0:00

Hi. I'm I disagree with Jealousy Decides

0:02

vs this is the showed the pits

0:05

facts against figments of your imagination. As.

0:09

We dive into the world of

0:11

dreaming. People

0:17

would say that talking about your draves

0:19

is one of the most boring things

0:21

that you could do. A grade So

0:23

a the interests of gaping this fall

0:26

I've invited to of the funniest people

0:28

that I go along to the show:

0:30

Comedians Toady Lodge and Ryan Jarred from

0:32

the Hip podcast Tony and Ryan. Welcome.

0:35

To the show Wire in June And that

0:37

means that I'm funny according to science. Yeah

0:40

which I realized and I'm going to turn.

0:42

I agree. I agree of the main topic

0:44

already when be because I believe that a

0:46

run things their dream is interesting but no

0:49

one thinks the other people's dreams of interest.

0:51

Tiny. yeah yeah he didn't same happy

0:53

with that com ah I love Dream Job

0:55

I love it. I every morning google my

0:57

dreams I have a like I'm into drains

1:00

what he love about dream chat. I

1:02

love that something has happened overnight that to

1:04

may feals monumental and I have to get

1:06

it off my chest. I feel like I've

1:09

watched a movie and you know when

1:11

you walk out of a movie theater up

1:13

yeah and you got oh what did you

1:15

think? Oh god Jude Law was good.

1:17

wasn't taught her why general emphasize that I'd

1:19

rather at. It has something and now

1:22

and he would talk about that either

1:24

that someone that the whole holiday at

1:26

the holiday don't cry from and my

1:28

favorite Christmas your the American Drug Black

1:30

is amazing. Arrive a dramatic actor so.

1:32

Good but say how a day briefing about

1:34

the whole I now So when I've had

1:36

a dream I just find it to be

1:38

like I've acted in a film overnight and

1:41

I tell my answer outta made This is

1:43

get were going up So much fun this

1:45

episode. So Ryan you've been quite silent. Yeah,

1:47

I was. So it goes on. quiets almost

1:49

more than I've been trying to, comes into

1:51

work goes. you'll never guess what you know.

1:53

I finally I. love

1:56

much so okay so what's a

1:58

dream tourney that you've had That

2:00

sort of baffled you perhaps. I

2:03

had one the other night in

2:06

the home that I live in. The

2:08

ocean was crashing in through the windows. As

2:12

if I was on like a cruise ship

2:14

in a really like torrential storm. The

2:16

house was rocking and the

2:18

water was coming in and like smashing through all

2:21

the windows and stuff. Was it scary?

2:23

Yeah, it was. You woke up quite late.

2:25

I woke up like, oh my god, like

2:27

there's water everywhere. And then my exact next

2:30

thought was I need to Google this. I

2:32

read that a lot of like very water

2:34

heavy dreams often are like emotion

2:36

that you need to express with somebody

2:39

or like you've got a lot of

2:41

unresolved feelings about an occasion or a

2:43

person or something. Okay,

2:46

so what science questions do you

2:48

two have about dreaming? Does

2:51

this mean something? Yes, of

2:53

course. Yeah, is there

2:55

something underlying somewhere that I have to

2:57

probably go and chat to someone about

3:00

in the awake world? And

3:02

then my asleep subconscious is trying to

3:05

give me a hint or push me in the

3:07

direction and go, oh, you maybe haven't dealt with

3:09

this and maybe it'll help. Or is it just

3:11

random garbage? Interesting. Okay,

3:16

so today on the show, we are

3:18

diving into the science of what is

3:20

up with this weird thing that

3:22

we do at night. You know,

3:24

here we are with water is coming into

3:26

our house. Sometimes we're

3:28

naked at grandma's funeral. We're flying. We're

3:30

losing teeth. For centuries,

3:33

we've seen symbols in dreams,

3:35

deeper meanings. In the years,

3:37

it was like the land of dreams was

3:39

a place for mystics and philosophers. Well,

3:42

no more. It's time for science

3:44

to enter the fray with groundbreaking

3:46

technology. For the first time in

3:48

history, we're becoming closer to understanding

3:50

dreams than ever before. Which may

3:52

be a bit of an oversell.

3:55

Hahaha. Hype it up. We're in

3:57

showbiz, baby. I

3:59

couldn't be more excited. to tell you about the size

4:01

of dreams. Today on the show, we're going to

4:03

find out what is happening in

4:05

our brains as we're transported into

4:08

this world. Why do dreams feel

4:10

so real? Yes. And

4:12

of course, what do dreams mean?

4:14

Could there be some window into

4:16

our deep subconscious? Or perhaps even

4:18

be helping our brains to

4:20

work better? Enter the

4:22

land of Nod if you dare. Oh,

4:25

I love that. Welcome to today's

4:27

Nodcast. Coming

4:31

up after this quick. Break. Who

4:35

came up with Nodcast? Me. I thought I did.

4:37

No, like you would never come up with a comment from

4:39

me. Just

4:42

another man stealing another

4:44

woman's jokes. I'm

4:47

going to die on that for a while. This

4:57

episode is brought to you by State Farm. From your morning

4:59

podcast From your morning podcast to your afternoon

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playlist, State Farm knows you personalize your

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entire day. And that's why State Farm

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just for you. Like a good neighbor,

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State Farm is there. Prices vary

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by state, options selected by customer,

5:20

availability and eligibility may vary. Today

5:30

on the show we are exploring the world

5:32

of dreaming. We're here with comedians and dreamers,

5:34

Tony and Ryan. Hello. Hello. Howdy. Dreamers.

