Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Part Two: Neurosurgeon Breaks Down the Science of Dreaming, The One Dream That Predicts The Future, How to Lucid Dream, and The Incredible Things Your Brain Does As You Die

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

What if your dreams could predict disease, unlock creativity, reveal hidden trauma—and even be controlled?   Dr. Rahul Jandial, MD, PhD (dual-trained neurosurgeon and neuroscientist, founder of the Jandial Lab at City of Hope Cancer Center in Los Angeles, and bestselling author of This is Why You Dream) takes you inside the wild, cutting-edge world of dream neuroscience and the sleeping brain.   Discover how this top brain surgeon can create a memory of a nightmare during awake brain surgery, what the brain does just before death, and how dream patterns may predict neurological disorders like Parkinson’s disease. Learn why erotic dreams occur, how lucid dreaming can enhance your waking life, what happens during sleep paralysis, and why some people don’t remember their dreams—plus expert sleep tips to improve dream recall.   Dr. Jandial also explores the deep links between trauma and nightmares, depression, and the eerie science of precognitive dreams and near-death experiences (NDEs). From the universal themes of falling and flying dreams to the latest on how AI might already be hacking your dreams, this is everything your brain’s doing while you sleep—and why it matters more than ever.   Dr. Rahul Jandial's book, THIS IS WHY YOU DREAM: What Your Sleeping Brain Reveals About Your Waking Life: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/735627/this-is-why-you-dream-by-rahul-jandial-md-phd/   Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/   BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, I'm I'm Bialli. I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to part two of our conversation with neurosurgeon and neuroscientist, Rahul Jandiel. We're going to be talking about some of the more esoteric aspects of dreams, like dream interpretation, erotic dreams. We're going to get into, can dreams actually predict the future? We're going to talk about commonality and common patterns across cultures and dreams, how we can influence our dreams and how we can even increase our creativity. to problem solve and find unique solutions by accessing our creative imagination. You do not want to miss part two, so enjoy. Here's part two with Rahul Jandiel.

Break it down. I want to ask you, both as a human and as a neurosurgeon, what is up with precognitive dreams? Because there is a field of study, and you and I would agree, It is not quantifiable. It's not qualifiable, but it's fascinating. Precognitive meaning, dreams that predict the future. People who believe that there is a way to tap into some aspect of us that understands things that in many cases have not happened.

So I'll give you a basic example, and then I'll give you a more elaborate one. There is a case, and there are several like this, but there's one case in particular of a man who dreamt all six lottery numbers that were needed to win the lottery, and he did win the lottery. and he did win the lottery. Now, there may have been a million times before that he dreamt of six other numbers. But that time, he dreamt of six, and the probability is like won in like 600,000. Like, it's big but not impossible.

Or he won, then he filled in the story backwards. No, no. So there are things, there are people who study this where it is documented, right? Where it's documented beforehand. So there's... I mean, make friends with that guy. Right, exactly.

But there is... There's at least one unicorn has been seen, so we have to address it. Correct. And there are people, Julian Mossbridge, who we're speaking to, she is a person who studies this. She studies, can you kind of train the brain to have dreams that in many cases have windows into, again, the future. The other example, which is more elaborate, is Elizabeth Crone, who we had on our podcast. And she was struck by lightning.

And she came back from two minutes on the pavement. she came back with a variety of she became synesthetic. We're seating his next book. And what she started having happened, though, was she would have a variety of, she didn't call them dreams. She said that they felt different than dreams and that they felt like visions is what she called them.

She started cataloging them. And while there are many that did not come true, she cataloged them with timestamps and emailed herself. And in several cases, she was having a vision of an airplane crash that occurred. She dreamt the Sully Sullenberger flight. She pictured... I mean, I once actually, is quite the man.

So she dreamt that plane on the water and typed it out, timestamp, to herself. She would dream flights with the number of people killed. Like 320 people were killed in a flight. And I'm seeing the letters W-A. It's either T-W-A or UWA. She's dreaming things. that, again, are time-stamped,

we cannot wrap our heads around this because unless you say there is a plane of consciousness of all things that were, are, and will be, do you have any understanding of what precognitive dreaming might actually be? Yeah, the...

There's a couple of things there. A pre-cognitive dream is a fancy way of dreams that predict the future. It makes sense. If it's a couple thousand years ago and you're lying down and physiologically you're thinking the brain is cold and the body's cold. Now, after our discussion from measurements, we know the body's a little cooler and the brain inside the skull is burning hot. So when it was assumed that was cold flesh and you'd wake up, you're like, I just went through, you know, the most exciting, wild, dangerous time I life.

It had to come from extra cranial, from God's omit. That kind of makes sense to me. We just had the wildest experience because you think of sleep as a time of rest. Rest is not inactivity. It's just a different type of activity. It's a car going forward and backwards. It doesn't like the brain's never off. So in that state, people, I think, started to think, okay, wait, the things I am dreaming about may offer me a clue to what is about to happen in a war or in a marriage and these sort of things.

I totally get that. but I don't have other than that dream enactment behavior that predicts Parkinson's when you you know when you attack your bed partner like that is the only pre-cognitive dreaming pattern that predicts a future disease but I just don't have information on that I'm not saying no and I don't even know how we gather it because so much of it is like you said it's it's unicorn experiences and one unicorn is all you need but I I think it would take for me somebody to like you know hold up the newspaper or whatever and say look you know later this year, I just, I would need to see it.

And I haven't. And I've searched for it because, as I said in this book, I didn't want to poo-poo things. I gave lucid dreaming the two chapters. I gave precognitive dreams are mentioned in there. But I just don't know. But yet, the electrical strikes and savants, let's leave that into a more absolutely provable. So there's some things here.

