AI isn’t abstract anymore. It’s showing up in the deepest parts of our lives People are using it at the exact moments they used to reach for a journal, a friend, or a distraction. That’s the territory we step into in this episode. I invited Dr. Laurence Hillman and Dr. Vanja Bokun Popović to join this conversation because both of them watch how inner life actually works through years of sitting with clients, students, and their own personal experiments with these tools.

The conversation moves from very concrete moments (panic rising during an AI exchange and a client swept into a fantasy that felt all too real) into the deeper and murkier psychological forces at play underneath it all. Vanja draws on trauma work and her experience with people whose attention tilts toward intensity. Laurence looks at patterns that show up when someone projects old material onto new technology. Neither of them treat AI as a gadget, but instead track what it stirs up in the psyche.

A steady theme is the question of personal readiness. Some people approach these systems with curiosity. Others bring hunger, fear, or a kind of imaginative overflow that can take on a life of its own. We talk through those differences without panic or dismissal. We also spend time on the way current mental-health protocols can misread metaphor, inner descent, or even spiritual language, which creates a strange tension for anyone doing genuine inner work while using these tools.

The episode explores one overarching line of inquiry. How do we stay connected to ourselves while using something this powerful? This whole exchange stays close to the body, the emotional realities of everyday life, and the existential questions people are facing as AI becomes part of their inner world.

Connect with Vanja on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/vanja_bokun_popovic_phd/?hl=en

Connect with Laurence via his website at: https://laurencehillman.com/

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This is part two of our investigation into the market built around women’s bodies and the systems that keep that market running. Be sure to listen to part one first if you haven’t already. In that first installment, we mapped the world that turns women into atmosphere, entertainment, or labor.

This episode stays with the same investigation but shifts the angle. We will move our focus to demand. Our story will look at boys raised on streaming porn without steady mentors, at men entering adulthood with no guidance on restraint or connection, and at the online figures who stepped in to shape their desires for them. These conditions influence how women are treated in public and private life, and they shape the marketplaces that formed around female visibility.

We also look at what happened after the first wave of #MeToo. Public attention forced a shift, but a quieter strain of tension remained. Many men didn’t know how to engage, and some avoided women entirely. Others drifted toward online voices that rewarded resentment. These shifts changed how people dated and how they related behind closed doors. You can hear it in the way couples talk about sex and in the way all your friends describe fatigue with modern dating, and most insidiously, in the way ordinary moments now carry a subtle layer of guardedness.

The final section turns toward change. It reviews legal approaches to commercial sex, the obligations of digital platforms, and the support systems that help people step away from high-risk environments. It also examines what healing requires after years of treating desire as currency. Premium subscribers receive the extended investigation.

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This is a two-part investigation into the market built around women’s bodies and the systems that keep that market running. From there, the episode follows the environments that feed this system, from the hostess world to the online spaces where attention pays.

Caroline Myss’s writing on the Prostitute Archetype offers a way to understand the inner bargains women make under pressure, while Rachel Moran’s account of prostitution brings forward the reality behind those bargains when survival narrows the exits. Their work helps explain how performance turned into a survival skill, and how that skill echoes through the long history of women whose value was measured through the appetites of others. The episode follows that pattern from older forms of courtesan culture into the present digital landscape, where erotic display and commercial visibility sit side by side.

Part Two, available for my premium subscribers on Patreon, continues this investigation to even deeper and murkier corners. We’ll study how the erotic marketplace reshapes intimacy, and how many men enter adulthood without mentorship, which creates a demand that feeds the system from another direction. It also looks at the private cost a woman carries after she has lived for extended periods inside environments that expect her to market her own desirability. Together, these two parts lay out the conditions that built what I’m calling the female market and the work involved in stepping outside of it once the pattern becomes visible.

UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVE

Join the BFTB Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021.

⟁ Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer. Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now. Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.