August 26, 2020 • 57 mins
Dreams are one of the most mysterious aspects of human existence, and we still don't fully understand the strange phenomenon known as dreaming. For thousands of years, human beings have taken action in the waking world based on information they encounter in a dream -- and, every so often, people have felt their dreams aren't just reminding them of the past or recontextualizing the present. Instead, in virtually every culture and in every era of recorded history, people have claimed their dreams also, sometimes, tell them about the future. Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they delve into the science of dreams, and the conspiracies our own brains may hatch against us.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They call
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Paul Mission controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. Let's begin today's episode, which gets
very strange, with a question, fellow listeners, what's the most
(00:48):
vivid dream you've ever experienced? You know, for many people,
this answer will come to your mind immediately in a
flash of images, sensations, or emotion that are often almost
indistinguishable from experiences in the waking world. Before the dawn
of recorded history, these things called dreams haunted us, They inspired, terrified,
(01:12):
and guided our ancestors. And dreams, you know, everyone knows
they're often central plot points and ancient myths. And who hasn't,
of course, heard the more modern tales of the visionary
scientists and inventor and artist, a writer or someone receiving
inspiration and suddenly solving a problem in a dream and
having a real solution to a problem when they wake up.
(01:35):
Long story short, dreams have been pivotal throughout the span
of human existence, and we still don't understand them. We
still don't completely get what's happening with dreams. We know
they tell us about the past, we know they re
contextualize the present, but could they also tell us about
the future? Here are the facts, you know. I don't
(01:55):
want to lose any time here, but I have a
reoccurring dream when I'm very stressed out where I am
physically jumping across asteroids that are flowing at me, or
like moving towards me. Do you guys have any like
stressed dreams that you've ever had like that? Or maybe
asitive dude, I have this recurring dream where I'm like
(02:16):
I've made it, my band has made it, and we're
like playing before you know, the biggest crowd I've ever
seen in the entire history of playing music, and I
don't know any of the songs. I'm like dreadfully underprepared,
or maybe like I'm in the arcade fire cool and
I just just freeze. I don't know any of the songs.
I have that dream a lot. What does it mean, guys?
What does it mean? Well, hopefully today we're gonna find out,
(02:38):
because we do know what dreams are. At least we
have a pretty good understanding of what they are. A
fancy way to phrase it would be something like, dreams
are patterns of information, specifically something that we have taken
in as sensory information, and the dream occurs when the
brain is in a resting state and somehow using this
(03:00):
information and making essentially a story or at least patterns
from it. And if we want to be a little
more blunt about it, dreams are hallucinations. They take every
box for everything that's ever been described as a hallucination.
And we've talked about it in previous episodes, But if
you describe the process of dreaming or even just sleeping
(03:22):
to some life form that had never encountered it, it
sounds so bizarre. We've just all sort of accepted that
anywhere from four to eight hours out of every twenty
four hours, we will uh, we will pass out, our
bodies will be useless, will go into some weird other world,
and then we gain control of our body again, and
(03:44):
everybody acts like nothing happened. It's odd right, And every
once in a while we encounter shadow people that want
to thwart our plans of living. Those pesky shadow people
always trying to suffocate us in our sleep. That's no fun. Um.
But we're talking specifically today. But I don't know, Ben,
you have this really great uh analogy for dreams is
(04:05):
the idea of like your brain kind of as a
hard drives, sort of like sorting out the bits or
like defragging, like kind of cleaning out the cobwebs. I
guess of the day, and subconsciously maybe doing some internal
problem solving. Even if it's not like you wake up
with some kind of ah ha moment, it is somehow
doing some good for you, like in terms of you know,
(04:26):
maybe uncluttering your subconscious Let's say, is that about the
span of it, Ben? Yeah? Yeah. Before we jump to
you know, the kind of theories that we have about
dreams because we don't know what they are, let's bust
one myth really quick. We've all heard that dreams only
occurred arenas specific phase of sleep r e M. Great
(04:46):
band Uh. The phrase r e M stands for rapid
eye movement. It's like the fifth stage of sleep. That's
where the dreams are supposed to happen. However, we know
that multiple studies have shown maybe we dream mainly in
the r M phase, but we also dream in other phases.
We can't be the dream process cannot be quite as
(05:08):
easily categorized as we would like, and that's where the
theories come in. So one of those leading theories their
loads and loads of great research pieces on dreams. One
of those theories is just what you described, that dreams
are a part of memory processing, meaning that it helps
us consolidate things we've learned while also transferring our short
(05:29):
term memory to our long term memory storage. So yes,
I think the analogy holds that to me, it seems
like a good description is the brains defragging the hard drive.
But then again, is the brain the hard drive? What
what's doing the defragging? Is that the software? Is that
the consciousness? This this gets very strange, very quickly, but yeah,
(05:52):
it in that concept. It says, though, all of those
connections that your neurons have made, it's solidifying that right
if they're necessary, And it's almost like the brain itself
is trying to decide what's important. It's really weird. It's
weird to think about your brain uh in the in
its unconscious state doing one of the most important things
(06:14):
that you can imagine, figuring out what you actually learned
and what you should remember, or or how you actually
feel about things. Sometimes I mean, like, perhaps my recurring
dream about being unprepared is a signal or a symptom
of me feeling overwhelmed at certain times. I don't have
this dream all the time, but when I do have
the dream, I think it's a product of me maybe
(06:36):
feeling a little under water with work or a little
bit like I'm out of my depth or something, or
like I kind of am a little bit of drift
and maybe need a little bit of a course correction.
So they can be interesting when you have these over
and over, you're like, oh, maybe this is a signal
pointing towards something that's really a great observation, because another
thing it could be is really just a problem solving
activity that your brain goes through a way to go
(06:59):
through it is difficult, complicated things that you know are
more deeply psychological. Then then perhaps you appreciated in the
moment um and to get balanced back in a way
or two to maybe put things in the right perspective
for you. But at the end of the day, it's
all just chemicals, right Like, it's all just firing neurons
(07:20):
and you know, electrical impulses bouncing around. Yeah, but that's
like saying that music is only math, you know what
I mean. It's a massive perspective. I I think I
think that's an important theory to bring up as well. Uh.
The bit more, I wouldn't say reductionists, but the theory
that wants to remove the concept of consciousness from the
(07:43):
equation and says that dreams are simply the brain responding
to uh, an array of biochemical changes and electrical pulses
that impulses that fire as you are asleep, whatever you
might be. The dream then is seen as nothing more
than a side effect, right like Uh, like sunsets look pretty,
(08:08):
but that wasn't part of some grand plan. This argument says,
it's just a a a very small side effect of
gravity and orbit. So we have these theories and they
all The thing is that none of them, on the
outset seem just straight wrong, none of them seem demonstrably incorrect.
(08:31):
They just seem like the old adage of the mice
describing an elephant, right, you know, different micey, different parts
of the elephant. They think it's a bunch of different
objects instead of one large thing. We do, luckily know
on numerous levels what happens when we dream. Every dream
(08:52):
you have has some of the same guide post. We
tend to be the main characters of our own lives
and our dreams. Just as in the aching world, you
are in your dreams. Even when you feel like you're
watching something happen, You're in it. Things are happening, You're
taking actions. The environment, the reality of the dream is
responding to your actions, and in the universe of the dream,
(09:17):
those responses and those actions they make sense. This is
not really the case once you wake up and you think, wow,
my um. You know, like my great aunt has been
dead for years, she never played the oboe, and I
have never been to Portugal. But they're like, how come
(09:37):
when I eat a chocolate covered pretzel in the real world,
it's delicious treat, But in a dream, all my teeth
fall out and I'm naked in front of a high
school gym of my peers and they're all laughing at me.
Why are they laughing at me? Or like in the
far side. One of the one of the greatest modern
American comic strips, uh, the the recurrent fear of showing
(09:59):
up to a lecture without one's duck. That's a that's
a deep cut for folks. But but yeah, that it
is true. These things have an internal logic. And if
you practice dream journaling, which can be a tremendously useful
psychological tool, then what you'll notice when you try to
write out the plot points of your dreams is that
things change, especially scenery. I didn't I didn't talk about
(10:23):
any of my recurrent dreams because they're weird. They kind
of all occur in the same universe, and things that
happen in one affect things in the other. Um, it's
like cinematic dream universe. It's not as cool as it sounds. Man,
that's pretty cool. I don't know, it's not as cool
as it sounds. But but we all But the thing is,
(10:44):
it makes sense when you're in the moment, right, Like
of course, my teeth falling out, That is a tremendously
common uh dream trope, especially in the West. Maybe it's
maybe has something to do with dentists, maybe has something
to do with the write of passage we experience when
our baby teeth fall out. But yeah, yeah, so it's
(11:06):
kind of programmed into us. But when we think about it,
when we're awake, all of our thoughts have a kind
of familiar logic to them. Right, I did A because
I want B or I did see because someone is
going to do D later. And our brain, which is
hugely underrated in the in the sort of avengers of
(11:27):
our body. Our brain is always working through all this
internal external stimuli. And your brain, like your heart, uh,
once it starts going, it doesn't get a break. It's
not supposed to get a break until you die. If
your brain or your heart stop doing what they do,
getting down how they get down, then you are very
(11:50):
much in trouble. So when you're when you're asleep, your
brain is still active. The brain is like the great
white shark of the body. You know, if it stops
then it dies. Um. And that's because of a couple
of things. So that the brain is divided into segments.
As we know, we've got the limbic system in the
mid brain, which deals with emotion in both waking and
(12:12):
dreaming states. It's interesting there these these parts kind of
have shared responsibilities, and they do similar functions when you're
awake and when you're asleep, and that includes the amygdala,
which is particularly active when you're in a dream state. Right,
and then we've got the cortex. The cortex is what
(12:32):
if the cortex had a job, If your dreams were
of soulless corporation, and the cortex was an employee of
your dreams, then it would have the title content creator,
which is not not a not a favorite title of mine.
So the reason that's important is everything that your cortex does,
your cortex rights and directs uh your dreams right comes
(12:56):
up with the plotlines. Everything you feel, from floating in
a vast, unnowable ocean to flying to jumping from one
impossible across one impossible chasm to another. All the people
you meet, all the monsters that chase you, they all
come from your cortex. And the visual cortex right there
the back of your brain, if you're human, when you're
(13:16):
listening to this is especially active because we are such,
you know, visual creatures, kind of the way that dogs
that dogs are olfactory creatures. This made me wonder. I
don't have the science on it yet, but I wonder
if dogs mainly dream and smell. Well. It's interesting too
because I never really recall sounds from dreams, and and
I know that's that's a thing that happens. There's even
(13:38):
a story Paul McCartney says that he came up with
the melody to I Believe yesterday in a dream and
he woke up and he had this melody, and he said,
and being a musical dude, I don't think I've ever
dreamt of a melody. I think of it as a
very specifically in the realm of visual hallucinatory kind of state,
you know. So I think that's pretty special for Paul
(13:58):
to come out of a dream date with that melody.
