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March 6, 2014 21 mins

Strange Sleep and Past Lives: In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Julie once again call forth the robot and take care of some accumulated listener mail on strange sleep, lucid dreaming, reincarnation and other topics.

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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and Julie Douglas. You know,
we hear a lot of wonderful feedback from you listeners,
and sadly we don't always have the time to h
to call the robot up to the desk and actually

(00:25):
go through any of it. Um in part because we're
increasingly busy with the with the stuff to la your
Mind thing, in part because of ice storms crippling the
city and what have you. But uh so, once again
we wanted to take an opportunity to devote one episode
it just uh conversing with you the listeners, uh, you
the readers, etcetera, and uh and and sharing some of

(00:48):
your thoughts on topics that we've we've recently touched on. Yeah,
so it's about high time that we got our house
in order, and we have a bevy of feedback that
we want to read because we think it's really interesting.
And uh, what should we check it off with. We
have a couple of themes. Oh well, I really like
this one on reincarnation. So let's call the robot over
and I'll read you what John had to say. John says,

(01:13):
I listened with interest to your recent thoughts on reincarnation
and I always struck with the thought that the idea
example of reincarnation with persisting memories of a past life
would be the Dali Lama. I think, uh, maybe to
be corrected, that when a Lama dies, the search for
the child who contains the spirit of leader begins and
there are tests to prove that they have found the
correct youth. I think these include tests check for signs

(01:35):
of a reincarnated spirit. Uh. Does anyone know of this?
And I'll take a break and say, yes, this is
actually the Dali Lama. Uh situation is a is a
really excellent example of of reincarnation worldview in effect. And
uh and and to the point where we really should
have mentioned it in the podcast because it's so strong. Um. Anyway,
John continues, Um, I don't know where I read this.

(01:57):
I also enjoyed your recent podcast about Stone Hinge, as
I have visited this in other monuments in England as
that is where I live. I prefer Avebury Circle as
it is large in diameter, if not in size of stones,
and the different rings and ditches that even encompass the
village and their position in relation to other barrows and
earthworks locally, give a much more impressive vision than of

(02:21):
those who devised and built these monuments. At a bury,
you can get amongst the stones and walk the ditches,
allowing a more connected feeling with the whole area. These
monuments need to be seen topographically to really impress with
the relation to the land and what else it contains.
Simply looking at a picture only gives you a very
small part of what they are. Thanks for keeping my
truck driving night full of interesting thoughts. Look forward to

(02:44):
future shows. John. All right, Well, so that first part
about the Dalai Lama. I do remember seeing a film
in which I believe Kiana reeves start. Do you know
which one I'm from? New MATRIXI Lama? Uh No? In
it documented um the search for the Llama, and they

(03:06):
were giving him some of the test. Do you recall
any test? Third, administer, I I do not. I remember
seeing the documentaries, uh one document in particular about the
about looking for the Llama, looking for the chosen youth
that would would have the spirit of Vallama. But but
I don't recall the details of it. Offhand and in

(03:26):
terms of the Stonehenge information that John had given us,
which was really great. I wanted to read an email
from Diane who says I love the Stonehenge episodes because
they reminded me of a project I did when I
was in fourth grade. I had a great teacher who
did a Stonehenge project where we created stones out of
modeling clay and then had to transport them one by
one across the table by rolling them on pencils. Once

(03:47):
the stone was off the last pencil, it was moved
to the front and repeat across the table. There was
time consuming, but fun. It was a cool project to
show what sort of work went into cutting and transporting
the stones. Stuck with me for twenty years. What a
great project for for kids to do, I think. Um.
She says she's been a long time fan and she's
been meaning to write and suggest a future show, And

(04:09):
she said that she became involved with a nonprofit called
the Cancer Research Institute, and she said that cancer immunotherapy
is a cool field of research and treatment for cancer
that uses the immune system to fight cancer and has
really started to take off in the last couple of years.
So she suggested that as an episode and that seems
like great fertile terrain for us, and I appreciate your

