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How Sleepwalking Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
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Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant.
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Speaker 1: It makes this stuff you should know. Um the late
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Speaker 1: night edition. It's late let's go and Chuck grew It
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Speaker 1: couldn't be better. How are you same? Just the same? So, Chuck,
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Speaker 1: I got a story for you. Let's hear it back
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Speaker 1: in in a little town called Weymouth, Massachusetts, although in
0:46
Speaker 1: Massachusetts they probably pronounced it in some radically different way
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Speaker 1: than it would be spelled we Mouth woman or wooster
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Speaker 1: or something weird like that. Um, there is a woman
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Speaker 1: named um Marie and Bickford, and she was a prostitute.
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Speaker 1: And she was discovered on October that year murdered and
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Speaker 1: brutally murdered. Actually uh, and it was quickly traced back
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Speaker 1: to a guy by the name of Albert Terrell Jack
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Speaker 1: the Ripper. No, but it was ripper asque. Her head
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Speaker 1: was severed or almost completely severed. Yeah, and it was
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Speaker 1: with the knife. Um. But the the reason everybody knew
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Speaker 1: it was Albert terrell was because that was her boyfriend
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Speaker 1: and he had left his wife for her. He was
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Speaker 1: a wealthy guy in Massachusetts and he left his wife
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Speaker 1: to be with Maria Anne Bickford. Um, and he wanted
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Speaker 1: her to quit the quit the job, I guess you
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Speaker 1: could call it. I would say that too. Well, she didn't.
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Speaker 1: She liked having a an income because she didn't have
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Speaker 1: to depend on any man for um, whatever she wanted,
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Speaker 1: and she refused. And ironic though, because she was depending
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Speaker 1: on men. Yeah, that is very ironic actually, um. She
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Speaker 1: uh ultimately died, was murdered, and it was Albert Terrelle
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Speaker 1: who who admitted to doing it, but he was sleepwalking.
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Speaker 1: He said it was pretty thin case. But he was
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Speaker 1: ultimately acquitted, even though he had set three fires in
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Speaker 1: the brothel in an obvious attempt to cover up what
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Speaker 1: he'd done while he was still supposedly sleepwalking. But the
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Speaker 1: jury bought it. And one of the reasons they bought
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Speaker 1: it was because it was a jury of wealthy white
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Speaker 1: men who weren't about to put one of their own
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Speaker 1: behind bars as big of a crook as he was.
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Speaker 1: But secondly because in eighteen forty five, we didn't really
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Speaker 1: understand sleepwalking. We didn't understand what people were capable of,
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Speaker 1: We didn't understand how sleep walking worked. And I know
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Speaker 1: you sent me an article as recently as a month
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Speaker 1: or so ago a guy in Arizona was acquitted of
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Speaker 1: sexual assault because he was sleepwalking. Right, Yeah, it was Illinois,
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Speaker 1: but um, that was today. The news articles from today
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Speaker 1: even better, even more recent, which makes my point even
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Speaker 1: more thorough, which is we don't understand sleepwalking too terribly
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Speaker 1: much more than we did in eighteen forty five as
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Speaker 1: far as explaining why it happens. Right, absolutely, But there
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Speaker 1: are some really interesting aspects of this, uh, this sleep
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Speaker 1: disorder which is called the paras omnia, right, yes, it's
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Speaker 1: that's one of many, but it's called somnambulism. Specifically, sleepwalking
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Speaker 1: is and not to be confused with no, not at all. Uh.
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Speaker 1: And there's an official definition if you want to look
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Speaker 1: in a mental health professional handbook called Yes, Uh, you
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Speaker 1: leave your bed while you're sleeping, and uh, you find
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Speaker 1: it others find it difficult to wake you when you're
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Speaker 1: sleep sleep walking. You can't remember what happened afterward. Uh,
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Speaker 1: you're confused when you wake up, you aren't suffering from
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Speaker 1: dementia or anything else physical. It's a big one, and
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Speaker 1: it impairs your social life or work life, or your life.
