Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, stuff you should know is going on tour.
Speaker 1: Do do do one of the deeds, my friend. Okay,
Speaker 1: So starting August eighth in Toronto, that's in Canada. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be at dan Fourth Music Hall. And then Chicago,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be there the next night, August nine, at
Speaker 1: the Harris Theater at Chicago. We want to see your faces.
Speaker 1: Step it up, Step it Up. Vancouver or the Vote
Speaker 1: Theater September. That's gonna be a great show, I think,
Speaker 1: don't you. It's gonna be a great of one. And
Speaker 1: then in Minneapolis at the Pantageous Theater where we've been before.
Speaker 1: It's lovely September. Yeah, and then we're gonna swing down
Speaker 1: to Austin. It's gonna be during Austin City Limits, although
Speaker 1: it has nothing to do with Austin City limits. Will
Speaker 1: be there October ten, yes, and then we're going to
Speaker 1: Lovely Lawrence, Kansas go Jayhawks, yeah on October eleventh. And hey,
Speaker 1: if you're in Kansas City or anywhere in that area,
Speaker 1: this is your chance. Get in your car. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you are anywhere near Brooklyn, well then you should
Speaker 1: go to the Bellhouse October. Will be there all three nights,
Speaker 1: and finally, we're gonna wrap it up here in Atlanta
Speaker 1: at the Bucket Theater on November four for a benefit
Speaker 1: show where we are donating all of the money's to
Speaker 1: Lifeline Animal Project of Atlanta and the National Down Syndrome Society. Yep.
Speaker 1: So for all this information again visually and for links
Speaker 1: two tickets, just go to s y s K Live
Speaker 1: dot com. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: How are you? I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Priyant,
Speaker 1: There's Jerry. Jerry's got a salad. Everything is normal, which
Speaker 1: means it's time. There's stuff you should know. That's right,
Speaker 1: Jerry's got the schwarmest special she said, Oh really, yeah,
Speaker 1: she loves it. How you doing. I'm good man, feeling
Speaker 1: despite myself kind of relaxed. Okay, I'm not feeling feverish.
Speaker 1: If that's what you're driving at. No, that's not what
Speaker 1: I was driving at. Uh yeah, no I'm not. Do
Speaker 1: you get fevers a lot? No, not anymore. Although I
Speaker 1: haven't for a long time, like I've never been like
Speaker 1: a fever person. I've probably had like a handful. Maybe.
Speaker 1: How many fevers have you had? Not a ton since
Speaker 1: I was a kid. Yeah, not a lot of adult fevers.
Speaker 1: I mean I've had like, uh, hip hop fever, rock
Speaker 1: and roll fever, yellow fever. I've had the fever for
Speaker 1: a flavor of a pringle. Oh Man, me too. What
Speaker 1: are those? Those aren't even potato chips? Are they? Their
Speaker 1: potato crisps? And those are good. They're mashed together potato parts.
Speaker 1: I don't think I want to know how those are made. No,
Speaker 1: it's like chicken McNuggets. I think a unicorn just poops
Speaker 1: them out. Have you seen unicorn pizza? It's a little much.
Speaker 1: There's a restaurant in New York, I'm not quite sure where,
Speaker 1: maybe lowery Side. They have unicorn pizza. It's like um
Speaker 1: dough okay, good start um, like a nice pestel colored
Speaker 1: frosting instead of sauce. UM, A mound of cotton candy, um,
Speaker 1: nerds or pop rocks maybe um, and then some other stuff.
Speaker 1: Supposedly it tastes kind of good. I'll eat anything that
Speaker 1: has enough frosting on it. I like frosting, but I'm
Speaker 1: not into like sugary candies. Really like nerds. And pop
Speaker 1: rocks and stuff. You know, I did a brain stuff
Speaker 1: once on pop rocks and that was interesting. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your tongue actually warms the pop rocks to the point
Speaker 1: where they melt. And since they have C O two
Speaker 1: trapped inside during the manufacturing process, that c O two
Speaker 1: suddenly is released in a pop So it's just a
Speaker 1: little bubble of C two. That's gotta be good for you.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's funny. My head of roommate in college, like,
Speaker 1: not many adults eat candy, Like people eat chocolate and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, candy bars, but candy candy, I don't
Speaker 1: know when adults is just a little strange. Yeah, do
Speaker 1: be candy? Sure? Like what mentos? Not mint mentos? Like
Speaker 1: candy mentos. I like those. Well. I had a roommate
Speaker 1: that would go to the convenient store next and this
Speaker 1: is college granted, but he still eats the stuff, I think,
Speaker 1: and he would go with like fifteen dollars and buy
Speaker 1: you know, like giant sweet tarts. You know it's big
Speaker 1: chewable ones and like uh, fun dip and nerds and
Speaker 1: just all kinds of candy fun dip, remember liquor made
Speaker 1: there's the same thing I think, Yeah, it's just right,
Speaker 1: Like I don't have a foot, but I've got my
Speaker 1: Lika made. Oh man, can you can you guys out
Speaker 1: there in podcast lantel over stalling because we are big time,
Speaker 1: because we happened upon a topic that no one really
Speaker 1: knows what's what? Yeah, I mean we're talking about fever dreams.
