Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist, thank you for joining us here. On
Speaker 1: December thirty first, the end of the western calendar year.
Speaker 1: Now a lot of people will look back on a year,
Speaker 1: and especially around this time, we'll start thinking about the future.
Speaker 1: This made us think of a series we did beginning
Speaker 1: in August of twenty twenty about precognition, about the idea
Speaker 1: of having a dream that violates linear time.
Speaker 2: Right, be it a dream or taking a step further
Speaker 2: a premonition. I think it's also appropriate in these holiday times,
Speaker 2: thinking about like Charles Dickens a Christmas Carol and ebeneze
Speaker 2: rescrewed flying through the various versions of what his life
Speaker 2: might hold, where he'd to go down certain paths.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we got a fresh sign of twelve months on
Speaker 3: the way. What will they hold you guys more Epstein file.
Speaker 1: We dive into the science of dreams, right. I think
Speaker 1: we were all surprised to learn that modern human science
Speaker 1: doesn't fully understand what happens when you pass out, you know,
Speaker 1: for your three to twelve hours every twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Apaolo, Let's keep it in This is our
Speaker 1: classic episode. Joined us after this in oh January first,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six for have dreams really predicted the future?
Speaker 4: Chapter two? For now, let's roll the tape.
Speaker 5: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 5: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 5: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 5: production of Iheartrading.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my.
Speaker 2: Name is Nolah.
Speaker 4: They call me Ben.
Speaker 1: We are joined as always with our super producer Paul,
Speaker 1: Mission control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here,
Speaker 1: and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: Let's begin today's episode, which gets very strange, with a
Speaker 1: question Fello listeners, what's the most vivid dream you've ever experienced?
Speaker 1: You know, for many people this answer will come to
Speaker 1: your mind immediately in a flash of images, sensations, or
Speaker 1: emotions that are often almost indistinguishable from experiences in the
Speaker 1: waking world. Before the dawn of recorded history, these things
Speaker 1: called dreams haunted us, They inspired, terrified, and guided our ancestors.
Speaker 1: And dreams, you know, everyone knows they're often central plot
Speaker 1: points in ancient myths, and who hasn't, of course, heard
Speaker 1: the more modern tales of a visionary scientist, an inventor
Speaker 1: and artist, a writer, or someone receiving inspiration and suddenly
Speaker 1: solving a problem in a dream and having a real
Speaker 1: solution to a problem when they wake up. Long story short,
Speaker 1: dreams have been pivotal throughout the span of human existence,
Speaker 1: and we still don't understand them. We still don't completely
Speaker 1: get what's happening with dreams. We know they tell us
Speaker 1: about the past, we know they recontextualize the present, but
Speaker 1: could they also tell us about the future?
Speaker 4: Here are the.
Speaker 3: Facts, My goodness, you know, I don't want to lose
Speaker 3: any time here, but I have a reoccurring dream when
Speaker 3: I'm very stressed out where I am physically jumping across
Speaker 3: asteroids that are flowing at me, or like moving towards me.
Speaker 3: You guys, have any like stressed dreams that you've ever
Speaker 3: had like that or maybe a positive.
Speaker 2: Wad, Dude, I have this recurring dream where I'm like
Speaker 2: I've made it, my band has made it, and we're
Speaker 2: like playing before you know, the biggest crowd I've ever
Speaker 2: seen in the entire history of playing music, and I
Speaker 2: don't know any of the songs. I'm like dreadfully underprepared,
Speaker 2: or maybe like I'm in the arcade fire cool and
Speaker 2: I just freeze. I don't know any of the songs
Speaker 2: I have that dream a lot. What does it mean, guys?
Speaker 2: What does it mean?
Speaker 3: Well, hopefully today we're gonna find out, because we do
Speaker 3: know what dreams are, or at least we have a
Speaker 3: pretty good understanding of what they are. A fancy way
Speaker 3: to phrase it would be something like dreams are patterns
Speaker 3: of information, specifically something that we have taken in as
Speaker 3: sensory information, and the dream occurs when the brain is
Speaker 3: in a resting state and somehow using this information and
Speaker 3: making essentially a story or at least patterns from it.
Speaker 1: And if we want to be a little more blunt
Speaker 1: about it, dreams are hallucinations. They take every box for
Speaker 1: everything that's ever been described as a hallucination. And we've
Speaker 1: talked about it in previous episodes, But if you describe
Speaker 1: the process of dreaming or even just sleeping to some
Speaker 1: life form that had never encountered it, it sounds so bizarre.
Speaker 1: We've just all sort of accepted that anywhere from four
Speaker 1: to eight hours out of every twenty four hours, we
Speaker 1: will we will pass out, our bodies will be useless,
Speaker 1: we'll go into some weird other world and then we
Speaker 1: gain control of our body again and everybody acts like
Speaker 1: nothing happened.
Speaker 4: It's odd, right.
Speaker 3: And every once in a while we encounter shadow people
Speaker 3: that want to thwart our plans of living.
Speaker 2: Those pesky shadow people always trying to suffocate us in
Speaker 2: our sleep. That's no fun. But we're talking specifically today
Speaker 2: about I don't know, Ben, you have this really great
Speaker 2: analogy for dreams, just the idea of like your brain
Speaker 2: kind of as at hard drive, sort of like sorting
Speaker 2: out the bits or like defragging, like kind of cleaning
Speaker 2: out the cobwebs, I guess of the day and subconsciously
Speaker 2: maybe doing some internal problem solving. Even if it's not
Speaker 2: like you wake up with some kind of aha moment,
Speaker 2: it is somehow doing some good for you, like in
Speaker 2: terms of, you know, maybe uncluttering your subconscious Let's say,
Speaker 2: is that about the span of it, Ben.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Before we jump to, you know, the kind
Speaker 1: of theories that we have about dreams because we don't
Speaker 1: know what they are, let's bust one myth really quick.
Speaker 1: We've all heard that dreams only occur during a specific
Speaker 1: phase of sleep. Ram great band, the phrase Ram stands
Speaker 1: for rapid eye movement. It's like the fifth stage of sleep.
Speaker 1: That's where the dreams are supposed to happen. However, we
Speaker 1: know that multiple studies have shown maybe we dream mainly
Speaker 1: in the RAM phase, but we also dream in other phases.
Speaker 1: We can't be the dream process cannot be quite as
Speaker 1: easily categorized as we would like, and that's where the
Speaker 1: theories come in. So one of those leading theories. There
Speaker 1: are loads and loads of great research pieces on dreams.
Speaker 1: One of those theories is just what you described, that
Speaker 1: dreams are a part of memory processing, meaning that it
Speaker 1: helps us consolidate things we've learned while also transferring our
Speaker 1: short term memory to our long term memory storage. So yes,
Speaker 1: I think the analogy holds that. To me, it seems
Speaker 1: like a good description is the brain's defragging the hard drive.
Speaker 1: But then again, is the brain the hard drive? What's
Speaker 1: doing the defragging? Is it the software? Is that the consciousness?
Speaker 1: This gets very strange, very quickly.
Speaker 3: But yeah, in that concept, it's as though all of
Speaker 3: those connections that your neurons have made, it's solidifying them,
Speaker 3: right if they're necessary. It's almost like the brain itself
Speaker 3: is trying to decide what's important. It's really weird. It's
Speaker 3: weird to think about your brain in its unconscious state
Speaker 3: doing one of the most important things that you can imagine,
Speaker 3: figuring out what you actually learned and what you should remember,
Speaker 3: or or.
