WEBVTT - Sleep and Creativity 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.840 --> 0:00:14.280 Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:16.720 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:19.040 McCormick and Robert, I want to tell you a story 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:23.960 about visions of frog hearts dancing in the void. Do tell? Okay? 0:00:24.280 --> 0:00:29.320 So In ninety six, the German American pharmacologist and physician 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:33.760 Otto Loewis and the English pharmacologist Henry Dale together won 0:00:33.800 --> 0:00:37.560 the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine for their discoveries 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:41.600 about how signals travel between nerve cells and then from 0:00:41.600 --> 0:00:44.680 nerve cells two organs in the body. Back then, this 0:00:44.800 --> 0:00:48.760 wasn't specifically known, like how does the nervous system transmit 0:00:48.840 --> 0:00:51.600 information back and forth? People thought, you know, maybe maybe 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:55.000 it's electrical. We discovered electricity at the time. What exactly 0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:58.560 is going on there? And specifically, what they found is 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:01.840 that chemicals were involved often sending these impulses back and 0:01:01.880 --> 0:01:05.240 forth in the nervous system. And in one famous experiment, 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:09.560 Otto Lowy and some colleagues first slowed down the beating 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:13.640 of a frog's heart by stimulating the vagus nerve connected 0:01:13.680 --> 0:01:15.680 to it. Now, that's the thing that they knew already 0:01:15.680 --> 0:01:17.600 at the time they could do, if you stimulate the 0:01:17.680 --> 0:01:21.360 vegas nerve, you can make the heartbeat decrease in rate. 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:26.600 Then they took fluid from the slowed down heart and 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:31.080 perfused a second frog's heart with that fluid from the 0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:35.360 slow beating first heart. Now the second frog heart also 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:39.360 slowed down, even though no nerves had been stimulated, and 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:43.280 this provided evidence that some chemical property of the fluid 0:01:43.360 --> 0:01:46.400 from the first heart had effects on the nerve cells 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:50.880 in the second heart. Essentially that chemicals controlled nervous tissue behavior, 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:54.520 and the chemical that slowed down the heartbeat was originally 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:58.000 called vegas stuff that's a good German name for it um, 0:01:58.040 --> 0:01:59.840 but now we know it to be a setal cullen. 0:02:00.480 --> 0:02:02.920 And then in a related experiment, Lois showed that you 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:05.680 could speed up a frog heart with fluid from another 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:09.480 heart whose accelerated nerve had been stimulated. So Louie had 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:13.519 hypothesized for many years that chemical transmission might have been 0:02:13.560 --> 0:02:16.920 the basis of the nervous system, but had been unable 0:02:16.960 --> 0:02:20.359 to prove it, and then these experiments eventually proved pretty 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:24.880 decisive in demonstrating the chemical nature of nerve cell communication 0:02:24.960 --> 0:02:27.760 that there's some chemical property being traded back and forth. 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:31.600 So where did Lowie get the idea for this breakthrough experiment. 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:35.960 There is a very strange story about that. According to 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:39.720 Lowie in his own words, quote the night before Easter 0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:43.560 Sunday of nineteen twenty, I awoke, turned on the light, 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:46.080 and jotted down a few notes on a tiny slip 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:49.560 of thin paper. Then I fell asleep again. It occurred 0:02:49.600 --> 0:02:51.840 to me at six o'clock in the morning that during 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:54.760 the night I had written down something important, but I 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:58.120 was unable to decipher the scrull. The next night, at 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:01.400 three o'clock, the idea returned. He was the design of 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:04.440 an experiment to determine whether or not the hypothesis of 0:03:04.480 --> 0:03:08.440 chemical transmission that I had undered seventeen years ago was correct. 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:11.680 I got up, immediately went to the laboratory and performed 0:03:11.720 --> 0:03:14.760 a simple experiment on a frog heart according to the 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:20.160 nocturnal design. So we're talking about dream inspiration here. We're 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:23.800 talking about the idea that the breakthrough, that dramatic twist 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:27.760 in the researcher story uh comes from the world of dreams. 