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Our Big Fat Dream Episode · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: and there's Jerry. And this could not be more of
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: a good old-fashioned Stuff You Should Know episode if it tried.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: That's right. I think you're right.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Think about all the elements here. All three of
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: us are present.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: I just had a kind of an awkward intro. Oh, yeah.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: This is the main topic that we've done like five
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: subtopics on already, but we didn't do the main topic yet.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: This is a straight ahead stuff you should know classic episode.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And watch this. I'm going to have a little
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: surprise for you in the audience. You ready? Yeah. All right.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: It is 101 on the dot. I was having a
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: dream six minutes ago.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Oh, really?
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: What was it?
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know, but I scheduled my nap to
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: happen right before we recorded, which I do sometimes. And
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: I have my clock set for 1255. And it was
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: kind of one of those naps where I was like,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: am I even sleeping or am I just getting good rest?
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: I can't tell if I'm asleep. And then I could
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: tell I was having a dream and all of a
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: sudden my alarm went off. And I woke up, splashed
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: my face, came down, and here you are.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Are you sure you're not still dreaming? Have you done
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: a reality test? Oh, no.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: That's a good call.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Because you could still be dreaming. I don't feel quite right.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't remember the dream. But when I woke up,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, this will be funny because I'm
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: going to be recording in five minutes and everyone's probably
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: going to be knocked out by the fact that I
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: was literally just dreaming minutes ago.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: I'm sure they will. I'm sure they will. Even more impressive,
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Jerry is dreaming now.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah. I woke up, she fell asleep.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, we're talking about dreams. Chuck, do you typically
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: have dreams? Do you often remember them? Do you never
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: remember them? Are they nightmares? What's the deal?
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: No nightmares. I used to have recurring dreams when I
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: was a kid.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: About what?
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I had a very specific recurring dream about Gilligan's Island
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: many times when I was a kid. That was a
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: little bit of a scary dream. I don't think it
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: would qualify as a nightmare per definition.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: I could see Lovey Howell being like drunk, like being
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: overly friendly, doing that to you as a kid.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, I still remember, like I remembered
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: my dream this morning when I woke up because I
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: woke up right after it happened. And it was kind
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: of a funny thing Emily did in the dream. So
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: I was like, I just had this dream. It was
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: kind of funny.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Can you share or?
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, sure. I mean, people sharing dreams is the most
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: boring thing ever. So, yeah, I'll give the most condensed
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: version is we were in New York going to some
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: some weird exclusive like art opening event or something interactive.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: I don't even know what it was. It doesn't matter.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: And there were celebrities there. And we went in a
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: few times because we figured out there was a back
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: way to get in. And when we walked in, we
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: were walking by people and Emily was like, hey, I
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: think that's that girl. from that movie. What was it?
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: And I was trying to find out. And then we
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: passed Rachel Dratch, actor Rachel Dratch.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: And she looked up because she thought like they were talking,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: we were talking about her and Emily went, oh, not you.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: I know you, Stephanie. And one kept walking.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: That's a pretty good dream, actually. Yeah.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: And I told Emily that she just cracked up.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: Rachel Dratch, man. Yeah.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: She's the best.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: That's out of nowhere. She is great.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Um, What about you? Or go ahead. What's your question?
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Well, I was going to say, have you seen the movie?
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: I don't remember what it's called, but where Nicolas Cage
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: starts appearing in like everyone in the world's dream.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen that yet. I heard it's pretty good.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: It is. It's actually really good. Especially as far as like,
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: you know, a standard Nick Cage movie these days goes.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, there's a lot of them. What about you?
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Do you dream and remember your dreams typically?
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: I dream and I remember them enough to... to just
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: kind of give like general outlines of them or know
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: that like that was unpleasant or that was stressful or
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: that was weird. But you know, like I have such
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: trouble like relating thoughts and ideas normally that when I
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: try to do it with dream stuff, it makes it,
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: it's just a big mess. So I'm not even going
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: to try, but they very frequently have to do with
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: like me having to like, um, Get get this thing
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: done over here and then this thing has to be
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: done over here. And I also have to make sure
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: that all these people are comfortable, too. It's like it
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: can get kind of tiring sometimes.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I sort of have the same thing. My most
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: recurring dream now isn't a specific thing, but it's a
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: specific motif, which is I'm trying to get somewhere and
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: I can't get there.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, I could see that.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Like a plane flight or I'm supposed to be at
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: a place or whatever, and I keep getting derailed. And
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: that happens. I had that dream all the time now.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: Okay, that is extremely interesting. I think that's worth looking into.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: So we'll revisit that because it comes up in a
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: couple of places. Like you just tapped a couple of
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: different dream components on the head with that.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then when I was younger, and then we'll
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: start the show, I used to always have the– And
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: this is like in my 20s, the teeth shattering or
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: teeth falling out dreams.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Okay. We'll talk about that too.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: The last one I have to share, it's a recurring dream.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: It starts out really nice. It's a beautiful woman, totally naked.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: And then as I look up higher and higher, it's
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: the head of Abraham Lincoln.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: You should just, I don't know, don't go all the
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: way to the head.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: Do you get the reference, though, from Dazed and Confused? No.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: I do remember that, though, now that you mention it. Yeah.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: One of the friends is like, probably best not to
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: look too deeply into that one.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: That's right. Anthony Rapp in that scene. That's right. Yeah.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I've never had that dream. That would be
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: pretty weird, you know?
