WEBVTT - Inception: I Dream of Science 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:06.680 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:14.280 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:18.000 This is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Duga, and we 0:00:18.520 --> 0:00:22.319 both researched this podcast yesterday. Um did a lot of 0:00:22.320 --> 0:00:25.560 our research yesterday and you know, a little bit you know, 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:28.760 on the other days prior. But but then we both 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:33.720 went home to our respective houses, went to sleep and dreamed. 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:39.400 So here's the question, did your dreaming last night help 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:43.040 you prepare it all for this podcast? You know, normally 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:45.360 I would be able to answer that question because I 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:47.760 remember quite a few of my dreams, But I really 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:51.120 don't remember my dreams outside. I can only assume that, uh, 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:56.600 I was hopefully covering the material. Well, I'm on my part. 0:00:56.680 --> 0:01:00.040 I don't always remember my dreams, but I remember the 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:02.760 one last night because I was dreaming that my cat 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:06.840 had a guest starring role on thirty Rock. And then 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:10.040 I woke up to the sound of the cat barfing. Um, 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:12.479 which generally happens, like the cat starts barfing or even 0:01:12.720 --> 0:01:14.680 beginning to barf somewhere in the house, and I just 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:16.679 wake up like that and immediately go into this sort 0:01:16.720 --> 0:01:19.640 of half awake must keep the cat from barfing on 0:01:19.720 --> 0:01:23.440 soft things mode, you know, right like on blankets and 0:01:23.720 --> 0:01:26.560 wool carpets, you go into triosh. Yeah, but it did 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:29.800 not really help this podcast at all. Not to say 0:01:29.840 --> 0:01:32.479 that something in my in my dream cycle didn't help, 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:34.600 but it's like it wasn't. Yeah, but there wasn't like 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:36.280 a situation where I was like, how are we going 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:38.680 to do that intro tomorrow and then like a man 0:01:38.760 --> 0:01:41.559 appeared to me in the like into in the dream 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:45.360 like I don't know, like um, like some you know, 0:01:45.480 --> 0:01:48.160 podcasting deity appears and says, this is how you will 0:01:48.200 --> 0:01:50.760 do it. You will both talk about how the night 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:53.440 before your dreams inspired, you know, like there was nothing 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:55.360 like I was gonna say Ira Glass, but that didn't 0:01:55.360 --> 0:01:58.680 sound like Ira Glass. That's not Ira Glasses, Boice. But 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:00.440 but Ira Glass would have been a good good pick 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:04.280 for that that dream vision. Um. But the interesting thing 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:07.360 is you do see plenty of really cool examples of 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:11.560 UH and and all of them are potentially problematic UH 0:02:11.720 --> 0:02:15.160 of creative people or even scientific you know, or rather 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:20.200 artistically geared people or scientifically geared people, UM getting something 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:23.080 out of their dreams, some sort of inspiration or some idea, 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:25.920 you know, this like this moment of like inception that 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:29.840 just uh that now enables them to create some great 0:02:29.919 --> 0:02:33.400 work or or or solve some problem that was nagging 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:36.679 them in their daily life. Yeah. Yeah, And that makes 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:39.280 sense because the mind, I've always said, plays with what 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:42.680 it loves, and if you're working on a problem day 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:44.560 after day, of course it's going to show up in 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:48.040 your dreams. Yeah. So I guess mine is something to 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:50.519 do with like my Cat and thirty Rock. But yeah, 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:53.160 I think that you have a wish fulfillment for for 0:02:53.320 --> 0:02:56.200 Biscuit to show up on a thirty Rock episode, and 0:02:56.280 --> 0:02:59.360 who doesn't now I have we talked about this earlier. 