Have you guys ever dreamt sounds or remembered sounds from
a dreamy happen at all? I have several highly talkative
monsters that inhabit my dreamscape. UM, very talkative and then
fascinating uh vocalizations. I highly recommend checking out one of
(14:22):
these if you get a chance, one of these mad brains.
Oh yeah, just hot back there and my, oh my
under lit Jim Bay look at that. Uh so, you
know it's fascinating that you're talking about that. The Cordex been.
I think it's You're absolutely right. The cortex is the
reason why we're almost It feels a lot of times
(14:44):
for me and maybe a lot of others that you're
kind of just a passenger in your dreams. Like you're moving,
you're going places, you're seeing things, things are changing, but
you just kind of accept it. You just kind of
go with it. You're just heading in that direction, unless,
of course, you've unlocked. You know, the ability to is
a dream, which is a whole other thing. But one
of the reasons that it's the dreams are like that
(15:05):
is because these parts of our brain, the lobes that
are talked about so frequently, kind of the logic systems. Uh,
those are the least active parts of your brain when
you are dreaming, which it really explains why you know,
things don't feel so strange until you wake up. And
(15:25):
maybe it's also one of the main reasons you don't
remember too much. She never played the obo. I've never
been to Portugal. Uh, and you know, and if I
don't write it down in twenty three minutes, I'll forget dude.
But that, yeah, that's it. That's right. That's another thing,
Like I've never been a dream journalier, and there's it
has to be my dream has to pack such a
wallet for me to remember it at all. Um. But
(15:48):
when it does, I do, and they stick with me.
I remember them for many years. But typically unless you
write it down super quick, you're still in that kind
of like waking dreaming between state and then you kind
of lose it. Right, Are you guys good at remembering dreams?
What would you say your odds are or like in
terms of like waking up and being able to recall
specifics from a dream. I keep a note on my
(16:09):
phone and it's always right by my bed, and yeah,
constantly doing that. What about you? Ben? Uh? I I
don't necessarily think it's a good thing, but yes, yeah,
pretty um I I do. Um. Well, it's no secret
longtime listeners. I don't like sleep. I resent it. I
(16:30):
think that science should already be at the point like where,
you know, if I can call someone in freaking Bhutan
and talk to them in real time with something you know,
the size of an open hand, then I shouldn't have
to I shouldn't have to sleep. We should have figured
some some way around it. Someone to space, we said,
(16:52):
people to space. But then Ben, if if you do
have to sleep because unfortunately our analog bodies require it
for some dang reason. Uh, why not at least record
as much as you possibly can. One day we're gonna
be able to plug in somehow and just get that
(17:13):
stuff like roll on quick time while I'm dreaming, and uh,
I can't wait for that, dude, right man, There's there's
one thing that to add with that. Um. You know,
I I spent a lot of time researching kind of
what we talked about with lucid dreams, which is probably
a story for another day. But I I end up
getting a lot of work done in dreams. It feels
(17:37):
like I'm doing a lot of work. And then I
wake up and I think, oh, I gotta write this
amazing story down. And then I write it down, go
get some coffee or something. I come back and I'm like, Wow,
the most amazing part of this story is that I
thought it was good and because my frontal lobes were
turned off, right, um, And I think we I think
(17:57):
we do that a lot to your point, and all
about how how we process in dreams. Um, it's unless
people have you know, PTSD or some sort of um
condition that gives them violent, nightmarish, recurrent horrific visions every
time they sleep. Most people would prefer dreams to a
(18:19):
dreamless sleep, you know. Otherwise it's really disconcerting to have
everything go dark at say four fifty three a m.
And then wake up at um, I don't know to
thirty seven PM. I just sort of hope nothing important happened. So,
I mean, we we probably won't really truly be able
(18:39):
to answer definitively like why do we dream? We've got
some good theories, but there are experts in mental health
that that do believe that it's an important part of
maintaining some semblance of sanity or like self awareness or
understanding of ourselves. Um. But there's you know, not like
a definitive like this is what dreams are for, um,
but for of from people. There for a lot of things.
(19:01):
And like like I said, if you're Paul McCartney, it
makes you write a song that's been covered by over
three thousand artists and probably one of the most recognizable
songs in the history of recorded music. That's just my
hot take on on yesterday. But it's a thing that
came from a dream. Um. So they certainly have value.
I mean, so many artists recreate images from their dreams.
And to your point, then, whether I think you're selling
(19:22):
yourself short with the quality of your dream stories. But
they are things that you've pulled from a dream state
that you can then translate into the real world and
do something with their functional in that way. Yeah, I mean,
evolution is a brutal editor. So we know that uh,
dreams exist for some purpose, right, and it's probably not
a vestigil leaving of our earlier arboreal ancestors. But we
(19:49):
do know to your point, even if we can't fully
answer the question why when it comes to dreams, we
know they do inform the waking world. I mean we
have examples, Like just to rattle off a few examples. Um,
one of my favorites, there's a guy named Dmitri men
to leave, the guy who made the periodic table. He's
(20:11):
got an element named after him. He's legit his story.
His claim, which is very difficult to prove about how
he figured out the periodic table is that he was
going mad looking at all these mismatched cards that kind
of picture his version of index cards where he wrote
down everything he knew about an element. And he's like
(20:33):
having his Charlie Day conspiracy theory thing. He's trying to
have his beautiful mind moment, it doesn't make sense. The
guy passes out on top of these cards, and then
in a dream he watches them sort of get up
and dance around, and then they put themselves in order
of their atomic weight, and he wakes up and he goes, Eureka,
(20:55):
what a satisfying feeling. That must have been, just just
the idea of of of making order out of chaos
and then waking up and having an actual concrete idea
from that. That's that's awesome. There's a I don't have
the exact story here, but you can look it up.
This will be an adventure for everyone watching. There's a
dream about a scientist who was attempting to work on dogs,
(21:17):
performing surgery on dogs. Um. I don't know exactly what
what his end goal was, but he had this dream
about a specific surgery that he wasn't planning on doing,
and then he wrote down all of the information from
his dream, attempted these surgery and he ended up discovering
insulin is pretty insane. Thank goodness that he did so,
(21:42):
and that he had a wonderful dream. Yeah, that's amazing, right,
this is um this leads us to this is a tangent.
I don't know if we we should delve into it,
but it leads to one of the questions that I
know a lot of us will have listening to this today,
which is, is it possible to oh spoilers, Okay, no,
let's save it for the end. We have to practice
(22:04):
linear time for this. So I have I have questions
for you guys that I've cat to be Yeah, So
so we'll get our questions in. At the end, we
know we we've painted a pretty good picture here, right.
Evolutionary theory suggests that basically dreams function as a safe
way to learn maybe right, so I can I can
(22:25):
figure out things without physically harming myself the way that
I could be in danger in the real world. So,
if you think about it, we all kind of have
this hollow deck in our head and we just run
scenarios until we wake up physically harm yourself or maybe
burn bridge, you know, with a colleague. Maybe you have
a dream where you get to yell at somebody that
(22:47):
you're dealing with some resentment towards, and then you wake
up and you feel like you've worked that out sort
of like a simulation where you've you know, gotten to
beat the crap out of you know, like a doll
with this person's face on, and then you feel better
so that you don't actually do it in real life.
Is that a thing people do? Do you know? It's
I just came up with it. It should be Why
(23:07):
why shouldn't it be? I guess it is better than
hitting hitting in person? You get a do you get
a different doll every time, or you just switch the face.
It's just gotta sleeve like a face shaped sleeve, or
you to slide in a new picture, you know, uh,
and you can dress it up in the types of
clothes that person might wear. You know. It's a commitment,
but it's you know, yeah, yeah, I think so, yeah,
(23:32):
except in places where really swell gels, like Norway. But
Norway is um, I'll clean up this background here, but
I'm I'm in the process of fixing some stuff up,
and I realized that currently the place I record is
not as nice as a Norwegian prison, but a lot
of places where people live in the US or not
(23:53):
to your point, noll uh, that's I'm gonna think about
that I'm going to think about, like, what kind of
all is it less creepy if you catch someone with
the real doll and they say, no, this is not
for sexual purposes. I put other people's faces on it
because I dislike other people and I just want to
beat something that feels like I'm realistically beating something right now.
(24:15):
It's not a sex thing. I think the safe way
to get around that is just to use those we
were those wwf uh slam dolls that were like, you know,
the Ultimate Warrior and whole COVID and they were a
little small kind of body pillow things and slam them
around or whatever. There's a name for him. But maybe
keep them like not life size. That would probably keep
people from looking at skance at you. We're not talking
(24:37):
about stuff that happened in the we are a little
bit the real world. We're talking about um working things
out in in your in your brain while you're not
fully awake, and that could involve working things out that
are like either too painful or just too like weird
to get into when you're awake. Maybe you have a
hard time wrapping your brain around it. But you need
to process these things, whatever they might be and so
(24:59):
this is your brain's way like forcing you to address
some of these things that maybe you're not equipped to
do so mentally when you're when you're awake. Yeah, and
this is strange because we can also see that dreams
do have the capability to warn us of things, and
maybe not in the way that we might initially suspect.
There was a two thousand ten study in the journal
(25:22):
Neurology which shows that some violent dreams may actually be
very very early warning signs of growing brain disorders, the
very dangerous ones like dementia or Parkinson's. And when we
say early warning signs here the study, uh, the study
appears to indicate that certain frequencies of violent dreams maybe
(25:46):
predicting a brain disorder malfunction up to a decade out,
which is which is nuts. And also I think that's
kind of dangerous. That's the kind of thing that you
you know, you look up on web MD if you've
had a nightmare and you think, oh, I'm gonna die.
At least this time it wasn't cancer, because as we
know web MD, it's cancer. Cancer. Yeah. Yeah, No, I mean,
(26:10):
like I I have violent dreams occasionally, but I also
watched a lot of horror movies and occasionally eat spicy
food before bad So I do think when I saw
that stat bend Um, it did give me pause. But
is this specifically violence? You doing violence or just any
form of violent imagery in your dreams. We'll think about
(26:32):
threat like physically thrashing for instance, where you know your
brain body connection hasn't completely switched off, which is also
you know something that happens with sleep paralysis. Yeah, but
I I would say also that is in That is
a fascinating study, but it's not. It's not hard proof.
(26:53):
So just because you're having nightmares does not mean that
you have cognitive woes in the future. No more so
than the average person. But everybody, everybody knows that may
have felt a bit like a beta switch on our part,
because when we say dreams might warn you of things,
(27:13):
what are we really talking about? What is the elephant
in the room that so many mice are confusing for
five different forms of life? It is this. You or
someone you know, regardless of whether they consider themselves a
skeptic or a quote unquote true believer, has at some
point in their life had a dream that they could
not explain, A vision that, for instance, inspired someone to
(27:35):
take a different route to work on the morning of
a horrific traffic accident, or a simple compulsion to react
to a trigger, something as elementary as I go inside
immediately when I see the woman with the red hat,
and then boom, you go inside. And just as you
go inside, I don't know, we're making stuff up, so
(27:56):
wishes or horses here, just as you go inside, a
gigantic piano slams down from the second floor of that building,
and you would have been standing in the spot where
it hits fascinating slippery slope. Are these warnings from the
mental process we don't fully understand? Uh? Is it just coincidence?
