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How Fever Dreams Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, stuff you should know is going on tour.
0:03
Speaker 1: Do do do one of the deeds, my friend. Okay,
0:08
Speaker 1: So starting August eighth in Toronto, that's in Canada. We're
0:11
Speaker 1: gonna be at dan Fourth Music Hall. And then Chicago,
0:14
Speaker 1: we're gonna be there the next night, August nine, at
0:16
Speaker 1: the Harris Theater at Chicago. We want to see your faces.
0:20
Speaker 1: Step it up, Step it Up. Vancouver or the Vote
0:23
Speaker 1: Theater September. That's gonna be a great show, I think,
0:26
Speaker 1: don't you. It's gonna be a great of one. And
0:28
Speaker 1: then in Minneapolis at the Pantageous Theater where we've been before.
0:31
Speaker 1: It's lovely September. Yeah, and then we're gonna swing down
0:35
Speaker 1: to Austin. It's gonna be during Austin City Limits, although
0:38
Speaker 1: it has nothing to do with Austin City limits. Will
0:41
Speaker 1: be there October ten, yes, and then we're going to
0:43
Speaker 1: Lovely Lawrence, Kansas go Jayhawks, yeah on October eleventh. And hey,
0:47
Speaker 1: if you're in Kansas City or anywhere in that area,
0:49
Speaker 1: this is your chance. Get in your car. Yeah. Uh,
0:52
Speaker 1: if you are anywhere near Brooklyn, well then you should
0:56
Speaker 1: go to the Bellhouse October. Will be there all three nights,
1:00
Speaker 1: and finally, we're gonna wrap it up here in Atlanta
1:02
Speaker 1: at the Bucket Theater on November four for a benefit
1:05
Speaker 1: show where we are donating all of the money's to
1:09
Speaker 1: Lifeline Animal Project of Atlanta and the National Down Syndrome Society. Yep.
1:13
Speaker 1: So for all this information again visually and for links
1:17
Speaker 1: two tickets, just go to s y s K Live
1:20
Speaker 1: dot com. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House
1:26
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
1:35
Speaker 1: How are you? I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Priyant,
1:39
Speaker 1: There's Jerry. Jerry's got a salad. Everything is normal, which
1:42
Speaker 1: means it's time. There's stuff you should know. That's right,
1:47
Speaker 1: Jerry's got the schwarmest special she said, Oh really, yeah,
1:51
Speaker 1: she loves it. How you doing. I'm good man, feeling
1:55
Speaker 1: despite myself kind of relaxed. Okay, I'm not feeling feverish.
1:59
Speaker 1: If that's what you're driving at. No, that's not what
2:01
Speaker 1: I was driving at. Uh yeah, no I'm not. Do
2:05
Speaker 1: you get fevers a lot? No, not anymore. Although I
2:08
Speaker 1: haven't for a long time, like I've never been like
2:11
Speaker 1: a fever person. I've probably had like a handful. Maybe.
2:15
Speaker 1: How many fevers have you had? Not a ton since
2:17
Speaker 1: I was a kid. Yeah, not a lot of adult fevers.
2:20
Speaker 1: I mean I've had like, uh, hip hop fever, rock
2:26
Speaker 1: and roll fever, yellow fever. I've had the fever for
2:30
Speaker 1: a flavor of a pringle. Oh Man, me too. What
2:33
Speaker 1: are those? Those aren't even potato chips? Are they? Their
2:35
Speaker 1: potato crisps? And those are good. They're mashed together potato parts.
2:39
Speaker 1: I don't think I want to know how those are made. No,
2:41
Speaker 1: it's like chicken McNuggets. I think a unicorn just poops
2:45
Speaker 1: them out. Have you seen unicorn pizza? It's a little much.
2:50
Speaker 1: There's a restaurant in New York, I'm not quite sure where,
2:53
Speaker 1: maybe lowery Side. They have unicorn pizza. It's like um
2:57
Speaker 1: dough okay, good start um, like a nice pestel colored
3:01
Speaker 1: frosting instead of sauce. UM, A mound of cotton candy, um,
3:08
Speaker 1: nerds or pop rocks maybe um, and then some other stuff.
3:14
Speaker 1: Supposedly it tastes kind of good. I'll eat anything that
3:16
Speaker 1: has enough frosting on it. I like frosting, but I'm
3:19
Speaker 1: not into like sugary candies. Really like nerds. And pop
3:23
Speaker 1: rocks and stuff. You know, I did a brain stuff
3:26
Speaker 1: once on pop rocks and that was interesting. Yeah. Yeah,
3:30
Speaker 1: your tongue actually warms the pop rocks to the point
3:33
Speaker 1: where they melt. And since they have C O two
3:36
Speaker 1: trapped inside during the manufacturing process, that c O two
3:39
Speaker 1: suddenly is released in a pop So it's just a
3:42
Speaker 1: little bubble of C two. That's gotta be good for you.
