Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 2: Our colleague Gol is on an adventure, but will return shortly.
Speaker 3: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know. Shout out to everyone
Speaker 3: who has this plane on some kind of automatic shuffle
Speaker 3: or playlist as they are slumbering sleeping listeners. We welcome
Speaker 3: you to tonight's episode, which is all about dreams. Dreams, dreams.
Speaker 2: That's right. You may even be aware and awake at
Speaker 2: this point in the show, but very soon you will
Speaker 2: drift off. What you dream will be directly influenced by what.
Speaker 3: You hear eight minus six. We've had some fascinating explorations
Speaker 3: of dreams in the past. We're talking about this and
Speaker 3: related cognitive science off air. While back, we did a
Speaker 3: two part episode on the concept of precognitive or clairvoyant dreams.
Speaker 3: Dreams that, from the perspective of their supporters, dreams that
Speaker 3: appear to predict the future, violating what we understand is
Speaker 3: the laws of linear time and what we learned in
Speaker 3: those episodes, it's weird. I went back and listened to
Speaker 3: the matt and reread the research too. We went back
Speaker 3: and listened to those episodes and reread the research, and
Speaker 3: we found that the basic physiological or neurological phenomenon that
Speaker 3: we call the dream is understood in that we know
Speaker 3: it happens. We also know the other non human animals dream.
Speaker 3: Do check out many video clips of octopuses that appear
Speaker 3: to be dreaming. And Dylan and you and I were
Speaker 3: having a little family time before we rolled, talking about
Speaker 3: how much we enjoy our animals dreaming, like our pets are,
Speaker 3: our dogs and cats and so on.
Speaker 2: It's pretty adorable, especially watching my dog dream, just watching
Speaker 2: how animated her body is, where she will physically be running.
Speaker 2: You can see her arms moving while she's laying on
Speaker 2: her side as though she's chasing something, and then making
Speaker 2: verbal sounds as though she's barking at something or up
Speaker 2: said about something. Even it's fascinating. What makes you wonder
Speaker 2: what we really do when we're asleep. And if you
Speaker 2: sleep next to someone on the regular, maybe you've got
Speaker 2: some reports of what your sleeping life is like. But
Speaker 2: even they might be sleeping too in the times when
Speaker 2: we're doing really wacky stuff, jogging in place, doing ninja stuff.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I've seen this. I've seen birds dream I've
Speaker 3: seen an octopus stream. I've seen one of my cats
Speaker 3: actually doesn't make a lot of appearances on here, the
Speaker 3: cat with a thousand names. I've seen that guy went
Speaker 3: a wall a few years back and then returned to
Speaker 3: his own volition, and ever since then he's been having
Speaker 3: dreams where he's obviously back outside hunting things. And he
Speaker 3: also snores, And one time he snored so loudly that
Speaker 3: he woke himself up and then turned and shot a
Speaker 3: poison glance my way, screamed at me, and instantly went
Speaker 3: back to sleep.
Speaker 2: What did you do? Me? Up? Right?
Speaker 3: Right right? Another phenomenon that's a good entry point, because
Speaker 3: we know that dreams can Dreams are functionally another version
Speaker 3: of reality that you experience in a specific series of
Speaker 3: brain activity stages, and that vividness, the appearance of concrete
Speaker 3: experienced reality is why again, if you sleep next to
Speaker 3: someone all the time, it is why your girlfriend might
Speaker 3: wake up mad at something you did in her dream.
Speaker 3: Classic trope.
Speaker 2: Yep. I would just say that kind of thing occurs
Speaker 2: a lot. I think that's probably universally and just your
Speaker 2: significant other. Yeah, look at you a little different. When
Speaker 2: you wake up in the morning. You're like, what's going on? Everything? Okay,
Speaker 2: You're just a jerk.
Speaker 3: Right right? You're like, what, I just woke up too?
Speaker 3: And then they're like, yeah, well, I guess I'll see
Speaker 3: you on the lush, exotic coast of Belgium, asshole. And
Speaker 3: you know what do you do but respond politely and
Speaker 3: wait for people to get back and sync with the
Speaker 3: waking world. We know more and more about brain activity
Speaker 3: during dream states, but get this, even on May sixteenth, Friday,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, human civilization still isn't sure why dreams
Speaker 3: are a thing. No, Matt, you'll remember in our previous explorations,
Speaker 3: I think we landed on the on a loose agreement
Speaker 3: that the most plausible answer for dreams as and why
Speaker 3: they're a thing. It goes down to the concept of
Speaker 3: like defragging a hard drive and encoding memory, and that's
Speaker 3: the most widely scientifically accepted explanation, but the debate continues.
Speaker 3: And back in twenty twenty one, we had a interesting
Speaker 3: conversation about a controversial ad campaign, and that is what
Speaker 3: led to tonight's episode. You see, despite the fact that
Speaker 3: people don't fully understand dreams and what this bizarre mental
Speaker 3: activity is, civilization in the past few decades has made
Speaker 3: stunning and we would posit somewhat disturbing progress toward manipulating dreams.
Speaker 3: And that's where our story begins.
Speaker 2: Yes, it begins right after these words from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: Here are the facts. What are dreams? All right? We're
Speaker 3: not going to belabor our earlier complaints about how cartoonish
Speaker 3: the idea of sleep is. To begin with. Dreaming is
Speaker 3: literally and simply put, a hallucinatory experience that occurs to
Speaker 3: some living organisms during sleep. Yep, it's hallucinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's extremely vivid images, sounds, all of your other
Speaker 2: sensory equipment. It gets activated via that old brain you
Speaker 2: got up in that head of yours, and it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: It's awesome. Actually, dreams can be fulfilling, dreams can be terrifying,
Speaker 2: dreams can make you go out and try and fulfill
Speaker 2: some vision that you saw while you were sleeping.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and unless we sound like we're casting aspersions on
Speaker 3: our much beloved pets, we've all been in a situation
Speaker 3: where your nervous system gets confused about which reality you're in.
Speaker 3: Because dreams are truly the first virtual reality. That is
Speaker 3: what the series of hallucinations can be defined at. So
Speaker 3: everybody's had that moment where you just sort of feel
Speaker 3: like you're falling and who right, yeah, or you need
Speaker 3: to move and you can't that sleep paralysis. Check out
Speaker 3: our episodes on that. Please do do do do keep it.
Speaker 3: Please check out our two part episode on whether dreams
Speaker 3: have really predicted the future. For now, for us, the
Speaker 3: most important thing to remember about this mental state is
Speaker 3: the following. Like you alluded to, Matt, dreams have always
Speaker 3: mystified humanity, and they've created a great deal of religious thought,
Speaker 3: and they've also determined many real world events. The wars
Speaker 3: have been inspired, right because somebody woke up having a
Speaker 3: vivid dream that stayed with them upon waking. Religions have
Speaker 3: been founded upon this civilization has hinged on these images
Speaker 3: from the dark.
Speaker 2: And you know, I've written multiple songs because I woke
Speaker 2: up and I just couldn't get a thought out of
Speaker 2: my head that was somehow conjured in those moments when
Speaker 2: I was asleep. And I've done that with drawing as well,
Speaker 2: where you just wake up here, what is this thing?
