Our Big Fat Dream Episode

7:47Chuck Bryant:Do you get the reference, though, from Dazed and Confused?

7:53Josh Clark:No. I do remember that, though, now that you mention it.

7:56Chuck Bryant:Yeah. One of the friends is like, probably best not to look too deeply into that one. That's right.

8:00Josh Clark:Anthony Rapp in that scene. That's right.

8:03Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So, yeah, I've never had that dream. That would be pretty weird, you know?

8:09Josh Clark:I bought it because I'm just still waking up, you know?

8:12Chuck Bryant:Sure. Sure. So, Charles, we're talking about dreaming and you can't really talk about dreaming unless you talk about sleeping. So let's do a brief overview. We've done a bunch of episodes on sleep, so we'll just kind of keep it short.

8:25Josh Clark:Yeah. As far as the stages of sleep, you're right. We've covered this a lot. But the first three stages are non-rapid eye movement sleep and REM sleep. And then after stage three, and it depends on the person, but, you know, about an hour and a half or two hours after you go to sleep, you're supposed to fall into REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep. And this is where generally you're going to be dreaming. And they used to think you only dreamed during REM sleep, but now they know that you can dream in both. But REM sleep is like where you have like the most intense dreams, the ones you're more likely to remember, that kind of thing.

9:00Yeah.

9:01Chuck Bryant:And we didn't really know about REM sleep until the 50s. I was surprised to find that out. But when we did discover REM sleep, people were like, oh, okay, there's different components to sleep. We need to start looking into that. Your body does all sorts of interesting things. But the one really important aspect about REM sleep is, in addition to, like, this is where you have your dreams' dreams, you are paralyzed, essentially. And they think the reason why is so you don't act out your dreams physically because you're experiencing them as reality otherwise. and that it's possible that your eyes are moving during rapid eye movement sleep because you're dreaming.

9:44Chuck Bryant:Right. They thought for a long time that you were looking at different things in your dreams with your eyes in physical reality while you were sleeping, and they just couldn't prove it. And there were a couple of studies that were like, actually, I think that's true.

9:59Josh Clark:Yeah, but I don't think they—they didn't prove it, though, did they?

10:01Chuck Bryant:No, but so like they cracked open the heads of poor little mice and they figured out how to look at what they call basically the eye directional cells. And they found that they were in sync with where the mouse's eyes were looking at any point during REM sleep strongly suggests that.

10:22Josh Clark:What did the mice say about what they were dreaming about? They just said, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep.

10:27Chuck Bryant:Okay. They're like a beaker from the Muppets, it turns out.

10:31Josh Clark:Oh, Beaker. I love Beaker.

10:32Chuck Bryant:And then the other study that I think was really interesting was they got with some lucid dreamers. And they said, hey, we want you to, in your dream, we want you to imagine you're looking at a circle. And then we want you to trace a circle with your thumb and look at that in your dreams. And the lucid dreamers were so good, they were able to do this. And they found that when the lucid dreamers were imagining the circle in their dreams, their eyes moved in kind of a stuttery step movement in the circle. that we would normally see when someone was awake and imagining it, when they looked at their thumb, their dream thumb, their eyes move smoothly like it does in waking life when we're actually looking at something.

11:14Josh Clark:Your dream thumb.

11:17Chuck Bryant:Dream thumb's pretty, there's something there. We've said a lot of dumb things over the years. Your dream thumb's up there.

11:24Josh Clark:Thanks, ma 'am. I love it. As far as how, like, we're going to talk a lot about dreams and whether or not everyone dreams. And we don't know for sure. Like, they think everyone dreams. Sure. And that some people just may not remember as well as others. And we'll kind of dig into that a little bit. But they do think that people generally dream multiple times a night. They don't know exactly how long they last. And, you know, the reason why, obviously, all this stuff is because someone's asleep. And, you know, you can't do a study where someone, like, hits a timer when a dream starts. They can just kind of go by hooking them up to machines and surmising whether or not they're dreaming.

12:00Josh Clark:Right. So you can't get like actual, you know, dead evidence about it. But they do think you dream multiple times a night and they last a few minutes, maybe up to a half an hour. And they think you probably dream a couple of hours a night.

12:13Chuck Bryant:That's surprising because I've always heard like dreams last like just a few seconds. I've always heard that too. They last hours, which would actually explain the rapid eye movement. Like if we're doing that while we're dreaming, we're moving back and forth. but that would suggest that our dreams are happening in much faster time than real waking time.

12:32Josh Clark:Yeah, that's a good point.

12:33Chuck Bryant:Well, I'm basically a dream researcher now.

12:37Josh Clark:As far as, you know, dream theory, you know, obviously we have to mention Freud. I kind of honestly get tired of mentioning Freud now, because I feel like every time we mention Freud, we then say, but no one really believes that anymore.

12:51Chuck Bryant:Well, the very fact that we consider dreams to conceivably be symbolic and try be trying to tell us something that in and of itself is the influence of Freud that still lasts today. So there's even though a lot of his stuff seems crackpot, there's like the basis of it is is still applicable.

13:11Josh Clark:Yeah, I think that's the solution I came to as well, which is like he birthed a lot of ideas. And that maybe is his value these days.

13:21Chuck Bryant:He birthed him right out of his sphincter.

