Superhuman - From Engineered Desire to Engineered Consent
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.
Superhuman - From Engineered Desire to Engineered Consent
Jeffersons Nightmare
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