Speaker 2: I have to get it down, whatever message was trying
Speaker 2: to be conveyed to me by myself. I gotta put
Speaker 2: this down.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Actually, I think I told you a few years back.
Speaker 3: I do most of my best writing in the few
Speaker 3: hours when I'm asleep, and then I wake up and go,
Speaker 3: oh okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, just pour it out. Or
Speaker 3: that old Mitch Hebberg joke, you know he has to
Speaker 3: keep a notepad by his night stand because otherwise he
Speaker 3: wakes up in the middle of the night, doesn't have
Speaker 3: a way to write it down, and has to tell
Speaker 3: himself the joke wasn't that good?
Speaker 2: Well, because then it'll be gone. That is the thing,
Speaker 2: dream journaling and all that stuff. If you don't get
Speaker 2: it down immediately, your brain is going to start filling
Speaker 2: in gaps and just make up other things, which could
Speaker 2: be great if you're in a creative process.
Speaker 3: Right sure, yeah, we And also, what, well, how about
Speaker 3: this later on in tonight's episode, will teach you a
Speaker 3: little pen and pad free mnemonic encoding device to help
Speaker 3: you remember your dreams when you wake up, and it
Speaker 3: does work. It's weird, but it's worth trying. So, like Matt,
Speaker 3: you and I have a lot in common with countless
Speaker 3: authors and musicians. Mary Shelley right, Frankenstein. Paul McCartney credits
Speaker 3: a lot of his musical endeavors to experiences in his
Speaker 3: dream state. We also know this is not restricted to
Speaker 3: what we would call quote unquote creative pursuits, even though
Speaker 3: I think science is inherently a creative pursuit. Scientists like
Speaker 3: Neils Bohr have made some of their greatest discoveries while
Speaker 3: literally asleep. As we all know, Borr, who is considered
Speaker 3: the father of quantum mechanics, He repeatedly throughout his later
Speaker 3: life credited his discovery of the structure of the atom
Speaker 3: to a dream. He said, look, I was just having
Speaker 3: a regular day, regular night.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: He ate his soup and rude of begas or his
Speaker 3: case idella whatever Niels Porn was eating, and he goes
Speaker 3: to sleep, regular guy. He starts dreaming about atoms, and
Speaker 3: he vividly sees it is burned into his brain. The
Speaker 3: nucleus of the atom, the electrons and the passages they
Speaker 3: spin in orbit around it, the way the planets spin
Speaker 3: around the Sun. And he wakes up and he goes,
Speaker 3: holy shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's exactly what he said. Well, if we
Speaker 2: think about dreams as specifically defragging the hard drive that
Speaker 2: is your mind and your neural connections, and then we
Speaker 2: imagine that every thought and every reference, every word, all
Speaker 2: of the things that you have to be able to
Speaker 2: produce as language and to have thoughts are connections between
Speaker 2: different neurons. Right sure, yep. And if we are defragging,
Speaker 2: we've maybe learned about seventeen different things in one day,
Speaker 2: and then we've got some older memories packed in there
Speaker 2: that we defrag the right way in our dreaming state,
Speaker 2: and that connection gets made without us being consciously aware
Speaker 2: of it, and then you wake up and now it's there.
Speaker 3: And riddle me this, because this verge is onto something
Speaker 3: fascinating that has still yet to be explained. Let's walk
Speaker 3: through it. So we know that different avenues of receiving
Speaker 3: external stimuli process memory in different ways. Smell and taste
Speaker 3: are extremely powerful. That's right. That's why, right now, if
Speaker 3: we ask you friends and neighbors to recall your favorite smell,
Speaker 3: it's gonna pop in your head. It's not just gonna
Speaker 3: pop in your head. A series of favorite smells are
Speaker 3: gonna pop in your head, along with associate images and
Speaker 3: maybe the sense of time and what you experienced it.
Speaker 3: So this is what mystifies me. Folks. Why why are
Speaker 3: dreams often not reported in terms of smell or olfactory stimuli?
Speaker 2: I don't have that thing. I can't think about a smell.
Speaker 3: Most people don't dream, don't encounter smells when they're dreaming.
Speaker 3: And if you do, please let us know, because you
Speaker 3: would be a fascinating outlier. Right, this is something I
Speaker 3: think it. I think it goes down to the way
Speaker 3: smell and taste in code into the brain. I really
Speaker 3: think that's it.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I was gonna be I was gonna make a
Speaker 2: joke about you know, if you're if you're getting actively
Speaker 2: Dutch ovens while asleep and you're unaware of it, then
Speaker 2: you could probably sense smell while you're dreaming.
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't call us, call call the pot police. Yeah,
Speaker 3: law in order, poop police. Boom boom, Oh wow, you're
Speaker 3: gonna get sued, no joke left behind anyway. So I
Speaker 3: love that man in these and other cases, though, we
Speaker 3: do see the science and dreaming at play, right, And
Speaker 3: you and I have known each other for quite some time,
Speaker 3: and we've talked consistently over the years about the nature
Speaker 3: of lucid dreaming. Don't make fun of us. Matt and
Speaker 3: I do share our dreams with each other. We have
Speaker 3: also encountered lectures and courses and even technology that's designed
Speaker 3: to inculcate lucid dreaming to help you understand the symbols
Speaker 3: or interpretations of what you see, journaling exercises like you mentioned.
Speaker 3: This is valuable stuff. And the thing that I'm not
Speaker 3: going to speak for you, But the thing that bugs
Speaker 3: me often about skepticism in this regard is that a
Speaker 3: lot of the more skeptical of us will dismiss dreams
Speaker 3: as little bore than, like a knock on cool side
Speaker 3: effect of evolution. Right, But then we have to ask
Speaker 3: what happened if Matt forgot the song that he learned
Speaker 3: in his dream. What happens if Neil's Boorr just forgets
Speaker 3: the structure of atoms? What happens if that legendary sleepy
Speaker 3: little patent cleric Albert Einstein ignores his own slumbering visions
Speaker 3: on the principle of relativity and the nature of the
Speaker 3: observable universe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then all of our sleep just becomes blackness, nothingness,
Speaker 2: the void itself.
Speaker 3: I'd be fine with that, man. There's a reason I
Speaker 3: don't sleep often. It's so weird.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I get it. Dream that is something we
Speaker 2: should talk about. Dreams can also be the worst thing ever,
Speaker 2: especially if you've got traumatic experiences in the waking world.
Speaker 2: By I've been there, I think maybe a lot of
Speaker 2: us have, where the moment you fall asleep, it is
Speaker 2: feels like torture almost, because you're just back there.
Speaker 3: I also, you know what I hate. This may be
Speaker 3: symptomatic of a larger mental issue, but I can't remember
Speaker 3: if I told you this. The majority of my dreams
Speaker 3: exist in an interconnected universe. They're aware of each other.
Speaker 3: They reference earlier stuff. It's weird.
Speaker 2: Well, you're actually fine. An ancient vampire, right, and what else?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 3: Is the spirits of the dead. No, it's seriously, it's
Speaker 3: weird stuff. Man, Like that is cool.
Speaker 2: That's like a superpower though, because you could build that
Speaker 2: universe like here if you wanted.
