WEBVTT - The Dark 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.880 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:16.560 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:19.760 if I may, I'm gonna I'm gonna ask our producer 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:22.840 knowl to uh down a little spooky music, and I'm 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:26.279 going to read a quote from HP Lovecraft. Wait, hold on, 0:00:26.360 --> 0:00:28.840 let me turn on the white We are submerged in 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:31.760 complete darkness right now. It's a little weird. Wait, holding 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:34.920 this really difficult, but okay, there, all right? This is 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:42.479 from Lovecraft supernatural horror. In literature, children will always be 0:00:42.520 --> 0:00:46.080 afraid of the dark, and men with mind sensitive to 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:50.120 hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the 0:00:50.200 --> 0:00:54.760 hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life, which made poll 0:00:54.800 --> 0:00:58.480 sat in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:03.320 upon our own lobe in unholy dimensions which only the 0:01:03.440 --> 0:01:09.720 dead and the moon struck can limps. That was beautiful. 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:12.200 And if you guys haven't guessed out there, we are 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:16.920 diving way into the deep dark in this episode. And 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:21.560 I love that because it really does evoke the sort 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:26.040 of primal fear that darkness has particularly for children. Yeah, 0:01:26.080 --> 0:01:27.880 I mean the great thing about this topic is that 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:32.160 light and dark, those are the cycles that have defined 0:01:32.360 --> 0:01:35.520 our lives, that have defined life for the most part 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:38.200 for so long. I mean, life here on Earth exists 0:01:38.200 --> 0:01:40.560 within these cycles of light and dark, and that has 0:01:40.640 --> 0:01:45.400 played into uh the evolutionary ascent of of almost all organists. 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:48.440 And it's so important to us that we have woven 0:01:48.480 --> 0:01:51.120 it into this symbolic level, right, I mean the ying 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:55.080 and yang of dark and light, these opposites which really 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:59.840 represent these ideas of not just values, but of the 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:04.480 spheares that we inhabit. Because on one level of the 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:07.360 world of light, the word the sunlit world, I mean 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:09.880 that's an area of the known, and then the world 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:12.640 of darkness that isn't an area of the if not 0:02:12.760 --> 0:02:15.720 the unknown, at least the uncertain. The other the possible. 0:02:15.760 --> 0:02:18.760 They had sort of the quantum state where the darkness 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:21.760 can be simply emptiness. The darkness can be something you 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:24.080 could trip over, it could be a thief, it could 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:27.040 be a monster. There's there's room for just about any 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:31.040 fear within that undefined space of shadow. And that undefined 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:35.760 space of shadow is largely what occupied the the human 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:39.360 experience and in fact, if you look at archaeological evidence 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:42.440 that suggests that, you know, just four d thousand years 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:46.400 ago or so, early humans mastered fire before that, what 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:48.720 would you do. I mean, you didn't. You didn't really 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:51.760 have that access to something that could glow and provide 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:55.840 some sort of illumination in the dark. Now skip ahead 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:59.000 to today, where we have a possibility for twenty four 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:02.400 hour light environments, and we kind of take that for 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:07.760 granted that darkness really did rule the night. Indeed, I 0:03:07.760 --> 0:03:10.040 mean for the longest, to borrow a phrase from historian 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:13.720 William Manchester, you had a world uh lit only by fire, 0:03:13.800 --> 0:03:16.160 right at least a night lit only by fire. So 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:18.920 you even if you had you had fire, you had candles, 0:03:18.960 --> 0:03:21.760 you had torches, you had campfires. Eventually you get gas 0:03:21.840 --> 0:03:26.680 lighting and and and lanterns and other uh luminary innovations. 