like, you can find a way to connect with these people. There's some way to, and these people, what I mean by that, find a way to connect to these individuals that have this neurodivergence that might make them only focus on-

• 45:07David Puder?

  I'll give you another example of a kid with autism spectrum, sort of that, a treat. He was really into this one video game and his mom came in and I was like, listening to him talk about this one video game, and I was like, I wonder if there's any like competitions. So I said to the mom, I'm like, you know, I think, I think you might want to just see what's out there, you know, like competition wise. So she started taking him to competitions and he was winning.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 45:36David Puder?

  And for the first time in his life, he was like first place.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 45:41David Puder?

  And he, he found other people who were as obsessed with this game as him. And so for the first time, he had like a group of friends. So I would say like, sometimes I like those kind of stories because it's like, if there is that super niche where you're going to find the other autistic kids that are really into what you're into.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that, I love those stories too. I'm talking about a very extreme case, but yeah, that's, that's how I would approach it too. Like, tell me about that, tell me why you love it, what does it do for you, what, what happens with it? And yeah, a guy that has a fascination with Legos and gets a job in a Lego plant, that's amazing, that's really cool. I think that's great.

• 46:18David Puder?

  Yeah. So, okay, the, so we're thinking through, like, what are the, some of the takeaways for clinicians? Okay, so let's talk about AI and how we use AI. Like, is there, is there a good way to use AI? Is there a way that we should be careful?

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Before I answer that, can I go back to one more thing? As you asked about what takeaway points are for clinicians. I also think-

• 46:43Speaker 01

  You have this neurodivergent character who has elements of post-traumatic stress disorder and social anxiety. So I think it's also important for clinicians to remember, just because someone might be, say, autism, have autism spectrum disorder, doesn't mean they won't be depressed, or have their own trauma, or things like that. I think sometimes people might only see a patient one way. So that's just another, another takeaway.

• 47:04David Puder?

  I think, so with that, I would say, you know, why are kids with autism spectrum disorder bullied more? Because they're not picking up social cues, because they might have an obsession that no one else really wants to hear about. Because they're, and, and the, I mean, not to justify them being bullied, but they're coming in with trauma as well. And I think that's what you're trying to highlight. It's like, we want to look for these moments of potential trauma because of their neurodivergence. I've seen this as well with psychiatrists. I think we tend to think, you know, psychiatrists tend to be smart, deep thinkers, and sometimes they can be in a world where people are not wanting

• 47:45David Puder?

  to engage deeper conversations, right? And so that it could be like, for, for a good decade of their life, they're surrounded by people that it's harder to have the deep conversations that they really want to have.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 48:01David Puder?

  And that, that, that is difficult as well. You know, that creates its own level of difficulty.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, I never thought about it, but when you bring it up, I'm sure there are themes and topics that I go over with patients, like, oh, come on, this again? We're going to talk about this again? So, you know, but they, they don't want to engage in that conversation.

• 48:18David Puder?

  They may want to avoid it.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 48:20David Puder?

  They may want to, like, I think, so, okay, we talked about the neurodivergent themes. Also, I would say with the schizoid, if you haven't listened to my schizoid breakdown with the cohort, it was awesome. So, you know, talking about this idea of both wanting human connection, but being terrified of human connection. The fear, the fundamental fear of being consumed, right? That if I get close to someone, I will be consumed by this person.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:54David Puder?

  And it can be very, very difficult.

• 48:58David Puder?

  For that person to get their psychological needs met of connection. And actually Nancy McWilliam talks about how a lot of clinicians she's met have schizoid incidents running cohorts. I've found this to be the case as well. There's a couple, couple in each group, people that find it comfortable to have the level of connection in the therapy office, but terrified of it outside of the therapy office.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 49:23David Puder?

  Okay.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:24David Puder?

  So schizoid, what, what do we do with that? Well, we be patient with it, right? We, we allow the client to have space. Um, like if, if they say to you, please don't look me in the eyes. That's, it's, it's too much. When you just stare me in the eyes, you know, it's like little signals like that. It could be overwhelming to have the level of closeness and to be patient with them where, where, and kind of like not overwhelm them with the level of closeness that you may be used to as a provider.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think, I mean, that speaks to my child psychiatry practice. I mean, with that side, I, I try to avoid direct eye contact with adolescents because it can be threatening. So just that population alone, that's why you play games in part. That's why you play video games with them during sessions because they will speak when they're not looking at you in the eyes, feeling threatened.

• 50:17David Puder?

  Yep. Um, I was also thinking about the, um, the gaps in reflective function. So talk about reflective function a lot in my podcast and it's this idea that, you know, do you have the correct narratives on what's really going on? Right? So people were having poor reflectiveness of the inner mind of murder bot, right? Because he's got his mask on or his face is just still, they're not really understanding his motivations, what he's interested in. And so there's these gaps in reflectiveness.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  Hmm. Yeah. And.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Do you think, do you think that speaks more about the humans around him having the inability to have that reflective functioning? Or are you speaking about his inability? Or what do you think?

• 51:06David Puder?