Is there something more to the story? Can dreams predict
(28:18):
the future? Will? We'll do our best to look at this.
After a word from our sponsor, here's where it gets crazy. Yeah. So,
I mean, for for most of modern history that there's
been this kind of notion of psychic abilities, precognition, being
(28:43):
able to see the future, tell people's fortunes, all of that,
you know, from that explainable kind of huckster side of things.
There's fiction, the realm of ghost stories and sci fi. Uh.
And then there's, of course the religious, or even separate
from religious, spiritual side of it all that. Yeah, And
you know, science essentially looks at things like this where
(29:07):
we don't fully understand yet. They look at it as
there is a mundane reason for this to occur. Just
because we don't know what it is. Doesn't mean that
it's supernatural, doesn't mean that our brains are connecting into
a time slip somewhere or a stream of whatever. It
just means that we don't know what's happening yet. And
(29:28):
that's all. That's all that it means and us. Science,
when it is done well, is able to admit when
it's wrong. Science is able to learn from itself, like
the best of human beings are able to do as individuals. Science,
like history, is one long ongoing conversation. It refers back
(29:48):
to earlier points. Do we orbit the sun? Does the
Sun orbit us? It challenges these points, and often it
disproves itself unapologetically at a future date. How could this
rock possibly injure me from way over, way over I'm
way I'm standing way over here and this rock as
(30:09):
we over here? How is that thing causing me cancer? Yes?
I thought you just meant like, you know, how does
it injure you when someone like throws it at your head? Oh?
That too? Propulsion. It's just a rock with like a
bad vibe. It's a downer rock, you know what I mean.
It's like emotionally an abusive rock to see. Well, speaking
(30:32):
of speaking of downers, we we should probably get the
downer version of this explanation kind of out of the way, right, Yeah, yeah,
you're right, Noel, Let's let's go to the ones that
the uh probably the first two that people think of
and should think of. The first is the C word
(30:53):
for today's show, coincidence. There are a ton of people
living on earth right now. It's a long time tradition.
On this show, we're pulling up the current world population,
which is seven billion, eight hundred and six million, uh
seventy one thousand, nine hundred and fifty eight nine sixty one. Like, look,
(31:17):
there are a lot of people, that's what we're saying.
And the vast majority of those people they all dream,
most of them in one way or another. Most people, also,
by the way, do not dream in black and white.
That is another myth to bust. There are also tons
and tons of people who lived and died before we
ever recorded this podcast, before podcast we're a thing, before
(31:39):
I don't know, before hula hoops were a thing. There
are a ton of yes there, there's so many dead
people that precede our stories in the world in which
we live today. And all of those people, or at
least the vast majority, experienced a dream, right, experienced multiple
dreams every night, every single night. So think, well, yeah,
(32:00):
I mean, but like, you know, I was watching a
YouTube video of I forget the guy's name, but he's
a lucid dreaming guy, and he had this is sort
of his whole point. He had the world population taking
away on on the screen and was just talking about
how he's like, let's do a more conservative estimate. Let's
count out everyone that has insomnia, you know, or like
kids that maybe aren't interpreting their dreams correctly or whatever.
(32:21):
And you know, you could maybe lower that number, it
was still you know, a massive, massive number. And so
it starts to become like dice rolls, right, Like every
time someone's dreaming, it's the roll of the dice. And
a lot of stuff happens, a lot of news, a
lot of bad news, a lot of things that we
are worried about that, We think about that, we um
(32:41):
commiserate over what will happen? Will there be a tanker accident?
Will there be a horrible plane crash? And sometimes those
things align right, Yeah, And you know, I think the
focus can can get pretty sharp here when you talk about,
let's see an important factory to the town where you live, right,
(33:02):
you know, maybe you're thinking about a lot. Maybe your
family has worked at that factory for a long time,
maybe you work there, um, and then something bad occurs
at that factory because there's a ton of mechanical equipment
and something goes wrong. Um, it may make you feel
as though you had a precognitive vision of something, even
if it even if your dream occurred months ago before
(33:24):
the accident, you still might remember it. But you know
that that's that's at least the way science would would
put a wet blanket, and you prize the details, right,
The things that are relevant are the things you remember.
The things that are irrelevant are cast aside, and then
you you every time you remember this, Just like in
our episodes on Deceptive Bread, the narrative, the story, the
(33:46):
details of your memory alter ever so slightly to fall
increasingly in line with what you think happened, and time
it doesn't matter, right, there's no there's no methodology, of course,
it's like a form of confirmation bias, right. You You
just highlight the bits that support your thesis. You know,
you need to explain something, and you have this little
(34:07):
inkling of a dream, of a piece of a dream,
of a fragment of a dream. God knows how much
of it you're actually even remembering. It just happens to
line up with that detail, and you're like, ah, yes,
I predicted this, this was meant to be, This was
destined or something, you know. And and that means that
what we see is precognition is just sort of a
magic trick we're playing on ourselves. If you're watching the video,
(34:29):
you're doing something like this, but you think it really
is your finger and how are you doing that? I
don't I don't understand what I'm looking at. How you
can you do the one where it's like, yeah, that's
like it. I like it, Witchcraft. I showed my son
that after you did it for me. It's one of
(34:50):
his favorite things. It's a cool move. It's a super
cool move. Can I can I really quickly ask you
guys opinion about something like this that that did happen
to me really quickly. It's very strang range, nothing significant,
nothing like a factory explosion or a plane crash or anything.
But I used to intern at this recording studio in Athens, Georgia,
and there was this um woman, a young woman who
(35:12):
also worked there. And I never actually met her, but
I always heard her name because it was a really
cool name. Her name was Bennett Moon, and I just
love that name, and I thought it was just really
memorable to me. And I hadn't thought about Bennett Moon
in a long long time, uh, for whatever reason. And
I had this very specific dream where I met Bennett
Moon was a person that I had never actually met,
(35:33):
but I was aware, like the periphery of this person.
And literally the next day, I'm listening to wait Waite,
don't tell Me on NPR and they have the call
in thing at the end, and who's the call in person?
But Bennett Moon from Athens, Georgia, And it's it's the
same person. It is this person, no question about it.
Never heard her voice in my life, never actually met her,
(35:55):
just knew of her that she kind of she had
a shared experience that was we never actually crossed paths.
It isn't that weird, Yeah, But I mean, at the
end of the day, I can chuck that up to coincidence.
It's not like it was predicting anything exactly. But it's
a pretty interesting game of odds there, you know, and
if if, if this is our brain just kind of
playing a trick on ourselves and the party, Meaning that
(36:16):
was a pretty pretty big one. It wasn't like I
was like blown away or felt like I was seeing
the hand of God or anything, but I did feel
like I was experiencing something, you know what I mean,
I don't know. Yeah, there's a there's another it's still
kind of a downer, but it's a little bit less
of a downer that that may help explain that. Let's
call it playing the probability game. So we're all familiar, Yeah,
(36:39):
we're all familiar with Carl Young. Uh, we're all familiar
with archetypes, these ideas of the super consciousness and so on.
But we don't really need that yet to talk about
dreams in this way. So if coincidence is a lottery,
then the probability game is kind of uh, kind of
(37:01):
your your brain playing clue in a couple of ways.
So this may apply to your anecdote. They are an
old because Carl Young makes a great point about the
perceived precognitive capacity of some dreams. Uh, we didn't want
to paraphrase demand, so we we just pulled the quote.
It's smart. It sounds smart because he wrote it. That's right. Yeah, Uh,
(37:25):
you wanna give it to us? Oh? Yes, the occurrence
of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It would be wrong
to call them prophetic because at bottom, they are no
more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or a weather forecast.
They are merely an anticipatory combination of probabilities which may
coincide with the actual behavior of things, but need not
(37:48):
necessarily agree in every detail confirmation. So what's so can
we unpack like the difference or the distinction between prospective
and prophetic. Sure? Yeah, the perspective dream would be the
the sum of your sensory information, your memory, often short term,
(38:11):
sometimes long term. Uh, you're fleeting ephemeral impressions all mashed together,
like that horrible stuff called neutral loaf that they used
to feed prisoners in the US. And maybe still do
you know if you want like a slightly more pleasant
sure or salad if you want something healthier as well.
(38:32):
So so this is all this is all mixed up.
And from this our subconscious, which doesn't function with some
of the same uh socially imposed constraints or ego imposed
constraints that our consciousness uh functions with our our subconscious
is able to aggregate these things and make a an
(38:54):
analysis a gues estimate. So a prospective dream is the
subconscious is saying this, this, this, and this are crazy connected. Therefore,
I think here's the room that this road leads us to.
So that's the idea. The idea there is that for
(39:15):
young a dream may only be prophetic if every detail
of the dream matches every detail of the bit, the scene,
the event in the waking world. Wait, so is he
acknowledging that this is possible or is he just setting
up a standard that's like impossible to meet. That's a
good question. He is primarily implying, at least the way
(39:38):
that I interpret it, that we are underestimating the intelligence
of our subconsciousness, because you know, we are very unappreciative
of our brains. I had to cut a line out
here at some point. But it's like the brain works
so hard you're asleep and you're still breathing. That's amazing
and the brain is doing that. But but that's what
(39:59):
he's saying. He's saying that we're kind of short changing
our own mental abilities, our own pattern recognition, really, uh,
and that we only notice this amazing ability when we
get something super weirdly specifically correct, and then we're like, WHOA,
maybe I I have superpowers. I have superpowers, and they
(40:21):
are entirely related to my ability to know which song
I'm gonna hear on the radio two days from now,
which is a tremendously common thing, especially with music, or
your ability to all of a sudden recognize Benett Moon. Yeah,
I been itt by the way, seriously, I hope I
hope she listens to the show. I gotta say that
that was That was one of those moments that that
I was like, is this real? Like I really had
(40:44):
to kind of do a double take, like a spit take,
where I was like, how how don't understand what I'm
experiencing right now? Um? And uh. There are some other
examples of this throughout history that I think would cause
even the most skeptical person to ask that very same question.
Oh yeah, you, I mean you could go on other
(41:04):
channels on YouTube and find lists of these kinds of things.
Shout out to Matthew Santauro, So I see you, man.
He gave a great example of Abraham Lincoln that I
had never heard about before. So I headed over to
history dot com just to learn a little more about it. Allegedly,
this is the way the story goes. Just a couple
(41:26):
of days before Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, he told his
wife Mary Todd and his friend Ward hill Lamon about
this dream that he had just had. And in this dream,
he's I believe he's there at the White House and
the Oval Office are near there, and he is he
sees all of these mourners. He sees a casket. He
(41:47):
sees like important members of his like inner circle, and
they're all mourning the death of the president. But he says,
according to the story, he didn't recognize himself in the
casticket in the casket. It wasn't him, so he wasn't
worried about it. He didn't believe that he was having
some kind of prophetic dream or precognitive dream that was
(42:08):
going to foretell his death. But uh, he did get assassinated,
if you I think it was very soon after. I
heard another version of the story where like he was
telling this to his bodyguard and and like saying, um
that Lamon is his was his part time bodyguard, his friend, right,
But but he would say like usually he would say
good night Laman or whatever, but this time he said goodbye.