13:23Josh Clark:But, of course, Freud was like, hey, none of this stuff is an accident. If you're having dreams, that means that you are living out some repressed desire that you can't act on in regular life. Probably, obviously, because it's Freud, probably a sexual desire. Carl Jung came around and said, yeah, I sort of agree philosophically to a certain degree with you, my teacher. I guess. But I don't think it's like a primal need and something that's repressed. I think it's just like us reflecting on ourselves and maybe even trying to work through like problems that we may have. Yeah.

14:05Chuck Bryant:So to differentiate those two guys, Freud was like dreams conceal and Jung was like, no, no, no, dreams reveal. And he was basically like, just read your dream. Like it's telling you something, but you don't have to be like, oh, what does this mean? you already know what it means and that it uses mythic archetypes as this ancient basic language that any human can understand.

14:28Josh Clark:Yeah, like the mythic archetype of Rachel Dratch.

14:32Chuck Bryant:Exactly. Who represented the trickster.

14:35Josh Clark:I mean, I also think it can vary. Like, clearly, if I keep having the same dream of trying to get somewhere and can't get there, like that may be saying something about my life. But I also think that it's just completely a complete random assimilation of just weirdo things popping into your head, like Rachel Dratch at an art opening.

14:56Chuck Bryant:Right. I tend to think, like, there is some series of, like, neural connections that happened in the last day or two that didn't make me consciously think of Rachel Dratch. But when I put those things together while I'm sleeping, boop, there's Rachel Dratch.

15:15Josh Clark:I tried to wonder, or I tried to wonder, I wondered if I had, like, you know, I do follow her on Instagram, but I don't think I had seen her on Instagram anytime recently. But who knows?

15:27Chuck Bryant:See, to me, it's like maybe you remembered a joke that someone on SNL told that she was just standing, like, in the background of that you focused on her years back. And you associate her with that joke, but don't realize it.

15:41Josh Clark:Yeah, Debbie Downer.

15:42Chuck Bryant:That's kind of my take on it. And if you look at Freud, you look at Jung's interpretations or dream theories, I should say, we've really done away with Jung's more than we have with Freud's, you know? Yeah, I think you're probably right. But then that's like the psychoanalysis version of it. Along comes in the 70s some much more scientific ideas about what dreams are and why we dream. And they really dovetail with your interpretation that they're essentially just random bits of meaningless information that our brain struggles to put together into a narrative. And that that's that. There's no meaning.

16:22Chuck Bryant:It's not trying to tell us anything. That grain silo over there isn't a giant penis that you wish you had. Like, it's just dreams. Like they're just a byproduct of your brain firing while you're asleep.

16:35Josh Clark:Yeah, that's called the activation synthesis hypothesis, which is it's just neurological processes playing out. And in this case, it's the forebrain trying to make sense of just what's firing around neuron wise while you're in REM sleep.

16:51Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's just like where it takes your brain firing while you're awake and puts it into like a narrative that usually fairly resembles reality. When you're sleeping, you're getting random impulses according to this. And so it's just doing its best. And sometimes its best is just plain old weird. Like there's Rachel Dratch, you know? Yeah. That's it.

17:17Josh Clark:Yeah, I think most of my dreams are odd. I don't ever have fantastical dreams where, like, I'm a winged beast that's flying through, you know, prehistoric life or anything like that.

17:28Chuck Bryant:As a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever flown in my dreams. Have you?

17:34Josh Clark:I don't think so. All of my dreams now are trying desperately to catch a flight that I can't catch. Man. But, yeah, not actually flying.

17:43Chuck Bryant:So there are some characteristics of dreams that these guys came up with the activation synthesis hypothesis pointed out. Alan Hobson and Robert McCarley, by the way, are the guys who figured this out. They said that there's illogical content, right?

17:58Josh Clark:Check, yeah.

17:59Chuck Bryant:Odd sensory experiences. Yeah. Intense emotions.

18:03Josh Clark:Yeah, that happens.

18:05Chuck Bryant:Acceptance of strange events. That's my favorite one.

18:07Josh Clark:Oh, yeah. In dreams, you're always just like, oh, yeah, sure. Right. Right.

18:10Chuck Bryant:And then difficulty in remembering them. And that it's just we just take that for granted. Right. Like, yeah, dreams are hard to recall. But as we'll see in a little while, there's that's just doesn't quite add up and make sense. And they've not figured out why that's the case quite yet. Yeah.

18:27Josh Clark:And the other, you know, those were from those two researchers since then. Other people have put forward that it's usually a first person perspective thing that features other people and that they incorporate elements of waking life. And I've found all that to be basically true.

18:43Chuck Bryant:For sure. All right, Chuck, let's take a break and we're going to come back and talk about a couple more interpretations and then why dreams are so hard to remember. That's right. That was my NPR throw to break.

18:54Josh Clark:We'll be right back.

19:09Josh Clark:Warning, the following song has been rated dangerously catchy and may not be suitable for grown-ups.

19:14Chuck Bryant:One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Knock, knock, knockin' at the door. Knock, knock, knockin' at the door. Five, six, who is it? Five, six, who is it? It's Kali and Elliot. It's Kali and Elliot.

19:32Josh Clark:Lingo Kids, only suitable for kids. If it gets stuck in mom's head, that's not our problem. Lingo Kids! Everything kids love. Download now for free.