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:29.720 Right now, all we have to go on here is 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:33.440 Louie's own words, right, I mean, who knows whether the 0:03:33.560 --> 0:03:37.040 dream is as he says it was a direct imagistic 0:03:37.120 --> 0:03:40.920 inspiration for the experiment that would later prove pretty decisive 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:44.560 in showing the chemical transmission of nerve impulses. But that's 0:03:44.600 --> 0:03:47.720 what he says, and he is not alone in telling 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:52.400 a story like this about a breakthrough experiment, discovery, invention, 0:03:52.600 --> 0:03:56.440 artistic innovation. This is a very common type of story 0:03:56.440 --> 0:04:00.240 among people who are often characterized as geniuses. Right, Yeah, 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:02.680 you see this all the time, and certainly just the 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:07.000 idea of dream inspiration or something more supernatural, something more 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:10.640 magical communication through a dream, such as from the divine. 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:16.360 These tales go back throughout our our various religions and mythologies. Yeah. Now, 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:18.120 one of the things that I've always thought is kind 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:21.080 of interesting about the idea of dream inspiration is that 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:25.080 it is taken to be an inherently supernatural thing in 0:04:25.120 --> 0:04:28.080 these ancient stories, Right, Like the gods visit you in 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:31.039 a dream and they give you some kind of insight 0:04:31.160 --> 0:04:33.080 or they give you the solution to a problem, and 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:36.839 it's just accepted that that is a supernatural deliverance that 0:04:36.960 --> 0:04:39.800 could not have been accessed by the person themselves. But 0:04:40.440 --> 0:04:43.000 what do our brains do? I mean, our brains think 0:04:43.400 --> 0:04:46.880 our brains figure things out. It does not actually seem 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:49.719 all that strange to me. You're in need of a 0:04:49.760 --> 0:04:53.800 supernatural explanation that the brain could be figuring things out 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:57.120 and gaining insights during sleep. No, not at all. And 0:04:57.120 --> 0:04:59.400 we'll get into the some of the science behind this 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:02.720 as we proceed, but I think a couple of things 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:05.040 are crucial here. So we talked about the the idea 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:08.960 of the distinction between religious dreams of inspiration in these 0:05:08.960 --> 0:05:12.359 scientific dreams. But ultimately, the realm of sleep is a 0:05:12.360 --> 0:05:16.040 realm of mystery, and in olden days, uh, for the 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:19.400 most part, dreams were a realm of religious mystery. To 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:23.080 a scientific individual, then the dreams are still a dream, 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:24.479 is still a realm of mystery, but it is a 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:30.479 realm of cognitive mystery, of scientific mystery and verifiable discovery. Right. Yeah, 0:05:30.600 --> 0:05:33.800 And so in either realm, though, it seems natural that 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:36.760 that answers might arise from them, and when they do, 0:05:37.680 --> 0:05:41.880 they can fulfill a vital storytelling role because nobody wants 0:05:41.920 --> 0:05:45.480 to hear this exchange. Oh that's a tremendous breakthrough. Dr Brundle, 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:48.600 How did you, uh, how did you come across that breakthrough? 0:05:48.920 --> 0:05:51.240 You don't want the answer to beate, Well, I worked 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:53.360 really hard and I thought about it a lot, and 0:05:53.480 --> 0:05:56.039 uh eventually work through the problem. No, you want to 0:05:56.040 --> 0:05:58.640 hear something like well, I was. I was working really 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:00.520 hard on the problem and I couldn't quite crack it. 0:06:00.560 --> 0:06:03.600 And then I had a dream or some variation at 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:06.360 or then I bumped my head while standing on the 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:09.000 toilet to hang a clock. That would be the case 0:06:09.080 --> 0:06:12.039 of doctor the fictional Dr Emmett Brown and back to 0:06:12.080 --> 0:06:14.120 the future, right, And that was when I saw it, 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:18.480 the flux capacitor. Yeah. I think another variation on this is, oh, 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:20.640 I didn't know how to work out this detail, so 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:24.239 I went on a walk in nature. Or I alight 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:28.280 took an hallucinogenic drug into bet. You know, these are 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:30.720 the different answers that sort of answers you often see 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:34.200 thrown out there when creative minds, either artistic or scientific, 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:37.719 are trying to crack something. You want there to be 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:41.240 this dramatic turning