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Speaker 1: And that's for straight up sleepwalking. There are sleepwalking can
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Speaker 1: be a symptom of things like dementia or Parkinson's or
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Speaker 1: something like that. But that's um kind of significant and
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Speaker 1: you should think that it's found in the d S
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Speaker 1: M four, which is the psychological Bible, right, so it's
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Speaker 1: it's considered a disorder, a disorder of arousal, I think
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Speaker 1: is what it's called. Right, Yes, so chuck while you're sleeping. Um,
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Speaker 1: when does this occur? When does it take place? Uh,
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Speaker 1: if you're an adult or actually kids too, I think
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Speaker 1: it occurs in the first third of your sleep, which
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Speaker 1: is the non R E M sleep, which is when
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Speaker 1: your body is, uh, you're in your deepest state of sleep,
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Speaker 1: but your body is kind of awake, so you're tossing
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Speaker 1: and turning a lot, but your brain is shut down.
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Speaker 1: So it's sort of the opposite of rim sleep. Right,
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Speaker 1: You've got non R E M N R E I'm
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Speaker 1: sleep right, and Um. Usually sleepwalking occurs during the deepest part,
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Speaker 1: which is what I think phase three or four or
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Speaker 1: possibly three and four when, as Katie Lambert, who wrote
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Speaker 1: this article put it, um, with R E M sleep,
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Speaker 1: your brains active but your body is not. With non
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Speaker 1: R E M sleep, which is when sleepwalking occurs, your
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Speaker 1: brain is just dead to the world, but your body
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Speaker 1: is still moving around, which accounts for sleepwalking. Right, perfect recap.
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Speaker 1: Thanks a lot. Uh. And you know your brain is
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Speaker 1: is also resistant to arousal when you're asleep, So that
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Speaker 1: explains why it's hard to wake somebody up when you're sleepwalking.
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Speaker 1: But it's not dangerous necessarily. No, And that's a question
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Speaker 1: that we should probably just go ahead and answer. Should
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Speaker 1: you wake a sleepwalker? You've you've heard warnings against that
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Speaker 1: kind of thing, I think on everything from the Brady
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Speaker 1: Bunch to Hawaii five. Oh. Let's say, okay, uh, myth
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Speaker 1: Yes you can wake a sleepwalker. But the rule I
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Speaker 1: put in is wake a sleepwalker like you would want
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Speaker 1: to be awakened just from bed. Don't go shaking them
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Speaker 1: or anything. You wouldn't do that somebody laying in bed
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Speaker 1: asleep either, they'll probably have a heart attack, so be
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Speaker 1: gentle and try and guide them back to the bed.
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Speaker 1: If they wake up, that's fine. But it's not it's
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Speaker 1: not like a danger. They're not gonna have a heart
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Speaker 1: attack if they and die if they're awake from sleepwalking. No,
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Speaker 1: but you could arouse their startle response, and um, they
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Speaker 1: are going to be confused and not know what's going on. That's,
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Speaker 1: like you said, one of the symptoms of sleep walking. Um.