Speaker 1: We know about fevers, yep, kind of know about dreams,
Speaker 1: but apparently no one's really gotten to work on figuring
Speaker 1: out what fever dreams themselves are. So it's largely anecdotal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're gonna have to bear with us something. We'll
Speaker 1: leave it. We'll leave that there for now. But I
Speaker 1: guess a good place to start is by talking about
Speaker 1: both those things separately. Uh, and starting with fevers. You
Speaker 1: know you've always heard ninety eight point six fahrenheit is
Speaker 1: the normal internal body temperature of human um. That in
Speaker 1: that was a big study that that is really ninety
Speaker 1: eight point two what um, depending on like how old
Speaker 1: you are, what time of day it is, what you're
Speaker 1: doing where you If you put it in your butt
Speaker 1: or in your under your armpit, or in your mouth
Speaker 1: or in your ear, or all of them at once,
Speaker 1: that'd be something else. Uh, it can vary a little bit.
Speaker 1: So I think there is a bit of a slight
Speaker 1: sliding scale to that number. Yeah, for sure. But I
Speaker 1: think the key is is it's going to be roughly
Speaker 1: around there. And even if you have an average body
Speaker 1: temperature that's not exactly ninet eight point six, let's say
Speaker 1: you typically tend towards five run cooler. Yeah, your body
Speaker 1: temperatures still during the average day gonna fluctuate plus or
Speaker 1: minus about a degree fair height either way. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I looked a little bit into the ninety eight point
Speaker 1: six and the original um dude that came up with
Speaker 1: that was a a German physician named Carl Reinholdt August Vondelick.
Speaker 1: That was good, a good one. When eight sixty eight
Speaker 1: he wrote a book, Well he did his studies where
Speaker 1: he had this temperature rod he would stick under the
Speaker 1: armpits of all these people. He's like, where do you
Speaker 1: want that exactly? And everyone went said, everyone always says,
Speaker 1: you know the comedian Rory Scoville, No, he should just
Speaker 1: check him out. He does these weird things, like he'll
Speaker 1: just do his whole routine with the German accent, like
Speaker 1: for no reason, whatsoever. I like the sound of that.
Speaker 1: And he did one about stealing old people, like kidnapping
Speaker 1: old people. For the German accent. He's from South Carolina,
Speaker 1: I think, but he's done shows with like a severe
Speaker 1: Southern accent and one just normal accent, and he'll do
Speaker 1: a German thing. He just like people, I guess. So
Speaker 1: he's great. He's one of my favorites. So anyway, UM
Speaker 1: sixty eight he wrote a book called after these experiments,
Speaker 1: called doshen Elkin Pharma and kind can Heighten. And I
Speaker 1: looked at It's funny. The real translation I think of
Speaker 1: that is on the temperature in diseases, but if you
Speaker 1: type in Google Translate, it comes out as the behavior
Speaker 1: of the intrinsically warm in sick units. That's the subtitle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So anyway, he's a guy that came up with ninety
Speaker 1: eight point six and that stood for a long time.
Speaker 1: But that's just so that was just based on his observations,
Speaker 1: his study, and it's stuck. It was an average. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like this is what you should be. It was
Speaker 1: just the average of all these people. And then hundred
Speaker 1: thirty years later we finally got around to verifying whether
Speaker 1: that was actually true or not. Well, I mean it
Speaker 1: says a ninety two that they said it was ninety
Speaker 1: eight point two from another study, but then everything I
Speaker 1: still read says point six. So all right, well, I
Speaker 1: know what you're talking about, though I had heard in
Speaker 1: the last few years that they're like that point six
Speaker 1: jazz is kind of kind of made upright, So, um,
Speaker 1: the point is is that your body is going to
Speaker 1: be roughly somewhere around there, right, that's your normal body temperature,
Speaker 1: and then depending on the time of day, it's either
Speaker 1: going to be a little cooler in that or a
Speaker 1: little warmer than that. And our body temperatures are regulated
Speaker 1: by something called the hypothalamus. And like I said, depending
Speaker 1: on the time of day, your body temperature is gonna fluctuate,
Speaker 1: and that's tied to sleep apparently, so as your body
Speaker 1: temperature is rising, usually in the late afternoon, is about
Speaker 1: where it peaks during the day. That's associated with wakefulness
Speaker 1: alertness not necessarily just having a high body temperature, but
Speaker 1: an incline in the temperature in your body means you're awake,
Speaker 1: you're alert, you're ready to go right, ready for action.