Why would people would think dreams are omens? what you mentioned where she's writing things down and emailing her, I don't have evidence of that. Can electricity change the brain and mind? Absolutely. So I just want to touch on that briefly. If you do imagine

that every neuron is a jellyfish and it generates its own electricity, much like an electrical eel, they're like sodium channels and glucose is used to separate ions like a battery. And when, you know, like lithium is used for bipolar disorder,

it's a molecular battery. The electricity has, generated creates a mind, it creates consciousness. Sometimes the depression can get so bad that at some elite centers, we will place electrodes on the surface of scalp, not to measure, but to activate a seizure, a mini lightning bolt, if you will. And they wake up in a few weeks, and they're lifted out of depression. So I'm trying to leave people with an understanding.

Electricity, lightning bolts, the unicorns for savants, we've seen it. Electricities used to lift depression with shock therapy. There's some issues with that in the past. We've seen it. And then if I could expand it to be electrochemical, those, you know, those neurons, they're spraying chemicals at each other. And the thing that's really got me thinking about things lately is, how is it somebody can think about self-harm to the point of suicide?

And they take a sniff of ketamine. And that's the treatment in hospitals. if you come in with suicidal ideation and the mechanism to set it up, they'll bring you in the hospitals and they'll give you ketamine and it'll stop you from wanting to kill yourself. And like, so I'm trying to understand

what's in that chemical, what it's doing inside the brain, how it's changing the electricity, lightning bolts to shock therapy to sniffing ketamine. That's all science. It can feel like it's overlapping, but that's real, real.

And for us and sort of what we get to do on this podcast is find that intersection between like what's the facts, what's the fantasy, right? And I think one of the things that, you know, you said that we're generating consciousness, many people believe that consciousness is this thing out here, right? That our mind and brain are having access to and sort of pulling, you know, from some sort of like quantum network. If that were the case, I could see people saying, oh, yeah, pre-cognitive dreams, it makes sense

because we're traveling outside of this conscious experience, you say, behind the skull, to be able to access something that's already out there. I mean, it's out there. Fair. They asked me about that on NPR. My understanding is reality is reality, and we all have different sensors for it. Like, you know, our dog is super smart. She can smell when you're being disingenuous.

Like, hey, come here for a treat. And she's like, you're going to try to put me in the cage and leave for the evening. She knows. And it's like, how do you know that? So instinct, hunch, mammalian brain, animals, the way that wolves mourn. I mean, there's something there. And so I try not to think of consciousness. It's a tough one because I can't tell you who is conscious, but I can't tell you when

the brain is working fine, but I can tell you when the brain's not working. It has no electricity. So whether the electricity that's measured and the experiences I've had, I don't. remember, I don't think that's required to say that there's consciousness, you know. So it's just a big space, but I see it in species. You see it in animals, you see it in people. But the only thing I can comment about consciousness is, you know, when we put people under anesthesia or when people have brain death, there's no consciousness.

And that if there is something external that we are potentially perceiving, it requires electrical activity within our skull. Okay, so I just, there was just a huge article in, I think it was in Harper's, about a woman whose son was in a horrible car accident and he was declared to be in what we used to call a vegetative state. It's a rough word, but yeah. Right. But there's now a new designation that they're saying that there is perception and there's

perceptive ability and this woman for 39 years has taken care of this son of hers, who many people would have said, pull the plug. Was their electrical activity in his brain? Well, so this is the thing. Back when the accident happened, they weren't even examining these things. Can you talk a little bit about what's changed, even in the time that you've been a surgeon, in terms of our ability to say, we're going to pull the plug on this person, or there may be perceptual and perceptual ability. That's a hard one. It's a big question. It's an important one. The first one to start with is locked-in syndrome. I write about it

and something else. So you're completely there but all you can do is move your eyes much like in lucid dreaming. Right. So I try to, and so you're like, you're there there. And in the beginning when they were writing about it, you know, they would say the person's not moving. Right. You know, they'd start an IV and they wouldn't flinch. I mean, how many people were

declared dead when they weren't? Your heart can beat for a few days even when there's no blood flow going into your skull. It's got automaticity. And if we put you on a breathing machine, the heart can go for a little while. So death, this is a big topic. Death, I don't believe death is cardiac death.

I believe death is the electrical silencing of brain activity. And there are some rigorous, I need some time for this one. There are some rigorous science papers coming out about older folks who say, don't resuscitate me. It's called DNR.

They've got the, surface electros going on, the heart is stopped, the little EKG is gone, the pulse is gone, but for three minutes after, which would be technically cardiac death and time of death, there's an explosion of brain activity. It doesn't go out in a whimper. The last thing the brain does is just launch all the neurotransmitters, launch all the electricity. Now, so for some people who are resuscitated and they see, I saw my whole life story, spanning across, it's consistent now the near-death experiences.

Right. Now we know that a couple of minutes afterwards, you're having the wildest, your brain is, your brain's on fire. So if you're resuscitated and you say, look, I saw my whole life pass before me, you know, expansive memories. Met God. They meet God. Yeah, but if it makes sense because your heart, your brain dies a few minutes after your heart dies.

That's new. That's like the phallasphor. And what I like about it is those electrical patterns, are like wild dreams. So maybe death is one last dream. Like, so that's romantic, that's poetic. But I've got measurements for you in the book. And it's searchable.

The Guardian did a whole piece on that. So that's one space. So when you talk about death, that itself is we may have gotten it wrong thinking death is when the heart stops beating. Then back to the stages of brain injury. Death, death is, the way they used to figure it out

is there's no electrical activity. So those people are locked in and that are totally there, but it can only move their eyes, they would put the surface electrodes and go, whoa, this is wild. So they were like, okay, these aren't the people, these people are not on the brink of death. And then the other definition of death is they started putting dye. We used to shoot dye into the carotid.

