Our Big Fat Dream Episode

No you’re no dreaming – go ahead, pinch yourself – we’ve finally made an episode on dreams! We’ve done episodes on lucid dreaming, night terrors, sleepwalking, sleep paralysis – basically everything but dreams themselves. Well, at long last here it is! See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 0:47Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 0:57Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and there's Jerry. And this could not be more of a good old fashioned Stuff You Should Know episode.

• 1:07Josh Clark?

  If it tried.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  That's right. I think you're right.

• 1:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Think about all the elements here. All three of us are present. I just had a kind of an awkward intro.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:20Josh Clark?

  This is the main topic that we've done like five subtopics on already, but we didn't do the main topic yet. This is a straight ahead Stuff You Should Know classic episode.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. And watch this. I'm gonna have a little surprise for you and the audience. You ready?

• 1:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  All right. It is 1:01 on the dot. I was having a dream six minutes ago.

• 1:46Josh Clark?

  Oh, really?

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48Josh Clark?

  What was it?

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know, but I scheduled my nap to happen right before we recorded, which I do sometimes. And I have my clock set for 12:55.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  And it was kind of one of those naps where I was like, am I even sleeping? Or am I just getting good rest? I can't tell if I'm asleep.

• 2:09Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  And then I could tell I was having a dream and all of a sudden my alarm went off. And I woke up, splashed my face.

• 2:18Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Came down. And here you are.

• 2:22Josh Clark?

  Are you sure you're not still dreaming? Have you done a reality test?

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Oh, no. That's a good, that's a good call.

• 2:28Josh Clark?

  Because you could still be dreaming. I don't feel quite right.

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can't remember the dream, but when I woke up, I was like, oh, this will be funny because I'm gonna be recording in five minutes and everyone's probably gonna be knocked out by the fact that I was literally just dreaming minutes ago.

• 2:45Josh Clark?

  I'm sure they will. I'm sure they will. Even more impressive, Jerry is dreaming now.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. I woke up, she fell asleep.

• 2:52Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, we're talking about dreams. Chuck, do you typically have dreams? Do you often remember them? Do you never remember them? Are they nightmares? What's the deal?

• 3:03Speaker 01

  No nightmares. I used to have recurring dreams when I was a kid.

• 3:07Josh Clark?

  About what?

• 3:08Speaker 01

  I had a very specific recurring dream about Gilligan's Island many times when I was a kid. That was a little bit of a scary dream. I don't think it qualifies as a nightmare per definition.

• 3:19Josh Clark?

  I could see Lovey Howell being like drunk, like being overly friendly.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 3:24Josh Clark?

  Doing that to you as a kid.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  But yeah, I mean, I still remember, like, I remembered my dream this morning when I woke up.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  Because I woke up right after it happened and it was kind of a funny thing Emily did in the dream. So I was like, I just had this dream. It was kind of funny.

• 3:41Josh Clark?

  Can you share?

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Oh, sure. I mean, people sharing dreams is the most boring thing ever, so.

• 3:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  I'll give the most condensed version is we were in New York going to some, some weird exclusive like

• 3:56Speaker 01

  art opening event or something, interactive. I don't even know what it was. It doesn't matter. And there were celebrities there and we went in a few times because we figured out there was a back way to get in. And when we walked in, we were walking by people and Emily was like, hey, I think that's that girl from that movie. What was it? And I was trying to find out. And then we passed Rachel Dratch, actor Rachel Dratch. And she looked up because she thought like they were talking, we were talking about her. And Emily went, oh, not you. I know you, Stephanie. And we kept walking.

• 4:29Josh Clark?

  That's a pretty good dream, actually.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I told Emily that. She just cracked up.

• 4:34Josh Clark?

  Rachel Dratch, man.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's the best.

• 4:37Josh Clark?

  That's out of nowhere. She is great.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  What about you? Or go ahead. What's your question?

• 4:43Josh Clark?

  Well, I was gonna say, have you seen the movie? I don't remember what it's called, but where Nicolas Cage starts appearing in like everyone in the world's dreams.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  I haven't seen that yet. I heard it's pretty good.

• 4:53Josh Clark?

  It is. It's actually really good. Especially as far as like, you know, a standard Nick Cage movie these days goes.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, there's a lot of them. What about you? Do you dream and remember your dreams typically?

• 5:06Josh Clark?

  I dream and I remember them enough to

• 5:10Josh Clark?

  to just kind of give like general outlines of them or know that like that was unpleasant or that was stressful or that was weird. But you know, like, I have such trouble like relating thoughts and ideas normally that when I try to do it with dream stuff, it makes it, it's just a big mess. So I'm not even gonna try. But they very frequently have to do with like me having to like,

• 5:35Josh Clark?

  get this thing done over here and then this thing has to be done over here. And I also have to make sure that all these people are comfortable too. It's like, it can get kind of tiring sometimes.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I sort of have the same thing. My most recurring dream now isn't a specific thing, but it's a specific motif, which is I'm trying to get somewhere and I can't get there.

• 5:57Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, I could see that.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Like a plane flight or I'm supposed to be at a place or whatever and I keep getting derailed. And that, that happens. I have that dream all the time now.

• 6:07Josh Clark?

  Okay, that is extremely interesting. I think that's worth looking into. So we'll revisit that because it comes up in a couple of places. Like you just, you just tapped a couple of different dream components on the head with that.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then when I was younger, and then we'll start the show, I used to always have the, and this is like in my twenties, the teeth shattering or teeth falling out dreams.

