From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Our colleague Gol is on an adventure, but will return shortly.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Shout out to everyone who has this plane on some kind of automatic shuffle or playlist as they are slumbering sleeping listeners. We welcome you to tonight's episode, which is all about dreams. Dreams, dreams.
That's right. You may even be aware and awake at this point in the show, but very soon you will drift off. What you dream will be directly influenced by what.
You hear eight minus six. We've had some fascinating explorations of dreams in the past. We're talking about this and related cognitive science off air. While back, we did a two part episode on the concept of precognitive or clairvoyant dreams. Dreams that, from the perspective of their supporters, dreams that appear to predict the future, violating what we understand is the laws of linear time and what we learned in those episodes, it's weird. I went back and listened to
the matt and reread the research too. We went back and listened to those episodes and reread the research, and we found that the basic physiological or neurological phenomenon that we call the dream is understood in that we know it happens. We also know the other non human animals dream. Do check out many video clips of octopuses that appear
to be dreaming. And Dylan and you and I were having a little family time before we rolled, talking about how much we enjoy our animals dreaming, like our pets are, our dogs and cats and so on.
It's pretty adorable, especially watching my dog dream, just watching how animated her body is, where she will physically be running. You can see her arms moving while she's laying on her side as though she's chasing something, and then making verbal sounds as though she's barking at something or up said about something. Even it's fascinating. What makes you wonder what we really do when we're asleep. And if you sleep next to someone on the regular, maybe you've got
some reports of what your sleeping life is like. But even they might be sleeping too in the times when we're doing really wacky stuff, jogging in place, doing ninja stuff. I don't know.
Yeah, and I've seen this. I've seen birds dream I've seen an octopus stream. I've seen one of my cats actually doesn't make a lot of appearances on here, the cat with a thousand names. I've seen that guy went a wall a few years back and then returned to his own volition, and ever since then he's been having
dreams where he's obviously back outside hunting things. And he also snores, And one time he snored so loudly that he woke himself up and then turned and shot a poison glance my way, screamed at me, and instantly went back to sleep.
What did you do? Me? Up? Right?
Right right? Another phenomenon that's a good entry point, because we know that dreams can Dreams are functionally another version of reality that you experience in a specific series of brain activity stages, and that vividness, the appearance of concrete experienced reality is why again, if you sleep next to someone all the time, it is why your girlfriend might wake up mad at something you did in her dream. Classic trope.
Yep. I would just say that kind of thing occurs a lot. I think that's probably universally and just your significant other. Yeah, look at you a little different. When you wake up in the morning. You're like, what's going on? Everything? Okay, You're just a jerk.
Right right? You're like, what, I just woke up too? And then they're like, yeah, well, I guess I'll see you on the lush, exotic coast of Belgium, asshole. And you know what do you do but respond politely and wait for people to get back and sync with the waking world. We know more and more about brain activity during dream states, but get this, even on May sixteenth, Friday, twenty twenty five, human civilization still isn't sure why dreams
are a thing. No, Matt, you'll remember in our previous explorations, I think we landed on the on a loose agreement that the most plausible answer for dreams as and why they're a thing. It goes down to the concept of like defragging a hard drive and encoding memory, and that's the most widely scientifically accepted explanation, but the debate continues. And back in twenty twenty one, we had a interesting conversation about a controversial ad campaign, and that is what
led to tonight's episode. You see, despite the fact that people don't fully understand dreams and what this bizarre mental activity is, civilization in the past few decades has made stunning and we would posit somewhat disturbing progress toward manipulating dreams. And that's where our story begins.
Yes, it begins right after these words from our sponsors.
Here are the facts. What are dreams? All right? We're not going to belabor our earlier complaints about how cartoonish the idea of sleep is. To begin with. Dreaming is literally and simply put, a hallucinatory experience that occurs to some living organisms during sleep. Yep, it's hallucinating.
Yeah, it's extremely vivid images, sounds, all of your other sensory equipment. It gets activated via that old brain you got up in that head of yours, and it's pretty cool. It's awesome. Actually, dreams can be fulfilling, dreams can be terrifying, dreams can make you go out and try and fulfill some vision that you saw while you were sleeping.
Yeah, and unless we sound like we're casting aspersions on our much beloved pets, we've all been in a situation where your nervous system gets confused about which reality you're in. Because dreams are truly the first virtual reality. That is what the series of hallucinations can be defined at. So everybody's had that moment where you just sort of feel like you're falling and who right, yeah, or you need to move and you can't that sleep paralysis. Check out
our episodes on that. Please do do do do keep it. Please check out our two part episode on whether dreams have really predicted the future. For now, for us, the most important thing to remember about this mental state is the following. Like you alluded to, Matt, dreams have always mystified humanity, and they've created a great deal of religious thought, and they've also determined many real world events. The wars have been inspired, right because somebody woke up having a
vivid dream that stayed with them upon waking. Religions have been founded upon this civilization has hinged on these images from the dark.