Speaker 2: How you actually feel about things. Sometimes I mean, like,
Speaker 2: perhaps my recurring dream about being unprepared is a signal
Speaker 2: or a symptom of me feeling overwhelmed at certain times.
Speaker 2: I don't have this dream all the time, but when
Speaker 2: I do have this dream, I think it's a product
Speaker 2: of me maybe feeling a little underwater with work or
Speaker 2: a little bit like I'm out of my depth or something,
Speaker 2: or like I kind of am a little bit adrift
Speaker 2: and maybe need a little bit of a course correction.
Speaker 2: So they can be interesting when you have these over
Speaker 2: and over and you're like, oh, maybe this is a
Speaker 2: signal pointing towards something.
Speaker 3: That's really a great observation, because another thing it could
Speaker 3: be is really just a problem solving activity that your
Speaker 3: brain goes through a way to go through those difficult,
Speaker 3: complicated things that you know are more deeply psychological than
Speaker 3: perhaps you appreciate it in the moment, and to get
Speaker 3: balance back in a way or to maybe put things
Speaker 3: in the right perspective for you.
Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, it's all just kems, right, Like,
Speaker 2: it's all just firing neurons and you know, electrical impulses
Speaker 2: bouncing around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's like saying that music is only math
Speaker 1: for you know what I mean, it's a matter of perspective.
Speaker 1: I think that's an important theory to bring up as well.
Speaker 1: The bit more, I wouldn't say reductionists, but the theory
Speaker 1: that wants to remove the concept of consciousness from the
Speaker 1: equation and says that dreams are simply the brain responding
Speaker 1: to an array of biochemical changes and electrical pulses that
Speaker 1: impulses that fire as you are asleep, whatever you might be,
Speaker 1: and the dream then is seen as nothing more than
Speaker 1: a side effect, right Like sunsets look pretty, but that
Speaker 1: wasn't part of some grand plan. This argument says, it's
Speaker 1: just a very small side effect of graph in orbit.
Speaker 1: So we have these theories and they all The thing
Speaker 1: is that none of them, on the outset seem just
Speaker 1: straight wrong, none of them seem demonstrably incorrect. They just
Speaker 1: seem like the old adage of the mice describing an elephant, right,
Speaker 1: you know, different mice see different parts of the elephant.
Speaker 1: They think it's a bunch of different objects instead of
Speaker 1: one large thing. We do, luckily know on numerous levels
Speaker 1: what happens when we dream. Every dream you have has
Speaker 1: some of the same guide posts. We tend to be
Speaker 1: the main characters of our own lives and our dreams.
Speaker 1: Just as in the waking world, you are in your dreams.
Speaker 1: Even when you feel like you're watching something happen, you
Speaker 1: are in it. Things are happening, You're taking actions. The environment,
Speaker 1: the reality of the dream is responding to your actions,
Speaker 1: and in the universe of the dream, those are responses,
Speaker 1: and those actions they make sense. This is not really
Speaker 1: the case once you wake up and you think, wow, my,
Speaker 1: you know, like, my great aunt has been dead for years.
Speaker 1: She never played the Obo, and I have never been
Speaker 1: to Portugal.
Speaker 2: Right, They're like, yeah, how come when I eat a
Speaker 2: chocolate covered pretzel in the real world, it's delicious treat.
Speaker 2: But in a dream, all my teeth fallout and I'm
Speaker 2: naked in front of a high school gym of my
Speaker 2: peers and they're all laughing at me. Why are they
Speaker 2: laughing at me?
Speaker 1: Or like in the Far Side. One of the one
Speaker 1: of the greatest modern American comic strips, the the recurrent
Speaker 1: fear of showing up to a lecture without one's duck.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a deep cut for folks. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: it is true. These things have an internal logic. And
Speaker 1: if you practice dream journaling, which can be a tremendously
Speaker 1: useful psychological tool, then what you'll notice when you try
Speaker 1: to write out the plot points of your dreams is
Speaker 1: that things change, especially scenery. I didn't I didn't talk
Speaker 1: about any of my recurrent dreams because they're weird. They
Speaker 1: kind of all occur in the same universe, and things
Speaker 1: that happen in one affect things in the other.
Speaker 2: Whoa you have like a Ben Bolen cinematic dream universe.
Speaker 4: It's not as cool as it sounds.
Speaker 2: Man, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 4: I don't know, it's not as cool as it sounds.
Speaker 1: But but we all But the thing is, it makes
Speaker 1: sense when you're in the moment, right Like of course,
Speaker 1: my teeth falling out that is a tremendously common, uh
Speaker 1: dream trope, especially in the West. Maybe it's maybe has
Speaker 1: something to do with dentists. Maybe it has something to
Speaker 1: do with the rite of passage we experience when our
Speaker 1: baby teeth fall out. But yeah, yeah, so it's kind
Speaker 1: of programmed into us. But when we think about it,
Speaker 1: when we're awake, all of our thoughts have a kind
Speaker 1: of familiar logic to them. Right, I did A because
Speaker 1: I want B or I did see because someone is
Speaker 1: going to do D later. And our brain, which is
Speaker 1: hugely underrated in the in the sort of avengers of
Speaker 1: our body. Our brain is always working through all this
Speaker 1: internal external stimuli. And your brain, like your heart, once
Speaker 1: it starts going, it doesn't get a break. It's not
Speaker 1: supposed to get a break until you die. If your
Speaker 1: brain or your heart stop doing what they do, getting
Speaker 1: down how they get down, then you are very much
Speaker 1: in trouble. So when you're when you're asleep, your brain.
Speaker 4: Is still active.
Speaker 2: The brain is like the great white shark of the body.
Speaker 2: You know, if it stops, then it dies. And that's
Speaker 2: because of a couple of things. So the brain is
Speaker 2: divided into segments. As we know, we've got the limbic
Speaker 2: system in the mid brain, which deals with emotion in
Speaker 2: both waking and dreaming states. It's interesting there these these
Speaker 2: parts kind of have shared responsibilities and do similar functions
Speaker 2: when you're awake and when you're asleep. And that includes
Speaker 2: the amygdala, which is particularly active when you're in a
Speaker 2: dream state.
Speaker 1: Right, and then we've got the cortex. The cortex is
Speaker 1: what if the cortex had a job, If your dreams
Speaker 1: were a soulist corporation, and the cortex was an employee
Speaker 1: of your dreams, then it would have the title content creator,
Speaker 1: which is not a favorite title of mind. So the
Speaker 1: reason that's important is everything that your cortex does, your
Speaker 1: cortex rights and directs your dreams right, comes up with
Speaker 1: the plot lines. Everything you feel, from floating in a
Speaker 1: vast and knowable ocean to flying to jumping from one
Speaker 1: impossible across one impossible chasm to another. All the people
Speaker 1: you meet, all the monsters that chase you, they all
Speaker 1: come from your cortex and the visual cortex right there
Speaker 1: at the back of your brain. If you're human, when
Speaker 1: you're listening to the this is especially active because we
Speaker 1: are such, you know, visual creatures, kind of the way
Speaker 1: that dog that dogs are olfactory creatures.
Speaker 4: This made me wonder.
