
In today's short, a man confronts a bully, and frees himself from a recurring nightmare that's terrorized him for more than 20 years.
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Robert Krulwich
Black Friday at the Home Depot. Para toda las fiestas que se bienen. En la tienda oper Internet tode pierdas. Black Friday and the Home Depot.
Steve Volk
Oh, wait, you're listening.
Producer/Interviewer
Okay. All right.
Jad Abumrad
Okay.
Producer/Interviewer
All right. You're listening to Radiolab Radio Loud from wnyc. Yes.
Steve Volk
And npr.
Jad Abumrad
Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.
Robert Krulwich
I'm Robert Krulwich.
Jad Abumrad
This is Radiolab, the podcast. And today, a story about facing. How would you put it?
Steve Volk
Facing your boogeyman, I think.
Jad Abumrad
Yeah.
Robert Krulwich
But in this case, like, literally, eh, that's almost.
WNYC Announcer
Almost.
Jad Abumrad
And it comes to us from. Matt, you ready?
Producer/Interviewer
Yeah.
Jad Abumrad
From reporter Matthew Kielty.
Producer/Interviewer
Steve.
Steve Volk
Yes.
Jad Abumrad
And another guy.
Producer/Interviewer
How you doing?
Steve Volk
Never been better.
Jad Abumrad
So, Matt, I don't know exactly how we're gonna start this story, but maybe just introduce us to this guy.
Producer/Interviewer
So this guy's Steve Volk.
Steve Volk
He's a reporter, a city reporter here in Philadelphia. I write about courts, crime, politics.
Producer/Interviewer
But the thing that I read was a personal story of Steve's story. Starts with Steve in his early 20s, and one night he goes to sleep, right?
Steve Volk
So I have this dream where I wake up in my apartment. There's nobody there but me. And I'm just sort of pacing around the rooms and I feel that sort of that kind of tremor or buzz, almost that something bad's about to happen.
Producer/Interviewer
That feeling when, like, the walls kind of close in on you a little bit.
Steve Volk
I could Just feel that something's about to happen. And I look over at the window, and there's this face.
Producer/Interviewer
Outside his window, this man just hovering there.
Steve Volk
And then he sort of recedes back into the dark. And comes back again. And so it sort of bob up to where I could see it and then recede back into the distance. And it was very, very threatening. Yeah, I don't know what's happening. I just think that this person's trying to scare me, intimidate me.
Producer/Interviewer
So he waits there for a minute, and a moment later, Steve hears this knock. Uh oh, at his front door. He knows immediately it's this guy.
Steve Volk
And so I start hollering using every expletive I know, you know, you're gonna. You're gonna scare me. I start daring him to come in so I can kill him. And I have this rage that, you know, I don't. I don't know that I've ever really felt in real life. So much rage that it made me feel sick.
Producer/Interviewer
He's just screaming at the door over.
Steve Volk
And over, come in here so I can kill you. It was really violent.
Producer/Interviewer
And then all of a sudden, this guy just kicks open the door, and.
Steve Volk
We fly at each other. We're both swinging and grabbing each other.
Producer/Interviewer
And then.
Steve Volk
I wake up literally with my fist, you know, my hand balled into a fist, and I've just thrown a punch at the air.
Producer/Interviewer
And he's. And he's in just absolute panic.
Steve Volk
Very, very profoundly disturbing dream.
Jad Abumrad
But it's just a dream. Yep.
Producer/Interviewer
But the thing about this dream is that it wouldn't go away. Meaning, like, anytime there was any sort of anxiety that flared up in his life. Work, deadline, relationship, family, troubles, back again. And every time, the same thing.
Steve Volk
This face that comes up out of.
Producer/Interviewer
The dark, the face, the window, the.
Steve Volk
Door, the fight, you know, I wanted it to go away.
Producer/Interviewer
And so this is something this. This persisted for how long?
Steve Volk
I would say I had this dream at least six times a year for about 20 years.
Jad Abumrad
20 years?
Producer/Interviewer
20 years. So you must have had it, like, hundreds of times.
Steve Volk
So, yeah, it was a dream that I wanted to be done with, and I wasn't sure how to be done with it.