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Speaker 1: But if you do manage to get the sleepwalker back
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Speaker 1: to bed and they lie back down and that's it,
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Speaker 1: you can pretty much rest assured that there's not gonna
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Speaker 1: be another incident like that because most people sleepwalk only
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Speaker 1: once per night. Interestingly, that's what they say, and thirty
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Speaker 1: seconds to a half hour. I've heard it even longer
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Speaker 1: than that, because it very much depends on what's going
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Speaker 1: on or maybe what you feel like you have to
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Speaker 1: get done while you're walking around in your sleep. You're
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Speaker 1: gonna be sort of zombiefied, but you're not gonna be
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Speaker 1: walking around with your arms out in front of you
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Speaker 1: like in the movies. That's a bunch of bunk um,
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Speaker 1: and you're probably gonna be pretty clumsy, but you can
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Speaker 1: still perform activities, which is kind of the weird thing
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Speaker 1: about it. One of the weird things about it, right,
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Speaker 1: you just perform them clumsily or you oddly. I guess
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Speaker 1: there's another way to put it. UM and sleepwalking is
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Speaker 1: one of these. It's a hilarious disorder really because it's
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Speaker 1: not generally that dangerous, so it doesn't have to be
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Speaker 1: that dangerous, although it can put you in dangerous situations,
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Speaker 1: and people have been hurt um in sleepwalking. But the
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Speaker 1: idea of just, you know, interacting with somebody with a
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Speaker 1: glassy eyed look on their face who's clumsily playing the guitar,
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Speaker 1: it's that's a funny disorder. It's funnier than chance. I
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Speaker 1: haven't either. I've never been much of a sleepwalker. I
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Speaker 1: don't think I've ever sleepwalked. I've sleepwalked, but I've never
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Speaker 1: interacted with someone who was sleepwalking. So yeah, I've done
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Speaker 1: it myself. Though. It's good. It's a lot of fun.
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Speaker 1: But it's one of these conditions where we have all
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Speaker 1: this evidence, in all this data, we just haven't been
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Speaker 1: able to fully put it together to figure it out
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Speaker 1: once and for all, which makes for a better podcast
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Speaker 1: for us. Right. Um, A little bit more data that
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Speaker 1: we have on at Chuck is that um sleepwalking tends
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Speaker 1: to run in families, children sleepwalk more than adults by far. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: you're ten times more likely if your family, Uh, if
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Speaker 1: you have a family member who has sleptwalked to be
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Speaker 1: a sleepwalker yourself. So is it slept walked or sleepwalked
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Speaker 1: slept walk Sure, that sounds good to me. We'll just
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Speaker 1: call it s W past tense. Uh. It more often
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Speaker 1: is founding kids. Obviously it's something you usually outgrow. Uh.
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Speaker 1: More often identical twins, which I thought was pretty interesting. Yeah, well,
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Speaker 1: gene expression at all. And uh, I think they said
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Speaker 1: adults two point five to four percent of adults sleepwalk,
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Speaker 1: and this is they're almost always adults who sleptwalked as children.
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Speaker 1: And if you start sleepwalking for the first time as
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Speaker 1: an adult, you might want to get that checked out.
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Speaker 1: You definitely want to get that checked out, because again,
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Speaker 1: it can be a symptom of another another problem like UM, Parkinson's,
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Speaker 1: Alzheimer's UM. Severe stress I think has been associated with it,
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Speaker 1: not just in children or not adults, but children too,
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Speaker 1: which I'm I was kind of like, if you have
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Speaker 1: a child who's suffering from sleepwalking and it's stress related,
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Speaker 1: what are you doing to your poor kid? To where
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Speaker 1: you the kids suffering from such stress that he's running
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Speaker 1: around at night. Absolutely, I wonder what I was stressed about.
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Speaker 1: I don't know, man. I find it odd that you
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Speaker 1: haven't asked me about sleepwalking yet, even though I said
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Speaker 1: three times that have slept walked. And I'm trying to
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Speaker 1: drum up the tension. Uh. They used to think that, um,
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Speaker 1: it was like an epileptic thing or hysteria. Well, it
9:50
Speaker 1: still is associated with epilepsy. Actually, hysteria is kind of
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Speaker 1: about the window though. Yeah, they still think it's caused
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Speaker 1: by epilepsy, though it's associated with it still. Yeah, I
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Speaker 1: did not know that we should change this article. Uh.
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Speaker 1: And like you said, no one knows exactly why it's happening, um,
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Speaker 1: but they can just say kind of what goes on
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Speaker 1: when it does happen, right, right, We have all this
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Speaker 1: information that hasn't been fully put together, which again I
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Speaker 1: find fascinating. Yeah, absolutely so, Chuck. Um, what are some
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Speaker 1: of the I guess competing theories for why we sleepwalk? Uh, Well,
10:27
Speaker 1: it's a lot of people think it's just like you're
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Speaker 1: in a transition stage between being awake and being asleep.