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: I bought it because I'm just still waking up, you know? Sure.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Um, so Charles, we're talking about dreaming and you can't
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: really talk about dreaming unless you talk about sleeping. So
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: let's do a brief overview. We've done a bunch of
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: episodes on sleep, so we'll just kind of keep it short.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, as far as the stages of sleep, you're right. We've,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: we've covered this a lot, but the first three stages
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: are non rapid eye movement, sleep in REM sleep. And
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: then after stage three, and it depends on the person,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: but you know, about an hour and a half or
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: two hours after you go to sleep, uh, you're, supposed
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: to fall into REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep. And
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: this is where generally you're going to be dreaming. And
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: they used to think you only dream during REM sleep,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: but now they know that you can dream in both.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: But REM sleep is like where you have like the
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: most intense dreams, the ones you're more likely to remember,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: that kind of thing.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And we didn't really know about REM sleep until
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: the 50s. I was surprised to find that out. But
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: when we did discover REM sleep, people are like, oh, OK,
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: there's different components to sleep. We need to start looking
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: into that. Your body does all sorts of interesting things.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: But the one really important aspect about REM sleep is
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: in addition to like this is where you have your dreams, dreams,
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: you are paralyzed, essentially. And they think the reason why
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: is so you don't act out your dreams physically because
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: you're experiencing them as reality otherwise. And that it's possible
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: that your eyes are moving during rapid eye movement sleep
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: because you're dreaming. They thought for a long time that
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: you were looking at different things in your dreams with
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: your eyes in physical reality while you were sleeping. And
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: they just couldn't prove it. And there were a couple
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: of studies that were like, Actually, I think that's true.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I don't think they... They didn't prove it, though,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: did they?
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: No, but... So, like, they cracked open the heads of
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: poor little mice, and they figured out how to look
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: at what they call basically the eye directional cells, and
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: they found that they were in sync with where the
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: mouse's eyes were looking at any point during REM sleep.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Strongly suggests that.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: What did the mice say about what they were dreaming about?
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: They just said... Okay. They're like a beaker from the Muppets,
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: it turns out.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, beaker. I love beaker.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: And then the other study that I think it was
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: really interesting was they got with some lucid dreamers and
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: they said, hey, we want you to, in your dream,
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: we want you to imagine you're looking at a circle.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: And then we want you to trace a circle with
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: your thumb and look at that in your dreams. And
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: the lucid dreamers were so good, they were able to
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: do this. And they found that when the lucid dreamers
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: were imagining the circle in their dreams, their eyes moved
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: in kind of a stuttery step movement in the circle
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: that we would normally see when someone was awake and
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: imagining it. When they looked at their thumb, their dream thumb,
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: their eyes moved smoothly like it does in waking life
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: when we're actually looking at something.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Your dream thumb.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Dream Thumb's pretty, there's something there. We've said a lot
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: of dumb things over the years, but Dream Thumb's up there. Thanks, man.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: I love it. As far as how, like, we're going
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: to talk a lot about dreams and whether or not
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: everyone dreams. And we don't know for sure, like, they
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: think everyone dreams. Sure. And that some people just may
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: not remember as well as others. And we'll kind of
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: dig into that a little bit. But they do think...
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: that people generally dream multiple times a night. Um, they
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: don't know exactly how long they last. And, you know,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: the reason why obviously all this stuff is, is because
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: someone's asleep and, you know, you can't do a study
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: where someone like hits a timer when a dream starts,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: they can just kind of go by hooking them up
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: to machines and surmising whether or not they're dreaming. Right.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: So you can't get like actual, you know, dead evidence
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: about it. But they do think you dream multiple times
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: a night and they last a few minutes, maybe up
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: to a half an hour. And they think you probably
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: dream a couple of hours a night.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: That's surprising because I've always heard like dreams last like
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: just a few seconds.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: They seem like they last hours.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Which would actually explain the rapid eye movement. Like if
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: we're doing that while we're dreaming, we're moving back and forth,
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: that would suggest that our dreams are happening in much
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: faster time than real waking time.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm basically a dream researcher now.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: As far as, you know, dream theory, you know, obviously
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: we have to mention Freud. I kind of honestly get
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: tired of mentioning Freud now because I feel like every
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: time we mention Freud, we then say, But no one
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: really believes that anymore.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Well, the very fact that we consider dreams to conceivably
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: be symbolic and try be trying to tell us something
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: that in and of itself is the influence of Freud
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: that still lasts today. So there's even though a lot
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: of this stuff seems crackpot, there's like the basis of
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: it is is still applicable.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's the solution I came to as well,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: which is like he birthed a lot of ideas. Mm hmm.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: And that maybe is his value these days.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: Birthed him right out of his sphincter.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: But of course, Freud was like, hey, none of this
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: stuff is an accident. If you're having dreams, that means
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: that you are living out some repressed desire that you
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: can't act on in regular life. Probably, obviously, because it's Freud,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: probably a sexual desire. Carl Jung came around and said, yeah,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: I sort of agree completely. philosophically to a certain degree
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: with you, my teacher, I guess. Yeah. But I don't
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: think it's like a primal need and something that's repressed.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I think it's just like us reflecting on ourselves and
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: maybe even trying to work through like problems that we
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: may have.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So to differentiate those two guys, Freud was like
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: dreams conceal and Jung was like, no, no, no, dreams reveal.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: And he was basically like just read your dream. Like
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: it's telling you something, but you don't have to be like, oh,
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: what does this mean? You already know what it means.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: And that it uses mythic archetypes as this ancient basic
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: language that any human can understand.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Like the mythic archetype of Rachel Dratch. Exactly.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Who represented the trickster.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, I also think it can vary. Like clearly,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: if I keep having the same dream of trying to
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: get somewhere and can't get there, Like that may be
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: saying something about my life. But I also think that
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: it's just completely a complete random assimilation of just weirdo
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: things popping into your head. Like Rachel Dratch at an
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: art opening.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Right. I tend to think like there is some series
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: of like like neural connections that happened in the last
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: day or two. That didn't make me consciously think of
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Rachel Dratch. But when I put those things together while
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: I'm sleeping, there's Rachel Dratch.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: I tried to wonder or I tried to wonder. I
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: wondered if I had like, you know, I do follow
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: her on Instagram, but I don't think I'd seen her
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: on Instagram anytime recently. But who knows?
