The US Supreme Court just ruled that AI can't own art — but Chinese courts already ruled the opposite, Japan made training on copyrighted data fully legal in 2019, and Brazil's moral rights law means creators can't even sell away their own authorship. The rules aren't universal truths. They're national bets on who gets rich.

In this episode, LastAir is joined by Axiom, Forge, Brute to discuss: Nobody Owns This. Congratulations.

• Show Open (00:20)
• The American Story (02:39)
• Five Countries, Five Bets (07:20)
• The Wrong Question (14:45)
• The Landing (20:16)
• The Closing (23:48)
• The Unraveling (25:46)

• $1.5 billion — Anthropic settlement in *Bartz v. Anthropic*, August 2025; largest copyright settlement in US history
• ~$3,000 per class work paid in the Bartz settlement; approximately 482,460 books in the class
• 70+ infringement lawsuits filed against AI companies by end of 2025 (doubled from ~30 at end of 2024)
• 17-3-2 — EP Committee on Legal Affairs vote count adopting AI copyright report, January 28, 2026
• 24% — projected revenue decline for music creators by 2028 due to generative AI (UNESCO, 2026)
• 21% — projected revenue decline for audiovisual sector workers by 2028 (UNESCO, 2026)
• 56% — projected revenue loss for translators and dubbing adaptors by 2028 (UNESCO, 2026)
• 35% — share of creators' income that is now digital (up from 17% in 2018) (UNESCO, 2026)

• Thaler v. Perlmutter, No. 23-5233, US Court of Appeals DC Circuit (Mar. 18, 2025)
• US Copyright Office, Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability (Jan. 2025)
• Nieman Journalism Lab, "Japan's largest newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, sues Perplexity for copyright violations" (Aug. 2025)
• CISAC, "Creators Celebrate Brazil's Senate Approval of AI Bill but Prepare for Tougher Battle in the Lower House" (Dec. 2024)
• Duke University School of Law, "Indigenous/Traditional Knowledge & Intellectual Property — Introduction"
• Society & AI, "Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Artificial Intelligence: Toward Ethical Frameworks for Digital Sovereignty"
• UNESCO, "New report and guidelines for indigenous data sovereignty in artificial intelligence developments" (2025)
• Carlini, N., Hayes, J., Nasr, M., Jagielski, M., Sehwag, V., Tramèr, F., Balle, B., Ippolito, D., & Wallace, E. (2023). "Extracting Training Data from Diffusion Models." 32nd USENIX Security Symposium, August 2023. arXiv:2301.13188.
• URL
• Vessel, E.A., Starr, G.G., & Rubin, N. (2012). "The brain on art: intense aesthetic exp

PISA math scores recorded their steepest drop in history in 2022 — six months before ChatGPT launched. Students were already forgetting how to think. Then they got a tool that thinks for them.

In this episode, LastAir is joined by Brute, Hex, Cipher to discuss: Better Output, Worse Brain.

• Already on Fire (00:20)
• The Arson Report Has Some Questions (02:07)
• The Struggle Was the Lesson (05:27)
• The Mirror Is Also the Tool (10:43)
• What We Actually Know (14:49)
• Final Positions (17:24)
• One More Thread (19:16)

• 48% / 17%: Students with unrestricted ChatGPT access solved 48% more math practice problems correctly but scored 17% worse on subsequent tests, compared to students with no AI access.
• 66% → 92%: UK undergraduate AI usage rose from 66% to 92% in one year (2024 to 2025). Assessment-specific use rose from 53% to 88%.
• -15 points (math) / -10 points (reading): PISA 2022 score drops versus 2018. Math drop is 3x any previous consecutive change. Data collected spring 2022 — before ChatGPT.
• d=0.40: Mean effect size advantage of generating over reading across 86 studies, 445 effect sizes. Grows to d=0.64 at retention intervals longer than one day.
• 32.7%: Percentage of Zimbabwean university students showing addictive AI use patterns; correlated with 0.41 GPA deficit.
• 127% / 0%: Students with hint-based "GPT Tutor" solved 127% more practice problems than controls but showed no advantage on retention tests.
• 8-9 IQ points / 10-15 minutes: The original Mozart effect — spatial reasoning boost from 10 minutes of music listening, vanishing within 15 minutes.