19:42Chuck Bryant:Hey everybody, we have a very important question for you. Is there anything that reflects who you are more than your home? We don't think so. That's the answer. Everything in there says something about you. It's your home. Well, Wayfair gets that.

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20:07Chuck Bryant:Yeah. You don't get 20 million verified five star reviews unless you're doing something right. Plus, Wayfair makes it easy to find what you're looking for, whether it's a new sofa or Halloween decor. So transform your space with pieces that hold up to real life. Join Wayfair Rewards today and get 5 % back on every purchase. Head to Wayfair.com or shop the Wayfair app for all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com.

20:37Josh Clark:You know, everyone, today's savvy burglars have done the math, and they know that if they trigger your alarm, they still have time to grab what they want and go. But SimpliSafe is different. When an intruder sets foot on your property, AI-powered cameras detect them, and a live U.S.-based agent takes action to deter them before a window ever breaks.

20:55Chuck Bryant:Yep, you can leave your house without worrying because you know SimpliSafe has you covered to prevent a crime before it even happens.

21:02Josh Clark:SimpliSafe's agents assess the threat, they intervene, they speak through the camera to scare off the intruders, and they call 911 for dispatch.

21:09Chuck Bryant:Yeah, unlike traditional systems that alert you only after a break-in is already underway, SimpliSafe is designed to help prevent the crime before it starts. Right now, you can get 50 % off a new SimpliSafe system. Go to simplisafe.com slash stuff. That's simplisafe.com slash stuff for 50 % off. And when you order, write in Stuff You Should Know in the How Did You Hear About a survey to let them know we sent you. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.

21:51Josh Clark:All right, so we're back talking more about dreams and specifically Hobson and McCarley, who, you know, researched the stuff in the late 70s. That theory they put forward that it's like, hey, you're looking too deeply into this. It's just a bunch of random neurons firing and your brain trying to make sense of it all. It was a pretty controversial theory because I guess they were the first people to kind of put forward that dreams may not be this big, deep thing full of meaning. But it didn't, like, explain why we dream.

22:24Chuck Bryant:No. No. I mean, it does in that it's saying there's no explanation aside from your brain just wiring randomly. Then they're like, just leave it at that. And other people are like, no, I will not leave it at that. Right. I guess also what you're saying is that it doesn't explain dreaming. Francis Crick was like, okay, you can explain dreaming without adding like symbolism and all sorts of weird stuff to it. You can just say like your brain is actually going through some steps that to, I guess, McCarley and Hobson just seemed like random firing. But what it's actually doing is sorting through the inputs throughout the day and saying, well, get rid of that.

23:01Chuck Bryant:Oh, I want to turn this into a memory. Oh, let's see what happens if we do this, but while we're an elf, you know, and that it's actually like he called it reverse learning where you're you're figuring you're sorting through the stuff from the day. And that that's what your brain's doing when you're dreaming.

23:16Josh Clark:Yeah, I don't fully understand that one.

23:20Chuck Bryant:I think what he was saying is sure guys like yeah it's just random firing or it seems like random firing but there's a our brain there's an evolutionary purpose to it it's not just some byproduct like there's a reason for it I think is what he was saying.

23:34Josh Clark:Yeah all right well I think he again to this research like he basically was like this is a starting point like he didn't claim to be the final point on the matter.

23:44Chuck Bryant:Yeah it's true.

23:46Josh Clark:uh people also think we might dream to process emotions uh that clearing the mind clutter kind of goes back to what crick was talking about uh promoting creativity perhaps um maybe as sort of like a dress rehearsal to something that may like scare you in real life obviously like the dreams you have the night before like a big interview or something in that case right man those are the worst that sleep is not refreshing yeah i mean man thank god we've had this job for so long and haven't had to go through that in life in a while.

24:18Chuck Bryant:No, I know. Or put a resume together. Yeah. Yeah.

24:21Josh Clark:Very fortunate.

24:23Chuck Bryant:So, okay. So those are theories of like what dreams are, why we dream. And I think the fact that we haven't, we'd never said like, oh, this is the one or this is the most widely accepted one. Even among dream researchers, they're like, there's a divide between whether people think dreams are functional and do something and others who are like, no, it's just random. So that's not been settled, even among the people who study this for a living. And I mentioned dream recall, too, right?

24:54Josh Clark:Yeah, I mean, it's tough. Sometimes I don't remember them at all. I mentioned that the Rachel Dratch when I had just woken up from that dream. So I definitely remember it. And that apparently is one of the keys, because they say five minutes after the end of the dream, they say you've forgotten about half of it. Ten minutes later, you've forgotten 90 percent of it. So if you want to, you know, have like a dream journal and if you want to remember your dreams. Yeah. They say that, you know, to be awakened during that REM sleep is the time to do it. And, you know, they suggest things like setting an alarm to wake yourself up during REM sleep and like keep a pad and a pencil.

25:35Josh Clark:Like if that's what you're doing to great, I would have a hard time falling back to sleep. So that's not for me.

25:41Chuck Bryant:Right. Right. That's also the reason why they wake you up like at terrible times. Because, you know, you don't want to if you wake up in the middle of REM sleep, like you're groggy for the rest of the day.

25:51Josh Clark:Yeah.

25:52Chuck Bryant:And during sleep studies or dream studies, I should say, they wake you up purposefully during REM sleep.