5:36

I like that. I'm going to pop

5:38

out of my LinkedIn. Yeah. Yeah. Big dreamers.

5:40

Okay. So when I started looking into the

5:43

science of dreaming, I had this idea that

5:46

when we dream at night, it isn't

5:48

such a big deal. Like I

5:50

thought we really only did it during

5:52

this particular time of sleep called REM,

5:54

like rapid eye movement. Is this an idea

5:56

that you two have heard about? I

5:59

have heard of that. But I dream right

6:01

up until my alarm like every day. Interesting.

6:04

Okay, you're about to be

6:06

very validated by science. I

6:09

love science. Okay, so let

6:12

me walk you through a typical

6:14

night of dreaming with

6:16

our Daydream Believer, Professor

6:18

Francesca Cicalari. She's a neuroscientist at the

6:21

Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience. And so we

6:23

got on a call and I asked

6:25

her. Throughout the night, how often are

6:27

people dreaming on average? Much

6:29

more than one thing. There'd

6:32

be several hours per night on dreams. Several

6:36

hours per night. So if you

6:38

think about sleep like a Hollywood

6:40

movie, dreaming is not some little

6:42

bit part. It's like Chris Hemsworth,

6:45

not Liam Hemsworth. Now,

6:48

one of the main ways that

6:50

researchers like Francesca know how

6:53

often we are dreaming for is this,

6:55

they take someone into a lab, they get them

6:57

to go to sleep. And then throughout the night,

6:59

they wake them up and say, are you dreaming? Oh

7:02

my God. That is my worst nightmare. Yeah, that sounds

7:04

awful. That's not dreams. That's nightmares. That is not. That

7:07

is when I... How can anyone

7:09

go to sleep knowing that that's going to happen?

7:11

I know, I know, but they do. They

7:14

do. And by doing this

7:16

kind of thing, Francesca has found that

7:18

not only are we dreaming more than

7:21

you might think, but

7:23

our dreams change throughout the night in these

7:25

really surprising ways. So

7:28

let's start. Basically, as

7:30

soon as you've gone to sleep, because

7:32

that's when our very first dreams

7:34

get going. We call them snapshots

7:36

that just pop up or a

7:39

little sequence of a movie, like a very short

7:41

movie sequence. They are very

7:43

difficult to remember unless someone wakes

7:45

you up and asks you in this space what you

7:47

just experienced. That is interesting. I

7:49

find this so fascinating because unless you are

7:51

involved in one of these studies, you

7:54

really wouldn't know what you are thinking about

7:56

during this time. I know. And

7:58

so those first dreams... that we

8:00

have. They're almost like these short,

8:03

forgettable TikToks. But

8:05

then you get into deeper

8:07

and deeper sleep, and the activity

8:09

in your brain during this time

8:12

changes. So here's Francesca. Your

8:14

brain activity progressively gets slower

8:17

and gets slower everywhere in the brain, and we

8:19

enter a stage that we call deep sleep.

8:22

The slower the brain activity is, basically,

8:25

the deeper the sleep. And

8:28

in this stage of sleep, if Francesca

8:30

would wake you up and say, like,

8:32

Ryan, Ryan, what are you experiencing in

8:34

this moment? What are you dreaming about?

8:37

You might say nothing. There are moments

8:39

throughout the night that you're literally not

8:41

dreaming. Or she says

8:43

people might have these almost

8:46

abstract dreams. Where

8:48

sometimes an experience was so fleeting and

8:50

so really hard, difficult

8:53

to describe, so minimal. It's just a

8:56

tiny thought or like a vague

8:59

sensation of threat. Did

9:01

any of this sound like, have you guys ever

9:03

woken up and had these sorts of

9:05

feelings? I've woken up and

9:08

remembered the thought I've had in

9:10

the dream. Really? But I don't,

9:12

there's no visual to it. Interesting.

9:15

So that, those sorts of thoughts might

9:17

be happening at this stage of sleep. Right.

9:23

And then, so all of these sort

9:26

of like weird, like dream light, we

9:28

could call them, they're all happening before

9:30

we hit that big moment that

9:33

many people associate with dreaming. Yeah.

9:35

Like REM. And so I thought at

9:37

this moment, we could maybe all do a little

9:40

sing along because you can't, you can't say REM

9:42

without, without a little song. Right?

9:45

Yeah, but I'm more of a karaoke person. So if

9:47

we were all mid song, I could join in. Oh,

9:49

okay. So I'm just a sing along. So what

9:51

you need is me to go, that's me in

9:53

the corner. That's me in

9:56

the spot. But

10:00

there we go. This is actually a dream I've

10:02

had. I love that. And Wendy from Science, had

10:26

wrongly thought for ages that

10:29

we really only dreamt in REM

10:31

sleep. And that's because there is this, when you look at

10:33

what's happening in the brain and the body during this time,

10:35

there's this very neat and tidy story.

10:38

So if you look at what's

10:40

going on in the brain, it is

10:43

truly bonkers. Like, remember how Francesca said

10:45

that during deep sleep, your brain activity

10:47

gets slower and slower, which makes

10:50

a lot of sense. Like, you're taking a break. It's taking

10:52

a break, exactly. And then you

10:54

hit REM roughly 90 minutes into

10:56

your sleep. And it's

10:58

like, party time. And

11:01

the brain activity is very big. It's very

11:03

wake-like. Although one is REM

11:06

asleep, your brain is just like

11:08

buzzing with activity. Research has found

11:10

that during REM sleep, you actually

11:13

get more blood rushing into the

11:15

visual centers of your brain, which

11:17

explained why you have these like

11:19

vivid dreams. You go

11:21

to that activity. And then

11:23

there's what's happening to your muscles.