3:45
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's funny. My head of roommate in college, like,
3:52
Speaker 1: not many adults eat candy, Like people eat chocolate and
3:55
Speaker 1: stuff like that, candy bars, but candy candy, I don't
3:58
Speaker 1: know when adults is just a little strange. Yeah, do
4:02
Speaker 1: be candy? Sure? Like what mentos? Not mint mentos? Like
4:08
Speaker 1: candy mentos. I like those. Well. I had a roommate
4:11
Speaker 1: that would go to the convenient store next and this
4:13
Speaker 1: is college granted, but he still eats the stuff, I think,
4:17
Speaker 1: and he would go with like fifteen dollars and buy
4:22
Speaker 1: you know, like giant sweet tarts. You know it's big
4:25
Speaker 1: chewable ones and like uh, fun dip and nerds and
4:30
Speaker 1: just all kinds of candy fun dip, remember liquor made
4:35
Speaker 1: there's the same thing I think, Yeah, it's just right,
4:40
Speaker 1: Like I don't have a foot, but I've got my
4:41
Speaker 1: Lika made. Oh man, can you can you guys out
4:46
Speaker 1: there in podcast lantel over stalling because we are big time,
4:49
Speaker 1: because we happened upon a topic that no one really
4:54
Speaker 1: knows what's what? Yeah, I mean we're talking about fever dreams.
5:01
Speaker 1: We know about fevers, yep, kind of know about dreams,
5:05
Speaker 1: but apparently no one's really gotten to work on figuring
5:10
Speaker 1: out what fever dreams themselves are. So it's largely anecdotal. Yeah,
5:16
Speaker 1: so you're gonna have to bear with us something. We'll
5:17
Speaker 1: leave it. We'll leave that there for now. But I
5:21
Speaker 1: guess a good place to start is by talking about
5:24
Speaker 1: both those things separately. Uh, and starting with fevers. You
5:28
Speaker 1: know you've always heard ninety eight point six fahrenheit is
5:31
Speaker 1: the normal internal body temperature of human um. That in
5:39
Speaker 1: that was a big study that that is really ninety
5:41
Speaker 1: eight point two what um, depending on like how old
5:45
Speaker 1: you are, what time of day it is, what you're
5:47
Speaker 1: doing where you If you put it in your butt
5:50
Speaker 1: or in your under your armpit, or in your mouth
5:53
Speaker 1: or in your ear, or all of them at once,
5:55
Speaker 1: that'd be something else. Uh, it can vary a little bit.
5:59
Speaker 1: So I think there is a bit of a slight
6:01
Speaker 1: sliding scale to that number. Yeah, for sure. But I
6:04
Speaker 1: think the key is is it's going to be roughly
6:07
Speaker 1: around there. And even if you have an average body
6:11
Speaker 1: temperature that's not exactly ninet eight point six, let's say
6:15
Speaker 1: you typically tend towards five run cooler. Yeah, your body
6:21
Speaker 1: temperatures still during the average day gonna fluctuate plus or
6:24
Speaker 1: minus about a degree fair height either way. Yeah, So
6:28
Speaker 1: I looked a little bit into the ninety eight point
6:30
Speaker 1: six and the original um dude that came up with
6:33
Speaker 1: that was a a German physician named Carl Reinholdt August Vondelick.
6:39
Speaker 1: That was good, a good one. When eight sixty eight
6:42
Speaker 1: he wrote a book, Well he did his studies where
6:45
Speaker 1: he had this temperature rod he would stick under the
6:47
Speaker 1: armpits of all these people. He's like, where do you
6:49
Speaker 1: want that exactly? And everyone went said, everyone always says,
6:56
Speaker 1: you know the comedian Rory Scoville, No, he should just
7:02
Speaker 1: check him out. He does these weird things, like he'll
7:05
Speaker 1: just do his whole routine with the German accent, like
7:08
Speaker 1: for no reason, whatsoever. I like the sound of that.
7:11
Speaker 1: And he did one about stealing old people, like kidnapping
7:16
Speaker 1: old people. For the German accent. He's from South Carolina,
7:20
Speaker 1: I think, but he's done shows with like a severe
7:23
Speaker 1: Southern accent and one just normal accent, and he'll do
7:26
Speaker 1: a German thing. He just like people, I guess. So
7:29
Speaker 1: he's great. He's one of my favorites. So anyway, UM
7:35
Speaker 1: sixty eight he wrote a book called after these experiments,
7:38
Speaker 1: called doshen Elkin Pharma and kind can Heighten. And I
7:46
Speaker 1: looked at It's funny. The real translation I think of
7:48
Speaker 1: that is on the temperature in diseases, but if you
7:51
Speaker 1: type in Google Translate, it comes out as the behavior
7:55
Speaker 1: of the intrinsically warm in sick units. That's the subtitle. Yeah,
8:03
Speaker 1: So anyway, he's a guy that came up with ninety
8:05
Speaker 1: eight point six and that stood for a long time.
8:07
Speaker 1: But that's just so that was just based on his observations,
8:11
Speaker 1: his study, and it's stuck. It was an average. It
8:14
Speaker 1: wasn't like this is what you should be. It was
8:16
Speaker 1: just the average of all these people. And then hundred
8:20
Speaker 1: thirty years later we finally got around to verifying whether
8:24
Speaker 1: that was actually true or not. Well, I mean it
8:26
Speaker 1: says a ninety two that they said it was ninety
8:28
Speaker 1: eight point two from another study, but then everything I
8:30
Speaker 1: still read says point six. So all right, well, I
8:34
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about, though I had heard in
8:35
Speaker 1: the last few years that they're like that point six
8:38
Speaker 1: jazz is kind of kind of made upright, So, um,
8:42
Speaker 1: the point is is that your body is going to
8:44
Speaker 1: be roughly somewhere around there, right, that's your normal body temperature,
8:48
Speaker 1: and then depending on the time of day, it's either
8:51
Speaker 1: going to be a little cooler in that or a
8:53
Speaker 1: little warmer than that. And our body temperatures are regulated
8:57
Speaker 1: by something called the hypothalamus. And like I said, depending
9:00
Speaker 1: on the time of day, your body temperature is gonna fluctuate,
9:03
Speaker 1: and that's tied to sleep apparently, so as your body
9:07
Speaker 1: temperature is rising, usually in the late afternoon, is about
9:10
Speaker 1: where it peaks during the day. That's associated with wakefulness
9:14
Speaker 1: alertness not necessarily just having a high body temperature, but
9:18
Speaker 1: an incline in the temperature in your body means you're awake,
9:23
Speaker 1: you're alert, you're ready to go right, ready for action.