25:58Josh Clark:That'd be terrible for me.

26:00Chuck Bryant:I know. And I've read that the trick that the dream researchers use is they go, wake up, it's time for Taco Bell fourth meal. And that usually gets people up.

26:12Josh Clark:Taco Bell fourth meal. I rolled the dice about a week and a half ago and had Taco Bell. Oh, wow. How was it? It was great. I was in the drive-thru line Googling, is it safe now to eat a Taco Bell? Wow. Because of the lettuce thing. Right. And the internet said, oh, sure, you go right ahead, buddy. It's great. Did it really? I'm surprised. Yeah. It said that they had worked all that out.

26:35Chuck Bryant:Oh, I had. Oh, yeah, that's right. I think Taco Bell switched suppliers like basically on day zero.

26:40Josh Clark:Yeah.

26:41Chuck Bryant:Okay, cool.

26:42Josh Clark:That was good.

26:43Chuck Bryant:I'm glad. And you haven't been pooping your pants for two straight weeks.

26:47Josh Clark:Well, I did because I ate Taco Bell. That's why, like, who can tell the difference?

26:52Chuck Bryant:That happened to me with Crystal once.

26:54Josh Clark:Oh, oh, yeah? Mm-hmm.

26:57Chuck Bryant:All right. I should probably edit that out.

26:58Josh Clark:Moving on.

27:00Chuck Bryant:So I think you touched on something early on, too, if I remember correctly, if I recall. You said that some people say that they don't dream. And it's up for debate whether they actually do dream because everybody dreams is the idea. And they just don't recall very well. Or if some people don't dream. And they found like, no, it seems like everybody dreams because they've studied people who say, like, I never remember dreams so much so I don't think I dream. They'll wake them up during REM sleep and say, what were you dreaming about? And those people can recall a dream. So they think, yes, everyone dreams, but do some people dream more than others?

27:42Chuck Bryant:And if not, or if so, then is it just like they, you know, they have more trouble recalling than other people?

27:48Josh Clark:Right, for sure. And then, of course, there have been theories within the dream theory community since Freud about, like, why we don't remember our dreams or we do. and Freud was like, well, you know, we forget them because if you remember, they are repressed feelings and wishes. So like that's the kind of thing you might want to push out of your head and keep it repressed. There's other people that have said that, you know, other things just like are there's too much in the brain, basically. So you can't remember it all. And also waking up like you're some people wake up and it's really hard for some people to come around and remember anything when they first wake up.

28:31Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I definitely subscribe to the neurobiological explanation for why dream recall is so hard because there's such there's some really convincing parts to it. Right. Yeah. Like the hippocampus, which is the little component that's responsible for consolidating short-term memory into long-term memory. It stays asleep a little longer than the rest of your brain. So you don't just immediately get to assembling your short-term memory of your dreams into long-term memories. That makes sense.

29:01Josh Clark:Yeah, I'm just now waking up, quite honestly. What's going on? What's happening?

29:06Chuck Bryant:You're such a pro that you just did like half of a podcast while you're still waking up.

29:12Josh Clark:Oh, boy.

29:14Chuck Bryant:Neurotransmitters, acetylcholine and norepinephrine are both involved in memory consolidation, and their levels dwindle and do weird stuff while you're having REM sleep. So there's like a lot of reasons why you probably aren't great at recalling your dreams. And then some people are really good at it, and they're just freaks of nature. Yeah.

29:35Josh Clark:I mean, some people think that if you are like if you're someone who's very prone to introspection or maybe daydreaming, you might be better remembering your dreams during the nighttime or whenever you happen to sleep.

29:46Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

29:47Josh Clark:But you can you know, they say you can train yourself to remember your dreams. uh you know the the dream journal like i mentioned earlier is is one way to at least record them but if you want to increase your dream recall first of all you have to fall into that rem sleep obviously uh there are things that can prohibit you from uh at least remembering your dreams like drinking booze or smoking pot or like exercising right before you go to bed that can definitely affect your dream recall uh and then you can you know you can train yourself i think we talked about this in other episodes might have been lucid dreaming can you control your dreams like when you go to bed say like as you're falling asleep trying to say like i'm gonna dream i'm gonna remember i'm gonna remember these dreams gonna do it i've heard it's uh best to say i must i must i must remember my dreams uh and again if you wake up right out of a dream you're more likely to remember it uh probably if it's a super like intense or vivid dream you're more likely to remember it.

30:50Chuck Bryant:Right.

30:50Josh Clark:And I have like, I try to do the thing where if I'm having a dream that I'm really enjoying and I have to wake up and go to the bathroom, I really try and just keep that dream running in my head and try and get right back to it. And sometimes that works.

31:03Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that's, yeah. And not only are you trying to remember the dream, you're trying not to wake up. Yeah. Just from peeing too. Yes, that definitely works. Like you're just, there's a certain level of consciousness that you'll let your brain rise to.

31:15Josh Clark:Right, right.

31:16Chuck Bryant:I actually have a dream that I remember because I woke up straight out of it, literally. It was cool. It was one of the neatest things that's ever happened to me. So I was laying in bed sleeping, dreaming that I was sitting in a car. And as I got out of the car, I was getting out of bed because I had to get up to pee myself. And, like, it felt very much like as my right leg got out of the bed and the car, like my right leg was awake. but like the rest of my body hadn't woken up yet because it was still in the car but my leg was in my bedroom and so as I got up out of bed I was getting out of the car in my dream and I just slowly transferred from the dream world into waking reality in my room.