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Speaker 1: So if you've got a dead brain, we'll not dead.
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Speaker 1: If you've got a very sleepy brain and a very
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Speaker 1: wired body, uh, you could potentially get triggered. They think
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Speaker 1: a lot of times. I saw this one study where um,
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Speaker 1: they took ten sleepwalkers and um they they kept them
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Speaker 1: awake for more than twenty four hours and then allowed
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Speaker 1: them to sleep, and they found that a buzzer going off.
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Speaker 1: All ten people got up and slept walked when they
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Speaker 1: heard this buzzer. Weird. After sleep deprivation and before during
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Speaker 1: just regular sleep, three out of ten were triggered by
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Speaker 1: the buzzer. So they think that like any noise like
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Speaker 1: a dog barking outside could like wake you up, wake
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Speaker 1: your body up, and send you doing whatever. Uh. And
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Speaker 1: sleep deprivation is a magic term as far as sleepwalking goes.
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Speaker 1: They found that UM sleepwalking increases dramatically and in studies
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Speaker 1: when they're sleep deprived, when the person sleep deprived first.
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Speaker 1: And they recommend also that if your kid um is sleepwalking,
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Speaker 1: you should not only decrease their stress somehow, maybe let
11:40
Speaker 1: them give up the trumpet if they really hate it, um,
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Speaker 1: but also to get them on like a regular sleep
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Speaker 1: schedule too, that that could be part of it as well.
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Speaker 1: That they may just be sleep deprived and stressed out. Yeah,
11:50
Speaker 1: adults kids for show. Um. Another theory with the kids
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Speaker 1: is that there's all kinds of crazy hormones being shot
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Speaker 1: about the body during the night and that that may
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Speaker 1: disrupt the kid And that's why that would explain why
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Speaker 1: it like tapers off after puberty. Yes. Um, have you
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Speaker 1: ever liked done something to say, driving or walking or
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Speaker 1: doing anything where you realized you got somewhere and you
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Speaker 1: hadn't been paying attention. You didn't really It wasn't like
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Speaker 1: you're blacked out or you're drunk or impaired or anything,
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Speaker 1: but you were just distracted or doing something else, daydreaming. Absolutely,
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Speaker 1: So I would imagine that that has a lot to
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Speaker 1: do with how we could possibly sleepwalk. It's like maybe
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Speaker 1: more basic part of our brain is activated, like the
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Speaker 1: brainstem with that controls like breathing, walking, that kind of stuff. Correct,
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Speaker 1: So maybe it's all brainstem makes sense to me. Uh,
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Speaker 1: people have actually killed people in their sleep, like you
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Speaker 1: said the first guy, Uh, there was someone else too,
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Speaker 1: And it kind of depends on the case. From what
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Speaker 1: I've seen, some of them get acquitted, some of them
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Speaker 1: get convicted. One guy stabbed his wife forty five times
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Speaker 1: and he was convicted. Another guy I murdered his father
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Speaker 1: and he was acquitted. So I guess it's sort of
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Speaker 1: a crap shoot. There hasn't been any You can't go
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Speaker 1: to a law book and say, well, we gotta we
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Speaker 1: have the sleepwalking defense, like the insanity plea. No, but um,
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Speaker 1: I think that, uh, you could probably find the same
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Speaker 1: um state witness or defense witness in the acquittals or
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Speaker 1: or um convictions. But there's some like great professional witness
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Speaker 1: out there, like can convince any jury that actually, if
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Speaker 1: you're sleepwalking, can't You can't possibly know what you're doing right. Well,
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Speaker 1: the guy from Illinois last week that was acquitted was
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Speaker 1: I think they proved that he had a long history
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Speaker 1: of sleepwalking. And this was some friend of his. He
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Speaker 1: like went out drinking with her and slept crashed on
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Speaker 1: her couch and then he said he woke up to
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Speaker 1: some guy punching him in the face. She said that
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Speaker 1: guy was the guy I called because you were assaulting
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Speaker 1: me in my sleep and he was like, I didn't
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Speaker 1: mean it, and they said, okay. Yeah. It took him
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Speaker 1: like a couple of hours or something to decide. The
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Speaker 1: jury Yeah, that was really fast too. That's what I'm saying.