Speaker 3: To, Man, I don't know, Like I haven't told you
Speaker 3: all the stuff. It's the lore is deep and it's
Speaker 3: like I want to reboot oh Ya again. But anyway,
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter. We're not here to talking about me.
Speaker 3: We're here to talk about the fact that people have
Speaker 3: been interpreting dreams. We've been human civilization has been trying
Speaker 3: to understand what the heck this is and why it
Speaker 3: exists since before humans figured out how to write things down.
Speaker 3: And it's a thriving industry today. I don't want to
Speaker 3: put you too far on the spot, but do you
Speaker 3: ever do you ever have a dream that sent you
Speaker 3: to the Internet? Do you ever just do a quick
Speaker 3: google on dream symbolism?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: Generally no, But I have weird stuff Like the other night,
Speaker 2: Jimmy Fallon and Chloe Feinman and I were hanging out
Speaker 2: and for some reason drinking absence Like, but that was cool.
Speaker 2: It wasn't haunting, it wasn't scary, it was just great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just a moment that happens, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. Also, also, folks, from just a production perspective,
Speaker 3: please respect your brain. It is doing new shows every
Speaker 3: single time you fall asleep, you know what I mean. Yeah,
Speaker 3: not all of them are going to be terrible. Some
Speaker 3: will be great, and then some will be Like I
Speaker 3: had one where I had to drive from one dream
Speaker 3: to another, and time is tricky in this virtual reality,
Speaker 3: but it was literally two and a half hours that
Speaker 3: I remember where I'm just driving and listening to light
Speaker 3: instrumental music.
Speaker 2: That's beautiful, man. I don't know, man, Well, it's a
Speaker 2: weird thing because time doesn't work the same in dreams.
Speaker 2: I don't know if anybody has experienced this, but I
Speaker 2: took a nap. In total, it was fifteen minutes, just
Speaker 2: like lay your head down. For me, it was literally
Speaker 2: in between two meetings because I just couldn't keep my
Speaker 2: eyes open laid down. I thought it was days in
Speaker 2: a dream like I thought so much time had passed,
Speaker 2: but it was, no, it was It was less than
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes. So it is a weird thing that we
Speaker 2: can perceive that stuff even when in this space, this reality,
Speaker 2: it's only been a couple of minutes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember similar experiences. I think we've all had
Speaker 3: some time or linear time parkour in dreams, which is
Speaker 3: one of the one of the coolest branches of the
Speaker 3: concept of dreaming, and there is a modern scientifically respected
Speaker 3: version of dream study owneurology O N E I R
Speaker 3: O L O G. Why it's branch of psychology, and
Speaker 3: they're not really trying to do the Freudian Youngian interpretation
Speaker 3: of you know, what does this blue tiger mean? Right?
Speaker 3: Why does it pursue you? Or things like that. What
Speaker 3: they're doing instead is exploring the process of dreaming and
Speaker 3: further attempting to correlate the nature of the lived experience
Speaker 3: of the dream to the activity in the human brain
Speaker 3: on a physical neurological level, and then also to understand
Speaker 3: how it relates to memory formation, how it may relate
Speaker 3: to mental disorders and other I don't love the term,
Speaker 3: but other divergent conditions. That's how it's often put in literature.
Speaker 2: That word reminds me of oni. The concept of oni.
Speaker 2: Isn't that a specific type of yokai like a yes demon, right,
Speaker 2: which makes you think of nightmares, which makes me think
Speaker 2: of like the when we looked up the origins of
Speaker 2: that concept, Wow.
Speaker 3: Okay, nightmares that's sleep paralysis episode was a banger and
Speaker 3: also interesting. If we want to go YOUNGI in just
Speaker 3: for a moment, I believe Eve, and I'm not gonna
Speaker 3: I'm not going to google it. Let's see if I'm right.
Speaker 3: I believe that an one is subterranean trogoladitic. I believe
Speaker 3: they're found in caves, in deep places, which Young would
Speaker 3: just love.
Speaker 2: Deep within the recesses of the folds of your mind.
Speaker 3: Dude, Young would be Okay. If you had to pick
Speaker 3: between hanging out with Freud or hanging out with Carl Young,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say it, I would probably go Young. Freud
Speaker 3: feels like a very smart dude who could be a lot.
Speaker 2: I'm going with Freud so I can get to Berne's.
Speaker 3: He'll say, why do you keep asking about my nephew.
Speaker 3: We're supposed to sit over here, lick these cigars and
Speaker 3: not think of penises. Freud was crazy, dude. I feel
Speaker 3: like enough time has passed right that I can say
Speaker 3: that he was He was, Yes.
Speaker 2: He was protecting. Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 3: He proposed and projected a lot of interesting concepts. But
Speaker 3: and look, a lot of people struggle with substance abuse.
Speaker 3: But that guy apparently loved cocaine.
Speaker 2: Who doesn't. I'm just joding me. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know what that's.
Speaker 3: Like me neither. I think I'll leave that experience unexperienced.
Speaker 3: I'll just read Freud, I guess anyway. So, fellow oeneurologist
Speaker 3: in the crowd, awake and asleep. We know this sounds
Speaker 3: a little dry, maybe disappointing, but please trust us. There
Speaker 3: is bizarre stuff ahead. We have been fascinated by the
Speaker 3: concept of well you'll see. We'll pause for a word
Speaker 3: from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy, all right,
Speaker 3: there turns out right it's an ancient science interpreting dreams,
Speaker 3: figuring out what dreams mean. There are in recent decades fascinating,
Speaker 3: fascinating experiments into the nature of dreams. The more passive
Speaker 3: stuff is observing what happens in a brain when a
Speaker 3: dream occurs. And then you get to the idea of
Speaker 3: enabling that dream world or the dreamer to communicate with
Speaker 3: the waking world. And then you get into Flutson with
Speaker 3: a dream, you know what I mean, touching it just
Speaker 3: a little. What dreams may come rated.
Speaker 2: Film dreams.
Speaker 3: Got to and everybody knows how we spelled that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, okay, Well, the thing that I think fascinated
Speaker 2: us pretty recently. Back in January, we found this story
Speaker 2: about a company that was trying to do this kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. How do we unli the power of dreams? Right?
Speaker 2: And how do we even potentially connect people via dreams
Speaker 2: the way we would connect people in an alternate reality
Speaker 2: space or a virtual reality space by making their senses
Speaker 2: via you know, Wi Fi signaling see each other, hear
Speaker 2: each other, and potentially even feel each other.
Speaker 3: Right. Which avenue of sensory stimuli can we hack? You know?
Speaker 3: What I mean? Is where we get down to it.
Speaker 3: This is a response to an ancient thing that is
Speaker 3: problematic for a lot of scientists, and I will confess
Speaker 3: in my various misadventures it has been problematic and difficult
Speaker 3: for me to explain as well. Folks, you have perhaps
Speaker 3: felt that you have communicated with a loved one or
Speaker 3: a quaint since what's that old trope? There are no
Speaker 3: strangers in dreams. Someone reached out to you. And this
Speaker 3: idea is ubiquitous. It exists across time and cultures, and
Speaker 3: modern science overwhelmingly says, you know, clap trap, hogwash they do.