32:06Chuck Bryant:Wow. It was really neat like the interior of the car and the edge of the bed were one in the same And it was like just some, I don't know, like portal or threshold or something that I went through. It was really, really cool, man.

32:20Josh Clark:Yeah, I love that stuff. I mean, that's why I love dreams because they're just, they can be just so bizarre and put you in a completely like weird state of mind without, you know, any substances.

32:33Chuck Bryant:For sure.

32:34Josh Clark:So they apparently, you know, and this is, I encourage you to go listen to the lucid dreaming episode, Can You Control Your Dreams? because that's the idea that you know you're asleep, you know you're dreaming, and you're in control of your dream, like dream sailing, I think is what we called it, or other people have called it.

32:49Chuck Bryant:For sure. And that was 2009, so that was like an early one.

32:54Josh Clark:Yeah, it was a minute ago. But dream incubation is another thing, and that's if you want to dream about a certain thing, you try and kind of do the same thing, like focus your attention on that thing as you're going to sleep. And a lot of times people there is one sort of subset of researchers that say or maybe just people that think that you can like come up creative solutions for maybe mental or creative blocks while you're dreaming. And so they will try and induce or incubate a dream as they're going to sleep. Yeah.

33:30Chuck Bryant:And it's it's basically like I want to dream about this. And so you will hopefully dream about it, especially if you like kind of prime yourself throughout the day to dream about that one topic. And people have shown you can come up with solutions to waking life problems in your dreams. And there have been some famous examples of it. One that usually gets mentioned in any kind of list of those. There's Kekale, the German chemist, who discovered the structure of the benzene molecule, I mean, which sounds like, okay great uh it was it required completely different thinking than everything he had been trained to up to that point because he was a chemist in germany in the mid-19th century and at that time they thought every molecule was linear in arrangement and he was like this is not the math is not adding up like this thing does not work in a linear shape what am i missing and he he slept one night and dreamt of ouroborosis or ourobori it's a snake eating its own tail And when he woke up, it was just clear as day to him that the benzene molecule was in a ring arrangement, a circular arrangement rather than linear.

34:41Chuck Bryant:And he was right.

34:43Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, you hear stories like that or that Mary Shelley dreamed up Frankenstein or other musicians like famous songs came to them in their sleep. and I hear that stuff and I think that like the solution to the benzene molecule or the seed of the idea of Frankenstein was in their brain already and the dream allowed it to be tapped into or something. I don't know. I mean, there's obviously nothing to prove that, but it just sort of makes sense to me.

35:13Chuck Bryant:That's my take on it too. That it was already there and their dream state just allowed them to think about it in different ways than they see in Waking Life.

35:24Josh Clark:So cool.

35:25Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I saw Yesterday and Let It Be were both dreamt by Paul McCartney, River of Dreams, that one where it's like, in the middle of the night, that Billy Joel song.

35:35Josh Clark:Yeah.

35:37Chuck Bryant:You didn't like my Billy Joel impression?

35:38Josh Clark:No, I thought it was funny.

35:40Chuck Bryant:That one came to him in a dream.

35:42Josh Clark:You're not going to sing Yesterday?

35:44Chuck Bryant:No.

35:44Josh Clark:Oh, okay.

35:46Chuck Bryant:Beethoven had some music come to him in a dream, 99 Luftballons. Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze. Yeah. And are you familiar with Aphex Twin? Oh, sure. Okay. Aphex Twin apparently is a hardcore lucid dreamer and has made bunches of songs by lucid dreaming, like purposely going to sleep and dreaming to work out music.

36:11Josh Clark:Cheat code. That's what they call that.

36:16Chuck Bryant:You got me with that one.

36:18Josh Clark:Should we take a break? Yeah. All right. We'll take a break and we'll talk a little bit more about dream meanings and nightmares right after this.

36:38Josh Clark:Warning, the following song has been rated dangerously catchy and may not be suitable for grownups.

36:43Chuck Bryant:A, B, C, D. In the morning, brush your teeth. A, B, C, D. In the morning, brush your teeth. E-F-G-H. Hurry up and don't be late. E-F-G-H. Hurry up and don't be late.

37:02Josh Clark:Lingo Kids. Only suitable for kids. If it gets stuck in mom's head, that's not our problem. Lingo Kids! Everything kids love. Download now for free. You know, everyone, today's savvy burglars have done the math, and they know that if they trigger your alarm, they still have time to grab what they want and go. But SimpliSafe is different. When an intruder sets foot on your property, AI-powered cameras detect them, and a live U.S.-based agent takes action to deter them before a window ever breaks.

37:29Chuck Bryant:Yep, you can leave your house without worrying because you know SimpliSafe has you covered to prevent a crime before it even happens.

37:36Josh Clark:SimpliSafe's agents assess the threat, they intervene, they speak through the camera to scare off the intruders, and they call 911 for dispatch. Yeah.

37:44Chuck Bryant:Unlike traditional systems that alert you only after a break-in is already underway, SimpliSafe is designed to help prevent the crime before it starts. Right now, you can get 50 % off a new SimpliSafe system. Go to simplisafe.com slash stuff. That's simplisafe.com slash stuff for 50 % off. And when you order, write in stuff you should know in the How Did You Hear About a survey to let them know we sent you. There's no safe like SimpliSafe.