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Speaker 1: There has to have been somebody who convinced them and
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Speaker 1: just laid it all out for him, because it's not
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Speaker 1: like the average juror knows a lot about sleep walking.
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Speaker 1: It's all you know, the cabinet of Dr Kelgary or
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Speaker 1: again the Brady bunch. Yeah, who Who's who was that?
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Speaker 1: I don't remember. I just remember there was a sleepwalking episode,
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Speaker 1: and it seems like I could be making it up.
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Speaker 1: You talked about injury, and I saw a study in
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Speaker 1: England that eleven percent of people that responded sleepwalkers said
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Speaker 1: they have been injured. And it's usually like bruising or cuts,
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Speaker 1: but I think eleven percent of that eleven percent actually
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Speaker 1: broke bones well, which is not a happy way to
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Speaker 1: wake up up with its um chuck. Sleepwalking is not
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Speaker 1: the only paris omnia. Remember we called it paras omnia.
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Speaker 1: It's a sleep disorder. There are other parasomnias, and the
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Speaker 1: first that I think we should talk about is called
15:00
Speaker 1: somnambulistic sexual behavior inexplicably um abbreviated as SPS. Yeah, that's weird.
15:09
Speaker 1: I wonder what the beast stands for. I guess that's
15:11
Speaker 1: part of the ballistic Maybe that's the Spanish um. The
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Speaker 1: Spanish abbreviation it's somnambulistic behavior sex you all. Yeah, so
15:21
Speaker 1: sleep sex or sexsomnia is um. Like Katie says in here,
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Speaker 1: it's pretty much what you think. It's being asleep in
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Speaker 1: the middle of the night and either you know, masturbating
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Speaker 1: or doing something to whoever is nearby, right, sexually, yes,
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Speaker 1: and again that can lead you to an assault conviction,
15:40
Speaker 1: or you can wake up very happy, depending on the situation. Right.
15:45
Speaker 1: And then of course there's the very very famous sleep eating,
15:48
Speaker 1: which one generally associates these days with the sleep aid
15:52
Speaker 1: ambient right, Yeah, eating all kinds of crazy things with
15:55
Speaker 1: ambient cigarettes and raw meat. I think we've talked about
15:59
Speaker 1: it before. It seems like, yeah, we've talked about it.
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Speaker 1: Kristen Conger rode article on it, and um, apparently the
16:05
Speaker 1: chemical zolpidem in ambient like crosses the eating and the
16:10
Speaker 1: sleeping wires and like one in a thousand people and
16:13
Speaker 1: they don't know why. But I also found another stat
16:15
Speaker 1: that said one and one percent of people have sleep
16:18
Speaker 1: eating disorders anyway, so I can't you know, Well, there's
16:22
Speaker 1: reports of people who have been on ambient and then
16:25
Speaker 1: switched to another similar drug, and it said that it
16:28
Speaker 1: all went away. There, sleep eating, abnormal sleep behavior. And
16:32
Speaker 1: then there was the first case of well the first
16:35
Speaker 1: documented case of a woman who is on ambient UM
16:39
Speaker 1: who sleep emailed and I can't stand the um the
16:44
Speaker 1: term the media gave it, but z mailing with three ze. Yeah,
16:49
Speaker 1: it's completely awful. Uh yeah, that was pretty cool because
16:52
Speaker 1: she emailed. She fired up her computer in the middle
16:55
Speaker 1: of the night, logged in to the internet. Onto the internet,
16:59
Speaker 1: she had to UM user password to use her password,
17:03
Speaker 1: and sent several emails that apparently were a random mix
17:07
Speaker 1: of upper and lower cases, and they were written in
17:09
Speaker 1: some strange language. Although when I read the first email,
17:13
Speaker 1: it didn't seem very strange to me at all. Uh No,
17:16
Speaker 1: it said, um, this is a quote, come tomorrow and
17:20
Speaker 1: sort this hellhole out. Dinner and drinks four pm. Bring
17:24
Speaker 1: wine and caviare only it seems like a very normal
17:26
Speaker 1: email to me. I've sent that same very same email before.
