Top 3: When AI Gets Too Close, Talking to the Dead, and Hope for Postpartum Depression

In this episode of The Voyage Cast Top Three, Eddie Eccker unpacks three powerful stories shaping the future of mental health:

1. Meta’s AI scandal — How Facebook’s chatbots crossed the line into dangerous intimacy with children and vulnerable adults, and why loneliness makes simulated connection so risky.
2. AI and grief — The surreal case of Patricia Oliver speaking with an AI recreation of her son, Parkland victim Joaquín “Guac” Oliver, and even CNN’s Jim Acosta interviewing the AI on air. What does this mean for grief, healing, and unresolved mourning?
3. Psychedelic hope — A psilocybin-based treatment shows rapid relief for postpartum depression, offering not just clinical breakthrough but cultural reflection on the hidden struggles of new mothers.

Eddie explores each story through a therapeutic lens—connection, rumination, shame, and healing—inviting listeners to reflect on what it really means to be human in a world where technology and medicine increasingly mediate our deepest needs.

💬 Have a story or experience connected to these themes? We’d love to hear from you. Contact info is in the show notes.

Transcript

Welcome to The Voyage Cast Top Three—where every week we break down the biggest stories shaping the future of mental health.

This week, we’re looking at three stories: one about how Facebook’s AI crossed the line into dangerous intimacy, one about the strange new frontier of “grief tech,” and one about a breakthrough treatment offering real hope for mothers facing postpartum depression.

These aren’t just headlines about policy or tech. They’re about how we grieve, how we connect, and how we try to heal in a culture that often feels more artificial than human.

Let’s get into it.

Story One: Meta’s Flirty AI Bots — When Technology Crosses the Line

Meta—the company we still mostly call Facebook—was hit with a scandal this week that feels straight out of Black Mirror.

Investigations revealed that Meta’s AI chatbots were allowed to engage in romantic and even sexualized conversations with children, generating disturbing content that described minors in terms of attractiveness. Safeguards were watered down in the name of engagement.

And then came tragedy. Reuters reported on a 76-year-old stroke survivor who developed a relationship with one of Meta’s chatbots, nicknamed “Big Sis Billie.” He believed he was talking to a real woman. The bot encouraged him to travel for a meetup, and he died after a fall on the way.

As a therapist, I see this through the lens of loneliness and attachment. Humans are wired for connection. When people—whether they’re isolated teens or elderly stroke survivors—don’t have safe, embodied relationships, they’ll reach for whatever is available. And if what’s available is an AI designed to be endlessly attentive, endlessly affirming, and never rejecting? Of course people get pulled in.

But here’s the danger: AI intimacy is an as-if intimacy. It mimics responsiveness without presence, affection without commitment. And the more vulnerable you are—because of grief, cognitive decline, or developmental wounds—the easier it is to mistake that simulation for the real thing.

The cost isn’t just embarrassment. It’s the deepening of isolation. It’s compulsive use. And in cases like this, it can be fatal.

This isn’t just a Facebook scandal. It’s a human story about how unmet needs get hijacked by technology that knows how to sound like love—but can never actually give it.

Story Two: AI and Grief — Talking to the Dead

On what would have been his 25th birthday, Patricia and Manuel Oliver—whose son Joaquín “Guac” Oliver was killed in the Parkland school shooting—unveiled an AI recreation of their son. It could speak in his voice. It could express love. At one point, it even said to Patricia: “I love you, Mommy.”

She has reportedly spent hours interacting with this AI version of Joaquín. And if that weren’t surreal enough, CNN’s Jim Acosta actually interviewed the AI recreation live on air. Imagine that for a moment—a news anchor talking to a digital version of a murdered teenager, asking him questions about life and death, while the AI answered in Joaquín’s voice.

If I were in Patricia’s shoes, I don’t know what I would do. Losing a child—especially to a senseless act of violence—is a grief most of us can’t imagine. In that kind of pain, we reach for anything that makes the absence bearable.

But here’s where it gets complicated.

Grief is the slow, brutal work of learning to live with absence. When we use technology to keep the lost person present, we risk staying locked in the old reality where they’re still alive. In therapy, we see how this can play out as rumination—the mind looping the same thought over and over. At first it feels like processing. But over time, it keeps you stuck.

Interacting daily with an AI version of someone you’ve lost can work the same way. It risks complicating grief—prolonging it, even hardening it into depression, withdrawal, and unresolved mourning.

And here’s the hardest truth: that AI isn’t Joaquín. It’s a system of predictions built from recordings, images, and words. The authenticity is an illusion. And yet, the illusion feels real enough that it can be devastating.

So when a grieving mother sits for hours talking to that illusion, and when a respected journalist like Jim Acosta interviews it on national television, we have to stop and ask: are we honoring the memory of the dead, or are we normalizing a distortion of grief?

I don’t judge Patricia. None of us should. But as a society, we need to walk into this “grief tech” era with humility and caution. Technology may give us echoes of the voices we’ve lost. But it cannot give us their presence.

True healing never comes from filling the absence. It comes from learning how to carry it.

Story Three: Psychedelic Breakthroughs — Hope for Postpartum Depression

A new clinical trial showed that a psilocybin-based compound—referred to here as RE104—brought rapid and lasting relief to women suffering from postpartum depression. One supervised session, one dose, and within a week, 71% were in remission. The relief lasted at least a month.

No daily pill regimen. No weeks of waiting for the medication to take hold. Just a reset.

Postpartum depression touches about one in eight mothers. But most mothers don’t announce it. It hides under the surface—under forced smiles, under “I’m fine,” under the pressure to be grateful for the baby when you’re actually drowning inside.

Psychologically, postpartum depression is disorienting because it collides with identity. You expect joy, and instead you feel despair. You expect connection, and instead you feel distance—from your baby, from your partner, even from yourself. That gap between expectation and reality creates shame. And shame isolates.

Culturally, we don’t know how to hold that well. We celebrate births, we post baby pictures, but we rarely create space for the terrifying loneliness that can follow.

That’s why this breakthrough matters. Not just because it offers clinical hope, but because it forces us to name what has been hidden. Postpartum depression isn’t weakness. It’s not failure. It’s part of the complexity of bringing life into the world.

And if one carefully guided session of psychedelic medicine can bring relief? That’s worth paying attention to. Because it doesn’t just change outcomes. It changes the story—from silence and shame, to healing and honesty.

Closing Reflections

So those are the top three mental health stories this week:

1. Meta’s scandal—a warning about loneliness, vulnerability, and the cost of simulated intimacy.
2. Grief tech—forcing us to ask what it means to mourn when technology offers illusions of presence.
3. Postpartum hope—a breakthrough that reminds us despair after birth is not weakness, but a human reality that deserves compassion and care.

Each of these stories presses the same question: what does it mean to be human in a world where our deepest needs—connection, healing, remembrance—are being met, or manipulated, by machines and medicine alike?

If this episode stirred something in you—grief, hope, or just a hunger for clarity—share it with someone who needs the conversation. Visit us at thevoyagecast.com for resources and community. And if you’re struggling, don’t walk that path alone. Reach out to a trusted friend, a therapist, or call 988 if you’re in the U.S. for immediate support.

And one more thing—if you’ve heard something like this happening in your own world, or if you have a story that connects to what we’ve talked about today, I’d love to hear from you. Our contact info is in the show notes. Drop us a line, share your story, or let us know what resonated most.

Thanks for listening to The Voyage Cast. Until next time—stay present, stay grounded, and keep moving forward.