point. Yeah, and and if we broaden 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:44.640 it beyond dreams, just to the idea of sudden unexpected 0:06:44.720 --> 0:06:49.320 realizations in the pursuit of say scientific knowledge or experiment design, 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:51.960 or breakthroughs in math or anything like that. There are 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:54.080 even more examples of this, and we're going to talk 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:57.320 about plenty of examples where people think that a dream 0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:00.880 or a period of sleep gave of them the answer 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:04.200 to something or gave them a breakthrough. But I remember 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:06.760 hearing the story that apparently Einstein, you know, he said 0:07:06.800 --> 0:07:10.000 he had to be careful shaving because suddenly ideas would 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:12.440 just leap into his mind while he was shaving. He'd 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:14.320 be careful not to cut himself. I don't know if 0:07:14.320 --> 0:07:16.240 that story is true, but it is a story. It 0:07:16.280 --> 0:07:18.920 sounds great, Yeah, it does. And if your experience is 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:21.640 anything like mine, I've never discovered anything on the scale 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:25.040 of Einstein, but I feel like I that rings true 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:28.920 of the characteristics of my thoughts sometimes, like I often 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:33.240 don't know from where what feel like my best insights arise. 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:37.360 You don't necessarily come from sitting down and concentrating real 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:40.480 hard on a problem until you arrive at the solution. 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:43.520 You're doing something else and then suddenly it just hits you, 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:46.960 as if out of the void. Yeah, an an Eureka 0:07:47.040 --> 0:07:51.120 moment does often feel like something from outside yourself, and 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:54.000 therefore I think it lends itself to these type of stories. 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:58.120 Like for my own part, my dreams don't really give 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:01.640 me a lot of inspiration these days. They're generally more 0:08:01.680 --> 0:08:05.440 about anxieties and petty fears. There's just just petty stuff, 0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:10.120 like petty day planning type type situations. But some of 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:13.200 my best creative thinking, either, of course, comes during the 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:16.239 act of writing. We know that that that that free 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:20.760 flow mode of creative activity, or when I'm swimming laps, 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:23.560 like when I when my perhaps when my my brain 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:26.280 is is forced to operate in a slightly different way. 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:29.400 That's when I can suddenly start making connections that I 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:32.560 am not making the rest of my waking time. I 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:36.680 often feel like the most creative I am any time, ever, 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:39.480 is the time between when I wake up and when 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:43.120 I get out of bed. That's for me, that's my 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:46.600 most disoriented time. I don't know where I am or 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:49.960 what I was working on. All I know is that 0:08:50.000 --> 0:08:52.079 the cat is making a lot of noise, and I'm 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:56.040 afraid that a banshee has manifested in the house. So 0:08:56.080 --> 0:08:59.599 I guess we should talk about some more examples of 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:02.680 these anecdotes. At least where people claim to have made 0:09:02.760 --> 0:09:07.280 major breakthroughs or discoveries or solved problems in dreams or 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:10.880 during periods of sleep. There's this great quote from John 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:13.800 Steinbeck where he writes in his nineteen four novel Suite 0:09:13.840 --> 0:09:17.199 Thursday Quote, it is a common experience that a problem 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:20.200 difficult at night is resolved in the morning, after the 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:24.320 Committee of Sleep has worked on it. Yes. And actually 0:09:24.400 --> 0:09:26.679 one of the authors and researchers we're going to talk 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:29.200 about in this episode today Deadre Barrett, who is a 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:33.760 psychologist who works on dreams and sleep creativity. She took 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:36.080 that phrase the Committee of Sleep and made it into 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:39.959 a title of a book she wrote about dreams and creativity. Now, 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:41.880 we've talked about dreams and stuff to