38:15Chuck Bryant:You know, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us, it brings us together, and it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next, unless something starts to feel off. Because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated.

38:31Josh Clark:That's right. From the very first bite, food kicks off a chain reaction, signals moving between the gut, the brain, and the immune system, a constant back and forth we can't see and often don't fully understand. So we want to introduce to you Eating Interrupted, a new podcast from iHeartRuby Studio. It's hosted by longtime journalist and Crohn's patient Cynthia McFadden. Eating Interrupted explores everything from food allergies and intolerance and why they seem to be on the rise to how digestion changes as we age and what it's really like to live with a chronic GI condition.

39:00Chuck Bryant:Through personal stories and expert insight, listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

39:30Chuck Bryant:Okay, Chuck, so I think this is going rather well. What do you think?

39:35Josh Clark:I agree.

39:37Chuck Bryant:So there's that whole divide about whether dreams mean anything or if they're just random.

39:42Josh Clark:Right.

39:44Chuck Bryant:Most people, I would say, are like, no, it's not random, man. I had this one dream and, you know, it said that I should go pursue a career as a sailor. And here I am a sailor and I've never been happier. Right. I've got a virgin voyage on the brain, I guess. Right.

40:01Josh Clark:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my grandfather, after he passed, came to me in a dream very specifically when I was like 10 years old. So, you know, you hear something like that. And I'm not, you know, super woo woo. So I don't necessarily think that he came to me in a dream and like something metaphysical happened to me. It was just a kid trying to make sense of losing his grandfather and a dream like providing some relief, maybe.

40:25Chuck Bryant:That's neat. I kind of there's like a kernel of me that is like it's possible. that your grandfather was somehow visiting you?

40:34Josh Clark:Yeah, I'd like to believe that's true. It was very powerful. I still remember it all these years later.

40:39Chuck Bryant:That's neat. Was he very critical of you in the dream? Yeah.

40:45Josh Clark:No, he literally walked up to me and said, you're going to be okay, bud. And that was it.

40:52Chuck Bryant:Oh, wow.

40:53Josh Clark:Yeah. Wow. I was like, granddad's really on the nose. Right. Oh, boy. It still makes me emotional all these years later. I was like 10 or 11 years old and I'm 55. Good Lord.

41:07Chuck Bryant:I mean, I can imagine that's like a lifetime experience that not everybody gets. It's like, yeah, that's a really special thing that happened to you. And you hear those stories.

41:17Josh Clark:Thanks, man. I appreciate that. You hear stories all the time about like way more involved dreams than that of like, you know, people from the beyond like getting in touch and stuff. I think it's interesting.

41:26Chuck Bryant:Check out this new card trick I just learned.

41:32All right.

41:33Chuck Bryant:Back to dream meanings and symbols, I think, is kind of what most people point to, which is why I said Freud's influence is still around today. Anybody who's like, no, dreams are symbolic and you have to interpret them, you're following in Freud's wake.

41:48Josh Clark:Yeah, and there are like some stock sort of explanations or guides for this kind of thing. Like when I mentioned my teeth falling out, it's a very common dream. Not surprisingly, it usually indicates anxiety about something. This, what you said, said anxiety about appearance. So I never really thought about that. But also maybe feeling deceitful or concerns about your health. Teeth falling out. and then my teeth literally fell out, which is kind of funny.

42:21Chuck Bryant:Did you dream that they went whoop right back in?

42:24Josh Clark:No, that's funny. But I do think that maybe my teeth grinding, it might have been a sort of reaction to me grinding my teeth at night.

42:33Chuck Bryant:That's interesting.

42:34Josh Clark:Yeah.

42:34Chuck Bryant:Yumi has a recurring teeth falling out dream where she'll have some sort of diamond somewhere or there's a diamond somewhere in the dream. Usually it's in like a ring and it falls out and she knows that that's her signal that her teeth are all about to fall out.

42:52Josh Clark:Oh, interesting. Yeah. I thought you were about to say she gets grills.

42:56Chuck Bryant:She would love a grill, actually. There's a grill museum in Atlanta. Did you know that?

43:01Josh Clark:No, but I'm not surprised.

43:03Chuck Bryant:There is one. We haven't been yet.

43:05Josh Clark:Atlanta's got to be one of the grill capitals of the world.

43:07Chuck Bryant:I would guess so because it's also like the trap music capital of the world and those two things go hand in hand. For sure. What about falling in a dream? This one sucks, I can tell you firsthand. It's typically thought to mean that you feel out of control of your life. Yeah. Being chased. I like this one, that you're evading responsibilities.

43:30Josh Clark:Yeah, that makes sense.

43:32Chuck Bryant:What about fire?

43:34Josh Clark:Fire, maybe it's about renewal or maybe it's about some anger that you have repressed or maybe purification perhaps or destruction.

43:43Chuck Bryant:Yep. Or I don't think I've ever had this one. Have you ever had one about being naked in public?

43:50Josh Clark:I don't think so, but that's a pretty common dream, I think, supposedly. I don't think I've had being naked or maybe I did when I was younger. I don't know.

44:02Chuck Bryant:But they typically think like you have probably had an embarrassing situation and you're still processing it.