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:28.840 But but for the most part, you're sort of carving 0:03:28.840 --> 0:03:31.200 out a little bit. You were reclaiming a little bit 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:34.120 of the night, but it's not quite as good as 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:37.040 the daylight, and you're still surrounded by all these shadows 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:41.200 and just gulfs of impenetrable darkness. Right until you had 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:45.680 like a really good um widespread source of artificial light. 0:03:45.840 --> 0:03:50.280 All you have those dying embers to light the space 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:53.120 around you. So what would you do. You would submit 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:55.400 to that dark and most of us would go to sleep. 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:58.840 And that brings up this idea which we've touched upon before, 0:03:59.120 --> 0:04:02.840 of two a sleep. Yeah, I mean this is pretty simple. 0:04:02.880 --> 0:04:05.040 What happens when it gets dark? And again you may 0:04:05.080 --> 0:04:07.720 have some some some light at your disposal, you may 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:10.400 have a camp fire your disposal, but your abilities are 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:14.360 greatly reduced. So you go to sleep. You simply call 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:19.840 it a day, except something happens about about halfway through, 0:04:19.960 --> 0:04:23.840 right you wake because according to historian Rogert Eckert, who 0:04:23.920 --> 0:04:27.320 published a book on the matter called at Days Closed 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:29.680 Night in Times Past, which by the way, was a 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:33.400 culmination of his sixteen years of research that uncovered more 0:04:33.400 --> 0:04:38.120 than five references to a segmented sleeping pattern, he found 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:41.520 that you would wake in this fourteen hour sleep pattern 0:04:42.240 --> 0:04:46.039 for maybe an hour or two, get up, tend your animals, 0:04:46.440 --> 0:04:49.679 do a little white house keeping in the moonlight, have sex, 0:04:50.440 --> 0:04:54.480 lay in bed, thinking, smoking a pipe, or gossiping with 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:57.279 your bed fellows. In fact, and we've mentioned before, I 0:04:57.360 --> 0:05:00.920 love this. It's widely known that Benjamin Franklin would light 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:05.240 a candle and take cold air baths, reading naked in 0:05:05.279 --> 0:05:07.880 a chair. Indeed, that was his his strategy for this 0:05:08.440 --> 0:05:11.520 this period between the two sleeps. And one thing I 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:14.159 love about this is it also really defines that idea 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:17.160 about the middle of the night, right because for us, 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:20.360 the middle of the night is typically more a situation 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:22.359 of staying up late enough for it to be the 0:05:22.360 --> 0:05:25.720 middle of the night. But you go back to to this, 0:05:25.720 --> 0:05:28.840 this earlier mode of sleep, and it's it's not merely 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:31.599 a stage of lateness, but a true in between that 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:36.160 this this little space, this little uh clutch of the 0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:39.720 darkness that you end up occupying between these two dominant 0:05:39.720 --> 0:05:43.880 phases of sleep. Now and Stephen Johnson's book How We 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:46.080 Got to Now in the PBS series, there is a 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:48.479 section on light and he talks about that. He talks 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:52.560 with historian Craig Koslovsky, who says that you know, are 0:05:52.640 --> 0:05:57.000 kind of nighttime wakenings now or even insomnia may be 0:05:57.200 --> 0:06:01.800 attributed to this original for seen our sleep phase. In 0:06:01.839 --> 0:06:04.680 other words, it's kind of normal that we get up sometimes, 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:07.160 you know, midnight or two o'clock in the morning, and 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:09.040 we can't get back to sleep for a while. Yeah, 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:11.520 I mean that's the biological norm. That's what we evolved 0:06:11.600 --> 0:06:13.920 to do. And it's only been in the last hundred 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:16.640 and fifty years, two hundred years, that we've really carved 0:06:16.640 --> 0:06:21.120 out a substantial zone of the night and and ReLit it. 0:06:21.360 --> 0:06:23.800 According to Stephen Johnson in the in the book of 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:25.840 How We Got to Now, in that that chapter and 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:29.040 Light points out that today's night sky burned six thousand 0:06:29.080 --> 0:06:31.119 times brighter than it did in me or one hundred 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:34.400 and fifty years ago. So it's it's transforms. It's transformed 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:37.560 the way we sleep, the way we work and uh. 