And you know, I've written multiple songs because I woke up and I just couldn't get a thought out of my head that was somehow conjured in those moments when I was asleep. And I've done that with drawing as well, where you just wake up here, what is this thing? I have to get it down, whatever message was trying to be conveyed to me by myself. I gotta put this down.
Yeah. Actually, I think I told you a few years back. I do most of my best writing in the few hours when I'm asleep, and then I wake up and go, oh okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, just pour it out. Or that old Mitch Hebberg joke, you know he has to keep a notepad by his night stand because otherwise he wakes up in the middle of the night, doesn't have a way to write it down, and has to tell himself the joke wasn't that good?
Well, because then it'll be gone. That is the thing, dream journaling and all that stuff. If you don't get it down immediately, your brain is going to start filling in gaps and just make up other things, which could be great if you're in a creative process.
Right sure, yeah, we And also, what, well, how about this later on in tonight's episode, will teach you a little pen and pad free mnemonic encoding device to help you remember your dreams when you wake up, and it does work. It's weird, but it's worth trying. So, like Matt, you and I have a lot in common with countless authors and musicians. Mary Shelley right, Frankenstein. Paul McCartney credits a lot of his musical endeavors to experiences in his
dream state. We also know this is not restricted to what we would call quote unquote creative pursuits, even though I think science is inherently a creative pursuit. Scientists like Neils Bohr have made some of their greatest discoveries while literally asleep. As we all know, Borr, who is considered the father of quantum mechanics, He repeatedly throughout his later life credited his discovery of the structure of the atom
to a dream. He said, look, I was just having a regular day, regular night.
You know.
He ate his soup and rude of begas or his case idella whatever Niels Porn was eating, and he goes to sleep, regular guy. He starts dreaming about atoms, and he vividly sees it is burned into his brain. The nucleus of the atom, the electrons and the passages they spin in orbit around it, the way the planets spin around the Sun. And he wakes up and he goes, holy shit.
Yeah, yeah, it's exactly what he said. Well, if we think about dreams as specifically defragging the hard drive that is your mind and your neural connections, and then we imagine that every thought and every reference, every word, all of the things that you have to be able to produce as language and to have thoughts are connections between
different neurons. Right sure, yep. And if we are defragging, we've maybe learned about seventeen different things in one day, and then we've got some older memories packed in there that we defrag the right way in our dreaming state, and that connection gets made without us being consciously aware of it, and then you wake up and now it's there.
And riddle me this, because this verge is onto something fascinating that has still yet to be explained. Let's walk through it. So we know that different avenues of receiving external stimuli process memory in different ways. Smell and taste are extremely powerful. That's right. That's why, right now, if we ask you friends and neighbors to recall your favorite smell, it's gonna pop in your head. It's not just gonna
pop in your head. A series of favorite smells are gonna pop in your head, along with associate images and maybe the sense of time and what you experienced it. So this is what mystifies me. Folks. Why why are dreams often not reported in terms of smell or olfactory stimuli?
I don't have that thing. I can't think about a smell.
Most people don't dream, don't encounter smells when they're dreaming. And if you do, please let us know, because you would be a fascinating outlier. Right, this is something I think it. I think it goes down to the way smell and taste in code into the brain. I really think that's it.
Sorry, I was gonna be I was gonna make a joke about you know, if you're if you're getting actively Dutch ovens while asleep and you're unaware of it, then you could probably sense smell while you're dreaming.
Yeah, don't call us, call call the pot police. Yeah, law in order, poop police. Boom boom, Oh wow, you're gonna get sued, no joke left behind anyway. So I love that man in these and other cases, though, we do see the science and dreaming at play, right, And you and I have known each other for quite some time, and we've talked consistently over the years about the nature of lucid dreaming. Don't make fun of us. Matt and
I do share our dreams with each other. We have also encountered lectures and courses and even technology that's designed to inculcate lucid dreaming to help you understand the symbols or interpretations of what you see, journaling exercises like you mentioned.
This is valuable stuff. And the thing that I'm not going to speak for you, But the thing that bugs me often about skepticism in this regard is that a lot of the more skeptical of us will dismiss dreams as little bore than, like a knock on cool side effect of evolution. Right, But then we have to ask what happened if Matt forgot the song that he learned in his dream. What happens if Neil's Boorr just forgets
the structure of atoms? What happens if that legendary sleepy little patent cleric Albert Einstein ignores his own slumbering visions on the principle of relativity and the nature of the observable universe.
Yeah, then all of our sleep just becomes blackness, nothingness, the void itself.
I'd be fine with that, man. There's a reason I don't sleep often. It's so weird.
Oh no, I get it. Dream that is something we should talk about. Dreams can also be the worst thing ever, especially if you've got traumatic experiences in the waking world. By I've been there, I think maybe a lot of us have, where the moment you fall asleep, it is feels like torture almost, because you're just back there.
I also, you know what I hate. This may be symptomatic of a larger mental issue, but I can't remember if I told you this. The majority of my dreams exist in an interconnected universe. They're aware of each other. They reference earlier stuff. It's weird.
Well, you're actually fine. An ancient vampire, right, and what else?