• 6:30Josh Clark?

  Okay, we'll talk about that too.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:33Josh Clark?

  A last one I have to share. It's a recurring dream. It starts out really nice. It's a beautiful woman, totally naked. And then as I look up higher and higher, it's the head of Abraham Lincoln.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  You should just, I don't know, don't go all the way to the head.

• 6:54Josh Clark?

  Do you, do you get the reference though from Dazed and Confused?

• 6:58Speaker 01

  No, I do remember that though, now that you mention it.

• 7:02Josh Clark?

  Yeah. One of the friends is like, probably best not to look too deeply into that.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  That's right. Anthony Rapp in that scene. That's right.

• 7:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So, yeah, I've never had that dream. That would be pretty weird, you know?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  I bought it because I'm just still waking up, you know?

• 7:18Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 7:20Josh Clark?

  So Charles, we're talking about dreaming and you can't really talk about dreaming unless you talk about sleeping. So let's do a brief overview. We've done a bunch of episodes on sleep, so we'll just kind of keep it short.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. As far as the stages of sleep, you're right. We've, we've covered this a lot. But the first three stages are non-rapid eye movement sleep and REM sleep. And then after stage three, and it depends on the person, but you know, about an hour and a half or two hours after you go to sleep, you're supposed to fall into REM sleep.

• 7:50Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Rapid eye movement sleep. And this is where generally you're gonna be dreaming. And they used to think you only dream during REM sleep, but now they know that you can dream in both. But REM sleep is like where you have like the most intense dreams, the ones you're more likely to remember, that kind of thing.

• 8:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And we didn't really know about REM sleep until the 50s. I was surprised to find that out. But when we did discover REM sleep, people are like, oh, okay, there's different components to sleep. We need to start looking into that. Your body does all sorts of interesting things. But the one really important aspect about REM sleep is in addition to like, this is where you have your dreams, dreams. You are paralyzed, essentially. You, and they think the reason why is so you don't act out your dreams physically because you're experiencing them as reality otherwise. And that it's possible that your eyes are moving during rapid eye movement sleep because you're dreaming.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:50Josh Clark?

  They thought for a long time that you were looking at different things in your dreams with your eyes in physical reality while you were sleeping. And they just couldn't prove it. And there were a couple of studies that were like, actually, I think that's true.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I don't think they, they didn't prove it though, did they?

• 9:08Josh Clark?

  No, but so like they cracked open the heads of poor little mice and they figured out how to look at what they call basically the, the eye directional cells. And they found that they were in sync with where the mouse's eyes were looking at any point during REM sleep strongly suggests that.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  What did the mice say about what they were dreaming about?

• 9:31Josh Clark?

  They just said.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 9:34Josh Clark?

  They're like a beaker from The Muppets, it turns out.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Oh, beaker. I love beaker.

• 9:39Josh Clark?

  And then the other study that I think it was really interesting was they got with some lucid dreamers. And they said, hey, we want you to, in your dream, we want you to imagine you're looking at a circle. And then we want you to trace a circle with your thumb and look at that in your dreams. And the lucid dreamers were so good, they were able to do this. And they found that when the lucid dreamers were imagining the circle in their dreams, their eyes moved in kind of a stuttery step movement in the circle that we would normally see when someone was awake and imagining it. When they looked at their thumb, their dream thumb, their eyes moved smoothly like it does in waking life and we're actually looking at something.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Your dream thumb.

• 10:23Josh Clark?

  Dream comes pretty.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  We've said a lot of dumb things over the years.

• 10:28Josh Clark?

  You should.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  He thumbs up there.

• 10:30Josh Clark?

  Thanks, man.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  I love it. As far as how like, we're going to talk a lot about dreams and whether or not everyone dreams, and we don't know for sure. Like, they think everyone dreams.

• 10:40Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  And that some people just may not remember as well as others, and we'll kind of dig into that a little bit. But they do think that people generally dream multiple times a night. They don't know exactly how long they last. And you know, the reason why, obviously, all this stuff is, is because someone's asleep. And, you know, you can't do a study where someone like hits a timer when a dream starts. They can just kind of go by hooking them up to machines and surmising whether or not they're dreaming.

• 11:06Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  So you can't get like, actual, you know, dead evidence about it. But they do think you dream multiple times a night, and they last a few minutes, maybe up to a half an hour. And they think you probably dream a couple of hours a night.

• 11:20Josh Clark?

  That's surprising, because I I've always heard like, dreams last like, just a few seconds, but they seem like they last hours, which would actually explain the rapid eye movement. Like, if we're doing that while we're dreaming, we're moving back and forth, that would suggest that our dreams are happening in much faster time than real waking time.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 11:40Josh Clark?

  Well, I'm basically a dream researcher now.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  As far as, you know, dream theory, you know, obviously, we have to mention Freud. I kind of honestly get tired of mentioning Freud now, because I feel like every time we mention Freud, we then say, but no one really believes that anymore.

• 11:58Josh Clark?

  Well, the very fact that we consider dreams to conceivably be symbolic and try be trying to tell us something, that in and of itself is the influence of Freud that still lasts today. So there's, even though a lot of his stuff seems crackpot, there's like, the basis of it is is still applicable.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's the solution I came to as well, which is like, he birthed a lot of ideas.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  And that maybe is his value these days.

• 12:27Josh Clark?