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: See, to me, it's like maybe you remembered a joke
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: that someone on SNL told that she was just standing
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: like in the background of that you focused on her
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: years back. And you associate her with that joke, but
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: don't realize it.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Debbie Downer.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: That's kind of my take on it. And if you
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: look at Freud, you look at Jung's interpretations or dream theories,
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: I should say, we've really done away with Jung's more
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: than we have with Freud's, you know?
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think you're probably right.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: But then that's like the psychoanalysis version of it. Along
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: comes in the 70s some much more scientific ideas about
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: what dreams are and why we dream. And they really
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: dovetail with your interpretation that they're essentially just random bits
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: of meaningless information that our brain struggles to put together
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: into a narrative. And that that's that. There's no meaning.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: It's not trying to tell us anything. that grain silo
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: over there isn't a giant penis that you wish you had.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Like it's just, just dreams. Like they don't, they're just
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: a by-product of your brain firing while you're asleep. Yeah.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: That's called the activation synthesis hypothesis, which is, uh, it's
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: just neurological processes playing out. Uh, and in this case,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: it's the forebrain trying to make sense of just what's
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: firing around a neuron wise while you're in REM sleep.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's just, Just like where it takes your brain
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: firing while you're awake and puts it into like a
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: narrative that usually fairly resembles reality. When you're sleeping, you're
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: getting random impulses according to this. And so it's just
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: doing its best. And sometimes its best is just plain
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: old weird. Like there's Rachel Dratch, you know?
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think most of my dreams are odd. I
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: don't ever have fantastical dreams where Like I'm a winged
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: beast that's flying through, you know, prehistoric life or anything
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: flown in my dreams. Have you?
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. All of my dreams now are
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: trying desperately to catch a flight that I can't catch.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: But yeah, not actually flying.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: So there are some characteristics of dreams that these guys
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: came up with the activation synthesis hypothesis pointed out. Alan
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Hobson and Robert McCarley, by the way, are the guys
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: who figured this out. They said that there's illogical content, right?
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Check. Yeah.
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: Odd sensory experiences.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: Intense emotions.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that happens.
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: Acceptance of strange events. That's my favorite one.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. In dreams, you're always just like, oh, yeah, sure.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Right. And then difficulty in remembering them. And that it's
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: just we just take that for granted. Right. Like, yeah,
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: dreams are hard to recall. But as we'll see in
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: a little while, there's that's just doesn't quite add up
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: and make sense. And they've not figured out why that's
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: the case quite yet.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And the other, you know, those were from those
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: two researchers since then. Other people have put forward that
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: it's usually a first person perspective thing that features other people.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: And that they incorporate elements of waking life. And I
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: found all that to be basically true. For sure. All right.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: So talking more about dreams and specifically Hobson and McCarley, who,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: you know, researched the stuff in the late 70s, that
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: theory they put forward that it's like, hey, you're looking
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: too deeply into this. It's just a bunch of random
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: neurons firing and your brain trying to make sense of
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: it all. It was a pretty controversial theory because I
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: guess they were the first people to kind of put
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: forward that dreams may not be this big, deep thing
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: full of meaning.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: But it didn't, like, explain why we dream.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: No.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: No.