Speaker 1: If once it starts to decline, that's associated with drowsiness,
Speaker 1: and it hits it's um, it's trough. Your body temperature
Speaker 1: is at its lowest right about before you wake up,
Speaker 1: and that's actually associated with R E. M. Sleep. So
Speaker 1: there are some some stuff starting to come out. Just
Speaker 1: bear with us, everybody. We're laying the groundwork. So your
Speaker 1: body temperature changes, the hypothalamus is directing the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and sleep and wakefulness has something to do. It's related
Speaker 1: to your body temperature changes. All right, good night, you
Speaker 1: take it from here. Well, you know what, let's take
Speaker 1: a break because I'm not sure where I should go.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Okay, I was being coy, you
Speaker 1: said stage very nicely. Okay. Uh So, if your body
Speaker 1: gets let's say, some bad bacteria gets in it, and
Speaker 1: your body is alerted warning intruder is coming, your immune
Speaker 1: system kicks into gear and it starts producing this biochemical
Speaker 1: material called a pyrogeny. This is my new favorite thing
Speaker 1: the body does. Yeah, well you knew that before, right
Speaker 1: or did you just not know the mechanism. I mean,
Speaker 1: I knew humans get fevers, and I knew the fever
Speaker 1: was to kind of like cook out everything. I didn't
Speaker 1: understand the mechanism. I understand answer your question, then, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: can I So these pyrogen's, right, they are um these
Speaker 1: biochemical markers that are released by the immune system in
Speaker 1: the body or and this is why I love this.
Speaker 1: There's some bacterias, some pathogens that make humans sick that
Speaker 1: produce pyrogen's naturally. So when they show up, they just
Speaker 1: start releasing them, and they just give themselves away. It's
Speaker 1: they're big dummies in that way. They're like, hey, where's
Speaker 1: the party. They kick open the door. They're carrying like
Speaker 1: a pony keg under one arm, their guts sticking out.
Speaker 1: It's just that that's that's like that kind of bacteria, right.
Speaker 1: So the pyrogans enter the bloodstream and they travel to
Speaker 1: the hypothalamus because remember the hypothal mis controls your um
Speaker 1: your body temperature, and this is what they do, Chuck,
Speaker 1: are you ready for what the pyrogens do. They go
Speaker 1: to your hypothalamus and they dampen the heat sensing neurons
Speaker 1: and the hypothalamus, and they excite the cold sensing neurons
Speaker 1: and your hypothalamus, and they trick your hypothalamus in the
Speaker 1: thinking your body is suddenly gotten very very cold, so
Speaker 1: that your hypothalamus turns the temperature up and says, don't
Speaker 1: let any of this heat out. We gotta we gotta
Speaker 1: warm back up. It tricks your body and your hypothalamus
Speaker 1: and creating a fever. That's right. And they do this
Speaker 1: because well they don't do this because but what happens
Speaker 1: from there. They do this because they're dumb. But what
Speaker 1: happens from there is, like you said, the fever, what
Speaker 1: a fever is, and why you want that fever for
Speaker 1: at least a little while that it does. It's it's
Speaker 1: trying to cook and burn and bake that bacteria until
Speaker 1: it dies. It is your body's fighting. Like when you hear,
Speaker 1: you know, like your fever broke, that's usually a good sign.
Speaker 1: That means yeah, right, that your fever did its job
Speaker 1: and it's cooked all that bacteria up and you're going
Speaker 1: to be on the men soon. Uh So basically that's
Speaker 1: what's happening. And this is the great thing about a fever.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, fever makes you feel like crap
Speaker 1: because it's a lot of hard work to kill all
Speaker 1: those things. Well it is, there's a lot of um.
Speaker 1: Your sympathetic nervous system is kicked into high gear, which
Speaker 1: I found out is one reason why they say you
Speaker 1: want to feed a cold starve a fever because you
Speaker 1: don't want to introduce digestion because it requires the parasympathetic
Speaker 1: nervous system, right fight or flight, and you don't want
Speaker 1: those two things going on while your body has a fever.
