Selects: How Fever Dreams Work

Summary

Stuff You Should Know: Selects – How Fever Dreams Work

Release Date: April 25, 2026
Hosts: Josh Clark & Charles W. "Chuck" Bryant
Podcast: Stuff You Should Know (iHeartPodcasts)

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Episode Overview

This classic SYSK episode revisits a fascinating topic: fever dreams. Josh and Chuck explore the intersection of fevers, dreaming, and why the combination creates such vivid, bizarre, and often disturbing nocturnal experiences. The hosts break down what is known — and unknown — about fevers, dreams, and how they collide, while maintaining their signature mix of humor, anecdotes, and nerdy tangents.
Theme (01:12–01:40): Understanding fever dreams: why they happen, what we know from science, and what’s mostly still a mystery.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: Fevers & Dreams

(Starts at 05:36)

• Body Temperature Isn’t Universal:

  • The idea that “98.6°F is normal” dates to 1868 research by German physician Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich.
  • Modern research shows “normal” varies by age, time of day, and measurement site. (06:45)
  • Quote: "Even if you have an average body temperature that's not exactly 98.6, let's say you typically tend toward 97.5. ...Your body temperature's still, during the average day, gonna fluctuate plus or minus about a degree Fahrenheit either way." — Josh (06:20)

• Hypothalamus as Crucial Regulator:

  • The hypothalamus keeps core temperature in check and links to sleep cycles.
  • Afternoon body temp peaks = most alert; lowest before waking.
  • Quote: "As your body temperature is rising, usually in the late afternoon, that's associated with wakefulness, alertness. ...Once it starts to decline, that's associated with drowsiness and it hits its trough...Right about before you wake up." — Josh (09:12)

2. How Fever Happens

(14:15–22:30)

• Immune Response and Pyrogens:

  • When pathogens invade, the immune system releases pyrogens, which (often with help from the invaders themselves) travel to the hypothalamus and “trick” it into believing the body is cold.
  • The hypothalamus then raises the body’s set point, resulting in fever.
  • Quote: "They go to your hypothalamus and they dampen the heat sensing neurons ...and they excite the cold sensing neurons...It tricks your body, your hypothalamus, into creating a fever." — Josh (15:51)

• Purpose & Risk of Fever:

  • Fever is the body's way of trying to “bake” bacteria/viruses — but strains organs when it gets too high.
  • Fever is typically defined as >100.4°F orally in adults. For kids, readings and thresholds differ; higher fevers are more concerning, especially in children (18:07–18:40).
  • Notable Moment: Josh explains that kids' fevers spike faster and higher due to immune system inexperience. (21:14)

• Why Not to “Starve a Fever”:

  • Advises against loading the body with extra tasks (like digestion) when fever is demanding full resources (17:07).

3. Understanding Dreams

(22:30–29:04)

• Dream Theories: From Synapse Fireworks to Emotional Processing:

  • Early theories: brain randomly fires with no meaning (“activation synthesis”).
  • Current science (EEG, MRI research): dreams help process and regulate emotions (“affect regulation theory”).
  • Nightmares and night terrors seen as the result of emotional processing “going haywire.”
  • Quote: "When you look at an EEG machine ...it looked like the brain waves of somebody...forming and recalling memories. ...So we're processing our emotions in our dreams. That's the point of dreams. That's the current understanding." — Josh (26:46)

• Dreaming Brain Areas: Amygdala, hippocampus, lingual gyrus — all parts involved in emotion and memory light up during dreaming. (27:18–27:34)

4. The Mystery of Fever Dreams

(32:20–39:23)

• Bridge Between Fever and Dreams Is Uncharted:

  • Having a fever and having a dream: "Understanding both doesn't necessarily amount to understanding them together." — Josh (32:35)
  • Scientific literature on fever dreams is “super thin. Basically non existent.” (32:29)

• What Are Fever Dreams?:

  • Vivid, ultra-real, often terrifying nightmares that occur when a person has a fever.
  • Quote: "The fever dream is basically a nightmare on steroids. ...so vivid and so real and scary." — Chuck (33:08)
  • People recall more as children — perhaps due to more frequent/stronger fevers, or memory bias.