  Birthed him right out of his sphincter.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  But of course Freud was like, hey, none of this stuff is an accident. If you're having dreams, that means that you are living out some repressed desire that you can't act on in regular life. Probably, obviously, because it's Freud, probably a sexual desire. Carl Jung came around and said, yeah, I sort of agree philosophically to to a certain degree with you, my teacher, I guess.

• 12:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  But and I don't think it's like a primal need and something that's repressed. I think it's just like us reflecting on ourselves and maybe even trying to work through like problems that we may have.

• 13:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So to differentiate those two guys, Freud was like, dreams conceal. And Jung was like, no, no, no, dreams reveal. And he was basically like, just read your dream. Like, it's it's telling you something, but you don't have to be like, oh, what does this mean? You already know what it means. And that it uses mythic archetypes as this ancient, basic language that any human can understand.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, like the archetype of Rachel Dratch.

• 13:38Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Who represented the trickster.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  I mean, I also think it can vary. Like, clearly, if I keep having the same dream of trying to get somewhere and can't get there, like, that may be saying something about my life. But I also think that it's just completely, a complete random assimilation of just weirdo things popping into your head, like Rachel Dratch at an art opening.

• 14:02Josh Clark?

  Right. I tend to think like, there is some series of like, like neural connections that happened in the last day or two, that didn't make me consciously think of Rachel Dratch. But when I put those things together while I'm sleeping, boop, there's Rachel Dratch.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  I tried to wonder, or I tried to wonder, I wondered if I had, like, you know, I do follow her on Instagram, but I don't think I'd seen her on Instagram anytime recently. But who knows?

• 14:33Josh Clark?

  See, to me, it's like, maybe you remembered a joke that someone on SNL told that she was just standing like, in the background of that you focused on her years back. And you associate her with that joke, but don't realize it.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, Debbie Downer.

• 14:48Josh Clark?

  That's kind of my take on it. And if you look at Freud, you look at Jung's interpretations, or dream theories, I should say, we've really done away with Jung's more than we have with Freud's, you know?

• 15:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you're probably right.

• 15:04Josh Clark?

  But then that's, that's like, the psychoanalysis version of it. Along comes in the 70s, some much more scientific ideas about what dreams are and why we dream. And they really dovetail with your interpretation that they're essentially just random bits of meaningless information that our brain struggles to put together into a narrative. And that that's that. There's no meaning. It's not trying to tell us anything. That grain silo over there isn't a giant penis that you wish you had. Like, it's just, just dreams. Like, they they're just a byproduct of your brain firing while you're asleep.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's called the activation synthesis hypothesis, which is, is just neurological processes playing out. And in this case, it's the forebrain trying to make sense of just what's firing around neuron wise while you're in REM sleep.

• 15:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's just, just like where it takes your brain firing while you're awake, and puts it into like, a narrative that usually fairly resembles reality. When you're sleeping, you're you're getting random impulses, according to this. And so it's just doing its best. And sometimes, its best is just plain old weird. Like, there's Rachel Dratch, you know?

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:22Josh Clark?

  That's, that's it.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think most of my dreams are odd. I don't ever have fantastical dreams where, like, I'm a winged beast that's flying through, you know, prehistoric life or anything like that.

• 16:35Josh Clark?

  As a matter of fact, I don't think I've ever flown in my dreams. Have you?

• 16:40Speaker 01

  I don't think so. All of my dreams now are trying desperately to catch a flight that I can't catch. But yeah, not actually flying.

• 16:49Josh Clark?

  So there are some characteristics of dreams that these, these guys came up with the activation synthesis hypothesis pointed out. Alan Hobson and Robert MacCarley, by the way, are the guys who figured this out. They said that there's illogical content, right?

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Check, yeah.

• 17:05Josh Clark?

  Odd sensory experiences.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:08Josh Clark?

  Intense emotions.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that happens.

• 17:11Josh Clark?

  Acceptance of strange events. That's my favorite one.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. In dreams, you're always just like, oh, yeah, sure.

• 17:16Josh Clark?

  Right. And then difficulty in remembering them. And that, it's just, we just take that for granted, right? Like, yeah, dreams are hard to recall. But as we'll see in a little while, there's, that's just, doesn't quite add up and make sense. And they've not figured out why that's the case quite yet.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the other, you know, those were from those two researchers. Since then, other people have put forward that it's usually a first person perspective thing

• 17:42Speaker 01

  that features other people, and that they incorporate elements of waking life. And I've found all that to be basically true.

• 17:49Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  All right. So talking more about dreams, and specifically Hobson and MacCarley, who, you know, researched the stuff in the late 70s, that theory they put forward that it's like, hey, you're looking too deeply into this. It's just a bunch of random neurons firing, and your brain trying to make sense of it all. It was a pretty controversial theory, because I guess they were the first people to kind of put forward that dreams may not be this big, deep thing full of meaning.

• 18:17Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  But it's, it didn't like, explain why we dream.

• 18:22Josh Clark?

  No, no. I mean, it does in that it's saying there's no explanation aside from your brain just firing randomly. Then they're like, just leave it at that. And other people are like, no, I will not leave it at that.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:34Josh Clark?