(04:30):
suggestion there, Diane. Yeah, yeah, we we could stand to
do a few more sort of health centric episodes in
the future. UM. Space is another area I want to
get back to. So if anyone out there has specific
requests for space related stuff to blow your mind content, uh,
do hit us up with those those suggestions, because sometimes
it's kind of difficult looking at at space, so looking

(04:50):
at health because I feel like we stuffed to bow
your mind. We we kind of have that caveat that
it needs to it needs to really like shake you,
it needs to really awe you in some way a perform.
But so if you have any ideas that might lead
to a sober stone or moments did you with space,
let us know. Yeah. Alright, here's another a bit of

(05:10):
listener mail, Thank you Robot. This one comes to us
from Tracy. Tracy says, I absolutely love your podcast. I
love your topics, but almost more than that, I love
your chemistry. You play off each other really well and
your interaction never slides into corny banter. I love your
inventive metaphors. Uh, the intensive research you do is evident
from your solid grasp of the information you present. You

(05:31):
rarely stumble in your knowledge. And to top it all off,
both have voices made for radio with no annoying vocal kicks.
You post nothing but fascinating articles on your Facebook page.
You kick, But I just wanted you to know you
have a huge fan in Miami. If you ever find
yourself in South Florida, I hope Miami's Vice City Rollers,
the roller Derby team I volunteer with, is playing. I'll

(05:52):
give you comp tickets. Well, thank you, Tracy. Indeed, if
we're ever in the in in South Florida, we may
have to look you up. Indeed we will. And that
just minded me of the Roller Derby Microbiome episode we
did in which they looked at Rolling Derby teams and
how they are swapping microbiomes and how interesting that is
and tracing that's really kind. Um. I do have to

(06:13):
say that I think that both of us have a
couple of malapropisms in which we butcher language, and that
is an episode which will be forthcoming at some point,
because it's really interesting about how your brain that listens
in your brain that is anticipating speech. They have to
work in tandem, and a lot of these malapropisms um
result from that sort of little disconnects that happened when

(06:37):
they're trying to do this bifurcated action. Yeah, and I
think I've said before I feel like I have very
much have a writer reader brain and uh and therefore
when I'm speaking, I often fall into various traps. I
guess I've gotten better at it over the years, but
still not all the traps have been marked and and eliminated. Alright.

(06:58):
The next one comes from Richard, and he says, I
love stuff to play your mind. I listen while working
out at the gym, and as a high school science teacher,
I enjoy bringing the program into my classroom. Good job,
and thank you. I fear you may be incorrect on hibernation. Uh,
I belause there's an episode of republished episode in January
that he's referring to. He says, let me do this
in two parts. Your recent discussion of hibernation violates a

(07:19):
basic principle of physics and engineering, the law of squares
and cubes, less formally, the relationship of surface area to volume.
This universal principle deserves a separate treatment on your program,
and to make it less technical in more podcast friendly,
I bring to your attention that virtually all monster movies
get it wrong. For a summary of why, read the
great biologist JB. S. Haldane's essay on being the right size.

(07:41):
The law of squares and cubes can explain numerous physical
and biological phenomena. This brings us to point to While
it is true that ground squirrels can reduce their core
temperature sufficiently to go into a state of suspended animation,
larger animals like bears may lower their set points slightly,
but cannot radate enough body heat to get a truly

(08:02):
suspended state. They're easily aroused even during winter rest, although
I do not suggest you try the experiment for rather
obvious reasons. By the way, you can extend this analysis
to demonstrate that large dinosaurs probably approached warm bloodedness even
without internal constancy. If you want to get summary on
the issue and it's specific relations hybernation, there's a helpful

(08:22):
lecture by Steven Stearns from his Yale course on evolution
in Ecology. So I just want to say thank you
Richard so much. UM. I do think that that probably
deserves its own upcoming episode, because we'd like to get
into this topic a lot. Hibernation, suspended animation, What we
can learn from hibernation, how we could apply it to humans,
either through emergency situations or even through space travel. Now,