Speaker 1: It's just a lot of extra work for it, right,
Speaker 1: But one of the one of the things that is
Speaker 1: going on when your body has a fever, when that
Speaker 1: temperature rises, it's hard enough on your organs, but it's
Speaker 1: also hard on the level just the fact that they're
Speaker 1: operating outside of their normal operating temperature, and that makes
Speaker 1: it very hard on them and can actually cook some
Speaker 1: of the ingredients inside yourselves. Yeah, I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: working in a too hot of an environment. It's just
Speaker 1: it's never fun for anyone. Although we've got some people
Speaker 1: love that stuff, yeah, but they're still they might like it,
Speaker 1: but they still aren't working fast. They might be happy,
Speaker 1: but they're slow. So if you have a fever, what's
Speaker 1: considered a fever now, if you're an adult and your
Speaker 1: oral temperature is above one point four or if your
Speaker 1: rectal or ear temperatures above one oh one then that's
Speaker 1: considered a fever. If you're a kid, um, good luck
Speaker 1: getting anything besides the rectal temperature, because it's just tough.
Speaker 1: You have basically no right well ye which you have
Speaker 1: as wiggly kids who aren't like, sure, stick something in
Speaker 1: my ear for four seconds, but up the up the kazoo.
Speaker 1: There's not really anything you can do about that. All
Speaker 1: they can do is say, yeah, exactly. So the rectal
Speaker 1: temperature for a kid above one point four and um.
Speaker 1: With adults like you don't have to really worry about
Speaker 1: your fever too much. If it if it tops a
Speaker 1: hundred and five for you know, any period of time,
Speaker 1: you probably want to do something about that. That's what
Speaker 1: I saw was the hundred and five degree hype mark
Speaker 1: was about where you should start to worry. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: an adult, and you're gonna feel so awful. If your
Speaker 1: temperature is one oh five, you're you've probably already been
Speaker 1: to a doctor at that points. For kids, it's different though.
Speaker 1: If you don't want to let your child get up
Speaker 1: to one oh five, that's bad, bad, bad. So what
Speaker 1: is it for kids that you really want to start worrying?
Speaker 1: But did you say, you know what I'm not exactly sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, it probably depends on whether you're a first
Speaker 1: time pairent or this is your second kid. Well, and
Speaker 1: it varies with the age, you know, it's like zero
Speaker 1: to eighteen months. It's something, and like what you should
Speaker 1: do is consult that your doctor. Yeah exactly. But you know,
Speaker 1: any kind of temperature you should for a child, you
Speaker 1: should kind of be a little more alert about, right.
Speaker 1: But we're not in medical experts here, no, we're not.
Speaker 1: And everything we're saying assumes that you have healthcare coverage.
Speaker 1: That's right. Um, all right, so that's fever in general.
Speaker 1: You got anything else on that? Yeah? One other thing? Um?
Speaker 1: Uh the pyrogens um Piro. By the way, it's a mistake, man,
Speaker 1: I did have some coincidence. No, it's not. What is
Speaker 1: the Latin for fire, Greek word for fire? Yeah, Piro
Speaker 1: def Leppard, right, Um, a great song. It really is
Speaker 1: the whole album. Yeah. They just mentioned it in Rock
Speaker 1: of Ages that comes up. They should have a song
Speaker 1: called Pyromania wonderful. But that's pretty cool. It's like the
Speaker 1: antithesis of your band, your album, and your song all
Speaker 1: being the same name, like Big Country. Oh I love
Speaker 1: that song. Sure, But it's pretty uncreative, but you're basically saying, like,
Speaker 1: here's our basket and we're gonna play every egg we
Speaker 1: have into it. That's the one one thing we came
Speaker 1: up with. I saw David Spade bit once and he
Speaker 1: was talking about he was complaining it wasn't even comedy.
Speaker 1: He's just complaining that he went and saw a big
Speaker 1: country and they didn't play the song Big Count. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He's like, it's the name of your band. It's the
Speaker 1: one song everybody came to see and play it. He's well,
Speaker 1: the longest, the long and short of it is I
Speaker 1: totally forgot what the other thing I had to say
Speaker 1: about Pyritans was, so I'll probably think of it. Oh,
Speaker 1: I know what it was, Pyrogen's um. As your immune
Speaker 1: system grows in ages and you become a grown up,
Speaker 1: the pyrigans have a little less of an effect on you.
Speaker 1: So where if you're a kid and your immune system
Speaker 1: is young and inexperienced, your fever is gonna shoot up
Speaker 1: quick and it's going to it's gonna get hotter faster.
Speaker 1: So you do want to stay on top of a
Speaker 1: kid's fever because their immune system is not used to
Speaker 1: pyrogens coming and messing with their hypothalamus like an adults.
Speaker 1: It is. Yeah, it'll spike much faster at this good point.