17:30
Speaker 1: What about the second one? Yeah, one said what the
17:34
Speaker 1: dot dot dot? I think, but it was the mix
17:37
Speaker 1: of all caps in lower case that really just kinda
17:41
Speaker 1: that had to be a little off putting to see that.
17:43
Speaker 1: It looks like brain damage, you know, it's like brain
17:47
Speaker 1: damage and text form. She's probably seen a doctor by
17:50
Speaker 1: this point, I would say, although she was on ambient right, yeah, okay,
17:54
Speaker 1: well that probably explains that zolpi um like you said.
17:57
Speaker 1: And then also, uh, this week, very sadly, a guy fell.
18:01
Speaker 1: He basically walked off of his third story hotel room
18:05
Speaker 1: in Majorca and just like broke a leg and hit
18:10
Speaker 1: his head too, and hit his head and his girlfriend
18:12
Speaker 1: just like this, she woke up to find her boyfriend
18:15
Speaker 1: had gone out the window. Awful. That's more than a bruise,
18:20
Speaker 1: my friend. And if you like connecting podcasts, there was
18:25
Speaker 1: a guy um in England in hart old Pool, right
18:30
Speaker 1: and on um Holy Island, at the Crowning Anchor on
18:36
Speaker 1: Holy Island off north the Northumberland coast. He woke up
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Speaker 1: in quicksand actually he's sleep he's he drank too much.
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Speaker 1: But then he's he sleepwalked. He s w pass tensed
18:50
Speaker 1: um into the marsh land and found himself waking up
18:56
Speaker 1: in the sinking and quicksandard and trapped in quicksand crazy.
18:59
Speaker 1: And the guy was smart enough to know that you
19:01
Speaker 1: stopped struggling and lie flat. And if he would listen,
19:05
Speaker 1: was a fan, wouldn't that be something It's possible, Chuck,
19:08
Speaker 1: because this just happened, right, it was m August eleven.
19:11
Speaker 1: H I wonder so, as sleepwalker Stephen Rook, if you
19:15
Speaker 1: listen to this podcast, let us know if we saved
19:17
Speaker 1: your life and put the bottle down in the stakes. Yeah, well,
19:20
Speaker 1: he said he did. He said he spent the next
19:22
Speaker 1: day in bed and uh, he was avoiding alcohol for
19:25
Speaker 1: a long time and wants to thank everyone. A friend said, yeah,
19:28
Speaker 1: he'll be back on the sauce this weekend. Totally. I've
19:31
Speaker 1: said that before too. My uncle, actually it was a
19:35
Speaker 1: famous sleepwalker in my family. He um, my uncle Steve,
19:39
Speaker 1: who you know as the guy who's helped us out
19:42
Speaker 1: before with some stuff, the guy we bought Scotch four
19:45
Speaker 1: a k A. Uh. He had a few incidents is
19:48
Speaker 1: when he was young, and one time they found tracks
19:51
Speaker 1: in the snow leading from his house, so he went
19:54
Speaker 1: Apparently he said he went outside see if it was snowing.
