Something You Should Know
This Is Why You Dream & The Benefits of Solitude – SYSK Choice
30 May 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What psychological issues can arise from being wealthy?
Today on Something You Should Know, why being rich, especially when you're young, can bring trouble. Then, what you do and don't dream about, why some dreams are very common and almost no one dreams about math.
When you look at patterns of dreaming, some dreams cluster in families like nightmares. Some dreams are common despite changes in culture and society, like falling and being chased. And then math dreams are very rarely reported.
Also, what makes organic seafood organic, and should you buy it? And spending time alone. A lot of people like it, but they worry about other people who like it.
There aren't any hard and fast rules for spending too much time or too little time alone, but we do tend to have these expectations that others who really prefer to be alone must not be liking it very much, must be having a hard time, or there's something wrong with them.
All this today on Something You Should Know.
Hey, it's Hillary Frank from The Longest Shortest Time, an award-winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health. We talk about things like sex ed, birth control, pregnancy, bodily autonomy, and, of course, kids of all ages. But you don't have to be a parent to listen.
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Chapter 2: Why do we dream and what functions do dreams serve?
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something you should know fascinating intel the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today something you should know with mike carruthers hey hi welcome to something you should know assuming assuming this isn't the case for you have you ever wondered or wished for the fact that you had been born into a very wealthy family or had won the lottery a while ago or
or maybe inherited a bunch of money early on so that your life was fairly easy for most of the ride. I imagine a lot of people wish that or think that, but interesting research shows that when wealth and success come too easy or too early, like when people win the lottery or receive a big inheritance, trouble often follows.
Researcher Dr. Stephen Berglas says human beings are wired to face challenges. It's how we have survived all these years. So when life becomes easy and carefree, it's really rather boring for many people. So we create our own obstacles.
Chapter 3: What are common themes in dreams, and why do some dreams recur?
This is why you often hear that lottery winners or the children of celebrities or children of wealthy parents get into all sorts of trouble with drugs and money or with the law. Humans need challenge. If life doesn't serve it up, people make up their own challenges. And often they're the kind of challenges that cannot be overcome. And that is something you should know.
We all sleep at night to allow our brain and body to rest. But what if that isn't really true? What if we sleep at night to allow our brains to dream?
Chapter 4: How do our dreams reflect our emotional states?
After all, we are dreaming much of the night, which would indicate our brain is working, not really resting. So why do we dream? Does dreaming perform some important function? Do we require sleep so that our brain can dream? Are the dreams we have really significant or are they just weird little stories that don't mean much?
Chapter 5: What is the relationship between solitude and creativity?
Here to discuss this is Dr. Rahul Jandiyal. He is a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist who performs and teaches brain surgery in underserved hospitals in Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe. He is the author of several books. His latest is called This Is Why You Dream, What Your Sleeping Brain Reveals About Your Waking Life.
Hey, doctor, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you for including me.
Chapter 6: How can solitude improve emotional resilience and self-awareness?
My pleasure. So what does science really know about dreams and why we have them? And what I mean is that we've all heard that dreams are so important that they can be helpful, that they're trying to tell you something. You can even maybe solve problems in your dreams. And my experience, and I suspect the experience of a lot of people, is that...
My dreams don't make a lot of sense much of the time. They're hard to remember.
Chapter 7: What misconceptions exist about solitude and loneliness?
They seem inconsequential most of the time. So how important can they be and how much stock can we put in our dreams?
I think that's an important point. And the way I think about it is let's not ask the dreaming brain and the dreaming mind to do what we wouldn't. What we wouldn't ask the waking brain and waking mind to do. We don't always have clever thoughts. We don't hold on to much of what we do during the day. And the product of the waking brain is not always consequential.
So, yes, many dreams are irrelevant. They're static. Some dreams are universal. Nightmares and erotic dreams.
Chapter 8: How can we find a balance between solitude and social interactions?
So that has to be understood that that doesn't seem like an accidental process. Some dreams cluster in families like nightmares. So they're inherited in some ways like our disposition to risk or mental health. Some dreams are common despite changes in culture and society like falling and being chased. And I've been reported for
centuries those things can't be accidental when they're happening over centuries across cultures and then some dreams uh the patterns when you look at not your dream or my dream but thousands of dreams math is very rare what happens with the dreaming brain is our executive network which is a collection of structures that includes something that's really that functions for logic and math is dampened it kind of makes sense that math dreams are very rarely reported
when you look at the dreaming brain and you see that imagination network, which is a different collection of structures, and the limbic system, which is a different collection of structures for emotion, those are liberated, if you will. They're accentuated. Their activity is higher in the dreaming brain.
Then that kind of makes sense that when we do have dreams and we do remember them, that they're filled with anxiety or they have nightmares or erotic dreams. So not every dream, not your dream, not my dream, but when you look at general brain activation patterns,
through machines, through electricity measurements, and you look at general description of dreams over the ages, I think some interesting conclusions can be made.
Well, that's really interesting that people don't dream about math.
Do even mathematicians dream about math? They must. They have to. That's a great question. Of course, some of your listeners are going to write in that, no, I dream of math. I'm not saying it's not an impossible thing, but when you look at thousands and thousands of dreams, the percentage of nightmares is above 90%. It's essentially universal.
I don't have to explain to somebody, other than my children, when they were kids, that, oh, it's only a nightmare. And when you look at the large patterns of dreaming, falling, chasing, teeth falling out, they're common, 30% to 70%. But math tends to be only a few percent.
So there is this sense, this belief, that when you're asleep... You're at rest. You're resting. You're sound asleep. You couldn't be more resting. And yet I wonder if while you're dreaming, how does the body react to those dreams? Does the body see or does the body experience your dream the same way your body experiences real life?
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