Speaker 1: That's what I was trying to think of. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: You need to take that need take that rectal temperature
Speaker 1: way more than you're comfortable with. I don't recall that
Speaker 1: ever having been done to me. Well, because you don't
Speaker 1: remember being a baby. No, but my parents were pretty strict,
Speaker 1: pretty stern. Mean, by the time a kid is old
Speaker 1: enough to where you can say, like, hey, put this
Speaker 1: under your tongue, or hold still for a minute while
Speaker 1: I put this in your ear, but pre that when
Speaker 1: they're not sentient humans and they're just you know, crying,
Speaker 1: whiny little sacks of flesh, you gotta stick it right
Speaker 1: up the butt. Okay, Harry's laughing. She almost spit out
Speaker 1: her schwarm a salad. Harry's done plenty of that, so
Speaker 1: she knows. Okay, So into dreams, um, I always think
Speaker 1: we've done a general show on dreams. I think we did. Finally,
Speaker 1: I didn't find it. What still, No, it's a lucid dreaming.
Speaker 1: Can you control your dreams? That's the same thing, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: I think that maybe because no, we we did one
Speaker 1: on dreams. I didn't see it. Wow, I can't believe it.
Speaker 1: I can't believe it. Well, this contributes to the little
Speaker 1: by little, someone will know. Jill Hurley, where are you
Speaker 1: when we need you? Our statistician, a minister of stats?
Speaker 1: All right, well we'll talk about dreams a bit here then,
Speaker 1: Even though we've explained this in various episodes here and
Speaker 1: there to some degree, but uh dreams. You know, if
Speaker 1: you're psychologist, you you really love to spend time talking
Speaker 1: and dissecting dreams, interpreting dreams. If you're a um more
Speaker 1: into the neurology side of science, you don't really care
Speaker 1: about that kind of stuff. Um. In fact, for many
Speaker 1: years they thought it was called activation synthesis hypothesis, which
Speaker 1: was you go to sleep and all these uh synapsters
Speaker 1: are just randomly firing and they don't really add up
Speaker 1: to even a story. You just do that when you
Speaker 1: wake up because you're human. Yeah, but that I mean,
Speaker 1: that's complete. Bs. Well, you almost get the impression that
Speaker 1: they came up with this, and the neurologists came up
Speaker 1: with it to stick out their territory in response to
Speaker 1: years of psychoanalysts saying, this is what dreams are like,
Speaker 1: tapping into the collective unconscious or um, they're you're repressed memories.
Speaker 1: Neuroscience said, no, nothing, they're just your stupid, wet brain
Speaker 1: going crazy while you sleep. Yeah, which we all know
Speaker 1: now is not true. I saw another one too. What's
Speaker 1: that um threat simulation theory? Have you heard of that one? No,
Speaker 1: but that's a great band name. Basically, it's you're training
Speaker 1: to be a ninja while you sleep, Like your brain
Speaker 1: is running threat simulations constantly, so that it's like working
Speaker 1: itself out, like getting more and more agile and quick
Speaker 1: and like, like, so you can get better at running
Speaker 1: from a savor tooth tiger if you actually encounter it.
Speaker 1: I can see that early on maybe, and there is
Speaker 1: an evolutionary advantage to it, so evolutionarily speaking, it would
Speaker 1: make sense. The point is it that one came along?
Speaker 1: I was like, no, there's obviously some reason for dreams.
Speaker 1: It's not just random yet. Well, and then maybe I
Speaker 1: could have seen that early on. But then at some
Speaker 1: point someone around the fire had a dream about Tuktok's
Speaker 1: wife and woke up and went, whoa, there was no
Speaker 1: savor tooth tiger and that I'm not sure what that meant, uh,
Speaker 1: but I better not tell tuktok, right, you know. And
Speaker 1: then they went, what's a rectal themome hasn't even been
Speaker 1: invented yet, so uh. These days they've done actual studies, um,
Speaker 1: with E e. G. Machines and MRI machines, and especially
Speaker 1: in Italy, these Italian researchers basically put people to sleep,
Speaker 1: not put them to sleep and the sleeper hole. They
Speaker 1: lay them down in a nice Italian bed, feed them
Speaker 1: some postaphazul, and get out the rectal thermometer and they
Speaker 1: hook him up to all these wires and machines. And
Speaker 1: then they will wake them up at different points in
Speaker 1: the night and say, hey, what were you dreaming of? Um,
Speaker 1: we'd like to talk about it and study what was
Speaker 1: going on with these machines. And um. They actually what
Speaker 1: they found supports the current the prevailing theory. I don't
Speaker 1: think it was their theory. I think it was around,
Speaker 1: but their research supports it called affect regulation theory, which
Speaker 1: is basically that we control our emotions or we process
Speaker 1: our emotions through our dreams. And these Italians found support
Speaker 1: for this and that when they woke people up and
Speaker 1: asked them what they were dreaming about. The ones who
Speaker 1: had the best recall were the ones who had the
Speaker 1: most Theta waves in their frontal lobes, which are slow
Speaker 1: moving waves. Right. Yes, And when you look at an
Speaker 1: e G machine, if you looked at those dreamers brain waves,
Speaker 1: it looked like the brain waves of somebody who was
Speaker 1: sitting there forming and recalling memories. So these people said,
Speaker 1: that's what they're doing. That's what all of us are doing.