• Theories on Why Fever Dreams Are So Intense:

  • Brain is metabolically sensitive and requires massive energy; fever “bakes” the brain, leading to system breakdown/overheating.
  • Amygdala (fear/anger center) may function abnormally during fever, intensifying nightmares (35:32, 36:18).
  • REM sleep is linked to decreased temperature regulation — if fever is present, this could nudge the dream machinery further off-kilter.
  • Waking up during REM increases the likelihood of remembering these bizarre dream events. (37:05)

• Anecdotes and Self-Reflection:

  • Both hosts discuss whether they’ve experienced fever dreams, with Chuck recalling them in childhood but not recently.
  • The hosts invite listeners (and scientists) with more information to reach out due to the lack of robust research. (39:32–39:54)

5. Miscellaneous Interesting Tidbits

(38:48–39:23)

• Recreational drugs like meth and ecstasy can raise brain temperatures, possibly contributing to their neurotoxicity.
  • Quote: “Supposedly, you’re not supposed to take ecstasy in warm climates.” — Josh (39:09)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “No one's really gotten to work on figuring out what fever dreams themselves are, so it's largely anecdotal.” — Josh (05:22)
• “It's like your body trying to cook, burn, bake that bacteria until it dies. ...when you hear your fever broke, that's usually a good sign.” — Chuck (16:20)
• "The fever dream is basically a nightmare on steroids. It's just so vivid and so real and scary." — Chuck (33:08)
• Classic banter: Candy tangents, pizza unicorns, and rectal thermometers recur as running jokes.
• Josh (15:19): "There’s some bacteria, some pathogens...that produce pyrogens naturally...they just give themselves away...big dummies in that way."

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Notable Timestamps

• 05:36 — Intro: Fevers, body temperature, and historical context
• 14:15 — How fever starts: Pyrogens and the hypothalamus
• 22:30 — Shift to dreams: Purpose, hypotheses, and memory
• 26:10 — Latest theory: Dreams as affect regulation/emotional processing
• 32:20 — Fever dreams: What we know, theory gaps
• 33:08 — What fever dreams feel like (childhood recollections)
• 35:32 — Brain’s role: Energy, susceptibility during fever
• 36:40 — How REM sleep, body temperature, and fever interact
• 39:09 — Brain temperature, recreational drugs, and toxicity
• 39:32 — Research gaps and call for listener insights

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Tone & Style

• Conversational, humorous, slightly meandering. Hosts riff on food, music, and childhood.
• Science-first but laid-back: Admits the science is “thin”; encourages skepticism.
• Relatable and self-deprecating: “We’re not medical experts here.”
• Encourages engagement: Invites listener stories or tips on further fever dream research.

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Conclusion

In this deep dive, Josh and Chuck demystify what science knows about fever dreams and what remains speculation. The result is a blend of biology, psychology, and humorous asides—typical SYSK style. The main takeaway: fever dreams are a real, memorable phenomenon, but remain a mystery ripe for further exploration.

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If you’ve ever had a surreal, anxiety-fueled dream while sick — you’re not alone. Why it happens? The science is still catching up.

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For further research, check:

• HowStuffWorks.com (as recommended by Josh & Chuck)
• Scientific articles on thermoregulation & sleep
• Listener and expert anecdotes, by reaching out to the show

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End of episode summary.

Transcript

[Narrator]

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[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, everybody. Happy Saturday. It's Chuck here, and I'm here to deliver to you my pick for this week's Selects episode. This is from July 2017. It's the episode How Fever Dreams Work. And quite honestly, you guys, I picked this one because I don't remember much about it. So I'm gonna listen to it all over again myself. So I hope you do as well. Hope you have a great Saturday and a great weekend. Here we go with how Fever Dreams work.

[Narrator]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to Podcast. How are ya? I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. Jerry's got a salad. Everything's normal, which means it's time for stuff. You should know.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

Jerry's got the shawarma special, she said.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Oh, really?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, she loves it.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

How you doing?

[Josh Clark]

I'm good, man. Feeling despite myself. Kind of relaxed.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

I'm not feeling feverish, if that's what you're driving at.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

No, that's not what I was driving at.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, no, I'm not.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Do you get fevers a lot?

