This is The Guardian.

Dr. Michelle Carr has an unusual job.

She spends her time watching people sleep.

So as a dream scientist, you know, I work in a sleep lab and we invite subjects into the lab, usually in the evening.

Before they can get cozy, Michelle's subjects are hooked up to electrodes on their scalp and face.

Then it lights out.

The subject will go into a bedroom, which we've tried to make kind of homey with a nice night table and a nice bed, and they'll sleep. And we are watching their brain activity

and their eye movement activity, and we have a video of them sleeping in bed.

But brain activity and eye movement only get the scientists so far.

To really get an insight into the mysteries of dreams, Michelle and her colleagues have to do something a little unkind.

Periodically throughout the night, we just wake them up. We use a two-way intercom to kind of call their name.

And after they wake up, we ask them about their dream.

And then they can go back to sleep, and we just repeat this process multiple times across the night

to collect as much dream content as we can.

The dream content Michelle has collected over her two decades as a dream scientist has informed her new book,

Into the Dream Lab, the new science of dreams and nightmares.

From studying dreams, we can see that the scaffolding of dreams is our experience from waking life.

And there are certain features that really often reappear in dreams,

and really they're like a simulation of our reality.

So today, why do we dream?

What happens when dreams go wrong?

And how can we take control of our sleeping life?

...