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, it does in that it's saying there's no
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: explanation aside from your brain just firing randomly. Right. Then
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: they're like, just leave it at that. And other people
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: are like, no, I will not leave it at that.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: I guess also what you're saying is that it doesn't
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: explain dreaming. Francis Crick was like, OK, you can explain
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: dreaming without adding like symbolism and all sorts of weird
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: stuff to it. You can just say like your brain
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: is actually going through some steps that to, I guess,
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: McCarley and Hobson just seemed like random firing. But what
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: it's actually doing is sorting through the inputs throughout the
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: day and saying, well, get rid of that. Oh, I
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: want to turn this into a memory. Oh, let's see
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: what happens if we do this. But while we're, um, uh,
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: an elf, you know, and that it's actually like, he
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: called it reverse learning where you're, you're figuring you're sorting
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: through the stuff from the day and that that's what
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: your brain's doing when you're dreaming.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't, I don't fully understand that one.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: I think what he was saying is sure guys, like, yeah,
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: it's just random firing or it seems like random firing,
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: but there's a, our brain, there's an evolutionary purpose to it.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: It's not just some byproduct. Like there's a reason for it,
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: I think is what he was saying.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. All right. Well, I think he, again, to this, uh, research,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: like he basically was like, this is a starting point.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Like he didn't claim to be the final point on
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: the matter.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's true.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Uh, people also think we might dream to process emotions, uh,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: That clearing the mind clutter kind of goes back to
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: what Crick was talking about. Promoting creativity, perhaps. Maybe as
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: sort of like a dress rehearsal to something that may
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: like scare you in real life. Obviously, like the dreams
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: you had the night before, like a big interview or
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: something in that case.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: Man, those are the worst. That sleep is not refreshing.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, man, thank God we've had this job
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: for so long and haven't had to go through... that
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: in life in a while.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: No, I know. Or put a resume together.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Very fortunate.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: Um, so, uh, okay. So those are, those are theories
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: that of like what dreams are, why we dream. And
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: I think the fact that we haven't, we'd never said like, oh,
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: this is the one, or this is the most widely
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: accepted one. Even among dream researchers, there's like, there's a
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: divide between whether people think dreams are functional and do
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: something and others who are like, no, it's just random.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: So that's not been settled even among the people who
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: study this for a living. And I mentioned dream recall too, right?
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it's tough. Sometimes I don't remember them
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: at all. I mentioned that the Rachel Dratch one, I
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: had just woken up from that dream. So I definitely
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: remember it. And that apparently is one of the keys
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: because they say five minutes after the end of the dream,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: they say you've forgotten about half of it. 10 minutes later,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: you've forgotten 90% of it. So if you want to,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: you know, have like a dream journal and if you
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: want to remember your dreams, they say that you know,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: to be awakened during that REM sleep is the time
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: to do it. And, you know, they suggest things like
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: setting an alarm to wake yourself up during REM sleep
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: and like keep a pad and a pencil. Like if
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: that's what you're into, great. I would have a hard
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: time falling back to sleep. So that's not for me.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: Right. That's also the reason why they wake you up
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: like at terrible times. Because, you know, you don't want to,
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: if you wake up in the middle of REM sleep,
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: like you're groggy for the rest of the day.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: And during sleep studies, or dream studies, I should say,
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: they wake you up purposefully during REM sleep.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: That'd be terrible for me.
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: I know. And I've read that the trick that the
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: dream researchers use is they go, wake up, it's time
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: for Taco Bell fourth meal. And that usually gets people up.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Taco Bell fourth meal. I rolled the dice about a
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: week and a half ago and had Taco Bell.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow. How was it?
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: It was great. I was in the drive-thru line Googling
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: is it safe now to eat a Taco Bell because
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: of the lettuce thing? And the internet said, oh, sure.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: You go right ahead, buddy. It's great.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: Did it really? I'm surprised.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It said that they had worked all that out.
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, I hadn't. Oh yeah, that's right. I think Taco
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: Bell switched suppliers like basically on day zero.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Okay, cool.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: That was good.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: I'm glad. And you haven't been pooping your pants for
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Two straight weeks.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Well, I did because I ate Taco Bell. That's why, like,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: who can tell the difference?
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: That happened to me with Crystal once. Oh. Oh, yeah?
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. All right.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: I should probably edit that out.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Moving on.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: So I think you touched on something early on, too,
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: if I remember correctly, if I recall. You said that
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: some people say that they don't dream.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: And it's up for debate whether they actually do dream
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: because everybody dreams is the idea.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: And they just don't recall very well. Or if some
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: people don't dream. Yeah. And they found like, no, it
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: seems like everybody dreams because they've studied people who say like,
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: I never remember dreams so much. So I don't think
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: I dream. They'll wake them up during REM sleep and say,
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: what were you dreaming about? And those people can recall
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: a dream. So they think, yes, everyone dreams, but do
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: some people dream more than others? And if not, Or
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: if so, then is it just like they, you know,
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: they have more trouble recalling than other people.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Right. For sure. And then, of course, there have been
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: theories within the dream theory community since Freud about like
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: why we don't remember our dreams or we or we do.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: And Freud was like, well, you know, we forget them
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: because if you remember, they are repressed feelings and wishes.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: So like that's the kind of thing you might want
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: to push out of your head.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Keep it repressed. Right. There's other people that have said that,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: you know, other things just like are there's too much
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: in the brain, basically. So you can't remember it all.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: And also waking up like you're some people wake up
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: and it's really hard for some people to come around
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: and remember anything when they first wake up.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely subscribe to the neurobiological explanation for why
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: dream recall is so hard because there's such there's some
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: really convincing parts to it. Right.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: Like the hippocampus, which is the little component that's responsible
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: for consolidating short term memory into long term memory. It's
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: it it's like stays asleep a little longer than the
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: rest of your brain. So you don't just immediately get
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: to assembling your your short term memory of your dreams
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: into long term memories. That makes sense.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just now waking up, quite honestly. What's going on?