blow your mind 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:44.000 quite a bit over the years. Again, it's this realm 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:46.600 of mystery. We can't help but study and discuss it, 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:49.800 how we interpret them, how we might manipulate them, and 0:09:49.840 --> 0:09:53.840 what they're actually for. And there is no consensus on 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:57.600 the purpose of dreams. I thought that we might just 0:09:57.840 --> 0:10:01.000 play a clip from a previous interview that we conducted 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:04.120 with Dr Moran surf Uh We talked to us in 0:10:04.160 --> 0:10:06.920 our episode the nine dream Worlds of Frederick van eden 0:10:07.440 --> 0:10:09.800 uh and I. And this is his response to to 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:13.160 my question, is there a consensus on the purpose of dreams? 0:10:13.600 --> 0:10:17.320 There isn't. There are like five different theories that try 0:10:17.360 --> 0:10:20.800 to explain what dreams are full, and they range from 0:10:21.559 --> 0:10:24.559 therefore nothing to they're the most important things that our 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:27.000 brain can do. So here's like the kind of layout 0:10:27.040 --> 0:10:29.720 of those. One of the theo is says that dreams 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:33.360 are basically our brain's way of defragmenting the hard lives 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:35.679 you kind of overnight. You have to choose which wem 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:38.160 always to erase, which ones to keep, and your brains 0:10:38.200 --> 0:10:41.440 sort them out. And because you see the visuals, if 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:43.760 you want of those mem always passing by, you create 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:45.640 a narrative of that, and this is what you call 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:47.480 a dream. This is a theory that says that they 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:49.760 don't really mean much. It's just that they're kind of 0:10:49.760 --> 0:10:52.640 an artifact of our brain doing things. That's on the 0:10:52.679 --> 0:10:55.319 one explain or the other explain that. The theory that 0:10:55.360 --> 0:11:00.400 our brain is essentially looking and fishing inside at things 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:02.880 that we suppressed during the day. This is the free 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:06.400 game theory. It said, we're kind of very stuff deep 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:09.240 inside that you want to not deal with it. And 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:11.880 then at night, because our god or down no, because 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:16.160 our brain speaks without anyone suppressing things, we get exposed 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:19.280 to things that kind of come up from from our psyche. 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:23.440 A third one that's really popular right now that I'm 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:26.880 supporting in many ways is one way the brain is 0:11:27.280 --> 0:11:31.360 using the dream to simulate futures for us and kind 0:11:31.360 --> 0:11:34.800 of leave to them in the ultimate visuality, so we 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:37.160 would actually know when we wake up if we should 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:39.400 do do not. So the idea is that you're debating 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:43.240 whether to marry her and move to Alabama or break 0:11:43.320 --> 0:11:45.800 up and decide to start a campaign in San Francisco, 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:48.280 and you really don't know what to do, so overnight 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:52.000 your brain plays both movies of you moving to Alabama 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:54.679 with her and you started the company in San Francisco. 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:58.920 And because it's such a cool virtuality with the brains, 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:02.200 we doesn't know that it's not really going to the experience. 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:06.040 You filter all of this movie through your values and emotions, 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:08.439 and when you wake up, even though the memory itself 0:12:08.840 --> 0:12:11.439 is lost and you have no collection of the dream, 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:14.840 what survives is the feeling towards those choices. So when 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:16.720 you wake up, you kind of have a better answer 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:18.800 to what you should do. So those are three CEO 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:21.840 is there's two more along the same lines, but they 0:12:21.880 --> 0:12:24.560 cannot fall into those packets. They mean nothing, but they're 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:27.040 just our brains way of working. They mean a lot, 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:30.600 because there are brains way of reflecting things that we 0:12:30.640 --> 0:12:33.600 are self suppressed, and they are are brains way of 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:37.240 stimulating futures that we didn't experience yet in an ultimate 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:41.679 virtuality device. That's so amazing that we are fooled by 0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:44.360 it ourselves, thinking that we are the character in this movie, 0:12:44.640 --> 0:12:47.120 and then waking up and knowing what to do now. 