Speaker 2: Until again, this group came along and said, well, let's
Speaker 2: at least give it a try. Let's see if we
Speaker 2: can make it happen. And by the way, the person
Speaker 2: acquaintance unknown, whoever it is that we feel is communicating
Speaker 2: to us in our dream, that can be a living person,
Speaker 2: that can be a like again, like for some reason,
Speaker 2: Jimmy Fallon was all about like encouragement and stuff in
Speaker 2: my dream. I don't know why. I don't know the dude,
Speaker 2: but he was. But he could also be somebody who's
Speaker 2: passed on already, right, or maybe somebody from history that
Speaker 2: we that we know and love, or somebody we have
Speaker 2: we've never met before, right or could never have met.
Speaker 3: Right or because we're also immediately you the observer and
Speaker 3: the dream you are gifted with dream logic, which means
Speaker 3: when you meet someone. That's why we say you no strangers. Really,
Speaker 3: when you meet someone, you immediately know key things about them,
Speaker 3: key visceral things.
Speaker 2: Yep, and they you because they are you. You are you,
Speaker 2: and they are you. We are us. What's happening? Okay,
Speaker 2: So let's get to this company. Yes, it is in California.
Speaker 2: It's called rem Space r E M space. That's one word. Uh.
Speaker 2: They put out several studies and some a bunch of
Speaker 2: PR stuff, to be fair, like a lot of this
Speaker 2: is prs, a.
Speaker 3: Lot of a lot of PR.
Speaker 2: Including like diagrams and videos, and.
Speaker 3: So much so that I believe both of your faithful
Speaker 3: correspondence folks struggle to find the actual you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. But it sounds awesome, So let's just it
Speaker 3: sounds cool, dream with us, Okay, Matt, what's happening.
Speaker 2: Well, they're able to connect two people who are experiencing
Speaker 2: some form or level of lucid dreaming to then be
Speaker 2: able to send one signal from one dreamer via Wi
Speaker 2: Fi through their system out to the other side to
Speaker 2: another human being sleeping far far away, also lucid dreaming.
Speaker 2: Then then that person received a signal from the other
Speaker 2: person and was able to then repeat it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So they're using and again this is a
Speaker 3: startup and it is hoping to monetize what we're exploring.
Speaker 3: That's an important thing for later. This experiment uses, as
Speaker 3: you said, Matt, just your average brain monitoring equipment, the
Speaker 3: server and the Wi Fi or key. The researchers use
Speaker 3: the brain monitoring equipment to watch in real time the
Speaker 3: action and activity of the brain and then when they
Speaker 3: receive the signal that indicates the participant has entered a
Speaker 3: hypnogogic or lucid dream state. Then the server, not the researchers,
Speaker 3: the server creates a word in such like some sort
Speaker 3: of specific quote unquote unique language word, which is how
Speaker 3: we know this A is pr and not science. And
Speaker 3: so it said, the server creates this thing, and it
Speaker 3: sends it to now our hypnogogic or lucid sleeper via
Speaker 3: earbuds that they're wearing as they enter that state, and
Speaker 3: they are still dreaming, but they can still hear the
Speaker 3: outside world. So they repeat the word in whatever the
Speaker 3: hell a unique language means.
Speaker 2: And these are sitting there sleeping, and then they say
Speaker 2: it out loud in their body. They dream it somehow.
Speaker 2: Then the clock it. The researchers understand that that's.
Speaker 3: What happens, because they measure they can see according to
Speaker 3: what we understand. The the brain monitoring equipment indicates a
Speaker 3: change such that you would know someone that has received
Speaker 3: and repeated to themselves internally information. And now, of course
Speaker 3: if we're at that state of lucid dreaming, or if
Speaker 3: we're between full wake and full sleep, then yeah, it's
Speaker 3: possible that someone just went someone went oh, I see
Speaker 3: or whatever, but that's not what we're looking for, and
Speaker 3: so small window of time passes in the real world, right,
Speaker 3: I know, we're getting very inception with this. The second
Speaker 3: sleeper has entered their lucid dream state, they receive that
Speaker 3: saved message from the server, and then they wake up
Speaker 3: and they repeat the word that they learned communicated in
Speaker 3: a dream state to a dream state, yet still created
Speaker 3: and entirely dependent upon the server and the Wi Fi.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where it's a little weird. I think when
Speaker 2: you look at some of the materials that rem Space
Speaker 2: is put forward, it feels as though it sounds as though,
Speaker 2: if you don't get dived too deep into it, as
Speaker 2: though the Lucid dreamer created a message and sent it
Speaker 2: to the second Lucid dreamer and they were lucid dreaming simultaneously.
Speaker 2: And it feels as though, at least to some of
Speaker 2: their materials, that it's happening in real time, like the
Speaker 2: sleepers are just communicating with each other. But that is
Speaker 2: not at least what we understand to be happening. It
Speaker 2: is all their their tech basically that is doing all
Speaker 2: of this stuff. But potentially cool if you had two
Speaker 2: eight comms in dream states. I don't know, man, no,
Speaker 2: I think. In the episode when we first brought up,
Speaker 2: we talked about long distance relationships and how interesting it
Speaker 2: would be to actually connect. You know, there's a saying
Speaker 2: if I don't know if anybody else has this experience,
Speaker 2: but like saying good night going to Ben's sing, I'll
Speaker 2: see in the dreams, Cabra, I'll see out there in
Speaker 2: the dreams, And you say it as a hopeful thing,
Speaker 2: a sweet thing. Sure, what if you could actually flick
Speaker 2: on a machine, put a little something on your head
Speaker 2: and nay, now we're out there in dream world together.
Speaker 3: Interesting? That interesting that you would bring up that part specifically,
Speaker 3: because that aspect of our conversation stayed with me as well.
Speaker 3: We know for this right, like what we're describing, according
Speaker 3: to the PR is the ideal next step for r
Speaker 3: EM space. But what we see, even with this tech
Speaker 3: reliant proof of concept, is the first known instance of
Speaker 3: communication between people whom are both in a dream state
Speaker 3: a sender and a receiver exists. Right. This also follows
Speaker 3: up on an earlier experiment from twenty twenty one, which
Speaker 3: was a big year actually for dream science researchers. Well,
Speaker 3: there was this sort of justice League or Avengers or
Speaker 3: x men of researchers from multiple countries who collaborated. And
Speaker 3: this is led by a guy named Ken pallor cognitive
Speaker 3: neuroscientist over in Illinois at Northwestern, and they are able
Speaker 3: to create dialogue between a person in a dream state
Speaker 3: and a fully awake scientist. It's not a very long
Speaker 3: conversation at all, but it is interesting. I don't know
Speaker 3: if it's long enough for us to do a classic
Speaker 3: like stuff. They don't want you to know reenactment, but
Speaker 3: maybe we just do the lines together.
Speaker 2: Oh no, let's tell you this. Okay, I will play
Speaker 2: the scientist. If you don't mind, Ben, please play the sleeper.
Speaker 2: Here we go. Scientist says eight minus six.
Speaker 3: Eight two.
Speaker 1: Eureka, guys, what happened?