(08:47):
I know that we have discussed the morphological limits of
gigantism before, particularly in terms of of say, Godzilla and
King Kom, Barbie and Barbie. Yes, that was a separate,
separate episode, but but we have touched on those topics before.
All right, we can take a quick breaking when we
come back, more listener mail on a number of fascinating topics. Alright,

(09:14):
we're back. Let's take some more feedback and then get
into it. All right, This one comes to us from Valerie.
Valerie says, I just finished up your episode on Night Janitors.
It made me feel much less lame for needing nine
hours of sleep to feel good. Now, I have always
fallen asleep anywhere if I am tired, in loud rooms,
standing up in a boat, and other odd of places.
Whenever I do anything that would loosen my inhibitions, like drink,

(09:35):
all I want to do is take a nap. Turns
out most of my inhibitions are how inappropriate it is
to sleep all the time. From now on, I am
going to imagine I have very demanding night janitors and
we are waiting at the doors, being like, can you
hurry up? And there we have a job to do,
ready to take advantage of my weakened state to start
work early. Also, I was wondering if there is anything

(09:56):
to this idea of animals getting a taste for humans.
I feel like I hear that all the time. I
wonder if it is like when I finally have a
chance to try something and it's especially tasty, like when
I got a taste for star fruit. I also think
about one group of orcas it was on a documentary
I watched that were really into sea urchins, even though
they're much harder to eat and harder to get than
other food. Could we be a delicacy of the animal world.

(10:19):
I thought it might be interesting to hear a podcast
on animals becoming man eaters after getting that first taste.
Warm regards Valerie in Austin, Texas, PS, you guys are great.
Well now I want to do an episode on man eaters.
That sounds perfect Well, you know, I thought this is
so timely because the other night, my daughter asked, she
gets to ask one question before she goes to bed,
and that's her way to She's always trying to distract

(10:41):
us from actually getting her to sleep. So that's the
way that we try to manage that. And so her
question was to do alligators to eat people? And so
my answer was because I tried to be as as
honest as possible without like going into some weird territory,
and I said, well, no they don't, but I'm sure
it has had been by accident. And then that was

(11:03):
so I shouldn't have even said that, because then she
was like, when who what happened? And I thought, oh, man,
that's it's true. It's it has happened by accident and
sometimes um, people have been in the wrong place at
the wrong time. And she went on to ask like,
do you think the alligators like the taste of humans? Well,

(11:24):
there you go. I think we'll definitely have to do
an episode on that. And I also have to say
that we were dangerously close to talking about cannibalism. I
just felt it. I felt like, the next question is
going to be the keetmans eat other humans. So you're
just completely low on energy right at that time. That's
when she starts throwing out questions about cannibalism and yeah,
what why do people kill each other? Why do people

(11:46):
don't I mean this? Yeah, she throws out the heavy stuff.
We have another email here from Kevin and he's talking
about the Night Janitors, which is again this episode that
dealt with this idea of all these toxic by products
that our brains make and how do we usher them
out of our system? Um. That has long been a mystery,
but we have new information that this happens when we sleep,

(12:07):
and only when we sleep. Um. Kevin says, I have
an interesting study I conducted last semester on my own.
I was nineteen at the time. I read about polyphasic sleeping,
where you can reduce average sleep to minimal hours, sometimes
to a day. I try to and reduce my average
from about eight hours to five hours. For thirty consecutive days,
I would do three and a half hours at night

(12:27):
and three equally spaced naps during the day. During this time,
I had lucid dreams the first time, which I still
seldom have to this day, and had felt a new
feeling of euphorium. Midway through. I found it was very well, possible,
but I stopped with my neighbor, who participated in twelve
actual sleep studies, said I was adapting to become and insomniac.

(12:48):
This leads me to question whether we can adapt to
a large amount of waste in our brains, or does
maybe the night janitor become more efficient. Good question. Also,
thank you for your exciting and inform national discussions. They
have changed my intellectual life for the better. Thank you, Kevin.
All right, well here's another little bit on sleep. This
one comes to us from Ann and says Dear Julian Robert.

