SciShow Tangents - Dreams with Trace Dominguez!
Episode Date: December 10, 2024Is a dream really a wish your heart makes? Or is it just that your brain is an organ that never really turns off? What do your dreams even mean??? These are just some of the perplexing questions this ...episode posed to us and our special return guest, Trace Dominguez!SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter! A big thank you to Patreon subscriber Garth Riley for helping to make the show possible!And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @im_sam_schultz Hank: @hankgreen[Definition]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2814941/https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-control-dreams/  [The Scientific Definition]Dreambookshttps://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/67/vandegrift.php#:~:text=Popular%20in%20Europe%20since%20antiquity,game%20then%20sweeping%20Northeastern%20cities.https://web.archive.org/web/20151222092158/http://www.eastm.org/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/146/134https://www.obafemio.com/uploads/5/1/4/2/5142021/dream_interpretation_in_ancient_china.pdfIncubationhttps://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft5j49p06s&chunk.id=d0e2624&toc.id=&brand=ucpress#:~:text=Common%20throughout%20all%20antiquity%2C%20the,some%20divinely%20inspired%20dream%20vision.https://www.britannica.com/topic/dream-sleep-experience/Dreams-as-a-source-of-divination#ref984709https://www.dreamscience.ca/en/documents/New%20content/incubation/Incubation%20overview%20for%20website%20updated.pdfOminous-Vapor Watcherhttps://www.obafemio.com/uploads/5/1/4/2/5142021/dream_interpretation_in_ancient_china.pdfhttps://www.britannica.com/topic/Zhouli[Trivia Question]Rapid eye movement (REM) saccade speedhttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780080450469010895https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1469-8986.1985.tb01551.xhttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1469-8986.1983.tb03008.xhttps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9406327/[Fact Off]Approximating dreams with generative AIhttps://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/heres-how-ai-could-soon-decode-your-dreamsLucid dreaming and the effects of video games on dreamshttps://academic.oup.com/nc/article/2017/1/nix009/3859602https://theconversation.com/im-a-lucid-dream-researcher-heres-how-to-train-your-brain-to-do-it-118901https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-00817-001https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F1053-0797.16.2.96https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2014-00817-001https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2008-19013-002https://www.theverge.com/2014/1/21/5330636/video-games-effect-on-dreams[Ask the Science Couch]Neuroscience of fever dreams https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3830719/https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/IJoDR/article/view/28492https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6997236/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033318268718077?via%3Dihubhttps://www.accjournal.org/journal/view.php?number=1528 Patreon bonus: Recurring dream content and possible psychologyhttps://psycnet.apa.org/record/2010-23497-001https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Antonio-Zadra/publication/232509978_Recurrent_dreams_Their_relation_to_life_events/links/53d673f10cf220632f3da1f7/Recurrent-dreams-Their-relation-to-life-events.pdf  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810005000772?casa_token=Dofy4I_w2PsAAAAA:DdZ6qAtKJiS6OEE3Iu8pETHldBs5n1SH3lvSQl6WuCNVv9Xi8v09wuR9bWki5YROcyKWXAZ3CcN3https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01812/fullhttps://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/ajp.134.12.1335[Butt One More Thing]Psychoanalyst Hans Thorner documenting a patient who dreamed of butt spidershttps://bgsp.edu/app/uploads/2014/12/Blechner-M-Patients-dreams-and-the-countertransference.pdfhttps://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429477546-12/three-defences-inner-persecution-hans-thorner
Transcript
Discussion (0)
You're listening to a Complexly Podcast.
INTRO
INTRO
Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents! It's a lightly competitive science knowledge showcase.
I'm your host, Hank Green.
And joining me this week as always is science expert and Forbes 30 under 30 education luminary,
Sari Riley.
We're still doing it.
Can you believe it?
Can you believe it?
And also even more unbelievable, it's the rootin tootin Sam Schultz.
Oh, yahoo. Here I go. But also importantly, it's not just the two of you today. It's the rootin' tootin' Sam Schultz! Hello! Yahoo!
Here I go.
But also importantly, it's not just the two of you today.
We have a special guest.
He is a science communicator, a producer, a television host, and a podcaster.
Trace makes the PBS television show Star Gazers.
He co-hosts the podcast That's Absurd.
Please elaborate with Julian Huget.
And he creates science videos on UNIDOS Trace.
Speaking of Julian, our guest listened to Julian's episode
and confirms he definitely got served in that dance off
in the basement of a London pub.
And he's a Returned Tangent special guest.
God, that was a long paragraph.
It's Trace Dominguez.
I feel like I should have run it through some AI
to like, you know, tighten it up a little bit.
Yeah, he could have inserted some fake stuff about you too.
Yeah, that would be good.
That would get put into a Wikipedia page and it'd just be true then.
Look, that's how I think it's called information laundering.
I think that works.
Is a great term.
The facts are made now.
Yeah, that's it.
Did you just make it up because that's great?
I just made it up.
I've never, yeah.
But that's, it works, right?
Yeah.
Put it in, you start with, say it in a podcast, get it on the Wikipedia,
get it in the New York Times, get it back in Wikipedia.
That was my whole strategy.
That's going to be in the dictionary someday, I think.
Information laundering?
Oh, man, that's good.
What a mess of a situation.
What a world we happen to occupy.
Trace, hi.
Hi.
It's nice to see you, too.
I have a question.
The sort of like history of America
has expanded the right to vote to more and more people.
And this is generally good.
Okay.
I would like to ask, in the next expansion,
should we do some animals?
And if so, which ones?
Birds.
I think birds are-
All birds?
You think all birds should-
Man, the chickens are gonna change things.
Yeah, that's good.
Yeah. Yeah, all the good. Yeah. Yeah.
I guess there are most of the of the vertebrates in America.
It feels like at this point, all the guys we eat, that would be a problem for us,
probably. That would be but maybe not a terrible idea for suffering.