11:26

When you measure muscle activity during the

11:28

stage, it's very flat. And

11:31

by flat, you mean it's like they're dead.

11:34

Like, well, yeah,

11:37

not all the muscles, but almost all the

11:39

muscles are functionally paralyzed.

11:41

Have you guys heard this before, that when you're

11:43

in REM, you're basically paralyzed? I didn't

11:45

know that. No, I didn't know that. That's horrifying,

11:47

not. That's terrifying. I wish I didn't know that.

11:49

Oh, right. Yes. So you do.

11:51

And maybe you might have experienced this

11:54

if you ever like wake up during

11:56

REM and you cannot move. Because this

11:58

is called sleep paralysis. I've had friends

12:00

who've had that and it sounds awful. It sounds

12:02

like being trapped in a, oh yeah. It's happened

12:04

to me a couple of times. You're just like,

12:07

move, move, move. But you literally cannot move.

12:09

And the reason that scientists think

12:12

this happens is so that you don't act

12:14

out your dreams while you're asleep. Oh, so

12:16

if you're dreaming that you're fighting someone. Yeah.

12:19

And there's actually people who have a

12:22

condition called REM sleep behavior disorder, where

12:24

they don't get paralyzed and they do

12:26

act out their dreams. And

12:28

I read this hectic case report of this

12:30

guy who would bang his head against the

12:32

wall. And so to stop him from doing

12:34

that, he actually tied his hands to a

12:37

bedpost at night. Oh my God. So

12:40

be glad that you get

12:42

paralyzed. Oh my goodness. So

12:45

all this stuff, like our busy brains,

12:47

our paralyzed bodies, it all seemed to

12:49

line up with the idea that REM

12:52

is where our dreams happen. But

12:55

then through studies like Francisca's, where she'll

12:57

wake people up through the night, she's

12:59

found that as the night goes on

13:01

and on, people will have these big

13:04

vivid dreams, even in what's

13:06

called non-REM sleep, where

13:08

there is a story like narrative

13:10

and where the non-REM dreams actually

13:12

become almost, by any means, indistinguishable

13:15

from REM sleep dreams. And this

13:17

is like a super weird thing, right?

13:19

Even when Francisca started reporting on it,

13:21

other scientists were like, are you sure?

13:25

But that is what she's saying. So

13:27

now we do know that whether it's

13:29

like weird abstract thoughts

13:31

that you're having or full blown

13:34

films in your mind, we're

13:36

dreaming a lot. In fact, a small

13:39

recent study that Francisca did estimated that

13:41

we could be dreaming for around 70%

13:43

of non-REM sleep and 95% of REM

13:45

sleep. Yeah,

13:49

other studies using other techniques estimate that

13:51

it might be a bit less than

13:53

that, but this other researcher that

13:55

I spoke to said, that he

13:57

thought we were probably dreaming four to six.

14:00

hours a night at least. And

14:02

he said, if you remember 10 minutes worth of that,

14:04

you're doing really well. Fascinating. Like

14:07

I'd love to get a print out in the morning going, here's

14:09

the 15 dreams you had last night. I

14:12

go, fuck off. I go fuck off. Jump

14:14

back into that one. So science is concerning

14:16

people who say, I don't dream much. What

14:18

they mean is I don't remember them. Yes,

14:20

that's exactly right. They're having them, they just

14:22

don't remember them in the morning. Yeah, exactly.

14:25

And there are people who say, I never have

14:27

dreams and then scientists take them into the

14:29

lab, do the sort of thing Francesca does.

14:31

And the vast majority of them are found

14:33

to be dreaming. They just don't remember their

14:35

dreams. Interesting. Yeah. There's

14:38

some weird research around like, if you care

14:40

about your dreams, you write dream journals. It

14:44

makes it more likely that you will remember your

14:46

dreams because this feels very

14:48

meta, but it's like you're telling

14:50

your brain dreams are important. Yeah.

14:52

Yeah. Yeah. Because

14:55

Tony, you have a really good recall of your

14:57

dreams, right? And they're really important to you. Yeah.

15:00

Should we play a game? Like for a dream you

15:02

remember really well. Do you want to just tell it

15:04

to us now? Yeah. Okay. So

15:07

I was standing at the bus stop across the

15:09

road from my family home that I grew up

15:11

in. Yeah. And as I was walking

15:13

past the bus stop about to cross the road, I realized the

15:15

house was on fire. There was like

15:17

a crazy, thank you. Wow. I've

15:19

got you all now. And then I realized like

15:21

my family home is on fire. And

15:24

there's all these people, like hundreds and hundreds

15:26

of people gathered around the front

15:28

of the house all of a sudden, everybody's kind

15:30

of like, how did you start? And then somebody

15:32

walked across the front of the house

15:34

that was wearing a black mask that

15:37

had the Nirvana smiley face. You know

15:39

the yellow, like infinite happiness, Nirvana face.

15:41

They were wearing a black mask with

15:43

that on it. And I

15:46

was like holding a brown, big lighter.

15:49

That is specific. Yeah. And

15:52

I was like, they did it and no one could hear

15:54

me. So the

15:56

stress and the drama of the dream was

15:58

that I could see the cult prayer. But no

16:00

one could hear me and no one could

16:02

see this person. I reckon I

16:04

had this dream probably 15 years ago, 16 years ago.

16:08

Yeah, and that dream now still haunts me.