9:27
Speaker 1: If once it starts to decline, that's associated with drowsiness,
9:32
Speaker 1: and it hits it's um, it's trough. Your body temperature
9:37
Speaker 1: is at its lowest right about before you wake up,
9:41
Speaker 1: and that's actually associated with R E. M. Sleep. So
9:44
Speaker 1: there are some some stuff starting to come out. Just
9:46
Speaker 1: bear with us, everybody. We're laying the groundwork. So your
9:49
Speaker 1: body temperature changes, the hypothalamus is directing the whole thing,
9:54
Speaker 1: and sleep and wakefulness has something to do. It's related
9:59
Speaker 1: to your body temperature changes. All right, good night, you
10:03
Speaker 1: take it from here. Well, you know what, let's take
10:05
Speaker 1: a break because I'm not sure where I should go.
10:09
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Okay, I was being coy, you
10:33
Speaker 1: said stage very nicely. Okay. Uh So, if your body
10:40
Speaker 1: gets let's say, some bad bacteria gets in it, and
10:44
Speaker 1: your body is alerted warning intruder is coming, your immune
10:50
Speaker 1: system kicks into gear and it starts producing this biochemical
10:56
Speaker 1: material called a pyrogeny. This is my new favorite thing
11:01
Speaker 1: the body does. Yeah, well you knew that before, right
11:05
Speaker 1: or did you just not know the mechanism. I mean,
11:07
Speaker 1: I knew humans get fevers, and I knew the fever
11:10
Speaker 1: was to kind of like cook out everything. I didn't
11:12
Speaker 1: understand the mechanism. I understand answer your question, then, oh yeah,
11:16
Speaker 1: can I So these pyrogen's, right, they are um these
11:23
Speaker 1: biochemical markers that are released by the immune system in
11:26
Speaker 1: the body or and this is why I love this.
11:29
Speaker 1: There's some bacterias, some pathogens that make humans sick that
11:33
Speaker 1: produce pyrogen's naturally. So when they show up, they just
11:37
Speaker 1: start releasing them, and they just give themselves away. It's
11:42
Speaker 1: they're big dummies in that way. They're like, hey, where's
11:45
Speaker 1: the party. They kick open the door. They're carrying like
11:47
Speaker 1: a pony keg under one arm, their guts sticking out.
11:51
Speaker 1: It's just that that's that's like that kind of bacteria, right.
11:54
Speaker 1: So the pyrogans enter the bloodstream and they travel to
11:57
Speaker 1: the hypothalamus because remember the hypothal mis controls your um
12:02
Speaker 1: your body temperature, and this is what they do, Chuck,
12:05
Speaker 1: are you ready for what the pyrogens do. They go
12:09
Speaker 1: to your hypothalamus and they dampen the heat sensing neurons
12:15
Speaker 1: and the hypothalamus, and they excite the cold sensing neurons
12:19
Speaker 1: and your hypothalamus, and they trick your hypothalamus in the
12:22
Speaker 1: thinking your body is suddenly gotten very very cold, so
12:26
Speaker 1: that your hypothalamus turns the temperature up and says, don't
12:29
Speaker 1: let any of this heat out. We gotta we gotta
12:31
Speaker 1: warm back up. It tricks your body and your hypothalamus
12:34
Speaker 1: and creating a fever. That's right. And they do this
12:38
Speaker 1: because well they don't do this because but what happens
12:41
Speaker 1: from there. They do this because they're dumb. But what
12:44
Speaker 1: happens from there is, like you said, the fever, what
12:46
Speaker 1: a fever is, and why you want that fever for
12:49
Speaker 1: at least a little while that it does. It's it's
12:52
Speaker 1: trying to cook and burn and bake that bacteria until
12:57
Speaker 1: it dies. It is your body's fighting. Like when you hear,
13:01
Speaker 1: you know, like your fever broke, that's usually a good sign.
13:04
Speaker 1: That means yeah, right, that your fever did its job
13:07
Speaker 1: and it's cooked all that bacteria up and you're going
13:10
Speaker 1: to be on the men soon. Uh So basically that's
13:14
Speaker 1: what's happening. And this is the great thing about a fever.
13:16
Speaker 1: But um, you know, fever makes you feel like crap
13:20
Speaker 1: because it's a lot of hard work to kill all
13:23
Speaker 1: those things. Well it is, there's a lot of um.
13:25
Speaker 1: Your sympathetic nervous system is kicked into high gear, which
13:29
Speaker 1: I found out is one reason why they say you
13:31
Speaker 1: want to feed a cold starve a fever because you
13:35
Speaker 1: don't want to introduce digestion because it requires the parasympathetic
13:38
Speaker 1: nervous system, right fight or flight, and you don't want
13:42
Speaker 1: those two things going on while your body has a fever.