(13:08):
During college, I had a lot of trouble with insomnia.
I was prescribed ambien my senior year. I made the
mistake multiple times of taking it but not immediately lying
down and going to bed, which is recommended. This led
to some interesting Internet comments. The biggest problem I had
was sleep cooking. I didn't just sleep eat whatever snacks
were in my apartment. I somehow felt they need to
make ramen noodles or spaghettios, or on one scary occasion,

(13:31):
to cook a full meal of pasta. I boiled a
pot of water, cooked the noodles, cooked, the sauce, drained,
the pasta, poured the pasta and sauce onto a plate,
covered them with parmesan cheese, ate the whole plate of food,
and then and then left the empty plate on the
floor upy my bed. I woke up next morning boggled
by the plate. I am relieved to say I never
left the stove hunt. I quit taking Ambien and several

(13:52):
years later quit drinking entirely. Sobriety has had a huge
impact on my sleep quality and worked much better than
ambient for me. I learned that while alcohol can make
you fall asleep pass out, the sleep you get isn't
RESTful or restorative sleep or reduces rim sleep. But people
often think they're sleeping better because they fall asleep sooner.
All my best and thanks, and yeah, I have to
second that since I quit drinking year and a half

(14:15):
nearing two years ago, I will say that my sleep
has been so much better and now I'm hungry for it.
Played a spaghetti. Yeah, it's uh We mentioned uh am
bien before, and it's the effects it sometimes has on people.
I do want to want to go ahead and throw
out though that if you know, let let your doctor,

(14:35):
your trusted doctor, advise you on what you should and
shouldn't take and use that as your sort of call
point rather than, you know, any kind of horror stories
you've heard about one medication or another. Well, yeah, because
some things can affect another person in entirely different ways.
So yeah, because I've encountered people before who desperately needed
some help sleeping, at least for like a small portion

(14:56):
of their time. And uh, and they were scared to
even try some thing because they'd heard somebody knew somebody
who had heard about somebody who you know, ate a
bunch of cigarettes while on ambient or something. Yeah. Well,
and if you've ever suffered from insomnia and you know
that point in the night where are like, man, I
wish someone would just hit me over the head with
a pan and knock me out, you know that that's

(15:17):
when you're in a desperate place and you need some help. Yeah,
So anyway, thanks for sharing that with the sand all right.
The next one has to do with leeches. We recently
did a podcast episode about leeches and how they've sort
of redeemed themselves in the medical community. And this is
from Ashley. She says, I recently listened to the podcast
about leeches. I thought you might be interested in my
experience with them. I'm a veterinary technician at a large

(15:39):
specialty veterinary practice and we currently have a small colony
of leeches that are being used to treat a couple
of feline patients. These two kitties have a condition called
polyspthemia vera, in which their bodies make too many red
blood cells. This results in very thick, sludgy blood that
can lead to seizures, a taxia, blindness, and other neurological symptoms.

(15:59):
There are men occasions that decreased red blood cell production,
but the side effects aren't good. One other treatment is
blood letting every week, but one of these cats is
not very friendly, which makes drawing a large amount of
blood from her very difficult and stressful for her and
imagine others. Um There's only one study and one cat
that leeches have been used on for this condition, but

(16:21):
our doctors decided to give it a try. The cat
can sit in the owner's lap and have leeches feed
for about thirty minutes, can go home. Both cats have
had multiple treatments, are and are doing very well. So
it looks like our leech experiment is a success. Thank you.
For reading. Ashley ps. We keep our leeches and fish
bowls on a shelf. We learned the hard way that
the bowls need to be covered more than once leeches

(16:43):
rained down on the person using the computer below the
shelf they were housed on. That's a little bit nightmaric.
Just to create a new word. Alright, I'm just gonna
wind up here with two quick ones. This one comes
to us from Annie in New Orleans. Any He shares
of her experiences with dentist dread and dental anxiety, which

(17:05):
we talked about in an episode. But then she closes
out and says, I listened to a lot of house
Stoworks podcasts, and I love them all for different reasons,
but I've almost started thinking of yours. This my mental
health cast. I developed some slightly debilitating anxiety and depression
problems this last year. For example, my fracture teeth were
very likely caused by clenching my teeth in my sleep.
After my crowns are in my dentist is going to
make a mouth guard to sleep with. Because if your

