Yegor Mostovshikov: Cognitive Warfare, AI Psychosis, Narrative Identity, Memory Politics & Who Gets to Write Your Story?

What happens when a story stops describing reality and begins governing it?

Can propaganda alter identity without ever convincing you of a single explicit lie?

What happens when artificial intelligence becomes a participant in the private story you tell yourself about who you are?

Can historical memory be stolen?

Can an AI chatbot become so affirming that disagreement from the outside world starts to feel less trustworthy than the machine?

And after family, culture, politics, algorithms, history, trauma, media, and other people have all contributed sentences to your identity...

who gets final edit?

In this episode of The Observable Unknown, Dr. Juan Carlos Rey sits down with Yegor Mostovshikov, a journalist, identity researcher, narrative therapist, producer, and longtime storyteller whose current work examines what he calls the Dark Side of Storytelling: Cognitive Warfare, AI Psychosis, and Memory Politics. Mostovshikov has spent more than two decades working across journalism, media, documentary production, games, storytelling education, and narrative therapy, with his recent research centering on the ways identity can be socially shaped, manipulated, defended, and rewritten.

This is a conversation about something deeper than misinformation.

It is about authorship.

Who teaches us what events mean?

Who decides which memories become central?