Uh?
Is the spirits of the dead. No, it's seriously, it's weird stuff. Man, Like that is cool.
That's like a superpower though, because you could build that universe like here if you wanted.
To, Man, I don't know, Like I haven't told you all the stuff. It's the lore is deep and it's like I want to reboot oh Ya again. But anyway, it doesn't matter. We're not here to talking about me. We're here to talk about the fact that people have been interpreting dreams. We've been human civilization has been trying to understand what the heck this is and why it exists since before humans figured out how to write things down.
And it's a thriving industry today. I don't want to put you too far on the spot, but do you ever do you ever have a dream that sent you to the Internet? Do you ever just do a quick google on dream symbolism?
Oh?
Generally no, But I have weird stuff Like the other night, Jimmy Fallon and Chloe Feinman and I were hanging out and for some reason drinking absence Like, but that was cool. It wasn't haunting, it wasn't scary, it was just great.
Yeah, it's just a moment that happens, you know what I mean. Also, also, folks, from just a production perspective, please respect your brain. It is doing new shows every single time you fall asleep, you know what I mean. Yeah,
not all of them are going to be terrible. Some will be great, and then some will be Like I had one where I had to drive from one dream to another, and time is tricky in this virtual reality, but it was literally two and a half hours that I remember where I'm just driving and listening to light instrumental music.
That's beautiful, man. I don't know, man, Well, it's a weird thing because time doesn't work the same in dreams. I don't know if anybody has experienced this, but I took a nap. In total, it was fifteen minutes, just like lay your head down. For me, it was literally in between two meetings because I just couldn't keep my eyes open laid down. I thought it was days in a dream like I thought so much time had passed, but it was, no, it was It was less than
fifteen minutes. So it is a weird thing that we can perceive that stuff even when in this space, this reality, it's only been a couple of minutes.
Yeah, I remember similar experiences. I think we've all had some time or linear time parkour in dreams, which is one of the one of the coolest branches of the concept of dreaming, and there is a modern scientifically respected version of dream study owneurology O N E I R O L O G. Why it's branch of psychology, and they're not really trying to do the Freudian Youngian interpretation of you know, what does this blue tiger mean? Right?
Why does it pursue you? Or things like that. What they're doing instead is exploring the process of dreaming and further attempting to correlate the nature of the lived experience of the dream to the activity in the human brain on a physical neurological level, and then also to understand how it relates to memory formation, how it may relate to mental disorders and other I don't love the term, but other divergent conditions. That's how it's often put in literature.
That word reminds me of oni. The concept of oni. Isn't that a specific type of yokai like a yes demon, right, which makes you think of nightmares, which makes me think of like the when we looked up the origins of that concept, Wow.
Okay, nightmares that's sleep paralysis episode was a banger and also interesting. If we want to go YOUNGI in just for a moment, I believe Eve, and I'm not gonna I'm not going to google it. Let's see if I'm right. I believe that an one is subterranean trogoladitic. I believe they're found in caves, in deep places, which Young would just love.
Deep within the recesses of the folds of your mind.
Dude, Young would be Okay. If you had to pick between hanging out with Freud or hanging out with Carl Young, I'm gonna say it, I would probably go Young. Freud feels like a very smart dude who could be a lot.
I'm going with Freud so I can get to Berne's.
He'll say, why do you keep asking about my nephew. We're supposed to sit over here, lick these cigars and not think of penises. Freud was crazy, dude. I feel like enough time has passed right that I can say that he was He was, Yes.
He was protecting. Is that what you're saying?
He proposed and projected a lot of interesting concepts. But and look, a lot of people struggle with substance abuse. But that guy apparently loved cocaine.
Who doesn't. I'm just joding me. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what that's.
Like me neither. I think I'll leave that experience unexperienced. I'll just read Freud, I guess anyway. So, fellow oeneurologist in the crowd, awake and asleep. We know this sounds a little dry, maybe disappointing, but please trust us. There is bizarre stuff ahead. We have been fascinated by the concept of well you'll see. We'll pause for a word from our sponsors. Here's where it gets crazy, all right, there turns out right it's an ancient science interpreting dreams,
figuring out what dreams mean. There are in recent decades fascinating, fascinating experiments into the nature of dreams. The more passive stuff is observing what happens in a brain when a dream occurs. And then you get to the idea of enabling that dream world or the dreamer to communicate with the waking world. And then you get into Flutson with a dream, you know what I mean, touching it just a little. What dreams may come rated.
Film dreams.
Got to and everybody knows how we spelled that.
Oh yeah, okay, Well, the thing that I think fascinated us pretty recently. Back in January, we found this story about a company that was trying to do this kind of stuff. How do we unli the power of dreams? Right? And how do we even potentially connect people via dreams the way we would connect people in an alternate reality space or a virtual reality space by making their senses via you know, Wi Fi signaling see each other, hear each other, and potentially even feel each other.