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:01.640 I think we've both had examples where, um, we've had 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:03.280 something in a dream that we've been able to take 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:08.119 and run with like a creative fashion. Um. Sometimes those 0:03:08.200 --> 0:03:10.760 ideas have worked for me. Um, and I've been able 0:03:10.800 --> 0:03:12.480 to like, you know, be like a really cool image 0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:14.120 that I'm like, oh I can take that and and 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:16.560 extrapolate on that and and feel like, you know, I 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:21.520 create something interesting, say fiction wise, out of it. Have 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:24.160 you found that to be the case, Yeah, yeah, definitely. Um, 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:27.160 when I've been writing fiction, I've there have been certain 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:30.480 scenes that came to me as if fully formed. Um 0:03:30.480 --> 0:03:32.960 it wasn't. The actual story wasn't fully formed, but there 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:36.200 was a very visceral idea of of this thing that 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:41.160 became the plot for something. And I've also uh had 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:44.080 dreams when I've had a conflict with someone and and 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:47.160 had was talking in that dream about the conflict with 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:49.520 that person, and that really seemed to help gain a 0:03:49.520 --> 0:03:52.920 better perspective, like I know I've had I have. I 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:55.640 think I have a lot of dreams where I'm it 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:58.440 probably comes of like being fascinated by subway systems and 0:03:58.440 --> 0:04:02.440 public transportation systems that are rail based or subterranean in nature, 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:07.160 and also from taking Atlanta's public transportation Marta every day. 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:10.880 I frequently have these dreams of sort of like vast 0:04:11.280 --> 0:04:16.440 like unreal um subterranean public transit systems, you know, and 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:20.840 lots of lots of sort of very very fantastic um 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:23.640 settings that are all sort of subway based. So do 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:25.919 you have a sort of continuity in your dreams and 0:04:25.960 --> 0:04:29.040 there's this universe that you've created that you can revisit. Yeah, 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:30.880 And so I've gotten some ideas out of that where 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:33.279 I'm where I sort of like in my waking um 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:35.599 hour sort of think back on that world and sort 0:04:35.600 --> 0:04:38.599 of try to apply form and function to it that 0:04:38.680 --> 0:04:41.240 doesn't exist in the dream. So you're working on your 0:04:41.279 --> 0:04:45.920 dreams in your waking life. Yeah, some I guess, but 0:04:45.920 --> 0:04:47.560 but it's more like I, like I said, I feel 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:49.480 like I'm definitely applying in order to it that doesn't 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:51.919 exist in the dream. On the other hand, I've also 0:04:51.960 --> 0:04:54.440 had like one particular example that I always come back 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:57.200 to is what I referred to as the hell pimple dream, 0:04:57.240 --> 0:04:58.720 where I had this dream and it's like I woke 0:04:58.800 --> 0:04:59.920 up in the night and I'm like, this is a 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:02.400 fabulous story idea, so it will be about a hell 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:05.680 pimple where I think the basis was that you have 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:08.360 the surface world and then Hell and then there's like 0:05:08.400 --> 0:05:11.920 a pimple coming up from Hell into this. And anyway, 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:13.680 when I woke up at like, you know, three o'clock 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:17.040 in the morning, uh, this time, it was like, this 0:05:17.080 --> 0:05:18.800 is a great idea. This is the best idea ever. 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:20.760 And I like wrote it down on the pad and 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:22.560 then came back to it. I'm like, wow, this is 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:26.479 just so monumentally stupid, you know. So had you been 0:05:26.760 --> 0:05:30.720 reading Dante before that possibly also I have read Dante 0:05:30.839 --> 0:05:32.480 before that seems like it could be like a hell 0:05:32.560 --> 0:05:38.240 pimple sort of indirect thing happening there. Um. Well, what 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:41.200 I think is really interesting about this is, especially the 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:44.520 Subpremian dreams, is that you did create that continuity and 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:48.719 that there is there's something going on in our dream lives. Um. 