And when there is no blood flow going from the four arteries from your heart to your skull, the lack of blood flow, equals brain death. The lack of electrical activity equals brain death. So there's some very clear things there. And that fits, right? Because that's what we're seeing

with those people whose hearts have died and there's still electrical activity. So likely brain death is a few minutes after cardiac death. So those precious moments when you're walking away from a loved one maybe hold on a little longer. So that's over here.

Then you can, the brain can be injured in so many different ways and that I think we were getting it wrong for so long with these persistent states that depending on where the injury was, it's not just that they're not moving and it's not just that you think they're not perceiving that there are different types of brain injury and there's stages of coma, stages of brain injury, stages of perception. And to better understand how that works now is we're using MRI, we're using MRI, and the electrical activity and they have a better sense of,

stay with me, is that if in the stock, there's a reticular activating system that does consciousness, if there's an injury to the, if the brain's like a mushroom and there's a stock, there's an injury to the stock,

that leans more that there cannot be perception or activity. If there are injuries to the cortical canopy, I mean, definitely you can have perception and emotion and experience. even though you're not moving. So it's not a field I'm in.

I'm not in neurology. I'm in neurosurgery. But that's a great question that those are the lessons we're learning now. And then if I can, different spots of the brain being dampened or activated. And then the resultant mind that happens kind of reminds you just a 24-hour cycle of waking and sleeping is that is never fully on, never fully off. But different symphonies are having their chance at creating the mind. My Mee Alex's breakdown is supported by Superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office

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Make sure to mention my ambiolics breakdown to help support the show. That's what Dr. Bruce Grayson talks about in terms of the filtering. In a near-death experience, he says the filtering that we carry out in normal everyday life is totally altered. and therefore maybe it's an explosion of brain activity that people are just having experiences. And there are so many commonalities through those experiences, which is fascinating. And he says that they're all often cultural,

like I'm going to cross a bridge or a river and that depends on where you are in the world. Which is interesting because sleep exit, people have come up for that negative experience. They've come up with overlapping stories based on where they're at. And near-death experiences, is the tunnel is more likely from low blood flow

to the optic arteries. So that was more mechanical. Interesting. Right. That was more mechanical. Well, he was also saying, if people have a near-death experience and they've never lived near a tunnel,

they wouldn't know what a tunnel is. So often they'll be like, oh, things were closing in, but that's interesting because it could be a visual. Which is also, there's a form of meditation that involves allowing the focal, like, that your focal field, like visual field closes in. And yeah.

Locations get low blood pressure and operating in other areas. the concern is not just that the brain is not going to get enough blood flows, but that the eye isn't. So I think that the tunnel is likely how the vision collapses with low blood flow. That feels more mechanical to me. I like that, though. But we have to make meaning of it because we have a brain.

Well, we're going to keep trying. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, meaning making is a fascinating topic. And then my whole life played out, expansive memory, you know, like a, film strip of their life, that kind of is, seems, we're just, you know, we're just vibing. That seems consistent with the robust brain electrical activity that happens in the few minutes before you actually have brain death, like that. Because most people are thinking, well, you're dying.

Why would you have such a rich experience? But brain death is, the brain doesn't whimper into the night. It's like, because you're never going to eat chocolate again. You might as well have something positive happen. Yeah. This is the time to indulge. If you put on again, just vibing. but if you put on your philosophical hat,

like, what do you think that purpose of that explosion is? It's fascinating, yeah. To look across our lives like that. A lot of people say they come back and they're like softened in a way. Their heart is broken open. They have huge spiritual changes where they were once aggressive. Like, what do you think that's about? I would say that intense experiences.

There's this learning, I think, can happen like sort of glacially and then they can be sort of rock bottom and like instant life-changing events and transfer. whether there's lightning bolts or something that happened with your child who gets sick. You know, that's there. So people who have that experience and come back, that their transformed just makes sense to me. That's like, tell me the one that isn't transformed. The, you know, the other part is it's a little trickier about, you know, what happens with

with death and how people react to that. It's, you know, I don't have a, I don't have a, I don't have a, I don't have a firm understanding of that. Because a lot of the patients I'm taking care of, with a few exceptions, they're either injured or said, or have asked to be sedated during that process. So, you know, it's not, it's not always a clear thing. Yeah. And except that I did have a patient with locked in syndrome. And because, because they don't feel pain, they didn't require the degree of anesthesia. or morphine during their time of exit.

So what I've tried to do is look for those unicorns and stories and answer it from that point of view. But the transformation of the human mind with certain experiences, I think speaks again to that cognition and the mind created from this flesh. Because it's electrically based, it can be jolted into a different way of thinking. and that there's there's evidence from a people hitting rock bottom with addiction there's evidence of heartbreak

there's evidence of my patients with children pass away there's evidence of lightning bolts and savants even if it's a few there's evidence of shock therapy where they just they're lifted out of of depression it's like what are we doing the flesh is the same and then now with ketamine it's like what is this thing that the the brain structure is the same actually the electricity is the same but the mind that comes from that flesh from the same electrical pattern is it does not want to hurt themselves. So I like leaving those

pieces open for people to connect. It's interesting to me I would have assumed that for the mind to change some of the electrical pattern would have changed. No, that's a big question too. So some people have injured brains and healthy minds and some people have like beautiful flesh brain

like just beautiful, just the anatomy and architecture is pristine and they don't have healthy minds. And then however you want to define that, these are just concepts. And then some people are not doing well. They're mentally not doing well. And some people are doing fantastic. But the electrical patterns, stay with me, they don't really predict mood and affect. They predict, are you awake? Are you on triple espresso?