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:40.240 And that's of course spiral of office, Johnson explains in 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:43.640 his book into the creation of global networks of communication. 0:06:44.240 --> 0:06:48.440 Uh and and and a lot of our modern technological world. Yeah, 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:51.039 because all of a sudden, you have improved street lighting, 0:06:51.120 --> 0:06:55.640 you had the advent of social opportunities at the in 0:06:55.960 --> 0:06:58.640 during the evening, you have you know, restaurants and cafes 0:06:58.680 --> 0:07:00.600 to go to. And that cause is a shift in 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:05.200 people sleep patterns because before that, according to Koslovski, you 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:09.039 had associations with the night that we're not so good. 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:11.360 We're talking about before the seventeenth century. He says the 0:07:11.480 --> 0:07:16.480 night was a place populated by people of disrepute, criminals, prostitutes, 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:18.840 and drunks. And he said even the wealthy who could 0:07:18.880 --> 0:07:21.400 afford candle light had better things to spend their money 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:23.640 on than burning their candles all night long. There really 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:27.240 wasn't any prestige or social value. And staying up all night, yeah, 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:30.240 I mean nightfalls. You locked the door because the only 0:07:30.280 --> 0:07:32.400 people out there are going to be people that are 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:34.280 probably up to no good. You don't want anything to 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:36.680 do with that. And the walls to the city, if 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:39.600 you have walls around your your here in which you live, 0:07:39.800 --> 0:07:41.960 those are gonna close because anyone entering the city in 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:44.200 the night again up to no good. And hey, don't 0:07:44.200 --> 0:07:47.040 forget about those nighttime predators of the animal ilk, right, 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:48.880 that's right. I mean it takes us back to our 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:52.840 primeval self, right. Uh, the idea that that there are 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:55.960 predators out there that will eat us and the night 0:07:56.040 --> 0:07:59.800 belongs to to those creatures, not to us. Um. And 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:02.160 you know, you can spiral off from that into a 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:05.000 lot of our our fears of the of the dark, 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:08.320 of the dark, and concerns about the night and uh, 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:12.000 and that basic type one error and cognition that we 0:08:12.040 --> 0:08:14.640 make when we believe a connection is really there and 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:17.840 uh when it isn't. We're hardwired to make type one 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:21.600 errors because a type to air a false negative gets 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:24.480 you killed. Always better to assume that their predators out 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:27.200 there in the dark. Always better to assume their thieves 0:08:27.200 --> 0:08:30.040 and criminals and and whatever out there in the shadows, 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:33.679 because it's a safer bed. Now we'll talk later about 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:37.959 how this type one into cognition errors can uh kind 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:40.080 of mess us up here in our modern world. But 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:43.480 for now, let's try to figure out why we respond 0:08:43.640 --> 0:08:45.880 so greatly to light and dark in the first place. 0:08:46.240 --> 0:08:47.880 And in order to do that, we got to look 0:08:47.920 --> 0:08:49.560 our old friends on the tree of life. I'm talking 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:52.719 about single filled bacteria because again, this comes back through 0:08:52.760 --> 0:08:55.920 the very the basic nature of the evolution of life. Right, 0:08:56.360 --> 0:09:02.319 Life evolved on a world that experiences period clockwork, periods 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:05.600 of night and day of light and darkness, and so 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:10.439 life itself is taking form within these environmental constraints yep. 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:13.800 And one of these constraints is a circadian rhythm, which 0:09:13.880 --> 0:09:17.000 tracks a standard Earth day's twenty four hour cycle. It's 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:19.960 a secret to why we can adjust to different time 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:24.560 zones and their accompanying sleep patterns. And according to Annally Knew, 0:09:24.600 --> 0:09:27.439 it's writing for I O nine in the article this 0:09:27.520 --> 0:09:30.800 is why you Can't sleep quote, it's likely that circadian 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:35.439 rhythms evolved in sino bacteria blue green algae over three 0:09:35.520 --> 0:09:38.160 billion years ago. And so you would say, okay, fine, 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:41.480 why but why did that blue green algae need to 0:09:41.600 --> 0:09:44.960 have some sort of circadian rhythm? And the answer is 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:48.400 that it's all about energy. Because single cell bacteria they 0:09:48.440 --> 0:09:50.760 need energy, but to get at their bodies had to 0:09:50.800 --> 0:09:54.760 carry out two different chemical processes that interfered with each other. 