Dreaming Machines

More from Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse

1. 

   S2 · E17 · 30 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 14 min

   A Great Loss to the Universe (Part Three)

   Content note: this episode includes a brief discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US. Outside the US, you can find a local helpline at https://findahelpline.com.Neuropsychoanalysis pioneer Mark Solms says he is building a machine that can feel. For two episodes, we asked whether he can. This week we ask whether he should.This is the final part of our three-part story about consciousness. Philosopher Ian Gold, PhD explains why AI has turned philosophy of mind from science fiction into decisions we…

2. 

   S2 · E16 · 23 Sep 2026 · 1 hr 8 min

   Engineering Consciousness (Part Two)

   When Richard Feynman died, a sentence was left on his blackboard at Caltech: “That which I cannot create, I do not understand.” Mark Solms took this as a challenge.A quick word up top about the week AI doom went mainstream, and why this show isn’t about that. Then: part two of a three-part story about the oldest question in philosophy, arriving at its strangest moment. Last episode, neuropsychoanalysis pioneer Dr. Mark Solms told us what consciousness is and where in the brain it lives. This episode: can it actually be built? Mark takes us inside the project he calls the main work of his…

3. 

   S2 · E15 · 16 Sep 2026 · 52 min

   The Problem of Other Minds (Part One)

   When Mark Solms was four years old, his older brother fell, hit his head, and woke up as somebody else. Mark has spent the fifty years since asking the question that accident left behind: how does a self come out of a piece of the body?This is part one of a two-part story about the oldest question in philosophy, arriving at its strangest moment. Neuropsychoanalyst Dr. Mark Solms, the man who proved dreaming comes from the brain's wanting machinery, not its random static, makes the case that consciousness isn't thinking at all. It's feeling. And it lives somewhere much older, and much…

4. 

   S2 · E13 · 2 Sep 2026 · 59 min

   Dancing Animals

   There are robot dogs patrolling the US–Mexico border. This story starts somewhere gentler: with Kurt Vonnegut leaving the house to buy one envelope.His wife wanted him to buy a hundred and keep them in a closet. He refused. The walk was the point. "We're here on Earth to fart around," he said. "And of course, the computers will do us out of that… we're dancing animals."This is part one of a two-part investigation into the physicality of the internet and AI. The bodies it runs on, and the bodies it runs over. Pulitzer Prize–winning Wall Street Journal reporter John West (The Internet Will…

5. 

   S2 · E12 · 26 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 4 min

   The Oracle Test

   Twenty-five hundred years ago, the richest man in the world didn't trust his oracles, so he tested them. One passed: the Oracle of Delphi. Then it told him exactly what he wanted to hear, and his empire burned.A few weeks ago, I met a man who ran the same test on his oracles. The Oracle of ChatGPT, the Oracle of Grok, and the Oracle of Gemini, side by side, checked against each other. Dr. Jeremy Heffner is a trauma surgeon, a bioengineer, and the co-founder of the largest social network for surgeons: one of the last people you'd expect to be told by his phone that he's been chosen to save…

6. 

   S2 · E11 · 19 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 8 min

   Through a Glass, Darkly: Part Two

   Last week we ended in a laboratory in Melbourne, with a man who grows human brain cells in a dish and teaches them to play Doom. He told us they’re about as complex as a cockroach. He also told us where the cells come from. Human blood. Some of it his own.This is the half where it stops being a question about machines.Hon Weng Chong, CEO and founder of Cortical Labs, draws a red line, and it isn’t at intelligence. It’s at suffering. He won’t build a system that could be conscious, because a system that can be conscious is a system that can be hurt. If that sounds familiar, it should: it is…

7. 

   S2 · E18 · 7 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 10 min

   Better Angels (Part One)

   Content note: this episode includes discussion of eugenics, Nazi forced sterilization and the murder of disabled people, and the Holocaust.Be altruistic. Think about the future. Save the world. No one could possibly object to that, right? This week, the first of two episodes on effective altruism, a philosophy that has influenced many of the most powerful people in artificial intelligence, one its defenders believe is among the best ideas we have for doing good, and one that other thinkers believe could help bring about the end of the world.For three episodes we asked which minds count. Now…

8. 

   S2 · E10 · 13 Aug 2026 · 57 min

   Through a Glass, Darkly: Part One

   Eight thousand years ago, in a settlement called Çatalhöyük in what is now central Turkey, somebody sat down with a piece of obsidian and began to grind volcanic glass. Black, brittle, sharp enough to cut skin, it doesn’t occur naturally anywhere near there; the closest volcanoes are a hundred and twenty miles east. So someone carried it that far, and then spent hours working one face of it flat and polishing it to a shine.It is the oldest mirror anyone has ever found. We know these things mattered, because we find them in graves. People were buried holding on to them.Here’s the thing,…

9. 

   S2 · E9 · 5 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 7 min

   The Punishment of Tantalus

   Tantalus was a king, and a son of Zeus, and he was invited to eat at the table of the gods, a rare honor. To test whether they were truly all-knowing, he killed his own son, cooked him, and served the body to them as a stew. They knew. For that, Tantalus was sent down to Tartarus, a place Homer describes as lying as far beneath Hades as heaven lies above the earth. A bunker underneath hell. There he stands forever in a pool of cool water, under a tree heavy with fruit. When he stoops to drink, the water drains away. When he reaches up, the branches lift out of reach. Eternal hunger, for the…

10. 

    S2 · E8 · 29 Jul 2026 · 56 min

    Tia Miseria

    There’s an old folktale about a woman called Tía Miseria — Aunt Misery. When Death comes for her, she asks him for one last favor: climb her pear tree and pick her some fruit for the journey. But the tree is enchanted. Whatever climbs up cannot climb down. And so Death hangs in the branches, for years. At first, no one minds. Then the wounded arrive at her door, begging. The old and the sick plead to be released. Wars are fought and nobody dies. The Earth fills up. The food runs out. The world discovers, one bad year at a time, that it cannot live without death.That’s where we begin. Because…

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