I think that that's right.
I think birds just kind of got, you know, like a crow.
You look at a crow and you're like, you know which like, which person
have taken an election, right?
Yeah.
They also have the dexterity to do it.
Like they can use a touch screen.
They can pull the lever or whatever.
Whatever you do.
All right, Sam's for crows.
I'm thinking peacocks.
Oh.
They're flashy.
It'd be fun.
Yeah.
They're clearly into environmentalism
because they're always at the zoo.
Just wandering around in the, you know.
Yeah, they're not even like zoo animals.
They're just zoo animals.
They're just zoo visitors like everybody else.
I love that.
It also doesn't mess things up.
It's a good first step.
Just like the peacocks do it.
It's a couple hundred extra votes.'s gonna complain too much and just not to be you know
Sexist the P the P hens he hens as well peacocks P hens both yes
Suffrage is there a name for a peacock and P hen that is inclusive of both peacocks and peahens?
Peafowl.
Peafowl.
Wow.
So all peafowl.
Sam's like all fowl.
And Trey's like, hold on.
Just the ones in the pea group.
I was trying to think of something funnier, but I think the funniest animal I have is
a groundhog.
I think we've already started paying attention to them for groundhog days.
We've got a tab.
They do control the winter already.
So that's the basic thing.
Yeah, they control the weather and that's one step away from voting.
It's one step away from Democrats.
That's what I've learned.
That's right.
I've heard that as well.
Give us some tips.
I've heard it.
It must be true. Give us some tips. I've heard it.
It must be true.
It must be true.
Groundhogs is great.
I mean, that's a reason that it should be pets, right?
Because we do know where they all are for the most part.
So gerbils, hamsters, cats, dogs.
What about fish?
Parrots.
Snakes.
I don't know.
Fish have a... What about exotic pets? You know, does. I don't know if fish should vote.
What about exotic pets?
You know, does the Tiger King get all of their tigers?
Do they count just because they're pets?
Yeah, if there's one person that needs more votes.
The most powerful person in the whole world.
Oh, man, people would get so many fish.
It'd be great for the fish sellers of America.
It'd be rolling in it.
Great, well, I think dogs should vote.
And I'm-
Woof.
Every week, we're on tangents to get together
to try to one-up and maize and delight each other
with science facts while also attempting to stay on topic.
Our panelists are playing for glory and for Hank bucks,
which I'll be awarding as we play.
And at the end of the episode,
one of these people will be crowned the winner.
But first we must introduce this week's topic
with the traditional science poem this week from Trace.
Okay, so a little preamble.
I went and I looked up every song that I could think of
that had the word dreams in it.
It's a lot.
It's a lot. It's a lot.
There's a lot of those.
And I put them together.
Oh, interesting.
Only in dreams we see what it means.
In every possible way, it's never quite as it seems.
I know I felt like this before,
but now I'm feeling it even more.
Life could be a dream.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream.
Make him the cutest that I've ever seen.
On a night when bad dreams become a screamer,
dreamer, you know you are a dreamer.
Can you put your hands in your head?
Oh, no.
There was no ransom to be paid.
No song unsung, no wine untasted.
I can make you mine,
taste your lips of wine, anytime night or day. It felt so good, like anything was possible.
Fly me high through the starry skies or maybe to an astral plane,
walking down the line that divides me somewhere in my mind.
Sweet dreams of rhythm and dancing. Sweet dreams of
passion through the night. You think I'm pretty without any makeup on. You think
I'm funny when I tell the punchline wrong. A dream is a wish your heart makes.
You know it's true. Oh, all the things come back to you. I don't want another
pretender, no, to disillusion me one more time. So baby dry your eyes
Save all the tears you've cried. Oh, that's what dreams are made of
It's too bad that all these things can only happen in my dreams cuz they're waiting for me
They're looking for me every single night. They're driving me insane
Get out of my dreams
Get into my car.
Hey, now, don't dream.
It's over.
Oh, your performance was so good.
I feel like that's the best performance we've ever had of a poem on the show.
Man, Sweet Dreams of Rhythm and Dance really hits, really hits the nostalgia buttons for this guy.
That's very high school ice skating.
Yeah, ice skating. Yeah, ice skating.
Yeah, it was a bowling alley for us.
Any LaBouche song.
I'm like, well, I'm at the bowling alley now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm not sure. I'm not sure what I want, who I am, who's hot.
It's all very confusing.
Am I? Are you? Are we? Is anybody?
Very much.
Oh, well, the topic for the day is dreams.
One of the most complicated of all science topics.
But before we try and get to the bottom of what they are,
we're going to take a short break.
And then we're going to dive in, everybody.
So get ready.
We'll be back to define dreams. Welcome back everybody.
Sari, what the heck is a dream?
Is it a wish my heart makes?
It's such a weird thing.
And I know I've said this before in the podcast,
but I feel like in the way that we look back on humans
talking about the four humors and balancing out medicine
is how humans will talk about us in a couple hundred years
when we're talking about the brain and dreams and whatnot,
they're going to be like, you thought what?
That the dream told you about your psychosexual development?
Do you guys have you ever got ever?
This happens to me.
I think that it's important.
You ever wake up and you're a little bit asleep still
and your mind shows you're a little bit asleep still
and your mind shows you like a super fast paced slideshow
of many, many images in a row?
It's just like flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash.
And it's like cup, man's face, McDonald's restaurant, dog.
Just like, no?
No.
That's not happened, no.
I've never had that happen, no.
Do you write them down? No, That's not happened. No, I've never had that happen. No.
Do you write them down?
No, it's happened way too fast.
Yeah, you need to transcribe these somehow and see what,
see if it means anything.
OK, never mind.
It's not important.
Nobody?
Not even our non-hosts in the room?
The fact that none of us do it makes
it seem really important to me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a one in seven.
Yeah. Maybe you're unique.
