In this mind-bending episode, we explore one of the most profound and unsettling questions of our time: Are we living in a simulation?

We begin by dropping you inside the world of video games like Vice City, Call of Duty, and GoldenEye — and then ask: what if you couldn’t tell the difference between their digital worlds and your own reality?

From Plato’s Allegory of the Cave to Descartes’ Evil Demon Hypothesis, from the Brain-in-a-Vat thought experiment to modern mysteries like déjà vu and the Mandela Effect, we examine whether our experiences are as real as they feel. We also explore how humanity is already building its own simulated worlds — raising the possibility that our universe is just one in a long c ...