Right. Which avenue of sensory stimuli can we hack? You know? What I mean? Is where we get down to it. This is a response to an ancient thing that is problematic for a lot of scientists, and I will confess in my various misadventures it has been problematic and difficult for me to explain as well. Folks, you have perhaps felt that you have communicated with a loved one or a quaint since what's that old trope? There are no strangers in dreams. Someone reached out to you. And this
idea is ubiquitous. It exists across time and cultures, and modern science overwhelmingly says, you know, clap trap, hogwash they do.
Until again, this group came along and said, well, let's at least give it a try. Let's see if we can make it happen. And by the way, the person acquaintance unknown, whoever it is that we feel is communicating to us in our dream, that can be a living person, that can be a like again, like for some reason, Jimmy Fallon was all about like encouragement and stuff in my dream. I don't know why. I don't know the dude,
but he was. But he could also be somebody who's passed on already, right, or maybe somebody from history that we that we know and love, or somebody we have we've never met before, right or could never have met.
Right or because we're also immediately you the observer and the dream you are gifted with dream logic, which means when you meet someone. That's why we say you no strangers. Really, when you meet someone, you immediately know key things about them, key visceral things.
Yep, and they you because they are you. You are you, and they are you. We are us. What's happening? Okay, So let's get to this company. Yes, it is in California. It's called rem Space r E M space. That's one word. Uh. They put out several studies and some a bunch of PR stuff, to be fair, like a lot of this is prs, a.
Lot of a lot of PR.
Including like diagrams and videos, and.
So much so that I believe both of your faithful correspondence folks struggle to find the actual you know what I mean. But it sounds awesome, So let's just it sounds cool, dream with us, Okay, Matt, what's happening.
Well, they're able to connect two people who are experiencing some form or level of lucid dreaming to then be able to send one signal from one dreamer via Wi Fi through their system out to the other side to another human being sleeping far far away, also lucid dreaming. Then then that person received a signal from the other person and was able to then repeat it.
Yeah, exactly. So they're using and again this is a startup and it is hoping to monetize what we're exploring. That's an important thing for later. This experiment uses, as you said, Matt, just your average brain monitoring equipment, the server and the Wi Fi or key. The researchers use the brain monitoring equipment to watch in real time the action and activity of the brain and then when they receive the signal that indicates the participant has entered a
hypnogogic or lucid dream state. Then the server, not the researchers, the server creates a word in such like some sort of specific quote unquote unique language word, which is how we know this A is pr and not science. And so it said, the server creates this thing, and it sends it to now our hypnogogic or lucid sleeper via earbuds that they're wearing as they enter that state, and they are still dreaming, but they can still hear the
outside world. So they repeat the word in whatever the hell a unique language means.
And these are sitting there sleeping, and then they say it out loud in their body. They dream it somehow. Then the clock it. The researchers understand that that's.
What happens, because they measure they can see according to what we understand. The the brain monitoring equipment indicates a change such that you would know someone that has received
and repeated to themselves internally information. And now, of course if we're at that state of lucid dreaming, or if we're between full wake and full sleep, then yeah, it's possible that someone just went someone went oh, I see or whatever, but that's not what we're looking for, and so small window of time passes in the real world, right,
I know, we're getting very inception with this. The second sleeper has entered their lucid dream state, they receive that saved message from the server, and then they wake up and they repeat the word that they learned communicated in a dream state to a dream state, yet still created and entirely dependent upon the server and the Wi Fi.
Yeah, that's where it's a little weird. I think when you look at some of the materials that rem Space is put forward, it feels as though it sounds as though, if you don't get dived too deep into it, as though the Lucid dreamer created a message and sent it to the second Lucid dreamer and they were lucid dreaming simultaneously. And it feels as though, at least to some of their materials, that it's happening in real time, like the sleepers are just communicating with each other. But that is
not at least what we understand to be happening. It is all their their tech basically that is doing all of this stuff. But potentially cool if you had two eight comms in dream states. I don't know, man, no, I think. In the episode when we first brought up, we talked about long distance relationships and how interesting it
would be to actually connect. You know, there's a saying if I don't know if anybody else has this experience, but like saying good night going to Ben's sing, I'll see in the dreams, Cabra, I'll see out there in the dreams, And you say it as a hopeful thing, a sweet thing. Sure, what if you could actually flick on a machine, put a little something on your head and nay, now we're out there in dream world together.
Interesting? That interesting that you would bring up that part specifically, because that aspect of our conversation stayed with me as well. We know for this right, like what we're describing, according to the PR is the ideal next step for r EM space. But what we see, even with this tech reliant proof of concept, is the first known instance of communication between people whom are both in a dream state
a sender and a receiver exists. Right. This also follows up on an earlier experiment from twenty twenty one, which was a big year actually for dream science researchers. Well, there was this sort of justice League or Avengers or x men of researchers from multiple countries who collaborated. And this is led by a guy named Ken pallor cognitive neuroscientist over in Illinois at Northwestern, and they are able to create dialogue between a person in a dream state
and a fully awake scientist. It's not a very long conversation at all, but it is interesting. I don't know if it's long enough for us to do a classic like stuff. They don't want you to know reenactment, but maybe we just do the lines together.
