Okay, Chelsea, I think I'm going to let you pick
this one. I have one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven articles to look, sorry, six articles
to look at. Are they categorized? I'm going to
give you categories. One's on animals. One is
on space. One is on UFOs. One is on pollution.
One is on dreams. And one is on space law. Those
all sound really good. This is a really tough
one. I'm going to go with... I was going to say
dreams, but then you said space law, so I think
I'm going to go space law. Oh, and you know what?
I'm going to stop it there because that one turns
out to probably be a video because the article
itself is maybe a paragraph long. Okay, well
then I choose... Dreams? What's the one I said?
Dreams, yeah, that one. Okay. This article comes
from Above Normal News. It was written on February
16th, 2026 by David Freeman. Article title, Scientists
have found a way to hack your dreams and it actually
works. I'm listening. Well, that's good. I'm
actually really happy when you tell me you are.
I think it's the first time I've actually told
you. That is not, but that's okay. A team at
Northwestern University played sounds in the
ears of sleeping volunteers during REM sleep,
watched those volunteers respond from inside
their dreams using pre -arranged physical signals,
and then measured what happened when they woke
up. How did they watch them in their dreams?
No, they watched them respond from inside their
dreams. So like they could see them like do something
measurable. Oh, like outwardly. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
The people whose dreams were successfully steered
towards specific unsolved puzzles were twice
as likely to solve those puzzles the next morning.
The ones who forgot their dreams entirely but
still responded to cues while unconscious solved
at the highest rate of all. The study, published
in February 2026 in Neuroscience of Consciousness
by Oxford University Press, is led by Karen Arconcoli
at Northwestern's Psychology Department. With
collaborators at the University of Notre Dame,
it is one of the most direct experimental demonstrations
ever produced that REM dreams actively contribute
to creative problem solving, not as folklore
or anecdote, but as laboratory findings backed
by statistical analysis and physiological recordings.
20 participants took part, most of them frequent
lucid dreamers capable of becoming aware they
are dreaming while still asleep. Each came to
the lab for two overnight sessions about a week
apart. On each visit, they arrived two hours
before their usual bedtime and were given a series
of creative puzzles designed to resist analytical
step -by -step solving. Matchstick problems,
rebust challenges, spatial and verbal brain teasers,
the sort of things where you either get the flash
of insight or you stay stuck. each puzzle came
with its own unique soundtrack a 15 second clip
of music or environmental sound participants
had three minutes per puzzle listening to the
soundtrack on repeat while they worked when they
failed they listened to the soundtrack one more
time and memorized their pairings the evening
continued until each participant had banked four
unsolved puzzles then came the wiring electrodes
were applied to monitor brain waves Eye movements,
muscle activity, heart rate, and nasal airflow.
Participants watched either Inception or Waking
Life while the setup was completed. Amazing.
Then went to bed with specific... Why would they
make them watch Inception? I have so many questions.
They watched Inception? I was not listening to
that part. Participants watched either Inception
or Waking Life while the setup was completed
and then went to bed with specific instructions.
At 4 a .m., they would be woken for 20 minutes
of lucidity training, a technique that pairs
a specific triple beep sound cue with a lucid
state of mind as they drift back towards sleep.
After that, sounds might be played during their
REM periods. If they became lucid, they could
signal by performing rapid left -right eye movements.
If they heard a puzzle soundtrack they should
start working on that puzzle and signal by sniffing
rapidly in and out through the nose. Of the four
unsolved puzzles each participant carried into
sleep, researchers randomly selected two for
cueing. The other two served as controls. When
REM sleep arrived, the team first played about
10 lucidity cues and then began feeding in the
puzzle soundtracks and title recordings for the
two selected problems. Cues were delivered every
15 to 30 seconds, starting barely above the threshold
of hearing, increasing only while the sleeper
showed no signs of arousal. I assume they mean
like waking up by that. Yeah. Any twitch of muscle
tone, any flicker of alpha waves, and the volume
dropped back down. After each REM period, participants
were woken and asked to recount everything they
could remember. 15 of the 20 participants had
at least one dream involving an unsolved puzzle.
Cued puzzles were incorporated into dreams at
a significantly higher rate than uncued ones,
with the effect reaching P less than .001, just
meaning not chance. The cueing worked exactly
as designed. Playing a puzzle soundtrack during
REM sleep made people dream about that puzzle.