And then a tweet about this later.
Yeah. I'm sorry.
Interesting. OK.
Sorry. You hit me more than I don't know.
I always feel like this is what's always happening while I'm dreaming.
And my my mind is just like trying to tell a story with these images.
And that is what we are.
So what you by asking this question, you've identified what's weird about dreams,
which is that we can only study dreams by report
rather than observing them in any way.
So many things in science we can observe and measure,
and dreams are all based on people going,
do you experience this too?
Or giving each other a survey and saying,
what do your dreams kind of feel like?
Or what kind of images did you see?
Did you also see Cup Dog McDonald?
McDonald's, yeah.
It's really difficult to manipulate
dream content experimentally,
whether it's exposure to stimuli before sleep
or during sleep, and so it's difficult to predict
the content of dreams.
And so everything that we know about dreams
is a combination of neuroscience,
which is like kind of what brain activity is going on, trying to measure as best we can, which
areas of the brain are active while you're dreaming, or this like qualitative content or form
analysis, which is what mental imagery is going on? What are the properties of dreams in general?
Are they narrative? Are they not?
Are they slideshows of images and things like that? And then making our best guesses as
to why we have them. And there's a lot we don't know. There are a lot of competing theories
out there. There's a lot of questions remaining. And it's really hard to prove or disprove
anything when it comes to
dreaming so we're just kind of like throwing a bunch of stuff out there.
We're in that phase of science where people are doing their studies.
People are obviously like really hungry to know about dreams because it's a shared human
experience but we don't know a lot.
If I've learned anything from the Christmas Carol, it's an undigested piece of meat, right?
I think that's right.
Have you heard, you remember that? Yeah. Christmas Carol, there's more undigested piece of meat, right? I think that's right. Have you heard, you remember that?
Yeah.
Christmas Carol, there's more of gravy than of gravy.
Where he like pops in and he's all like,
no, you're an undigested piece of meat.
Yeah.
No, Jacob Mali.
Yeah, makes sense.
I mean, look, they gotta come from somewhere.
Right.
Do most people dream every night?
Is that, even if you don't remember it,
do you always do it?
Cause a lot of times I feel like I just fall asleep and wake up, but like, is it still happening?
Yeah, your body's just your brain's getting good at forgetting all those dreams. It doesn't want them.
Doesn't want you to remember that. It's embarrassing.
Like in the documentary Inside Out, they're just not recording them.
Is that right? Sorry, we're all talking.
You are talking and that is correct.
So maybe documentary inside out is maybe a strong term, but as far as we know that most
dreams, if not all dreams, even if people report not remembering them, they still do
dream. They can see them going on in there somehow with a thing or what?
I think as far as I know, it is you can either interrupt people during sleep,
so most dreams occur during rapid eye movement or REM sleep,
though they can occur in non-REM periods as well.
And so if you wake people up in the middle of that sleep
phase, then they might remember their dreams. Or they have done studies on people who report not having dreams, but who regularly experience some form of, I forget what it's called,
but like restlessness in their sleep, like talking or or movement or things like that and so people who
Don't report having dreams
Still like move around as though they are interacting with an environment or sleep talk or do other things and then wake up
And then they say I didn't dream but then the researchers who are studying them sleeping are like you totally were acting as though you were dreaming
So we think that even though people don't remember their dreams,
they probably are dreaming still.
Because I'm also someone who doesn't remember their dreams,
like 90% of the time, probably.
I go back and forth.
I'm in a period right now where I'm definitely not remembering any dreams.
But sometimes I have like strong, I don't know,
it's like my brain gets in that like,
I want to try to remember these things phase. And then I'm like, you I don't know, it's like my brain gets in that like, I wanna try and remember these things phase.
And then I'm like, you guys had this weird dream.
And then they're like, I don't care.
Nobody cares, nobody wants to hear about it.
You don't wanna hear about your cup.
You wanna think.
Like you have a fun dream about one,
you have like a dream about one of your friends,
not necessarily a fun dream or whatever.
But then you tell them and you're like, they're gonna to love this, but you can just tell that they don't
love it. So just don't ever tell anybody your dreams except scientists. That's the only
people who need to hear about it. My wife loves to tell me about her dreams. I'm just
like, cool.
I feel like the first half of that is definitely connected to the second half of that thought.
No one cares. Just nobody cared.
When does Rachel tell you her dream?
Is it like right after waking up or is it later on in the day?
It has to be because she forgets it if she doesn't say it right when she wakes up.
Yeah.
And that is pretty common too, I think.
As far as we know in studies about dreams,
memory is very weird around dreaming,
where most dreams are lost,
like we were talking about, where if you don't wake up
during a certain time, you don't remember it.
But then also, when you wake up, the dream is really vivid
for like a little bit, and then it very quickly gets lost
unless you write it down or record it.
Like close your eyes.
Yeah. Yeah.
And so you gotta think actively about remembering it,
otherwise that's gonna go away. So there's something remembering it, otherwise that's going to go away.
So there's something going on neurologically that's different from how we experience the
world and process memories, like dreams are not being encoded into memory in the same
kind of way, which is also weird and also another part of consciousness we don't quite
understand.
Sarah, do we know where the word dream comes from?
So much like dreams are weird and mysterious, the word dream is also weird and mysterious.
So in Old English and Early Middle English, the word for dream, like sleeping vision,
was swefin, which is very, a very weird word. And it meant sleep and also kind of sleeping
vision at the same time. And the word dream, as we know it today,
actually meant like joy or mirth or music.
So it meant, the word existed,
but meant a totally different thing.
Oh, it meant music?
Yeah.
And we are not entirely sure where,
like sometime in Middle English that like joy meaning of dream faded out
and the sleep vision meaning faded in and we're not sure why this switch happened.