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: What's happening?
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: You're such a pro that you just did like half
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: of a podcast while you're still waking up.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, boy.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: Neurotransmitters, acetylcholine and norepinephrine are both involved in memory consolidation,
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: and their levels dwindle and do weird stuff while you're
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: having REM sleep. So there's like a lot of reasons
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: why you probably aren't great at recalling your dreams and
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: then some people are really good at it and they're
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: just freaks of nature.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah i mean some people think that if you are
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: uh like if you're someone who's very prone to introspection
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: or maybe daydreaming you might be better remembering your dreams
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: during the nighttime or whenever you happen to sleep yeah
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: uh but you can you know they say you can
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: train yourself to remember your dreams uh you know the
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: the dream journal like i mentioned earlier is is one
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: way to at least record them. But if you want
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: to increase your dream recall, first of all, you have
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: to fall into that REM sleep, obviously. There are things
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: that can prohibit you from at least remembering your dreams,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: like drinking booze or smoking pot or like exercising right
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: before you go to bed. That can definitely affect your
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: dream recall. And then you can, you know, you can
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: train yourself. I think we talked about this in other episodes.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Might've been lucid dreaming. Can you control your dreams? Like
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: when you go to bed, Say, like, as you're falling asleep,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: try and just say, like, I'm going to dream. I'm
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: going to remember. I'm going to remember these dreams. I'm
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: going to do it.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: I've heard it's best to say, I must. I must.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: I must remember my dreams.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: And, again, if you wake up right out of a dream,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: you're more likely to remember it. Probably if it's a super, like,
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: intense or vivid dream, you're more likely to remember it.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: And I have, like, I try to do the thing
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: where if I'm having a dream that I'm really enjoying
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: and I have to wake up and go to the bathroom.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: I really try and just keep that dream running in
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: my head and try and get right back to it.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: And sometimes that works.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's that's yeah. And not only are you trying
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: to remember the dream, you're trying not to wake up.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: Just from peeing too. Yes. That definitely works. Like you're just,
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: there's a certain level of consciousness that you'll let your
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: brain rise to. Right.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: I actually have a dream that I remember because I
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: woke up straight out of it. Literally. Um, It was cool.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: It was one of the neatest things that's ever happened
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: to me. So I was laying in bed, sleeping, dreaming
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: that I was sitting in a car. And as I
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: got out of the car, I was getting out of
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: bed because I had to get up to pee myself.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: And like, it felt very much like as my right
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: leg got out of the bed and the car, like
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: my right leg was awake. But like the rest of
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: my body hadn't woken up yet because it was still
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: in the car, but my leg was in my bedroom still.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: And so as I got up out of bed, I
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: was getting out of the car in my dream and
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: I just slowly transferred from the dream world into waking
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: reality in my room. Wow. It was really neat. Like
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: the interior of the car and the edge of the
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: bed were one in the same. And it was like
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: just some, I don't know, like portal or threshold or
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: something that.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: I went through.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: It was really, really cool, man. Yeah.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I love that stuff. I mean, that's why I
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: love dreams. Cause they're just, it's, they can be just
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: so bizarre and put you in a completely like weird
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: state of mind without, you know, any substances for sure. So, uh,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: they apparently, you know, and this is, um, I encourage
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: you to go to listen to the lucid dreaming episode.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Can you control your dreams? Cause that's the idea that,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: you know, you're asleep, you know, you're dreaming and you're
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: in control of your dream. Like dream sailing, I think
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: is what we called it or other people have called
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: it for sure.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: And that was 2009, so that was like an early one.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a minute ago. But dream incubation is
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: another thing, and that's if you want to dream about
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: a certain thing, you try and kind of do the
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: same thing, like focus your attention on that thing as
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: you're going to sleep. And a lot of times people,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: there is one sort of subset of researchers that say,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: or maybe just people that think that you can like
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: come up with creative solutions for maybe mental or creative
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: blocks while you're dreaming. And so they will try and
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: induce or incubate a dream as they're going to sleep.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's basically like, I want to dream about this.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: And so you will hopefully dream about it, especially if
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: you like kind of prime yourself throughout the day to
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: dream about that one topic. And people have shown you
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: can come up with solutions to waking life problems in
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: your dreams. And there have been some famous examples of it.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: One that usually gets mentioned in any kind of list
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: of those, there's Kekele, the German chemist, who discovered the
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: structure of the benzene molecule, which sounds like, okay, great.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: It required completely different thinking than everything he had been
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: trained to up to that point, because he was a
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: chemist in Germany in the mid-19th century. And at that time,
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: they thought every molecule... Was linear in arrangement. And he
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: was like, this is not the math is not adding
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: up like this thing does not work in a linear shape.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: What am I missing? And he he slept one night
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: and dreamt of Ouroboros or Ouroboros, a snake eating its
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: own tail. And when he woke up, it was just
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: clear as day to him that the benzene molecule was
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: in a ring arrangement, a circular arrangement rather than linear.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: And he was right.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, you hear stories like that or that Mary Shelley, um,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: dreamed up Frankenstein or other musicians like famous songs came
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: to them in their sleep. And I hear that stuff.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: And I think that that like the solution to the
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: benzene molecule or the seed of the idea of Frankenstein
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: was in their brain already. And the dream allowed it
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: to be tapped into or something. I don't know. I mean,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: it's there's obviously nothing to prove that, but it just
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: sort of makes sense to me.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: That's my take on it, too, that it was already
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: there and they're their dream state just allowed them to
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: think about it in different ways than they do in
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: waking life.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: So cool.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I saw yesterday and let it be. We're both
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: dreamt by Paul McCartney river of dreams. Um, that one
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: where it's like in the middle of the night, that
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Billy Joel song.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: You didn't like my Billy Joel impression.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: No, I thought it was funny.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: Uh, that one was, came to him in a dream.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: You're not gonna sing yesterday.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: No.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: Uh, Beethoven, uh, had a, uh, Some music come to
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: him in a dream. 99 Loof Balloons. Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: And are you familiar with Apex Twin?