The dream reports read like transmissions from
somewhere profoundly strange. One participant
signaled lucidity with her eye movements, heard
a puzzle name played in her ears, then confirmed
with sniffing signals that she was working on
it. When she woke, she described recruiting a
friend's daughter in her dream. The girl, who
in the dream had autism, did not speak, climbed
onto a seesaw. Watching this, the dreamer realized
something about the puzzle. The scales were not
flat. The actual puzzle required moving five
matchsticks to balance a hanging scale. Whether
the seesaw vision helped remains unclear. She
never solved that one. Another participant's
case was more striking. She responded to two
puzzle cues in real time while sleeping, confirming
through sniffing signals that she was processing
them. We do not use sniffing signals enough,
apparently. Nope. When she woke, she remembered
almost nothing. She had been looking through
a dresser. Papers with puzzles were inside. She
solved one and got little celebration. She could
not say which puzzle. The next morning, she solved
both cute problems. Something happened in her
sleeping brain that her waking memory could not
access, but the cognitive benefit was real. What's
the cognitive benefit? That they were able to
solve the puzzle, I think is what they're saying.
Because, like, they cued up certain sounds to
make them think about those particular puzzles,
and they solved those puzzles. Oh, okay. I don't
see that as a benefit, but okay. Yeah. This connects
to the study's most unsettling findings. What
fucking weird stats. Yeah. The people who tried
hardest did worse. The people who processed the
problems without any awareness of doing so did
best. The researchers suggest that non -lucid
dreams may enhance unconscious incubation by
allowing incorrect mental pathways to fade while
the brain ranges across distant associations.
Deliberate effort during lucid dreams may do
the opposite, dragging the dreamer back into
the same wrong approaches that created the impasse
while awake. That's interesting. It's like, it's
your awake. problem solving that's still trying
to work through it and it just can't think outside
its normal box. So it's not helping to lucidly
dream. Whereas if you just like let your brain
go with the flow and you don't remember any of
it, you're going to solve it. Like that is bizarre.
Yeah. Puzzles that were dreamed about by any
measure were solved the next morning at 42%.
Puzzles not dreamed about were solved at 17%.
That difference was statistically significant.
But how are they controlling the puzzles that
are being solved? Because they're giving them
four puzzles. But they're only playing songs
for two of them. So they're controlling the ones
that they tried to make you dream about versus
the ones they did not. Oh, okay. Okay, that makes
sense. I was like, how are they controlling the
puzzles inside a dream? Dreams are widely known
as uncontrollable. And if you can't control them,
it's actually shittier, apparently. Exactly.
Widely known. Yeah, I think that's far enough
to go with this article. It actually goes on.
You know, I could probably finish it. There's
six. No, we can leave it there. People will link
to it and you guys can go take a look. Yeah.
But yeah, that's something like I've always,
I don't know. It's really interesting that I
wouldn't have thought that way. Would you? With
regards to like lucid dreaming actually being
detrimental to your learning ability? No. I can't
say it's something that I've ever really thought
about or thought we should do a study on either.
Yeah. Just to be straight up. But like we always,
we've known at least for a really long time,
like sleeping on something is beneficial. Like
your brain makes connections while you sleep.
Yeah. To make you better at things that you're
trying to learn. Yeah. And it's almost like from
the study they're showing that you can do things
during your sleep, but like. Trying to control
how you're learning during the sleep isn't going
to help at all. In fact, it probably will hurt
overall. Come on, I shouldn't say hurt. Just
not as good as letting your body naturally go
with the flow. Yeah, I wonder if it's, I don't
know. It feels like it's right on the tip of
my brain, but I can't. Maybe you should sleep
on it. Yeah, maybe I should sleep on it. We can
talk about it in the next episode. Other than
that, like, what are the implications? Like,
why did they go into this study? Why did they
need to do this study? Maybe... But they wanted
to see the impact on different types of sleep
and cues while sleeping on problem solving or
learning. Yeah. Which is just wild. Like, completely
not remembering your dream at all is the best
way of learning as opposed to either remembering
your dream about it or intentionally taking control
of your dream and trying to learn during the
dream. Like that is just wild. In the end, at
least I don't lucid dream. So in the end, I think
I'm better off is what I've learned from the
study at least. Yeah. Although I don't think
we're trying to like intentionally said anything
while we sleep either. So who actually knows
if it's just like, let your brain run wild. Yeah,
you should definitely. And I'm sure somewhere
in there, there's a plug for us to say, you better
be listening to us while you sleep. Yeah. It's
best just to listen to us while you sleep because
then. You're absorbing all this like such good
knowledge and just calm that you guys need for
your soul. Yeah. Soul. Yeah. Anyhow, you guys
got 48 hours. You need to sleep and listen to
us like the whole time. And then if you run out
of episodes, you do it again. Yeah. And then
you do it while you're awake. And it's supposed
to be more beneficial that way. Anyhow. Bye.
Bye.