Speaker 1: I don't have the science on it yet, but I
Speaker 1: wonder if dogs mainly dream and smell.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 2: It's interesting too because I never really recall sounds from dreams,
Speaker 2: and I know that's that's a thing that happens. There's
Speaker 2: even a story Paul McCartney says that he came up
Speaker 2: with the melody to I Believe Yesterday in a dream
Speaker 2: and he woke up and he had this melody, and
Speaker 2: he said, and being a musical dude, I don't think
Speaker 2: I've ever dreamt of a melody. I think of it
Speaker 2: as a very specifically in the realm of visual hallucinatory
Speaker 2: kind of state, you know. So I think that's pretty
Speaker 2: special for Paul to come out of a dream state
Speaker 2: with that melody. Have you guys ever dreamt sounds or
Speaker 2: remembered sounds from a dream?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, really happen at all.
Speaker 3: I have several highly talkative monsters that inhabit my dreamscape,
Speaker 3: very talkative and in fascinating uh vocalizations. I highly recommend
Speaker 3: checking out one of these if you get a chance, one.
Speaker 2: Of these mad brands.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll oh yeah, just hot back there and my
Speaker 3: oh my underlit jimbae.
Speaker 2: Look at that.
Speaker 3: Uh So, you know it's fascinating that you're talking about
Speaker 3: that the cordex been. I think it's You're absolutely right.
Speaker 3: The cortex is the reason why we're almost It feels
Speaker 3: a lot of times for me and maybe a lot
Speaker 3: of others that you're kind of just a passenger in
Speaker 3: your dreams, like you're moving, you're going places, you're seeing things,
Speaker 3: things are changing, but you just kind of accept it.
Speaker 3: You just kind of go with it. You're just headed
Speaker 3: in that direction, unless, of course, you've unlocked you know,
Speaker 3: the ability to locid dream, which is a whole other thing.
Speaker 3: But one of the reasons that it's that dreams are
Speaker 3: like that is because these parts of our brain, the
Speaker 3: lobes that are talked about so frequently, kind of the
Speaker 3: logic systems, those are the least active parts of your
Speaker 3: brain when you are dreaming, which it really explains why
Speaker 3: you know, things don't feel so strange until you wake up.
Speaker 3: And maybe it's also one of the main reasons you
Speaker 3: don't remember too much.
Speaker 1: My Great Gods is dead. She never played the Obo,
Speaker 1: I've never been to Portugal, and you know, and if
Speaker 1: I don't write it down in twenty three minutes, I'll
Speaker 1: forget dude.
Speaker 2: But that, yeah, that's it, that's right, that's another thing
Speaker 2: like I've never been a dream journaler, and there's it
Speaker 2: has to be my dream has to pack such a
Speaker 2: waile up for me to remember it at all. But
Speaker 2: when it does, I do, and they stick with me
Speaker 2: and I remember them for many years. But typically unless
Speaker 2: you write it down super quick, you're still in that
Speaker 2: kind of like waking dreaming between state and then you
Speaker 2: kind of lose it. Right, Are you guys good at
Speaker 2: remembering dreams?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 2: What would you say your odds are or like in
Speaker 2: terms of like waking up and being able to recall
Speaker 2: specifics from a dream.
Speaker 3: I keeping notes on my phone and it's always right
Speaker 3: by my bed, and yeah, constantly doing that.
Speaker 2: What about you? Ben? Uh?
Speaker 1: I I don't know necessarily think it's a good thing,
Speaker 1: but yes, yeah, okay, pretty I do. Well, it's no
Speaker 1: secret longtime listeners. I don't like sleep.
Speaker 4: I resent it.
Speaker 1: I think that science should already be at the point
Speaker 1: like where, you know, if I can call someone in
Speaker 1: freaking Bhutan and talk to them in real time with
Speaker 1: something you know, the size of an open hand, then
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have to I shouldn't have to sleep. We
Speaker 1: should have figured some some way around it. Well, then
Speaker 1: be someone to space. We said people to space.
Speaker 3: But then, ben if if you do have to sleep
Speaker 3: because unfortunately our analog bodies require it for some dang reason. Uh,
Speaker 3: why not at least record as much as you possibly can.
Speaker 3: One day we're gonna be able to plug in somehow
Speaker 3: and just get that stuff like roll on quick time
Speaker 3: while I'm dreaming. And I can't wait for that.
Speaker 4: Too, right, man. There's there's one thing though, to add
Speaker 4: with that.
Speaker 1: You know, I spend a lot of time researching kind
Speaker 1: of what we talked about with lucid dreams, which is
Speaker 1: probably a story for another day, but I end up
Speaker 1: getting a lot of work done in dreams. It feels
Speaker 1: like I'm doing a lot of work. And then I
Speaker 1: wake up and I think, oh, I got to write
Speaker 1: this amazing story down. And then I write it down,
Speaker 1: go get some coffee or something. I come back and
Speaker 1: I'm like, Wow, the most amazing part of this story
Speaker 1: is that I thought it was good and because my
Speaker 1: frontal lobes were turned off right, And I think I
Speaker 1: think we do that a lot. To your point in
Speaker 1: all about how how we process in dreams, it's unless
Speaker 1: people have you know, PTSD or some sort of condition
Speaker 1: that gives them violent, nightmarish, recurrent horrific visions every time
Speaker 1: they sleep. Most people would prefer dreams to a dreamless sleep,
Speaker 1: you know, Otherwise it's really disconcerting to have everything go
Speaker 1: dark at say, four point fifty three am and then
Speaker 1: wake up at I don't know, two thirty seven pm.
Speaker 4: I just sort of hope nothing important happened.
Speaker 2: So, I mean, we probably won't really truly be able
Speaker 2: to answer definitively like why do a dream? We've got
Speaker 2: some good theories, but there are experts in mental health
Speaker 2: that do believe that it's an important part of maintaining
Speaker 2: some semblance of sanity or like self awareness or understanding
Speaker 2: of ourselves. But there's you know, not like a definitive
Speaker 2: like this is what dreams are four But for different people,
Speaker 2: there for a lot of things. And like like I said,
Speaker 2: if you're Paul McCartney, it makes you write a song
Speaker 2: that's been covered by over three thousand artists and probably
Speaker 2: one of the most recognizable songs in the history of
Speaker 2: recorded music. That's just my hot take on yesterday. But
Speaker 2: it's a thing that came from a dream, So they
Speaker 2: certainly have value. I mean, so many artists recreate images
Speaker 2: from their dreams. And to your point, then, whether I
Speaker 2: think you're selling yourself short with the quality of your
Speaker 2: dream stories. But they are things that you've pulled from
Speaker 2: a dream state that you can then translate into the
Speaker 2: real world and do something with. They're functional in that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, evolution is a brutal editor. So we
Speaker 1: know that dreams exist for some purpose, right, and it's
Speaker 1: probably not a vestigial leaving of our earlier arboreal ancestors.
Speaker 1: But we do know to your point, even if we
Speaker 1: can't fully answer the question why when it comes to dreams,
Speaker 1: we know they do inform the waking world. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have examples, Like, just to rattle off a few examples,
Speaker 1: one of my favorites, there's a guy named Dimitri mend Leave,
Speaker 1: the guy who made the periodic table. He's got an
Speaker 1: element named after him. He's legit his story. His claim,
Speaker 1: which is very difficult to prove about how he figured
Speaker 1: out the periodic table is that he was going mad
Speaker 1: looking at all these mismatched cards. Kind of picture his
Speaker 1: version of index cards, where he wrote down everything he
Speaker 1: knew about an element, and he's like having his Charlie
Speaker 1: Day conspiracy theory thing. He's trying to have his beautiful
Speaker 1: mind moment, it doesn't make sense. The guy passes out
Speaker 1: on top of these cards, and then in a dream
Speaker 1: he watches them sort of get up and dance around,
Speaker 1: and then they put themselves in order of their atomic weight,
Speaker 1: and he wakes up and he goes, Eureka.