[Josh Clark]

No, not anymore. Although I haven't for a long time. I've never been a fever person. I've probably had a handful, maybe. How many fevers have you had?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Not a ton since I was a Kid. Not a lot of adult fevers. I mean, I've had hip hop fever. I've had rock and roll fever.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Yellow fever.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I've had the fever for a flavor of a Pringle.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, man, me too.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

What are those? Those aren't even potato chips, are they?

[Josh Clark]

They're potato crisps.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Man, those are good.

[Josh Clark]

They're mashed together potato parts.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I don't think I want to know how those are made.

[Josh Clark]

No, it's like Chicken McNuggets.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I think a unicorn just poops them out.

[Josh Clark]

Have you seen unicorn pizza? It's a little much.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Oh, what is it?

[Josh Clark]

There's a restaurant in New York, I'm not quite sure where, maybe Lower east side. They have unicorn pizza. It's like dough.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Okay, good start.

[Josh Clark]

Like a nice pastel colored frosting instead of sauce.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

A mound of cotton candy. Nerds or Pop Rocks, maybe.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Oh, good Lord.

[Josh Clark]

And then some other stuff. Supposedly it tastes kind of good. I'll eat anything that has enough frosting on it.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I like frosting, but I'm not into, like, sugary candies. Really?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, like nerds and Pop Rocks and stuff.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Nah.

[Josh Clark]

You know, I did brain stuff once on Pop Rocks. That was interesting.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Your tongue actually warms the pop rocks to the point where they melt. And since they have CO2 trapped inside during the manufacturing process, that CO2 suddenly is released in a pop.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

So it's just a little bubble of CO2.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's gotta be good for you.

[Josh Clark]

I'm sure.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

It's funny, I had a roommate in college. Not many adults eat candy. People eat chocolate and stuff like that. Candy bars. But candy candy, I don't know, for an adult is just a little strange, don't you think?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Do you eat candy?

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Like what?

[Josh Clark]

Mentos. Not mint Mentos, like candy Mentos. I like those.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Well, I had a roommate that would go to the convenience store next, and this was college granted. Right. But he still eats this stuff, I think.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And he would go with like, $15 and buy, you know, like giant sweet tarts, you know, those big chewable ones and like fun dip and nerds and just all kinds of candy.

[Josh Clark]

Fun Dip or Lick a Maid. It was the same thing, I think. Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

It was just sugar stick dip in sugar.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Like, I don't have a foot, but I've got my Lick a Maid.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Oh, man.

[Josh Clark]

Can you. Can you guys out there in podcast land tell we're stalling? Because we are big time. Because we happen upon a topic that no one really knows what's What? Yeah, I mean, we're talking about fever dreams. We know about fevers.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yep.

[Josh Clark]

Kind of know about dreams.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But apparently no one's really gotten to work on figuring out what fever dreams themselves are, so it's largely anecdotal.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So you're going to have to bear with us on this.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

We'll leave it there. We'll leave that there for now.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

But I guess a good place to start is by talking about both those things separately and starting with fevers. You know, you've always heard 98.6 Fahrenheit is the normal internal body temperature of a human. That in 92, there was a big study that said it's really 98.2. What? Depending on, like, how old you are, what time of day it is, what you're doing, where you. If you put it in your butt or under your armpit or in your mouth or in your ear or all of them at once, that'd be something else. It can vary a little bit. So I think there's a bit of a slight sliding scale to that number.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. But I think the key is it's gonna be roughly around there. And even if you have an average body temperature that's not exactly 98.6, let's say you typically tend toward 97.5.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

You run cooler. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Your body temperature's still, during the average day, gonna fluctuate plus or minus about a degree Fahrenheit either way.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

So I looked a little bit into the 98.6, and the original dude that came up with that was a German physician named Carl Reinhold August von de Lich.

[Josh Clark]

That was good.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's a good one.

[Josh Clark]

When?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

1868, he wrote a book. Well, he did his studies where he had this temperature rod he would stick under the armpits of all these people.

[Josh Clark]

He's like, where do you want it?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, exactly. And everyone once said everyone always says armpits. You know the comedian Rory Scovel?

[Josh Clark]

No.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

You should just check him out.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

He does these weird things, like, he'll just do his whole routine with a German accent, like, for no reason whatsoever.

[Josh Clark]

I like the sound of that.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And he did one about stealing old people, like kidnapping old people with a German accent. He's from South Carolina, I think, but he's done shows with, like, a severe Southern accent and then one just normal accent. And then he'll do a German thing.