Are you meditating? are you asleep? So they give us like the global states, but the individual experience within those, which is coming back to what you said, if you're having a rough day, the dreaming process, all the electricity is going to look the same in our brains,

but you had a rough day. The dream that your brain conjures is going to be different. So that's, I love thinking about things like that. Can you tell us what you've learned about how to influence our dreams? Waking mind feeds, dreaming mind, dreaming mind feeds waking mind to different degrees. Obviously, you had imagination to it. Obviously, you had memory to it.

That said, the people who write about this the most is during the sleep entry period, that the things they try to think about, and I think Dolly wrote, Dolly is the best example of this, but for me, sleep exit is a better time for me to hold on a fresh thoughts or idea generate. But people do, not every time, not every person, not every stage of our life. there are consistent reports that the things they toggle in their mind as they fall asleep can sometimes when you have the aha moment the next day, it's not really an aha moment. The imagination network was working on it through the dreaming process.

So that's possible and that's what journaling comes in. When I was younger in my 30s, I remember removing like a cancer from anatomy and it's a very visual thing. It's like scuba diving and navigating and flying spaceships. It's, you don't know what's around this. It's a visual, spatial thing. I used to look at the brain scans of the tumors within the brain. And before I go to bed, just a little, you know, pop it in my brain a little bit. And I don't, I mean, I never.

And the question I got asked was, do you dream of doing surgery? Never, not single time. But I have a lot of visual spatial dreams, driving fast, flying fast. So you're navigating visual spatial. Interesting. And then awkward social things. Well, and I guess the question is also, is that why you, became a neurosurgeon, right?

Like, which comes first, you know? No, I mean, I've, no, I mean, I just fumbled forward, yeah. No, but I'm saying you have the predisposition. Like, I couldn't, like, I went to graduate school for neuroscience, but like, I had shaky hands. I wasn't going to be a surgeon, right? What happened for me? There's something about you that made you a person who can navigate this way.

Well, fair. Maybe I was, but fair. Yeah. When I got to medical school, I wasn't really interested. I didn't, for me, again, not to be negative or disparage anybody. I didn't really get, like, I'm going to. write you a prescription and a prescription that somebody else could write. And the first time I saw surgery, I was like, wow, first, this person does that for you. And then there were some surgeons

in big centers where they could do a surgery that other surgeons couldn't. So I was like, wait, your hands are medicine that doesn't exist anywhere outside of you. Like, to me, it went that way for me. And then I was like, oh, I get all this visual spatial stuff. But I don't want to look at laboratories and like, I'm not that. I mean, I did enough of it. to become a neurosurgeon. But I like performing under pressure, visor spatial, that, and whether I dream of that now after going into it, or maybe those are my dreams that made you go,

hey, you could be good at this. Did you play sports growing up? Not really. I just got in a lot of trouble. I used to, you know, we used to like, I grew up here in Los Angeles. I didn't play sports growing up, but from a young age, I was good with my hands, with fixing things.

I like driving fast. I like, you know, you know, I like pressure situations. And you select for that. Oh, yeah. So this is the thing, with all due respect.

The thing that we say about people who went to med school for neurosurgery, they're like fighter pilots. You have to be so incredibly confident. If you don't like that thrill, you're going to, so first,

the bifurcation is very straight in medical school. It's procedures or not. Yeah. And then, and most is not. And then it's, what I say is,

first thing that you want to know, And then it's dangerous procedures or not dangerous procedures. There's a lot of not dangerous procedures, right? You're holding life in your hands. Yeah, or, yeah, yeah, for sure, actually. Yeah, for sure. And it brings out something in me that I think other responsibilities would not have. I think I would have been a disinterested XYZ.

But in this thing, because it's intense. intense. It engages me and it gave me a sense of identity and a master class in humanity. So the career has definitely shaped me. It's also a huge responsibility to have that role in someone's life. You know, I think that's the thing that often goes on said, I would don't know where I was just in London. I said, I've met over 7,000 people. And I don't mean just like, hey, P's, it's met them, shook hands, engaged them in some capacity. Out of those, a few thousand I've operated on. And that's a longer interaction. And just think about meeting somebody in their time of crisis. In about 20 minutes, they're signing over two weeks from now, one week from now, go ahead and open my skull. I gave you

permission. I want you to do that. That you develop, there's a masterclass there for someone who's willing to look at it. And so while, I'm 52 now, while I was, you know, from 35 to, you know, the last 25 years, really, I was always enjoying. that part, holding on to those nuggets. And I realized that the physical craft is a thrill for me, you know, but it was also

where else would have gotten all this content for this publishing career that last, just started five years ago, right? Like, where are you, where are you going to get the dots? So I, I'm thrilled, yeah, I'm thrilled I'm thrilled about how my life turned out. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I also think

about, and this kind of relates to the conversation about dreaming and what we dream about. You know, I'm thinking also what would your brain have done a thousand years ago, 5,000 years ago, what would his brain as a writer and a creative have been like, and it's kind of like dreams or this window into like... Invent the wheel. Bow and arrow. I actually wrote about that, like kinesthetic creativity.

Like, I mean, I know we think of creativity as like Pixar or whatever, like Hollywood, which is important, but like isn't like tying a knot, like the most creative thing ever? wildly creative. Right? Or the wheel or a bow and arrow. Like, so maybe, maybe that it was creativity that led us to out-compete or whatever that was with the Neanderthals because they had bigger brains. They had more of that cortical canopy. So maybe it was a wild dream life.