Speaker 2: What a satisfying feeling. That must have been, just the
Speaker 2: idea of making order out of chaos and then waking
Speaker 2: up and having an actual concrete idea from that. That's awesome.
Speaker 3: There's a I don't have the exact story here, but
Speaker 3: you can look it up.
Speaker 2: This will be an.
Speaker 3: Adventure for everyone watching. There's a dream about a scientist
Speaker 3: who is attempting to work on dogs, performing surgery on dogs.
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly what his end goal was, but
Speaker 3: he had this dream about a specific surgery that he
Speaker 3: wasn't planning on doing, and then he wrote down all
Speaker 3: of the information from his dream, attempted the surgery, and
Speaker 3: he ended up discovering insulin is pretty insane. Thank goodness
Speaker 3: that he did so, and that he had a wonderful dream.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's amazing, right. This is this leads us to
Speaker 1: this is a tangent. I don't know if we should
Speaker 1: delve into it, but it leads to one of the
Speaker 1: questions that I know a lot of us will have
Speaker 1: listening to this today, which is, is it possible to
Speaker 1: oh spoilers. Okay, no, let's save it for the end.
Speaker 1: We have to practice linear time for this. So I
Speaker 1: have questions for you guys that are haught. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we'll get our questions in at the end. We know
Speaker 1: we've painted.
Speaker 4: A pretty good picture here. Right.
Speaker 1: Evolutionary theory suggests that basically dreams function as a safe
Speaker 1: way to learn maybe right, so I can I can
Speaker 1: figure out things without physically harming myself the way that
Speaker 1: I could be in danger in the real world. So,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, we all kind of have
Speaker 1: this hollow deck in our head and we just run
Speaker 1: scenarios until we wake.
Speaker 2: Up physically harm yourself or maybe burn a bridge, you know,
Speaker 2: with a colleague. Maybe you have a dream where you
Speaker 2: get to yell at somebody that you're dealing with some
Speaker 2: resentment towards, and then you wake up and you feel
Speaker 2: like you've worked that out, sort of like a simulation
Speaker 2: where you've gotten to beat the crap out of a
Speaker 2: you know, like a doll with this person's face on it,
Speaker 2: and then you feel better so that you don't actually
Speaker 2: do it in real life. You know?
Speaker 4: Is that a thing people do?
Speaker 2: Do you putn't know. I just came up with it.
Speaker 2: It should be Why shouldn't it be?
Speaker 1: I guess it is better than hitting a person. You
Speaker 1: get to do you get a different doll every time?
Speaker 4: Or do you just switch the face.
Speaker 2: It's just got a sleeve, like a face shaped sleeve,
Speaker 2: or you to slide in a new picture, you know,
Speaker 2: and you can dress it up and the types of
Speaker 2: clothes that person might wear. You know, it's a commitment,
Speaker 2: but it's.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, yeah, I think so, yeah, except in
Speaker 1: places where really swell gels, like Norway. But Norway is
Speaker 1: I'll clean up this background here, but I'm in the
Speaker 1: process of fixing some stuff up, and I realize that
Speaker 1: currently the place I record is not as nice as
Speaker 1: a Norwegian prison, but a lot of places where people
Speaker 1: live in the US are not to your point, nol,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna think about that. I'm gonna think about, like,
Speaker 1: what kind of doll? Is it less creepy if you
Speaker 1: catch someone with the real doll and they say, no,
Speaker 1: this is not for sexual purposes. I put other people's
Speaker 1: faces on it because I dislike other people and I
Speaker 1: just want to beat something that feels like I'm realistically
Speaker 1: beating something right now.
Speaker 2: It's not a sex thing. I think this safe way
Speaker 2: to get around that is just to use those Remember
Speaker 2: those WWF slam dolls that were like, you know, the
Speaker 2: Ultimate Warrior and hul Cogin and they were a little
Speaker 2: small kind of body pillow things and you can slam
Speaker 2: them around or whatever. There's a name for them, but
Speaker 2: maybe keep them like not life size. That would probably
Speaker 2: keep people from looking as scance at you. We're not
Speaker 2: talking about stuff that happens in the ru We are
Speaker 2: a little bit the real world. We're talking about working
Speaker 2: things out in your brain while you're not fully awake,
Speaker 2: and that could involve working things out that are like
Speaker 2: either too painful or just too like weird to get
Speaker 2: into when you're awake. Maybe you have a hard time
Speaker 2: wrapping your brain around it. But you need to process
Speaker 2: these things, whatever they might be. And so this is
Speaker 2: your brain's way of like forcing you to address some
Speaker 2: of these things that maybe you're not equipped to do
Speaker 2: so mentally. When you're awake.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is strange because we can also see
Speaker 1: that dreams do have the capability to warn us of things,
Speaker 1: and maybe not in the way that we might initially suspect.
Speaker 1: There was a twenty ten study in the journal Neurology
Speaker 1: which shows that some violent dreams may actually be very
Speaker 1: very early warning signs of growing brain disorders, the very
Speaker 1: dangerous ones like dementia or Parkinson's. And when we say
Speaker 1: early warning signs here the study, the study appears to
Speaker 1: indicate that certain frequencies of violent dreams may be predicting
Speaker 1: a brain disorder malfunction up to a decade out, which
Speaker 1: is nuts. And also, I think that's kind of dangerous.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of thing that you know, you look
Speaker 1: up on WebMD after you've had a nightmare and you think, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna die. At least this time it wasn't cancer,
Speaker 1: because as we know WebMD, it's cancer.
Speaker 2: It's cancer. The answer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, No.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, I have violent dreams occasionally, but I
Speaker 2: also watched a lot of horror movies and occasionally eat
Speaker 2: spicy foods before bed. So I do think when I
Speaker 2: saw that stat Ben, it did give me pause. But
Speaker 2: is this specifically violence, you doing violence, or just any
Speaker 2: form of violent imagery in your dreams?
Speaker 1: Well, think about like physically thrashing, for instance, where you
Speaker 1: know your brain body connection hasn't completely switched off, which
Speaker 1: is also you know, something that happens with sleep paralysis.
Speaker 1: I see, yeah, But I would say also that is
Speaker 1: that is a fascinating study, but it's.
Speaker 4: Not hard proof.
Speaker 1: So just because you're having nightmares does not mean that
Speaker 1: you have cognitive woes in the future.
Speaker 4: No more so than the average person.
Speaker 1: But everybody, everybody knows that may have felt a bit
Speaker 1: like a beta switch on our part, because when we
Speaker 1: say dreams might warn you of things, what are we
Speaker 1: really talking about? What is the elephant in the room
Speaker 1: that so many ice are confusing for five different forms
Speaker 1: of life?
Speaker 4: It is this.