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:52.960 That indicates that we do have an area to work 0:05:52.960 --> 0:05:56.880 out our problems or ideas. But then you've got cognitive 0:05:56.920 --> 0:05:59.920 scientists Stephen Pinker, And he's the same guy, by the way, 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:03.680 who when we were covering music UM and and how 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:05.880 it can rebuild your brain in that podcast, he's the 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:10.400 guy that said that auditory cheesecake is something um that 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:14.440 he could ascribe to the ability of humans to play music, 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:17.599 saying appreciate music, so on and so forth, that it 0:06:17.640 --> 0:06:22.680 didn't necessarily add to any sort of um function in 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:26.480 evolutionary sense. Yeah, he's he provides a really sobering note 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:30.000 to to other researchers who make a really lofty will 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:32.839 not lofty, but make a really you know, strong claim 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:35.920 that that music is a really essential part of who 0:06:35.920 --> 0:06:39.600 we are and serves a specific purpose. Yeah. Yeah, so 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:41.680 I mean, he's like the kill joy right of all 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:45.000 the fun things, and when it comes to dreams, same thing. 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:47.320 Not to say we don't need kill joys, I mean 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:50.719 we need somebody to say, WHOA slow down there, guys, 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:53.040 don't get too excited, get too excited about this, because 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:55.080 there is something in our nature we want to give 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:58.640 meaning to these things, you know, and because they're important 0:06:58.640 --> 0:07:00.919 to us, and so we think therefore, oh well, you know, 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:04.720 of course my dream is important. Um. So he likens 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:08.479 dreams to computer screen savers, and you know, we're just 0:07:08.640 --> 0:07:11.080 totally depressing. He says, it doesn't really matter what the 0:07:11.120 --> 0:07:13.520 content is as long as certain parts of the brain 0:07:13.600 --> 0:07:17.640 are active. That being said, there's a lot of data 0:07:17.640 --> 0:07:19.840 out there now that say that we can point to 0:07:19.920 --> 0:07:22.960 and say, okay, well, dreams actually are a huge function 0:07:23.160 --> 0:07:27.320 of the way that we are processing information, and that's 0:07:27.320 --> 0:07:30.480 what we're talking about today. So I'm gonna run through 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:34.840 a few examples of of of ways that first artists 0:07:35.680 --> 0:07:39.480 from a different spectrum have have claimed that dreams have 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:43.800 inspired their work. Um and uh, you know, without spending 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:44.920 a whole lot of time, I do you have people 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:48.080 like Salvador Dolly of course claimed dreams stimulated his work. 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:50.920 You have a number of filmmakers such as Mark Bergmann 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:56.840 uh Felini. Um, you have authors such as Robert Louis 0:07:56.880 --> 0:07:59.920 Stevenson and Mary Shelley. Um, you know Dr jack On, 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:04.080 Mr Hyde, Frankenstein. There's the whole business with Paul McCartney 0:08:04.360 --> 0:08:07.680 was claiming yesterday, Um, he heard it in in his 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:10.680 dream right right, the melody yeah, and immediately got up 0:08:10.720 --> 0:08:14.440 and started playing on the piano. And this is just 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:18.040 a biographically kind of interesting that he was in the 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:21.480 midst of filming Help, and he was staying in his 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:24.320 parents attic in a small room, and so I mean, 0:08:24.360 --> 0:08:27.360 it's interesting that he composed this completely nostalgic piece of 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:31.880 music in a really important time of his life. Well 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:34.839 sidebar there. Yeah. And one of my favorites is the 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:38.080 tale of Joe R. Landsdale, who's kind of a weird 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:44.559 southern Southern Gothic noir writer. Uh still writing, putting out 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:47.200 a number of novels today. But he he claimed to 0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:49.199 have this thing where anytime he was hard up for 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:51.520 a story idea, couldn't think of anything, he would have 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:53.679 his wife make him a big bowl of popcorn and 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:55.360 he would like just gorge himself on and then go 0:08:55.400 --> 0:08:58.120 to bed, and which would result in like these crazy dreams. 