16:10

And when you woke up, what was the

16:12

feeling that you had? I just felt so

16:14

distressed because it was so vivid. It was

16:16

as if I had witnessed a crime in

16:19

real life. I remember waking up

16:21

and like telling my mum, like, oh, mum, I've had

16:23

this horrible dream. She was like, that's okay, babe. Like,

16:25

you can sit, like the house is fine. We're all

16:27

safe. Like, wow. It was

16:29

so real. Okay, well, this leads

16:31

us into our next question, which is why do dreams

16:34

feel so real? Because

16:36

it's just the illusion you're having it. Like,

16:39

it's not real. You're in sleeping bed and

16:41

you're not alone. Many people have had this

16:43

feeling of a dream that feels so

16:45

real. One study of undergrad students found that

16:47

70 percent of them had experienced a dream that

16:49

for a moment they thought really happened. There's

16:52

a research paper that describes people dreaming

16:54

of their parents, kids or pets

16:56

having died. One person even called

16:58

to make arrangements for the funeral.

17:00

Oh, my God. And then realised,

17:03

oh, no, they're still alive. That was just

17:05

a dream. So this is something

17:07

that many of us have experienced, right? And

17:09

Francesca did this awesome study that's

17:12

really helping us understand what might be going

17:14

on here. So here's what she did. She

17:18

trains people so that when they wake up,

17:21

they stay in bed and stop

17:24

and remember the exact thing that

17:26

they were thinking or dreaming about

17:28

just before they woke up. And

17:31

she does this so that she can get

17:33

this like detailed readout of their dreams at

17:35

a particular moment in time. And

17:37

basically, people practice this at home for two weeks.