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:50.080 Some have speculated that dreams are tied to the brains 0:12:50.120 --> 0:12:53.480 crunching of waking world problems. So the idea of solving 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:55.600 problems and our dreams that just seems to fit, right, 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:58.920 But it also fits are these much older ideas of 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:02.199 dreams as prophet your communication with the divine, And you 0:13:02.240 --> 0:13:04.600 can see the danger there. The idea of inspiration and 0:13:04.679 --> 0:13:08.800 dreams is just so romantically captivating. Uh, Even as if 0:13:08.800 --> 0:13:12.199 one is above outright lying about dream inspiration to improve 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:15.960 their storytelling, it's still rather easy to manipulate our memories 0:13:15.960 --> 0:13:19.199 of dreams. Oh yeah, I bet you've had this experience 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:21.960 where you start trying to explain a dream you just 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:26.920 had and suddenly you can't tell if what you're saying 0:13:26.960 --> 0:13:29.360 about your memory of the dream is really what you 0:13:29.480 --> 0:13:31.960 dreamed or if you're just making it up. Now it 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:34.960 feels very blurry the line between the two. So, yeah, 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:37.520 maybe you didn't see the answer in a dream. Maybe 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:40.920 the dream just contain fragments of the problem, but it 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:43.080 makes for a better story. Though then again, if it 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:46.040 contained fragments of the problem that leads you to the answer, 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:49.320 is that fundamentally all that different from seeing the answer 0:13:49.360 --> 0:13:51.600 in the dream. That's true. That's true. And if you 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:54.920 go with any of these interpretations where dreams are important, 0:13:54.960 --> 0:13:58.280 where they are, uh, there, there's there's something more than 0:13:58.400 --> 0:14:02.280 just uh, you steam being released from the from the 0:14:02.320 --> 0:14:05.600 cognitive engine. Uh, then it makes sense that that they 0:14:05.600 --> 0:14:07.840 would play a role. Now, we mentioned that there were 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:10.800 a bunch of anecdotes throughout history of people claiming that 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:14.120 dreams gave them some kind of creative breakthrough and solving 0:14:14.120 --> 0:14:19.280 a problem or in in doing doing something creative and original. Uh, 0:14:19.480 --> 0:14:22.000 let's talk about a few of them. Okay, Yeah, let's 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:24.120 let's We're not gonna run through all of them, but 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:26.920 we'll run through a few notable ones here, and all 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:30.200 of them, all of them, all dreams that have ever occurred, 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:32.920 will be cataloged for you to know. No, these are 0:14:32.960 --> 0:14:35.600 just a few, uh that pop up from time to 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:37.880 time and or and in many cases are often cited. 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:42.720 So starting with some artists, Salvador Dolly, he attributed the 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:46.480 persistence of memory to dream inspiration. It's not hard to imagine. Yeah, 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:50.040 there's a there's a dreamlike quality, an overt dreamlike quality 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:52.480 to his work. Also, I think Dolly was a liar, 0:14:52.680 --> 0:14:55.880 so who knows what he if what he says about 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:59.040 the inspiration of anything is true, that's true his stories 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:01.840 about the creation of his work or often you can 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:06.160 see them as just extensions of the fantastic painting. Paul 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:09.000 McCartney claims the melody for Yesterday came to him in 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:12.960 a dream. Sure. Stephen King, of course, I had this 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:17.480 life threatening accident in n and he experienced vivid dreams 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:20.120 in recovery, and he claims that a lot of dream 0:15:20.200 --> 0:15:25.760 Catcher came from those dreams. Okay, is that I've never 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:28.760 read that book. I think I've tried to watch the movie. 0:15:28.880 --> 0:15:31.720 Is the book more interesting than the movie? I haven't 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:34.760 neither seen nor read it because there was kind of 0:15:34.760 --> 0:15:38.440 a negative buzz about both of them. I've always been 0:15:38.440 --> 0:15:40.560 fascinated with the idea sound. I need to read it 0:15:40.680 --> 0:15:42.400 or see it. I need to commit to one or 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:45.760 the other because I love the concept. I remember extended 0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:49.760 sequences of people defecating alien life forms. See there you go. 