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:01.600 And he claims that anytime that those dreams gave him 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:04.400 like even something he could like grab onto and turn 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:06.680 into a story, he was able to sell that story 0:09:07.280 --> 0:09:09.840 with with like, you know, the first time he submitted 0:09:09.840 --> 0:09:11.680 it to a publication. That's pretty great. So that the 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:16.680 popcorn was like this symbolic like mental activity. Yea lucky 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:19.440 red socks and yeah, and and also you know, like 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:22.120 in our recent podcast about the Gut, we talked about 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:28.520 how inner about the link between our gastro intestinal activity 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:31.280 and our neural activity in the brain, and how there's 0:09:31.320 --> 0:09:33.960 this you know, they're this, they're linked, and so you know, 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:36.959 it's like he's stimulating the brain by stimulating the gut 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:40.480 and getting these crazy stories out of it. I think 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:42.360 I knew what I'm doing this weekend. I'm going to 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:45.240 try that out. I tried with pickles once, and I 0:09:45.240 --> 0:09:47.040 think it were I mean not, I didn't set out to. 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:49.040 It's just I ended up eating like two or three 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:52.079 like big like you know, Boar said pickles before I 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:54.199 went to sleep and had some sort of weird dreams. 0:09:54.679 --> 0:09:58.920 But you also encounter. Of course, scientists who who claimed 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:01.520 to have have have made that, you know, come up 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:04.199 with that one key step they were missing or or 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:05.839 you know, it's kind of like in the back of 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:09.160 the Future, you know where you have Dr Emmitt Brown claiming, 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:13.080 you know where he he envisions the flux capacitor that 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:15.480 makes time travel possible in a dream, which is a 0:10:15.520 --> 0:10:19.360 great way to explain the unexplainable um away. Yeah, and 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:21.199 we'll get into that in a in a minute too, 0:10:21.600 --> 0:10:25.959 because because again, all these examples of somebody claiming dream 0:10:26.000 --> 0:10:32.600 inspiration are are at once believable and potentially problematic because 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:36.680 it realies on your personal experience right right, and unverifiable. Yeah, 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:38.439 and I mean what was what's going to get into 0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:41.280 this part? Yeah, it's there's something about even in in 0:10:42.360 --> 0:10:45.320 even today, when we know, I think most of us 0:10:45.360 --> 0:10:47.640 know that a dream is not that a line talking 0:10:47.640 --> 0:10:51.120 to you, there's still the dream world is mysterious. And 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:54.600 to say that an idea came to you in a dream, um, 0:10:54.640 --> 0:10:58.240 you know it, it kind of elevates that that idea. 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:00.840 It's it's like saying, you know, I got this idea 0:11:00.880 --> 0:11:03.640 from a dream, I got this idea from uh you know, 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:05.240 there's a sense that I got it from another world. 0:11:05.280 --> 0:11:08.560 There's a sense I got it from a from the muse. 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:10.760 It's so or it's it's just sort of a symbol 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:15.840 out of a mysterious you know process, and and and 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:19.400 so making that claim can it can be a little 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:23.200 uh disingenuous. I guess is that because the memory is 0:11:23.200 --> 0:11:27.040 a faulty thing. Yeah. Yeah, and then the then what 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:28.840 I always think of two is that the ego might 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:31.160 be kind of bound up to like I'm a genius, 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:35.120 I I've got the solution. I I dreamed like this 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:37.720 brain is pretty fabulous. I was thinking about this problem 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:39.280 and then I just I just went to sleep and 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:41.640 my brain did all the rest of the work. Like 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:44.280 That's how awesome this uh, this engine in my head is. 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:46.280 You know. So there's there's a there's a sense of 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:48.760 that with with the and and of course it's one 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:50.680 of those things that can never be fully proved proven. 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:52.880 I could I could make the claim that every podcast 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:56.319 we've done, I've you know, has been inspired by my dreams. 0:11:56.480 --> 0:11:58.840 And you know, how are you going to prove me wrong? Right? 