17:39

They got really good at it. And

17:42

Francesca said that by the end of these

17:44

two weeks, they could say things like, well,

17:46

when the alarm sound went off, when I

17:48

heard it, I was in the kitchen

17:51

looking at this and this or talking to this

17:53

person. And before that, this and

17:55

this and this happened. So they could distinguish the

17:57

last scene from what happened before. So

18:00

she brings them into the lab after they've been trained

18:02

and then she takes them to this room that looks

18:04

a bit like a simple hotel room. She puts a

18:06

cap on their head with a tonne of electrodes to

18:09

measure the electrical activity in their brain. Then

18:11

she gets them to go to sleep and the

18:13

alarm goes off. They do

18:15

the trick, they go back into their minds and

18:18

then she asks them like, what were you

18:20

dreaming about? If you were dreaming, what was

18:22

in that dream? Was there

18:24

a face in it? Did anyone

18:26

speak? All these questions and repeat

18:28

this many times. It's quite

18:31

exhausting. She told me that she would wake

18:33

them up up to 20 times per

18:35

night. And by the end of

18:37

the experiment, Francesca and her team now

18:39

had a tonne of reports of what

18:41

people were dreaming about. They'd say, you

18:43

know, I saw a face, I saw

18:45

a podium, whatever. And she had the

18:47

brain images, right? Well, so

18:49

now she can start looking for part. And

18:52

a big question is basically, when

18:55

you see something in a dream, is

18:57

it just like seeing something when

18:59

you're awake? And is that

19:02

why dreams feel so real? So

19:06

to figure this out, Francesca looks

19:08

at this part of our brain that lights

19:10

up when we're looking at faces. So

19:12

it's really cool, but there is a particular

19:14

part of our brain. It's called the fusiform

19:17

facial area. And like, while I'm looking at

19:19

your faces right now, this area of my

19:21

brain will be like buzzing and excited. Like,

19:23

you are looking at faces. Whoa. And basically,

19:26

she wanted to know if people were dreaming

19:28

of a face, was that like,

19:30

wow. So

19:36

one day she's in the lab,

19:38

it's Thanksgiving. And she looks

19:41

at the data on the people who had just dreamed

19:43

of a face. She looks for that

19:45

little area and boom. I

19:47

saw this face area light up, clearly

19:49

pop up with such... Yeah,

19:51

so clearly, I already had the impression that

19:53

I had captured like a trace of a

19:55

dream, something objective. And there, yeah, this was

19:58

a big moment for me. the

20:00

best moment. It's so cool. It's so

20:02

cool. Like you could see it right there. I was

20:05

like telling the colleagues that were

20:07

there, look at this, look at this. That's

20:09

incredible. I mean

20:11

it makes sense because it does

20:14

feel so real but I think to

20:16

have that confirmed. Interesting. Very interesting. And

20:18

in fact this isn't just about seeing

20:20

things in dreams but research has found

20:22

that when we experience emotion it is

20:25

as if we're really experiencing the emotion. So

20:27

research has found that this region

20:29

of our brain called the limbic system that

20:32

is linked to emotion that's fired up during

20:34

REM and then there's this other study that

20:36

found that there's a particular brain pattern that

20:38

you can see when we are angry

20:40

and then when we're angry in a dream you

20:43

see it there too. You see that same pattern

20:45

and so like this totally goes against the

20:48

idea that dreams are just like kind of

20:50

weird thoughts you have. Yeah because in a

20:52

dream when you for instance see a face

20:54

in a dream you really see it. It's not

20:56

that you think about a face right? So that

21:00

can explain yeah why when we wake up angry

21:03

or sad in a dream like we've really

21:05

felt that emotion. We've experienced it. I think

21:07

that's crazy. No wonder you're so stressed when

21:09

you wake up and you dream that your

21:11

boyfriend's cheated on you. Yeah. Like if I've

21:13

dreamt that my boyfriend's cheated on me in

21:15

a dream I'll wake up like so

21:18

heartbroken. Yeah and he'll be like he'll be like

21:20

hey so like how would you think I'll be

21:22

like I actually can't talk to you right now

21:24

I know you didn't do this. I

21:27

know you didn't do this but I

21:30

feel this right now and I just need

21:32

to like sit in this from I need

21:34

to let myself feel it. But at the

21:36

same time though when I dream of my

21:38

mum who passed away 10 years ago I

21:40

dream about her a lot I feel like

21:43

I've seen her and that makes me

21:45

feel really nice. Yeah. Yeah which is

21:47

like I don't know if I've ever been able to

21:49

do that. Like I've chatted to her and that like

21:51

the hug in the dream was that felt like a

21:53

real so I'm willing to

21:55

take the bad because I get the really

21:57

good stuff as well. So that's amazing. That's

21:59

crazy. Yeah. Okay. So what

22:01

we have learned is that when

22:03

we are fast asleep, our brain

22:05

is hard at work, wearing away, building

22:07

these worlds for us. And

22:10

our next question is why, why do

22:12

we do this thing? Yeah. And when do our brains get

22:14

to sleep? When do they get to rest? When do they

22:16

get to busy? They're off all day. They're off all

22:18

night. It's all coming up after

22:20

this quick nap. Welcome

22:32

back. Today on the show, we're exploring the world

22:34

of dreams. We're here with Tony and Ryan. You guys still

22:37

awake? Yeah. Yeah. Even though I can't

22:39

wait to go to sleep tonight. Yes, I

22:41

am. I wonder what I'll find. So

22:44

now we're about to find out why do we

22:46

dream? And for this, we need Bob the Stick-old.

22:48

He's a professor at Harvard and he's like a

22:50

God in the dreaming world. Although if you

22:53

met him at a barbecue, you

22:55

wouldn't know it. When I go to parties and I

22:57

meet someone new and they ask me what I do,

22:59

I stay. I study sleep and memory. And

23:02

I don't say dreams because if I say

23:04

dreams, the next seven words out of their

23:06

mouth are, oh, I had

23:08

the most amazing dream. And then

23:11

they proceed to tell me this really stupid and

23:13

boring dream. Yeah, he gets

23:16

it. He's an expert at Harvard.

23:18

He gets it. That's

23:22

amazing though. That even he's like, nah, I can't

23:25

buy into this. I think it must be the same when

23:27

people say like, oh, I'm a nurse. And they go, oh,

23:29

can you have a look at this mole? You know

23:31

what I mean? Yeah. There's always this one question

23:33

that when people find out what you do, they

23:35

always ask the same question. They always ask the

23:38

same question. Oh, so every time we

23:40

say, oh, I work in podcasts and they go, oh, bye

23:42

mate. No, I've got a great idea. Yeah, I've got

23:44

a great story. I've got a great idea. I've got

23:46

a great story and they tell you the worst story

23:48

ever. But it's good to know that a Harvard professor

23:50

also is in that same area. Yeah.

23:53

So, Bob studies why do we dream and

23:55

what dreams mean. And he told me that for

23:58

decades when it came to this question. Freud

24:00

was kind of the biggest game in town. He's

24:02

the one that thought that dreams were some

24:05

manifestation of our deepest stuff and darkest desires.

24:07

And if you found yourself eating a pickle

24:09

in a dream, it meant you wanted to

24:12

do something cheeky with your dad. Is

24:15

that the direct sign? Well,

24:20

Bob isn't buying any of it. No

24:23

evidence for that at all. Okay,

24:25

so do we have any science fact

24:27

reason to explain why we dream?

24:29

Bob went searching for the real

24:32

evidence one. And he said that

24:34

one good place to start was just by

24:36

looking at what people actually dream about. And

24:39

the thing is, we often remember the really

24:41

weird and scary stuff. So if you ask

24:43

people like through your lifetime, have you ever

24:46

dreamed of being chased or falling or teeth

24:48

falling out? You know, people will say, yeah,

24:50

yeah, I did have a dream about another

24:52

common one is exams. So I once

24:54

sat down and wrote up a list of I think

24:56

20 exam dreams you could have. You

24:59

get to the exam and it's

25:01

all over. Everybody's leaving. You

25:03

get to the exam and it's the wrong

25:06

room. You get to the

25:08

exam and it's written up in Russian. And so

25:10

my recurring dream, yes, is I have a

25:12

Spanish exam, but I can't study for

25:14

it for some reason. And it's coming and it's

25:16

coming and I can't study for it. Right.

25:19

And you know, it's too late to study

25:21

and you just know it's going to be

25:23

doomsday. There you go. I

25:25

told Bob my stupid boring dream. The

25:29

one thing. Exactly. Do you speak

25:31

Spanish? No, but

25:33

I've always wanted to. It's

25:37

so annoying because as a kid, my recurring dream used

25:39

to be I was in a battle with a

25:41

triceratops. That sounds quite fun.

25:43

And then at some point it switched to a

25:45

Spanish exam and I was like, ah,

25:47

that's growing up. Do you get

25:49

no more threats in Spanish? No,

25:52

my Spanish isn't good enough. I

25:54

would just be like, I got on. I'm

26:00

over an email. That's how bad my splat is. That's why I kept

26:02

stressing about it. Thanks for bringing it up, Ryan. Okay, so

26:04

every now and then we'll have dreams like this, but the

26:06

thing is that the research is

26:15

found that most of the time, day

26:18

after day after day, we're not dreaming

26:20

of exams or flying

26:22

or being chased. We're dreaming of something else.