44:09Josh Clark:yeah that makes sense but you know the issue with all this stuff like is i said these are sort of stock explanations you know they sell books and they get clicks for articles but it's hard to get a stock explanation because it's so um you know you can see like somebody might see something as like awesome in a dream where other people might see it as a threat uh it gets very culturally specific, obviously, and even within one culture, things can be interpreted in contradictory ways. So it's hard to sort of say like, well, this is what that means.

44:43Chuck Bryant:Right. It definitely seems much more pop culture than scientific, for sure.

44:48Josh Clark:For sure.

44:49Chuck Bryant:And then there's, you had mentioned recurring dreams, your recurring dream of running late for something. That's a thing. Recurring dreams, especially recurring unpleasant dreams, or a horror that can be, that can befall humans, which is very sad. Recurring dreams don't have to always be unpleasant, but from what I could tell, pleasant recurring dreams are essentially non-existent, that the best you can hope for are neutral recurring dreams. Right, right. Most of the time they're at least unpleasant, if not, you know, straight up bad dreams.

45:25Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And, you know, there's a distinction I mentioned earlier that we were going to get into it between bad dreams and nightmares. If you're talking about just like real sleep research, a nightmare specifically means that you are like it wakes you up. Like it's so bad you wake up, you know, obviously generally like scared.

45:50Chuck Bryant:That means, do you remember the end of Don't Be Dumb was a nightmare for you? Do you remember? Because you woke up from it.

45:57Josh Clark:That's right. You pulled me into Don't Be Dumb at the end.

46:00Chuck Bryant:It was great. It was a great ending.

46:02Josh Clark:In a very Newhart way.

46:04Chuck Bryant:There's another, there's an author, a neuroscientist named Siddhartha Ribeiro, I think. They wrote The Oracle of Night, colon, The History and Science of Dreams. And they, I thought, made a pretty interesting case for dreams having some sort of meaning, even not symbolically, but at least they're not just random, the byproduct of random neural firings. And he said it's because the exact... existence of recurring dreams shows that you couldn't possibly have the same dream if your neurons are just firing randomly. You could not have a recurring dream. Like that in and of itself shows that there is something to dreams, that they do serve some purpose or they do have some meaning to us, which I thought was rather clever.

46:50Josh Clark:Yeah, I think I probably agree with that. Recurring nightmares is probably kind of one of the worst things. And it's very, very sad in that veterans and people suffering from PTSD in general often have recurring nightmares. And that's actually one of the criteria for diagnosing PTSD. There was a study in 1998 that found two to eight percent of adults have nightmares or problematic nightmares, at least. And 52 percent of Vietnam veterans did.

47:19Chuck Bryant:I know.

47:20Josh Clark:And that's tough stuff because that's clearly, you know, you know, things that are either buried or that you just can't can't get over or deal with. in your waking life.

47:30Chuck Bryant:What's neat about that, though, is they have figured out forms of dream therapy for PTSD specifically, but it can also be used by anyone having recurring bad dreams or nightmares, where you essentially train yourself to imagine a different ending for that nightmare, right? Yeah, yeah. So for PTSD, like your nightmare is the event that gave you PTSD. So you're re-experiencing it over and over every night, which it's just mind boggling how awful that sounds. Right.

48:06Josh Clark:Yeah.

48:06Chuck Bryant:The, this therapy is like, okay, in this next stream, you're going to have like in the end, you're going to fight this person off or you're going to suddenly be at home and at peace or whatever. And it's kind of like that dream incubation idea where you eventually, hopefully, are able to change the end of that nightmare. And from what I was reading, that usually frees the person from that nightmare. They never have it again after that.

48:34Josh Clark:Yeah, it's the turn your frown upside down of hellish nightmares. For sure, right.

48:40Chuck Bryant:So at the very least, it's heartening that there is a solution, a potential solution, because nightmares, whether you have PTSD or not, they're linked to self-injury and suicide.

48:54Josh Clark:Yeah. And, you know, even just at the bare minimum, it's going to give you perhaps sleep deprivation. And it can interfere with your, you know, normal routines during the day, your job, your relationships. they think there may be a genetic predisposition to frequent nightmares, but they don't know what that is. But they also say, well, it also could be maybe the same like genetic or at least driven by genetic risk factors of mental health conditions that may be underlying behind the dreams.

49:26Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and that actually ties into nightmares and bad dreams being a characteristic or a trait of Parkinson's disease. Oh, yeah, you found that. And specifically, Parkinson's disease with dementia. I guess 78 % of people with Parkinson's disease with dementia have recurring nightmares.

49:47Josh Clark:Oh, man.

49:48Chuck Bryant:Or at least bad dreams. I'm not sure if they actually meet the criteria for nightmare where you wake up. But it's not pleasant to go to sleep if you have Parkinson's with dementia.

49:58Josh Clark:Yeah. Yeah. We did a whole episode on fever dreams, too. Remember that?

50:03Chuck Bryant:Mm-hmm.

50:04Josh Clark:That was interesting.

50:05Chuck Bryant:We did one on sleep paralysis. That's right. And we did one on night terrors, too. So, yeah, both of those episodes are out there. I think sleep paralysis was called, like, the worst thing that can happen to you while you're sleeping, maybe.

50:19Josh Clark:Right. Isn't that the sleep paralysis is when you, like, you're asleep, but you picture yourself awake and there's, like, someone at the foot of your bed?