13:44
Speaker 1: It's just a lot of extra work for it, right,
13:47
Speaker 1: But one of the one of the things that is
13:49
Speaker 1: going on when your body has a fever, when that
13:52
Speaker 1: temperature rises, it's hard enough on your organs, but it's
13:56
Speaker 1: also hard on the level just the fact that they're
13:59
Speaker 1: operating outside of their normal operating temperature, and that makes
14:03
Speaker 1: it very hard on them and can actually cook some
14:05
Speaker 1: of the ingredients inside yourselves. Yeah, I mean, it's like
14:08
Speaker 1: working in a too hot of an environment. It's just
14:11
Speaker 1: it's never fun for anyone. Although we've got some people
14:14
Speaker 1: love that stuff, yeah, but they're still they might like it,
14:17
Speaker 1: but they still aren't working fast. They might be happy,
14:22
Speaker 1: but they're slow. So if you have a fever, what's
14:25
Speaker 1: considered a fever now, if you're an adult and your
14:30
Speaker 1: oral temperature is above one point four or if your
14:33
Speaker 1: rectal or ear temperatures above one oh one then that's
14:37
Speaker 1: considered a fever. If you're a kid, um, good luck
14:42
Speaker 1: getting anything besides the rectal temperature, because it's just tough.
14:46
Speaker 1: You have basically no right well ye which you have
14:49
Speaker 1: as wiggly kids who aren't like, sure, stick something in
14:53
Speaker 1: my ear for four seconds, but up the up the kazoo.
14:57
Speaker 1: There's not really anything you can do about that. All
15:00
Speaker 1: they can do is say, yeah, exactly. So the rectal
15:05
Speaker 1: temperature for a kid above one point four and um.
15:10
Speaker 1: With adults like you don't have to really worry about
15:13
Speaker 1: your fever too much. If it if it tops a
15:15
Speaker 1: hundred and five for you know, any period of time,
15:19
Speaker 1: you probably want to do something about that. That's what
15:21
Speaker 1: I saw was the hundred and five degree hype mark
15:24
Speaker 1: was about where you should start to worry. Yeah, as
15:26
Speaker 1: an adult, and you're gonna feel so awful. If your
15:29
Speaker 1: temperature is one oh five, you're you've probably already been
15:32
Speaker 1: to a doctor at that points. For kids, it's different though.
15:36
Speaker 1: If you don't want to let your child get up
15:38
Speaker 1: to one oh five, that's bad, bad, bad. So what
15:40
Speaker 1: is it for kids that you really want to start worrying?
15:42
Speaker 1: But did you say, you know what I'm not exactly sure.
15:46
Speaker 1: I mean, it probably depends on whether you're a first
15:48
Speaker 1: time pairent or this is your second kid. Well, and
15:52
Speaker 1: it varies with the age, you know, it's like zero
15:54
Speaker 1: to eighteen months. It's something, and like what you should
15:57
Speaker 1: do is consult that your doctor. Yeah exactly. But you know,
16:02
Speaker 1: any kind of temperature you should for a child, you
16:04
Speaker 1: should kind of be a little more alert about, right.
16:07
Speaker 1: But we're not in medical experts here, no, we're not.
16:09
Speaker 1: And everything we're saying assumes that you have healthcare coverage.
16:12
Speaker 1: That's right. Um, all right, so that's fever in general.
16:18
Speaker 1: You got anything else on that? Yeah? One other thing? Um?
16:21
Speaker 1: Uh the pyrogens um Piro. By the way, it's a mistake, man,
16:28
Speaker 1: I did have some coincidence. No, it's not. What is
16:30
Speaker 1: the Latin for fire, Greek word for fire? Yeah, Piro
16:35
Speaker 1: def Leppard, right, Um, a great song. It really is
16:40
Speaker 1: the whole album. Yeah. They just mentioned it in Rock
16:44
Speaker 1: of Ages that comes up. They should have a song
16:48
Speaker 1: called Pyromania wonderful. But that's pretty cool. It's like the
16:52
Speaker 1: antithesis of your band, your album, and your song all
16:57
Speaker 1: being the same name, like Big Country. Oh I love
17:01
Speaker 1: that song. Sure, But it's pretty uncreative, but you're basically saying, like,
17:06
Speaker 1: here's our basket and we're gonna play every egg we
17:08
Speaker 1: have into it. That's the one one thing we came
17:11
Speaker 1: up with. I saw David Spade bit once and he
17:14
Speaker 1: was talking about he was complaining it wasn't even comedy.
17:17
Speaker 1: He's just complaining that he went and saw a big
17:18
Speaker 1: country and they didn't play the song Big Count. Yeah.
17:23
Speaker 1: He's like, it's the name of your band. It's the
17:25
Speaker 1: one song everybody came to see and play it. He's well,
17:30
Speaker 1: the longest, the long and short of it is I
17:33
Speaker 1: totally forgot what the other thing I had to say
17:34
Speaker 1: about Pyritans was, so I'll probably think of it. Oh,
17:38
Speaker 1: I know what it was, Pyrogen's um. As your immune
17:42
Speaker 1: system grows in ages and you become a grown up,
17:45
Speaker 1: the pyrigans have a little less of an effect on you.
17:49
Speaker 1: So where if you're a kid and your immune system
17:51
Speaker 1: is young and inexperienced, your fever is gonna shoot up
17:54
Speaker 1: quick and it's going to it's gonna get hotter faster.
17:58
Speaker 1: So you do want to stay on top of a
18:00
Speaker 1: kid's fever because their immune system is not used to
18:03
Speaker 1: pyrogens coming and messing with their hypothalamus like an adults.
18:06
Speaker 1: It is. Yeah, it'll spike much faster at this good point.
18:08
Speaker 1: That's what I was trying to think of. Yeah, that's true.