26:24

And Bob did this kind of famous study

26:27

to test out what this thing is.

26:30

So it all started more than two decades ago

26:32

when he went for a hike in Vermont with

26:34

his family. That night I go to

26:36

bed and as I'm falling asleep, I

26:38

suddenly realized I can feel myself back on

26:41

the mountain. I can actually feel the rocks

26:43

under my hands. And it

26:45

startles me back awake and

26:47

I say, that's really strange. Now

26:49

at the time, Bob was studying memory and

26:52

he was like, well, this is really weird.

26:54

Like why is my brain going back to

26:56

this hike? Why am I dreaming about this?

26:58

He wanted to study it systematically. And at

27:00

first he actually wanted to, maybe it's something

27:02

about that hike. And so he wanted to get

27:04

a bunch of people to go back in the hike and see if they

27:06

dreamed about it. But then there's one student

27:08

came up with a much simpler idea. Oh Tetris.

27:11

And I said, huh? And

27:13

another one of the students said, oh

27:15

yes, yes, definitely Tetris. And

27:18

I sort of said, what are you talking about? And he

27:20

said, oh, when you first

27:22

start playing Tetris, you go

27:25

to bed at night and you see Tetris

27:27

pieces floating down. I've seen that. Yeah,

27:31

definitely. When

27:33

Candy Crush was a really big scene. I

27:35

remember saying that. Yeah, exactly. Okay.

27:38

So the plan was set. Bob and his

27:40

team were going to get people to play Tetris over a couple

27:42

of days. Then they'd go to bed and

27:44

just as they were going to sleep, the team would

27:46

wake them up and say, what was going

27:48

on in your mind just before

27:50

we woke you up? And what do you know?

27:53

Oh, I just saw Tetris pieces

27:55

floating down and I was rotating

27:57

them and fitting them into slots. Oh.

28:02

This was published in 2000 in

28:04

this very prestigious fancy journal

28:06

called Science. When it's

28:09

published, this paper just goes off.

28:11

Everybody loved it, but they loved it because

28:13

they say, that happens to me

28:15

too. PlayStation even has

28:17

a VR game about dreaming of

28:20

Tetris pieces and in the promo.

28:22

They will talk about a lab

28:24

at Harvard University. One of the first

28:26

formal studies of the phenomenon was at

28:29

Harvard Medical School in the year 2000.

28:33

And then they switched to this music by some current

28:36

rock star who I don't know about.

28:38

My wife Debbie recognized. Lost. They

28:40

all saw. So

28:45

there you go. And as you mentioned with Candy

28:47

Crush, this is not just about Tetris. Bobbity's

28:50

team then got people to play Alpine Racer

28:52

2. And people dreamed

28:54

about downhill skiing. And on a more

28:57

serious note, when other researchers showed people

28:59

videos of what happened during September 11,

29:02

so towers burning, people trying to

29:05

escape, then they were also

29:07

more likely to have dreams of that kind of

29:09

thing. And this all suggests that

29:11

while we might remember vivid and weirdo dreams

29:13

that we have, most

29:16

of the time we're actually dreaming

29:18

of stuff that just happened

29:20

throughout our day. And I

29:22

asked Francesca about this. And

29:24

she's working out people hundreds of

29:26

times to be like, what are you dreaming about?

29:29

I mean, how often would you get a

29:31

dragon was coming out from

29:33

the sky and then the Starship Enterprise came

29:35

and I went inside. That's not what most

29:38

people dream about most frequently.

29:40

So a lot of

29:42

time in these laboratory experiences, what

29:44

we get are laboratory dreams. About

29:47

cables, about electrodes. Very

29:49

rarely do we get like

29:51

the full Hollywood movie type

29:54

of dream. This is why

29:56

I think Dream Chat is boring. Because I

29:58

agree with her most of my... dreams

30:00

are kind of just like what I did

30:02

yesterday again. Like if I said Tony goes,

30:04

what'd you dream about last night? I'd be

30:06

like coming into work today and like doing

30:08

this thing. And so one study

30:10

that really hammered home this idea that like

30:12

we're mainly dreaming about stuff that happened to

30:14

us is this study that got about 20 people

30:17

to record their dreams over a week. And then

30:19

they found that almost 90% of

30:21

the dreams were tied to something that really

30:23

happened mostly in the very recent past. And

30:26

curiously about half of the dreams

30:28

had multiple memories in them kind

30:30

of jumbled together, which makes sense.

30:32

Tony with your Nirvana

30:34

dream, like you're kind of mixing Nirvana. Like

30:36

it was the house I could see it

30:38

was a band I liked and yeah, no,

30:40

that makes sense. But your dream went

30:42

Nirvana chat. I'm not feeling heard. Yeah.

30:45

The house is on fire and just suddenly just

30:47

piled them together. Yeah, this is what we think

30:50

about. Yeah, exactly. We shove them together and sometimes

30:52

they don't belong together. I can over pull. Yeah,

30:55

they don't belong. I've never done an

30:57

Uber pull and gone. I like you.

30:59

Yeah, no. Yeah. That is

31:01

exactly right. That is exactly right. And all right.

31:04

Well, it's all science. Have a good day, everyone.

31:06

Follow, like and subscribe. Okay, so this takes us

31:08

back to the idea of why, you know, now

31:10

that we know what we are mainly

31:20

dreaming about, why do we

31:22

do it? Why do we dream? And

31:25

it makes sense that if we're mainly

31:27

taking things that happen to us

31:29

during the day, we're somehow

31:31

like that's our memory. We're taking memories of

31:34

the day. And so researchers like Bob are

31:36

like, maybe dreams have something

31:38

to do with consolidating or

31:40

bolstering our memories. It's doing

31:42

the admin. It's the filing of the day. Yeah. Yeah.