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, sure. Okay.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: Apex Twin apparently is a hardcore lucid dreamer and has
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: made bunches of songs by lucid dreaming, like purposely going
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: to sleep and dreaming to work out music.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Cheat code. That's what they call that.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: You got me with that one.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Should we take a break? Yeah. All right. We'll take
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: a break and we'll talk a little bit more about
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: dream meetings and nightmares right after this.
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, Chuck, so I think this is going rather well.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: What do you think?
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: So there's that whole divide about whether dreams mean anything
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: or if they're just random.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Most people, I would say, are like, no, it's not random, man.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: I had this one dream, and it said that I
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: should go pursue a career as a sailor, and here
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: I am a sailor, and I've never been happier, right? Mm-hmm.
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: I've got a virgin voyage on the brain, I guess.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. I mean, my, my grandfather, after he passed,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: came to me in a dream very specifically when I
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: was like 10 years old. So, you know, you hear
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: something like that and I, I'm not, uh, you know,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: super woo woo. So I don't necessarily think that he
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: came to me in a dream and like something metaphysical happened. Um,
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: to me, it was just a kid trying to make
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: sense of losing his grandfather and a dream, like providing
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: some relief. Maybe.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: That's neat. I, I, I kind of, there's like a
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: kernel of me that is, is like, it's possible that
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: your grandfather was somehow visiting you.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I'd like to believe that's true. It was, it
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: was very powerful. I still remember it, you know, all
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: these years later.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: That's neat. Did he, he, was he very critical of
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: you in the dream?
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, no, he, he literally walked up to me
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: and said, uh, you're going to be okay, bud. And
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: that was it.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Like super, I was like, Yeah. Granddad's really on
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: the nose. Yeah. It still makes me emotional. Years later,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: I was like 10 or 11 years old and I'm 55.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Good Lord.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, I can imagine that's like a lifetime experience
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: that not everybody gets. It's like, yeah, that's a really
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: special thing that happened to you.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: And you hear those stories. Thanks, man. I appreciate that.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: You hear stories all the time about like way more
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: involved dreams than that of like, you know, people from
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: the beyond, like getting in touch and stuff. I think
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: it's interesting.
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: Check out this new card trick I just learned. All right.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: Back to dream meanings and symbols, I think is kind
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: of what most people point to, which is why I
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: said Freud's influence is still around today. Anybody who's like, no,
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: dreams are symbolic and you have to interpret them. You're
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: following in Freud's wake.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and there are like some stock sort of explanations
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: or guides for this kind of thing. Like when I
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: mentioned my teeth falling out, it's a very common dream.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: Not surprisingly, it usually indicates anxiety about something. What you said,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: anxiety about appearance. So I never really thought about that,
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: but also maybe feeling deceitful or concerns about your health.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: Teeth falling out? Then my teeth literally fell out, which
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: is kind of funny.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: Did you dream that they went right back in?
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: No, that's funny. But I do think that maybe my
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: teeth grinding, it might have been a sort of reaction
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: to me grinding my teeth at night.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: That's interesting.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: Yumi has a recurring teeth falling out dream where she'll
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: have some sort of diamond somewhere or there's a diamond
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: somewhere in the dream. Usually it's in like a ring
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: and it falls out. And she knows that that's her
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: signal that her teeth are all about to fall out.
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, interesting. Yeah. I thought you were about to say
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: she gets grills.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: You would love a grill, actually. There's a grill museum
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: in Atlanta. Did you know that?
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: No, but I'm not surprised.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: There is one. We haven't been yet.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Atlanta's got to be one of the grill capitals of
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: the world.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: I would guess so. Because it's also like the trap
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: music capital of the world. And those two things go
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: hand in hand.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: For sure. What about falling in a dream?
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: This one sucks, I can tell you firsthand. It's typically
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: thought to mean that you feel out of control of
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: your life.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Being chased. I like this one, that you're evading responsibilities.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: What about fire?
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Fire, maybe it's about renewal, or maybe it's about some
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: anger that you have repressed, or maybe purification, perhaps, or destruction.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: Or.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever had this one. Have you
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: ever had one about being naked in public?