(42:32):
And he told him like, I had this dream and
I'm worriou something's going to happen in the theater tonight.
And he and he was like, well, he shouldn't go,
Mr President, he said, but I'm meeting my wife there.
I don't want to disappoint her, so I must go.
And then like he he said goodbye for the first
time ever instead of you know, goodnight, which whatever. It's
it's an interesting detail. Here's why it's a little weird
because Lamon is the guy who told this story. So
(42:55):
Lincoln was assassinated April four, eight sixty five. And this
concept that there was a dream that was told to
Mary Todd and Laman didn't come out for at least
fifteen years, if if not longer, And it was allegedly
told by Laman based on notes that he took in
eighteen sixty, so who who knows if it's real or not. UM.
(43:21):
But there's another interesting fact. The cabinet that worked with
Abraham Lincoln were aware that he did seem to put
a lot of importance on his dreams, that that he
would have you tell him about it. Will pause for
a word from our sponsor, but please stay away. We'll
(43:41):
be back soon. And we're back with more on precognitive dreams.
Like a lot of us, I grew up reading these
sorts of stories, often in time life books. Uh. This
point was just make him a sponsor. But these stories
(44:03):
have grains of truth, which I think you've done a
fantastic job of outlining. And then they also get carried
over and embellished, you know, and in in UM television
series like Unsolved Mysteries or anything on the History Channel
after about ten PM back in the day. Uh. And
and this the thing that's interesting about that is it's
(44:27):
often used that tendency is often used by skeptics as
a way to entirely discredit the anecdote, right, or keep
raising the bar of proof until proof is something that
can never be attained. But it's it's almost enough for
an entire episode on its own, The other worldly quote
(44:49):
unquote psychic experiences of world leaders. Churchill said that he
heard a golden voice since he was a child, and
said later that it's saved his life until actually until um,
even around World War two or so, until the World
War two years, it was incredibly common for Western leaders
(45:12):
to be pretty open about what they saw as a
connection with some sort of other side. Uh, and it
faded now or it's it's uh, it's a bit in
the dull drums now, because I imagine that a lot
of people feel they would not be taken seriously if
they said, hey, I am from a family that has
(45:32):
precognitive dreams. I have precognitive dreams. Also I should be
in charge of nuclear weapons. It doesn't track right. It's
it's seen as a blow to credibility rather than just
a part of someone's individual human experience. But we know
it's not. These people who are recounting these things are
not chumps, they're not unintelligent people. I think you had
(45:53):
a you had another example, Matt also an American and
also a pretty smart guy. You love him or hate him? Yeah,
I found a story about Samuel Clemons just right rifling
through the internet, and it comes from Life on the Mississippi,
which is Samuel Clemons or Mark Twain's autobiography. It's fascinating.
(46:15):
So he was, uh, Sam, Sam, I don't I don't
like calling that. Mark Twain was working on a steamboat
called the Pennsylvania and he had arranged for his younger brother,
guy named Henry, to also get a job there. He
was going to I think what did they call it.
(46:36):
It's a really interesting job, a mud clerk on the Pennsylvania,
which is the steamboat. And um, there's this whole situation
where the captain insulted Henry for some reason and Mark
Twain heard about it. There was a whole fight that
resulted in Mark Twain just being banned from the boat
(47:00):
where his brother was working. Right, So, out of just
the set of circumstances, Mark Twain got kicked off of
this boat that he was on and his brother is
still there. So then at some point Mark Twain lays down,
he has a dream, and inside this dream he sees
his brother Henry in a coffin and there are a
(47:22):
lot of specifics about it. Um, I've heard that he
was wearing one of Mark Twain's own suits. But one
of the most important things about this dream was that
there was a specific set of white flowers laid down
on to Henry's coffin where he was laying, and with
a single red flower in the middle. Right. That's exactly
(47:43):
what it is. So what very very strong image that
was left on Mark Twain even after he awoke. And
obviously you know that kind of dream you dream about
a loved one who dies that's going to be affecting
in some way or another. And so there were there
were different details here which would be of interest to
(48:04):
anyone agreeing with the beliefs of Carl Young or the
beliefs as laid out in in today's episode. Uh. He
had some specific details that appeared to be correct, things
that were unusual, like a metallic often. This is also
for anyone else who who read the incredibly unedited autobiography
(48:30):
of Mark Twain, where some of this is pulled from.
I just want to I just want to let you
know I'm right there with you in solidarity. Even great
writers need editors, even just good editors. It's a very
very long book. He's dictating it on his deathbed. And
the reason I'm bringing that up is because he may
have fallen victim to something known as retrospective conviction, which
(48:54):
is what we're talking about earlier, when we alter our
own memories by remembering those memories. However, like you said, Matt,
he he says he had never had any doubts since
he had had that dream, that it was predictive. He
can remember everything very, very vividly. So Mark Twain has
(49:16):
to leave the boat. His brother is still on it,
and later on he gets word that a boiler has
in fact exploded on this steamboat and his brother in
inhaled a bunch of steam and it actually burned his
lungs and he's in he's in the hospital. So Mark Twain,
you know, obviously makes his he stops what he's doing.
(49:38):
He makes his way to the hospital where his brother is.
It's in Memphis, Tennessee. And when Sam gets there, the
doctors um tell him that his brother is in absolutely
terrible pain, but he's going to be fine. He just
scalded his lungs a little bit. He's going to recover.
Don't worry about it, uh Sam. They wouldn't have called
him Mark Twain. They didn't know that name. Listen, here,
(50:00):
Mark Twain, brother's gonna be just fine. Yeah. Um, but Sam,
you know, uh, a caring brother says, well, there must
be something you can do to make him feel a
little better, Like, look at him. He's obviously in pain.
You know, he's in pain. Let's do something about it.
And according to Sam himself, he convinces the doctor to
(50:21):
give his brother a shot of morphine. And the doctor
is supposedly inexperienced with this type of drug and overdoses
Henry and and Henry unfortunately passes away. I thought he
died from the blast and I didn't realize that. That's
that's extra tragic and unexpected. Wow. Yeah, and you know again,
(50:46):
according to Sammy never forgave himself for this fact. But
the strangest part is that at the actual funeral of
his brother Henry, he noticed some things that reminded him
of the dream he had had where what the what
the coffin looked like, the suit that his brother was wearing,
and the most important fact, the most important similarity perhaps
(51:09):
were a a bouquet of white flowers with a single
red rose in the center that was laid down on
to his brother Henry. That's like the end of a
ghost store. It's like a twist ending dude. And then
it took the ribbon off and her head fell off
like that, and there was a single red rose. Burr
don't like that. He also told this story around seventy
(51:32):
or eighty times, by his own admission, and when he
was performing this story at the Monday Evening Club, as
was called in four UH, the the incident, I believe
if I'm thinking of the right one without without pulling
out that brick of a book, I believe it. He
(51:55):
was telling this story several years later, and someone called
Reverend Burton, Reverend Dr Burton, just for extra accolades, asked
Twain if he had told it multiple times. He said, yes,
seventy or eighty, and Burton pointed out that is likely,
or it's very possible for someone with the best of
(52:17):
intentions to embellish a story over the years. Twain stuck
to his guns. I don't think any of it is embroidery,
he had replied. I think it is all just as
I've stated it, detail by detail. Yes, the man wrote fiction,
and wrote uh an enormous amount of fiction, so he's
no stranger to spinning a tale. However, In the case
(52:40):
of Mark Twain, I would point out that he appears
to have predicted his own death without taking his own hand.
He was born on November five, two weeks after Hayley's
comments Reach the Brillion where it's the point nearest the sun.
This is apply point in an awesome claymation filled with
(53:02):
some very disturbing depictions of the devil. I recommend checking
it out on YouTube. In his autobiography in nineteen o nine,
he said, I came in with Haley's comment at eighteen
thirty five. It's coming again next year. I expect to
go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment
of my life if I don't go out with Haley's comment.
So he went on about it. Um so that's a
(53:25):
little different, because is that precognition or is that just
him being very stubborn and saying I want to go
out with a power move. But to your point, Matt, yes,
it is tremendously I think it's I think it would
surprise people to learn how common it is for people
that you would associate with great success, people that you
(53:47):
would associate with great power UH to to believe in
predictive UH precognitive or even prophetic dreams. Maybe they don't
talk about it as much now, you know, maybe they
are not recounting strange stories of their family or their
(54:08):
personal experience. And if so, there's probably a reason. It's
because they feel like they will be resigned to the
rubbish heap of the current day. And that's a real
valid concern. But I would imagine, you know, world leaders
listening in the audience today that, yeah, that you two
have had a dream or four or Baker's dozen or
(54:31):
nineteen that you yourself cannot explain to this day. It
is a very common thing. It is a very common thing. Yeah, yeah, no,
it's true. Uh. And I mean I don't know up
to this point in the in the show, I hope
it doesn't sound like we're poo pooing any of these things.
I think we've all acknowledged the whole way that the
brain is a very under understood that's a redundant. But
(54:54):
I'm still gonna go with the thing. Um, I have
I have not proofrood this. I've just said out. I'm
building a case that unfortunately we're not getting trying to
get to in in a very ham fisted way. Um,
This is one of those ones where we like just
look at the clock and we're like, man, we've got
so much more left to go and some really good, amazing,
(55:15):
juicy science based stuff. Um, but I think we're gonna
save that for a part two because there's really enough
there to to give you another really um substantial episode
out of this topic. Yes, so you will have to
stay tuned, But for now, why don't you write to us?
Tell us about your dreams, tell us about something maybe
(55:36):
you've predicted, or a strange thing that's happened within your
family or a friend or a loved one. You can
find us on Facebook and on Twitter, where we are
a conspiracy stuff show. You can also uh find us
on social media and the usual spots or Facebook where
Instagram we're we're not pinterious. We fought back and we
we we we fought the law and the law did
(55:58):
not win. We won that one, but who knows anything
could happen. Um, we are conspiracy or conspiracy Stuff show
and most of the usual spots Twitter as well. Uh.
If you don't want to do that, you can go
to Facebook where we have a really dope Facebook group
called Here's where it Gets Crazy. It's super easy to
get in. Just name you know anybody involved in the show,
or a topic or whatever you want, just so we
(56:19):
know that you're actually real, um and and you're in
a lot of cool conversations there and meme exchanges and
a good group of folks on Here's where it gets crazy.
What else can they do? You can give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three s T d
W y t K. If you don't like social media,
if you don't like uh, if you don't cotton to
(56:41):
calling on the phone, but you have a story to
tell us, and I expect many of us in the
audience do have a story to share today. Please, please, please,
always remember that there is one last way you can
contact us any old time and day or night, the
waking world or the world of dreams. You can send
us a good old ash and email caveat asterix. If
(57:03):
you dream about sending us an email, just to make
sure it does go through, send one while you're awake
as well. Where we are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com.