Producer/Interviewer
But a couple years ago, Steve starts working on this book, basically looking at things that are kind of out there on the edge of science, but he's looking at them in this objective, investigative way. And one of the things that he ends up bumping into is lucid dreaming, lucid dreaming, lucid dreaming.
Jad Abumrad
So this is where, like, you wake up inside your Dream like you're awake. Yeah.
Producer/Interviewer
You're awake. You're present. You're aware. You can control what's happening in your dream.
Jad Abumrad
Let me just ask you, really. I mean, I've seen Inception. I've heard people say that they have lucid dreams, but I just always assume those people just don't know what they're talking about. They're actually referring to something else.
Producer/Interviewer
Yeah. It seems crazy.
Steve Volk
And for a long time, Western science denied lucid dreaming happened. Yeah, it didn't exist.
Producer/Interviewer
But the more Steve looked into it, he realized that the science behind this is real. It is? Yeah.
Jad Abumrad
So sell me.
Producer/Interviewer
We're gonna start with this guy, Stephen LaBerge.
Jad Abumrad
Stephen LaBerge.
Producer/Interviewer
So in the late 70s, LaBerge goes to Stanford. He wants to study consciousness. The reason he does is because he's actually. He's grown up his entire life claiming to have lucid dreams.
Jad Abumrad
He claims he's been controlling his dreams all his life.
Producer/Interviewer
Yeah.
Jad Abumrad
Yeah.
Producer/Interviewer
But at the same time, he's also a scientist.
Steve Volk
So he had to find a way to show people objectively that lucid dreaming exists.
Jad Abumrad
Wait, hold up. How would you even go about doing that? Cause if it's a dream, it's only in your head. So how can you prove something that's only in your head?
Producer/Interviewer
So that actually takes us back to.
Steve Volk
Laberge'S advisor, a guy named William Dement.
Producer/Interviewer
William C. Dement.
Steve Volk
Dement.
Producer/Interviewer
He's conducting all these sleep studies at the Stanford Sleep Science Center. And one of the things he notices when people go into this dream state, their eyes behind their eyelids, they begin.
Steve Volk
To just dart around like crazy. They go diagonally sideways.
Producer/Interviewer
Basically, what we know is rem, or.
Steve Volk
Rapid eye movement, right?
Producer/Interviewer
But one day, Dement has this subject, and he's watching this guy, and this guy's eyes, when he. When he goes into rem, out of nowhere, his eyes go from craziness to this, like, really slow, controlled pattern. Left to right and left to right and left to right. And Dement was so intrigued that he.
Steve Volk
Immediately went and woke them up and said, do you remember what you were dreaming? And they said, yeah, I was watching a ping pong match. Ba dum bump, Right? I mean, it sounds like a joke.
Producer/Interviewer
But for LaBerge, this is like a total revelation. I mean, think about it. If you are in a dream and you, like, wave your hands around or you shout, you're not moving or anything in the real world, but if you move your eyes in a dream, someone sitting out there in the real world will actually see Your eyes move, they'll see that it's like this little hidden line that you can use to call out from the dream world to. To the awake world.
Steve Volk
And so Stephen LaBerge figures, okay, what I'm going to do then is have somebody monitor me while I sleep. And once I'm dreaming and become aware that I'm dreaming, I will issue two smooth, controlled eye movements.
Producer/Interviewer
In other words, I'm going to go to sleep, and when I become lucid in my dream, I'm going to move my eyes left, right, left, right. And then you out here in the real world, you'll see my eyes actually move left, right, left, right. And that way you'll know that I am lucid in my dream, controlling what's going on. That's pretty cool. So laberge gets all hooked up to the machines, and his assistant sits there watching his eyes go all crazy.
Steve Volk
And then suddenly, instead of herky jerky movement, his assistant sees smooth, controlled movements.
Producer/Interviewer
Left, right, left, right, left, right.
Jad Abumrad
The same pattern.
Producer/Interviewer
They'd agreed on exact same pattern.
Jad Abumrad
And they were sure that laberge was deep asleep during this pattern making.