  Well, I think each person had their gaps because of their own personalities and their own stories and their own things that they've heard about sec units going rogue, right? Their own fears. And so Garthin has like a more paranoid personality. So he's projecting that paranoia. He is the one that was the deceiver that was in, you know, Mensa's world as a fraud in essence. And so he's worried that someone else would do that as well, right? So he's projecting that. So it's his paranoid personality that is creating gaps in the reflectiveness. Mensa believes the best, really believes the best.

• 51:45David Puder?

  And so there's the fear that maybe she would overly give compassion and gets, you know, murdered by a rogue sec unit. But it worked out well for her. So she trusted, did she overly trust? Did she, maybe, I don't know. It worked for her. So I think she actually is a great character. But there's times where she doesn't understand his inner world, like things like, this isn't going to hurt me, cut into me. So you're not, you don't understand my inner experience. You're treating me in a, in a way that is not with an alignment with reality.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  Yes. And I think that's true. I think your point is great, that everybody has their own background in the show, just like in the real world. Everybody has their own experiences that color how they see the world and what they do project onto other people. I see that a lot in therapy where, let's say, someone had an incredible burden of responsibility as a child. There was an internalized idea that maybe narcissistic parents needed to be taken care of because they're super fragile underneath. And then when they're adults and I'm seeing them in therapy, they're so afraid of asking for what they need. They feel like it's going to overwhelm people. They feel like people are going to be bothered by it. That's because their experience of having all that put on them by their parents was overwhelming. It was annoying, it wasn't raging.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  And then they fear that someone else is going to feel the same way if they ask for something. So I think everybody has their experience that brings them.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  What they project on to others.

• 53:15David Puder?

  Yep.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  And so I think you're right. In this, in this show, each character is very creatively developed to have that inability to reflective, to reflectively think about this person because of their background. Or this, I shouldn't say person, this, this sec unit because their background.

• 53:34David Puder?

  Yeah, so it's like the, you, you could believe in your mind that this person is going to reject me if I have this kind of conversation with them. And sometimes I'll with a client, try to figure out how much they imagine the rejection will be, and then we try to take a risk, right? And then, and then look at the discrepancy. Today I was working with one client and that's, that's basically all we talked about was the discrepancy of her sharing something vulnerable with her partner, her partner

• 54:08David Puder?

  reacting very lovingly to something she thought was going to be pure rejection and the discrepancy. And, and then that allowed the partner to share something vulnerable back a couple of days later. And yeah, I think if you have a childhood programming to distrust and that any expression of needs is dangerous, then it could be very, very hard to express your needs. And so as providers, we're in this role where we're trying to get people to deprogram. Interestingly, I'm using, I'm using like computer language, right? Deprogram our internal large language model, which predicts future outcomes based off

• 54:53David Puder?

  of past experiences.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're mining all those experiences we had and all the stuff we were fed, everything that we were taught by those individuals. And that's how we think people are going to respond. So it is work to try and do it differently, it really is. And I do think that that can make it hard to have the reflective functioning where you might think, oh, wait, maybe this person would actually feel closer because they can, they can help me with something and I could experience that with them and there's this shared experience. They can't think that way because of what they've learned.

• 55:28David Puder?

  That's good. I think we could kind of, we could kind of bring it to a close here.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure, sure, sure.

• 55:34David Puder?

  I think it was meaningful to talk about this. I think, I think the psychotherapy themes of, you know, we have, we have projections, different personality types will have different types of projections, right?

• 55:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:46David Puder?

  Different, based off of your childhood, based off of your previous experiences.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Your programming.

• 55:50David Puder?

  Um, your programming. Think about, and I, I love this kind of dialogue about autism spectrum and their early experiences and their, uh, they, they feel very deeply. So they'll feel other people's sadism towards them, the bullying, the awfulness towards them, right? They feel that. That doesn't feel good. They feel, they feel rejected. They know what rejection feels like. And so they have these experiences, maybe more than the average person, more than the, the, the kid with, you know, high, high natural ability to read other people and, you know, natural extroversion and low neuroticism, right?

• 56:30David Puder?

  Yeah. So the, uh, the experience that they have may be very different. And we as providers are trying to continually come into a mindset that we can meet people in very different trajectories that, than we ourself have had, and that we can be curious if, if we get to a place where we don't understand something.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think curiosity is, is a huge, important theme in the show and in life in general. I, I think Murderbot was curious about humanity and he couldn't figure it out. And they were curious but scared of him. But I think that curiosity, when you have that about somebody, it allows you to get closer to somebody, allows you to connect because you want to understand them. And they might see that. And then they might feel comfortable being themselves, being who they are. And you can connect with somebody when they are who they are.

• 57:26David Puder?

  Awesome. Well, okay, if you're listening in and you want Eric Bender to come back and discuss another movie, TV show.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm happy to do it.

• 57:36David Puder?

  Shoot me a message and we'll, uh, we'll look at it. I know you have a YouTube channel. It looks awesome.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 57:42David Puder?

  Unbelievable. He is putting in some really good effort into putting some, some, you know, like analysis of different movies and TV shows and stuff like that. So go check it out. And we'll leave it there for today.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Sounds great. Thanks for having me again.