(57:32):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio Welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They call
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super
producer Paul Mission controlled decond. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't
want you to know. Let's begin today's episode, which gets
very strange, with a question, fellow listeners, what's the most
(00:48):
vivid dream you've ever experienced? You know, for many people,
this answer will come to your mind immediately in a
flash of images, sensations, or emotion that are often almost
indistinguishable from experiences in the waking world. Before the dawn
of recorded history, these things called dreams haunted us, They inspired, terrified,
(01:12):
and guided our ancestors. And dreams, you know, everyone knows
they're often central plot points and ancient myths. And who hasn't,
of course, heard the more modern tales of the visionary
scientists and inventor and artist, a writer or someone receiving
inspiration and suddenly solving a problem in a dream and
having a real solution to a problem when they wake up.
(01:35):
Long story short, dreams have been pivotal throughout the span
of human existence, and we still don't understand them. We
still don't completely get what's happening with dreams. We know
they tell us about the past, we know they re
contextualize the present, but could they also tell us about
the future? Here are the facts, you know. I don't
(01:55):
want to lose any time here, but I have a
reoccurring dream when I'm very stressed out where I am
physically jumping across asteroids that are flowing at me, or
like moving towards me. Do you guys have any like
stressed dreams that you've ever had like that? Or maybe
asitive dude, I have this recurring dream where I'm like
(02:16):
I've made it, my band has made it, and we're
like playing before you know, the biggest crowd I've ever
seen in the entire history of playing music, and I
don't know any of the songs. I'm like dreadfully underprepared,
or maybe like I'm in the arcade fire cool and
I just just freeze. I don't know any of the songs.
I have that dream a lot. What does it mean, guys?
What does it mean? Well, hopefully today we're gonna find out,
(02:38):
because we do know what dreams are. At least we
have a pretty good understanding of what they are. A
fancy way to phrase it would be something like, dreams
are patterns of information, specifically something that we have taken
in as sensory information, and the dream occurs when the
brain is in a resting state and somehow using this
(03:00):
information and making essentially a story or at least patterns
from it. And if we want to be a little
more blunt about it, dreams are hallucinations. They take every
box for everything that's ever been described as a hallucination.
And we've talked about it in previous episodes, But if
you describe the process of dreaming or even just sleeping
(03:22):
to some life form that had never encountered it, it
sounds so bizarre. We've just all sort of accepted that
anywhere from four to eight hours out of every twenty
four hours, we will uh, we will pass out, our
bodies will be useless, will go into some weird other world,
and then we gain control of our body again, and
(03:44):
everybody acts like nothing happened. It's odd right, And every
once in a while we encounter shadow people that want
to thwart our plans of living. Those pesky shadow people
always trying to suffocate us in our sleep. That's no fun. Um.
But we're talking specifically today. But I don't know, Ben,
you have this really great uh analogy for dreams is
(04:05):
the idea of like your brain kind of as a
hard drives, sort of like sorting out the bits or
like defragging, like kind of cleaning out the cobwebs. I
guess of the day, and subconsciously maybe doing some internal
problem solving. Even if it's not like you wake up
with some kind of ah ha moment, it is somehow
doing some good for you, like in terms of you know,
(04:26):
maybe uncluttering your subconscious Let's say, is that about the
span of it, Ben? Yeah? Yeah. Before we jump to
you know, the kind of theories that we have about
dreams because we don't know what they are, let's bust
one myth really quick. We've all heard that dreams only
occurred arenas specific phase of sleep r e M. Great
(04:46):
band Uh. The phrase r e M stands for rapid
eye movement. It's like the fifth stage of sleep. That's
where the dreams are supposed to happen. However, we know
that multiple studies have shown maybe we dream mainly in
the r M phase, but we also dream in other phases.
We can't be the dream process cannot be quite as
(05:08):
easily categorized as we would like, and that's where the
theories come in. So one of those leading theories their
loads and loads of great research pieces on dreams. One
of those theories is just what you described, that dreams
are a part of memory processing, meaning that it helps
us consolidate things we've learned while also transferring our short
(05:29):
term memory to our long term memory storage. So yes,
I think the analogy holds that to me, it seems
like a good description is the brains defragging the hard drive.
But then again, is the brain the hard drive? What
what's doing the defragging? Is that the software? Is that
the consciousness? This this gets very strange, very quickly, but yeah,
(05:52):
it in that concept. It says, though, all of those
connections that your neurons have made, it's solidifying that right
if they're necessary, And it's almost like the brain itself
is trying to decide what's important. It's really weird. It's
weird to think about your brain uh in the in
its unconscious state doing one of the most important things
(06:14):
that you can imagine, figuring out what you actually learned
and what you should remember, or or how you actually
feel about things. Sometimes I mean, like, perhaps my recurring
dream about being unprepared is a signal or a symptom
of me feeling overwhelmed at certain times. I don't have
this dream all the time, but when I do have
the dream, I think it's a product of me maybe
(06:36):
feeling a little under water with work or a little
bit like I'm out of my depth or something, or
like I kind of am a little bit of drift
and maybe need a little bit of a course correction.
So they can be interesting when you have these over
and over, you're like, oh, maybe this is a signal
pointing towards something that's really a great observation, because another
thing it could be is really just a problem solving
activity that your brain goes through a way to go
(06:59):
through it is difficult, complicated things that you know are
more deeply psychological. Then then perhaps you appreciated in the
moment um and to get balanced back in a way
or two to maybe put things in the right perspective
for you. But at the end of the day, it's
all just chemicals, right Like, it's all just firing neurons
(07:20):
and you know, electrical impulses bouncing around. Yeah, but that's
like saying that music is only math, you know what
I mean. It's a massive perspective. I I think I
think that's an important theory to bring up as well. Uh.
The bit more, I wouldn't say reductionists, but the theory
that wants to remove the concept of consciousness from the
(07:43):
equation and says that dreams are simply the brain responding
to uh, an array of biochemical changes and electrical pulses
that impulses that fire as you are asleep, whatever you
might be. The dream then is seen as nothing more
than a side effect, right like Uh, like sunsets look pretty,
(08:08):
but that wasn't part of some grand plan. This argument says,
it's just a a a very small side effect of
gravity and orbit. So we have these theories and they
all The thing is that none of them, on the
outset seem just straight wrong, none of them seem demonstrably incorrect.
(08:31):
They just seem like the old adage of the mice
describing an elephant, right, you know, different micey, different parts
of the elephant. They think it's a bunch of different
objects instead of one large thing. We do, luckily know
on numerous levels what happens when we dream. Every dream
(08:52):
you have has some of the same guide post. We
tend to be the main characters of our own lives
and our dreams. Just as in the aching world, you
are in your dreams. Even when you feel like you're
watching something happen, You're in it. Things are happening, You're
taking actions. The environment, the reality of the dream is
responding to your actions, and in the universe of the dream,
(09:17):
those responses and those actions they make sense. This is
not really the case once you wake up and you think, wow,
my um. You know, like my great aunt has been
dead for years, she never played the oboe, and I
have never been to Portugal. But they're like, how come
(09:37):
when I eat a chocolate covered pretzel in the real world,
it's delicious treat, But in a dream, all my teeth
fall out and I'm naked in front of a high
school gym of my peers and they're all laughing at me.
Why are they laughing at me? Or like in the
far side. One of the one of the greatest modern
American comic strips, uh, the the recurrent fear of showing
(09:59):
up to a lecture without one's duck. That's a that's
a deep cut for folks. But but yeah, that it
is true. These things have an internal logic. And if
you practice dream journaling, which can be a tremendously useful
psychological tool, then what you'll notice when you try to
write out the plot points of your dreams is that
things change, especially scenery. I didn't I didn't talk about
(10:23):
any of my recurrent dreams because they're weird. They kind
of all occur in the same universe, and things that
happen in one affect things in the other. Um, it's
like cinematic dream universe. It's not as cool as it sounds. Man,
that's pretty cool. I don't know, it's not as cool
as it sounds. But but we all But the thing is,
(10:44):
it makes sense when you're in the moment, right, Like
of course, my teeth falling out, That is a tremendously
common uh dream trope, especially in the West. Maybe it's
maybe has something to do with dentists, maybe has something
to do with the write of passage we experience when
our baby teeth fall out. But yeah, yeah, so it's
(11:06):
kind of programmed into us. But when we think about it,
when we're awake, all of our thoughts have a kind
of familiar logic to them. Right, I did A because
I want B or I did see because someone is
going to do D later. And our brain, which is
hugely underrated in the in the sort of avengers of
(11:27):
our body. Our brain is always working through all this
internal external stimuli. And your brain, like your heart, uh,
once it starts going, it doesn't get a break. It's
not supposed to get a break until you die. If
your brain or your heart stop doing what they do,
getting down how they get down, then you are very
(11:50):
much in trouble. So when you're when you're asleep, your
brain is still active. The brain is like the great
white shark of the body. You know, if it stops
then it dies. Um. And that's because of a couple
of things. So that the brain is divided into segments.
As we know, we've got the limbic system in the
mid brain, which deals with emotion in both waking and
(12:12):
dreaming states. It's interesting there these these parts kind of
have shared responsibilities, and they do similar functions when you're
awake and when you're asleep, and that includes the amygdala,
which is particularly active when you're in a dream state. Right,
and then we've got the cortex. The cortex is what
(12:32):
if the cortex had a job, If your dreams were
of soulless corporation, and the cortex was an employee of
your dreams, then it would have the title content creator,
which is not not a not a favorite title of mine.
So the reason that's important is everything that your cortex does,
your cortex rights and directs uh your dreams right comes
(12:56):
up with the plotlines. Everything you feel, from floating in
a vast, unnowable ocean to flying to jumping from one
impossible across one impossible chasm to another. All the people
you meet, all the monsters that chase you, they all
come from your cortex. And the visual cortex right there
the back of your brain, if you're human, when you're
(13:16):
listening to this is especially active because we are such,
you know, visual creatures, kind of the way that dogs
that dogs are olfactory creatures. This made me wonder. I
don't have the science on it yet, but I wonder
if dogs mainly dream and smell. Well. It's interesting too
because I never really recall sounds from dreams, and and
I know that's that's a thing that happens. There's even
(13:38):
a story Paul McCartney says that he came up with
the melody to I Believe yesterday in a dream and
he woke up and he had this melody, and he said,
and being a musical dude, I don't think I've ever
dreamt of a melody. I think of it as a
very specifically in the realm of visual hallucinatory kind of state,
you know. So I think that's pretty special for Paul
(13:58):
to come out of a dream date with that melody.
Have you guys ever dreamt sounds or remembered sounds from
a dreamy happen at all? I have several highly talkative
monsters that inhabit my dreamscape. UM, very talkative and then
fascinating uh vocalizations. I highly recommend checking out one of
(14:22):
these if you get a chance, one of these mad brains.