18:10
Speaker 1: You need to take that need take that rectal temperature
18:16
Speaker 1: way more than you're comfortable with. I don't recall that
18:18
Speaker 1: ever having been done to me. Well, because you don't
18:21
Speaker 1: remember being a baby. No, but my parents were pretty strict,
18:26
Speaker 1: pretty stern. Mean, by the time a kid is old
18:29
Speaker 1: enough to where you can say, like, hey, put this
18:32
Speaker 1: under your tongue, or hold still for a minute while
18:34
Speaker 1: I put this in your ear, but pre that when
18:37
Speaker 1: they're not sentient humans and they're just you know, crying,
18:41
Speaker 1: whiny little sacks of flesh, you gotta stick it right
18:44
Speaker 1: up the butt. Okay, Harry's laughing. She almost spit out
18:48
Speaker 1: her schwarm a salad. Harry's done plenty of that, so
18:51
Speaker 1: she knows. Okay, So into dreams, um, I always think
18:58
Speaker 1: we've done a general show on dreams. I think we did. Finally,
19:01
Speaker 1: I didn't find it. What still, No, it's a lucid dreaming.
19:06
Speaker 1: Can you control your dreams? That's the same thing, wasn't it.
19:11
Speaker 1: I think that maybe because no, we we did one
19:14
Speaker 1: on dreams. I didn't see it. Wow, I can't believe it.
19:18
Speaker 1: I can't believe it. Well, this contributes to the little
19:23
Speaker 1: by little, someone will know. Jill Hurley, where are you
19:27
Speaker 1: when we need you? Our statistician, a minister of stats?
19:31
Speaker 1: All right, well we'll talk about dreams a bit here then,
19:33
Speaker 1: Even though we've explained this in various episodes here and
19:35
Speaker 1: there to some degree, but uh dreams. You know, if
19:39
Speaker 1: you're psychologist, you you really love to spend time talking
19:45
Speaker 1: and dissecting dreams, interpreting dreams. If you're a um more
19:51
Speaker 1: into the neurology side of science, you don't really care
19:54
Speaker 1: about that kind of stuff. Um. In fact, for many
19:58
Speaker 1: years they thought it was called activation synthesis hypothesis, which
20:02
Speaker 1: was you go to sleep and all these uh synapsters
20:07
Speaker 1: are just randomly firing and they don't really add up
20:10
Speaker 1: to even a story. You just do that when you
20:13
Speaker 1: wake up because you're human. Yeah, but that I mean,
20:16
Speaker 1: that's complete. Bs. Well, you almost get the impression that
20:19
Speaker 1: they came up with this, and the neurologists came up
20:22
Speaker 1: with it to stick out their territory in response to
20:25
Speaker 1: years of psychoanalysts saying, this is what dreams are like,
20:29
Speaker 1: tapping into the collective unconscious or um, they're you're repressed memories.
20:35
Speaker 1: Neuroscience said, no, nothing, they're just your stupid, wet brain
20:40
Speaker 1: going crazy while you sleep. Yeah, which we all know
20:43
Speaker 1: now is not true. I saw another one too. What's
20:46
Speaker 1: that um threat simulation theory? Have you heard of that one? No,
20:51
Speaker 1: but that's a great band name. Basically, it's you're training
20:54
Speaker 1: to be a ninja while you sleep, Like your brain
20:57
Speaker 1: is running threat simulations constantly, so that it's like working
21:02
Speaker 1: itself out, like getting more and more agile and quick
21:05
Speaker 1: and like, like, so you can get better at running
21:07
Speaker 1: from a savor tooth tiger if you actually encounter it.
21:12
Speaker 1: I can see that early on maybe, and there is
21:15
Speaker 1: an evolutionary advantage to it, so evolutionarily speaking, it would
21:18
Speaker 1: make sense. The point is it that one came along?
21:23
Speaker 1: I was like, no, there's obviously some reason for dreams.
21:26
Speaker 1: It's not just random yet. Well, and then maybe I
21:29
Speaker 1: could have seen that early on. But then at some
21:32
Speaker 1: point someone around the fire had a dream about Tuktok's
21:34
Speaker 1: wife and woke up and went, whoa, there was no
21:37
Speaker 1: savor tooth tiger and that I'm not sure what that meant, uh,
21:43
Speaker 1: but I better not tell tuktok, right, you know. And
21:46
Speaker 1: then they went, what's a rectal themome hasn't even been
21:49
Speaker 1: invented yet, so uh. These days they've done actual studies, um,
21:55
Speaker 1: with E e. G. Machines and MRI machines, and especially
22:00
Speaker 1: in Italy, these Italian researchers basically put people to sleep,
22:04
Speaker 1: not put them to sleep and the sleeper hole. They
22:07
Speaker 1: lay them down in a nice Italian bed, feed them
22:10
Speaker 1: some postaphazul, and get out the rectal thermometer and they
22:14
Speaker 1: hook him up to all these wires and machines. And
22:17
Speaker 1: then they will wake them up at different points in
22:19
Speaker 1: the night and say, hey, what were you dreaming of? Um,
22:22
Speaker 1: we'd like to talk about it and study what was
22:25
Speaker 1: going on with these machines. And um. They actually what
22:29
Speaker 1: they found supports the current the prevailing theory. I don't
22:33
Speaker 1: think it was their theory. I think it was around,
22:35
Speaker 1: but their research supports it called affect regulation theory, which
22:39
Speaker 1: is basically that we control our emotions or we process
22:45
Speaker 1: our emotions through our dreams. And these Italians found support
22:49
Speaker 1: for this and that when they woke people up and
22:52
Speaker 1: asked them what they were dreaming about. The ones who
22:55
Speaker 1: had the best recall were the ones who had the
22:57
Speaker 1: most Theta waves in their frontal lobes, which are slow
23:01
Speaker 1: moving waves. Right. Yes, And when you look at an
23:03
Speaker 1: e G machine, if you looked at those dreamers brain waves,
23:08
Speaker 1: it looked like the brain waves of somebody who was
23:11
Speaker 1: sitting there forming and recalling memories. So these people said,
23:16
Speaker 1: that's what they're doing. That's what all of us are doing.