  I guess also, what you're saying is that it doesn't explain dreaming. Francis Crick was like, okay, you can explain dreaming without adding like, symbolism and all sorts of weird stuff to it. You can just say like, your brain is actually going through some steps that to, I guess, MacCarley and Hobson just seemed like random firing. But what it's actually doing is sorting through the inputs throughout the day and saying, oh, get rid of that. Oh, I want to turn this into a memory. Oh, let's see what happens if we do this. But while we're an elf, you know, and that it's actually like, he called it reverse learning, where you're, you're figuring, you're sorting through the stuff from the day, and that that's what your brain's doing when you're dreaming.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, I don't fully understand that one.

• 19:18Josh Clark?

  I think what he was saying is sure, guys, like, yeah, there's it's just random firing, or it seems like random firing, but there's a our brain, there's an evolutionary purpose to it. It's not just some byproduct, like, there's a reason for it, I think, is what he was saying.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, all right. It's well, I think he, again, to this research, like, he basically was like, this is a starting point, like, he didn't claim to be the final point on the matter.

• 19:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's true.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  People also think we might dream to process emotions, that clearing the mind clutter kind of goes back to what Crick was talking about, promoting creativity, perhaps, maybe as sort of like a dress rehearsal to something that may like scare you in real life, obviously, like, the dreams you have the night before, like, a big interview or something in that case.

• 20:06Josh Clark?

  Right. Man, those are the worst. That sleep is not refreshing.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, man, thank God, we've had this job for so long and haven't had to go through that in life in a while.

• 20:15Josh Clark?

  No, I know, or put a resume together.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, very fortunate.

• 20:21Josh Clark?

  So, okay, so those are, those are theories that of like, what dreams are, why we dream, and I think the fact that we haven't, we'd never said, like, oh, this is the one, or this is the most widely accepted one. Even among dream researchers, they're like, there's a divide between whether people think dreams are functional and do something, and others who are like, no, it's just random. So that's not been settled, even among the people who study this for a living. And I mentioned dream recall, too, right?

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's tough. Sometimes I don't remember them at all. I mentioned that the Rachel Dratch one, I had just woken up from that dream, so I definitely remember it, and that apparently is one of the keys, because they say five minutes after the end of the dream, they say you've forgotten about half of it. Ten minutes later, you've forgotten 90% of it. So if you want to, you know, have like a dream journal, and if you want to remember your dreams.

• 21:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  They say that, you know, to be awakened during that REM sleep is the time to do it. And, you know, they suggest things like, setting an alarm to wake yourself up during REM sleep, and like, keep a pad and a pencil, like, if that's what you're into, great, I would have a hard time falling back to sleep, so that's not for me.

• 21:39Josh Clark?

  Right. That's also the reason why they wake you up, like, at terrible times, because, you know, you don't want to, if you wake up in the middle of our REM sleep, like, you're groggy for the rest of the day.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:50Josh Clark?

  And during sleep studies, or dream studies, I should say, they wake you up purposefully during REM sleep.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  That'd be terrible for me.

• 21:58Josh Clark?

  I know. And I've read that the trick that the dream researchers use is they go, "Wake up, it's time for Taco Bell fourth meal," and that usually gets people up.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Taco Bell fourth meal. I rolled the dice about a week and a half ago and had Taco Bell.

• 22:14Josh Clark?

  Oh, wow. How was it?

• 22:16Speaker 01

  It was great. I was in, I was in the drive-through line Googling, "Is it safe now to eat a Taco Bell?"

• 22:23Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Because of the lettuce thing. And the internet said, "Oh, sure, you go right ahead, buddy, it's great."

• 22:29Josh Clark?

  Did it really? I'm surprised.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it said that they had worked all that out.

• 22:33Josh Clark?

  Oh, I had, oh, yeah, that's right. I think Taco Bell switched suppliers, like, basically on day zero.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:39Josh Clark?

  Okay, cool.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  It was good.

• 22:41Josh Clark?

  I'm glad. And you haven't been pooping your pants for two straight weeks.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Well, I did, because I ate Taco Bell. That's why, like, who can tell the difference?

• 22:50Josh Clark?

  That happened to me with Crystal once.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Oh, oh, yeah?

• 22:55Josh Clark?

  All right. I should probably edit that out.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Moving on.

• 22:58Josh Clark?

  So I think you touched on something early on, too, if I remember correctly, if I recall. You said that some people say that they don't dream, and it's up for debate whether they actually do dream, because everybody dreams, is the idea, and they just don't recall very well, or if some people don't dream.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:18Josh Clark?

  And they found, like, no, it seems like everybody dreams, because they've studied people who say, like, "I never remember dreams so much, so I don't think I dream." They'll wake them up during REM sleep, and say, "What were you dreaming about?" And those people can recall a dream. So they think, yes, everyone dreams, but do some people dream more than others? And if not, or if so, then is it just like, they, you know, they have more trouble recalling than other people?

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Right, for sure. And then, of course, there have been theories within the dream theory community since Freud, about like, why we don't remember our dreams, or we, or we do. And Freud was like, "Well, you know, we forget them, because if you remember, they are repressed feelings and wishes." So like, that's the kind of thing you might want to push out of your head, and keep it repressed. There's other people that have said that, you know, other things, just like, are, there's too much in the brain, basically, so you can't remember it all. And also, waking up, like, you're, some people wake up, and it's really hard for some people to come around and remember anything when they first wake up.

• 24:29Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I definitely subscribe to the neurobiological explanation for why dream recall is so hard, because there's such, there's some really convincing parts to it, right?

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:40Josh Clark?