Maybe it was more imagination that led us to come up with tools. And the way, and sometimes with surgery, it just feels like it's being released. It's not step one, step two. It's a performance. and then you start to look at dance and you start to look at these things and then maybe it was kinesthetic creativity that led to the earlier tools

and they have oh they got a bunch of stuff about putting people in brain scans with learning how to tie knots and undo knots like it's some complex stuff going on with making knots out of rope and maybe that's what our ancestors got right and that's why we're here now. I don't think it's maybe at all.

Creativity is for me any way of looking at something differently and having an outcome that then is designed by a different approach to the problem. Whether, and applied creativity. A lot of athletes talk about the creativity in their sport and that sort of trance-like state that they can enter once they've developed the biomechanics of the sport. After mastery. Correct.

Yeah. And they have, as a group, they have more lucid dreams. Interesting. Really? The whole visual, spatial thing is leans lucid dreaming, more nightmares and creative people. Those are links. Yeah, and you also have to look at sort of what are the other factors. Who are the kind of people who are creative?

You could actually be seeing that people who are highly emotional, right, are having these kinds of... Yeah, or you're in an environment where your dad just hooked you up with the right job. Right. There's a lot of factors there, but visual, spatial, kinesthetic movement, creativity, dance, athletes, lucid dreaming. There's some clustering there. That's an interesting conversation point, you know. Can we talk about AI for a minute? And it's, have you seen any ways that AI is changing dreaming?

There are some companies that try and influence with scent or with images or with light and then also how they're trying to map the brain to see if they can interpret what people are dreaming about. I'm not an expert at this. This is a, there's a chapter on this, but there's some very concerning development. So we talked about the thalamus being a filter. Like you're not you're never off off right and so what happens is whether it's an alarm or it's a smell They're trying to like have people Smell something and they play a certain sound or they actually show a commercial like like Burger King was involved in this kind of marketing strategy

To see if it'll change your sales behavior when they're awake. Oh, that's terrifying Yeah, it is a little bit right and now we've got all these gizmos and things are recording you got the Apple watch or the sleep thing that it wouldn't be a stretch in the next handful of years I'm not talking like this isn't like Blade Runner, you know, 30 years from now. But like if they start to figure out when you're in deeper sleep versus REM sleep, because there's some patterns that they could pulse a certain sound or different thing that would influence, not control, but influence your behavior. I think that's a space that needs to be looked at. You may know about this already.

It's called neural rights. Like people are like, hey, that data is even more precious than the daytime data because our guard is down. Yeah. Well, and I was also thinking there are, you know, there's kind of nervous system regulator devices. that sort of throughout the day give intermittent, you know, kind of buzzing to try and sort of train the nervous system. So I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, I would just like to stay asleep so I can remember my dreams. I mean, you can imagine this is the black mirror version of it, but I actually don't think it's so far off that someone could give consent to have their device, play, sound, auditory cues that could link to a commercial in their waking life, making them more predisposed to want that commercial. because, as you said, we're always, you know, the waking life and the dreaming life are merged in some way.

So if we experience something in our dream life. That marketing strategy is out there. It's in the second to last chapter of this book. That marketing strategy is already being tested. That's not like... Tested, but they're not like widespread people can sign up and sort of agree to this in their home. Not yet, but sufficiently, it has advanced sufficiently to where different, neuroscience societies across different countries have tried to come up with like the Ten Commandments of

Please Don't Do This. And so it's not it's not it's not. See that's the whole that's what lucid dreaming you think it's gonna be woo-woo. It's not this thing sounds like you're a writer trying to come up with your next pitch. No like this is already happening. So I think that's why it's important to have the language and the understanding in how to decipher a lot of this neuro stuff that's coming our way. There was an episode of Black Mirror where a woman is basically put into a state. And to be brought out of that state, you have to pay the company. But if you don't pay at the highest level, you get commercial breaks. So she's in the middle of her life. She's like working with a kid. Netflix. No, I know it's to me. So this eight-year-old at school is like, my parents got into a fight.

And she's like, if you're considering depression, please call. And they're like, what? She's like, are you considering suicide? And he's like, I'm eight years old. And the notion was when they go to the companies, the company's like, oh, you wanted the ad free, you're going to need to pay more. I love that one.

It was Tracy Ellis Ross plays the executive. And it's horrible, but also it's like, oh my gosh, that's not a world I could imagine that we live in. It's like, I watch too being that, you know, it's free, but the commercials are like a part of it. Yeah. So if you don't have resources, that's right.

You're going to end up getting the brain training that's constantly interrupted. But what we were, what this, but what this brings up is for people who, let's say, need money, right? We already know people sell blood, people sell their eggs, they sell their they sell their womb. Like, are you selling

data, right? And we just took a dark turn. I don't think it's dark. I just think it's, I think it's, you know, we talked about brain death. You talk about, you know, I just think it's, that's what, this is why I love what I do because we couldn't have this conversation talking about knees and

hearts and my gut microbiome. Like, I'm not, again, I'm not, disparaging them, but it's a very narrow lane from which to understand humanity. Whereas we've been all over today. I mean, I think so it's not dark to me. It's just, it's exciting. The darkness for me is the concern about the exploitive element. The exploitive element and basically the corporations that are going to roll this out.

Do not have a great track record in safeguarding human well-being. And I would say that is not dark, but that is right on point. they can't be left to be to be kind. They can't be left to self-police that. And so just to return, you're not completely out when you're dreaming. You're not completely paralyzed when you're dreaming. And it seems to be that we're in a more more perceptive or more vulnerable to suggestions that are made to our ears and nose in the dreaming state.

I just leave it at that. You guys can look it up, but that's... So if it's a more vulnerable state where your guard is down, it needs a little bit of extra attention. Yeah. Well, I think that's also a great reason not to sleep with the TV on.