23:18
Speaker 1: While we're dreaming. We're forming memories. We're taking emotions that
23:22
Speaker 1: we've experienced through the day and we're creating memories out
23:26
Speaker 1: of them so we can file them away. So we're
23:29
Speaker 1: processing our emotions and our dreams. That's the point of dreams.
23:32
Speaker 1: That's the current understanding. Yeah, and then I mean other
23:36
Speaker 1: parts of the brain that have been active all sort
23:38
Speaker 1: of deal with emotion, whether it's the a magdala and
23:41
Speaker 1: the hippocampus or the lingual gyrus, which I think we
23:45
Speaker 1: just talked about that in another episode. I don't recall.
23:48
Speaker 1: I can't remember, um, but they're all areas of the
23:51
Speaker 1: brain that relate to emotion and memory, and some with
23:55
Speaker 1: visual activity. And you know that kind of makes sense.
23:58
Speaker 1: I like that theory and then under that current theory,
24:01
Speaker 1: so that's like the the explanation for regular dreams. And
24:04
Speaker 1: you can't just have a theory for dreams without including
24:07
Speaker 1: nightmares or else your theory is broken. Right, So the
24:10
Speaker 1: affect regulation theory considers nightmares. Um, basically, it's an emotion
24:17
Speaker 1: that's being put into the process of being, of creating
24:20
Speaker 1: a memory, a false memory, right, a dream memory, I
24:23
Speaker 1: guess you put it. But it's a real emotion, right,
24:26
Speaker 1: and um, it's so big it breaks the process. And
24:31
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, this process of creating a fake
24:33
Speaker 1: memory of fake experience, UM, goes haywire. And now all
24:37
Speaker 1: of a sudden you're enduring some terrible, horrifying experience because
24:42
Speaker 1: the emotion that was being processed was too big and
24:45
Speaker 1: got out of control. And now you have a nightmare
24:47
Speaker 1: t s for you. Yeah, I think we did one
24:51
Speaker 1: of night terrors. We did for sure, and sleep paralysis.
24:57
Speaker 1: We've covered it all. I think I guess we were.
25:00
Speaker 1: They haven't done a dreams one, all right, So let's
25:02
Speaker 1: take another break. We're gonna come back and finally talk
25:04
Speaker 1: about fever dreams. You robbed me of a Saturday night
25:30
Speaker 1: fever reference. I just want to go on record this
25:32
Speaker 1: thing that I was wrong, So Chuck, here's where everything
25:37
Speaker 1: just kind of goes totally off the rail. We've talked
25:41
Speaker 1: about fevers, We've talked about nightmares. The problem is really
25:47
Speaker 1: understanding both doesn't necessarily amount to understanding them together. Right, So,
25:54
Speaker 1: knowing what fevers are, knowing what dreams are, it doesn't
25:56
Speaker 1: mean you know what fever dreams are. But you can
26:00
Speaker 1: make stuff up if you want. Yeah, and I don't.
26:03
Speaker 1: I'm boy, I don't even think we even said if
26:05
Speaker 1: you've never had a fever dream, you might even know
26:07
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Feel kind of dumb at this point
26:09
Speaker 1: in the podcast. But a fever dream is um, basically
26:14
Speaker 1: a nightmare on steroids. It's just so vivid and so
26:18
Speaker 1: real and scary. Um that happens, you know, when you
26:23
Speaker 1: are sick with a fever. Yes, obviously, so their fever dreams, right,
26:28
Speaker 1: so they are a thing. Yeah, but the scientific literature
26:31
Speaker 1: on them is super thin, non existent. Kids seemed to
26:35
Speaker 1: get them, if not more, at least they stand out
26:38
Speaker 1: more to children, and so anecdotally people seem to recall
26:42
Speaker 1: having fever dreams. More when they were kids. Whether or
26:44
Speaker 1: not that's true or just a memory is uh or
26:48
Speaker 1: you know what do you call it, like a memory
26:50
Speaker 1: bias or whatever, There's no one really knows. Yeah, well
26:55
Speaker 1: that yeah, I mean, we don't really know because I
26:58
Speaker 1: don't remember the last time I had a fever and
27:01
Speaker 1: if I did, whether or not I had had a
27:03
Speaker 1: fever dream. I I don't think I've ever had a
27:06
Speaker 1: fever dream. I did when I was a kid. I
27:08
Speaker 1: don't remember having fever dreams. I remember being sick as
27:11
Speaker 1: a kid and having like nightmares when I was sick,
27:14
Speaker 1: so like they're noticeably worse than your average nightmare. Really,
27:20
Speaker 1: so would you keep waking up from them? Mm hmmm,
27:24
Speaker 1: that I don't remember. See, that's that's a big question
27:26
Speaker 1: to me. Um. Well, let's talk about the anecdotal theory
27:30
Speaker 1: of what is behind fever dreams. Right, So, when your
27:34
Speaker 1: body is undergoing a fever, we said that your body
27:37
Speaker 1: is not functioning at its top performance. Um, and that
27:41
Speaker 1: includes the brain. The brain itself is an extremely special
27:45
Speaker 1: organ if you didn't know already, it's like, I think
27:49
Speaker 1: two of the body's mass, but it requires twenty of
