Dreaming Machines

On a summer afternoon in 2001, a freight train caught fire in a tunnel beneath Baltimore. The blaze burned at 1,500 degrees for days. And within hours, two thousand miles away, the internet slowed down… in Los Angeles.This is part two of our investigation into the physicality of the internet and AI: the machines’ bodies, and ours.Dream researcher Dr. Kelly Bulkeley explains why apocalyptic thinking might be an evolutionary advantage, what nightmares are actually for, and why he won’t rule out that AI is dreaming already. Investigative journalist Veronica Martinez reports from Ciudad Juárez, where communities remade by one industrial promise are watching the data centers arrive with another. And Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist John West returns to make the case for the body: why memory lives in muscle, why we read poems we don’t fully understand, and what a dead philosopher in a glass case can teach us about being remembered.Also: the panopticon guy becomes one of history’s first livestreamers, Elon Musk promises a billion robots, and we ask what’s left for dancing animals once the machines take the useful stuff.We called part one Dancing Animals because that’s what Vonnegut said we are. We’re calling this one Dreaming Machines because we don’t know yet what they are.Next week: the man who is building a machine that can feel.We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.comOur full long-form expert interviews are available ad-free on Patreon. Hear complete conversations with John West, Petra Molnar, Dr. Jeremy Heffner, Dr. Joel Gold, and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMediaA Wondermind and Agoric Media ProductionAgoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.comWondermind https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/ https://www.wondermind.com/Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/ https://seankingogrady.substack.com/Guests:Dr. Kelly Bulkeley — Dream Researcher and Author of The Spirituality of Dreaming - https://amzn.to/4dU0ns6Veronica Martinez — Independent investigative journalist covering migration and border militarization in the Paso del Norte region (Ciudad Juárez, El Paso, Las Cruces) — https://www.instagram.com/vmreports/John West — Pulitzer Prize–winning computational reporter, The Wall Street Journal / Author, The Internet Will Die, and So Will You (out now!!) — https://amzn.to/4zIp97COther works and things mentioned:The Howard Street Tunnel fire (July 18, 2001) — how a train fire in Baltimore slowed the internet — Maria Farrell & Robin Berjon, “We Need To Rewild The Internet,” Noema — https://www.noemamag.com/we-need-to-rewild-the-internet/Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman — the punishment of “eternal waking” — https://amzn.to/4xOWNXTDr. Joel Gold and Dr. Ian Gold — Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8UDr. Michael Ferguson — Director, Neurospirituality Research Lab · Harvard Medical School and Harvard Divinity School — https://neuromichael.com - https://neurospirituality.ioPetra Molnar — The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (from Part One) — https://amzn.to/4zIhN3MThe maquiladora industry — the last industrial promise made to Ciudad Juárez — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MaquiladoraTorre Centinela — the surveillance tower rising over Juárez — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre_CentinelaFlock Safety cameras — the boomerang lands in the driveway — https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/cities-ditch-license-plate-readers-over-privacy-worriesJeremy Bentham’s auto-icon and the PanoptiCam — the dead man who made it to the livestream — https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bentham-project/who-was-jeremy-bentham/auto-iconElon Musk at the G20 (September 1, 2026) — one billion humanoid robots in ten years — https://www.facebook.com/cnbc/videos/elon-musk-there-will-be-at-least-a-billion-humanoid-robots-in-10-years/1102034215493426/Kurt Vonnegut’s envelope story (“we’re