Speaker 2: I was so asleep? Man, I was sleeping, definitely, man.
Speaker 3: Shout out to all of us who are so impressed
Speaker 3: that somewhat did math while asleep.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't even know if you're supposed to be
Speaker 2: able to do that, man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have to check with sleep police.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love how we're just inventing police departments. Now we
Speaker 3: got poop police. We got sleep police.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, we got Java police. They said that you've
Speaker 2: had enough coffee, as he drinks a monster coffee.
Speaker 3: Job police arrest this.
Speaker 2: That's a good one too.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, guys, we are drinking canned coffee because.
Speaker 2: It's just not the same when it's in a cup,
Speaker 2: but if it's in a can, and he goes.
Speaker 3: I dreamed that you said that, So so okay, look
Speaker 3: eight minus six. Our scientist, Frederick, Doctor Frederick says eight
Speaker 3: minus six to a sleeping person, and our patient says,
Speaker 3: I essentially I hear you, and here is the answer.
Speaker 3: So I know this is not in this barely freezed
Speaker 3: as an interrogative. It's just the three words eight minus six,
Speaker 3: and the sleeper, despite not being awake, immediately recognizes, interprets,
Speaker 3: analyzes this as a math conversation, and then produces the result.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well amazing. So it's not the same as what
Speaker 2: rem Space claims to have done, but it is pretty
Speaker 2: cool to be able to send a message out into
Speaker 2: that dream world and then get a response. It kind
Speaker 2: of reminds me of some of the sci fi tropes
Speaker 2: where you've got somebody going through like a portal or something,
Speaker 2: or even someone going down into the depths of the ocean,
Speaker 2: and there's still communication between the surface world and then
Speaker 2: the depths of the ocean where just someone else is
Speaker 2: exploring out in an unknown, unseen place, and then people
Speaker 2: back in you know, the waking real, you know, whatever
Speaker 2: we call real world, can then talk to that person
Speaker 2: and see what they're discovering. I don't know, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: I'm having a hard time even like phrasing these things correctly.
Speaker 2: But I'm imagining the dreamscape as another world to be explored,
Speaker 2: another reality to be explored.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. Yes, like the high heavens, the deep
Speaker 3: ink of space, and the ocean and the seas. It
Speaker 3: also reminds me of I don't know if there are
Speaker 3: any fans of the television series Fringe.
Speaker 2: In the crowd.
Speaker 3: Yes, but remember, dude, yeah, I know we are. But
Speaker 3: remember the entangled typewriters. This is a slight spoiler three
Speaker 3: two one. These people and characters and entities are able
Speaker 3: to communicate across various planes of existence through putting a
Speaker 3: mirror next to a special kind of typewriter and typing
Speaker 3: one thing in their reality and then seeing a message
Speaker 3: typed out on the mirror.
Speaker 2: Oh, it is so cool, so good that show gives
Speaker 2: me frision.
Speaker 3: Is excited to meadows on board. We also know that
Speaker 3: depending on how further research works out REM Space and
Speaker 3: other startups or initiatives like it, some of which, by
Speaker 3: the way, are federally or militarily funded, they may pave
Speaker 3: the way for brand new approaches to things like treating
Speaker 3: PTSD or anxiety, along with some other stuff that we'll
Speaker 3: talk about after the next ad break. We do have
Speaker 3: to Matt, We've got to say it. Michael Riduga is
Speaker 3: the founder and CEO of rem Space, and he is
Speaker 3: pretty ambitious in his statements about it. He says the
Speaker 3: follow in multiple PR communicats. Quote yesterday, communicating and dreams
Speaker 3: seemed like science fiction. Tomorrow it will be so common
Speaker 3: we won't be able to imagine our lives without this technology. Ambitious,
Speaker 3: you know, man's reach must exceed his grasp. Else what's
Speaker 3: a heaven for? And however the old poem goes. But
Speaker 3: also full disclosure, Reduga has made some controversial moves in
Speaker 3: the past. He did put a chip in his own skull.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he gave himself brain surgery with a home depot
Speaker 2: drill and it wasn't from home depot, but you know,
Speaker 2: a drill that you would use for wood and stuff.
Speaker 2: And then he had to get it removed because you know,
Speaker 2: he put a chip in his own brain at his
Speaker 2: own house, which almost died. Like we admire.
Speaker 3: Well officially he said personal reasons. Yeah, but I think
Speaker 3: being alive as a personal reason ambitious. This man is ambitious.
Speaker 3: This man is all to say. When you think about it,
Speaker 3: it's an exciting time to be asleep.
Speaker 2: Weird.
Speaker 3: Exciting doesn't always mean good. What if we take a
Speaker 3: break for a word from our sponsors here, and then,
Speaker 3: as they say on the LA leaguers, we get to
Speaker 3: the chicken. I think there's something you and I are
Speaker 3: both excited slash terrified to explore.
Speaker 4: Let's do it, and we're back.
Speaker 3: This is the thing that stayed with us the most
Speaker 3: and really informs our exploration tonight, Matt. As you and
Speaker 3: I alluded to earlier, the same innovations that allow for
Speaker 3: potential anxiety or trauma treatment, the same innovations that allow
Speaker 3: for or potentially better communication between people, also, inevitably, just
Speaker 3: like nuclear research, lead us to the dark side, the
Speaker 3: troubling stuff. What if by the same the same methods
Speaker 3: used to observe and help people in a dream state.
Speaker 3: What if we could manipulate it, put a thug on
Speaker 3: the scale.
Speaker 2: What if that scientist instead of saying eight minus six
Speaker 2: said drink core's light.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, exactly. And I loved when we talked about
Speaker 3: this back in twenty twenty one in our Strange News program.
Speaker 3: The year before that, in twenty twenty researchers over at MIT,
Speaker 3: which is a kind of good school. They are they're
Speaker 3: gonna be so bad. All right, it's fine as school.
Speaker 3: I'm kidding. Oh my gosh, they're gonna kill us anyway.
Speaker 3: Media they have a thing called Media Lab Fluid Interfaces.
Speaker 3: This is a group that created something called targeted dream
Speaker 3: Incubation or TDI. The technology or the approach, the methodology
Speaker 3: they deploy is new, but the concept isn't. You can
Speaker 3: read some great, some great work by a journalist named
Speaker 3: Sophia Motino about this, writing for Science and she just
Speaker 3: describes the following. You know, dream incubation is, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: something familiar to anybody who's played a video game too
Speaker 3: long before bed. It's where images sounds, repetitive, sensory cues
Speaker 3: shape the content of the hallucinations you have in your
Speaker 3: sleeping state. And Sophia goes on to note this is
Speaker 3: an ancient people throughout history had rituals techniques to try
Speaker 3: to change the content of your dreams. That's why in
Speaker 3: the Western world, that's why people pray before bedtime, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, Let God shepherd me through the
Speaker 3: night and things like that.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a cool it's one of the reasons people
Speaker 2: do a lot of research before bed, meditate, often create art,
Speaker 2: write songs. I mean, some of the things that you
Speaker 2: do right before bed tend to find their way into
Speaker 2: your dreams, at least most vividly. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that makes sense because if we encounter a
Speaker 3: sort of sedimentary accretion theory of stimulus before you leave
Speaker 3: the waking world, then you could argue that the stuff
Speaker 3: at the top, the soil at the top, is going
Speaker 3: to be the things that the shovel hits first.