Speaker 1: While we're dreaming. We're forming memories. We're taking emotions that
Speaker 1: we've experienced through the day and we're creating memories out
Speaker 1: of them so we can file them away. So we're
Speaker 1: processing our emotions and our dreams. That's the point of dreams.
Speaker 1: That's the current understanding. Yeah, and then I mean other
Speaker 1: parts of the brain that have been active all sort
Speaker 1: of deal with emotion, whether it's the a magdala and
Speaker 1: the hippocampus or the lingual gyrus, which I think we
Speaker 1: just talked about that in another episode. I don't recall.
Speaker 1: I can't remember, um, but they're all areas of the
Speaker 1: brain that relate to emotion and memory, and some with
Speaker 1: visual activity. And you know that kind of makes sense.
Speaker 1: I like that theory and then under that current theory,
Speaker 1: so that's like the the explanation for regular dreams. And
Speaker 1: you can't just have a theory for dreams without including
Speaker 1: nightmares or else your theory is broken. Right, So the
Speaker 1: affect regulation theory considers nightmares. Um, basically, it's an emotion
Speaker 1: that's being put into the process of being, of creating
Speaker 1: a memory, a false memory, right, a dream memory, I
Speaker 1: guess you put it. But it's a real emotion, right,
Speaker 1: and um, it's so big it breaks the process. And
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, this process of creating a fake
Speaker 1: memory of fake experience, UM, goes haywire. And now all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you're enduring some terrible, horrifying experience because
Speaker 1: the emotion that was being processed was too big and
Speaker 1: got out of control. And now you have a nightmare
Speaker 1: t s for you. Yeah, I think we did one
Speaker 1: of night terrors. We did for sure, and sleep paralysis.
Speaker 1: We've covered it all. I think I guess we were.
Speaker 1: They haven't done a dreams one, all right, So let's
Speaker 1: take another break. We're gonna come back and finally talk
Speaker 1: about fever dreams. You robbed me of a Saturday night
Speaker 1: fever reference. I just want to go on record this
Speaker 1: thing that I was wrong, So Chuck, here's where everything
Speaker 1: just kind of goes totally off the rail. We've talked
Speaker 1: about fevers, We've talked about nightmares. The problem is really
Speaker 1: understanding both doesn't necessarily amount to understanding them together. Right, So,
Speaker 1: knowing what fevers are, knowing what dreams are, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you know what fever dreams are. But you can
Speaker 1: make stuff up if you want. Yeah, and I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm boy, I don't even think we even said if
Speaker 1: you've never had a fever dream, you might even know
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Feel kind of dumb at this point
Speaker 1: in the podcast. But a fever dream is um, basically
Speaker 1: a nightmare on steroids. It's just so vivid and so
Speaker 1: real and scary. Um that happens, you know, when you
Speaker 1: are sick with a fever. Yes, obviously, so their fever dreams, right,
Speaker 1: so they are a thing. Yeah, but the scientific literature
Speaker 1: on them is super thin, non existent. Kids seemed to
Speaker 1: get them, if not more, at least they stand out
Speaker 1: more to children, and so anecdotally people seem to recall
Speaker 1: having fever dreams. More when they were kids. Whether or
Speaker 1: not that's true or just a memory is uh or
Speaker 1: you know what do you call it, like a memory
Speaker 1: bias or whatever, There's no one really knows. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: that yeah, I mean, we don't really know because I
Speaker 1: don't remember the last time I had a fever and
Speaker 1: if I did, whether or not I had had a
Speaker 1: fever dream. I I don't think I've ever had a
Speaker 1: fever dream. I did when I was a kid. I
Speaker 1: don't remember having fever dreams. I remember being sick as
Speaker 1: a kid and having like nightmares when I was sick,
Speaker 1: so like they're noticeably worse than your average nightmare. Really,
Speaker 1: so would you keep waking up from them? Mm hmmm,
Speaker 1: that I don't remember. See, that's that's a big question
Speaker 1: to me. Um. Well, let's talk about the anecdotal theory
Speaker 1: of what is behind fever dreams. Right, So, when your
Speaker 1: body is undergoing a fever, we said that your body
Speaker 1: is not functioning at its top performance. Um, and that
Speaker 1: includes the brain. The brain itself is an extremely special