[Josh Clark]

He just likes to mess with people, I guess.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

So he's great.

[Josh Clark]

I will check him out. Thanks, man.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

He's one of my favorites. So, anyway, 1868, he wrote a book called, after these experiments called Dos verhalten der Ergenformer and Krankenheitn.

[Josh Clark]

That is good.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And I looked. It's funny. The real translation I think of that is on the temperature in diseases. But if you type it into Google Translate, it comes out as the behavior of the Intrinsically warm in Sick units.

[Josh Clark]

That's the subtitle.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. So anyway, he's a guy that came up in 98.6, and that stood for a long time.

[Josh Clark]

But that's just. So that was just based on his observations, his study, and it stuck.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

It was an average. It wasn't like, this is what you should be. It was just the average of all these people.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And then 130 years later, we finally got around to verifying whether that was actually true or not.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Well, I mean, it says in 92 that they said it was 98.2 from another study, but then everything I still read says 98.6.

[Josh Clark]

All right, I know what you're talking about, though. I had heard in the last few years that they're like that. 98.6 Jazz is kind of made up.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

So the point is, is that your body's going to be roughly somewhere around there, right? That's your normal body temperature.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

And then depending on the time of day, it's either going to be a little cooler than that or a little warmer than that.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And our body temperature is regulated by something called the hypothalamus. And like I said, depending on the time of day, your body temperature is going to fluctuate. And that's tied to sleep, apparently. So as your body temperature is rising, usually in the late afternoon is about where it peaks during the day. That's associated with wakefulness, alertness. Not necessarily just having a high body temperature, but an incline in the temperature in your body means you're awake, you're alert, you're ready to go. Right?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. Ready for action.

[Josh Clark]

Once it starts to decline, that's associated with drowsiness and it hits its trough. Your body temperature is at its lowest Right about before you wake up.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And that's actually associated with REM sleep. So there are some stuff starting to come out. Just bear with us, everybody.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

We're laying the groundwork.

[Josh Clark]

So your body temperature changes. The hypothalamus is directing the whole thing. And sleep and wakefulness has something to do. It's related to your body temperature changes. All right, good night. You take it from here.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Well, you know what? Let's take a break because.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I'm not sure where I should go. We'll be right back.

[Josh Clark]

Oh,

[Chuck Bryant]

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[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Okay, I was being coyote. You set the stage very nicely. Okay, so if your body gets, let's say, some bad bacteria gets in it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And your body is alerted, Warning, intruder is coming. Your immune system kicks into gear and starts producing this biochemical material called a pyrogen.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, this is my new favorite thing the body does.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Well, you knew that before, right? Or did you just not know the mechanism?

[Josh Clark]

I mean, I knew humans get fevers, and I knew the fever was to kind of like cook out everything. I didn't understand the mechanism, I guess, to answer your question.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Well, take this part then.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah. Can I?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So these pyrogens, right, they are these biochemical markers that are released by the immune system in the body.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

Or.

[Josh Clark]

And this is why I love this, there's some bacteria, some pathogens that make humans sick that produce pyrogens naturally.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So when they show up, they just start releasing them and they just give themselves away.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, they're big dummies in that way.

[Josh Clark]

Right. They're like, hey, where's the party? They kick open the door, they're carrying, like a pony keg under one arm, their gut's sticking out. It's just that's like that kind of bacteria. Right. So the pyrogens enter the bloodstream and they travel to the hypothalamus. Because, remember, the hypothalamus controls your body temperature. And this is what they do. Chuck, are you ready for what the pyrogens do?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

They go to your hypothalamus and they dampen the heat sensing neurons in the hypothalamus and they excite the cold sensing neurons in your hypothalamus and they trick your hypothalamus into thinking your body's suddenly gotten very, very cold so that your hypothalamus turns the temperature up and says, don't let any of this heat out. We got to warm back up. It tricks your body, your hypothalamus, into creating a fever.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And they do this because. Well, they don't do this because. But what happens from there? They do this because they're dumb. But what happens from there is, like you said, the fever, what a fever is and why you want that fever for at least a little while. Fever that it does, it's trying to cook and burn and bake that bacteria until it dies. It is your body fighting. Like when you hear your fever broke, that's usually a good sign. That means that your fever did its job and it's cooked all that bacteria up and you're going to be on the mend soon.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

So basically that's what's happening. And this is the great thing about a fever. But you know, fever makes you feel like crap because it's a lot of hard work to kill all those things.