Oh yeah, just hot back there and my, oh my
under lit Jim Bay look at that. Uh so, you
know it's fascinating that you're talking about that. The Cordex been.
I think it's You're absolutely right. The cortex is the
reason why we're almost It feels a lot of times
(14:44):
for me and maybe a lot of others that you're
kind of just a passenger in your dreams. Like you're moving,
you're going places, you're seeing things, things are changing, but
you just kind of accept it. You just kind of
go with it. You're just heading in that direction, unless,
of course, you've unlocked. You know, the ability to is
a dream, which is a whole other thing. But one
of the reasons that it's the dreams are like that
(15:05):
is because these parts of our brain, the lobes that
are talked about so frequently, kind of the logic systems. Uh,
those are the least active parts of your brain when
you are dreaming, which it really explains why you know,
things don't feel so strange until you wake up. And
(15:25):
maybe it's also one of the main reasons you don't
remember too much. She never played the obo. I've never
been to Portugal. Uh, and you know, and if I
don't write it down in twenty three minutes, I'll forget dude.
But that, yeah, that's it. That's right. That's another thing,
Like I've never been a dream journalier, and there's it
has to be my dream has to pack such a
wallet for me to remember it at all. Um. But
(15:48):
when it does, I do, and they stick with me.
I remember them for many years. But typically unless you
write it down super quick, you're still in that kind
of like waking dreaming between state and then you kind
of lose it. Right, Are you guys good at remembering dreams?
What would you say your odds are or like in
terms of like waking up and being able to recall
specifics from a dream. I keep a note on my
(16:09):
phone and it's always right by my bed, and yeah,
constantly doing that. What about you? Ben? Uh? I I
don't necessarily think it's a good thing, but yes, yeah,
pretty um I I do. Um. Well, it's no secret
longtime listeners. I don't like sleep. I resent it. I
(16:30):
think that science should already be at the point like where,
you know, if I can call someone in freaking Bhutan
and talk to them in real time with something you know,
the size of an open hand, then I shouldn't have
to I shouldn't have to sleep. We should have figured
some some way around it. Someone to space, we said,
(16:52):
people to space. But then Ben, if if you do
have to sleep because unfortunately our analog bodies require it
for some dang reason. Uh, why not at least record
as much as you possibly can. One day we're gonna
be able to plug in somehow and just get that
(17:13):
stuff like roll on quick time while I'm dreaming, and uh,
I can't wait for that, dude, right man, There's there's
one thing that to add with that. Um. You know,
I I spent a lot of time researching kind of
what we talked about with lucid dreams, which is probably
a story for another day. But I I end up
getting a lot of work done in dreams. It feels
(17:37):
like I'm doing a lot of work. And then I
wake up and I think, oh, I gotta write this
amazing story down. And then I write it down, go
get some coffee or something. I come back and I'm like, Wow,
the most amazing part of this story is that I
thought it was good and because my frontal lobes were
turned off, right, um, And I think we I think
(17:57):
we do that a lot to your point, and all
about how how we process in dreams. Um, it's unless
people have you know, PTSD or some sort of um
condition that gives them violent, nightmarish, recurrent horrific visions every
time they sleep. Most people would prefer dreams to a
(18:19):
dreamless sleep, you know. Otherwise it's really disconcerting to have
everything go dark at say four fifty three a m.
And then wake up at um, I don't know to
thirty seven PM. I just sort of hope nothing important happened. So,
I mean, we we probably won't really truly be able
(18:39):
to answer definitively like why do we dream? We've got
some good theories, but there are experts in mental health
that that do believe that it's an important part of
maintaining some semblance of sanity or like self awareness or
understanding of ourselves. Um. But there's you know, not like
a definitive like this is what dreams are for, um,
but for of from people. There for a lot of things.
(19:01):
And like like I said, if you're Paul McCartney, it
makes you write a song that's been covered by over
three thousand artists and probably one of the most recognizable
songs in the history of recorded music. That's just my
hot take on on yesterday. But it's a thing that
came from a dream. Um. So they certainly have value.
I mean, so many artists recreate images from their dreams.
And to your point, then, whether I think you're selling
(19:22):
yourself short with the quality of your dream stories. But
they are things that you've pulled from a dream state
that you can then translate into the real world and
do something with their functional in that way. Yeah, I mean,
evolution is a brutal editor. So we know that uh,
dreams exist for some purpose, right, and it's probably not
a vestigil leaving of our earlier arboreal ancestors. But we
(19:49):
do know to your point, even if we can't fully
answer the question why when it comes to dreams, we
know they do inform the waking world. I mean we
have examples, Like just to rattle off a few examples. Um,
one of my favorites, there's a guy named Dmitri men
to leave, the guy who made the periodic table. He's
(20:11):
got an element named after him. He's legit his story.
His claim, which is very difficult to prove about how
he figured out the periodic table is that he was
going mad looking at all these mismatched cards that kind
of picture his version of index cards where he wrote
down everything he knew about an element. And he's like
(20:33):
having his Charlie Day conspiracy theory thing. He's trying to
have his beautiful mind moment, it doesn't make sense. The
guy passes out on top of these cards, and then
in a dream he watches them sort of get up
and dance around, and then they put themselves in order
of their atomic weight, and he wakes up and he goes, Eureka,
(20:55):
what a satisfying feeling. That must have been, just just
the idea of of of making order out of chaos
and then waking up and having an actual concrete idea
from that. That's that's awesome. There's a I don't have
the exact story here, but you can look it up.
This will be an adventure for everyone watching. There's a
dream about a scientist who was attempting to work on dogs,
(21:17):
performing surgery on dogs. Um. I don't know exactly what
what his end goal was, but he had this dream
about a specific surgery that he wasn't planning on doing,
and then he wrote down all of the information from
his dream, attempted these surgery and he ended up discovering
insulin is pretty insane. Thank goodness that he did so,
(21:42):
and that he had a wonderful dream. Yeah, that's amazing, right,
this is um this leads us to this is a tangent.
I don't know if we we should delve into it,
but it leads to one of the questions that I
know a lot of us will have listening to this today,
which is, is it possible to oh spoilers, Okay, no,
let's save it for the end. We have to practice
(22:04):
linear time for this. So I have I have questions
for you guys that I've cat to be Yeah, So
so we'll get our questions in. At the end, we
know we we've painted a pretty good picture here, right.
Evolutionary theory suggests that basically dreams function as a safe
way to learn maybe right, so I can I can
(22:25):
figure out things without physically harming myself the way that
I could be in danger in the real world. So,
if you think about it, we all kind of have
this hollow deck in our head and we just run
scenarios until we wake up physically harm yourself or maybe
burn bridge, you know, with a colleague. Maybe you have
a dream where you get to yell at somebody that
(22:47):
you're dealing with some resentment towards, and then you wake
up and you feel like you've worked that out sort
of like a simulation where you've you know, gotten to
beat the crap out of you know, like a doll
with this person's face on, and then you feel better
so that you don't actually do it in real life.
Is that a thing people do? Do you know? It's
I just came up with it. It should be Why
(23:07):
why shouldn't it be? I guess it is better than
hitting hitting in person? You get a do you get
a different doll every time, or you just switch the face.
It's just gotta sleeve like a face shaped sleeve, or
you to slide in a new picture, you know, uh,
and you can dress it up in the types of
clothes that person might wear. You know. It's a commitment,
but it's you know, yeah, yeah, I think so, yeah,
(23:32):
except in places where really swell gels, like Norway. But
Norway is um, I'll clean up this background here, but
I'm I'm in the process of fixing some stuff up,
and I realized that currently the place I record is
not as nice as a Norwegian prison, but a lot
of places where people live in the US or not
(23:53):
to your point, noll uh, that's I'm gonna think about
that I'm going to think about, like, what kind of
all is it less creepy if you catch someone with
the real doll and they say, no, this is not
for sexual purposes. I put other people's faces on it
because I dislike other people and I just want to
beat something that feels like I'm realistically beating something right now.
(24:15):
It's not a sex thing. I think the safe way
to get around that is just to use those we
were those wwf uh slam dolls that were like, you know,
the Ultimate Warrior and whole COVID and they were a
little small kind of body pillow things and slam them
around or whatever. There's a name for him. But maybe
keep them like not life size. That would probably keep
people from looking at skance at you. We're not talking
(24:37):
about stuff that happened in the we are a little
bit the real world. We're talking about um working things
out in in your in your brain while you're not
fully awake, and that could involve working things out that
are like either too painful or just too like weird
to get into when you're awake. Maybe you have a
hard time wrapping your brain around it. But you need
to process these things, whatever they might be and so
(24:59):
this is your brain's way like forcing you to address
some of these things that maybe you're not equipped to
do so mentally when you're when you're awake. Yeah, and
this is strange because we can also see that dreams
do have the capability to warn us of things, and
maybe not in the way that we might initially suspect.
There was a two thousand ten study in the journal
(25:22):
Neurology which shows that some violent dreams may actually be
very very early warning signs of growing brain disorders, the
very dangerous ones like dementia or Parkinson's. And when we
say early warning signs here the study, uh, the study
appears to indicate that certain frequencies of violent dreams maybe
(25:46):
predicting a brain disorder malfunction up to a decade out,
which is which is nuts. And also I think that's
kind of dangerous. That's the kind of thing that you
you know, you look up on web MD if you've
had a nightmare and you think, oh, I'm gonna die.
At least this time it wasn't cancer, because as we
know web MD, it's cancer. Cancer. Yeah. Yeah, No, I mean,
(26:10):
like I I have violent dreams occasionally, but I also
watched a lot of horror movies and occasionally eat spicy
food before bad So I do think when I saw
that stat bend Um, it did give me pause. But
is this specifically violence? You doing violence or just any
form of violent imagery in your dreams. We'll think about
(26:32):
threat like physically thrashing for instance, where you know your
brain body connection hasn't completely switched off, which is also
you know something that happens with sleep paralysis. Yeah, but
I I would say also that is in That is
a fascinating study, but it's not. It's not hard proof.
(26:53):
So just because you're having nightmares does not mean that
you have cognitive woes in the future. No more so
than the average person. But everybody, everybody knows that may
have felt a bit like a beta switch on our part,
because when we say dreams might warn you of things,
(27:13):
what are we really talking about? What is the elephant
in the room that so many mice are confusing for
five different forms of life? It is this. You or
someone you know, regardless of whether they consider themselves a
skeptic or a quote unquote true believer, has at some
point in their life had a dream that they could
not explain, A vision that, for instance, inspired someone to
(27:35):
take a different route to work on the morning of
a horrific traffic accident, or a simple compulsion to react
to a trigger, something as elementary as I go inside
immediately when I see the woman with the red hat,
and then boom, you go inside. And just as you
go inside, I don't know, we're making stuff up, so
(27:56):
wishes or horses here, just as you go inside, a
gigantic piano slams down from the second floor of that building,
and you would have been standing in the spot where
it hits fascinating slippery slope. Are these warnings from the
mental process we don't fully understand? Uh? Is it just coincidence?