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. But that's a pretty common dream,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: I think, supposedly. I don't think I've had being naked.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: Or maybe I did when I was younger. I don't know.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: But they typically think you have probably had an embarrassing
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: situation and you're still processing it.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense. But the issue with all this
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: stuff is... I said these are sort of stock explanations.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: You know, they sell books and they get clicks for articles,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: but it's hard to get a stock explanation because it's so,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: you know, you can see like somebody might see something
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: is like awesome in a dream where other people might
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: see it as a threat. It gets very culturally specific, obviously.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: And even within the own, you're like one culture, things
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: can be interpreted in contradictory ways. So it's hard to
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: sort of say like, well, this is what that means.
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: Right. It definitely seems much more pop culture than scientific
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: for sure.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: And then there's, you had mentioned recurring dreams, your recurring
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: dream of running late for something. Those are, that's, that's
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: a thing. Recurring dreams, especially recurring unpleasant dreams are a
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: horror that can be, that can befall humans, which is
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: very sad. Recurring dreams don't have to always be unpleasant,
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: but from what I could tell, unpleasant recurring dreams are
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: essentially non-existent, that the best you can hope for are
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: neutral recurring dreams. Most of the time they're at least unpleasant,
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: if not, you know, straight up bad dreams.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And, you know, there's a distinction I
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, but that we were going to get into
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: it between bad dreams and nightmares. If you're talking about
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: just like real sleep research, a nightmare specifically means that
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: you or like it wakes you up. Like it's so bad,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: you wake up, you know, obviously generally like scared.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: That means, do you remember the end of Don't Be
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: Dumb was a nightmare for you? Do you remember? Because
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: you woke up from it. That's right.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: You pulled me into Don't Be Dumb at the end.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: It was great. It was a great ending.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: In a very new heart way.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: There's another, there's an author, a neuroscientist named Siddhartha Ribeiro, Ribeiro,
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: I think. They wrote The Oracle of Night, colon, The
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: History and Science of Dreams. And they, I thought, made
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: a pretty interesting case for dreams having some sort of meaning,
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: even not symbolically, but at least they're not just random,
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: the byproduct of random neural firings.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: And he said it's because the existence of recurring dreams
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: shows that you couldn't possibly have the same dream if
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: your neurons are just firing randomly. Right.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: You could not have a recurring dream like there that
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: in and of itself shows that there is something to
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: dreams that they do serve some purpose or they do
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: have some meaning to us, which I thought was rather clever.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I probably agree with that. Recurring nightmares
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: is probably kind of one of the worst things. And
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: it's very, very sad in that veterans and people suffering
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: from PTSD in general often have recurring nightmares. And that's
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: actually one of the criteria for diagnosing PTSD. There was
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: a study in 1998 that found two to eight percent
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: of adults have nightmares and or problematic nightmares at least,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: and 52% of Vietnam veterans did. And that's tough stuff
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: because that's clearly, you know, things that are either buried
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: or that you just can't get over or deal with
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: still in your waking life.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: What's neat about that, though, is they have figured out
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: forms of dream therapy for PTSD specifically, but it can
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: also be used by anyone having recurring bad dreams or nightmares.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: Where you essentially train yourself to imagine a different ending
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: for that nightmare. Right.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: So as for PTSD, like your nightmare is the event
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: that gave you PTSD. So you're re-experiencing it over and
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: over every night, which it's just mind boggling how awful
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: that sounds. Right.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: This therapy is like, OK, in this next dream, you're
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: going to like in the end, you're going to fight
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: this person off or you're going to suddenly be at
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: home and at peace or whatever. And it's kind of
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: like that dream incubation idea where you eventually, hopefully, are
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: able to change the end of that nightmare. And from
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: what I was reading, that usually frees the person from
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: that nightmare. They never have it again after that.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's the turn your frown upside down of hellish nightmares.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: For sure. Right. So at the very least, it's heartening
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: that there is a solution, a potential solution, because nightmares,
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: whether you have PTSD or not, they're linked to self-injury
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: and suicide. Yeah.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: And, you know, even just at the bare minimum, it's
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: going to give you perhaps sleep deprivation and it can
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: interfere with your, you know, normal routines during the day,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: your job, your relationships. Uh, they think there may be
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: a genetic predisposition to frequent nightmares, but they don't know
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: what that is. Uh, but they also say, well, it
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: also could be maybe, uh, the same like genetic or
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: at least driven by genetic risk factors of mental health
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: conditions that may be underlying behind the dreams. Yeah.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: And that actually ties into, um, nightmares and bad dreams
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: being a, um, A characteristic or a trait of Parkinson's disease.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. You found that.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: And specifically Parkinson's disease with dementia. I guess 78% of
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: people with Parkinson's disease with dementia have recurring nightmares.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, man.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: Or at least bad dreams. I'm not sure if they
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: actually meet the criteria for nightmare where you wake up,
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: but it's not pleasant to go to sleep if you
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: have Parkinson's with dementia.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: We talked about we did a whole episode on fever
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: dreams to remember that.