The other meaning maybe came from proto-Germanic roots. The word drogmas, or the root drogmas,
which meant deception, illusion, or phantasm,
and had a lot of cognates in Old Norse, or Swedish,
or Old Saxon, and things like languages like that.
But at some point in English, we just traded the words,
and we're like, okay, you don't mean music anymore.
Yeah.
What about nightmares?
Great question.
Are those just the same?
Anything to do with a horse?
Is that a horse thing?
I think it's a being thing.
Like I think a mare was a evil demon or spirit
or something.
Wow.
Incubus, yes.
That's a sexy mean guy.
No, that's a succubus.
Oh, okay, the opposite. What's the incubus? I think incubi and succubi are you this and succubus are just like are they both sexy
Yeah, they're just both different kinds of sexy, you know a male demon and the human
Yes, indeed. It's a succubus. So nightmare is sexy
Yeah
bad So nightmare is sexy. Yeah. Specifically bad sex stuff, not just bad stuff.
I think it's like the idea or sensation
of like a feeling of suffocation.
So maybe more like sleep paralysis is nightmare.
Okay.
And I guess that maybe is connected
if you're in a puritanical society to sexy demon too.
Yeah, you wake up to the demon, right?
Yeah.
I mean, I'm looking at pictures of them
and they don't look particularly sexy.
To you.
Yeah, looking at the right pictures.
Yeah.
I'll send you a couple of links.
People are...
Yeah, I'm seeing some pretty sexy incubuses.
Okay, I guess I didn't do the right search.
It's just these guys.
What?
Are you looking at the band incubus?
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, it's just like five guys.
Well, they maybe were sexy back in the day.
Yeah, that's more of a rebuke of the early 2000s.
Yeah, I think that's it.
All right. the early 2000s.
All right. We have to keep going.
And so since we know what's going on now, we are going to do the quiz portion of the show. And this game that we're playing today is called the scientific definition.
So now that we are all definitely experts on what dreams are, it's time to delve into
what dreams mean.
In this game, we're going
to give you a word or a short phrase related to interpreting dreams, and you will use your wit,
your charm, and all of your other skills that you have available to you as a sentient human being
to present an explanation of what that word or phrase means. And at the end of each round,
I will judge who got the closest.
Also, I will tell you what the actual definition is.
Are you ready? Yes, I think so.
The first thing is dream books.
Is that just like an old timey dream journal?
Where you just you just you just write down.
Maybe that's too obvious, but I think it's where you write down your dreams.
You we don't know what people are dreaming about
unless you write it down like a captain's log.
And it is a science word, is this right?
Oh.
And it has to do with dreaming
or it can just have the word dream in it
and be about anything.
No, no, it has to do with dreaming.
Okay, gosh, well I don't know what else it could possibly be
but I have to think of something else.
A dream book is a book that you'd read
to try to have a specific kind of dream
before you went to sleep.
Nice, love that.
Ooh.
That's a good one.
I was thinking of the same thing that Sari was thinking of.
So now I have to go in a completely different direction.
Well, it's neither of those things exactly.
So.
Hmm, a dream book.
If I were going to name something a dream book and it wasn't a really good band.
It's like a prog rock. Yeah, like a prog rock band.
Be like, oh, did you see dream book last night?
Yeah, they were so good.
Yeah. But now I'm confused as to whether I should be thinking it's a band or a thing.
Dream book.
They're both such good answers.
And it's just two words that both have meanings.
When you want to pay someone in your dreams, you pay them with Dreambook,
the greatest app in your dreams that you can use.
You just boop it, you know?
You just boop it, and then you You just boop it and then you're paying for whatever
case that's happening.
We got a dream expansion packs, you know?
Extra content.
They're gonna figure that out someday.
Don't speak that into the world.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm just gonna go with Sam.
It is, these were texts that describe images
that might be seen in dreams and also their meanings.
So you're kind of both kind of close,
but kind of equally close to me.
They were found in cultures all over the world.
The oldest example is as far back as 2000 BCE
in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and China.
It's just like a real thing that,
because dreams are really weird
and people of course thought
that they must have meant something. They were kind of faded out of popularity at the end of the 19th century in
Europe and North America among impoverished people who gambled and played the lottery and used them
to interpret their dreams and place their bets. That is a bad idea. Yeah. And with the 19th and
20th century rise of psychoanalysis and dream interpretation theories
put forward by Freud and Young, they kind of fell out of fashion.
I would be so curious to see if those ancient ones had any kind of overlap of like theme
or anything.
Yeah.
Like the teeth falling out means something specific or...
Exactly.
Because everybody has school dreams, right?
Like everybody has school dreams. Fall? Like everybody has school falling school, falling.
I follow a lot naked when you're not supposed to be naked.
That's the only one. Yeah.
So Sam's got a point.
Next, we have round two incubation.
This is a word that has something to do with dreams. Oh.
Incubation.
And incubus is for how?
I think this is something to do with prepping your space.
You know, like you get the right blankie and the right pillow and the right temperature
so you can like set yourself up for dreaming good.
That is good.
Okay, I'm going to go full, this is a nightmare situation.
This is like incubate.
We're going incubus.
That incubation is where you actually, I'm going to try to do this.
You really love incubi and are trying to, like you enjoy the experience of being scared
in a nightmare, kind of like watching a horror movie.
And so Incubation is setting yourself up
for a nightmare specifically.
Like you want nightmares.
Yeah, that makes sense.
That's just watching a horror movie.
And so Trace's years was kind of like nesting
to ensure a good night.
Yeah, yeah.
A good night's sleep or a good night's dreaming?
A good night's dreaming.
A good night's dreaming.
Yeah.
Incubation.
So, gosh, maybe it's like what your brain does when you're sleeping.
They like, like healing up like a, they were like, your brain's incubating, the dreams
are healing it somehow.
It's a long rest.
Yes, yes.
Well, Trace is very close to the actual thing.
It is in fact setting yourself up
for a specific set of dream situations.
