This is a special episode recorded for the 2023 Big Rhetorical Podcast Carnival. The theme of this event is "Artificial Intelligence: Applications and Trajectories". In the special episode, Nic and Molly explore the idea of seeking out care or comfort from ChatGPT or other artificially 'intelligent' chatbots. In other words, we look at whether ChatGPT would make a good therapist or not. We draw on linguistics scholarship as well as our own personal experience using chatbots -- both ChatGPT and Em -- to inform our conversation.

In our first season, we go back in history in order to explore a world before modern psychiatry. We talk about demonic possession, exorcism, and other spiritual phenomena that might act as ways for people to try to improve their mental health. Our first episode begins with Ancient Greece, considering how Hippocratic physicians and the cult of Asclepius treated people suffering from mental illness or distress.

In this episode, Nic & Molly explore the exorcism stories found in the New Testament of the Christian Bible, specifically the Gospel of Mark. We discuss how the writer of Mark portrays Jesus Christ healing people afflicted by demons. We talk about how early Christianity sought to distinguish itself from the healing that took place at asclepiad sanctuaries. We also ask whether Hippocrates, or the author of On the Sacred Disease, would have thought Jesus was a quack.