What are dreams for?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 5 April 2019
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
There are very good reasons to sleep: to regulate the body’s metabolism, blood pressure and other aspects of health. But do we actually need to dream? Is there an evolutionary reason for it?
Marnie Chesterton takes her dream diary to a dream lab to explore this very popular preoccupation of many CrowdScience listeners.
What would happen if we didn’t dream? What purpose do dreams serve? Can we really interpret them meaningfully, or are they merely random signals from the brain? The latest research says talking about them could be more important than we realise.
And what about controlling our dreams? Marnie finds herself a willing participant in a study on lucid dreaming – of which sleep scientists are only just starting to understand the psychological benefits.
Presenter: Marnie Chesterton Producer: Dominic Byrne
(Image: Woman dreaming on a cloud up in the sky. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and maybe it's when I had a hand in. |
| 0:04.0 | I'm Tammy Walker and I produce podcasts for the BBC. |
| 0:08.0 | My role is to give new and diverse creators a voice with the opportunity to build a career. |
| 0:12.0 | That's the thing I love about podcasts. |
| 0:14.4 | You start with just a good idea, but then you have the space to see where it goes. |
| 0:18.4 | And doing that at the BBC means we can really run with the best stories |
| 0:21.9 | while developing the most unique audio talent. |
| 0:24.3 | So if you like what you hear, why not check out the huge range of podcast we've got on BBC |
| 0:29.1 | Sounds. |
| 0:29.6 | It's 4 a.m. I'm still awake and this is the opposite of what I need right now. |
| 0:40.0 | I don't want to wake my flat mate up so I'm whispering but |
| 0:47.8 | Dom my producer needs me to one be asleep so that two, I can have an interesting dream because a |
| 0:57.6 | professor is going to interpret that for me. It's for a crowd science episode on the purpose of dreaming because we've had loads of questions on it, |
| 1:06.0 | but I can't seem to dream at the moment and it's beginning to stress me out. |
| 1:20.0 | Hello, I'm Rajendra Chandrshaker from India. My question for crowd sciences is, what is a dream? |
| 1:25.0 | Hello, Crowd Science. I'm Sijing Yi from Singapore. |
| 1:29.0 | And my question is, why do we dream? |
| 1:32.0 | Hello, my name is Agnes Korea from Erobi Kenya |
| 1:36.0 | my question for crowd science is is there any reason to dream |
| 1:42.0 | what causes all the brain activity that makes us to have either a pleasant |
| 1:47.0 | dream or a disturbing nightmare? |
| 1:50.0 | Nightmare. Nightmare. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