Producer/Interviewer
Yeah, yeah, they were watching. They were watching on the EEG machines that he was in a deep sleep when he made that pattern signal.
Jad Abumrad
So he was conscious while he was unconscious, is what you're saying?
Producer/Interviewer
Correct. He was lucid. Okay.
Jad Abumrad
And he was able to repeat this?
Producer/Interviewer
Yeah, he went on and ended up replicating this with a lot of other people.
Jad Abumrad
He published it?
Producer/Interviewer
Yeah, he published it, like, in a.
Jad Abumrad
Journal, not just on the Web?
Producer/Interviewer
Yep.
Jad Abumrad
Wow.
Steve Volk
And you won't find. At this stage, you won't really find credible dream researchers denying the reality of lucid dreaming. So you will find them ignoring it routinely.
Producer/Interviewer
Steve gets in touch with LaBerge, who turns out is doing these workshops now teaching people how to have lucid dreams. How to have lucid dreams on command.
Jad Abumrad
This is something you can learn.
Producer/Interviewer
You can learn how to do this. Yeah.
Steve Volk
Laberge has discovered a lot of different techniques for this.
Producer/Interviewer
He's got techniques.
Jad Abumrad
What are the techniques?
Producer/Interviewer
So, first of all, to become lucid in a dream, you have to realize in the dream that you're dreaming.
Jad Abumrad
Yes.
Producer/Interviewer
Which is kind of like, how do you.
Jad Abumrad
How do you do that in a dream?
Producer/Interviewer
You actually. What you do is you practice in the waking world. You become, like, hyper aware of certain things that work differently in the dream world than they do in the waking world.
Jad Abumrad
Like what?
Steve Volk
One of the most easy for people to follow is print, like text when you're awake.
Producer/Interviewer
Text is Text. But text in a dream changes really dramatically from moment to moment.
Steve Volk
Right now, there's a viewsonic monitor across from me, and when I look away from it and look back, it still says viewsonic. However, in a dream, when you look away from it, because it has no external reality, when you look back, it could be anything. It could be nuclear launch codes, it could be poetry.
Producer/Interviewer
The point of all this is to zero in on things that make you.
Steve Volk
Question, am I awake or am I dreaming?
Producer/Interviewer
It's called a state test.
Steve Volk
And what ends up happening if you start doing this in real life is you end up being in a dream. And because you've asked yourself this question a dozen times that day, am I awake or am I dreaming? That thought will occur to you in.
Jad Abumrad
The dream, and if it does, that might.
Producer/Interviewer
That might open the door to actually becoming aware and taking control.
Steve Volk
Man, you are more than halfway there at that point.
Producer/Interviewer
So Steve, he started trying all this out, doing all these state tests, but it wasn't really working. So he ended up calling laberge's assistant.
Steve Volk
And I called her, and we talked through different techniques in the book, and then we talked about this nightmare.
Producer/Interviewer
And when she heard about his nightmare, she actually suggested a different technique in waking life.
Steve Volk
Imagine the dream as it happened, and then find the point at which you would like to gain lucidity. Something happens, something shifts, and this is the point where you'd like to become lucid.
Producer/Interviewer
And he decided when the face first appears in the window, that's the moment, that very specific moment when I want to gain awareness.
Steve Volk
And so I would imagine myself doing this over and over.
Producer/Interviewer
Face awareness. Face awareness. And then one night, he goes to sleep.
Steve Volk
I'm walking through my apartment, nobody there but me, and I feel that sort of familiar buzz of anticipation.
Producer/Interviewer
Something bad's about to happen.
Steve Volk
And I look into the window, and.
Producer/Interviewer
There'S the guy, just like usual. But this time he says, I was there. You're there, and then suddenly you're there.
Steve Volk
Yeah, it's like my perspective shifts, and I am in this body, in this place, not observing something, but in it. So I could feel, you know, my fingers tickling my palms. I could feel my feet on the floor. I locked into these feelings because they make the dream more stable. And I wanted this dream to be stable because this face has been showing up in this window for 20 years. And it does its thing. It recedes, it comes back. And I go to the door, and I reach for the door, and the handle is a door handle. It feels that real. And I turn in and I. A moment or two later, the guy appears in the doorway. And there is this moment where we look at each other face to face, and he's this total nondescript guy, really, like any old beer drinking dude. So he looks at me and he's clearly perplexed because we're not going through our usual dance, you know, And I kind of backed up to give him room.