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:55.840 That sounds great. Um. Also, you have some some athletic 0:15:56.160 --> 0:15:59.280 creative types in the on the mix here, golfer Jack 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:02.360 Nicholas claim names that he improved his golf golf game 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:04.320 based on a dream in which he saw a new 0:16:04.320 --> 0:16:07.600 way to grasp his club. Okay, yeah, who knows if 0:16:07.640 --> 0:16:11.920 that's true, but all right. William Blake would attribute to 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:14.520 some of his ideas to dream visitations of his dead brother. 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:17.640 We of course, also have to look to Coleridge's opium 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:20.520 induced dreams. Oh yeah, the poem Kubla Khan, right was 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:23.600 supposedly inspired by a dream or even did he even 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:26.760 say it was composed in the dream? He may have it, 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:30.160 I remember. Some of this also factors into confessions of 0:16:30.160 --> 0:16:34.440 an English opium eater as well. Um. Also, you have 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:38.840 Robert Louis Stevenson who claims to have dreamt two scenes 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:42.520 from Dr Jacqueline mr. Hyde. But these are all artists 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:45.560 and creative types, right. Well, maybe Putting, who knows of 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:48.320 Jack Nicholas, counts there, but he he is an artist 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:53.720 of the green. It's harder to see, it's harder to 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:57.360 see what's all that unusual about dreams inspiring artists and 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:00.320 musicians and stuff, because in a way, there's no wrong 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:03.720 answer in art, right, So what's really interesting is when 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:07.040 you get like an experiment, design, or something in science 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:10.440 that is either valid or not, or how or actually 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:12.960 has a right answer or not. Yeah, so we're gonna 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:16.200 get into some of the scientific examples that this first one, though, 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:20.399 kind of I guess, straddles the realm here between the 0:17:20.440 --> 0:17:24.080 purely artistic and the purely scientific. Because you had scholar 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:29.159 Hermann Hilprecht who lived eighteen fifty nine through nine, and 0:17:29.240 --> 0:17:32.720 he reported that he dreamed an Assyrian priest came to 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:36.760 him and revealed the accurate translation of the stone of Nebuchadnezzar, 0:17:37.880 --> 0:17:41.160 which that just sounds amazing. Well, I know she wasn't Assyrian, 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:43.879 but I want to hear the dream where in Headuana 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:48.280 comes and poses some wrathful poetry about Anana. Yeah. What 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:50.679 it makes for a nice footnote too, when you have 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:53.240 visitations like this. Uh. And that's something to keep in 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:54.960 mind as we roll through a number of these. You 0:17:55.000 --> 0:17:59.359 have individuals making scientific break breakthroughs, and they don't necessary 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:01.800 like a lot of our accounts of the dream inspiration 0:18:02.280 --> 0:18:05.720 are not coming directly from that individual, or they're coming 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:08.800 years after the fact. It varies from case to case, 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:11.119 because I guess ultimately it's not the kind of thing 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:13.960 you would necessarily put into your scientific paper and say 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:17.840 and then I had a dream and this was the result. Well. 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:20.840 A classic example of the scientific inspiration from a dream, 0:18:21.119 --> 0:18:25.400 apart from Otto Loewi, was also Dimitri mendal aev right, yes, 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:28.399 who of course live at eighteen thirty four through nine seven, 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:30.919 the Russian chemist who gave us the periodic table. The 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:34.480 story goes that he saw a complete periodic table in 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:38.359 a dream. Um. And maybe I've just been thinking too 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:41.159 much about Ghostbusters, but I want to imagine what it 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:43.879 would have been like if mental had had been forced 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:46.240 to choose the form of gozer, which they're taken on 0:18:46.240 --> 0:18:49.640 the form of the periodic table, what's the atomic number 0:18:49.680 --> 0:18:54.000 of Gozer? Now, as G. W. Baylor points out, there 