Well, I fall asleep with Netflix all the time and it doesn't make... It doesn't... Yeah, no, but it's a little bit like insomnia. People are like, how do you... Well, it's not everybody has insomnia. If you drink, if you slam three spressels fall asleep

with a laptop on, you sleep well, have insomnia. But if some people... But you don't know how well you could be sleeping if you're sleeping with a laptop. What if I'm watching that show falling asleep all the time? Well, I actually, when I was watching Black Mirror, it definitely... It affected your mood. Yeah, it gets... I mean, I love crime documentaries, but I now only listen to them in the day. So she had the experience where she was watching crime documentaries before bed and then she was having more nightmares. So we was having disrupted and dysregulated sleep, but yes. So we saw that changing... But not more... You weren't committing more crime than that was not committing crimes in my sleep. No.

I want to ask a question. I want to ask a question. about dream interpretation. Okay, yeah. Obviously, this has been the foray of psychology, right? It's like Freudian and what are all these, like, what do dreams mean? You do talk about it here, though. I found it really fascinating that so much of dreams, whether you grow up in a technological culture, a non-technological culture, the themes are very similar, right?

The themes are falling. You can tell me. There's like five main themes, right? falling, being embarrassed in a social situation. I mean, how do you answer? You have to answer it with what we know, and I wanted to answer it. It's the last chapter.

And people may be disappointed, but based on the fact that my dreams are cooked up by my imagination and my memory, how can, you know, how can a wine glass be the same for the three of us. How can it mean the same? Because we're living such different lives. How can even be the same as my life

that I was living just like three years ago? And there's this whole field of like addicts and recovery and if they don't. There's just a report like somebody who, you know, it was somebody in Brazil and he said, you know, I knew I was head of the right direction because I, you know, I didn't smoke rock in my dream. And so like I love the fact that all of that stuff is out there.

but dream interpret so I want to engage it so for that for that person a crack pipe in their own life has different symbolism for me it means possibility and new experiences for wine glass means something else a bridge means something else so I don't think there can be a universal symbol that applies to all humans let alone me in my past life I was told like water's consciousness and you're always being swallowed by it so every time I have dream about water I'm like oh it's consciousness I just don't see how that can I don't I don't see how that can I don't see how that can happen even for me. Water's not the same thing. I've got patience. A bridge could mean end of life. Bridge could mean reconciliation. It's just, it's so personalized. I don't understand how one thing could be the same for you and me.

I'll just say that off the top. That isn't when we can't interpret things. You were going to say? No, no. Well, I was going to go to the sort of like there are similarities that seem to be shocking across cultures. Cultures. Cultures and different people. Nobody wants to fall. Everybody's having nightmares about fall.

Well, so that's interesting. So the path, that's, so what I, that's a, those are dream patterns. The meaning. Yeah, let's go to patterns first. Patterns first is, is, is easier. So the, one of the opening thoughts that I had was, your dreams are not limitless. And if you look at patterns, not my dream, your dream or your dream, but thousands and thousands of dreams over hundreds of years, you find that reports of math and. calculation are very infrequent.

And you find nightmares and erotic dreams are very common. And then you get teeth falling out, falling, being chased as common dreams. And that's held. It went from horse and carriage and buggy to like different continent. So there is a

there's a dreaming pattern I think that is built in. Also falling, that's one of our first reflexes, is the grasping reflex. Very good. Very good. Maybe that's one of the reflexes that goes away. But maybe falling is one of these probably like nobody wants to die. And my ancestors that didn't have falling dreams, they all died.

Right. What about big babies? Not in an airplane, but flying. I used to have this dream all the time about flying and sometimes it'd be more frequent. I haven't had it in a long time. And our ancestors weren't flying. So I can't explain that, but it's a pattern. And some consistent dream.

Consistent dream and there's a huge difference in the dream. One version is I'm flying but I cannot control where I'm going and it kind of feels out of control. That's just your life. The other much less frequent was that I could control it. And when I could control the flying, it was the most amazing. Then you were lucid dreaming.

I don't know. Feeling of mastery. It's true. There was an element of lucid dreaming. I never thought about that because I'd be like, oh my gosh. Yeah, you could steer it a butt. Yeah, lucid dreaming isn't like resetting the, I ask somebody who does that. It's not like you completely reset the environment. You're just like, hey, I can actually drive where I'm flying or drive where I'm sailing. It's a subtle control.

Agency. I would wake up from those feeling like I could tackle anything that I had just had the most amazing experience, that life was great. So back to dream interpretation. When I was looking at this, there were some things that are obvious. Like, if you're nervous about giving a speech and you have a dream about showing up naked behind a podium, that's a consistent, that doesn't need interpretation. Your waking anxieties are clearly reflected in your dream anxieties or dreams. Then I noticed end of life dreams were very. interesting for my cancer patients that when your day and pregnancy dreams they're called genre

dreams when your daytime life event is so massive it's also consistently represented connected to your dream life there's a it's just taking up so much space there's no time to be a imaginative so those they don't need interpretation then they're like junk dreams we don't hold every thought we have to like what does that mean you know so just leave dreams alone a little bit speak for yourself Oh, yeah. And then the fourth one is what I call universal dreams. Like, I really do think nightmares and erotic dreams are cultivating the mind. Do they need interpretation? That's a whole field when you're older. You have an erotic dream about somebody. What will you bring you here to not talk about erotic dreams. So I do want to talk about it. Easy on road. When you say the brain is our most powerful sex organ, you're talking about it from a really interesting perspective that the things that we can encounter. in our dreams are incredibly vivid, incredibly activating,

and they have so much emotional content to them. Can you talk a little bit? I mean, I think you said that like two-thirds of men report that they can have an orgasm from dreams and a third of women. White dreams and stuff like that. Yeah, like what's going on with my erotic sleep? Yeah. Well, I don't have a...