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:58.360 So the bacteria began keeping time by tracking the sun. 0:09:58.480 --> 0:10:02.000 So when it was light outside the cyanobacteria, we'd get 0:10:02.120 --> 0:10:05.400 energy from photosynthesis, and when it was dark they could 0:10:05.440 --> 0:10:09.920 get energy by sequestering nitrogen. But if these two processes 0:10:09.960 --> 0:10:13.160 were done simultaneously, they would cancel each other out. But 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:16.680 sequentially keeping track of light and dark and went to 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:22.560 do these chemical processes allowed a maximum gathering of energy. Now, 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:25.800 the other idea is that at that time there were 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:28.960 life forms who shared the same environment, and this was 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:31.800 also a way to compete with each other for food. 0:10:31.920 --> 0:10:35.120 So some evolved to feed during the day and others 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:38.080 to feed at night. And then you go forward and 0:10:38.160 --> 0:10:43.160 you have us bipedal energy hogs really taking advantage of 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:46.360 this whole circadian rhythm thing. And of course this brings 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:48.440 us back to our old friend, the pineal gland, which 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:51.360 we we did an entire episode about about the pineal gland. 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:54.080 I think we called it my third eye peneal optics 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:56.640 um and uh, certainly go back and listen to that 0:10:56.640 --> 0:10:58.200 one if you want a deeper dive into this, but 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:02.760 just to refresh, pineal gland is a small organ shaped 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:05.840 like a pine cone, hence the name, and it's located 0:11:05.920 --> 0:11:08.760 on the mid line attached to the posterior end of 0:11:08.840 --> 0:11:11.719 the roof of the third ventricle in the brain and 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:14.800 humans is roughly one sentiment or in length, and the 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:20.040 pennel is composed of penelocytes and giggle cells. In older animals, 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:24.120 the penel often contains calcium deposits or brain stand Now, 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:27.440 it's it's not an eye, it's not a true eye, 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:30.040 but it is. It does have optical properties, and it 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:32.640 does and light does play a role in what it does. 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:36.960 So light exposure to the retina relays to the hypothalamus, 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:38.920 and this is an area in the brain that is 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:42.200 involved in the in the coordination of biological clock signals. 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:46.040 UH and fibers from the hypothalamus descend to the spinal 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:50.520 cord and project to the superior cervical ganglia, from which 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:54.520 post a ganglionic neutrons ascend back to the pineal gland. 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:59.200 So the penneal transduces signals from the sympathetic nervous system 0:11:59.200 --> 0:12:03.240 into a hormone linal signal, and it produces several important hormones, 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:08.240 including melotonin, in response to environmental lighting. So the human 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:12.440 penel regulates the rhythm that beats out the biological thought 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:16.480 by secreting a substance melatonin according to the light stimulus 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:20.120 received through the eyes and from the skin. Yeah, the 0:12:20.120 --> 0:12:23.400 penel gland acts as a control tower for the biological clock. 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:26.520 Inside of this directing some body functions like sleep based 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:28.640 on the data that it's getting back from these light 0:12:28.720 --> 0:12:31.600 sensing skills. And I love this idea that this third 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:33.679 eye does have all the components of an eye, but 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:36.080 is not an eye, and it is taking in all 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:39.120 of these environmental cues in order to tell the body. Hey, 0:12:39.120 --> 0:12:42.240 time to wake up or time to go to sleep? Now, Um. 