Speaker 1: You or someone you know, regardless of whether they consider
Speaker 1: themselves a skeptic or a quote unquote true believer, has
Speaker 1: at some point in their life had a dream that
Speaker 1: they could not explain. A vision that, for instance, inspired
Speaker 1: someone to take a different route to work on the
Speaker 1: morning of a horrific traffic accident, or a simple compulsion
Speaker 1: to react to a trigger. Something as elementary as I
Speaker 1: go inside immediately when I see the woman with the
Speaker 1: red hat, and then boom, you go inside. And just
Speaker 1: as you go inside, I don't know, we're making stuff up,
Speaker 1: so wishes or horses here, Just as you go inside,
Speaker 1: a gigantic piano slams down from the second floor of
Speaker 1: that building, and you would have been standing in the
Speaker 1: spot where it hits. It's a fascinating slippery slope. Are
Speaker 1: these warnings from a mental process we don't fully understand?
Speaker 1: Is it just coincidence? Is there something more to the story.
Speaker 1: Can dreams predict the future? Well, we'll do our best
Speaker 1: to look at this. After a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 1: here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, I mean, for most of modern history there's
Speaker 2: been this kind of notion of psychic abilities, precognition, being
Speaker 2: able to see the future, tell people's fortunes, all of that.
Speaker 2: You know, from that explainable kind of huckster side of things.
Speaker 2: There's fiction, the realm of ghost stories and sci fi.
Speaker 2: And then there's of course the religious or even separate
Speaker 2: from religious, just spiritual side of it. All that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, science essentially looks at things like
Speaker 3: this where we don't fully understand yet they look at
Speaker 3: it as there is a mundane reason for this to occur.
Speaker 3: Just because we don't know what it is doesn't mean
Speaker 3: it's supernatural, doesn't mean that our brains are connecting into
Speaker 3: a time slip somewhere or a stream of whatever. It
Speaker 3: just means that we don't know what's happening yet, And
Speaker 3: that's all.
Speaker 2: That's all that it means.
Speaker 1: And science, when it is done well, is able to
Speaker 1: admit when it's wrong. Science is able to learn from itself,
Speaker 1: like the best of human beings are able to do
Speaker 1: as individuals. Science, like history, is one long, ongoing conversation.
Speaker 1: It refers back to earlier points. Do we orbit the sun?
Speaker 1: Does the Sun orbit us? It challenges these points, and
Speaker 1: often it disproves itself unapologetically at a future date.
Speaker 3: How could this rock possibly injure me from way over
Speaker 3: way over I'm waste, I'm standing way over here and
Speaker 3: this rock is way over here. How is that thing
Speaker 3: causing me cancer?
Speaker 4: Right? Oh right, exactly? Radiation?
Speaker 2: Yes, Oh, I thought she just meant, like, you know,
Speaker 2: how does it injure you when someone like throws it
Speaker 2: at your head?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: That too? Propulsion?
Speaker 1: It's just a rock with like a bad vibe. It's
Speaker 1: a downer rock, you know what I mean. It's like
Speaker 1: emotionally an abusive rock to see.
Speaker 2: Well, speaking of speaking of downers, we we should probably
Speaker 2: get the downer version of this explanation kind of out
Speaker 2: of the way, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're right, Noel.
Speaker 1: Let's let's go to the ones that the probably the
Speaker 1: first two that people think of and should think of.
Speaker 1: The first is the C word for today's show, coincidence.
Speaker 1: There are a ton of people living on Earth right now.
Speaker 1: It's a longtime tradition. On this show, we're pulling up
Speaker 1: the current world population, which is seven billion, eight hundred
Speaker 1: and six million, seventy one, nine hundred and fifty nine
Speaker 1: sixty nine sixty five nine sixty Like, Look, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people, that's what we're saying, and the
Speaker 1: vast majority of those people they all dream, most of
Speaker 1: them in one way or another. Most people, also, by
Speaker 1: the way, do not dream in black and white. That
Speaker 1: is another myth to bust. There are also tons and
Speaker 1: tons of people who lived and died before we ever
Speaker 1: recorded this podcast, before podcast worthing before I don't know,
Speaker 1: before hula hoops worthing. There are a ton of yes,
Speaker 1: there's so many dead people that precede our stories in
Speaker 1: the world in which we live today, and all of
Speaker 1: those people, or at least the vast majority, experienced a dream, right,
Speaker 1: experience multiple.
Speaker 2: Dreams every night, every single night. So think, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, but like, you know, I was watching a
Speaker 2: YouTube video of I forget the guy's name, but he's
Speaker 2: a lucid dreaming guy, and this was sort of his
Speaker 2: whole point. He had the world population ticking away on
Speaker 2: the screen and was just talking about how he's like,
Speaker 2: let's do a more conservative estimate. Let's count out everyone
Speaker 2: that has insomnia, you know, or like kids that maybe
Speaker 2: aren't interpreting their dreams correctly or whatever. And you know,
Speaker 2: you could maybe lower that number, it was still, you know,
Speaker 2: a massive, massive number. And so it starts to become
Speaker 2: like dice rolls, right, Like every time someone's dreaming, it's
Speaker 2: the roll of the dice. And a lot of stuff happens,
Speaker 2: a lot of news, a lot of bad news, a
Speaker 2: lot of things that we are worried about, that we
Speaker 2: think about, that we commiserate over. What will happen? Will
Speaker 2: there be a tanker accident, will there be a horrible
Speaker 2: plane crash, and sometimes those things align.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, And you know, I think the focus can
Speaker 3: can get pretty sharp there when you talk about let's say,
Speaker 3: an important factory to the town where you live, right,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe you're thinking about a lot. Maybe your
Speaker 3: family has worked at that factory for a long time,
Speaker 3: maybe you work there, and then something bad occurs at
Speaker 3: that factory because there's a ton of mechanical equipment and
Speaker 3: something goes wrong. It may make you feel though you
Speaker 3: had a precognitive vision of something, even if it even
Speaker 3: if your dream occurred months ago before the accident, you
Speaker 3: still might remember it. But you know, that's that's at
Speaker 3: least the way science would would put a wet blanket on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you prize the details, right, The things that
Speaker 1: are relevant are the things you remember. The things that
Speaker 1: are irrelevant are cast aside. And then you you every
Speaker 1: time you remember this, just like Kinner episodes on Deceptive breed,
Speaker 1: the narrative, the story, the details of your memory alter
Speaker 1: ever so slightly to fall increasingly in line with what
Speaker 1: you think happened. And time it doesn't matter, right, there's
Speaker 1: no there's no methodology.
Speaker 2: Of course, It's like a form of confirmation bias, right,
Speaker 2: you just highlight the bits that support your thesis. You know,
Speaker 2: you need to explain something, and you have this little
Speaker 2: inkling of a dream, of a piece of a dream,
Speaker 2: of a fragment of a dream. God knows how much
Speaker 2: of it you're actually even remembering. It just happens to
Speaker 2: line up with that detail, and you're like, ah, yes,
Speaker 2: I predicted this, this was meant to be, This was
Speaker 2: destined or something, you know.
Speaker 1: And then that means that what we see is precognition
Speaker 1: is just sort of a magic trick we're playing on ourselves.
Speaker 4: Hey, if you're watching the.
Speaker 1: Video, you're doing something like this, but you think it
Speaker 1: really is your finger, And now.
Speaker 2: How are you doing that? I don't I don't understand
Speaker 2: what I'm looking at.
Speaker 3: But then how did you can you do the one where
Speaker 3: it's like.
Speaker 4: This finger becomes too Yeah, that's that's the class.
Speaker 2: I like it. I like it, witchcraft son.
Speaker 3: I show my son that after you did it for me.
Speaker 3: It's one of his favorite things.