How much time do we have left? I don't have a simple answer for that. But what I would tell you is some interesting things. Over in these reports, over 90% of people have erotic dreams and across different cultures. So it doesn't mean if you think you're prudish or not. It's not really about that. It's like a solar flare. There's a lot of infidelity, whether you're in a good relationship or not, like over 80%.

If you change it from sex to erotic, those are some of the, that's the data coming. Those are the surveys that exist from which I extracted information. One clarification, 80% are people dreaming about other people that they're not in a relationship with. Cheating. but whether that's good in a relationship or not is actually based on if you're in a good relationship or not. Right, like what does it mean to you? Like to dream about an ex could mean,

oh, I really made the right decision to not be with them. I don't know. I mean, yeah. If you're still thinking about your ex and you're dreaming about them, then you just still want to be with your ex. That was my one. And then if you're in a healthy relationship

and you have infidelity dreams, but you wake up and you're like, hey, you know, you guys are viving. I don't think that's disruptive. it's what does it mean to have infidelity dreams in an unhealthy relationship and people have some opinions about that but the just another thing to be mad at them about when you wake up like you cheated on me in my dream

I don't I didn't want to get involved in that for you too I'm going to move on to that the next one is that it tends to be they tend to report a small cluster of people like you know it's not like some chimera like you know Pedro Pascal and Brad Pitt morphed or whatever whatever it is for anybody Like, there's not, it's like, it's people you don't even like, like your boss or, like, you know, it's family sometimes. So I don't know what that means, but it's a tight, tribal, narrow cluster. I don't know where I went with Pedro Pascal and Brad Pitt, but it sounds good to me.

And she's like, yeah, that's all right. She's chibroofs. Then the thing is, like, the acts are wild, but the actors are surprisingly narrow. That's, those are the things I took out of that. And people can do you can say whatever you want. But those are the surveys out there. At a biological level, you don't need self-stimulation to have an orgasm, a physiologic orgasm. Excitment from the brain can descend down and do that.

That's well established, Freud and wet dreams and stuff like that. Orgasms are, you know, they're a cerebral event. Going from touch to caress, there isn't a new nerve. that you sprout. But the perception can, bumping into somebody in the subway versus a lover's touch is lands differently

in your sensory cortex. That maturation happens around the time of erotic dreams. I'm not saying they're linked, but there's starting to be a lot of coincidences, right? So there's some, I think there's some cognitive maturation with erotic dreams

that may allow the development of erogenous touch that happens at that time because you're not making a new nerve for it. That's fascinating. I mean, I wonder what is happening in the brain that all of a sudden it's received. A lot of hormones. Yeah. Well, that's an interesting question too, because sometimes, I don't know if it's a, I don't

know if the hormones come first or the raw dreams come first, but it's likely they're all intertwined. Yeah, it's a priming system also. And you kind of talk about that in the book as well, that there's, you know, a certain performative practical aspect to dreams. And that extends even to our romantic, you know, experiences and our, you know, It's a guidebook, you know. Maybe it may be a guidebook for like, hey, this is what, you don't know how good this feels,

but this is how, this is where you need to be going because the species needs to procreate, you know, I don't know. Go search this out in your waking life. Yeah, exactly. See how much you like that? Yeah. Before we let you go, what would you like people to take away from this book and kind of the work you do in general?

You know, you do such incredible education about not just the, functions of the brain, but sort of what it means to understand them at the level you do, what would you like people to take away from what you do? That's a big question. And at different stages in my life, I've had, I'm having different insights. And I think for me now, at a 52 with adult sons, you know, I'm feeling like I can reinvent. I'm feeling like I can transform.

I'm feeling surprisingly inquisitive and curious again. And I just want people to know that if you look at the structure of the brain, those 100 billion neurons, they don't actually touch. And they spray chemicals at each other. And if you just appreciate that and think of it as like the Christmas globe in New York, that every day you're kind of new, potentially new. And so whatever tragedy you're dealing with is not permanent. I'm not saying it's easy.

And whatever triumph you're feeling at that moment is also not permanent. So based on the structure of the brain that those neurons don't touch and they spray chemicals and it's an aurora borealis, it's not one spot or wires, that, you know, there's a new day for you every day. And that's what I would want people to walk away with. That's really sweet. It's a beautiful takeaway. This is why you dream. Highly recommend it and your other books as well. Such a pleasure to get to talk to you. Thanks for being here. My pleasure. Before we recorded this episode, I told myself that I wanted to remember a dream last night.

Really? I did. And? I did remember it. I don't know why. I just did. Are you going to share with a class? No, it wasn't very interesting.

I was a teenager and I was hanging out with friends from camp. But, like, that was it. Like, when he talks about sort of like the junkie dreams, like, that was it. Like, there's no meaning. It's not very interesting. I'm not painting a painting that's going to be sold for millions of dollars based on that dream. I think my brain doesn't want to do the things that your brain wants to do when it's dreaming. I mean, that's consistent with your personality.

You don't like being told what to do. I mean, I have a lot of dreams that don't fall under the creative, you know, umbrella. I'm like speaking Spanish, which is not my native tongue. I'm speaking Hebrew. I'm translating things. I'm writing music. I'm practicing piano. Like, nothing restful.

That was actually the, most eye-opening part of this, the idea that sleep is not rest, that the brain, as he says, is like on fire with activity. I mean, look, we also do feel rested when we have certain cycles of R.A.m. sleep and alcohol and pot. And we know that those things are things that disrupt R.E.M. sleep, which is going to kind of change the restfulness and how, you know, how good you feel when you wake up. But I kind of feel that way about, you know, like, if you're constantly having nightmares all night, you're not going to feel so good in the morning. You feel crummy.