Speaker 1: organ if you didn't know already, it's like, I think
Speaker 1: two of the body's mass, but it requires twenty of
Speaker 1: the body's energy. Yeah, and the neurons compared to regular
Speaker 1: old dumb cells. Uh uh, they they burn or they
Speaker 1: need about between three times more energy than a regular
Speaker 1: dumb cell in your body. Right. And so when all
Speaker 1: these chemical processes, when all of this UM energy is
Speaker 1: being exploited to power cells, UM, it produces the byproduct
Speaker 1: of heat. So the brain is super sensitive to overheating
Speaker 1: right already, just under normal circumstances, and it's generally taken
Speaker 1: care of, uh by by your body, like it's you
Speaker 1: know that it's cooled down and regulated. Right. So, Um,
Speaker 1: if you have a fever and your brain is not
Speaker 1: operating at optimal conditions, but you're asleep, so it's trying
Speaker 1: to go through its normal processes. Um, if you have
Speaker 1: a nightmare, it's entirely possible that that nightmare is going
Speaker 1: to be far far worse because the normal processes have
Speaker 1: broken down, or it's even further possible apparently. Um. The
Speaker 1: amygdalas frequently implicated with nightmares because it has to do
Speaker 1: with being terrified or angry or fearful. Um, the amigdala
Speaker 1: might be functioning at an abnormal level and it's just
Speaker 1: basically going haywired while you have a fever. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then the fact that most dreams occur during R E
Speaker 1: M sleep, and I think that's when you're body is
Speaker 1: warmest sleep anyway, right, that's when see, this is where
Speaker 1: it all gets kind of hinky. During R E M sleep,
Speaker 1: your hypothalamus says I'm done, I'm not working right now,
Speaker 1: so it stops regulating temperature, which is usually why your
Speaker 1: body temperature is lowest right before you wake up. I
Speaker 1: thought it was highest right before you wake up. No,
Speaker 1: it's highest in the afternoon while you're awake. It's lowest
Speaker 1: right before you wake up. I feel like I always
Speaker 1: wake up hot. You. I mean, you may be like
Speaker 1: sleeping with too many blankets, your room might be a
Speaker 1: little too warm, or maybe it's my stupid you know,
Speaker 1: schedule of my see, I mean it could be you know,
Speaker 1: it might have cut off a couple hours before or something. Right,
Speaker 1: it could be right, so fires up after I get up.
Speaker 1: Because supposedly, um, when you are sleeping and you're in
Speaker 1: R E M sleep, your hypothalamus is not regulating temperature
Speaker 1: during that period. So if you if you are already hot,
Speaker 1: and remember high body temperature is associated with wakefulness, then
Speaker 1: maybe you are waking up more frequently than you normally would,
Speaker 1: and when you wake up in the middle of a dream,
Speaker 1: you're more prone to remember it. If you wake up
Speaker 1: in the middle of a nightmare, it's going to seem
Speaker 1: even worse than one that you had and woke up
Speaker 1: normally from. Yeah, I mean I had a series of
Speaker 1: not nightmares last night, but just sort of anxiety dreams.
Speaker 1: And I don't have any anxiety about anything right now.
Speaker 1: I think it was just after reading all this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just suggestible you had anxiety dreams. Yeah, but not
Speaker 1: about like nothing specific. No, like there's you know usually
Speaker 1: if I have anxiety dreams and just like because something's
Speaker 1: going on in my life, I'm anxious. But it was
Speaker 1: just a research huh, I think so. I men, you're dedicated.
Speaker 1: But they were also celebrity dreams because you know I've
Speaker 1: talked about those before. No, Yeah, yeah, that I have
Speaker 1: just celebrity dreams all the time. But they're just very
Speaker 1: normal that I'm just like friends with celebrity people. But
Speaker 1: were they were the anxiety written last night? Yes, Like
Speaker 1: I was hanging out with a band Luna Dean were
Speaker 1: um of Luna and that was but there was. I
Speaker 1: can't remember exactly what was going on, but you know
Speaker 1: that was anxiety involved, like I was trying to get
Speaker 1: somewhere and couldn't get there, like the typical stupid dream stuff,
Speaker 1: you know. But some Dean was in there somehow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Have you talked to him today? I don't know him,
Speaker 1: but uh, I think I know why they were in there,
Speaker 1: That's all I'll say. Okay, wink wink, I guess. So.