Speaker 2: It's a cool move. It's a super cool move. Can
Speaker 2: I can I really quickly ask you guys opinion about
Speaker 2: something like this that that did happen to me really quickly?
Speaker 2: It's very strange. Nothing significant, nothing like a factory explosion
Speaker 2: or a plane crash or anything. But I used to
Speaker 2: intern at this recording studio in Athens, Georgia, and there
Speaker 2: was this woman, a young woman who also worked there,
Speaker 2: and I never actually met her, but I always heard
Speaker 2: her name because it was a really cool. Her name
Speaker 2: was Bennett Moon, and I just love that name, and
Speaker 2: I thought it was just really memorable to me. And
Speaker 2: I hadn't thought about Bennett Moon in a long long
Speaker 2: time for whatever reason. And I had this very specific
Speaker 2: dream where I met Bennett Moon was who was a
Speaker 2: person that I'd never actually met, but I was aware,
Speaker 2: like I'm the periphery of this person. And literally the
Speaker 2: next day I'm listening to Wait, Wait, don't tell me
Speaker 2: on NPR and they have the call in thing at
Speaker 2: the end, and who's the call in person but Bennett
Speaker 2: Moon from Athens, Georgia, And it's it's the same person.
Speaker 2: It is this person, no question about it. Never heard
Speaker 2: her voice in my life, never actually met her, just
Speaker 2: knew of her that she kind of she had the
Speaker 2: shared experience that was we never actually crossed, Pasa. Isn't
Speaker 2: that weird? That is very weird? But I mean, at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, I can chalk that up
Speaker 2: to coincidence. It's not like it was predicting anything exactly,
Speaker 2: but it's a pretty interesting game of odds there, you know.
Speaker 2: And if this is our brain just kind of playing
Speaker 2: a trick on ourselves and in party, meaning that was
Speaker 2: a pretty pretty bit one. It wasn't like I was
Speaker 2: like blown away or felt like I was seeing the
Speaker 2: hand of God or anything, but I did feel like
Speaker 2: I was experiencing something, you know what I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a there's another it's still kind of a downer,
Speaker 1: but it's a little bit less of a downer. That
Speaker 1: may help explain that. Let's call it playing the probability game.
Speaker 5: So we're all.
Speaker 1: Familiar with Yeah, we're all familiar with Carl Young, we're
Speaker 1: all familiar with archetypes, these ideas of the super consciousness
Speaker 1: and so on, but we don't really need that yet
Speaker 1: to talk about dreams in this way. So if coincidence
Speaker 1: is a lottery, then the probability game is kind of
Speaker 1: kind of your your brain playing clue in a couple
Speaker 1: of ways. So this may apply to your anecdote there, Noel,
Speaker 1: because Carl Jung makes a great point about the perceived
Speaker 1: precognitive capacity of some dreams. We didn't want to paraphrased demand,
Speaker 1: so we just pulled the quote. It sounds smart because
Speaker 1: he wrote it.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, Matt, you want to give it to us. Oh.
Speaker 3: Yes, the occurrence of prospective dreams cannot be denied. It
Speaker 3: would be wrong to call them prophetic because at bottom,
Speaker 3: they are no more prophetic than a medical diagnosis or
Speaker 3: a weather forecast. They are merely an anticipatory combination of
Speaker 3: probabilities which may coincide with the actual behavior of things,
Speaker 3: but need not necessarily agree in every detail.
Speaker 4: Confirmation.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what's so? Can we unpack like the difference
Speaker 2: or the distinction between prospective and prophetic.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, the prospective dream would be the the sum
Speaker 1: of your sensory information, your memory, often short term, sometimes
Speaker 1: long term, your fleeting ephemeral impressions, all mash together, like
Speaker 1: that horrible stuff called neutral loaf that they used to
Speaker 1: feed prisoners in the US and maybe still do.
Speaker 2: Or freud kick you know, if you want like a
Speaker 2: slightly more pleasant.
Speaker 1: Sure or salad if you want something healthier as well.
Speaker 1: So this is all, this is all mixed up, and
Speaker 1: from this our subconscious, which doesn't function with some of
Speaker 1: the same socially imposed constraints or ego imposed constraints that
Speaker 1: our consciousness functions with. Our subconscious is able to aggregate
Speaker 1: these things and make an analysis a guestimate. So a
Speaker 1: prospective dream is the subconscious saying this, this, and this
Speaker 1: are crazy connected. Therefore, I think here's the realm that
Speaker 1: this road.
Speaker 4: Leads us to. So that's the idea.
Speaker 1: The idea there is that for young a dream may
Speaker 1: only be prophetic if every detail of the dream matches
Speaker 1: every detail of the bit, the scene, the event in
Speaker 1: the waking world.
Speaker 2: Wait, so is he acknowledging that this is possible or
Speaker 2: is he just setting up a standard that's like impossible
Speaker 2: to meet.
Speaker 1: That's a good question. He is primarily implying, at least
Speaker 1: the way that I interpret it, that we are underestimating
Speaker 1: the intelligence of our subconsciousness, because you know, we are
Speaker 1: very unappreciative of our brains. I had to cut a
Speaker 1: line out here at some point.
Speaker 4: But it's like, the brain works so hard.
Speaker 1: You're asleep and you're still breathing. That's amazing, and the
Speaker 1: brain is doing that. But that's what he's saying. He's
Speaker 1: saying that we're kind of short changing our own mental abilities,
Speaker 1: our own pattern recognition, really, and that we only notice
Speaker 1: this amazing ability when we get something super weirdly specifically correct,
Speaker 1: and then we're like, whoa, oh, maybe I have superpowers.
Speaker 1: I have superpowers, and they are entirely related to my
Speaker 1: ability to know which song I'm going to hear on
Speaker 1: the radio two days from now, which is a tremendously
Speaker 1: common thing, especially with music, or.
Speaker 3: Your ability to all of a sudden recognize Bennett Moon. Yeah,
Speaker 3: hi Bennett by the way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, seriously, I hope I hope she listens to the show.
Speaker 2: I gotta say that that was one of those moments
Speaker 2: that I was like, is this real? Like I really
Speaker 2: had to kind of do a double take, like a
Speaker 2: spit take, where I was like, how to understand what
Speaker 2: I'm experiencing right now? And there are some other examples
Speaker 2: of this throughout history that I think would cause even
Speaker 2: the most skeptical person to ask that very same question.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you, I mean, you could go on other
Speaker 3: channels on YouTube and find lists of these kinds of things.
Speaker 3: Shout out to Matthew Santoro, So I see you man.
Speaker 3: He gave a great example of Abraham Lincoln that I
Speaker 3: had never heard about before, so headed over to History
Speaker 3: dot com just to learn a little more about it. Allegedly,
Speaker 3: this is the way the story goes. Just a couple
Speaker 3: of days before Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, he told his
Speaker 3: wife Mary Todd and his friend Ward Hill Lamon about
Speaker 3: this dream that he had just had. And in this dream,
Speaker 3: he's I believe he's there at the White House and
Speaker 3: the oval officer near there, and he is he sees
Speaker 3: all of these mourners. He sees a casket. He sees
Speaker 3: like important members of his like inner circle, and they're
Speaker 3: all mourning the death of the president. But he says,
Speaker 3: according to the story, he didn't recognize himself in in
Speaker 3: the casket. It wasn't him, so he wasn't worried about it.