Speaker 2: Right or last. It could be either right, and then
Speaker 2: it just depends on we don't really know if the
Speaker 2: brain goes from the bottom up like what we learned today, Okay,
Speaker 2: going from the bottom up to the top of the thing.
Speaker 2: The last thing you learn or does it start from
Speaker 2: the top, as you're saying, go down.
Speaker 3: And we don't know whether certain let's call them elements.
Speaker 3: I'm loving this analogy, by the way, may have more weight, right,
Speaker 3: and metaphorical weight because of the variables of previous holes
Speaker 3: dug right, previous shovels, things that this is where we
Speaker 3: enter recurrent content. Right. The nightmares that haunt you are
Speaker 3: the We're just gonna let that one go.
Speaker 2: It's just your brain going, oh crap. We really haven't
Speaker 2: dealt with that yet. We're trying to, but we can't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we know that people would, like you said, Matt,
Speaker 3: people would meditate, People might do a creative act like journaling, writing, sculpting, painting, sketching, praying,
Speaker 3: of course, And sorry, I got that wrong. I'm not
Speaker 3: an expert on the Christianity stuff. It's now I lay
Speaker 3: me down to sleep, not God shepherd me through the night.
Speaker 3: I think that's a different religion. It's now I lay
Speaker 3: me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul
Speaker 3: to keep I.
Speaker 2: Mean that's one of the Yeah, that's one of the prayers.
Speaker 2: There's so many, dude.
Speaker 3: What's the cool one?
Speaker 2: Uh me this night? No, I don't know.
Speaker 3: To the glorious dead and also me falling asleep on
Speaker 3: the couch watching Police Academy five.
Speaker 2: You hold the septa, we hold the key. You are
Speaker 2: the devil, we are an e. I think that's how
Speaker 2: it goes.
Speaker 3: That's amazing and that's a tribute. Yeah, So shout out
Speaker 3: to the fellow nerds who enjoyed that. Oh, Noel would
Speaker 3: have had chuckle at that too. So all right. People
Speaker 3: would also use drugs, right, And this we see reflected
Speaker 3: in things like the concept of sipping a nightcap or
Speaker 3: the an alcoholic beverage before bed, or for instance, people
Speaker 3: who ingest cannabis right, or take any number of pill medications,
Speaker 3: et cetera. Yes, yes, exactly. Which what an amazing word, right.
Speaker 3: It sounds like it does something. It does it does something,
Speaker 3: but it sounds like it's a real word, and it's
Speaker 3: very much not a real word.
Speaker 2: Sleep drive to Kroger. That's what it does.
Speaker 3: Right. Oh and then if you ever misbehave on social media,
Speaker 3: blame it on the ambient anyway. So TDI targeted dream incubation.
Speaker 3: It is the in this sense before the thing we're
Speaker 3: about to get into. It is the combination of an
Speaker 3: app and a wearable sleep tracking sensor device. Things that
Speaker 3: you and I were I think both contemplating for a while.
Speaker 3: Did you ever pull the trigger on that, like the
Speaker 3: like the lucid dream goggle thing.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I never, I never tried it. I would
Speaker 2: love to, though, I would really really like to do that.
Speaker 3: It'd be interesting. If you want to read more about this, folks,
Speaker 3: check out the paper that the people at MIT. I'm laughing, Dylan,
Speaker 3: so as a joke that the check out the paper
Speaker 3: the people at MIT wrote called dormio a targeted dream
Speaker 3: incubation device. So yes, we talked about the good stuff.
Speaker 3: The technology in this paper can plausibly help address issues
Speaker 3: by redirecting your dreaming mind, getting you to dwell on
Speaker 3: something else. When it turns out, the world of dream
Speaker 3: research it includes some potential nightmares all its own.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: So in step with all of this related interesting inspirational
Speaker 3: research we've been exploring, multiple organizations are looking into the
Speaker 3: concept of engineering dreams not for mental health, but instead
Speaker 3: to sell you stuff. And Matt, I don't know which
Speaker 3: where do we start unpacking this. What's the one that
Speaker 3: stood out the most to you?
Speaker 2: The stuff that's one of the most was the cores
Speaker 2: light or the cores, mulsen, cores, whatever it is. The
Speaker 2: companies that wanted it was, look, we have to put
Speaker 2: this out there. It was part of a commercial campaign. Yesay,
Speaker 2: so what we're telling you was kind of happening, but
Speaker 2: it was also a tongue in cheek commercial thing. And
Speaker 2: it's hard to know where the line is between what
Speaker 2: the company actually wanted to do and then what they
Speaker 2: wanted to do just to sell more of their product.
Speaker 3: And of the eighteen people that we're going to reference
Speaker 3: in the study, all consented to participate with advanced knowledge
Speaker 3: of what was happening, and twelve were paid actors.
Speaker 2: Yes. Absolutely, So let's just get into what I This
Speaker 2: is what I recall from our previous discussion. The hope
Speaker 2: that at least Cores had was that if they played
Speaker 2: sounds of nature of certain types of water, of a
Speaker 2: chili landscape, the imagery of mountains and clouds and all
Speaker 2: of these things, that it would it would make the user,
Speaker 2: let's say, the experiencer in the dream state, think of cores,
Speaker 2: tap the rockies, cores, ice cold, forged in ice. You know,
Speaker 2: all of these concepts that have been a part of
Speaker 2: the cores mythos thinking of these things would have them
Speaker 2: want and desire cores.
Speaker 3: Cours the beers so good, you can drink it with your.
Speaker 2: Mouth, that's right, that's right. Yeah. But but yeah, that
Speaker 2: was interesting to me. The concept of not directly stating
Speaker 2: within somebody's dream and you know, pumping in audio that
Speaker 2: says drink more, corese drink more. Course, it was let's
Speaker 2: give them the experience of the things that they associate
Speaker 2: positively with our product. Maybe they will then purchase.
Speaker 3: It right, right, And they had to be quite careful
Speaker 3: with the idea of, as you're saying, explicitly telling people
Speaker 3: to go buy something right. They wanted to avoid that
Speaker 3: part that.
Speaker 2: Would fall under subliminal messaging and a bunch of other
Speaker 2: things that would probably get sticky legal wise. This is
Speaker 2: a this is more fun science.
Speaker 3: This is more look at us, fellow humans. We're in corporation,
Speaker 3: but we're cool. We're in fact, we're not cool. We're cores.
Speaker 3: So TDI targeted dream incubation. Like you said, it's you
Speaker 3: could call it. We could call it an ad campaign
Speaker 3: or ad stunt. They might call it or an activation.
Speaker 3: Heaven forfend it's the twenty twenty one Super Bowl, right,
Speaker 3: one of the most pivotal moments in advertising year over year.