19:57
Speaker 1: Another time he fell asleep on a couch after school,
20:02
Speaker 1: got up an eate dinner, and then later on woke
20:05
Speaker 1: up and said, Hey, what's for dinner tonight? And they're like,
20:09
Speaker 1: you just had scallops? And another time specific that's what
20:13
Speaker 1: he said, I asked him today. Uh. And then another
20:16
Speaker 1: time he was going to the store with my grandfather
20:19
Speaker 1: and he fell asleep in the car on the way
20:21
Speaker 1: to the store and then woke up like in the
20:24
Speaker 1: shop that they were going to, like at the counter
20:26
Speaker 1: paying for something weird. What was he buying? I think
20:29
Speaker 1: he said tickets to like a Danny Thomas benefit show
20:32
Speaker 1: or something. It's like the early sixties. Yeah, that's pretty
20:36
Speaker 1: much everybody was sleepwalking in that line. Yeah, that's a
20:38
Speaker 1: hot ticket in MEMPHISO back in the day. Yeah, yeah,
20:41
Speaker 1: oh yeah, And I used to sleepwalk, all right, let's
20:45
Speaker 1: hear well. A couple of times I'd gotten up and
20:47
Speaker 1: just gone out to my We had a split level,
20:50
Speaker 1: so I'd go out to the banister overlooking our den
20:52
Speaker 1: and just start yelling things. And um, another time I
20:57
Speaker 1: specifically remember I got up. I mean I remember after it, obviously,
21:01
Speaker 1: I got up and I got ready for school and
21:03
Speaker 1: took a shower and got dressed, and then I woke
21:06
Speaker 1: up the next morning. I was like, that was weird.
21:07
Speaker 1: I must have dreamt that, and I saw like the
21:09
Speaker 1: wet towel in my clothes on the floor down your head,
21:11
Speaker 1: your saddle, shoes on your like don d I was
21:14
Speaker 1: like clutching shampoo. So I don't sleep walk anymore. Them
21:18
Speaker 1: I sleep talk, though, do you? So? It's Emily. I
21:22
Speaker 1: think a lot of people sleep talk. That's not a
21:25
Speaker 1: big deal. Yeah, what are you say in your sleep? Um? You?
21:27
Speaker 1: Me actually likes to use her iPhone to record me
21:31
Speaker 1: sleep talking, and she loves to share it with everybody
21:34
Speaker 1: who will listen. Has actually emailed the sound clips to
21:38
Speaker 1: people before. But there's this one of me like just
21:40
Speaker 1: muttering and all of a sudden I go do the
21:43
Speaker 1: real pop and that was I have no idea. Why
21:46
Speaker 1: why am I not on that email? That's disappointing. I
21:49
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm sure I could get it for you. Um. Lastly, Chuck,
21:52
Speaker 1: there's one a point that I found it fascinating, which
21:57
Speaker 1: is people have always thought and still probably think because
21:59
Speaker 1: for dumb that um you act out your dreams while
22:03
Speaker 1: you're sleepwalking. Not true. The point that Katie Lambert makes
22:08
Speaker 1: is your brain is not really active, It's it's in
22:10
Speaker 1: the slow delta wave that you couldn't possibly be dreaming in,
22:14
Speaker 1: so you're not actually acting out your dreams. But there
22:18
Speaker 1: is a disorder called R E M sleep disorder where
22:21
Speaker 1: you actually are acting out your dreams. It's the it's
22:24
Speaker 1: a sleepwalking that occurs in that in that phase of sleep,
22:27
Speaker 1: the R E M phase where your brains active but
22:30
Speaker 1: your body is not supposed to be, So you are
22:32
Speaker 1: really wound up. If you have R. E M sleep disorder,
22:35
Speaker 1: you really need to give up the trumpet immediately. Yeah,
22:37
Speaker 1: that's when you wake up in your your dreaming that you're,
22:40
Speaker 1: you know, cutting wood for the fire, and you're like
22:43
Speaker 1: chopping your wife's leg with your hand exactly, and she guess,
22:46
Speaker 1: what are you doing? That's not what she's saying, Sam
22:48