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:02.560 I'm not? Yeah, so um so yeah, keep that in 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:04.679 mind in any of these examples we're talking about. I 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:07.440 think we'll get into it. There's clearly something going on 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:09.240 in the in the brain and a number of processes 0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:12.760 that we can actually look at scientifically, but ultimately there's 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:16.240 a lot of subjective subjective area there to keep in mind. Uh. 0:12:16.600 --> 0:12:19.120 The biggest one that comes that that generally rises to 0:12:19.240 --> 0:12:23.120 the top is Dmitri mental Lev and Uh, he was 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:26.960 working on the periodic table of elements, um, which we have. 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:29.360 There's I believe there's a podcast about that and also 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:33.920 an excellent how stuff works article. Um. But he allegedly 0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:38.000 he fell asleep during an afternoon game of solitaire, as 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:41.680 one as want to do, and upon waking he you know, 0:12:41.880 --> 0:12:44.920 he knew exactly how he's going to arrange them, which 0:12:44.920 --> 0:12:47.280 is of course he ranged the arrange them according to 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:49.840 increasing atomic masks and found that, you know, the elements 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:55.640 of similar properties appeared at regular intervals. But but this 0:12:55.720 --> 0:12:57.839 is that this is one again, we can't really prove 0:12:57.880 --> 0:13:00.600 that this happened, right, Yeah, And there is actually some 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:03.840 information out there that calls it into question because they 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:07.480 say that it um that wrestling colleagues second hand account 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:11.120 of this, right, So maybe he told the colleague and 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:15.000 then that the archival material indicates that Mendelev had already 0:13:15.000 --> 0:13:17.760 discovered the pyodic table before the alleged dream took place, 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:21.280 and that a dream quite plausibly occurred some went later 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:24.720 than depicted in and it was an improved representation of 0:13:24.760 --> 0:13:28.280 the periodic table. So there's I mean no doubt he 0:13:28.360 --> 0:13:31.000 had a dream about it, but it may have not 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:33.800 been the the Eureka moment that was, you know, all 0:13:33.840 --> 0:13:36.480 of a sudden, the complete version of the periodic table. 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:38.120 It makes me think too, like maybe he just got 0:13:38.160 --> 0:13:40.240 sick of telling the story like everybody you know, Like 0:13:40.280 --> 0:13:42.040 it's like he goes to a dinner party and they're like, hey, 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:44.400 mental leve, how did you come up with that periodic table? 0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:46.000 And eventually you just get sick of telling the same 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:49.320 story over and over and you like, I dreamt it right? Yeah. Yeah. 0:13:49.320 --> 0:13:51.440 Because he tells a real version, he's going to have 0:13:51.600 --> 0:13:56.840 the group for very long. Um. Another interesting case is 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:01.600 is a Frederick August von Coo Cool back in eighteen 0:14:01.640 --> 0:14:06.240 sixty nine, and he again allegedly discovered the ring structure 0:14:06.320 --> 0:14:11.520 of the benzene molecule UH by dreaming about a snake 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:16.360 seizing hold of its own tail, which for the conspiracy 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:18.679 theorists out there, don't get too excited. I don't think 0:14:18.679 --> 0:14:21.560 that he was a member of the Illuminati. Um. But 0:14:21.720 --> 0:14:24.960 right that that that he took that, and he extrapolated 0:14:25.000 --> 0:14:29.480 that to say that benzine had a ring like molecular structure, right, yeah, 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:34.000 which is pretty cool. I mean if if indeed that happened. Yeah, 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:36.600 because the ben zine is it's basically it's a ring 0:14:36.640 --> 0:14:39.160 of six carbons and then they're like six hydrogen shooting 0:14:39.160 --> 0:14:41.080 off from it. They'll have to say I look at it, 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:42.720 and I don't think, oh my goodness, it's totally a 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:46.240 snake um consuming its own tail. No. And I was 0:14:46.240 --> 0:14:47.680 thinking about that too. I was like, yeah, that seems 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:50.040 a little far fetched, but if you are obsessed with 0:14:50.040 --> 0:14:53.760 the topic, you'll find patterns anywhere that you can. Right. 