Speaker 3: So there are one hundred almost one hundred million people
Speaker 3: watching the super Bowl one way or another. Uh, And
Speaker 3: they wanted to alter cores, wanted to alter dreams of
Speaker 3: viewers the night before the game. They wanted them to
Speaker 3: dream about cores and then buy corps while they're watching
Speaker 3: the Super Bowl the next day. That's the idea, that's
Speaker 3: what they're They're already selling the idea, right, And this
Speaker 3: was I love that you pointed out. It's already kind
Speaker 3: of a a story, right, it's a story we're telling.
Speaker 3: And even you know. The interesting thing and I'm sure
Speaker 3: they talked about this. The interesting thing is it increases
Speaker 3: visibility enough just the reporting about this that people are
Speaker 3: gonna be thinking, of course, even if they're not one
Speaker 3: of the eighteen people who participated in this study.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a little weird. It feels like a crambling production.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, Oh my gosh, it is a crambling production.
Speaker 3: Detroiters is so good. Please check it out, bolts and
Speaker 3: join us and pushing for a season three please? Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then we have no we we have a lot
Speaker 3: of examples from the world of gaming. Xbox U use
Speaker 3: TDI in what you could arguably calls another ad stunt
Speaker 3: to have pro gamers primed to dream of their favorite
Speaker 3: video games, PlayStation latched onto something we've already known about, Tetris.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: They said, we can create a Tetris game based on
Speaker 3: this sleep study. And the study shows that if you
Speaker 3: play enough Tetris, you dream about Tetris. And I think
Speaker 3: we've all been there at one point or another.
Speaker 2: Well, Scientific American has talked about that, that Tetris study dreams. Yeah, like,
Speaker 2: why are there test? Why do we all have Tetris dreams?
Speaker 2: What's going on?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can go to science dot org. The study
Speaker 3: that launched one thousand ships comes out in October of
Speaker 3: two thousand, replaying the game Hypnagogic Images in normals and amnesiacs. Okay,
Speaker 3: the title is something we're going to move past, but
Speaker 3: but it is. It is an experience, right, and it
Speaker 3: shows us a lot about how dream incubation can work
Speaker 3: because Tetris just has you know, a small set of
Speaker 3: shapes that move in a predictable pattern, and you are
Speaker 3: participating in that pattern. You are programming yourself to experience
Speaker 3: a routine yet interactive series of stimuli.
Speaker 2: See. The next thing is, can we alter perception within
Speaker 2: those Tetris dreams so that we become each individual piece
Speaker 2: as we plunge faster and faster down towards whatever shape
Speaker 2: we're becoming and making interesting.
Speaker 3: I like it the adult argument there, Yes, Tetris. We're
Speaker 3: hanging out later if you guys want to kick it.
Speaker 3: We know that the vice president of marketing at Mulson
Speaker 3: Coors again is back a few years ago, praised this
Speaker 3: beverage company's strategy and said, this is never before seeing
Speaker 3: form of advertising. I don't know why. It sounds like
Speaker 3: a British villain, but agreed with the VP at course,
Speaker 3: and they also said, not only have we never seed
Speaker 3: this before, we never want to see it again.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, Well, imagine imagine what happens if all
Speaker 2: of us, at some point in the near future have
Speaker 2: access to our dream world via some app, via some
Speaker 2: device that was pretty ubiquitous, and it's just something that
Speaker 2: becomes popular and now we're all doing it. Imagine if
Speaker 2: those dreams can be invaded with ad space, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: what happens?
Speaker 3: Right in twenty twenty one a group of around forty
Speaker 3: real life honorologists dream researchers. They got so concerned about
Speaker 3: this that they penned an open letter calling, most importantly
Speaker 3: for regulation of what they see as an emergent industry.
Speaker 3: You know, and as you were saying, Matt, They're concerns
Speaker 3: are pretty valid. The idea is, Look, human civilization is
Speaker 3: already monitored at a much more invasive level than at
Speaker 3: any other point in history. So dreams and your inner
Speaker 3: thoughts for now remain the last sacrisanct areas, the last
Speaker 3: truly private places. And we know external stimuli like sound, smells, lights, speech,
Speaker 3: that can affect what you're dreaming about, for example, falling
Speaker 3: asleep while watching a movie or listening to your favorite podcast.
Speaker 3: A lot of people are thoroughly creeped out by having
Speaker 3: some external entity seek to not just infiltrate, but to
Speaker 3: control your dream state, even if only briefly, even with
Speaker 3: the best of intentions. This is my house, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. We don't take walk ins.
Speaker 2: We already know that trice a Lawrence can get in
Speaker 2: there without us knowing. So you know, if we can
Speaker 2: avoid them, probably not, but we could probably legislate out
Speaker 2: of letting. I don't know, Microsoft hang out in our
Speaker 2: brains and tell us to buy things right?
Speaker 3: Right? Right? Is there a world with no walls to face?
Speaker 3: Just to keep going with that?
Speaker 2: Three?
Speaker 3: Okay, so we know we want to give a shout
Speaker 3: out to a cognitive scientist, Adam Harr. Adam Harr points
Speaker 3: out he was a participant in this open letter and
Speaker 3: he speaks to some of our concerns. He points out
Speaker 3: the second big issue with dream advertising is that quote
Speaker 3: people are particularly vulnerable to suggestion when they are asleep.
Speaker 3: He also, he's not some guy outside of a deli
Speaker 3: that they asked about this. He might have been outside
Speaker 3: of a deli. But before he did any of that,
Speaker 3: he invented a glove that helps with dream targeting. It
Speaker 3: helps to steer people towards specific subjects in certain stages
Speaker 3: of the sleep cycle. And to your point, Matt, by
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, this guy had already been contacted over
Speaker 3: a number of years by Microsoft, other giant corporations, and
Speaker 3: oddly enough, to airlines, two separate airlines. They wanted him
Speaker 3: to help them work on dream incubation. He was not
Speaker 3: super opposed to this. It's fascinating research he's a brilliant person,
Speaker 3: but he is a moral person such that he feels
Speaker 3: uncomfortable monetizing this technology and his work for the purpose
Speaker 3: of advertisements. I mean, let's think about it this way.
Speaker 3: You know, you're listening if you're awake, and you and
Speaker 3: Matt and Dylan and myself are waking brains have all
Speaker 3: these tricks and barriers that allow for things like skepticism,
Speaker 3: analysis and critical thought. You know, like Matt, when you
Speaker 3: hear a commercial these days, do you immediately say, crap,
Speaker 3: I have to buy this now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I say Google, buy me that thing.
Speaker 3: That's why you have so many that things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're everywhere.
Speaker 3: Thing one, thing, two. There are more boxes, boxes of
Speaker 3: things and stuff. So this is a mission critical point
Speaker 3: because those same processes are processes whatever you prefer. They
Speaker 3: don't work the same way when you're asleep. So we
Speaker 3: could hear you could hear us while you're awake saying
Speaker 3: something like, behold the lush, exotic coast of Belgium, brought
Speaker 3: to you by Illumination Global Unlimited. Buy a ticket today.
Speaker 3: You could hear that over and over while you're awake,
Speaker 3: and it's going to give you pause because you know, Belgium.
Speaker 3: Great Belgium is a fantastic place. It is not known
Speaker 3: for its lush, exotic coast That makes no sense.