(17:27):
many informative episodes surrounding anxiety, I've decided to seek out
professional help. In addition to trying things like meditation to
quiet the constant screeching of my default mode network. I'm
feeling more hopeful for my future happiness than I have
in as long as I can remember. You guys are great. Well,
that's that's very good to hear. For First, I want
to say mouth guard. I myself were a mouth guard
when I sleep every night, and it's made a lot

(17:49):
of difference for me. So UM, definitely stick with that
as much as you'll want to spit it out at times.
Uh and uh and and kudos for seeking, you know,
professional help to help balance things out. I think that's
you know, that's often the bravest uh and at times
the hardest thing you have to do for yourself is
is saying, yes, I'm gonna actually see somebody about this. Indeed,

(18:12):
and you know, I've said this several times, but the
episodes that we've covered the topics, a lot of times
I find myself turning to some of the things that
that do help. UM. And that was interesting that she
brought up the default mode network, because I really think
that that is sometimes the problem with with a lot
of what ails me is just kind of quiet that

(18:32):
part of the mind and there's so many different ways
to get to that point. Indeed, indeed, all right, here's
the last one here. This one comes to it from
Ashley actually says, Hi, Robert and Julie, I'm listening to
some of your older podcast via iTunes and came across
Lucid Dreams. During the cast, you mentioned some sences not
being activated during dreams, and the food isn't usually a
part of lucid dreams because the taste isn't active. Well,

(18:54):
I had a very unusual dream of law back where
I was an intergalactic social mixer. I had a conversation
at the bar with a green, jellowish male and drank
the most perfect glass of pineapple juice. I've also had
a recurring dream where I am at a family reunion
type gathering with my children. At some point I fall
out of favor with my family and they want to
have me committed and take out custody on my children.
At this point, I take flight like a bird, not superman.

(19:16):
Think of the We Fit chicken game where you flap
your arms to fly. I've been having this dream on
and off since two thousand two, prior to We Fit,
so I don't know why or where this dream came from. Okay,
well that's it. Thanks for keeping me company while I work,
study and take mom breaks. I put myself in a
time out. I love you much, Ashley. Oh, thank you

(19:36):
very much, Ashley. I really would like to have a
lucid dream about food now, Yes, I as well, because
I don't think I can remember an instance where I
had like a very taste uh centric dream. Yeah, and
just to be able to experience that in a lucid
way might be pretty amazing. I don't know. I'm gonna
put me to like some sort of sprig of basil

(19:57):
in my mouth before I get a sleep, yeah it,
or you know, or have someone else like stick basil
in your mouth on your sleep to trigger it. That
would be perfectly normal. Yeah. All right, So there you go.
We've managed to catch up a little bit on our
listener mail. You guys and gals are always sharing such
wonderful thoughts with us about the topics that we cover.
You have wonderful suggestions for future episodes, and we just

(20:20):
wanted to again take take time once more. You just
go through some of these listener mail catch up, and
then start brush to some new episodes. The next week.
All right, So you want to get in touch with us,
you want to get in on this, well, you can
find us in a number of places. Stuff to Blow
Your Mind dot Com is our main homepage, and that's
where you'll find blog posts, videos, all the podcast links
out to our various social media accounts. Now our Facebook page.

(20:42):
If you just look on faceboobook for Stuff to Blow
your Mind, that's where we are. We're pretty strong following there,
and a lot of people get in touch with us
via Facebook and we do read those messages, so bear
that in mind. And then there's always an old fashioned
way you can get in touch with us as well.
But before I tell you about that old fashioned way,
I want to tell about YouTube, in particular Mind Stuff Show.

(21:03):
If you go there, you will find videos that Robert
and I have toiled away on. In fact, I probably
have the most jacked up Marilyn Monroe wig that has
ever existed in one of those videos, and you can
check that out at My Stuff Show at YouTube. In
the meantime, you can send us an email at Blow
the Mind at Discovery dot com for more on this

(21:25):
and thousands of other topics. Doesn't how Stuff Works dot
Com

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