Speaker 1: Here's another thing that was in our own article I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting and just a little tidbit, was that, um,
Speaker 1: some recreational drug like meth and ecstasy can raise brain temperatures.
Speaker 1: That is one of the reasons they think that it
Speaker 1: kills so many brain cells when you do those drugs. Yes,
Speaker 1: supposedly you're not supposed to take ecstasy and warm climates. Yeah,
Speaker 1: never have heard that. Yeah, just norway. Well there you
Speaker 1: have it, only it's fall barred. Um what else is
Speaker 1: there anything else in here? No? Man, I can't believe
Speaker 1: we stretched this one out as far as we did. Alright,
Speaker 1: we never have to talk about fever dreams again, Chuck good.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about fever dreams, well
Speaker 1: you might as well start at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: There's nothing wrong with that, um. And you can also
Speaker 1: just go around and look at how sparse the researches
Speaker 1: on the internet for yourself. And if you are a
Speaker 1: researcher and you know more stuff about fever dreams that
Speaker 1: you can point us to let us know. UM. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, I think I said search bars somewhere in there,
Speaker 1: which means it's time for a listener mail. Uh, you
Speaker 1: know what. I think another reason the anxiety dreams is
Speaker 1: because I'm barreling through this season of Fargo. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and the two episodes I watched last night, which I
Speaker 1: believe we're if there are ten, I think it was
Speaker 1: eight and nine, we're both just like ratcheted up with sin.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's what it was. And I think that
Speaker 1: probably has something to do with it. That happens to
Speaker 1: me sometimes I'll be watching something I won't realize how
Speaker 1: on top of me it's gotten, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, like it goes to an ad and I'm
Speaker 1: like really uptight about like this scratching washing machine sale
Speaker 1: that's going on somewhere, and I don't understand why. I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, that TV show really got to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think Fargo had something to do it.
Speaker 1: Think you may have nailed it. Um, all right, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this one garden variety fan mail, which we
Speaker 1: don't read a lot of these, so I'm going to
Speaker 1: dig in. Hey, guys, that's all this is fan mail.
Speaker 1: You guys are doing a great job, always have. It's
Speaker 1: clear that with every episode do you take pains to
Speaker 1: provide the most accurate information you can in the most
Speaker 1: thoughtful way possible. How ironic that you would read this
Speaker 1: on the fever dreams of Uh, there's never been more
Speaker 1: evident to me than in the episodes you did on Puberty.
Speaker 1: I know it's been a little while since he's came out,
Speaker 1: but just listen to them, and it was touching to
Speaker 1: see how frequently you tried to reassure young listeners what
Speaker 1: they're experiencing is normal and that there was nothing wrong
Speaker 1: about what was happening. To hear two grown men do
Speaker 1: their best talk to young boys and girls about such
Speaker 1: sensitive material was a pleasure. Yes, at times, I could
Speaker 1: practically feel you nervously twitching while trying trying to discuss
Speaker 1: um menstruation in an informative yet reassuring way. But it
Speaker 1: was absolutely charming, just reaffirm what we've always known. You
Speaker 1: two are just a pair of great dudes. That's nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've only been listening for a few years, but I'm
Speaker 1: a lifetime fan. Now. Uh, if you're keeping count, like
Speaker 1: to put it in a vote for d C for
Speaker 1: live shows. Uh, Josh, h E d G E E.
Speaker 1: Sorry E d G E is edge and then add
Speaker 1: two els edgel Josh edgel or a gel, I like
Speaker 1: edgel for ed Gil, Gil for Edgar. I think edgel
Speaker 1: edgel sounds like a kid next door. Josh, it's Josh
Speaker 1: and Josh. You know what. We usually come to d
Speaker 1: C once a year. Um, I don't think we're coming
Speaker 1: this year though, now we probably will be there earli
Speaker 1: ash two eighteen. Yeah. DC is always great to us,
Speaker 1: so we we'll definitely be back. Yeah. Uh, and you
Speaker 1: can always fly somewhere in the continental United States or Canada. Josh.
Speaker 1: Take that Sola Express up to Brooklyn exactly. It's a
Speaker 1: pleasure train there you go. There's rectel thermometers everywhere. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to see us on tour, go to
Speaker 1: s y SK Live dot comference tickets. You can get
Speaker 1: in touch with us on Twitter at Josh I'm Clark
Speaker 1: or s Y s K podcast. You can join Chuck
Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com, slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or
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Speaker 1: and Jerry an email to Stuff podcast at how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com and has always joined us at our
Speaker 1: home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
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