27:53
Speaker 1: the body's energy. Yeah, and the neurons compared to regular
27:58
Speaker 1: old dumb cells. Uh uh, they they burn or they
28:02
Speaker 1: need about between three times more energy than a regular
28:08
Speaker 1: dumb cell in your body. Right. And so when all
28:11
Speaker 1: these chemical processes, when all of this UM energy is
28:14
Speaker 1: being exploited to power cells, UM, it produces the byproduct
28:19
Speaker 1: of heat. So the brain is super sensitive to overheating
28:22
Speaker 1: right already, just under normal circumstances, and it's generally taken
28:26
Speaker 1: care of, uh by by your body, like it's you
28:30
Speaker 1: know that it's cooled down and regulated. Right. So, Um,
28:34
Speaker 1: if you have a fever and your brain is not
28:38
Speaker 1: operating at optimal conditions, but you're asleep, so it's trying
28:44
Speaker 1: to go through its normal processes. Um, if you have
28:48
Speaker 1: a nightmare, it's entirely possible that that nightmare is going
28:52
Speaker 1: to be far far worse because the normal processes have
28:54
Speaker 1: broken down, or it's even further possible apparently. Um. The
29:00
Speaker 1: amygdalas frequently implicated with nightmares because it has to do
29:04
Speaker 1: with being terrified or angry or fearful. Um, the amigdala
29:09
Speaker 1: might be functioning at an abnormal level and it's just
29:14
Speaker 1: basically going haywired while you have a fever. Yeah, and
29:18
Speaker 1: then the fact that most dreams occur during R E
29:21
Speaker 1: M sleep, and I think that's when you're body is
29:24
Speaker 1: warmest sleep anyway, right, that's when see, this is where
29:28
Speaker 1: it all gets kind of hinky. During R E M sleep,
29:31
Speaker 1: your hypothalamus says I'm done, I'm not working right now,
29:34
Speaker 1: so it stops regulating temperature, which is usually why your
29:38
Speaker 1: body temperature is lowest right before you wake up. I
29:40
Speaker 1: thought it was highest right before you wake up. No,
29:42
Speaker 1: it's highest in the afternoon while you're awake. It's lowest
29:45
Speaker 1: right before you wake up. I feel like I always
29:47
Speaker 1: wake up hot. You. I mean, you may be like
29:51
Speaker 1: sleeping with too many blankets, your room might be a
29:53
Speaker 1: little too warm, or maybe it's my stupid you know,
29:59
Speaker 1: schedule of my see, I mean it could be you know,
30:02
Speaker 1: it might have cut off a couple hours before or something. Right,
30:04
Speaker 1: it could be right, so fires up after I get up.
30:06
Speaker 1: Because supposedly, um, when you are sleeping and you're in
30:10
Speaker 1: R E M sleep, your hypothalamus is not regulating temperature
30:14
Speaker 1: during that period. So if you if you are already hot,
30:19
Speaker 1: and remember high body temperature is associated with wakefulness, then
30:24
Speaker 1: maybe you are waking up more frequently than you normally would,
30:28
Speaker 1: and when you wake up in the middle of a dream,
30:30
Speaker 1: you're more prone to remember it. If you wake up
30:32
Speaker 1: in the middle of a nightmare, it's going to seem
30:34
Speaker 1: even worse than one that you had and woke up
30:36
Speaker 1: normally from. Yeah, I mean I had a series of
30:40
Speaker 1: not nightmares last night, but just sort of anxiety dreams.
30:44
Speaker 1: And I don't have any anxiety about anything right now.
30:46
Speaker 1: I think it was just after reading all this stuff. Yeah,
30:49
Speaker 1: I'm just suggestible you had anxiety dreams. Yeah, but not
30:55
Speaker 1: about like nothing specific. No, like there's you know usually
30:58
Speaker 1: if I have anxiety dreams and just like because something's
31:00
Speaker 1: going on in my life, I'm anxious. But it was
31:03
Speaker 1: just a research huh, I think so. I men, you're dedicated.
31:06
Speaker 1: But they were also celebrity dreams because you know I've
31:09
Speaker 1: talked about those before. No, Yeah, yeah, that I have
31:13
Speaker 1: just celebrity dreams all the time. But they're just very
31:16
Speaker 1: normal that I'm just like friends with celebrity people. But
31:20
Speaker 1: were they were the anxiety written last night? Yes, Like
31:23
Speaker 1: I was hanging out with a band Luna Dean were
31:26
Speaker 1: um of Luna and that was but there was. I
31:29
Speaker 1: can't remember exactly what was going on, but you know
31:31
Speaker 1: that was anxiety involved, like I was trying to get
31:33
Speaker 1: somewhere and couldn't get there, like the typical stupid dream stuff,
31:37
Speaker 1: you know. But some Dean was in there somehow. Yeah.
31:41
Speaker 1: Have you talked to him today? I don't know him,
31:44
Speaker 1: but uh, I think I know why they were in there,
31:47
Speaker 1: That's all I'll say. Okay, wink wink, I guess. So.
31:52
Speaker 1: Here's another thing that was in our own article I
31:54
Speaker 1: thought was interesting and just a little tidbit, was that, um,
31:58
Speaker 1: some recreational drug like meth and ecstasy can raise brain temperatures.