Producer/Interviewer
Guy walks in.
Steve Volk
We're standing there looking at each other, and I hadn't thought about what I would actually say. I just. I just thought I'd let him in.
Jad Abumrad
What does the guy do?
Steve Volk
Well, he pulls out a gun. At this point, when he pulls this gun out, the whole dream in this moment now becomes for me a kind of battle between what I know to be true, which is that this is a dream and it has no external reality and the natural feelings of fear that crop up when somebody who's already been Terrorizing you for 20 years has now pulled out a gun. And he is really carefully looking at.
Jad Abumrad
Me.
Steve Volk
Like, waiting for me to go back to my normal reaction. So he pulls the gun up now and points it at me, looking at me like, okay, now are you gonna do what you usually do now? Are you afraid? And in my head I'm just like, it's a dream, it's a dream, it's a dream, it's a dream. And so I just stand there and he starts firing. My first reaction is to look down at myself, right? To look at my chest and my stomach. And I can see that my shirt is just sort of billowing with each.
Producer/Interviewer
Impact.
Steve Volk
With each bullet. But there's. There's no blood, there's no nothing. I'm not. I'm not hurting. I am taking this. And it's. And it's nothing. I really feel. And I had this thought at the time, I'm Neo, I am Superman. This guy's firing bullets at me, and nothing. I look up at him and he sort of looks at me and then he smiles and drops the gun by his side. And the sensation I had was like, that message was like, see? You got it. You got it. I'm nothing to be afraid of at all. And I woke up still feeling like Neo, still feeling like Superman. And I have never had that dream. Never had it again. It's gone.
Producer/Interviewer
It's gone.
Steve Volk
My dream is gone.
Producer/Interviewer
Well.
Jad Abumrad
Thank you, Matt.
Producer/Interviewer
Hey, sure.
Jad Abumrad
And thanks also to Steve Volk. His book, which goes into much more detail on lucid dreaming and many other things, is called Fringology.
Robert Krulwich
This puts me in mind of our solution to a problem I've had now for several years.
Jad Abumrad
You know, like me beating up on you and your dreams.
Robert Krulwich
I should have just waited it out. Really. I should have said, yeah, go ahead, stab me.
Jad Abumrad
See now I'll never hurt you again.
Robert Krulwich
I mean, this is something that everybody can take home and use tonight.
Producer/Interviewer
All right.
Jad Abumrad
I'm Jad Abumrad.
Robert Krulwich
I'm Robert Krulwich.
Jad Abumrad
Thanks for listening.
Sean Fitzgerald
Hey guys, I'm Sean Fitzgerald, a Radiolab podcaster from Victoria in Australia. Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan@www.sloan.org. so good. I love that science. Thanks, guys.
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Release Date: January 24, 2012
Hosts: Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich
Reporter: Matthew Kielty
Guest: Steve Volk
This episode dives deep into the science and personal power of lucid dreaming, told through the harrowing and ultimately transformative story of journalist Steve Volk. For decades, Volk faced a recurring nightmare—until he learned to confront it through lucid dreaming. The episode explores the line between waking and dreaming, the scientific validation of lucid dreaming, and the practical methods for controlling your dreams to overcome fear.
[02:14–05:33]
[05:39–10:07]
[10:07–12:25]
[11:48–13:13]
[13:13–17:13]
Engaging, personal, slightly playful, with a strong sense of wonder and curiosity. The episode moves seamlessly between investigative journalism, scientific explanation, and intimate storytelling. The hosts express both healthy skepticism and awe, matching the narrative of confronting the unknown in both science and the mind.
Radiolab’s “Wake Up and Dream” is a fascinating exploration of lucid dreaming as both a scientifically validated phenomenon and a powerful tool for personal transformation. Steve Volk’s story offers hope—illustrating that by becoming aware and courageous inside our own dreams, we can fundamentally change our waking lives as well.