  Like, the hippocampus, which is the little component that's responsible for consolidating short-term memory into long-term memory. It's, it, it's like, stays asleep a little longer than the rest of your brain, so you don't just immediately get to assembling your, your short-term memory of your dreams into long-term memories. That makes sense.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm just now waking up, quite honestly, what's going on? What's happening?

• 25:05Josh Clark?

  You're such a pro, that you just did, like, half of a podcast while you're still waking up.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 25:12Josh Clark?

  Neurotransmitters, acetylcholine and norepinephrine are both involved in memory consolidation, and their levels dwindle and do weird stuff while you're having REM sleep. So there's like, a lot of reasons why you probably aren't great at recalling your dreams, and then some people are really good at it, and they're just freaks of nature.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, some people think that if you are, like, if you're someone who's very prone to introspection, or maybe daydreaming, you might be better remembering your dreams during the nighttime, or whenever you happen to sleep.

• 25:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  But you can, you know, they say you can train yourself to remember your dreams.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  You know, the dream journal, like I mentioned earlier, is, is one way to at least record them. But if you want to increase your dream recall, first of all, you have to fall into that REM sleep, obviously. There are things that can prohibit you from at least remembering your dreams, like drinking booze, or smoking pot, or like, exercising right before you go to bed. That can definitely affect your dream recall. And then you can, you know, you can train yourself. I think we talked about this in other episodes, might have been lucid dreaming, can you control your dreams? Like, when you go to bed, say, like, as you're falling asleep, trying to say, like, "I'm gonna dream, I'm gonna remember, I'm gonna remember these dreams, gonna do it."

• 26:32Josh Clark?

  I've heard it's best to say, "I must, I must, I must remember my dreams."

• 26:38Speaker 01

  And again, if you wake up right out of a dream, you're more likely to remember it. Probably if it's a super, like, intense or vivid dream, you're more likely to remember it.

• 26:48Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  And I have, like, I try to do the thing where if I'm having a dream that I'm really enjoying, and I have to wake up and go to the bathroom, I really try and just keep that dream running in my head, and try and get right back to it, and sometimes that works.

• 27:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's, that's, yeah. And not only are you trying to remember the dream, you're trying not to wake up.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:07Josh Clark?

  Just from peeing, too. Yes, that definitely works. Like, you're just, there's a certain level of consciousness that you'll let your brain rise to.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 27:14Josh Clark?

  I actually have a dream that I remember, because I woke up straight out of it, literally. It was cool. It was one of the neatest things that's ever happened to me. So I was, I was laying in bed, sleeping, dreaming, that I was in a, sitting in a car, and as I got out of the car, I was getting out of bed, because I had to get up to pee myself, and, like, it felt very much like, as my, my right leg got out of the bed and the car, like, my right leg was awake.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 27:44Josh Clark?

  But like, the rest of my body hadn't woken up yet, because it was still in the car, but my leg was in my bedroom. And so as I got up out of bed, I was getting out of the car in my dream, and I just slowly transferred from the dream world into waking reality in my room.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 28:04Josh Clark?

  It was really neat, like, the, the interior of the car and the edge of the bed were one and the same. And it was like, just some...

• 28:13Josh Clark?

  I don't know, like Portal or Threshold or something that I went through. It was really, really cool, man.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that stuff. I mean, that's why I love dreams, because they're just, it's, they can be just so bizarre and put you in a completely like weird state of mind without, you know, any substances.

• 28:31Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  So they apparently, you know, and this is, I encourage you to go to listen to the lucid dreaming episode. Can you control your dreams? Because that's the idea that you know you're asleep, you know, you're dreaming and you're in control of your dream. Like dream sailing, I think is what we called it, or other people have called it.

• 28:48Josh Clark?

  For sure. And that was 2009, so that was like

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:51Josh Clark?

  early one.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a minute ago. But dream incubation is another thing. And that's if you want to dream about a certain thing. You try and kind of do the same thing, like focus your attention on that thing as you're going to sleep. And a lot of times people, there, there is one sort of subset of researchers that say, or maybe just people that think that you can like come up creative solutions for maybe mental or creative blocks while you're dreaming. And so they will try and induce or incubate a dream as they're going to sleep.

• 29:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And it's, it's basically like, I want to dream about this. And so you will hopefully dream about it, especially if you like, kind of prime yourself throughout the day to dream about that one topic. And people have shown you can come up with solutions to waking life problems in your dreams. And there've been some famous examples of it. One that usually gets mentioned in any kind of list of those, there's Kekelé, the German chemist.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:56Josh Clark?

  Who discovered the structure of the benzene model, molecule, I mean, which sounds like, okay, great. It was, it required completely different thinking than everything he'd been trained to up to that point. Because he was a chemist in Germany in the mid 19th century. And at that time, they thought every molecule was linear in arrangement. And he was like, this is not, the math is not adding up. Like this thing does not work in a linear shape. What am I missing? And he, he slept one night and dreamt of Ouroboros's, or Ouroboris, the snake eating its own tail. And when he woke up, it was just clear as day to him that the benzene molecule was in a ring arrangement, a circular arrangement rather than linear. And he was right.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you hear stories like that, or that Mary Shelley dreamed up Frankenstein. Or other musicians, like famous songs came to them in their sleep. And I don't, I hear that stuff and I think that, that like the solution to the benzene molecule or the seed of the idea Frankenstein was in their brain already. And the dream allowed it to be tapped into or something. I don't know. I mean, it's, there's obviously nothing to prove that, but it just sort of makes sense to me.