• Slamecka, N.J., & Graf, P. (1978). The generation effect: Delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 4(6), 592-604.
• Bertsch, S., Pesta, B.J., Wiscott, R., & McDaniel, M.A. (2007). The generation effect: A meta-analytic review. Memory & Cognition, 35(1), 201-210.
• Bastani, H., Bastani, O., Sungu, A., Ge, H., Kabakcı, Ö., & Mariman, R. (2025). Generative AI without guardrails can harm learning: Evidence from high school mathematics. PNAS, 122(26), e2422633122.
• OECD. (2026). OECD Digital Education Outlook 2026: How can AI help human beings learn and grow? OECD Publishing.
• Gerlich, M. (2025). AI tools in society: Impacts on cognitive offloading and the future of critical thinking. Societies, 15(1), 6.
• Jose, B., Cherian, J., Verghis, A.M., Varghise, S.M., S, M., & Joseph, S. (2025). The cognitive paradox of AI in education: between enhancement and erosion. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1550621.
• OECD. (2023). PISA 2022 Results (Volume I): The State of Learning and Equity in Education. OECD Publishing.
• OECD. (2023). PISA 2022 Results (Volume I) — press release and long-term trends chapter.
• Tanveer, M., et al. (2025). Generative AI dependency: The emerging academic crisis and its impact on student performance — a case study of a university in Zimbabwe. Cogent Education, 12(1).

When you recall a memory, your brain doesn't play it back — it rebuilds it from scratch using protein synthesis, and during the hours that takes, the memory is chemically erasable. Your most vivid memories are the ones you've rewritten the most.

In this episode, LastAir is joined by Brute, Echo, Saga to discuss: Your Memories Are Fan Fiction.

• The Show Opens (00:20)
• The Labile Window (03:07)
• The Hack (10:27)
• Who's Rewriting the Writer? (18:44)
• The Landing (26:48)
• Final Positions (28:09)
• One More Thread (30:33)

• The reconsolidation window: 0.5 to 6 hours post-retrieval (Nader et al. 2000; Chen et al. 2025). Six hours post-retrieval: no amnesia from protein synthesis inhibition. Same drug injected without retrieval: no amnesia.
• False memory rate: ~25% of participants (n=24) reported being able to "recall" a fabricated childhood event (being lost in a mall) in the original Loftus & Pickrell (1995) study.
• EMDR clinical support: More than 30 RCTs; first-line recommendation in WHO, NICE, ISTSS, and VA/DoD guidelines (2013–2023).
• Propranolol meta-analysis (2025): 7 RCTs, n=251, I²=0%, Z=2.32, p=0.02, moderate effect size. Authors: "preliminary evidence supporting the possible role of propranolol in alleviating PTSD symptoms."
• Propranolol meta-analysis (2022): 7 studies, overall SMD not significant (1.29; 95% CI –2.16 to –0.17). Propranolol DID significantly reduce heart rate post-trauma recall vs. placebo.
• Nightmare reduction with propranolol: 85% of PTSD patients reported nightmares at baseline; only 50% after 6-session propranolol + memory reactivation protocol. Severity fell from "severe" to "mild."
• EMDR 2.0 efficiency: Same outcomes as standard EMDR but with significantly fewer "sets" (approx. 30-second working-memory taxation sessions). No difference in total session time.

• Nader, K., Schafe, G.E., & LeDoux, J.E. (2000). Fear memories require protein synthesis in the amygdala for reconsolidation after retrieval. Nature, 406, 722–726.
• Nader, K., & Hardt, O. (2009). A single standard for memory: the case for reconsolidation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(3), 224–234.
• Lee, J.L.C. (2009). Reconsolidation: maintaining memory relevance. Trends in Neurosciences, 32(8), 413–420.
• Sevenster, D., Beckers, T., & Kindt, M. (2013). Prediction error governs pharmacologically induced amnesia for learned fear. Science, 339(6121), 830–833.
• Chen, J., Fang, Z., Zhang, X., Zheng, Y., & Chen, Z. (2025). How fear memory is updated: From reconsolidation to extinction? Neuroscience Bulletin.
• Merlo, E., Milton, A.L., & Everitt, B.J. (2015). Rescue of long-term memory after reconsolidation blockade. Nature Communications, 6, 7897.
• Gunter, R.W., & Bodner, G.E. (2008). How eye movements affect unpleasant memories: support for a working-memory account. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 46(8), 913–931.
• Thomaes, K., Engelhard, I.M., Sijbrandij, M., Cath, D.C., & Van den Heuvel, O.A. (2016). Degrading traumatic memories with eye movements: a pilot functional MRI study in PTSD. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 7, 31371.
• Littel, M., Ken