31:47

The filing of the day is a really

31:50

interesting analogy and something that's in that

31:52

Tetris study that I haven't told you about

31:54

yet, sort of almost

31:57

suggests that maybe we could even file

31:59

away. In, I dreamed that

32:01

we don't even consciously remember that we

32:03

did during that day. In

32:06

Bugs Tetris that a. Handful.

32:09

Of the people had amnesia.

32:11

So. They couldn't remember that they

32:13

played Tetris. And. Yes, Bob

32:15

remember the day that he found

32:17

out whether they. Dreamt of

32:20

Tetris pieces. When. I

32:22

got the call from my students and

32:24

he said bob we got one and

32:26

he report the dream reports which was.

32:29

Oh I'm seeing seeps their

32:31

rectangles. that third turned on

32:34

their side. I don't know where

32:36

they're from. And I was

32:38

just blown away And when I say

32:40

I so shouted him we've got, we've

32:42

got it And that was really really

32:44

exciting. And. So we know

32:46

that in their brains inaccessible

32:49

to them or memories of

32:51

playing Tetris. Or

32:54

ourselves as in my my exists. To

32:56

them but they just can access at that.

32:58

Surprising. Tried a memory is can't

33:00

remember the memory. Wow.

33:03

So tiny? Yes. Did you

33:05

burn your house down on.

33:09

Our. I

33:11

was around this lotta. So

33:15

the sooner resets act it's at

33:17

the point was unaware outlets how

33:20

does all this work. On

33:23

site uses one. Idea is that like them

33:26

because I generally zooming out Say how memory.

33:28

Works is when you learn something new, like playing

33:30

Tetris or anything. That. Memory is very

33:32

fragile and it can be forgotten. Say

33:34

for example, do you remember Bob's losses?

33:37

Schools. Nickel something saw it's yeah

33:40

with an s a day with his

33:42

stick out without a I didn't. Stick

33:44

in your head snapped the raise it a

33:46

bit dizzy. example that you forgot that is

33:48

the kids to the first few. Hours that

33:50

he gets me news like a new memory.

33:52

For me, it's it's really, really fragile and.

33:54

A delicate can be last until your brain

33:57

has had a chance to do what's called

33:59

consolidate. It. Reconciling. Say

34:01

that the. Lights

34:03

went, Out and

34:05

where'd you could do you Really like said that. Those

34:08

girl pathways. Yeah, And

34:10

so we know that sleeping. Is really

34:12

important. The memory consolidation. An Answer:

34:15

one of the big ideas around why

34:17

we dream is that perhaps he plays

34:19

a role in that. Perhaps it's to

34:21

the thing on memory and sense to

34:24

really put this to the test. Bugs

34:26

Team did this study were one of

34:28

his colleagues designed a virtual machines. And

34:30

there's a sore over there and this of

34:32

passage sheer and you can turn around and

34:35

own is another passage behind you. There's a

34:37

door that goes out to bright light. They

34:39

get around fifty people to play the maze

34:41

then I haven't that they wake them up.

34:43

Awesome! Did you dream that? anything? What? You dream

34:45

that and in the last play. The made again

34:47

and I basically wanted to say if you

34:50

dreamt about the maze did you do better

34:52

at. It can handle the people that didn't

34:54

have any. found. That yes, I

34:57

am so sites because you notice of people

34:59

who dream about of are the ones who

35:01

get better. And. So ones have

35:04

this of dreaming. Could. Those

35:06

to. Improve our memory.

35:08

Really fascinating. The I never thought

35:10

of a dream Why that before? The that guy

35:13

makes more sense that. Yeah, yeah, and

35:15

now I'm not. All of the

35:17

studies find the same thing as

35:20

Spawns did, but. Interestingly

35:22

of the he said evidence to

35:24

say that the dreams that you're

35:26

having outside of men slaves are

35:29

playing a role in helping you

35:31

to remember Sachs mazes. Suffice, that's

35:33

album. Which. I

35:36

don't opens the door to

35:38

may be all renderings having

35:41

a different purpose and one

35:43

idea is that maybe renderings

35:45

times help us to process

35:48

emotional things in our lives

35:50

and says is that black

35:52

shirt. We barely ever dream

35:54

as things as they silly happened in

35:57

real life such as an accurate when

35:59

play. During that is super.

36:01

Super s what normally. Happens

36:03

like we mentioned his, you take memories

36:06

for me day and then you like

36:08

jumble them up with other memories of

36:10

a the adsense weeds. And so the

36:12

idea is that Foxley doing that by

36:15

shambling up memories and adding weird stuff

36:17

that actually might be helping our brain

36:19

to think about the stuff that happened

36:22

to us during the day. Maybe some

36:24

lucky stars in a different way. Than

36:26

a helpful. And. He.

36:29

The one of the main reasons that sounds

36:31

as think this is because there's a group

36:33

of people who actually do dream of things

36:35

as that happened in real life. and it's

36:37

people with Ptsd. So like a whole

36:40

martha of post traumatic. Stress Disorder. Not

36:42

everyone with that that our homework is

36:44

that you will dream of the trauma

36:46

as like This Accurate. Replay over

36:48

and over again. And

36:51

say like his what Bob says about it. And

36:54

they actually see that you've been

36:56

replaced. As it happens in,

36:58

that might be part of why they don't

37:00

feel. The brain doesn't able.