• 31:11Josh Clark?

  That's my take on it too. That it was already there and, and their, their dream state just allowed them to think about it in different ways than they

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:21Josh Clark?

  waking life.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  So cool.

• 31:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I saw Yesterday and Let It Be were both dreamt by Paul McCartney. River of Dreams. That one where it's like in the middle of the night, that Billy Joel song.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:35Josh Clark?

  You didn't like my Billy Joel impression?

• 31:37Speaker 01

  No, I thought it was funny.

• 31:38Josh Clark?

  That one was, came to him in a dream.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  You're not gonna sing Yesterday?

• 31:42Josh Clark?

  No.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 31:43Josh Clark?

  Beethoven had a, some music come to him in a dream, 99 luth balloons. Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:53Josh Clark?

  And are you familiar with Aphex Twin?

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 31:56Josh Clark?

  Okay. Aphex Twin apparently is a hardcore lucid dreamer and has made bunches of songs by, by lucid dreaming, like purposely like going to sleep and dreaming to like work out, you know, music.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Cheat code, that's what they call that.

• 32:14Josh Clark?

  You got me with that one.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Should we take a break?

• 32:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  All right, we'll take a break and we'll talk a little bit more about dream meanings and nightmares right after this.

• 32:39Josh Clark?

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• 33:03Speaker 01

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• 33:26Josh Clark?

  That's pretty awesome. And smart downloads automatically downloads videos by your favorite creators. So even if you forget to download it ahead of time, Premium has you covered. So if you like YouTube, you'll love Premium. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply.

• 33:56Josh Clark?

  Okay, Chuck, so I think this is going rather well. What do you think?

• 34:02Speaker 01

  I, I agree.

• 34:03Josh Clark?

  So there's that whole divide about whether dreams mean anything or if they're just random.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:10Josh Clark?

  Most people, I would say, are like, no, it's not random, man. I had this one dream and, you know, it, it, it said that I should go pursue a career as a sailor and here I am a sailor and I've never been happier, right? I've got a Virgin Voyage on the brain, I guess.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, my, my grandfather, after he passed, came to me in a dream, very specifically when I was like 10 years old. So, you know, you hear something like that and I, I'm not, you know, super woo woo. So I don't necessarily think that he came to me in a dream and like something metaphysical happened. To me, it was just a kid trying to make sense of losing his grandfather and a dream like providing some relief, maybe?

• 34:52Josh Clark?

  That's neat. I, I, I kind of, there's like a kernel of me that is, is like, it's possible that your grandfather was somehow visiting you.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd like to believe that's true. It was, it was very powerful. I still remember it, you know, all these years later.

• 35:05Josh Clark?

  That's neat. Did he, was he very critical of you in the dream?

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  No, he, he literally walked up to me and said, you're gonna be okay, bud. And that was it.

• 35:18Josh Clark?

  Oh, wow.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like super, I was like, you know, granddad's really on the nose.

• 35:27Josh Clark?

  Oh, boy.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it still makes me emotional all these years later. I was like 10 or 11 years old and I'm 55, good lord.

• 35:34Josh Clark?

  I mean, I can imagine that's like a, like a lifetime experience that not everybody gets. It's like, yeah, that's a really special thing to happen to you.

• 35:42Speaker 01

  And you hear those stories. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. You hear stories all the time about like way more involved dreams than that of like, you know, people from the beyond, like getting in touch and stuff. I think it's interesting.

• 35:52Josh Clark?

  Check out this new card trick I just learned.

• 35:59Josh Clark?

  All right. Back to dream meanings and symbols, I think is kind of what most people point to, which is why I said Freud's influence is still around today. Anybody who's like, no, dreams are symbolic and you have to interpret them, you're, you're following in Freud's wake.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they're like some stock sort of explanations or guides for this kind of thing. Like when I mentioned my teeth falling out, it's a very common dream. Not surprisingly, it usually indicates anxiety about something. This, what you said, said anxiety about appearance. So I never really thought about that, but also maybe feeling deceitful or concerns about your health. Teeth falling out? And then my teeth literally fell out, which is kind of funny.

• 36:47Josh Clark?

  Did you dream that they went whoop right back in?

• 36:50Speaker 01

  No, that's funny. But I do think that maybe my teeth grinding, it might've been a, a sort of reaction to me grinding my teeth at night.

• 36:59Josh Clark?

  That's interesting.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:00Josh Clark?

  Yumi has a recurring teeth falling out dream where she'll have some sort of diamond somewhere, or there's a diamond somewhere in the, in the dream. Usually it's in like a ring and it falls out and she knows that that's her signal that her teeth are all about to fall out.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting.

• 37:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  I thought you were about to say she gets grills.

• 37:22Josh Clark?

  She would love a grill, actually. There's a grill museum in Atlanta. Did you know that?

• 37:27Speaker 01

  No, but I'm not surprised.

• 37:29Josh Clark?

  There is one. We haven't been yet.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Atlanta's got to be one of the grill capitals of the world.

• 37:33Josh Clark?

  I would guess so, because it's also like the trap music capital of the world. And those two things go hand in hand.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  For sure. What about falling in a dream?

• 37:42Josh Clark?

  This one sucks, I can tell you firsthand. It's typically thought to mean that you feel out of control of your life.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:52Josh Clark?