Oh no, let's tell you this. Okay, I will play the scientist. If you don't mind, Ben, please play the sleeper. Here we go. Scientist says eight minus six.
Eight two.
Eureka, guys, what happened?
I was so asleep? Man, I was sleeping, definitely, man.
Shout out to all of us who are so impressed that somewhat did math while asleep.
Yeah. I don't even know if you're supposed to be able to do that, man.
Yeah, we have to check with sleep police.
Yeah.
I love how we're just inventing police departments. Now we got poop police. We got sleep police.
Uh huh, we got Java police. They said that you've had enough coffee, as he drinks a monster coffee.
Job police arrest this.
That's a good one too.
Oh yeah, guys, we are drinking canned coffee because.
It's just not the same when it's in a cup, but if it's in a can, and he goes.
I dreamed that you said that, So so okay, look eight minus six. Our scientist, Frederick, Doctor Frederick says eight minus six to a sleeping person, and our patient says, I essentially I hear you, and here is the answer. So I know this is not in this barely freezed as an interrogative. It's just the three words eight minus six, and the sleeper, despite not being awake, immediately recognizes, interprets, analyzes this as a math conversation, and then produces the result.
Yeah, well amazing. So it's not the same as what rem Space claims to have done, but it is pretty cool to be able to send a message out into
that dream world and then get a response. It kind of reminds me of some of the sci fi tropes where you've got somebody going through like a portal or something, or even someone going down into the depths of the ocean, and there's still communication between the surface world and then the depths of the ocean where just someone else is exploring out in an unknown, unseen place, and then people back in you know, the waking real, you know, whatever we call real world, can then talk to that person
and see what they're discovering. I don't know, I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time even like phrasing these things correctly. But I'm imagining the dreamscape as another world to be explored, another reality to be explored.
One hundred percent. Yes, like the high heavens, the deep ink of space, and the ocean and the seas. It also reminds me of I don't know if there are any fans of the television series Fringe.
In the crowd.
Yes, but remember, dude, yeah, I know we are. But remember the entangled typewriters. This is a slight spoiler three two one. These people and characters and entities are able to communicate across various planes of existence through putting a mirror next to a special kind of typewriter and typing one thing in their reality and then seeing a message typed out on the mirror.
Oh, it is so cool, so good that show gives me frision.
Is excited to meadows on board. We also know that depending on how further research works out REM Space and other startups or initiatives like it, some of which, by the way, are federally or militarily funded, they may pave the way for brand new approaches to things like treating PTSD or anxiety, along with some other stuff that we'll talk about after the next ad break. We do have to Matt, We've got to say it. Michael Riduga is the founder and CEO of rem Space, and he is
pretty ambitious in his statements about it. He says the follow in multiple PR communicats. Quote yesterday, communicating and dreams seemed like science fiction. Tomorrow it will be so common we won't be able to imagine our lives without this technology. Ambitious, you know, man's reach must exceed his grasp. Else what's a heaven for? And however the old poem goes. But also full disclosure, Reduga has made some controversial moves in the past. He did put a chip in his own skull.
Yeah, he gave himself brain surgery with a home depot drill and it wasn't from home depot, but you know, a drill that you would use for wood and stuff. And then he had to get it removed because you know, he put a chip in his own brain at his own house, which almost died. Like we admire.
Well officially he said personal reasons. Yeah, but I think being alive as a personal reason ambitious. This man is ambitious. This man is all to say. When you think about it, it's an exciting time to be asleep.
Weird.
Exciting doesn't always mean good. What if we take a break for a word from our sponsors here, and then, as they say on the LA leaguers, we get to the chicken. I think there's something you and I are both excited slash terrified to explore.
Let's do it, and we're back.
This is the thing that stayed with us the most and really informs our exploration tonight, Matt. As you and I alluded to earlier, the same innovations that allow for potential anxiety or trauma treatment, the same innovations that allow for or potentially better communication between people, also, inevitably, just like nuclear research, lead us to the dark side, the troubling stuff. What if by the same the same methods used to observe and help people in a dream state.
What if we could manipulate it, put a thug on the scale.
What if that scientist instead of saying eight minus six said drink core's light.
Yes, yes, exactly. And I loved when we talked about this back in twenty twenty one in our Strange News program. The year before that, in twenty twenty researchers over at MIT, which is a kind of good school. They are they're gonna be so bad. All right, it's fine as school. I'm kidding. Oh my gosh, they're gonna kill us anyway. Media they have a thing called Media Lab Fluid Interfaces. This is a group that created something called targeted dream
Incubation or TDI. The technology or the approach, the methodology they deploy is new, but the concept isn't. You can read some great, some great work by a journalist named Sophia Motino about this, writing for Science and she just describes the following. You know, dream incubation is, in my opinion, something familiar to anybody who's played a video game too long before bed. It's where images sounds, repetitive, sensory cues shape the content of the hallucinations you have in your
sleeping state. And Sophia goes on to note this is an ancient people throughout history had rituals techniques to try to change the content of your dreams. That's why in the Western world, that's why people pray before bedtime, you know what I mean, Let God shepherd me through the night and things like that.