Is there something more to the story? Can dreams predict
(28:18):
the future? Will? We'll do our best to look at this.
After a word from our sponsor, here's where it gets crazy. Yeah. So,
I mean, for for most of modern history that there's
been this kind of notion of psychic abilities, precognition, being
(28:43):
able to see the future, tell people's fortunes, all of that,
you know, from that explainable kind of huckster side of things.
There's fiction, the realm of ghost stories and sci fi. Uh.
And then there's, of course the religious, or even separate
from religious, spiritual side of it all that. Yeah, And
you know, science essentially looks at things like this where
(29:07):
we don't fully understand yet. They look at it as
there is a mundane reason for this to occur. Just
because we don't know what it is. Doesn't mean that
it's supernatural, doesn't mean that our brains are connecting into
a time slip somewhere or a stream of whatever. It
just means that we don't know what's happening yet. And
(29:28):
that's all. That's all that it means and us. Science,
when it is done well, is able to admit when
it's wrong. Science is able to learn from itself, like
the best of human beings are able to do as individuals. Science,
like history, is one long ongoing conversation. It refers back
(29:48):
to earlier points. Do we orbit the sun? Does the
Sun orbit us? It challenges these points, and often it
disproves itself unapologetically at a future date. How could this
rock possibly injure me from way over, way over I'm
way I'm standing way over here and this rock as
(30:09):
we over here? How is that thing causing me cancer? Yes?
I thought you just meant like, you know, how does
it injure you when someone like throws it at your head? Oh?
That too? Propulsion. It's just a rock with like a
bad vibe. It's a downer rock, you know what I mean.
It's like emotionally an abusive rock to see. Well, speaking
(30:32):
of speaking of downers, we we should probably get the
downer version of this explanation kind of out of the way, right, Yeah, yeah,
you're right, Noel, Let's let's go to the ones that
the uh probably the first two that people think of
and should think of. The first is the C word
(30:53):
for today's show, coincidence. There are a ton of people
living on earth right now. It's a long time tradition.
On this show, we're pulling up the current world population,
which is seven billion, eight hundred and six million, uh
seventy one thousand, nine hundred and fifty eight nine sixty one. Like, look,
(31:17):
there are a lot of people, that's what we're saying.
And the vast majority of those people they all dream,
most of them in one way or another. Most people, also,
by the way, do not dream in black and white.
That is another myth to bust. There are also tons
and tons of people who lived and died before we
ever recorded this podcast, before podcast we're a thing, before
(31:39):
I don't know, before hula hoops were a thing. There
are a ton of yes there, there's so many dead
people that precede our stories in the world in which
we live today. And all of those people, or at
least the vast majority, experienced a dream, right, experienced multiple
dreams every night, every single night. So think, well, yeah,
(32:00):
I mean, but like, you know, I was watching a
YouTube video of I forget the guy's name, but he's
a lucid dreaming guy, and he had this is sort
of his whole point. He had the world population taking
away on on the screen and was just talking about
how he's like, let's do a more conservative estimate. Let's
count out everyone that has insomnia, you know, or like
kids that maybe aren't interpreting their dreams correctly or whatever.
(32:21):
And you know, you could maybe lower that number, it
was still you know, a massive, massive number. And so
it starts to become like dice rolls, right, Like every
time someone's dreaming, it's the roll of the dice. And
a lot of stuff happens, a lot of news, a
lot of bad news, a lot of things that we
are worried about that, We think about that, we um
(32:41):
commiserate over what will happen? Will there be a tanker accident?
Will there be a horrible plane crash? And sometimes those
things align right, Yeah, And you know, I think the
focus can can get pretty sharp here when you talk about,
let's see an important factory to the town where you live, right,
(33:02):
you know, maybe you're thinking about a lot. Maybe your
family has worked at that factory for a long time,
maybe you work there, um, and then something bad occurs
at that factory because there's a ton of mechanical equipment
and something goes wrong. Um, it may make you feel
as though you had a precognitive vision of something, even
if it even if your dream occurred months ago before
(33:24):
the accident, you still might remember it. But you know
that that's that's at least the way science would would
put a wet blanket, and you prize the details, right,
The things that are relevant are the things you remember.
The things that are irrelevant are cast aside, and then
you you every time you remember this, Just like in
our episodes on Deceptive Bread, the narrative, the story, the
(33:46):
details of your memory alter ever so slightly to fall
increasingly in line with what you think happened, and time
it doesn't matter, right, there's no there's no methodology, of course,
it's like a form of confirmation bias, right. You You
just highlight the bits that support your thesis. You know,
you need to explain something, and you have this little
(34:07):
inkling of a dream, of a piece of a dream,
of a fragment of a dream. God knows how much
of it you're actually even remembering. It just happens to
line up with that detail, and you're like, ah, yes,
I predicted this, this was meant to be, This was
destined or something, you know. And and that means that
what we see is precognition is just sort of a
magic trick we're playing on ourselves. If you're watching the video,
(34:29):
you're doing something like this, but you think it really
is your finger and how are you doing that? I
don't I don't understand what I'm looking at. How you
can you do the one where it's like, yeah, that's
like it. I like it, Witchcraft. I showed my son
that after you did it for me. It's one of
(34:50):
his favorite things. It's a cool move. It's a super
cool move. Can I can I really quickly ask you
guys opinion about something like this that that did happen
to me really quickly. It's very strang range, nothing significant,
nothing like a factory explosion or a plane crash or anything.
But I used to intern at this recording studio in Athens, Georgia,
and there was this um woman, a young woman who
(35:12):
also worked there. And I never actually met her, but
I always heard her name because it was a really
cool name. Her name was Bennett Moon, and I just
love that name, and I thought it was just really
memorable to me. And I hadn't thought about Bennett Moon
in a long long time, uh, for whatever reason. And
I had this very specific dream where I met Bennett
Moon was a person that I had never actually met,
(35:33):
but I was aware, like the periphery of this person.
And literally the next day, I'm listening to wait Waite,
don't tell Me on NPR and they have the call
in thing at the end, and who's the call in person?
But Bennett Moon from Athens, Georgia, And it's it's the
same person. It is this person, no question about it.
Never heard her voice in my life, never actually met her,
(35:55):
just knew of her that she kind of she had
a shared experience that was we never actually crossed paths.
It isn't that weird, Yeah, But I mean, at the
end of the day, I can chuck that up to coincidence.
It's not like it was predicting anything exactly. But it's
a pretty interesting game of odds there, you know, and
if if, if this is our brain just kind of
playing a trick on ourselves and the party, Meaning that
(36:16):
was a pretty pretty big one. It wasn't like I
was like blown away or felt like I was seeing
the hand of God or anything, but I did feel
like I was experiencing something, you know what I mean,
I don't know. Yeah, there's a there's another it's still
kind of a downer, but it's a little bit less
of a downer that that may help explain that. Let's
call it playing the probability game. So we're all familiar, Yeah,
(36:39):
we're all familiar with Carl Young. Uh, we're all familiar
with archetypes, these ideas of the super consciousness and so on.
But we don't really need that yet to talk about
dreams in this way. So if coincidence is a lottery,
then the probability game is kind of uh, kind of
(37:01):
your your brain playing clue in a couple of ways.
So this may apply to your anecdote. They are an
old because Carl Young makes a great point about the
perceived precognitive capacity of some dreams. Uh, we didn't want
to paraphrase demand, so we we just pulled the quote.
It's smart. It sounds smart because he wrote it. That's right. Yeah, Uh,
(37:25):
you wanna give it to us? Oh? Yes, the occurrence
of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It would be wrong
to call them prophetic because at bottom, they are no
more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or a weather forecast.
They are merely an anticipatory combination of probabilities which may
coincide with the actual behavior of things, but need not
(37:48):
necessarily agree in every detail confirmation. So what's so can
we unpack like the difference or the distinction between prospective
and prophetic. Sure? Yeah, the perspective dream would be the
the sum of your sensory information, your memory, often short term,
(38:11):
sometimes long term. Uh, you're fleeting ephemeral impressions all mashed together,
like that horrible stuff called neutral loaf that they used
to feed prisoners in the US. And maybe still do
you know if you want like a slightly more pleasant
sure or salad if you want something healthier as well.
(38:32):
So so this is all this is all mixed up.
And from this our subconscious, which doesn't function with some
of the same uh socially imposed constraints or ego imposed
constraints that our consciousness uh functions with our our subconscious
is able to aggregate these things and make a an
(38:54):
analysis a gues estimate. So a prospective dream is the
subconscious is saying this, this, this, and this are crazy connected. Therefore,
I think here's the room that this road leads us to.
So that's the idea. The idea there is that for
(39:15):
young a dream may only be prophetic if every detail
of the dream matches every detail of the bit, the scene,
the event in the waking world. Wait, so is he
acknowledging that this is possible or is he just setting
up a standard that's like impossible to meet. That's a
good question. He is primarily implying, at least the way
(39:38):
that I interpret it, that we are underestimating the intelligence
of our subconsciousness, because you know, we are very unappreciative
of our brains. I had to cut a line out
here at some point. But it's like the brain works
so hard you're asleep and you're still breathing. That's amazing
and the brain is doing that. But but that's what
(39:59):
he's saying. He's saying that we're kind of short changing
our own mental abilities, our own pattern recognition, really, uh,
and that we only notice this amazing ability when we
get something super weirdly specifically correct, and then we're like, WHOA,
maybe I I have superpowers. I have superpowers, and they
(40:21):
are entirely related to my ability to know which song
I'm gonna hear on the radio two days from now,
which is a tremendously common thing, especially with music, or
your ability to all of a sudden recognize Benett Moon. Yeah,
I been itt by the way, seriously, I hope I
hope she listens to the show. I gotta say that
that was That was one of those moments that that
I was like, is this real? Like I really had
(40:44):
to kind of do a double take, like a spit take,
where I was like, how how don't understand what I'm
experiencing right now? Um? And uh. There are some other
examples of this throughout history that I think would cause
even the most skeptical person to ask that very same question.
Oh yeah, you, I mean you could go on other
(41:04):
channels on YouTube and find lists of these kinds of things.
Shout out to Matthew Santauro, So I see you, man.
He gave a great example of Abraham Lincoln that I
had never heard about before. So I headed over to
history dot com just to learn a little more about it. Allegedly,
this is the way the story goes. Just a couple
(41:26):
of days before Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, he told his
wife Mary Todd and his friend Ward hill Lamon about
this dream that he had just had. And in this dream,
he's I believe he's there at the White House and
the Oval Office are near there, and he is he
sees all of these mourners. He sees a casket. He
(41:47):
sees like important members of his like inner circle, and
they're all mourning the death of the president. But he says,
according to the story, he didn't recognize himself in the
casticket in the casket. It wasn't him, so he wasn't
worried about it. He didn't believe that he was having
some kind of prophetic dream or precognitive dream that was
(42:08):
going to foretell his death. But uh, he did get assassinated,
if you I think it was very soon after. I
heard another version of the story where like he was
telling this to his bodyguard and and like saying, um
that Lamon is his was his part time bodyguard, his friend, right,
But but he would say like usually he would say
good night Laman or whatever, but this time he said goodbye.