  Being chased is, I like this one, that you're evading responsibilities.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 37:58Josh Clark?

  What about fire?

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Fire, maybe it's about renewal, or maybe it's about some anger that you have repressed, or maybe purification perhaps, or destruction.

• 38:09Josh Clark?

  Yep. Or I don't think I've ever had this one. Have you ever had one about being naked in public?

• 38:16Speaker 01

  I don't think so, but that's a pretty common dream, I think supposedly.

• 38:22Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  I don't think I've had being naked, or maybe I did when I was younger. I don't know.

• 38:29Josh Clark?

  But they typically think like you have probably had an embarrassing situation and you're still processing it.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense. But you know, the issue with all this stuff like is, I said, these are sort of stock explanations. You know, they sell books and they get clicks for articles, but it's hard to get a stock explanation because it's so, you know, you can see, like, somebody might see something as like awesome in a dream where other people might see it as a threat. It gets very culturally specific, obviously, and even within the own, you're like one culture. Things can be interpreted in contradictory ways. So it's hard to sort of say like, well, this is what that means.

• 39:09Josh Clark?

  Right. It definitely seems much more pop culture than scientific, for sure.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 39:16Josh Clark?

  And then there's, you had mentioned recurring dreams, your recurring dream of running late for something. Those are, that's, that's a thing. Recurring dreams, especially recurring unpleasant dreams are a horror that can be, that can befall humans, which is very sad. Recurring dreams don't have to always be unpleasant. But from what I could tell, pleasant recurring dreams are essentially non-existent, that the best you can hope for are neutral.

• 39:45Josh Clark?

  Recurring dreams, that most of the time they're at least unpleasant, if not, you know, straight up bad dreams.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. And you know, there's a distinction I mentioned earlier, but that we were going to get into it between bad dreams and nightmares. If you're talking about just like real sleep research, a nightmare specifically means that you

• 40:08Speaker 01

  are like, it wakes you up, like it's so bad, you wake up, you know, obviously generally like scared.

• 40:16Josh Clark?

  That means, do you remember the end of Don't Be Dumb was a nightmare for you? Do you remember? Cause you woke up from it.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  That's right. You pulled me into Don't Be Dumb at the end.

• 40:26Josh Clark?

  That's great. That's a great ending.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  In a very New Heart way.

• 40:30Josh Clark?

  There is another, there's an author, a neuroscientist named Sedarda Ribero, Ribiero, I think. They wrote the Oracle of Night, colon, the history and science of dreams. And they, I thought, made a pretty interesting case for dreams having some sort of meaning, even not symbolically, but at least they're not just random, the byproduct of random neural firings.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:54Josh Clark?

  And he said, it's because the existence of recurring dreams shows that you couldn't possibly have the same dream if your neurons are just firing randomly.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:05Josh Clark?

  You could not have a recurring dream, like there, that in and of itself shows that there is something to dreams, that they do serve some purpose, or they do have some meaning to us, which I thought was rather clever.

• 41:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I probably agree with that.

• 41:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Recurring nightmares is probably kind of one of the worst things. And it's very, very sad in that veterans and people suffering from PTSD in general, often have recurring nightmares. And that's actually one of the criteria for diagnosing PTSD.

• 41:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  There was a study in 1998 that found two to eight percent of adults have nightmares, or problematic nightmares at least, and 52% of Vietnam veterans did. And that's tough stuff, because that's clearly, you know, you know, things that are either buried or that you just can't, can't get over or deal with still in your waking life.

• 41:57Josh Clark?

  What's neat about that though, is they have figured out forms of dream therapy for PTSD specifically, but it can also be used by anyone having recurring bad dreams or nightmares, where you essentially train yourself to imagine a different ending for that nightmare, right?

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:18Josh Clark?

  And so as for PTSD, like your nightmare is the event that gave you PTSD. So you're re-experiencing it over and over every night, which it's just mind boggling how awful that sounds, right?

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:32Josh Clark?

  The, this therapy is like, okay, in this next dream, you're going to, like, in the end, you're going to fight this person off, or you're going to suddenly be at home and at peace or whatever. And the, it's kind of like that dream incubation idea, where you eventually, hopefully are able to change the end of that nightmare. And from what I was reading, that usually frees the person from that nightmare. They never have it again after that.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the turn your frown upside down of hellish nightmares.

• 43:05Josh Clark?

  For sure. Right. So it's, at the very least, it's, it's heartening that there is

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 43:12Josh Clark?

  A potential solution, because nightmares, whether you have PTSD or not, they're linked to self-injury and suicide.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you know, even just at the bare minimum, it's going to give you perhaps sleep deprivation. And it can interfere with your, you know, normal routines during the day, your job, your relationships. They think there may be a genetic predisposition to frequent nightmares, but they don't know what that is. But they also say, well, it also could be maybe the same like genetic, or at least driven by genetic risk factors of mental health conditions that may be underlying behind the dreams.

• 43:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And that actually ties into nightmares and bad dreams being a a characteristic or a trait of Parkinson's disease.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, you found that.

• 44:02Josh Clark?

  And specifically Parkinson's disease with dementia. I guess 78% of people with Parkinson's disease with dementia have recurring nightmares.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Oh man.

• 44:14Josh Clark?

  Or at least bad dreams. I'm not sure if they actually meet the criteria for nightmare where you wake up, but here, you're, you, it's not pleasant to go to sleep if you have Parkinson's with dementia.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. We talked about, we did a whole episode on fever dreams too. Remember that? That was interesting.