37:03

To. Make those new associations to figure

37:05

out for new way to think about

37:07

what happened. That. Help them

37:09

move forward and resources and now trying

37:11

to figure out where that like targeting

37:13

people the trends. Then I

37:15

have Ptsd might be read actually help them

37:18

single. Wow, I'm saying yeah yeah

37:20

and now I'm not a ton of

37:22

research the this emotional processing theory but

37:24

I'm yeah. I get there was some

37:26

resets in the nineteen eighties looking into

37:28

the dreams of people going through a

37:31

divorce and it found that those who

37:33

tended to have like really yucky dreams

37:35

about their exes, they tended to get

37:37

better. Fact that. All. This

37:39

time I have truly been

37:41

a scientist suffer. Do

37:44

you feel like some of your dreams

37:46

has helped you go through difficult times?

37:49

One million percent, right? Yeah, Absolutely. so

37:51

in the last sees have

37:53

lost of he grandparents live

37:55

natural causes old eyes when

37:57

i finally passed away It's

38:00

actually a lot of admin and logistics of

38:03

planning the funeral. What am I going

38:05

to say? And I felt like all of the day

38:07

was like a lot of logistics and stuff I had

38:09

to do. Yeah. And so I

38:12

didn't really get a chance to have my

38:14

good cry. And

38:16

I reckon it was three or

38:18

four nights after that had passed away.

38:21

It was like in my dream that I'd actually burst

38:24

into tears and wake up. Wow. Do you remember

38:26

what you were dreaming about? Not

38:29

really the dream, but I remember waking

38:31

up from the dream and being... It's

38:33

not just like in the dream I

38:35

was crying. I was physically had liquid

38:37

coming out of my face. And

38:40

so I just remember waking up in my bedroom and

38:42

being like, oh my God, I'm covered

38:44

in tears and still being

38:46

quite sensitive and emotional about

38:48

it. Yeah. Wow. And it's because it

38:50

wasn't until I was asleep that I

38:52

could actually fully process and just get

38:55

it out. I

38:57

think as we're winding

39:00

down our nodcast,

39:04

I think what the research is telling

39:06

us is that

39:08

perhaps some dreams are there to help

39:11

us remember. Maybe some

39:13

dreams are there to help us process the crap

39:15

that's going on in our lives. And

39:18

then there's still a lot of mystery here, which

39:21

does leave us room to wonder if

39:24

maybe there is some

39:26

deeper truth buried in our dreams,

39:28

even beyond what

39:30

the science can tell us right now.

39:33

And so I asked Bob, do

39:35

you think that we should be searching for meanings

39:37

in our dreams? It can be fun

39:40

and it can be instructive to search

39:42

for meaning in your dreams. I

39:45

mean, you shouldn't marry someone or divorce someone

39:47

because of a dream. And you shouldn't take

39:50

a job or quit a job because of a

39:52

dream, but it's just,

39:56

it's your brain's wandering thoughts

39:58

on a topic. And

40:00

it's your brain, so it's probably

40:02

useful. Now, it might be

40:04

a dream about, you know, putting a collar

40:07

on your mother, and you

40:09

don't want to go hunting too much

40:11

for meaning in it. You

40:14

definitely don't. You don't. Yeah,

40:21

when people spend a bit too much

40:23

time trying to connect dots, it may

40:25

or may not be that. Not everything

40:27

has some other meaning. Yeah. Yes. Yep.

40:29

So did I answer your dream questions?

40:32

Yeah. You're really sparking

40:34

my scientific creativity, I think. Thank you

40:36

so much. Thank you so much

40:38

for being on the show. Thank you for having us. Thanks

40:40

for having us. Awesome. Yeah. Good

40:43

old Bob Stickeld. Yeah. Never

40:47

forget that name. Yeah. That's

40:52

scientific. This

40:58

episode has 93 citations. So

41:03

if you want to learn more about the world of

41:05

dreaming, just head on to our show notes and there's

41:07

a link to the transcript with a

41:09

link to all of our citations. We've been making

41:12

this show for a long time, putting

41:14

these fully cited transcripts in

41:17

our episodes for a long time. And still people

41:19

will click on it and go, oh my God,

41:22

I can't believe how much work you guys put

41:24

into every single episode. But we really, really do.

41:27

We like to get the science right. If

41:30

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41:32

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41:34

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for us. Science versus. The

41:52

episode was produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman with

41:54

help from Joel Warner, Rose Vindler, Merle Horn

41:57

and Michelle Dung. They're edited by Blas Terrell.

42:00

by Erica Akiko Howard, mix and

42:02

sound design by Bobby Lord, music

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written by Bobby Lord, Reemie Hidaka

42:06

and Peter Leonard. Thanks to all

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of the researchers that we spoke

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to for this episode, including Dr.

42:13

Dylan Selseman, Dr. Nuit Saka, Professor

42:15

Carolyn Watt, Dr. Tiki Rinseka, Professor

42:17

Drew Dawson, Dr. Beshak Turka, Dr.

42:19

Kachia Vali, Dr. Delcein Udet, Dr.

42:21

Sarah Sakh and Dr. Dan Rubin.

42:23

A special thanks to Lauren Silverman,

42:26

Stupid Old Studios, Andrew Piket, the

42:28

Zukerman Family and Joseph LaVell Wilson.

42:30

Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original.

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Listen to us for free on Spotify

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or wherever you get your podcasts. If

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you do listen on Spotify, though, follow

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us and tap the bell icon so

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you get notifications whenever a new episode

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pops up. And Wendy Zukerman, I'll

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be back next time.