Well, it's a cool it's one of the reasons people do a lot of research before bed, meditate, often create art, write songs. I mean, some of the things that you do right before bed tend to find their way into your dreams, at least most vividly. Yeah.
Yeah, And that makes sense because if we encounter a sort of sedimentary accretion theory of stimulus before you leave the waking world, then you could argue that the stuff at the top, the soil at the top, is going to be the things that the shovel hits first.
Right or last. It could be either right, and then it just depends on we don't really know if the brain goes from the bottom up like what we learned today, Okay, going from the bottom up to the top of the thing. The last thing you learn or does it start from the top, as you're saying, go down.
And we don't know whether certain let's call them elements. I'm loving this analogy, by the way, may have more weight, right, and metaphorical weight because of the variables of previous holes dug right, previous shovels, things that this is where we enter recurrent content. Right. The nightmares that haunt you are the We're just gonna let that one go.
It's just your brain going, oh crap. We really haven't dealt with that yet. We're trying to, but we can't.
Yeah, so we know that people would, like you said, Matt, people would meditate, People might do a creative act like journaling, writing, sculpting, painting, sketching, praying, of course, And sorry, I got that wrong. I'm not an expert on the Christianity stuff. It's now I lay me down to sleep, not God shepherd me through the night. I think that's a different religion. It's now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep I.
Mean that's one of the Yeah, that's one of the prayers. There's so many, dude.
What's the cool one?
Uh me this night? No, I don't know.
To the glorious dead and also me falling asleep on the couch watching Police Academy five.
You hold the septa, we hold the key. You are the devil, we are an e. I think that's how it goes.
That's amazing and that's a tribute. Yeah, So shout out to the fellow nerds who enjoyed that. Oh, Noel would have had chuckle at that too. So all right. People would also use drugs, right, And this we see reflected in things like the concept of sipping a nightcap or the an alcoholic beverage before bed, or for instance, people who ingest cannabis right, or take any number of pill medications, et cetera. Yes, yes, exactly. Which what an amazing word, right.
It sounds like it does something. It does it does something, but it sounds like it's a real word, and it's very much not a real word.
Sleep drive to Kroger. That's what it does.
Right. Oh and then if you ever misbehave on social media, blame it on the ambient anyway. So TDI targeted dream incubation. It is the in this sense before the thing we're about to get into. It is the combination of an app and a wearable sleep tracking sensor device. Things that you and I were I think both contemplating for a while. Did you ever pull the trigger on that, like the like the lucid dream goggle thing.
Oh no, I never, I never tried it. I would love to, though, I would really really like to do that.
It'd be interesting. If you want to read more about this, folks, check out the paper that the people at MIT. I'm laughing, Dylan, so as a joke that the check out the paper the people at MIT wrote called dormio a targeted dream incubation device. So yes, we talked about the good stuff. The technology in this paper can plausibly help address issues by redirecting your dreaming mind, getting you to dwell on
something else. When it turns out, the world of dream research it includes some potential nightmares all its own.
All right.
So in step with all of this related interesting inspirational research we've been exploring, multiple organizations are looking into the concept of engineering dreams not for mental health, but instead to sell you stuff. And Matt, I don't know which where do we start unpacking this. What's the one that stood out the most to you?
The stuff that's one of the most was the cores light or the cores, mulsen, cores, whatever it is. The companies that wanted it was, look, we have to put this out there. It was part of a commercial campaign. Yesay, so what we're telling you was kind of happening, but it was also a tongue in cheek commercial thing. And it's hard to know where the line is between what the company actually wanted to do and then what they wanted to do just to sell more of their product.
And of the eighteen people that we're going to reference in the study, all consented to participate with advanced knowledge of what was happening, and twelve were paid actors.
Yes. Absolutely, So let's just get into what I This is what I recall from our previous discussion. The hope that at least Cores had was that if they played sounds of nature of certain types of water, of a chili landscape, the imagery of mountains and clouds and all of these things, that it would it would make the user, let's say, the experiencer in the dream state, think of cores,
tap the rockies, cores, ice cold, forged in ice. You know, all of these concepts that have been a part of the cores mythos thinking of these things would have them want and desire cores.
Cours the beers so good, you can drink it with your.
Mouth, that's right, that's right. Yeah. But but yeah, that was interesting to me. The concept of not directly stating within somebody's dream and you know, pumping in audio that says drink more, corese drink more. Course, it was let's give them the experience of the things that they associate positively with our product. Maybe they will then purchase.
It right, right, And they had to be quite careful with the idea of, as you're saying, explicitly telling people to go buy something right. They wanted to avoid that part that.
Would fall under subliminal messaging and a bunch of other things that would probably get sticky legal wise. This is a this is more fun science.