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:46.640 Alison louder Milk, who is whenres senior editors here, had 0:12:46.720 --> 0:12:49.360 brought up the point before, and I think she was 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:53.400 like talking about whales at the Georgia Aquarium who are 0:12:53.440 --> 0:12:56.520 affected by daylight savings time she ran up the point 0:12:56.559 --> 0:13:01.400 of what what would happen if you weren't exposed to 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:04.160 light at all? Yeah, this brings to mind some research 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:07.920 from two thousand eleven UH into the nature of the 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:12.240 Mexican blind cave fish. Now, despite what the name would 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:15.679 have you think, this species exists in both subterranean and 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:19.280 surface populations. Now the surface fish swim with the benefit 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:24.040 of sighted eyes, while their underground can go about blindly 0:13:24.559 --> 0:13:28.440 in laboratory populations this UH. In this two thousand eleven 0:13:28.440 --> 0:13:31.560 to say, the surface fish slept while the cavers darted 0:13:31.600 --> 0:13:35.199 around all night. Uh. The researchers discovered that the differing 0:13:35.280 --> 0:13:38.840 sleep behavior hinged on a few dominant gene mutations that 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:41.560 became fixed in the cave populations when they took to 0:13:41.640 --> 0:13:44.560 the dark. After All, as we've discussed in our truck 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:48.360 lafonta episode of food is scarce in the subterranean environments 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:52.120 particularly in Subtranian waters. So natural selection favors the scavengers 0:13:52.240 --> 0:13:56.200 who are willing to work long, long hours. Um. This 0:13:56.559 --> 0:14:02.360 research also brings to mind the account of researcher Christina Lanzoni, 0:14:02.520 --> 0:14:05.079 who spent a whopping two hundred and sixty nine days 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:09.240 of solitary confinement in the subterranean under lab in the 0:14:09.240 --> 0:14:12.320 Frasasi Caves in central Italy. Now, granted she didn't have 0:14:12.360 --> 0:14:15.680 to swim about all night scaven scaven for food, but 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:21.520 her sleep patterns altered significantly. On average, Lanzoni's waking days 0:14:21.520 --> 0:14:25.800 stretched on for fifty four to fifty six hours, followed 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:29.600 by fourteen to sixteen hours of sleep. For furthermore, that 0:14:29.680 --> 0:14:32.160 sleep was much more like that of an infant, as 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:35.960 she fall immediately into rim sleep and dream of wide 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:39.840 and open spaces. So UM, what I like about those 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:43.400 two studies is that they do really drive home how 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:46.960 crucial light and dark um is. Do an organism be 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:51.360 it to being an organism's uh evolutionary advancement into a 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:54.440 into a realm of darkness, or its continuing existence in 0:14:54.440 --> 0:14:56.960 a room of light, or just taking a single organism 0:14:57.120 --> 0:14:59.440 and taking it out of that that flow of light 0:14:59.480 --> 0:15:03.440 and dark and putting it into a subterranean world. Now, 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:06.360 in those examples, as are those are all organisms who 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:10.160 could detect light. But the question becomes, what if you 0:15:10.200 --> 0:15:13.800 were never indoctrinated into light in the first place. We're 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:15.480 going to take a quick break when we get back, 0:15:15.560 --> 0:15:18.160 we're going to talk about blindness. We're gonna talk about 0:15:18.200 --> 0:15:24.480 twenty four hours sleep wake disorder and fear of the dark. 0:15:28.360 --> 0:15:31.440 All right, we're back, and we're discussing darkness. But it's 0:15:31.480 --> 0:15:33.600 like to to live as an organism in a world 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:36.160 of light and dark and how light and dark rules 0:15:36.200 --> 0:15:40.840 less at a very basic biological level. But what about 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:43.640 those of us whose ability to perceive light and darkness 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:48.400 is significantly degraded or almost erased, almost completely, at least 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:51.560 at the retina level. Yeah, and we'll talk about that 0:15:51.840 --> 0:15:54.440 in a moment, about people who are blind and what 0:15:54.480 --> 0:15:56.000 their sleep patterns are like. But first you have to 0:15:56.080 --> 0:15:58.200 kind of go back to the whole spartadian rhythm in 0:15:58.240 --> 0:16:01.440 the first place. And it turns out that most of 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:04.760 us have body clocks that run a little longer than 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:08.280 twenty four hours, and this can sometimes lead to something 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:11.560 called the twenty four hours sleep wake disorder. Or non 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:15.680 twenty four And according to the non twenty four site, 0:16:16.400 --> 0:16:19.480 if your body clock is say twenty four point five 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:24.280 hours long, today, you're running a half hour behind. Tomorrow 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:28.440 you're an hour behind, and so on until your natural 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:32.240 rhythms have you sleeping during the day and a week 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:35.520 at night. Now this can go on and on and on. 