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:56.200 So maybe even if it was an accident, maybe if 0:14:56.240 --> 0:15:00.440 the he truly was just dreaming about a snake consuming 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:05.000 its own tail. Um after his Illuminati meeting, and then 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:07.720 he woke up and he thought, oh, well, you know what, 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:11.080 there's there's actually a correlation here, like the it's you know, 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:13.760 the brain does try to find patterns. Yeah, well, maybe 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:15.880 he was reading a bunch of like Norse mythology, and 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:18.120 he was all wound up about the organ mander and 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:24.479 the knit guard storm, and you know who isn't about them. 0:15:24.720 --> 0:15:28.720 Another interesting account is that of this, well there's a 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:34.120 First of all, there's Elias ho This is the guy who, uh, 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:36.400 he was working on designs for the first selling machine 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:38.920 and he couldn't figure out how to make it hold 0:15:38.920 --> 0:15:42.160 the needle, and then he dreamt that he was being 0:15:42.160 --> 0:15:46.160 attacked by cannibals with spears and supposedly worked it all 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:48.760 out right right, and he noticed that the spear there 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:50.480 was a small hole at the top right, because I 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:53.520 think before he was playing with a needle that he 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:55.800 had put the hole in the middle. And so he 0:15:55.880 --> 0:15:58.760 had that eureka moment when when he was about to 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:01.080 be cannibalized in his dream. I wonder if you like 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:02.880 woke up, like, first of all, it was like, oh 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:05.240 my god, goodness, I'm about to be eaten, like just 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:07.840 completely freaking out, and he's like, oh, oh wait, no, 0:16:07.960 --> 0:16:10.520 I got it. You know, it's sort of interesting too, 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:13.800 because you know, his adrenaline probably was pretty high, and 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:17.680 there's actually some correlation between adrenaline in long term memory. 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:21.040 So yeah, so it was good that he remembered it. 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:24.920 One of the more one of the crazy examples is 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:29.120 Herman v. Hill prect and this guy was actually a 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:34.560 German born professor of assyrian Um. And there it's worth 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:36.920 noting that there are also some accusations that this professor 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:39.720 and you know, took credit for other people's archaeological work 0:16:40.480 --> 0:16:43.720 that he hadn't done, that he appropriated artifacts, it's, etcetera. 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:48.520 So there's there's some controversy about this figure um. But 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:51.000 but there were like two cases where he supposedly figured 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:53.960 something out via his dreams. Uh. For instance, he was 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:59.760 trying to umu decode the name Nebuchadnezzar, the legendary Babylonian 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:04.080 and he claims that he had a dream um and 0:17:04.240 --> 0:17:05.960 you know, he'd been working at this problem, working at it, 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:08.760 and then he had a dream um where he's like 0:17:08.800 --> 0:17:11.199 saw this, uh, this dude at a table and he 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:15.720 figured out that the that it means nebu protect my boundary, 0:17:17.000 --> 0:17:19.240 which that may not make a lot of sense, but 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:20.800 let me get unto the in the next one, which 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:23.080 is even more interesting. And this was one he was 0:17:23.280 --> 0:17:27.320 this is uh and there was an expedition to the 0:17:27.320 --> 0:17:30.920 Temple of Bell at Nippur in present day Iraq, and 0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:34.720 Uh he brought back a sketch of two fragments UH 0:17:35.000 --> 0:17:38.440 with the inscriptions in cuneiform, and he made a stab 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:41.280 at translating these to no avail and then Uh. Then 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:43.560 he supposedly had a dream in which quote a tall, 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:47.400 thin priest of the old pre Christian Nippur unquote came 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:49.159 to him in a dream, and it formed him that 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:52.600 these fragments were portions of ear rings and UH, and 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:56.800 that the Babylonian king had sent these had sent an 0:17:56.800 --> 0:18:02.440 inscribed voted cylinder uh to Uh to some artisans and 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:04.840 asked him to make ear rings and then he made 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:08.320 them out of the subscribed cylinder and UH. And so 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:10.560 he ended up going to the He thought about it 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:13.120 this after the dream apparently decided that yes, the