Three Podcasts About Dreams: ScienceVs; Nerdpreneur; Speaking Of Psychology

Sigmund Freud published The interpretation Of Dreams in 1899 and revised it multiple times. It took almost 100 years to disavow many of the conclusions from Freud's opus.

Today, we know more about dreams thanks to knowledge acquired in the field of neuroscience.

Research shows we remember on average one to three dreams per week. However, not everyone is equal when it comes to recalling dreams. People who say they never dream make up around 2.7 to 6.5% of the population. Often, these people used to recall their dreams when they were children. The proportion of people who say they have never dreamt in their entire life is very low: 0.38%.

Dreams fascinate us, and anything that fascinates us often find its way into a podcast, or better yet, multiple podcasts. In this article, we are going to review three recent podcasts that covered dreams. Two of the podcasts take a scientific view of the dreams we have when we are asleep. One podcast takes a deeply philosophical view of the dreams we have when we're awake. Dreams about what we want our lives to be.

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 Let's start with Science Vs, which is a long-running show from Spotify Studios that finds out what’s fact, what’s not, and what’s somewhere in between. The podcast does the hard work of sifting through all the science, so listeners don't have to, and cover everything from 5G and Pandemics, to Vaping and Fasting Diets.

Hosted by science journalist Wendy Zukerman, Science Vs takes on the fads, trends, and opinionated mob to find out what’s fact, what’s not, and what’s somewhere in between.

In the show's March 21, 2024 episode, Zukerman and her team covered dreams.  One of their guests, Professor Francesca Siclari, a neuroscientist at Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, said "…And a lot of people associate this stage of sleep — REM — with dreaming… and not just people, but scientists had wrongly thought for ages that we really only dreamt in REM sleep and that’s because if you look at what’s going on in the brain, we had this really neat and tidy story"

Then, Professor Bob Stickgold and his team launched a sleep / dream experiment where they had people to play Tetris over a couple of days. Then just as the test subjects were going to sleep, the team would wake them up and say – "what was going on in your mind just before we woke you up???  And what do you know?"

Stickgold admits: "They just saw Tetris pieces floating down."

Zukerman concludes: "This all suggests is that while we might remember the vivid and weirdo dreams we have ... most of the time through the night, we're dreaming about stuff that's happened to us ...that we've seen."

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  "At Nerdpreneur we have fun conversations with people turning their weird passion into a successful business! We interview entrepreneurs from around the world to discover the hacks, tools, and mindsets that turn nerd passion into full-time income."

 I have recommended the Nerdpreneur podcast for nerds and non-nerds. The podcast has highly capable, smart, playful, and insightful co-hosts and fascinating guests, who have transformed their passion into a business.

The podcast boasts that it "interviewed dozens of niche professionals from all over the world, including board game designers, dice retailers, D&D content creators, tarantula breeders, and even a German zombie magician!"

In the April 10, 2024 episode, Chris Saunders and Frank embark on a profound exploration of dreams and aspirations. They delve into the significance of not just dreaming, but actively pursuing those dreams with clarity and intention. Highlighting the transformative power of dreams, the conversation covers various categories, from personal to professional aspirations, emphasizing the importance of setting actionable goals and embracing growth. The episode is underpinned by the powerful message that those who dare to dream with their eyes open possess the potential to bring about real change.

The exercise in the episode is based on the work of Matthew Kelly, as outlined in his book The Dream Manager.

Dream Categories Discussed: Personal Aspirations: Insights into the value of personal growth and the pursuit of happiness through achieving personal dreams.

Professional Goals: Strategies for setting and achieving professional milestones, emphasizing the journey of entrepreneurship and career advancement.

Creative Dreams: Exploring the desire to create and share art, music, literature, and other forms of creative expression.

Adventure Dreams: Encouraging listeners to seek out new experiences and adventures, from travel to unique hobbies.

Financial Dreams: Practical advice on setting financial goals, from becoming debt-free to making strategic investments.

Legacy Dreams: The importance of creating a lasting impact, whether through charitable actions, community involvement, or inspiring others.

Spiritual Dreams: Reflections on the pursuit of inner peace, spiritual growth, and the search for meaning.
 
The guys end with this quote: "All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible." – T.E. Lawrence

 I loved the episode because it expands our view of dreams as not just a strange experience while asleep, but an active, awake motivational drive to find ourselves, improve ourselves, and define ourselves. During the episode, Chris and Frank share some of their dreams, including six-pack abs! Kudos to Chris and Frank for a superb episode.

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 Speaking of Psychology is an audio podcast series highlighting some of the latest, most important, and relevant psychological research being conducted today.

Produced by the American Psychological Association, the objective of these podcasts is to help listeners apply the science of psychology to their everyday lives.

The host of the podcast is Kim Mills, who is the senior director of strategic external communications and public affairs for the American Psychological Association (APA), where she has worked since 2007. 

On episode 258, Mills welcomed Mark Blagrove, PhD, who is a professor of psychology and the director of the sleep laboratory at Swansea University, U.K. He studies sleep and dreaming, and his research interests includes sleep and memory consolidation, the relationship between what happens in our waking life and our dream content, and how sharing our dreams with others can build empathy.

In the episode, Dr. Blagrove talks about sharing dreams: "there’ve been several papers written on the benefits of that to people and to their friendships and relationships of sharing the dreams to other people and the greater closeness that results as a result of that. There’s even then been work done on the motivations for sharing dreams and the fact that they can be shared for entertainment or out of a wish to find out more about the dream, or because the other person is in the dream, and so they want to share it for that reason."

When Mills asks if there is a difference between non-REM dreams and REM dreams, Dr. Blagrove responds: "Yes, there are qualitative differences. The non-REM dreams are shorter, they may have fewer emotions, fewer characters, fewer scenes, and there is a dispute, a debate goes on about that because if you control for the length of the dream in words, then short rapid eye movement, sleep dreams are very similar to long non-rapid eye movement dreams.

Dr. Blagrove continues: "One theory says that actually the REM and non-REM dreams only differ in terms of how long they are, there’s that difference, and they don’t actually have any qualitative difference. They don’t really have any qualitative difference. As you get nearer to the end of the night, the non-REM dreams start to look more like REM dreams. They start to get longer, they start to get more bizarre and with more characters. And so there are all of this multitude of factors coming in that affect the dreams across the night.

Finally, Mills wants to know if animals dream.

Dr. Blagrove: "So there is that type of circumstantial evidence that non-human animals might be having dreams that they’re reacting to during the night. After all, these animals quite possibly have a level of possibly even daydreaming, you could say, similar to us, or imagery going on similar to us. And so possibly it would seep over into their sleep to have dreams as well."

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I hope you enjoyed this article about three podcasts dedicating episodes to dreams.

Sweet Dreams.