Science of Dreaming
The Infinite Monkey Cage
BBC
4.7 • 9.4K Ratings
🗓️ 30 September 2019
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Brian Cox and Robin Ince are joined by comedian Bridget Christie, neuroscientist Professor Penny Lewis and psychologist Richard Wiseman to explore the science of dreaming. Our dreams have fascinated humans for millennia and then Freud came along and told us they really did mean something, and mostly they were about sex and anger. Was he right? Why do we dream and can we find meaning in the content of our dreams? Can our dreams help us solve problems, give us new ideas, help us write a symphony, even if they can't predict the future? The panel also discuss what is going on in the brain whilst we sleep, and how memories are formed and consolidated while we snooze. It turns out the phrase "better to sleep on it" has a strong scientific argument.
Producer: Alexandra Feachem
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Hello, welcome to The Infinite Uncaged Podcast. |
| 0:07.5 | I'm Robin Hnts, next to me is Brian Cox, |
| 0:09.5 | and we hope you enjoy this podcast. |
| 0:11.2 | If you are confounded by it, don't worry, most of us are. |
| 0:14.6 | I'm Robin Hnts. I'm Brian Cox. |
| 0:16.3 | One of the great milestones in the journey |
| 0:18.3 | to understand the human unconscious |
| 0:20.1 | occurred when Sigmund Freud published |
| 0:21.8 | the interpretation of dreams. |
| 0:26.5 | And now I'm going to tell you what it means |
| 0:27.7 | when you dream of a harpist. |
| 0:28.7 | But anyway, the other great psychotherapist |
| 0:31.4 | at that time, Karl Jung, |
| 0:32.8 | considered one of his most influential dreams |
| 0:34.9 | to be the one where God did a big poo on Barzell Cathedral |
| 0:39.3 | destroying the cathedral on impact. |
| 0:42.1 | And that's entirely true, by the way. |
| 0:44.5 | Is it these autobiography said that the dream |
| 0:46.8 | that really changed? |
| 0:47.6 | Well, I've never dreamt of God. |
| 0:49.6 | I mean, the fact that it's God and a poo in a cathedral. |
... |
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