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: That was interesting.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: We did one on sleep paralysis.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: And we did one on night terrors, too. So, yeah,
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: both of those episodes are out there. I think sleep
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: paralysis was called like the worst thing that can happen
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: to you while you're sleeping, maybe. Right.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: And that the sleep paralysis is when you like you're asleep,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: but you picture yourself awake and there's like someone at
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: the foot of your bed.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and because you're in REM sleep, you can't move. Yeah.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, God.
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: And then night terrors are similar in that you appear
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: to other people to be awake because you're screaming and
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: fighting somebody off and your eyes are open, but you
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: are still asleep.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, kids usually get those, but adults can as well.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: And then what about this idea about premonitions? There have
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: definitely been people that have at least said that they
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: had a premonition about some very specific historical event, sometimes
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: big time, and sometimes just, you know, little things that
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: happen in people's families. But, you know, the big ones
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: are ones that get all the press. Like in the 1960s,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: there was a Canadian dreamer named Kathleen Lorna Middleton who
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: had a lot of dreams about things that she had
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: no connection to. And she at least claimed to have
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: predicted things Through her dream, a landslide in South Wales
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: that killed 144 people about an hour before. And supposedly
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Yeah. She foretold in a dream.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: And she doesn't seem to have been like attention seeking
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: or anything like that. She does seem to have been
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: like this. These were her experiences. Of course, scientifically, you're like, well,
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of things you can point to that
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: that explain this. why people think there's such a thing
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: as precognitive dreams. Um, your dreams might be a little
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: ambiguous so that you're kind of retroactively going back and
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: be like, yes, that's what that was, was saying. Um,
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: or your brain just wants to identify patterns naturally. We
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: talk about that a lot.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: Um, so it could be putting together stuff that's not
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: really necessarily connected. Um, selective memory coincidence. Uh, Yeah, it's
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: just there's not really any room for it in science, typically.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: But I found an article that pointed out that quantum
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: physics actually has room for precognitive dreams.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah?
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It basically says that under some quantum theories, like
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: quantum gravity, I think, it allows for this, where past, present,
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: and future are not following any kind of linear order
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: like we think of time. Instead, they all kind of coexist.
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: And this quantum interpretation of precognitive dreams just basically says
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: in certain states, in this case dreaming, the dream state,
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: we're able to access future events just like we are
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: past events or present events when we're waking.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: Hmm.
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: Pretty neat.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's pretty cool. I mean, between 17 and 38%
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: of people dream. say they have had at least one
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: precognitive dream in their lifetime. Uh, and I think definitely
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: if you have like a willingness to accept, like, um,
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: accept that kind of thing in general and maybe accept
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: ambiguous information and put it together in a way that
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: makes sense. Like you may be more prone to be like, Hey,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: but I dreamed this thing. And you know, who knows
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: that assassination was sort of a political assassination was much
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: more of a thing when Robert Kennedy was assassinated and,
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: Maybe Kathleen Lorna Middleton was a fan of the Kennedys
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: and it's something that that concerned her.
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good explanation.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: But, you know, it maybe it's not also to be explained.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: And maybe I mean, who knows? Maybe people can really
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: dream stuff that's going to happen. I don't know.
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: I don't either. I don't either, Chuck. And I think
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: that it takes a big man to admit something like that.
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: We're a couple of big men.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: You got anything else about dreams right now?
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: I do not.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: Okay. Well, that was our dream episode. People have been
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: calling for that for a while. Hopefully you guys liked it.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: I know, yeah.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: And since we're wondering whether you guys liked this episode,
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: I think I just accidentally triggered listener mail.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: That's right. This is Sammy Davis Jr. 's story. I
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: don't know if you saw this.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: It's pretty fun.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: Hey, guys, fairly new listener. Someone wrote in with the
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Sammy Davis Jr. story, and you asked for more, so
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: here it is. When my elderly father passed in 2006,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: we heard a story from the wife of my dad's
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: business partner. She told us that there was a time
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: when the four of them were in Las Vegas together
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: and attended a Sammy Davis Jr. concert. My mother, who
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: had gone out to the restroom just before the concert began,
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: came back in. The lights went down. Sammy began his
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: first number, and my mother returned from the restroom. It
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: was dark, and she couldn't remember or see where they
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: were sitting. And as she stumbled between the tables, she
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: started calling out, Vic, where are you? Vic, where are you?
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't too long before Sammy completely stopped the
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: show and asked from the stage, Vic, babe, where are you?
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Mom got back to her table and Sammy started the
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: concert over again from the very beginning. Later that year,
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: very sadly, my mom also passed away and I was
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: able to tell this story as part of her remembrance,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: adding that I could imagine her arriving in heaven asking, Vic,
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: where are you? That is from Cliff in Madison, Wisconsin,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: one of my new favorite towns.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a great town. And that's a great story, Cliff.
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: Thanks a lot for sending it to us. One of
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: the better Sammy Davis Jr. stories I've ever heard.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, doesn't get much better than Sammy Davis Jr. addressing
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: you from stage.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: For sure. If you want to be like Cliff and
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: send us an email with a great story that's also
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: kind of a tribute to your late loved one, we
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: think those are the tops, as Sammy might say. At
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: the very least, Mel Torme would say it.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: You can send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.