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:55.919 are some problems with this story, so we have no 0:18:56.040 --> 0:18:57.760 dream journal to go off here. We just have a 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:02.080 colleague secondhand account, And it seems like he'd already crafted 0:19:02.080 --> 0:19:05.080 the periodic table before the alleged dream took place, and 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:07.880 merely saw an improved version of it in his dreams, 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:10.760 a version of the story that sounds maybe a lot 0:19:10.800 --> 0:19:13.720 more sensible, but and and maybe more in line with 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:15.920 some of these other stories. Either way, you can still 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:18.960 call that dream inspiration, you know, if you're if the 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:22.240 thing you're trying to create either appears to you wholesale 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:25.680 in the dream based on your work and experience, or 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:29.520 some updated version, some twist on it appears in your dream. Now, 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:31.480 since we're in the realm of chemistry, we should go 0:19:31.560 --> 0:19:36.040 to maybe the single most often cited example of dream 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:40.720 inspiration in science, which is August ka Yes lived eight 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:47.440 uh and he dreamt of whirling snakes and allegedly discovered 0:19:47.480 --> 0:19:50.920 the ring shape of the benzene molecule by seeing an 0:19:50.920 --> 0:19:53.880 aora boris in his dream. Or a boris, of course, 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:56.800 is the serpent consuming its own tail. One thing to 0:19:56.880 --> 0:19:58.920 keep in mind, that is this account didn't emerge until 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:01.640 twenty eight years later, So that's more than enough time 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:04.760 obviously for memory to have been altered or the story 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:09.640 to have been maybe a little embellished dramaticized, but it's 0:20:09.640 --> 0:20:11.960 it's still one of the examples that you see cited 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:16.000 time after time for dream inspiration in science. Well, anything 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:18.919 we can get smaller than a benzine molecule. Oh, we 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:21.480 can move on to the work of Neil's Bore, who've 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:26.720 talked about recently. Through nineteen so he claimed to have 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:29.720 developed his model of the atom based on a dream 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:32.399 he had in which he sat on the Sun and 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:35.879 the planets moved around him on tiny chords. Now that's 0:20:35.920 --> 0:20:39.679 cosmic terror. Up next on our list of considerations. Here 0:20:39.680 --> 0:20:43.280 there's J. B. Parkinson, who lived nineteen twelve through nineteen 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:48.760 ninety one. He got invented computer controlled anti aircraft guns, 0:20:49.200 --> 0:20:51.560 and this is an excerpt from his New York Times 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:54.760 oh bit. Mr Parkinson, who was a member of the 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:58.679 technical staff of Bell Laboratories in New York in nineteen forty, 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:01.480 had a dream that had that a device he designed 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:04.679 to guide a marking stylist could be used to control 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:08.520 anti aircraft guns. He developed a prototype, and the Western 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:11.800 Electric Company began mass producing it. His achievements won him 0:21:11.840 --> 0:21:15.560 a presidential award and a Franklin Institute Medal. Okay, well, 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:17.119 whether or not you like the fact that it was 0:21:17.160 --> 0:21:20.960 a weapon, even weapons take creativity to produce, true, and 0:21:20.960 --> 0:21:23.359 and it was a defensive weapon, we can say that 0:21:23.640 --> 0:21:27.600 anti aircraft gun for the most part. Okay. Up next, 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:31.480 we have a sewing machine inventor and handsome werewolf Elias. 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:35.879 How I recommend everyone look up a picture of of 0:21:35.880 --> 0:21:38.960 old Elias here because he was something else that, Like, 0:21:39.000 --> 0:21:41.679 I've never seen somebody's sport one of those kind of 0:21:41.680 --> 0:21:46.000 a neck beard so glamorously. It's the beard without the mustache. 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:49.359 But it looks it's very fluffy and luxurious. It looks 0:21:49.359 --> 0:21:51.840 like he's been brushing it a lot. Yeah, it's there's 0:21:51.880 --> 0:21:55.399 this seam seamless flow from his his thick head of 0:21:55.440 --> 0:21:58.959 hair into this beard. Uh. I just get a very 0:21:59.000 --> 0:22:01.920 handsome werewolf off of him. They should have cast him 0:22:02.080 --> 0:22:06.359 in that Wolfman remake. Yeah. Well, he allegedly dreamt he 0:22:06.400 --> 0:22:09.159 was building a sewing machine for a savage king in 0:22:09.200 --> 0:22:12.679 a strange country. I love that. So there's not a 0:22:12.680 --> 0:22:14.760