Speaker 2: But if you they're there, are people gonna wake up
Speaker 2: and they're going to be thinking about that. I go
Speaker 2: to Belgium, but I want to go to the beach.
Speaker 3: Because it's your partner is going, why are we going
Speaker 3: to Belgium? And you're like the lush, exotic coastline. But
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's the fear, right. This technology is
Speaker 3: not meant to cause harm. But how could dream incubation
Speaker 3: affect folks who have addictions to gambling or drugs or
Speaker 3: you know whatever compulsive behavior. If they're asleep, they don't
Speaker 3: have the ability to remove themselves from that core's advertisement,
Speaker 3: and they don't have the ability to prevent exposure to
Speaker 3: known triggers. You know, like all of a sudden, I'm
Speaker 3: asleep and all of a sudden, I have an invasive
Speaker 3: dream about Blackjack.
Speaker 2: Oh, oh, casino.
Speaker 3: Right, This stake's native advertising to a new level. I
Speaker 3: know we're running along, let's maybe not. What do you say,
Speaker 3: can we walk a little further into the dark?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, sure, let's go the darkness of your dreams
Speaker 2: and our dreams. To be sure, what about other interfaces
Speaker 2: that we haven't thought about, that haven't been invented yet.
Speaker 2: Things Again, like we're talking about some device, some small
Speaker 2: probably a teeny tiny little thing that's ergonomic for your
Speaker 2: head when you wear it, and it's gonna be comfortable
Speaker 2: at night, and you're gonna want to wear it because
Speaker 2: it's gonna make you sleep better. It's gonna be nice.
Speaker 3: How can you sleep without it? Is what they're hoping,
Speaker 3: you ask yourself after about four months?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, then what happens when they come out with
Speaker 2: a version that, oh, well, we can actually just implant this. Now,
Speaker 2: you can just get this in your brain the way
Speaker 2: our friend did with his drill, except it'll be in
Speaker 2: a safe but it'll be in a safe surgical environment.
Speaker 3: Yes, we're calling it trepanation. Plus. It's part of your
Speaker 3: it's part of your US citizenship plus membership. Imagine a world.
Speaker 3: I know it sounds like we're being weird, but imagine
Speaker 3: a world where giant tech companies like Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon,
Speaker 3: they create sleep technology that becomes normalized. And maybe what
Speaker 3: if it to your point about everybody wearing one, what
Speaker 3: if it becomes another aspect of social media. Like in
Speaker 3: their heyday, everybody had to have a TikTok or a
Speaker 3: Facebook account, so you are expected to do this, and
Speaker 3: now you can pay extra to avoid some ads, and
Speaker 3: now these corporations who own the platform have a gargantuan
Speaker 3: new revenue stream. One of the dumbest examples. Okay, everybody
Speaker 3: has their micro sleep or their metasoft or whatever, and
Speaker 3: now they are telling advertisers, we can get into people's
Speaker 3: dreams for you. If you are Mattel or Lago, how
Speaker 3: much are you going to pay for literal dream ad
Speaker 3: space across a given demographic right before Christmas?
Speaker 2: Especially for kids? How young before you get an implant? Yeah,
Speaker 2: listen to tomorrow's Monsters. That's a show created by Dan
Speaker 2: Bush and it is about this very thing. It's an
Speaker 2: exploration of this concept of like sleep and how can
Speaker 2: we capture sleep.
Speaker 3: Yes, I remember that I'm a fan of Dan on
Speaker 3: a personal level, and Matt, you and he have worked
Speaker 3: together for a while. We do have another this is
Speaker 3: a tangent, but we have another new show by Dan
Speaker 3: and team that we'd love to recommend.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, listen to a Live again right now. Alive again.
Speaker 2: Check it out. It's all about, well, it's all about
Speaker 2: a lot of things, but mostly it's near death experiences
Speaker 2: and what consciousness does when it's outside of this reality
Speaker 2: that we all.
Speaker 3: Experience another brief hypnogogic experience right the line between life
Speaker 3: and death. And just like dreams, emerging from an NDE
Speaker 3: has also a tremendous effect on individual lives and on
Speaker 3: the course of human history. Honestly, this all goes in
Speaker 3: so many directions. We also know. Another concern for people
Speaker 3: are against dream incubation is the idea that all of
Speaker 3: this tech will inevitably create another revenue stream by harvesting
Speaker 3: the user data sleep patterns, brain activity, behavior before, after,
Speaker 3: and during sleep. And this sounds sci fi, but we
Speaker 3: have to remember this occurs in step with previously established
Speaker 3: technology like the breakthrough back in twenty thirteen where Japanese
Speaker 3: researchers leveraged MRI scans to go into the minds of
Speaker 3: sleeping people and generate like printouts of the images they
Speaker 3: saw while they slumbered.
Speaker 2: That's a big note things.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's past. Yeah for me that.
Speaker 2: I really don't I honestly don't even really want to know.
Speaker 2: Sometimes where my jams go.
Speaker 3: I'll draw it myself. If it's that important, I will,
Speaker 3: you know, and I respect the science. It is amazing.
Speaker 3: These are brilliant, well intentioned people. But it might be
Speaker 3: a rubicon too far. You know, dreams are baffling, they're inspiring,
Speaker 3: they're joyous, they're terrifying, they're amazing. We are on the
Speaker 3: cusp of a new paradigm where again, if you want
Speaker 3: to be optimistic about it, the bleeding edge of science
Speaker 3: is leading us to deeper nize spiritual questions about the
Speaker 3: nature of consciousness and the thing called the soul and
Speaker 3: how it experiences it health or you're gonna wake up
Speaker 3: thinking I can't believe I could get fifteen percent off
Speaker 3: a cheeseburger.
Speaker 2: Today, zero percent down on that new Toyota.
Speaker 3: Holy kra hon hon, wake up, you were talking in
Speaker 3: your sleep again. Oh what was it about. It's about
Speaker 3: the great deals for the Toyota Camry.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you said. Honda Odyssey has their top
Speaker 2: line models on sale this month.
Speaker 3: It's perfect for the lush, exotic coast of Belgium. We
Speaker 3: have to go. Tell us, folks, would you trade off
Speaker 3: your privacy and the secrets of your dream state. If so,
Speaker 3: what would be your price? If not, tell us why not?
Speaker 3: For a lot of us, We have to realize this
Speaker 3: is the stuff we don't want them to know. So
Speaker 3: let us know your thoughts so you can find us
Speaker 3: online conspiracy stuff, conspiracy stuff, show any derivation thereof on
Speaker 3: the social meat you might sip. You can also pop
Speaker 3: by our email address or just give us a call
Speaker 3: on our telephone number.
Speaker 2: Our number is one eight three three st DWYTK. It's
Speaker 2: a voicemail system. When you call in, give yourself a
Speaker 2: cool nickname and let us know in the message if
Speaker 2: we can use your name and message on the air.
Speaker 2: If you've got more to say, they can fit in
Speaker 2: a three minute voicemail. Maybe you've got links, maybe you've
Speaker 2: got attachments. Why don't you send us a good old
Speaker 2: fashioned email.
Speaker 3: We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
Speaker 3: we receive. Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void
Speaker 3: writes back, So get hypnagogic. Join us in this liminal
Speaker 3: state conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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