And it was in fact specific to sleeping inside of a temple
or a shrine or some other holy space
to receive some kind of divine
dream. So going specifically to the lay down and then I will be in the right spot and you
will zap me the correct useful dream situation. And this was a thing in ancient Greece. It
was commonly employed for curative processes. So sleep petitioners would bring sacrifices to temples like those of the Greek
god of healing, who is called Asclepius. And Asclepius is like a sleepiest. You would do
this sleep near the temple. And if you had good dreams, they would interpret those to mean that
you had indeed been healed of whatever thing. And this is also like, it's not limited to Western cultures either.
It gets a thing that people would do.
Nowadays, dream incubation refers more broadly
to intentionally trying to influence
what kind of dream that you have
by using techniques like meditation
or to focus your mind right before going to sleep.
So basically exactly what Trace said.
Yeah.
That's cool.
A little bit like what Sari said too though,
cause I read this. S That's a little bit like what Sari said too though, cause I'll read this.
Sari's answer and was like, mine was like prepping your physical space and Sari's was
like prepping your mental space.
Maybe they should both get a point.
Mine was just stupid.
I don't get it.
That's definitely the least correct.
Mine was about healing though and as sleepiest does heal you.
So we're all right.
He's going to be mad So we're all right.
You're going to be mad at us.
All right.
Round three.
What does the phrase ominous vapor watcher mean?
It's somebody who I'm just going to get in
so I don't have to go last again.
It's somebody who looks at vapor and then maybe they look at vapor and then they say, you're
going to dream about this tonight.
Guessing a dream based on what comes out.
I don't know what you do with that information because you got to go to sleep, but that's
what it is.
Or wait, wait, wait.
They watch somebody sleeping.
They watch somebody sleeping and somehow they've rigged up something that vapors are coming
out of the sleeping person
And they look at the vapors and they're like they're dreaming about this right now
That's what it is. See live live streaming a dream through vapor
Well, I was thinking something similar to the watching people sleep like if you're an ominous vapor watcher
You're sitting with people who are sleeping and dreaming
And keeping the bad vapors from
them.
Oh, you're protecting them from the vapors.
Interesting.
So instead of trying to, you know, get out of your dreams, you're more just like, get
that, get out of here, vape, vape, vape.
Get that vapor out of here.
You got a fan, a big fan.
Yeah.
Really?
A really large fan.
Yeah.
Actually, that person's whole job when the oscillating fan came out, like it was just replaced, totally automated.
That's why fans are invented to keep the vapor away from you.
We'll really talk about robots taking our jobs as ominous vapor watchers. You don't
see them anymore.
We forgot. We forgot.
I think an ominous vapor watcher is someone who has tried to stay awake too long to avoid dreaming.
And then they become an ominous vapor watcher.
It's like, do you see that guy?
He's been up for 48 hours.
He's an ominous vapor watcher for sure.
He's at OVW big time.
Yeah, it's like a slang. Yeah.
All right. I think that Sam was definitely closest.
This was the official title of an ancient Chinese royal bureaucratic position
tasked with observing vaporous illuminations
that did not come from the person,
but appeared near the sun.
And a traditional symbol for the king was the sun.
So they would determine with those vapors
whether the king's dreams from the previous night
bode good or ill. Though honestly, I feel like the dreams
themselves should tell you that.
Like if somebody stabs the king and you're like, that's a good sign.
I don't feel like you're bureaucratic situation is going to be held on to for long.
It just seems useless.
Like, why don't they just ask the king?
The guy sitting outside looking at the sun the next day.
And then it's just like, yeah, the king's dreams were good.
And the king's like, just over there.
You could just ask him.
How are your dreams, buddy?
But maybe different dreams can bode
so many different things with many interpretations.
I mean, the most recent dream I remember having
is losing my son in a parking garage.
Oh, no.
Very scary dreams.
Typical dad dream.
I had to call everybody, be like, everybody, come help.
I lost him. I told him to stand there.
And then I went to a bar just like the exact, like most unforgivable act.
I don't even drink. Yeah.
Sounds just like you.
Stand here. I'll be back in like two to three hours.
That's what I said, I was like, don't move.
You should have just let him in the car at that point.
All right, so we've come out with that,
with Sam with two points,
Sarah with none, and Trace with one.
Next up, we're gonna take a short break
and then it'll be time for the fact off.
Welcome back everybody. Get ready for the fact off. Our panelists have brought science
facts to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind.
And after they've presented their facts,
I will judge them and award Hank Bucks any way I see fit.
But decide who goes first.
We must answer this trivia question, all three of you.
Dreaming occurs mostly during the REM phase of sleep.
And REM stands for rapid eye movement,
referring to the fact that our eyes keep moving
and seem to move frequently and even quickly,
even while we're totally zonked out. The velocity of REM is measured in degrees per second.
Think of our range of vision as what is visible, as a portion of 360 degrees of the space all around
us. How rapid do you think these rapid eye movements while sleeping can be measured in degrees per second degrees of?
moving around the the 360
per second
Whoa, yeah, there's a wild thing to do how rapid in degrees per second
I'm just gonna go with 90. I don't know just
245 degree movements every second. Yeah. yeah, sure. Yeah, that's good.
I'm going to do boom boom. That's pretty.
Yeah, I'm going to go slightly more 180.
OK, twice as much going twice as much.
Yeah, you can go from like you can't really twist your eye inside your head,
but one from one side to the other.
And the highest I could go is 360. Is that right?
No, no. I mean, it could be more than that.
You just have to be moving your eyes really fast.
Oh, then it be more than that. You just have to be moving your eyes really fast.
Oh, then it's like a thousand.
Oh, just a good old second.
A second's a long time to an eye, I think.
Yeah.
Wow.
Eyes are fast.
Way faster than a second.
Are you kidding me?
Especially if you're asleep.
Well, you can stop defending yourself, Sam.
