Can you control your dreams?
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Hi, friends. If you love Brains on Universe, you'll love the latest season of Million Bazillion, Marketplace's award-winning kids podcast about money. Hosts Ryan and Bridget answer the funny, tricky, and just really good questions from kid listeners to help dollars make more sense. Million Bazillion is presented in partnership with Greenlight, the debit card and money app for kids and teens. With Greenlight, kids and teens learn to earn, save, spend wisely, and invest.

Learn all about Greenlight at greenlight.com slash million. And tune into Million Bazillion wherever you find your favorite podcasts. From the brains behind Brains On, this is the Moment of Um. Answering those questions that make you go, um. Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios. I'm Anna Weigel. Um.

I used to love bedtime, but lately I've been having bad dreams, some real doozies. One time, I dreamed I was in the woods surrounded by raccoons. They were playing bongos with their tiny raccoon hands and chanting, "We're going to turn you into soup! We're going to turn you into soup!" And then there's the one where I'm skating at a roller rink and suddenly the floor is sand and I'm at the bottom of a stinky fish tank trying to avoid giant slimy bubbles.

I wish I had a way to control my dreams, like a remote control to change the channel when things got scary. That's something Connor was wondering too. Hello, my name is Connor from Toronto, Canada. I'm nine years old and my question is, can we control our dreams? Howdy, I can help you with that. Who are you and why are you in my bedroom? And why do you have a cowboy hat and a guitar? Don't worry, Anna, you've already drifted off to sleep.

I'm just a figment of your imagination. You can call me Fig. I have a cowboy hat because I store my sandwiches under it. And I brought along my guitar to help me teach you something called lucid dreaming.

I also brought along a dream version of Dr. Katema Paul. He's a scientist who studies circadian rhythms, the way our brain controls dreams when we sleep and when we wake up. Doc, can we control them, their dreams? Absolutely. It's possible for you to control your dream, and that's a state we call lucid dreaming. ♪

My name is Katema Paul. I'm a professor of integrative biology and physiology. My area of expertise is in sleep and circadian rhythms, and I work at University of California, Los Angeles. Lucid dreaming technically is the ability to be aware in your dream and to know that you are dreaming, but there are

types of lucid dream where you not only gain awareness that you're dreaming, but you gain some control in your dream. You're able to make decisions in your dream and you're able to affect outcomes in your dreams. And coincidentally, most lucid dreaming in the studies that have examined age occurs during adolescent and young adult years. But you only remember that if you wake up right after the lucid dream. So it's likely that many people have had lucid dreams, but don't remember them.

When I was younger, I remember there was a period in my lucid dreams where I was actively controlling my dreams and I did get better at it. I had dreams where I was actually, my big thing was flying in my dreams. So this was around the time when I was 17 or 18. I would make myself fly. Um, uh,

See, Anna, Doc says you can be the driver of your own dream wagon. The trick to lucid dreaming is to realize in the dream that you are dreaming. Once you know that, you can start to control things. Now, here's something you can do to help tell you whether you're awake or dreaming.

Let's say you're in the forest and the raccoons are circling. You know about the raccoon dream? Oh, right. Yep. You live in my head. Yeah, that one's a humdinger. So, take the pointer finger of one hand, touch it to the palm of the other hand, and push. If you're dreaming, you won't feel your palm. Your finger will push right on through. If you see that happen, you can sing to yourself a little something like this.

This is a dream I'm the boss of myself With only a thought I can be somewhere else Like a tropical beach

or a rocket in space. I'm sending my dreams to a different place. Like a tropical beach or a rocket in space. I'm sending my dreams to a different place. Thanks, Fig and Dr. Paul. I'm going to go hang out with some baby ducks on a cloud of pillows. Ah!

So much better. Good night. If you like this episode, take a second to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you want to learn more about the science of a sleeping brain, check out the Brains On podcast where we have a whole episode all about dreams. If you have a moment of um question, we'd love to help you answer it. Drop us a line by going to brainson.org slash contact. See you next time and the next day and every weekday. Until then. ♪

We're going to turn you into soup. We're going to turn you into soup.