• 44:31Josh Clark?

  We did one on sleep paralysis.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 44:34Josh Clark?

  And we did one on night terrors too. So yeah, both of those episodes are out there. I think sleep paralysis was called like, the worst thing that can happen to you while you're sleeping, maybe?

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Right. And isn't that the sleep paralysis is when you like, you're asleep, but you picture yourself awake and there's like someone at the foot of your bed?

• 44:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And because you're in REM sleep, you can't move.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:57Josh Clark?

  And then night terrors are similar in that you, you appear to other people to be awake, because you're screaming and fighting somebody off and your eyes are open, but you are still asleep.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, kids usually get those, but adults can as well. And then what about this idea about like premonitions? Like I, you know, there have definitely been people that have at least said that they had a premonition about some very specific historical event. Sometimes big time and sometimes just, you know, little, little things that happen in people's families. But the, you know, the big ones are ones that get all the press, like in the 1960s, there was a Canadian dreamer named Kathleen Lorna Middleton, who had a lot of dreams about things that she had no connection to. And she at least claimed to have predicted through her dream, a landslide in South Wales

• 45:56Speaker 01

  that killed 144 people about an hour before, and supposedly the assassination of Robert Kennedy.

• 46:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  She foretold in a dream.

• 46:05Josh Clark?

  And she doesn't seem to have been like attention seeking or anything like that. She, she does seem to have been a like this, this, these were her experiences. Of course, scientifically, you're like, well, there's a lot of things you can point to that, that explain why people think there's such a thing as precognitive dreams. Your dreams might be a little ambiguous, so that you're kind of retroactively going back and be like, yes, that's what that was, was saying. Or your brain just wants to identify patterns naturally. We talk about that a lot.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:39Josh Clark?

  So it could be putting together stuff that's not really necessarily connected. Selective memory, coincidence.

• 46:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's just, there's not really any, any room for it in science typically. But I found an article that pointed out that quantum physics actually has room for precognitive dreams.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Oh yeah?

• 47:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah. It basically says that under some quantum theories, like quantum gravity, I think it allows for this, where past, present and future are not following any kind of linear order, like we think of time. Instead, they all kind of coexist. And this, this quantum interpretation of precognitive dreams just basically says, in certain states, in this case, dreaming, the dream state, we're able to access future events, just like we are past events, or present events when we're waking.

• 47:35Josh Clark?

  Pretty neat.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's pretty cool. I mean, between 17 and 38% of people say they have had at least one precognitive dream in their lifetime.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  And I think definitely if you have like a willingness to accept like,

• 47:55Speaker 01

  accept that kind of thing in general, and maybe accept ambiguous information and put it together in a way that makes sense. Like you may be more prone to be like, hey, but I dreamed this thing. And you know, who knows that assassination was sort of, political assassination was much more of a thing when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. And maybe Kathleen Lorna Middleton was a, a fan of the Kennedys and it's something that, that concerned her.

• 48:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's a good explanation.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  But you know, it maybe it's not also to be explained. And maybe, I mean, who knows? Maybe people can really dream stuff that's going to happen. I don't know.

• 48:29Josh Clark?

  I don't either. I don't either Chuck. And I think that it takes a big man to admit something like that.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  All right, we're a couple of big men.

• 48:38Josh Clark?

  You got anything else about dreams right now?

• 48:40Speaker 01

  I do not.

• 48:41Josh Clark?

  Okay. Well, that was our dream episode. People have been calling for that for a while. Hopefully you guys liked it.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  I know. Yeah.

• 48:47Josh Clark?

  And since we're wondering whether you guys liked this episode, I think I just accidentally triggered listener mail.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  That's right. This is Sammy Davis Jr. story. I don't know if you saw this.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  It's pretty fun. Hey guys, fairly new listener. Someone wrote in with the Sammy Davis Jr. story and you asked for more, so here it is. When my elderly father passed in 2006, we heard a story from the wife of my dad's business partner. She told us that there was a time in the four of them were in Las Vegas together and attended a Sammy Davis Jr. concert. My mother, who had gone out to the restroom just before the concert began, the, came back in, the lights went down. Sammy began his first number and my mother returned from the restroom. It was dark and she couldn't remember or see where they were sitting. And as she stumbled between the tables, she started calling out, Vic, where are you? Vic, where are you? And it wasn't too long before Sammy completely stopped the show and asked from the stage, Vic babe, where are you?

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Mom got back to her table and Sammy started the concert over again from the very beginning.

• 49:50Josh Clark?

  Oh wow.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  Later that year, very sadly, my mom also passed away and I was able to sell this story as part of her remembrance, adding that I could imagine her arriving in heaven, asking Vic, where are you? That is from Cliff in Madison, Wisconsin, one of my new favorite towns.

• 50:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that is a great town. And that's a great story. Cliff, thanks a lot for sending it to us. One of the better Sammy Davis Jr. stories I've ever heard.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, doesn't get much better than Sammy Davis Jr. addressing you from stage.

• 50:18Josh Clark?

  For sure. If you want to be like Cliff and send us an email with a great story, that's also kind of a tribute to your late loved one. We think those are the tops, as Sammy might say. At the very least, Mel Torme would say it.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 50:32Josh Clark?

  You can send it off to [email protected].

• 50:40Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 50:55Josh Clark?

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• 51:26Speaker 03

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