(42:32):
And he told him like, I had this dream and
I'm worriou something's going to happen in the theater tonight.
And he and he was like, well, he shouldn't go,
Mr President, he said, but I'm meeting my wife there.
I don't want to disappoint her, so I must go.
And then like he he said goodbye for the first
time ever instead of you know, goodnight, which whatever. It's
it's an interesting detail. Here's why it's a little weird
because Lamon is the guy who told this story. So
(42:55):
Lincoln was assassinated April four, eight sixty five. And this
concept that there was a dream that was told to
Mary Todd and Laman didn't come out for at least
fifteen years, if if not longer, And it was allegedly
told by Laman based on notes that he took in
eighteen sixty, so who who knows if it's real or not. UM.
(43:21):
But there's another interesting fact. The cabinet that worked with
Abraham Lincoln were aware that he did seem to put
a lot of importance on his dreams, that that he
would have you tell him about it. Will pause for
a word from our sponsor, but please stay away. We'll
(43:41):
be back soon. And we're back with more on precognitive dreams.
Like a lot of us, I grew up reading these
sorts of stories, often in time life books. Uh. This
point was just make him a sponsor. But these stories
(44:03):
have grains of truth, which I think you've done a
fantastic job of outlining. And then they also get carried
over and embellished, you know, and in in UM television
series like Unsolved Mysteries or anything on the History Channel
after about ten PM back in the day. Uh. And
and this the thing that's interesting about that is it's
(44:27):
often used that tendency is often used by skeptics as
a way to entirely discredit the anecdote, right, or keep
raising the bar of proof until proof is something that
can never be attained. But it's it's almost enough for
an entire episode on its own, The other worldly quote
(44:49):
unquote psychic experiences of world leaders. Churchill said that he
heard a golden voice since he was a child, and
said later that it's saved his life until actually until um,
even around World War two or so, until the World
War two years, it was incredibly common for Western leaders
(45:12):
to be pretty open about what they saw as a
connection with some sort of other side. Uh, and it
faded now or it's it's uh, it's a bit in
the dull drums now, because I imagine that a lot
of people feel they would not be taken seriously if
they said, hey, I am from a family that has
(45:32):
precognitive dreams. I have precognitive dreams. Also I should be
in charge of nuclear weapons. It doesn't track right. It's
it's seen as a blow to credibility rather than just
a part of someone's individual human experience. But we know
it's not. These people who are recounting these things are
not chumps, they're not unintelligent people. I think you had
(45:53):
a you had another example, Matt also an American and
also a pretty smart guy. You love him or hate him? Yeah,
I found a story about Samuel Clemons just right rifling
through the internet, and it comes from Life on the Mississippi,
which is Samuel Clemons or Mark Twain's autobiography. It's fascinating.
(46:15):
So he was, uh, Sam, Sam, I don't I don't
like calling that. Mark Twain was working on a steamboat
called the Pennsylvania and he had arranged for his younger brother,
guy named Henry, to also get a job there. He
was going to I think what did they call it.
(46:36):
It's a really interesting job, a mud clerk on the Pennsylvania,
which is the steamboat. And um, there's this whole situation
where the captain insulted Henry for some reason and Mark
Twain heard about it. There was a whole fight that
resulted in Mark Twain just being banned from the boat
(47:00):
where his brother was working. Right, So, out of just
the set of circumstances, Mark Twain got kicked off of
this boat that he was on and his brother is
still there. So then at some point Mark Twain lays down,
he has a dream, and inside this dream he sees
his brother Henry in a coffin and there are a
(47:22):
lot of specifics about it. Um, I've heard that he
was wearing one of Mark Twain's own suits. But one
of the most important things about this dream was that
there was a specific set of white flowers laid down
on to Henry's coffin where he was laying, and with
a single red flower in the middle. Right. That's exactly
(47:43):
what it is. So what very very strong image that
was left on Mark Twain even after he awoke. And
obviously you know that kind of dream you dream about
a loved one who dies that's going to be affecting
in some way or another. And so there were there
were different details here which would be of interest to
(48:04):
anyone agreeing with the beliefs of Carl Young or the
beliefs as laid out in in today's episode. Uh. He
had some specific details that appeared to be correct, things
that were unusual, like a metallic often. This is also
for anyone else who who read the incredibly unedited autobiography
(48:30):
of Mark Twain, where some of this is pulled from.
I just want to I just want to let you
know I'm right there with you in solidarity. Even great
writers need editors, even just good editors. It's a very
very long book. He's dictating it on his deathbed. And
the reason I'm bringing that up is because he may
have fallen victim to something known as retrospective conviction, which
(48:54):
is what we're talking about earlier, when we alter our
own memories by remembering those memories. However, like you said, Matt,
he he says he had never had any doubts since
he had had that dream, that it was predictive. He
can remember everything very, very vividly. So Mark Twain has
(49:16):
to leave the boat. His brother is still on it,
and later on he gets word that a boiler has
in fact exploded on this steamboat and his brother in
inhaled a bunch of steam and it actually burned his
lungs and he's in he's in the hospital. So Mark Twain,
you know, obviously makes his he stops what he's doing.
(49:38):
He makes his way to the hospital where his brother is.
It's in Memphis, Tennessee. And when Sam gets there, the
doctors um tell him that his brother is in absolutely
terrible pain, but he's going to be fine. He just
scalded his lungs a little bit. He's going to recover.
Don't worry about it, uh Sam. They wouldn't have called
him Mark Twain. They didn't know that name. Listen, here,
(50:00):
Mark Twain, brother's gonna be just fine. Yeah. Um, but Sam,
you know, uh, a caring brother says, well, there must
be something you can do to make him feel a
little better, Like, look at him. He's obviously in pain.
You know, he's in pain. Let's do something about it.
And according to Sam himself, he convinces the doctor to
(50:21):
give his brother a shot of morphine. And the doctor
is supposedly inexperienced with this type of drug and overdoses
Henry and and Henry unfortunately passes away. I thought he
died from the blast and I didn't realize that. That's
that's extra tragic and unexpected. Wow. Yeah, and you know again,
(50:46):
according to Sammy never forgave himself for this fact. But
the strangest part is that at the actual funeral of
his brother Henry, he noticed some things that reminded him
of the dream he had had where what the what
the coffin looked like, the suit that his brother was wearing,
and the most important fact, the most important similarity perhaps
(51:09):
were a a bouquet of white flowers with a single
red rose in the center that was laid down on
to his brother Henry. That's like the end of a
ghost store. It's like a twist ending dude. And then
it took the ribbon off and her head fell off
like that, and there was a single red rose. Burr
don't like that. He also told this story around seventy
(51:32):
or eighty times, by his own admission, and when he
was performing this story at the Monday Evening Club, as
was called in four UH, the the incident, I believe
if I'm thinking of the right one without without pulling
out that brick of a book, I believe it. He
(51:55):
was telling this story several years later, and someone called
Reverend Burton, Reverend Dr Burton, just for extra accolades, asked
Twain if he had told it multiple times. He said, yes,
seventy or eighty, and Burton pointed out that is likely,
or it's very possible for someone with the best of
(52:17):
intentions to embellish a story over the years. Twain stuck
to his guns. I don't think any of it is embroidery,
he had replied. I think it is all just as
I've stated it, detail by detail. Yes, the man wrote fiction,
and wrote uh an enormous amount of fiction, so he's
no stranger to spinning a tale. However, In the case
(52:40):
of Mark Twain, I would point out that he appears
to have predicted his own death without taking his own hand.
He was born on November five, two weeks after Hayley's
comments Reach the Brillion where it's the point nearest the sun.
This is apply point in an awesome claymation filled with
(53:02):
some very disturbing depictions of the devil. I recommend checking
it out on YouTube. In his autobiography in nineteen o nine,
he said, I came in with Haley's comment at eighteen
thirty five. It's coming again next year. I expect to
go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment
of my life if I don't go out with Haley's comment.
So he went on about it. Um so that's a
(53:25):
little different, because is that precognition or is that just
him being very stubborn and saying I want to go
out with a power move. But to your point, Matt, yes,
it is tremendously I think it's I think it would
surprise people to learn how common it is for people
that you would associate with great success, people that you
(53:47):
would associate with great power UH to to believe in
predictive UH precognitive or even prophetic dreams. Maybe they don't
talk about it as much now, you know, maybe they
are not recounting strange stories of their family or their
(54:08):
personal experience. And if so, there's probably a reason. It's
because they feel like they will be resigned to the
rubbish heap of the current day. And that's a real
valid concern. But I would imagine, you know, world leaders
listening in the audience today that, yeah, that you two
have had a dream or four or Baker's dozen or
(54:31):
nineteen that you yourself cannot explain to this day. It
is a very common thing. It is a very common thing. Yeah, yeah, no,
it's true. Uh. And I mean I don't know up
to this point in the in the show, I hope
it doesn't sound like we're poo pooing any of these things.
I think we've all acknowledged the whole way that the
brain is a very under understood that's a redundant. But
(54:54):
I'm still gonna go with the thing. Um, I have
I have not proofrood this. I've just said out. I'm
building a case that unfortunately we're not getting trying to
get to in in a very ham fisted way. Um,
This is one of those ones where we like just
look at the clock and we're like, man, we've got
so much more left to go and some really good, amazing,
(55:15):
juicy science based stuff. Um, but I think we're gonna
save that for a part two because there's really enough
there to to give you another really um substantial episode
out of this topic. Yes, so you will have to
stay tuned, But for now, why don't you write to us?
Tell us about your dreams, tell us about something maybe
(55:36):
you've predicted, or a strange thing that's happened within your
family or a friend or a loved one. You can
find us on Facebook and on Twitter, where we are
a conspiracy stuff show. You can also uh find us
on social media and the usual spots or Facebook where
Instagram we're we're not pinterious. We fought back and we
we we we fought the law and the law did
(55:58):
not win. We won that one, but who knows anything
could happen. Um, we are conspiracy or conspiracy Stuff show
and most of the usual spots Twitter as well. Uh.
If you don't want to do that, you can go
to Facebook where we have a really dope Facebook group
called Here's where it Gets Crazy. It's super easy to
get in. Just name you know anybody involved in the show,
or a topic or whatever you want, just so we
(56:19):
know that you're actually real, um and and you're in
a lot of cool conversations there and meme exchanges and
a good group of folks on Here's where it gets crazy.
What else can they do? You can give us a call.
Our number is one eight three three s T d
W y t K. If you don't like social media,
if you don't like uh, if you don't cotton to
(56:41):
calling on the phone, but you have a story to
tell us, and I expect many of us in the
audience do have a story to share today. Please, please, please,
always remember that there is one last way you can
contact us any old time and day or night, the
waking world or the world of dreams. You can send
us a good old ash and email caveat asterix. If
(57:03):
you dream about sending us an email, just to make
sure it does go through, send one while you're awake
as well. Where we are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com.
(57:32):
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