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:38.360 So what basically what this um is saying is that 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:40.080 you could go to sleep at ten o'clock every night, 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:43.520 but if you have this non twenty four disorder, you know, 0:16:43.560 --> 0:16:45.600 you might false ip at ten thirty and then eleven, 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:47.240 and then so on and so forth, and it just 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:50.400 keeps pushing that needle of your body clock around this 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:54.320 twenty four hour cycle, and in some cases it takes 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:56.920 up to say one and a half months to get 0:16:57.240 --> 0:17:00.080 back to where you are simped up to say a 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:02.680 normal cycle that the rest of the world, at least 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:05.199 your time zone is on. I feel like this this 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:08.720 matches up at a symbolic level with with pretty much 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:12.000 everything uh in my modern life. Imagine with a lot 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:15.640 of people that you have within the the the calendar year, 0:17:15.720 --> 0:17:18.960 within the the the confines of clock time, you have 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:21.200 x amount of time to spend on a given thing. 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:26.520 Unfortunately that thing actually takes x point five um to 0:17:26.800 --> 0:17:28.879 to complete and it all adds up and you end 0:17:29.000 --> 0:17:33.240 up just sort of not sticking to any particular schedule, 0:17:33.280 --> 0:17:35.600 but just sort of falling through it. And this with 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:40.760 this amorphous sleeps cycle, with the amorphous attention to detail 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:44.440 and various corners of your life. UM and I feel 0:17:44.480 --> 0:17:47.800 like my own just my own sleep sometimes falls like this, 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:50.280 like I'm not never never, just like to go to 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:52.440 sleep at this time, wake up at this It's like 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:54.840 like it'll it'll sort of flow and shift throughout a 0:17:54.840 --> 0:17:58.119 given week. Well. As a former insomniac scept for, I 0:17:58.200 --> 0:18:01.280 try to keep really close to the times that I 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:03.120 fall asleep and wake up because that helps a lot 0:18:03.119 --> 0:18:05.320 in terms of regulation. But I understand what you mean. 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:06.840 I read on twenty four and I was like, well, 0:18:06.880 --> 0:18:10.720 this is this does kind of feel like sleep can 0:18:10.760 --> 0:18:12.880 become this very random thing and as you say, something 0:18:12.920 --> 0:18:16.399 that you fall through as opposed to just being completely 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:19.440 SYNCD up on. And it turns out that among people 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:24.560 who are totally blind, as many as seventy suffer from 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:28.280 the effects of NON twenty four, which again comes about 0:18:28.359 --> 0:18:32.280 because of this light of light perception, or more specifically, 0:18:32.320 --> 0:18:35.920 the transmission of ocular light from the retina to their 0:18:35.920 --> 0:18:40.240 circadian clock that is impaired, So you don't have that 0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:43.680 sort of reset button, and you don't have that sort 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:47.080 of environmental cue of hey, let's wake up, and it 0:18:47.119 --> 0:18:50.520 can be much more prevalent among the blind. So, you know, 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:52.400 we talked about that, this this idea that I can 0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:54.280 take a month and a half to get sinked back 0:18:54.359 --> 0:18:58.240 up to that cycle that at least your time zones on. 