50:26Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And because you're in REM sleep, you can't move. Yeah.

50:30Josh Clark:Oh, God.

50:30Chuck Bryant:And then night terrors are similar in that you appear to other people to be awake because you're screaming and fighting somebody off and your eyes are open, but you are still asleep.

50:44Josh Clark:Yeah, kids usually get those, but adults can as well. And then what about this idea about like premonitions? Like, you know, there have definitely been people that have at least said that they had a premonition about some very specific historical event, sometimes big time and sometimes just, you know, little things that happen in people's families. But, you know, the big ones are ones that get all the press. It's like in the 1960s, there was a Canadian dreamer named Kathleen Lorna Middleton who had a lot of dreams about things that she had no connection to. And she at least claimed to have predicted through her dream a landslide in South Wales that killed 144 people about an hour before.

51:33Josh Clark:And supposedly the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Yeah. She foretold in a dream.

51:38Chuck Bryant:And she doesn't seem to have been like attention seeking or anything like that. She does seem to have been like this. These were her experiences. Of course, scientifically, you're like, well, there's a lot of things you can point to that that explain why people think there's such a thing as precognitive dreams. your dreams might be a little ambiguous so that you're kind of retroactively going back and being like, yes, that's what that was saying. Or your brain just wants to identify patterns naturally. We talk about that a lot. So it could be putting together stuff that's not really necessarily connected.

52:18Chuck Bryant:Selective memory, coincidence. Yeah. Yeah, it's just there's not really any room for it in science. typically, but I found an article that pointed out that quantum physics actually has room for precognitive dreams.

52:35Josh Clark:Oh, yeah? Yeah.

52:37Chuck Bryant:It basically says that under some quantum theories, like quantum gravity, I think it allows for this, where past, present, and future are not following any kind of linear order like we think of time. Instead, they all kind of coexist. And this quantum interpretation of precognitive dreams just basically says in certain states, in this case dreaming, the dream state, we're able to access future events just like we are past events or present events when we're waking. Pretty neat.

53:10Josh Clark:Yeah, that's pretty cool. I mean, between 17 and 38 % of people say they have had at least one precognitive dream in their lifetime. And I think definitely if you have like a willingness to accept like.

53:29Josh Clark:Accept that kind of thing in general and maybe accept ambiguous information and put it together in a way that makes sense. Like you may be more prone to be like, hey, I dream this thing. And, you know, who knows that assassination was sort of a political assassination was much more of a thing when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. and maybe Kathleen Lorna Middleton was a fan of the Kennedys and it's something that concerned her. Yeah, that's a good explanation. But, you know, maybe it's not also to be explained. Maybe, I mean, who knows? Maybe people can really dream stuff that's going to happen.

54:02Josh Clark:I don't know.

54:03Chuck Bryant:I don't either. I don't either, Chuck. And I think that it takes a big man to admit something like that.

54:09Josh Clark:All right, we're a couple of big men.

54:12Chuck Bryant:You got anything else about dreams right now?

54:14Josh Clark:I do not.

54:15Chuck Bryant:Okay. Well, that was our dream episode. People have been calling for that for a while. Hopefully you guys liked it.

54:20Josh Clark:I know, yeah.

54:21Chuck Bryant:And since we're wondering whether you guys liked this episode, I think I just accidentally triggered listener mail.

54:29Josh Clark:That's right. This is a Sammy Davis Jr. story. I don't know if you saw this. It's pretty fun. Hey, guys, fairly new listener. Someone wrote in with the Sammy Davis Jr. story, and you asked for more, so here it is. When my elderly father passed in 2006, we heard a story from the wife of my dad's business partner. She told us that there was a time when the four of them were in Las Vegas together and attended a Sammy Davis Jr. concert. My mother, who had gone out to the restroom just before the concert began, came back in, the lights went down, Sammy began his first number, and my mother returned from the restroom.

55:02Josh Clark:It was dark and she couldn't remember or see where they were sitting, and as she stumbled between the tables, she started calling out, Vic, where are you? Vic, where are you? and it wasn't too long before Sammy completely stopped the show and asked from the stage, Vic, babe, where are you? Mom got back to her table and Sammy started the concert over again from the very beginning. Oh, wow. Later that year, very sadly, my mom also passed away and I was able to tell this story as part of her remembrance, adding that I could imagine her arriving in heaven asking, Vic, where are you? That is from Cliff in Madison, Wisconsin, one of my new favorite towns.

55:40Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that is a great town. And that's a great story, Cliff. Thanks a lot for sending it to us. One of the better Sammy Davis Jr. stories I've ever heard.

55:48Josh Clark:Yeah, doesn't get much better than Sammy Davis Jr. addressing you from stage. For sure.

55:53Chuck Bryant:If you want to be like Cliff and send us an email with a great story that's also kind of a tribute to your late loved one, we think those are the tops, as Sammy might say. At the very least, Mel Torme would say it. For sure. You can send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

56:13Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

56:29Josh Clark:Warning, the following song has been rated dangerously catchy and may not be suitable for grown-ups.

56:34Chuck Bryant:One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Knock, knock, knockin' at the door. Knock, knock, knock. Get out the door. Five, six, who is it? Five, six, who is it? It's Callie and Elliot. It's Callie and Elliot.

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