dream 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:16.040 was right, and then he went to the Imperial Museum 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:20.240 in Constantinople in the same year and located fragments UH 0:18:20.400 --> 0:18:23.680 in two widely separated cases. And when he arranged them 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:25.560 side by side, he found that they had in fact 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:29.960 once belonged to the same vote of cylinder. So this 0:18:30.200 --> 0:18:33.320 fascinated um Uh some some people. But but when they 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:35.280 really started looking at it, it it was like it was 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:38.080 clear that this was just associated reasoning. There was like 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:40.960 nothing going on that like, these dreams were not giving 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:45.000 him any information that he could not have pieced together conceivably, 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:48.000 and you know in his waking uh contemplations, right, it 0:18:48.080 --> 0:18:52.439 just happened to occur in his dream stay and and 0:18:52.480 --> 0:18:56.840 again there's some controversies about the guy anyway, so you know, 0:18:56.960 --> 0:18:59.400 keep that in mind too. But but but even if 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:01.400 it was complete, really on the up and up, there 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:05.240 was nothing, uh you know, there's nothing supernatural going on here, right, right. 0:19:05.280 --> 0:19:06.840 But then yeah, but there's the problem him being a 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:09.160 little body, So yeah, what are you gonna do? So 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:13.200 what's going on in the mind? A lot turns out? Yeah. Um. 0:19:13.320 --> 0:19:17.200 In fact, there's a psychologists by the name of Deedre Barrett, 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:20.680 and she says that creative problem solving dreams virtually always 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:23.600 occur only after the dreamer has done extensive work on 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:26.840 the issue awake. So most typically the dreamer is stuck 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:30.639 at one particular step of a multiple phase process, and 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:34.680 then the dream involves that step. So then you uh 0:19:35.240 --> 0:19:40.080 add another psychologist to the equation, and his name is 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:44.720 Robert stickled, and he has conducted all sorts of studies, 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:48.359 but basically his premise is that sleep can increase your 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:52.520 ability to finish solving outstanding problems that you may have. 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:56.640 And when you look at it our brains, the regions 0:19:56.680 --> 0:20:02.480 involved in dreaming, the emotional processing quanked way up. Um, 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:06.560 so you've got the emotional component. And what he seems 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:08.520 to think is that there are parts of the brain 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:11.720 that you can access much more directly than in your 0:20:11.760 --> 0:20:15.880 waking sleep. Um, in particular the emotional components which may 0:20:15.920 --> 0:20:18.840 have been gathering data for you as well. Um, that 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:22.560 can inform the problem that you're working on. And I 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:24.880 mean I would use the example of from earlier when 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:27.960 we were talking about solving problems in our dreams, and 0:20:28.280 --> 0:20:31.000 when I've had a conflict with someone and being able 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:33.680 to access that information in my mind during a dream 0:20:33.720 --> 0:20:37.120 and having this conversation and and perhaps having the time 0:20:37.160 --> 0:20:40.200 and space on a mental blackboard to figure that out, 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:43.119 and those resources being more available to me. So this 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:45.680 is someone who has, like I said, carried out a 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:48.840 lot of studies in that area. So anyway, Um, yes, 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:52.520 he Robert Sickle thinks that dreams are constructed within networks 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:55.480 of associated memories that we don't have access to normally, 0:20:56.200 --> 0:20:58.960 and he sees dreams as being about what the brain 0:20:59.080 --> 0:21:02.800 calculates as most important, same as as Barrett. Basically, the 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:05.520 importance of the subject, multiplied by the time spent on 0:21:05.600 --> 0:21:09.120 it determines what we dream about. But now, of course 0:21:09.160 --> 0:21:11.680 the problem is that we don't always remember our dreams. 0:21:12.520 --> 0:21:15.119 So there are two theories on why we don't remember dreams. 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:19.240 One is that uh during rem we shut off our 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:23.399 non adrenaline release, and that may shut down systems that 0:21:23.480 --> 0:21:26.600