The Science and Art of Dreaming with Sidarta Ribeiro
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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You're listening to the Nocturinous Conversations. I'm Emily Silverman. At the height of the pandemic, we at the Nocturnist were struggling to talk about COVID in a way that felt fresh. So we decided to ask healthcare workers to send in their COVID dreams. We had somebody send in a dream about the floor being covered in ants and trying to vacuum up the ants, and they just kept coming and kept coming. We had a story about a woman who found herself on a beach searching for her brother and all the people on the beach were holding strings that disappeared into the horizon, which she thought were kite strings but turned out to be IV poles. We had somebody who dreamt that they were in a car accident and then time slowed down and they watched the entire accident unfold in slow motion with the pieces of glass flying through the air.
It was really one of my favorite episodes of The Nocturnist that we've ever made, and part of the reason why is it allowed us to dive into the subconscious of healthcare workers and explore what the pandemic was doing to us in a different way. If you want to take a listen, it's Stories from a Pandemic Part Two, Episode Four, and the title of the episode is Dreams and Nightmares. So, as you can tell, I've always been really interested in dreams, which is why when I received this book, The Oracle of Night, I immediately picked it up. And the author of the book and today's guest is Sidarta Ribeiro, a founder of the Brain Institute at the Universidad Federal de Rio Grande de Norte in Brazil, where he's also a professor of neuroscience.
He received a PhD in animal behavior from the Rockefeller University. and he's the author of The Oracle of Night, A History and Science of Dreams. What I found inside Siddhartha's book Is this incredibly comprehensive exploration of what dreams are and what our relationship to dreams is as human beings. He talks about where dreams started, walking us all the way back to antiquity and how they show up in old texts and cultures, and the importance of dreams and dreams interpretation in older human societies. He talks about our modern lifestyle and how that hinders our ability to. sleep and dream and harness the power of dreams. He talks about dream interpretation as a communal activity that can be really powerful.
And that's not even starting. To talk about the neuroscience in this book and his beautiful descriptions of the brain and the electric activities in the brain and the neurotransmitters and the hormones and everything that comes together and synchronizes to produce this powerful and mysterious process called dreaming, which is such an important function for mental health and physical health and also human thriving and flourishing. It also made me think about sleep deprivation among medical residents and I have to admit I had some stirrings of anger as I realized for the first time in a while how much sleep I missed out on as a resident. And I've been doing some writing about that on the side. So this book definitely inspired me to dig into my own emotions and sift through some old feelings about medical training and sleep.
I was thrilled to have the opportunity to speak to Siddharta about his book. We zoomed from his apartment in Brazil and I was here in San Francisco and there was this super high-pitched whistle from the wind outside his apartment window and somehow our editor, John Oliver, was magically able to make it disappear. So thank you, John. And it's really a great conversation. We cover a lot of ground. Ranging from the historical to the scientific to the spiritual. So I'll leave it there. I'm really excited to introduce neuroscientist Siddhartha Ribero. Enjoy. I am sitting here with Siddhartha Ribero.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–8:27
2
What inspired Emily to invite Sidarta Ribeiro and what is the focus of his book?
8:27–27:44
3
How did Sidarta’s experience as a narcoleptic PhD student shape his view of sleep and dreaming?
27:44–49:19
4
What are the different stages of sleep and how do they relate to dreaming?
49:19–52:04