This is more look at us, fellow humans. We're in corporation, but we're cool. We're in fact, we're not cool. We're cores. So TDI targeted dream incubation. Like you said, it's you could call it. We could call it an ad campaign or ad stunt. They might call it or an activation. Heaven forfend it's the twenty twenty one Super Bowl, right, one of the most pivotal moments in advertising year over year. So there are one hundred almost one hundred million people
watching the super Bowl one way or another. Uh, And they wanted to alter cores, wanted to alter dreams of viewers the night before the game. They wanted them to dream about cores and then buy corps while they're watching the Super Bowl the next day. That's the idea, that's what they're They're already selling the idea, right, And this was I love that you pointed out. It's already kind of a a story, right, it's a story we're telling. And even you know. The interesting thing and I'm sure
they talked about this. The interesting thing is it increases visibility enough just the reporting about this that people are gonna be thinking, of course, even if they're not one of the eighteen people who participated in this study.
Yeah, it's a little weird. It feels like a crambling production.
Yeah, yes, Oh my gosh, it is a crambling production. Detroiters is so good. Please check it out, bolts and join us and pushing for a season three please? Yeah, and then we have no we we have a lot of examples from the world of gaming. Xbox U use TDI in what you could arguably calls another ad stunt to have pro gamers primed to dream of their favorite video games, PlayStation latched onto something we've already known about, Tetris.
Uh.
They said, we can create a Tetris game based on this sleep study. And the study shows that if you play enough Tetris, you dream about Tetris. And I think we've all been there at one point or another.
Well, Scientific American has talked about that, that Tetris study dreams. Yeah, like, why are there test? Why do we all have Tetris dreams? What's going on?
Yeah, you can go to science dot org. The study that launched one thousand ships comes out in October of two thousand, replaying the game Hypnagogic Images in normals and amnesiacs. Okay, the title is something we're going to move past, but but it is. It is an experience, right, and it shows us a lot about how dream incubation can work because Tetris just has you know, a small set of shapes that move in a predictable pattern, and you are
participating in that pattern. You are programming yourself to experience a routine yet interactive series of stimuli.
See. The next thing is, can we alter perception within those Tetris dreams so that we become each individual piece as we plunge faster and faster down towards whatever shape we're becoming and making interesting.
I like it the adult argument there, Yes, Tetris. We're hanging out later if you guys want to kick it. We know that the vice president of marketing at Mulson Coors again is back a few years ago, praised this beverage company's strategy and said, this is never before seeing form of advertising. I don't know why. It sounds like a British villain, but agreed with the VP at course, and they also said, not only have we never seed this before, we never want to see it again.
Oh yeah, no, Well, imagine imagine what happens if all of us, at some point in the near future have access to our dream world via some app, via some device that was pretty ubiquitous, and it's just something that becomes popular and now we're all doing it. Imagine if those dreams can be invaded with ad space, right, yeah, what happens?
Right in twenty twenty one a group of around forty real life honorologists dream researchers. They got so concerned about this that they penned an open letter calling, most importantly for regulation of what they see as an emergent industry. You know, and as you were saying, Matt, They're concerns are pretty valid. The idea is, Look, human civilization is already monitored at a much more invasive level than at
any other point in history. So dreams and your inner thoughts for now remain the last sacrisanct areas, the last truly private places. And we know external stimuli like sound, smells, lights, speech, that can affect what you're dreaming about, for example, falling asleep while watching a movie or listening to your favorite podcast.
A lot of people are thoroughly creeped out by having some external entity seek to not just infiltrate, but to control your dream state, even if only briefly, even with the best of intentions. This is my house, you know what I mean. We don't take walk ins.
We already know that trice a Lawrence can get in there without us knowing. So you know, if we can avoid them, probably not, but we could probably legislate out of letting. I don't know, Microsoft hang out in our brains and tell us to buy things right?
Right? Right? Is there a world with no walls to face? Just to keep going with that?
Three?
Okay, so we know we want to give a shout out to a cognitive scientist, Adam Harr. Adam Harr points out he was a participant in this open letter and he speaks to some of our concerns. He points out the second big issue with dream advertising is that quote people are particularly vulnerable to suggestion when they are asleep. He also, he's not some guy outside of a deli that they asked about this. He might have been outside of a deli. But before he did any of that,
he invented a glove that helps with dream targeting. It helps to steer people towards specific subjects in certain stages of the sleep cycle. And to your point, Matt, by twenty twenty one, this guy had already been contacted over a number of years by Microsoft, other giant corporations, and oddly enough, to airlines, two separate airlines. They wanted him to help them work on dream incubation. He was not
super opposed to this. It's fascinating research he's a brilliant person, but he is a moral person such that he feels uncomfortable monetizing this technology and his work for the purpose of advertisements. I mean, let's think about it this way. You know, you're listening if you're awake, and you and Matt and Dylan and myself are waking brains have all these tricks and barriers that allow for things like skepticism,
analysis and critical thought. You know, like Matt, when you hear a commercial these days, do you immediately say, crap, I have to buy this now?
Yeah, I say Google, buy me that thing.
That's why you have so many that things.
Yeah, they're everywhere.