32:04
Speaker 1: That is one of the reasons they think that it
32:07
Speaker 1: kills so many brain cells when you do those drugs. Yes,
32:09
Speaker 1: supposedly you're not supposed to take ecstasy and warm climates. Yeah,
32:13
Speaker 1: never have heard that. Yeah, just norway. Well there you
32:18
Speaker 1: have it, only it's fall barred. Um what else is
32:23
Speaker 1: there anything else in here? No? Man, I can't believe
32:26
Speaker 1: we stretched this one out as far as we did. Alright,
32:30
Speaker 1: we never have to talk about fever dreams again, Chuck good.
32:33
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about fever dreams, well
32:35
Speaker 1: you might as well start at how stuff works dot com.
32:37
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with that, um. And you can also
32:41
Speaker 1: just go around and look at how sparse the researches
32:44
Speaker 1: on the internet for yourself. And if you are a
32:47
Speaker 1: researcher and you know more stuff about fever dreams that
32:50
Speaker 1: you can point us to let us know. UM. In
32:54
Speaker 1: the meantime, I think I said search bars somewhere in there,
32:57
Speaker 1: which means it's time for a listener mail. Uh, you
33:02
Speaker 1: know what. I think another reason the anxiety dreams is
33:04
Speaker 1: because I'm barreling through this season of Fargo. And yeah,
33:09
Speaker 1: and the two episodes I watched last night, which I
33:12
Speaker 1: believe we're if there are ten, I think it was
33:16
Speaker 1: eight and nine, we're both just like ratcheted up with sin.
33:21
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's what it was. And I think that
33:23
Speaker 1: probably has something to do with it. That happens to
33:25
Speaker 1: me sometimes I'll be watching something I won't realize how
33:28
Speaker 1: on top of me it's gotten, and then all of
33:29
Speaker 1: a sudden, like it goes to an ad and I'm
33:32
Speaker 1: like really uptight about like this scratching washing machine sale
33:36
Speaker 1: that's going on somewhere, and I don't understand why. I'm like,
33:39
Speaker 1: oh wow, that TV show really got to me. Yeah,
33:41
Speaker 1: I think I think Fargo had something to do it.
33:43
Speaker 1: Think you may have nailed it. Um, all right, I'm
33:46
Speaker 1: gonna call this one garden variety fan mail, which we
33:49
Speaker 1: don't read a lot of these, so I'm going to
33:52
Speaker 1: dig in. Hey, guys, that's all this is fan mail.
33:55
Speaker 1: You guys are doing a great job, always have. It's
33:58
Speaker 1: clear that with every episode do you take pains to
34:01
Speaker 1: provide the most accurate information you can in the most
34:04
Speaker 1: thoughtful way possible. How ironic that you would read this
34:07
Speaker 1: on the fever dreams of Uh, there's never been more
34:09
Speaker 1: evident to me than in the episodes you did on Puberty.
34:11
Speaker 1: I know it's been a little while since he's came out,
34:14
Speaker 1: but just listen to them, and it was touching to
34:15
Speaker 1: see how frequently you tried to reassure young listeners what
34:18
Speaker 1: they're experiencing is normal and that there was nothing wrong
34:21
Speaker 1: about what was happening. To hear two grown men do
34:23
Speaker 1: their best talk to young boys and girls about such
34:26
Speaker 1: sensitive material was a pleasure. Yes, at times, I could
34:29
Speaker 1: practically feel you nervously twitching while trying trying to discuss
34:34
Speaker 1: um menstruation in an informative yet reassuring way. But it
34:38
Speaker 1: was absolutely charming, just reaffirm what we've always known. You
34:41
Speaker 1: two are just a pair of great dudes. That's nice. Yeah,
34:44
Speaker 1: I've only been listening for a few years, but I'm
34:47
Speaker 1: a lifetime fan. Now. Uh, if you're keeping count, like
34:51
Speaker 1: to put it in a vote for d C for
34:52
Speaker 1: live shows. Uh, Josh, h E d G E E.
34:59
Speaker 1: Sorry E d G E is edge and then add
35:03
Speaker 1: two els edgel Josh edgel or a gel, I like
35:08
Speaker 1: edgel for ed Gil, Gil for Edgar. I think edgel
35:14
Speaker 1: edgel sounds like a kid next door. Josh, it's Josh
35:17
Speaker 1: and Josh. You know what. We usually come to d
35:19
Speaker 1: C once a year. Um, I don't think we're coming
35:23
Speaker 1: this year though, now we probably will be there earli
35:25
Speaker 1: ash two eighteen. Yeah. DC is always great to us,
35:28
Speaker 1: so we we'll definitely be back. Yeah. Uh, and you
35:32
Speaker 1: can always fly somewhere in the continental United States or Canada. Josh.
35:37
Speaker 1: Take that Sola Express up to Brooklyn exactly. It's a
35:40
Speaker 1: pleasure train there you go. There's rectel thermometers everywhere. Uh.
35:45
Speaker 1: If you want to see us on tour, go to
35:47
Speaker 1: s y SK Live dot comference tickets. You can get
35:50
Speaker 1: in touch with us on Twitter at Josh I'm Clark
35:53
Speaker 1: or s Y s K podcast. You can join Chuck
35:56
Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com, slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or
35:59
Speaker 1: slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us both
36:02
Speaker 1: and Jerry an email to Stuff podcast at how stuff
36:05
Speaker 1: Works dot com and has always joined us at our
36:07
Speaker 1: home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
36:14
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
36:16
Speaker 1: it how stuff Works dot com