Speaker 3: He didn't believe that he was having some kind of
Speaker 3: prophetic dream or precognitive dream that was going to foretell
Speaker 3: his death. But he did get assassinated, if you, I
Speaker 3: think it was very soon after.
Speaker 2: I heard another version of the story where like he
Speaker 2: was telling this to his bodyguard and like saying.
Speaker 3: That Laman is was his part time bodyguard his friend, right,
Speaker 3: but he would say like usually he would say good night,
Speaker 3: Laman or whatever, but this time he said goodbye.
Speaker 2: And he told him like, I've had this dream and
Speaker 2: I'm worried something's gonna happen in the theater to night.
Speaker 2: And he was like, well, you shouldn't go, mister president,
Speaker 2: and he said, but I'm meeting my wife there and I
Speaker 2: don't want to disappoint her, so I must go. And
Speaker 2: then like he he said goodbye for the first time
Speaker 2: ever instead of you know, good night, which whatever. It's
Speaker 2: it's an interesting detail.
Speaker 3: Here's why it's a little weird because Lamon is the
Speaker 3: guy who told this story. So Link was assassinated April fourteenth,
Speaker 3: eighteen sixty five. And this concept that there was a
Speaker 3: dream that was told to Mary Todd and Lamon didn't
Speaker 3: come out for at least fifteen years wow, if not longer.
Speaker 3: And it was allegedly told by Lamon based on notes
Speaker 3: that he took in eighteen sixty five, So who knows
Speaker 3: if it's real or not. But there's another interesting fact.
Speaker 3: The cabinet that worked with Abraham Lincoln were aware that
Speaker 3: he did seem to put a lot of importance on
Speaker 3: his dreams that he would have. Can you tell him
Speaker 3: about it?
Speaker 1: Will pause for a word from our sponsor, but please
Speaker 1: stay awake.
Speaker 2: We'll be back soon, and we're back with more on
Speaker 2: pre cognitive dreams.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of us, I grew up reading these
Speaker 1: sorts of stories often in time life books. This point
Speaker 1: was just make him a sponsor. But these stories have
Speaker 1: grains of truth, which I think you've done a fantastic
Speaker 1: job of outlining. And then they also get carried over
Speaker 1: and embellished, you know, in television series Gunsolved, Mysteries or
Speaker 1: anything on the History Channel after about ten PM back
Speaker 1: in the day. And the thing that's interesting about that
Speaker 1: is it's often used that tendency is often used by
Speaker 1: skeptics as a way to entirely discredit the anecdote, right,
Speaker 1: or keep raising the bar of proof until proof is
Speaker 1: something that can never be attained. But it's almost enough
Speaker 1: for an entire episode on its own. The other worldly
Speaker 1: quote unquote psychic experiences of world leaders. Churchill said that
Speaker 1: he heard a golden voice since he was a child,
Speaker 1: and said later that it saved his life until actually until.
Speaker 4: Even around World.
Speaker 1: War two or so, until the World War two years,
Speaker 1: it was incredibly common for Western leaders to be pretty
Speaker 1: open about what they saw as a connection with some
Speaker 1: sort of other side, and it faded.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: It's a bit in the duldrums now because I imagine
Speaker 1: that a lot of people feel they would not be
Speaker 1: taken seriously if they said, hey, I am from a
Speaker 1: family that has precognitive dreams. I have precognitive dreams. Also
Speaker 1: I should be in charge of nuclear weapons. It doesn't
Speaker 1: track right. It's seen as a blow to credibility rather
Speaker 1: than just a part of someone's individual human experience. But
Speaker 1: we know it's not. These people who are recounting these
Speaker 1: things are not chumps. They're not unintelligent people. I think
Speaker 1: you had another example, Matt, also an American and also
Speaker 1: a pretty smart guy. You love them or hate them?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I found a story about Samuel Clemens just rifling through
Speaker 3: the internet, and it comes from Life on the Mississippi,
Speaker 3: which is Samuel Clemens or Mark Twain's autobiography. It's fascinating.
Speaker 2: So he was.
Speaker 3: Sam Sam I don't like calling that. Mark Twain was
Speaker 3: working on a steamboat called the Pennsylvania, and he had
Speaker 3: arranged for his younger brother a guy named Henry to
Speaker 3: also get a job there. He was going to I
Speaker 3: think what did they call it. It's a really interesting
Speaker 3: job a mud clerk on the Pennsylvania, which is the steamboat.
Speaker 3: And there's this whole situation where the captain insulted Henry
Speaker 3: for some reason and Mark Twain heard about it. There
Speaker 3: was a whole fight that resulted in Mark Twain just
Speaker 3: being banned from this boat where his brother was working. Right, So,
Speaker 3: out of just this set of circumstances, Mark Twain got
Speaker 3: kicked off of this boat that he was on and
Speaker 3: his brother is still there. So then at some point
Speaker 3: Mark Twain lays down, he has a dream, and inside
Speaker 3: this dream he sees his brother Henry in a coffin,
Speaker 3: and there are a lot of specifics about it. I've
Speaker 3: heard that he was wearing one of Mark Twain's own suits.
Speaker 3: But one of the most important things about this dream
Speaker 3: was that there was a specific set of white flowers
Speaker 3: laid down on to Henry's coffin where he.
Speaker 2: Was laying, and with a single red flower in the middle.
Speaker 3: Right, That's exactly what it is, So a very strong
Speaker 3: image that was left on Mark Twain even after he awoke,
Speaker 3: and obviously you know that kind of dream, a dream
Speaker 3: about a loved one who dies that's going to be
Speaker 3: affecting in some way or another.
Speaker 1: And so there were there were different details here which
Speaker 1: would be of interest to anyone agreeing with the beliefs
Speaker 1: of Carl Jung or the beliefs as laid out in
Speaker 1: today's episode. He had some specific details that appeared to
Speaker 1: be correct, things that were unusual, like metallic often. This
Speaker 1: is also for anyone else who read the incredibly unedited
Speaker 1: autobiography of Mark Twain, where some of this is pulled from.
Speaker 1: I just want to let you know I'm right there
Speaker 1: with you in solidarity. Even great writers need editors, even
Speaker 1: just good editors. It's a very very long book. He's
Speaker 1: dictating it on his deathbed. And the reason I'm bringing
Speaker 1: that up is because he may have fallen victim to
Speaker 1: something known as retrospective conviction, which is what we're talking
Speaker 1: about earlier, when we alter our own memories by remembering
Speaker 1: those memories. However, like you said, Matt, he says he
Speaker 1: had never had any doubts since he'd had that dream
Speaker 1: that it was predictive. He can remember everything very, very vividly.
Speaker 3: So Mark Twain has to leave the boat. His brother
Speaker 3: is still on it, and later on he gets word
Speaker 3: that a boiler has in fact exploded on this steamboat
Speaker 3: and his brother inhaled a bunch of steam and it
Speaker 3: actually burned his lungs and he's he's in the hospital.
Speaker 3: So Mark Twain, you know, obviously makes his He stops
Speaker 3: what he's doing. He makes his way to the hospital
Speaker 3: where his brother is. It's in Memphis, Tennessee. And when
Speaker 3: Sam gets there, the doctors tell him that his brother
Speaker 3: is in absolutely terrible pain. But he's going to be fine.
Speaker 3: He just scalded his lungs a little bit. He's going
Speaker 3: to recover. Don't worry about it, Sam. They wouldn't have
Speaker 3: called him Mark Twain. They didn't know that name.