Thing one, thing, two. There are more boxes, boxes of things and stuff. So this is a mission critical point because those same processes are processes whatever you prefer. They don't work the same way when you're asleep. So we could hear you could hear us while you're awake saying something like, behold the lush, exotic coast of Belgium, brought to you by Illumination Global Unlimited. Buy a ticket today.
You could hear that over and over while you're awake, and it's going to give you pause because you know, Belgium. Great Belgium is a fantastic place. It is not known for its lush, exotic coast That makes no sense.
But if you they're there, are people gonna wake up and they're going to be thinking about that. I go to Belgium, but I want to go to the beach.
Because it's your partner is going, why are we going to Belgium? And you're like the lush, exotic coastline. But I mean, that's that's the fear, right. This technology is not meant to cause harm. But how could dream incubation affect folks who have addictions to gambling or drugs or you know whatever compulsive behavior. If they're asleep, they don't have the ability to remove themselves from that core's advertisement, and they don't have the ability to prevent exposure to
known triggers. You know, like all of a sudden, I'm asleep and all of a sudden, I have an invasive dream about Blackjack.
Oh, oh, casino.
Right, This stake's native advertising to a new level. I know we're running along, let's maybe not. What do you say, can we walk a little further into the dark?
Oh yeah, sure, let's go the darkness of your dreams and our dreams. To be sure, what about other interfaces that we haven't thought about, that haven't been invented yet. Things Again, like we're talking about some device, some small probably a teeny tiny little thing that's ergonomic for your head when you wear it, and it's gonna be comfortable at night, and you're gonna want to wear it because it's gonna make you sleep better. It's gonna be nice.
How can you sleep without it? Is what they're hoping, you ask yourself after about four months?
Yeah, well, then what happens when they come out with a version that, oh, well, we can actually just implant this. Now, you can just get this in your brain the way our friend did with his drill, except it'll be in a safe but it'll be in a safe surgical environment.
Yes, we're calling it trepanation. Plus. It's part of your it's part of your US citizenship plus membership. Imagine a world. I know it sounds like we're being weird, but imagine a world where giant tech companies like Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, they create sleep technology that becomes normalized. And maybe what if it to your point about everybody wearing one, what
if it becomes another aspect of social media. Like in their heyday, everybody had to have a TikTok or a Facebook account, so you are expected to do this, and now you can pay extra to avoid some ads, and now these corporations who own the platform have a gargantuan new revenue stream. One of the dumbest examples. Okay, everybody has their micro sleep or their metasoft or whatever, and now they are telling advertisers, we can get into people's
dreams for you. If you are Mattel or Lago, how much are you going to pay for literal dream ad space across a given demographic right before Christmas?
Especially for kids? How young before you get an implant? Yeah, listen to tomorrow's Monsters. That's a show created by Dan Bush and it is about this very thing. It's an exploration of this concept of like sleep and how can we capture sleep.
Yes, I remember that I'm a fan of Dan on a personal level, and Matt, you and he have worked together for a while. We do have another this is a tangent, but we have another new show by Dan and team that we'd love to recommend.
Oh yeah, listen to a Live again right now. Alive again. Check it out. It's all about, well, it's all about a lot of things, but mostly it's near death experiences and what consciousness does when it's outside of this reality that we all.
Experience another brief hypnogogic experience right the line between life and death. And just like dreams, emerging from an NDE has also a tremendous effect on individual lives and on the course of human history. Honestly, this all goes in so many directions. We also know. Another concern for people are against dream incubation is the idea that all of this tech will inevitably create another revenue stream by harvesting the user data sleep patterns, brain activity, behavior before, after,
and during sleep. And this sounds sci fi, but we have to remember this occurs in step with previously established technology like the breakthrough back in twenty thirteen where Japanese researchers leveraged MRI scans to go into the minds of sleeping people and generate like printouts of the images they saw while they slumbered.
That's a big note things.
Yeah that's past. Yeah for me that.
I really don't I honestly don't even really want to know. Sometimes where my jams go.
I'll draw it myself. If it's that important, I will, you know, and I respect the science. It is amazing. These are brilliant, well intentioned people. But it might be a rubicon too far. You know, dreams are baffling, they're inspiring,
they're joyous, they're terrifying, they're amazing. We are on the cusp of a new paradigm where again, if you want to be optimistic about it, the bleeding edge of science is leading us to deeper nize spiritual questions about the nature of consciousness and the thing called the soul and how it experiences it health or you're gonna wake up thinking I can't believe I could get fifteen percent off a cheeseburger.
Today, zero percent down on that new Toyota.
Holy kra hon hon, wake up, you were talking in your sleep again. Oh what was it about. It's about the great deals for the Toyota Camry.
Oh my god, you said. Honda Odyssey has their top line models on sale this month.
It's perfect for the lush, exotic coast of Belgium. We have to go. Tell us, folks, would you trade off your privacy and the secrets of your dream state. If so, what would be your price? If not, tell us why not? For a lot of us, We have to realize this is the stuff we don't want them to know. So let us know your thoughts so you can find us online conspiracy stuff, conspiracy stuff, show any derivation thereof on
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