No, you're going to feel absolutely horrible. The popularity of this topic, you know, other scientists have talked about sleep architecture and that how are the media that we're consuming right before bed, the fact that we're getting light in our eyes, which tells us to be awake, changes the architecture of our sleep, which is going to impact dream patterns. I definitely, this is obviously anecdotal, but I feel a difference and I notice a difference in my dream patterns. They're much busier, more frantic, less restful when I'm watching media or working right up until bed. Right. Like if I'm like writing and on my screen and cranking out emails and my brain needs or benefits from like a wind down time period and talk a little bit about like the difference that having that free time almost unstructured brain time where we're not processing information.

and it sounds like the creative network increases how important that is and the benefits. I mean, I think he was kind of talking about how, you know, even the notion of like the brain activity is that it's never not working. Like, the only time it's not working is when it's not producing an electrical signal, you know? So it's always working, but the question is sort of to what degree are we giving, you know, are we giving a section of the brain the ability to say, I'm in charge now? So when we're working, when we're engaging, even on things that we enjoy or even watching TV, we are, we're recruiting parts of the brain that, you know, are going to take some time to relax. I mean, for many people who do meditation, you know, what you find is that the first like five minutes or a little bit of a crapshoot, that's why it's nice to meditate for five minutes. But if you're meditating for five minutes and wondering why you're not feeling anything, it's because your brain is still chilling the F out from what you were doing when you hit the timer. So for many, you know, experiences where we're trying to calm the brain down, be it meditation, be it sleep. Yeah, it takes active time. And also, this is another metric that people who wear fancy rings and things, you know, is if you fall asleep too quickly, it's actually a sign that you missed your window of optimal sleep, that you shouldn't be so exhausted that you, like, conk out.

Also enter alcohol or pot and the reason that many people honestly use it, you know, nightcap. but your brain actually needs time to do its natural sort of winding down and that's actually more optimal than just like conking to sleep. I can't remember what the window is. I remember when I used to wear my thing. I was like, oh, did I hit it? It's like between two and eight minutes or something. Yeah, I think it's like under three minutes.

It's a little bit too fast. It's too fast. And if it's like over 10 or 15, then you're like. No, then you're having trouble falling asleep. The notion of quieting the brain down actually, I started to think about it differently. I started thinking about it as a toggle between this imagination creative network and this executive functioning network. And the executive functioning is making lists and organizing and problem solving and not problem solving in the way that a creative network might where it's searching a sort of more open-ended. No, it's like a computer.

It's like a computer. I need to do this. Is that the voice of your brain? That's the voice of my executive function brain. and it's very upset. I need to make this happen right away. It's a little bit around short time. And the creative side is sort of out in a meadow and ideas are coming to it.

And it's like, let's try this on and let's try that. And it has a, he talks in his book also about how the creative imagination network has a much higher degree of emotionality. So in that sense, when we're dreaming. and I like the idea of dreams as part of the visualization, sort of the experimentation, sensory experimentation, like we're rehearsing. That's the word I was looking for. In that sense, we're not only rehearsing psychologically,

but we're rehearsing emotionally, where we create a scenario, feel what that's like, kind of thinking about Bruce Lipton, we're kind of trying on the programming in a way. And this is where I think people can get a lot of benefits. is knowing that they're toggling between those two states and having enough time in the creative imagination state to allow it to do its thing. For sure. Also, this was in his bio, but we didn't get to talk to him about it. He started by going to community college. He went to

Compton Community College and he got his BA from Berkeley, his MD from USC, his doctorate from UCSD, and his cancer surgery specialization from UCSF. So he kind of like hit the whole coast But just really cool. He started in community college and just really think he has a neat story. Last thought about this need for the creative imagination network, tying it to some of the other things that we talk about, intuition and spirituality. I actually think that people have a much higher ability to connect with something greater than themselves in that space. So it's not just about problem solving. I think there's an inherent wisdom that gets quieted. down because our society prioritizes the executive functioning, getting things done, and we need it.

Like, that's how we drive and stay in our lane and not crash. And that's how we make sure we're fed, et cetera, et cetera, it keeps us alive. But by prioritizing that, we sort of lose out on some of the inherent wisdom that can be accessed in that space. Yeah. And we've, you know, talked a lot about that, about those kind of transcendental and kind of theta, you know, kind of zones. And that comes up a lot. I mean, like, more episodes than I can even think about have talked about this. So really like that notion of that sleep entry state being, you know, full of possibility, which is why people are doing this lucid dreaming. And, you know, maybe I'll have to try and do some of the exercises and see if I can do it.

For substack, we're going to have a challenge. I think we should start a community chat about the practice of setting intention before we go to bed. And seeing if it works. Seeing what if it works, seeing what type of dreams we can have. and then having a short practice upon entering back into a wake life. Happy to engage. One of the things he talks about is there are certain people who have donated dream journals to, it's kind of like a, sounds like just like a giant like dream cloud.

It's like a, they collect people's journals. Some people remember a lot more dreams and they have people who sometimes for 50 years keep a journal of their dreams. And so that allows some of these longitudinal studies. So I don't know if we'll get it. I don't think we have a large enough sample size. yet on Substack, but you never know. We're going to find the commonality

in the Breakers' dream patterns. If you haven't already joined us on Stubstack, head over, join the breaker community. There's so much awesome bonus content there. We can't wait for you to see it all. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. See you next time. It's My and Bealix Breakdown.

She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fiction. And now she's going to break down. So break it down.