Speaker 2: Listen here, Mark Twain, your brother's going to be just fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But Sam, you know, a caring brother, says, well,
Speaker 3: there must be something you can do to make him
Speaker 3: feel a little better.
Speaker 2: Look at him.
Speaker 3: He's obviously in pain. You know, he's in pain. Let's
Speaker 3: do something about it. And according to Sam himself, he
Speaker 3: convinces the doctor to give his brother a shot of morphine.
Speaker 3: And the doctor is supposedly inexperienced with this type of
Speaker 3: drug and overdoses Henry, and Henry unfortunately passes away.
Speaker 2: I thought he died from the blast. I didn't realize that.
Speaker 2: That's that's extra tragic and unexpected.
Speaker 3: Wow. Yeah, and you know again, According to Sammy never
Speaker 3: forgave himself for this fact. But the strangest part is
Speaker 3: that at the actual funeral of his brother Henry, he
Speaker 3: noticed some things that reminded him of the dream he
Speaker 3: had had, where what the what the coffin looked like,
Speaker 3: the suit that his brother was wearing, and the most
Speaker 3: important fact, or the most important similarity perhaps were a
Speaker 3: bouquet of white flowers with a single red rose in
Speaker 3: the center that was laid down onto his brother Henry's It's.
Speaker 2: Like the end of a ghost story. It's like a
Speaker 2: twist ending dude. And then it took the ribbon off
Speaker 2: and her head fell off. It's like that, and there
Speaker 2: was a single red rose. Burr. I don't like that.
Speaker 1: He also told this story around seventy or eighty times
Speaker 1: by his own admission, and when he was performing this
Speaker 1: story at the Monday Evening Club as was called in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty four, the incident, I believe if I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of the right one without pulling out that brick.
Speaker 4: Of a book.
Speaker 2: I believe it.
Speaker 1: He was telling this story several years later, and someone
Speaker 1: called Reverend Burton or reverend doctor Burton, just for extra accolades,
Speaker 1: asked Twain if he had told it multiple times. He said, yeah,
Speaker 1: seventy or eighty, and Burton pointed out that it is likely,
Speaker 1: or it's very possible for someone with the best of
Speaker 1: intention to embellish a story over the years. Twain stuck
Speaker 1: to his guns. I don't think any of it is embroidery,
Speaker 1: he had replied. I think it is all just as
Speaker 1: I've stated it, detail by detail. Yes, the man wrote fiction,
Speaker 1: and wrote an enormous amount of fiction, so he's no
Speaker 1: stranger to spinning a tale. However, in the case of
Speaker 1: Mark Twain, I would point out that he appears to
Speaker 1: have predicted his own death without taking his own hand.
Speaker 1: He was born on November thirtieth, eighteen thirty five, two
Speaker 1: weeks after Haley's comment reached the prillion where it's the
Speaker 1: point nearest to the sun. This is a plot point
Speaker 1: in an awesome claymation film with some very disturbing depictions
Speaker 1: of the devil. I recommend checking it out on YouTube.
Speaker 1: In his autobiography in nineteen oh nine, he said, I
Speaker 1: came in with Haley's comment at eighteen thirty five. It's
Speaker 1: coming again next year. I expect to go out with
Speaker 1: it. It'll be the great disappointment of my life if I
Speaker 1: don't go out with Haley's comment.
Speaker 4: So it went on about it.
Speaker 1: So that's a little different because is that precognition or
Speaker 1: is that just him being very stubborn and saying I
Speaker 1: want to go out with the power move. But to
Speaker 1: your point, Matt, yes, it is tremendously. I think it's
Speaker 1: I think it would surprise people to learn how common
Speaker 1: it is for people that you would associate with great success,
Speaker 1: people that you would associate with great power, to believe
Speaker 1: in predictive, precognitive or even prophetic dreams. Maybe they don't
Speaker 1: talk about it as much.
Speaker 5: Now, you know.
Speaker 1: Maybe they are not recounting the strange stories of their
Speaker 1: family or their personal experience, and if so, there's probably
Speaker 1: a reason. It's because they feel like they will be
Speaker 1: resigned to the rubbish heap of the current day. And
Speaker 1: that's a real valid concern. But I would imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: world leaders listening in the audience today that yeah, that
Speaker 1: you two have had a dream or four or a
Speaker 1: Baker's dozen or nineteen that you yourself cannot explain to
Speaker 1: this day. It is a very common thing. It is
Speaker 1: a very common thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, it's true. Uh And I mean I
Speaker 2: don't know up to this point in the in the show,
Speaker 2: I hope it doesn't sound like we're poo pooing any
Speaker 2: of these things. I think we've all acknowledged the whole
Speaker 2: way that the brain is a very under understood that's
Speaker 2: a redundant. But I'm still going to go with the thing.
Speaker 4: I have.
Speaker 1: I have not poof pooed this. I'm just setting up.
Speaker 1: I'm building a case that unfortunately we're not getting.
Speaker 2: That trying to get to in a very ham fisted way.
Speaker 2: This is one of those ones where we like just
Speaker 2: look at the clock, are like, man, we've got so
Speaker 2: much more left to go and some really good, amazing,
Speaker 2: juicy science based stuff. But I think we're going to
Speaker 2: save that for a part too, because there's really enough
Speaker 2: there to give you another really substantial episode out of
Speaker 2: this topic.
Speaker 3: Yes, so you will have to stay tuned, but for now,
Speaker 3: why don't you write to us, tell us about your dreams,
Speaker 3: tell us about something maybe you've predicted, or a strange
Speaker 3: thing that's happened within your family or a friend or
Speaker 3: a loved one. You can find us on Facebook and
Speaker 3: on Twitter, where we are a conspiracy stuff show.
Speaker 2: You can also find us on social media and the
Speaker 2: usual spots or Facebook where Instagram. We're not Pinterest. We
Speaker 2: fought back and we fought the law, and the law
Speaker 2: did not win. We won that one, but who knows
Speaker 2: anything could happen. We are conspiracy or conspiracy Stuff show
Speaker 2: in most of the usual spots Twitter as well. If
Speaker 2: you don't want to do that, you can go to Facebook,
Speaker 2: where we have a really dope Facebook group called Here's
Speaker 2: where it Gets Crazy, super easy to get in. Just
Speaker 2: name you know anybody involved in the show, or or
Speaker 2: a topic or whatever you want, just so we know
Speaker 2: that you're actually real and you're in a lot of
Speaker 2: cool conversations there and meme exchanges and good group of
Speaker 2: folks on Here's Where it Gets Crazy. What else can
Speaker 2: they do?
Speaker 3: You can give us a call. Our number is one
Speaker 3: eight three three s T d wy TK.
Speaker 1: If you don't like social media, if you don't like
Speaker 1: if you don't cottonto calling on the phone, but you
Speaker 1: have a story to tell us, and I expect many
Speaker 1: of us in the audience do have a.
Speaker 4: Story to share today.
Speaker 1: Please, please, please, always remember that there is one last
Speaker 1: way you can contact us any old time of day
Speaker 1: or night, the waking world or the world of dreams.
Speaker 1: You can send us a good old fashioned email caveat asterisk.
Speaker 1: If you dream about sending us an email, just to
Speaker 1: make sure it does go through, send one while you're
Speaker 1: awake as well.
Speaker 6: Where we are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff they Don't Want you to Know is a production
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