Speaker 1: cutting wood, babe? You say, I'm correcting you. All right,
22:52
Speaker 1: Well that's it for sleepwalking. UM. I can virtually guarantee
22:56
Speaker 1: you guys will email us your sleepwalking story. So please,
22:59
Speaker 1: do you want to learn more about sleep walking? And
23:02
Speaker 1: read a page that didn't make it into this podcast
23:06
Speaker 1: at all about sleepwalking in the organically did not make
23:10
Speaker 1: it in. I guess you could call it organic. Well
23:13
Speaker 1: we didn't say, let's not include that. Just go ahead
23:16
Speaker 1: and type in sleep walking that's one word, or try
23:19
Speaker 1: s w past tense and see what happens. Um into
23:24
Speaker 1: the handy search bar at how stuff first dot Com
23:27
Speaker 1: and I said I wasn't going to use handy anymore
23:30
Speaker 1: either way. This we arrived at listener. Now that's right,
23:36
Speaker 1: Josh gonna call this uh pot growing Granny And this
23:40
Speaker 1: is from KM that's cryptic. Hi, guys, I literally just
23:47
Speaker 1: finished listening to your how grow houses work and I
23:49
Speaker 1: couldn't resist sending in this story. My grandmother has always
23:52
Speaker 1: been an avid gardener and avid gardener. She's very interested
23:56
Speaker 1: in pretty plants and had learned at some point that
23:58
Speaker 1: marijuana was a very beautiful plan in so she decided
24:02
Speaker 1: she wanted to grow some just for the sole purpose
24:04
Speaker 1: of seeing what it looked like firsthand. Now, where would
24:07
Speaker 1: a middle aged woman in eastern Pennsylvania get seeds to
24:09
Speaker 1: grow pot from my college age mother? Of course, my mom, though,
24:12
Speaker 1: was not a smoker by any means, so when she
24:15
Speaker 1: asked to find she was asked to find pot seeds,
24:18
Speaker 1: she of course pawned the task off to to her
24:20
Speaker 1: frat frat member boyfriend, who later would become my father.
24:25
Speaker 1: My father was also not a smoker, but he had
24:27
Speaker 1: a frat brother that was known to partake in this
24:30
Speaker 1: particular lifestyle, and he has always only been known as
24:34
Speaker 1: Bob Oh and my family, which I think is pretty cryptic.
24:38
Speaker 1: So Babo got him some seeds for the grandmother. She
24:40
Speaker 1: planted him began growing pot in her yard, to the
24:43
Speaker 1: dismay of my grandfather, who was good friends with the
24:45
Speaker 1: chief of police and the mayor. The plants grew beautifully
24:49
Speaker 1: in the open air of my grandmother's garden. They lived
24:51
Speaker 1: pretty close to the center of the city. As far
24:54
Speaker 1: as I know, there was no attempt to obscure them
24:56
Speaker 1: from being seen. Uh. The plug was pulled though, when
24:59
Speaker 1: my grandfather decided that come winter the world. The grandmother said,
25:03
Speaker 1: we gotta bring him inside this winter, and granddad says, no,
25:06
Speaker 1: we're not bringing those inside. So they went through the
25:08
Speaker 1: compost pod or that's what That's what the kid was
25:13
Speaker 1: told in her glaucoma got much worse, right. Yeah, well,
25:17
Speaker 1: thanks for that. Who wrote that, km KM, Thank you
25:20
Speaker 1: k M for your cryptic email. We appreciate that one. Um.
25:24
Speaker 1: If you have a story about your grandmother breaking the law,
25:28
Speaker 1: we want to hear it, uh, Send it in an
25:31
Speaker 1: email to stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
25:39
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, does
25:42
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
25:45
Speaker 1: check out our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot
25:48
Speaker 1: Com home page brought to you by the reinvented two
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Speaker 1: thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you