You're wrong. It was 58 degrees.
58?
58.73 degrees per second.
Yeah, counter-intuitively based on the name,
eye movements during REM are generally much slower
than eye movements when you're awake.
What the heck?
Sam, you were right that they are fast.
The movements are called saccades,
and one study of saccade velocity while asleep
found an average velocity of 58.73 degrees per second
versus the average saccade velocity while awake,
which is up to 700 degrees per second.
Oh, I was close.
Oh.
Yeah, wow.
We were using our awake eye movements to judge
our sleepy guy movements. Yeah.
Well, that means that Trace gets to go first,
and then Sari, and then Sam isn't gonna go at all.
I'm just saying that.
You can't win, Sam, even though you won the game.
I'm just saying, well, if they do really, really bad,
I can't. They do really bad.
Yeah, their facts suck. Okay, if they have
terrible facts, I will let them know that to their faces.
My dream fact is based on a source from the BBC.
Scientists are using large fMRI datasets,
which Sam alluded to earlier,
where they scan their brains,
see their blood movement,
and then they're using those and feeding them into
generative AI to try
and approximate what is happening inside of the person's head.
They get self-reported data when they wake up,
and they're saying, here's what I dreamed about,
and they try and pair it with what's happening
across lots and lots of people.
And they're like, oh, this person was dreaming
about teacups and McDonald's, and this person was dreaming,
and they had the same blood flow at this point
and this point, and so they start pairing them together.
They need more fMRI data, but there is,
allegedly, researchers in Japan who can do this don't do it don't
those are my dreams you can't see them I don't want you to know about how I wasn't wearing
pants I wonder if they make them incubate first yeah I bet they do incubate them a little
bit like an fMRI is sort of a modern temple How do you sleep while you're in an fMRI? This is a great point. Don't they donk?
They do donk. Pretty loud. Maybe they give them really good earplugs. Like the best earplugs.
Oh, wow. I can't even imagine the best earplugs.
But like white noise, just like, yeah, that would be amazing.
I don't know. If like, I was tired enough, I'd sleep with the donks.
I can sleep under anything, I think.
I've never slept in a scan,
but I feel like I could get there
if I keep going the way I have been.
Sleepier and sleepier.
I did an FMRI study
because I just wanted to know what it felt like.
And they paid me a couple hundred dollars to do it
because I was really good at sitting still.
So I did a sleep deprivation study and I had to do a test on when I was fully awake and then
I had to do a test after staying up overnight. And by the end of it, in the fMRI, I was so
sleepy that I think I dozed off a little bit.
Yeah, that's not good because you can twitch. You might be one of those hypnic jerks and
then that ruins everything.
I don't think that ruined everything, but they had me watch nature documentaries. So it was intentionally like very relaxing.
And wow, that's not dope.
My scanners in Missoula don't have TVs.
It doesn't make you sit there for like 50 minutes.
Yeah, you can listen.
They do. They give you headphones and they're like,
you listen to a podcast and then you're like,
listen to a podcast and it's like,
donk, donk, donk, donk, donk.
So they're using, they're using the AI to match up
people who have similar patterns.
They're not like looking at the brain and being like,
here's what we think you dreamt about.
They're trying to recreate what people are dreaming about.
Okay.
The only way they can really see objectively what people are doing
is through the blood flow in their brain.
They're like, okay, well,
we're matching up this blood flow with
this self-reported dream that they remember.
They don't have enough data to really do a good job with this yet.
But if you can imagine lots and lots and lots and lots of people go through
dream studies over the next, I don't know, 40 years, maybe they'll be able to determine
Look, there's only there's one thing I know about the world.
It's that we're going to build a lot of MRIs in the next 10 years, we are just going to
we're going to need so much helium, you guys.
It's it's silly.
We love ourselves an MRI.
I mean, yeah, I would love to get one.
I'm jealous.
I wanna get paid to get an FMRI.
It's their own, to get an FMRI.
I don't think you can go get an FMRI.
That'd be cool.
That is cool.
It does make me, like, I don't know.
I feel like dreams are from another universe almost.
And the fact that they're just like things happening
in my brain kind of bums me out.
But still, what you end up dreaming still feels
of another universe.
Like the sort of like what consciousness,
what thing is deciding what's gonna get dreamed.
That's very weird to me.
Cause I tend to think like I can decide right now
to think about a gerbil or I could decide to think about like the taste of a fresh apple.
But I like in dreams like nobody's deciding what to think about but also in wakefulness
most of the time I'm not deciding what to think about. I'm just thinking I'm just out
of control. I don't know. It's very weird. Consciousness is strange.
Do you lucid dream?
Do you yeah, do you anybody lucid dream here? I have lucid dreamed
I'd like did a thing where I was like trained myself to lucid dream
But then I stopped because I kept waking up in them another night all the time
So you did successfully train yourself to do it. I did and but like I only did like four or five times
Well, yeah
I had a friend who told me that I should start writing my dreams down and that would
help me learn how to lucid dream.
And then last night I had a dream about, because I've been doing that, last night I had a dream
about that same friend and he had written a really funny book and I was really jealous
of it in my dream.
It wasn't even a funny book and I was really jealous of it.
And then in my dream, I thought to myself, I'm just dreaming this.
I wrote the funny book. This guy didn't do shit.
I don't remember what the book is.
Yeah, that's basically it.
Yeah. OK, that's that's disappointing.
Well, I mean, yeah, like the win is if you can start flying and I got it.
Also rollerblading like a professional rollerblader, which is what I've always wanted to be able
to do.
And so in the times when I made that happen, it lasted like in the in like dream land,
like 30 seconds before I woke up.
I've accidentally been able to control my dreams.
Like, you know, when somebody does something in a dream and then you're just like, oh,
I don't want it. And now you're in control and you're like, didn't realize that you could just make choices.
Yeah, like that. That was fun.
