In this episode, dreams were a royal road indeed - to super interesting facts! Our chosen word for this episode took us from the supernatural to the surreal!

We started off with some sticky situations from many moons ago, which is as descriptive as we dare to get when it comes to time (for those not in the know: our discomfort with incomprehensible amounts of time is a recurring theme) for this particular anecdote about a much-loved character from our childhoods!

Ragini takes us from this beloved mystery character from our childhoods to the Dream Argument and the progenitor of the line, “I think, therefore I am” – good ol’ René Descartes.

Gluttons for punishment, we went right back to the theory of multiple universes and briefly discussed the number of possible universes – another incomprehensible set of numbers which was eye-opening nonetheless.

The confusion was offset by veering into Shar’s research into a very interesting researcher called Andrew Paquette who was owner and keeper of probably the most well-kept dream journal there ever was! And instead of doing what all we other commonfolk do with our dream journals (flip through them occasionally to go back to that one sex dream that was just shy of being disturbing enough to screenshot and share with friends one boring Sunday afternoon), Andrew spent the better part of four decades meticulously indexing and analysing the frequency of his dreams that could be counted as premonitions of someone’s death – you know, just like your average journalist of dreams! The findings are interesting to say the least, with Andrew clearly going down as a fan of the long troll. More information in the Links of Interest section.

Have you heard of the Aberfan disaster? Well, did you know that it led to the setting up of the British Premonitions Bureau? Us neither! Shar’s section led us on a non-so-merry chase through 60’s Britain where the power of premonitions was respected… albeit quietly and in a short-lived organisation with an interesting end. More on that in the episode!

Have you peed the bed because you thought you were sat on the loo? Us neither! Promise. Shar’s research into a little-known figure in lucid dreaming history called Ms. Arnold Foster (a lazy shortening of name that would put double-barrel names to shame) was interesting to say the least! More on Ms. Arnold Foster’s dreamy travels, thoughts on lucid dreaming and her interesting take on Freud’s grandiose hypotheses at the time in the episode!

Taking a turn into that murky world of nightmares and sleep paralysis, Ragini then took us through the eerie and chilling versions of these that exist across various cultures before settling on an unfortunate but fascinating phenomenon called Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syndrome (SUNDS) and how migrants from a certain affected population in Asia carried with them the susceptibility to sudden death in sleep. More explained in the episode!

Ending on a lighter note, Ragini took us through the bizarre “frenemyship” between two of the most influential men in their own rights during the 19th and 20th centuries – Salvador Dali and Sigmund Freud. Trust us, it’s worth the listen.

Links of Interest:

Sara Shakeel

The Psychiatrist Who Believed People Could Tell The Future

Mary Arnold-Forster

Dreaming and Bereavement

When Salvador Dali Met Sigmund Freud

Andrew Paquette’s Research - Based on His 12000-Dream Database

Now stop trawling through this blog post for more info and listen to the episode!

Episode edited by: Mohit Shandilya

Music for the episode: Charita Arora