#0: Life in a House

Dreams are among the most bizarre and counterintuitive experiences that a person can have—and each of us has them multiple times per night, whether or not we remember them. The content of dreams is highly mysterious, and humans have forever debated their significance and structure. Dreams have started religions and wars. They have catalyzed major scientific and non-scientific discoveries. Now, we finally have enough scientific evidence to begin to tell the veridical story of dreaming.  Why do we dream? (And why don't we already have a good answer to this question?) Are dreams totally random phenomena, are they intimations of the divine, or do they exist somewhere between these characterizations? What is the brain doing while we dream? In this episode, we investigate the magic of the dreamstate, we learn its neuropsychological backstory, and we consider the significance that we can (and can't) attribute to our dreams. This six-part episode is the first of its kind in providing a comprehensive and intuitive understanding of what dreaming is.

This is an unsettling time, no doubt. But what does this really mean from a cognitive perspective? The relevance of this question couldn't be clearer: when we understand the logic and the mechanics of negative emotion, we get a much better sense of how we might avoid unnecessary suffering during this time. 

Join Cameron Berg, a student of cognitive science at Yale University, to explore the nature of our current moment from a new perspective. What exactly do we mean by the mind, and why is it so worth understanding in these times?