But I didn't wake myself up, but it's happened so rarely.
It would be cool to be able to do stuff.
Sarah, what do you got?
So that is a great segue, because I was going to ask if anyone had ever experienced lucid dreaming,
because I have not.
My understanding is that there's kind of a spectrum of lucid dreaming from like a minimal
kind of vibe-y awareness that's like, oh, I'm in a dream, to actually adjusting obstacles
of the narrative around you.
And it can be trained or practiced through like testing reality or mnemonics or intentionally
interrupting your sleep or all these things.
But lucid dreaming
might also be related to things that we do in our day to day lives, like playing a lot
of video games. So the psychologist Jane Gakenbach seems to have found her research niche in studying
video games and dreaming. Yeah. She's got a great name. She loves video games and dreaming. Yeah. She's got a great name.
Loves video games and dreaming.
And throughout her, like many years,
decades of research has basically found that what she and her research team
defines as a hardcore gamer, they have more lucid dreams than non-gamers.
And how they define a hardcore gamer is this like chuffed me
Plays video games several times a week four sessions of more than two hours
Has played 50 or more video games over the course of their lifetime and has been playing video games since grade 3 or earlier
Oh, wow. So okay. Well, I feel like I can be a hardcore gamer even if I started late, okay
Okay. Whoa.
I feel like I can be a hardcore gamer
even if I started late, okay.
Yeah.
Jane.
What if we can afford a Nintendo?
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I do like that, you know,
you need to have a parameter so that you are,
can exclude and include people.
Yep.
And this is how they've defined hardcore gamer.
I think I would fall into the category
except for I don't play games now.
So have I now lost it?
Do you play phone games?
No. I don't do anything for fun really.
I know.
I'm not existence right now.
And basically their hypothesis throughout all these studies is that video games are a technologically constructed alternate reality, while dreams are a biologically constructed alternate reality. And there are some similarities and
skills between lucid dreaming and video gaming, like good spatial awareness, high attention,
and this idea of like flow state that you're just in the world that is not your waking
experience. And so in a 2013 study, they surveyed 98 people in a university psychology class.
I'm guessing it was her class. Who knows? This is how research studies sometimes go.
And online. And they basically found that the lucid dreams of self-identified hardcore
gamers are more like their waking realities. So like one subject played a lot of Guitar
Hero and Halo and had a lucid dream of playing paintball from the first person perspective.
And another who played a lot of driving games,
the study didn't specify which ones,
and was able to like switch between the first
and third person perspectives during a dream,
when she was trying to escape a wolf.
So like in the way that you can switch perspectives
in a video game, that translates to that control
over the dream state.
And then separately, or maybe somewhat relatedly, there's some evidence in a 2008 study of theirs
that hardcore gamers might have less threatening nightmares,
or feel more empowered in their dreams relative to non-gamers.
And maybe this is because it's kind of like exposure to it there.
If you think of dreams as a way to expose yourself to threats or workout problems,
then you're already kind of doing that through the video game world.
And so you don't need to do it in your dream state.
And all of these conclusions, I always couch my facts with things
that make them sound less sensational because that's who I am as a person.
But these scientists basically say that the relationship between video games
and dreaming is very, very complicated
because there are so many different games
and so you can't compare people
if you're playing puzzle phone games,
if you're playing Candy Crush for hours and hours
to playing Halo for hours and hours.
Those are entirely different video game experiences.
I disagree with that.
Because I think one of the most,
I can pretty reliably guess that I will have a dream
with game logic.
If I'm playing any game, I've had Tetris Dream, I've had Minecraft Dream, I've had Fortnite
Dream, I've had like where you're like, those rules are applying to the dream that you're
having basically.
Or at least that's the sensation that you get.
So I feel like, yeah, I think any kind of game can rewire your brain enough to do that kind of thing.
I once played so much Tetris in college that I wrote a word in a paper,
and I expected it to start falling down the screen.
Whoa.
Whoa.
That's awesome.
I expected Tetris physics to take over a word document.
It really is like what you said.
It's like you are interacting with a different reality where your brain instantly is just
like, well, in this reality, I can jump this high and that just feels right.
I don't know.
I think it translates.
I heard once somebody said that nobody ever goes on Twitter in their dreams and I was
like, nope, that's not right.
Oh, no, hang on.
No, that's not right. Twitter is a hang on. No, that's not right.
Twitter is a video game, basically.
It's a video game, yeah, where you can interact
with a lot of mean people.
I was a hardcore gamer for that for a while.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So I have to choose, I have to choose
between approximating dreams with weird AI models
or a serious fact, lucid dreaming
and the effects of video games on dreams.
Oh, those are both very cool.
I don't know.
The fact that we can like look into people's brains
is very cool on its face.
And then the fact that dreams are real
and they're actually a thing that's happening
in your brain, that's very good.
And Trace is already ahead.
I have to get, okay, Trace,
you're the winner of today's episode of SciShow Tanger.
I'm being cowed. Wow, wow.
I'm just thinking crazy. That's crazy.
All right, now it's time to ask the science couch
where we have a listener question for our couch
of finely honed scientific minds.
At 23SkidZ on Twitter asked, are fever dreams real?
Why do dreams get weirder and more vivid
and so disorganized when you have a fever?
Well, they're definitely real because that was I had a dream when I had mono that I accidentally
or I like had to for some reason stuff my grandmother into a mailbox and then sleep
on it.
Oh, like a blue one or like a mailbox like at the end of your drive?
No, like at the end of the driveway mailbox.
Oh, no, that would make more sense.
But no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, at the end of the driveway mailbox. Oh, no, that would make more sense.
But no, but she was very easy to get in there.
It's a little tight, but.
But yeah, I mean, I do.
I know why, though.
I do not know why.
Just the sub rip of just inflammation, maybe.
Is there any is there any thought that dreams do have something to do
with like healing your brain or like making connections in a positive way?