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:02.760 Imagine this sort of chronic sleep disorder that would be 0:19:02.760 --> 0:19:05.119 in place, and all the symptoms that would follow. It 0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:08.520 would feel like you had jet leg every single day 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:10.840 of your life. Yeah, I agree. That's that's the way 0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:13.240 I felt before I had when I had this unaddressed 0:19:13.240 --> 0:19:16.320 to sleep problems a while back. Yeah, And in these cases, 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:19.359 it's you know, extremely difficult to be on time and 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:24.280 stay awake at work, to attend school, pursue interest, keep 0:19:24.320 --> 0:19:27.639 your social life intact, and so there aren't many things 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:31.320 that you can do for this. However, some people have 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:35.719 found limited relief through treatment with a synthetic version of 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:39.800 melotonin that will sometimes help to drag forward the body 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:43.439 clocks reset time by creating that chemical pulse to the 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:47.919 circadian um body clock. But again this is limited and 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:51.520 not everybody responds to it. Yeah, but still the synthetic 0:19:51.600 --> 0:19:54.440 melotonin is key, much better than wandering around in the 0:19:54.480 --> 0:19:56.600 middle of the night trying to stuff the pineal glands 0:19:56.680 --> 0:19:59.080 out of people, so that if you're victims skulls. Yeah, 0:19:59.080 --> 0:20:01.160 there are only so many air bath that you can take. 0:20:02.320 --> 0:20:04.280 But I mean, that's one of the things about sleep problems, right, 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:06.240 There's so many things you have to do in during 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:08.680 the course of a day, and here you are awake 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:12.160 in the dead of night, in the dark, and this 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:14.000 is you and you it's not only is it not 0:20:14.119 --> 0:20:16.359 the time to do most of those things, but even 0:20:16.440 --> 0:20:19.000 even the things that you could conceivably do that you 0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:20.639 can turn on a light and grab a book or 0:20:20.800 --> 0:20:22.680 or whatever, you work on your homework, work on your 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:27.520 you know, some some of your daylit work stuff, you 0:20:27.560 --> 0:20:30.280 don't have the mindset to do it because what you 0:20:30.320 --> 0:20:32.960 need is sleep at that time. Yeah, And I mean 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:37.439 it can also lead to other sleep disturbances like nightmares. 0:20:37.760 --> 0:20:40.880 And there was a really interesting study that just came 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:43.919 out in the journal Sleep Medicine. And granted it is 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:46.520 one study, and it's very small, but in the study, 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:50.840 it showed that an average of of the dreams experienced 0:20:50.840 --> 0:20:54.680 by people born blind are nightmares. And when you look 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:57.920 at sighted people in nightmares, it accounts for only six 0:20:57.960 --> 0:21:01.320 percent of the dreams that they have. So that's you know, 0:21:01.359 --> 0:21:05.080 a fourfold increase if you are born blind in this 0:21:05.119 --> 0:21:07.520 one study. Yeah, Now, I do want to want to 0:21:07.600 --> 0:21:09.560 drive home here that this is this is not something 0:21:09.560 --> 0:21:12.880 that causes excessive trouble for those individuals. So don't think 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:15.639 about any blind people in your life or just you know, 0:21:16.080 --> 0:21:17.880 uh that you may know and think, oh my god, 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:19.600 that you know that that poor person they're having to 0:21:19.680 --> 0:21:22.920 just live of nightmare every night, something to that effect, 0:21:23.600 --> 0:21:26.920 because it's not like that. No. In fact, when the 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:29.960 study participants who are born blinds were told of this 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:34.320 fourfold increase, they didn't even realize that it was disproportionate. 0:21:34.359 --> 0:21:36.640 And they did they were fine for it. And if 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:38.439 you think about it, then we'll talk a little bit 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:41.600 more about this. That's maybe because dreams and nightmares kind 0:21:41.600 --> 0:21:45.000 of helped guide us in an odd way. Yeah, we've 0:21:45.040 --> 0:21:49.000 we've talked about dreams and nightmares in the past, and 0:21:49.240 --> 0:21:51.000 I mean, you basically get down to this idea that 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:53.760 the dreams are, of course not just a screen saver 0:21:54.440 --> 0:21:57.119 like dreams and and everything that's going on in your 0:21:57.119 --> 0:22:00.400 brain at night. It's about processing the information, and from 0:22:00.440 --> 0:22:06.200 the day, it's about processing your environment, your struggles, your stresses, 0:22:06.320 --> 0:22:09.439 the problems that you're facing and working them out in 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:13.480 the brain. And sort of the the byproduct of all 0:22:13.600 --> 0:22:16.840 that is the dreamscape that you end up inhabiting. Yeah, 0:22:16.880 --> 0:22:18.600 and let's droll down into the nitty gritty of this 0:22:18.640 --> 0:22:21.520 study because I think it tells something about that dreamscape. So, 0:22:21.680 --> 0:22:24.439