Is there something that you're super healing or trying to do something
and your brain is just scrambling?
Yeah, so I think there's some, to Sam's question, there's some models,
the two main models, or okay, three more main models of dreaming.
One is psychodynamic, which is like
the Freud stuff of dreams represent some fulfillment of unconscious wishes, you're
processing unconscious stuff. One of them is called the activation input modulation model,
just sort of like, you've just got a bunch of hormones flooding in, it may serve like
a creative function. So processing trauma, healing, providing virtual reality,
integrating a bunch of stuff.
And then there's the neurocognitive model,
which is just like, there's no function,
but your brain just is a brain.
And this is like what your brain does as an organ is think.
And so it can't not think.
There's no, like you don't turn off your heart,
you don't turn off any of your other organs. And so your brain just doesn't never turns off.
I like that last one.
Yeah.
That's relatable.
We just are. We have not mapped any of those two fever dreams as far as I know, I think
as far as we've gotten with fever dreams, I found a 2013, a 2016, and a 2020 study that were
combinations of like online surveys and whatnot. They're all retrospective
studies which means that they didn't like wake people up with fevers. They
asked people to remember fever dreams and so they're like tell me about your
most horrifying fever dreams and what was the content of them and they
basically found that people tended to remember their fever dreams because they
were so bizarre like stuffing your grandma in a mailbox kind of dreams, often had a negative
tone, often were very emotionally intense, bizarre, relative to other dreams that these
people remembered having. So most of the studies are about just like they exist. And then we
have a couple ideas of why they might cause these more disruptive dreams.
Part of the problem is that we don't know what fevers actually are.
We don't have like a consistent definition of fever, which is a very weird thing.
Which surprised me and I feel like I've read about it before, but your body gets hot.
Like that's part of it.
It is a sign of inflammation.
So like an immune response,
but the symptoms vary across different patients,
across different disease types,
across different like stages and different diseases
of like all the other physiological stuff
going on in fever.
Main thing that we know about is like elevated temperature.
You're a little bit hotter, Your brain's a little bit hotter.
And we know that hot brains disrupt,
hot brains, like Kimbo's,
disrupt the brain's normal cognitive processes.
So during a high fever, your brain's not working as well.
They significantly increase your wake time.
You have kind of fitful sleep.
Your rapid eye movement sleep is more disrupted,
and so then your dreams might be influenced by that
because your sleep isn't working properly.
And then there's also another hypothesis
called the continuity hypothesis,
which kind of gets to that psychoanalytic zone,
which says that your dreams might mirror
some of your waking thoughts and experiences.
So if you're feverish and unpleasant and grumpy and feeling bad in real life,
then your dreams might also be worse in effect. They're also not going to be restful in your dreams.
That makes a tiny bit of sense to me.
I remember doing something about not fever dreams, but dreams in general years ago in a podcast video.
something about not fever dreams, but dreams in general years ago in a podcast video.
And they talked about like when you fall asleep, you cool off, like you your body temperature tends to drop. So that makes a lot of sense that if you are hotter, things are going to behave weird,
your brain is going to act differently because you're not supposed to be warm, you're supposed
to be even below body temperature. I think that's as close as we've got is like,
other scientists also know that fact that
you shared, Trace, and they're like, okay, it's weird now.
Yeah.
So what?
It's weird.
It seems bad.
It's more like pointing out that the patterns exist rather than having a cohesive explanation
for the patterns.
We are.
Yeah.
I just feel like it's so we're still quite a ways away.
We need more f FMRIs.
Always.
Now for our listeners on Patreon,
we're gonna answer a bonus science count question.
Sam, what is it?
At TrumpetDoc and at LunaLewise86
and at Emma Fisher 6067 on YouTube.
I'll ask the same exact question and here it is.
How common are reoccurring dreams and how do common dreams vary across culture?
Like teeth falling out or falling?
We already touched on this a little bit, but I would be very curious about that as well.
Yeah.
If you want to hear the answer to that question as well as enjoy all new episodes ad-free,
you can head over to our Patreon.
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At our $8 a month tier, you can get new new episodes ad free and extended shenanigans as we answer a bonus science couch question every episode
Our patrons are the best. Thank you so much
We're very grateful for their support of the show trace where we can find more of what you're up to
You can go to our website for our podcast
That's absurd show comm if you want to ask questions, the whole show is basically just we answer questions
from people who listen.
So Sari's been on and answered amazing questions
from our weird and incredible audience.
You can also find me on YouTube, LeonardoSofTrace.
Just look for Trace Dominguez or wherever else.
If you look for Trace Dominguez or just TraceScience,
you're probably going to find it.
Amazing.
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Thank you for joining us.
I've been Hank Green.
I've been Sari Riley.
I've been Sam Schultz.
I've been Trey Staminguez.
SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Jess Stempert.
Our associate producer is Eve Schmidt.
Our editor is Seth Glicksman.
Our social media organizer is Julia Buzz-Bazio.
Our editorial assistant is Bukki Chakravarti.
Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish.
Our executive producers are Nicole Sweeney and me, Hank Green, and of course, we couldn't make any
of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you, and remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled,
but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing.
Psychoanalysis is pretty controversial these days and debates over its scientific legitimacy
are sometimes called the Freud Wars.
But because psychoanalytic theories suggest
that dreams might tell us something
about people's unconscious minds,
there are a lot of wild dreams
that have been written down and interpreted.
For example, in a 1957 paper called
Three Defenses Against Inner Persecution,
written by the psychoanalyst Hans Thörner,
he collects various patient case stories,
including one where the patient reported a dream in which red spiders were crawling in and out of his amus,
which he interpreted as a feeling of persecution by bad internal objects.
Oh, yucky.
Seems a little on the nose to me.
Bad internal objects.
Look, we've all got some bad internal objects.
That's why you need an MRI.
Sometimes they got to come out.
Come out your butt.