[Josh Clark]

Well, it is. There's a lot of. Your sympathetic nervous system is kicked into high gear, which I found out is one reason why they say you want to feed a cold, starve a fever, because you don't want to introduce digestion because it requires the parasympathetic nervous system. Right. Fight or flight. And you don't want those two things going on while your body has a fever. It's just a lot of extra work for it. Right. But one of the. One of the things that is going on when your body has a fever, when that temperature rises, it's hard enough on your organs, but it's also hard on the level. Just the fact that they're operating outside of their normal operating temperature.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And that makes it very hard on them and can actually cook some of the ingredients inside your cells.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, it's like working in a too hot of an environment. It's just. Cause it's never fun for anyone.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Although I guess some people love that stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But they might like it, but they still aren't working fast.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, that's true.

[Josh Clark]

You know, they might be happy, but they're slow.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

So if you have a fever, what's considered a Fever now in 2017, if you're an adult and your oral temperature is above 100.4, or if your rectal or ear temperature is above 101 and that's considered a fever. If you're a kid, good luck getting anything besides the rectal temperature because it's just tough.

[Josh Clark]

You have basically no. Right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Well, what you have is wiggly kids who aren't like, sure, stick something in my ear for four seconds. Yeah, but up the kazoo. There's not really anything they can do about that.

[Josh Clark]

All they can do is say glavin.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, exactly. So the rectal temperature for a kid above 100.4. And with adults, you don't have to really worry about your fever too much. If it tops 105 for any period of time, you probably want to do something about that.

[Josh Clark]

That's what I saw was the 105 degree Fahrenheit mark was about where you should start to worry.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. As an adult. And you're going to feel so awful if Your temperature is 105. You've probably already been to a doctor at that point.

[Josh Clark]

Let's hope so.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

For kids it's different though. If you don't want to let your child get up to 105, that's bad, bad, bad.

[Josh Clark]

So what is it for kids that you really want to start worrying about?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Did you say, you know what? I'm not exactly sure.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, it probably depends on whether you're a first time parent or this is your second or third kid.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Well, and it varies with the age. You know, it's like 0 to 18 months. It's something.

[Josh Clark]

I gotcha.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Like what you should do is go consult your doctor. Yeah, exactly. But you know, any kind of temperature you should for a child, you should kind of be a little more alert about. Right, but we're not medical experts here.

[Josh Clark]

No, we're not. And everything we're saying assumes that you have healthcare coverage.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's right. All right, so that's fever in general. You got anything else on that?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, one other thing. The pyrogens.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Pyro. By the way, it's no mistake, man.

[Josh Clark]

I did have something.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

No coincidence.

[Josh Clark]

No, it's not. What is it? Latin for fire. Greek word for fire.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Pyro. Eat Def Leppard. Right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Great song.

[Josh Clark]

It really is a whole album, right? Yeah. They just mention it in Rock of Ages. It comes up.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

They should have a song called Pyromania.

[Josh Clark]

But that's pretty cool. It's like the antithesis of your band, your album and your song all being the same name. Like Big Country.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Oh, I love that song.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. But it's pretty uncreative. You're basically saying, like, here's our basket and we're gonna put every egg we have into it. That's the one thing we came up with. Yeah. I saw a David Spade bit once and he was talking about. He was complaining it wasn't even comedy. He was just complaining that he went and saw a Big country and they didn't play the song Big Country. No. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Really?

[Josh Clark]

He's like, it's the name of your band. It's the one song everybody came to see and they didn't play it.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

He's funny too.

[Josh Clark]

Well, the long and short of it is I totally forgot what the other thing I had to say about pyrogens was, so I'll probably think of it. Oh, I know what it was. Pyrogens. As your immune system grows and ages and you become a grown up, the pyrogens have a little less of an effect on you. So where. If you're a kid and your immune system is young and inexperienced, your fever's gonna shoot up quick and it's gonna get hotter faster. So you do wanna stay on top of a kid's fever because their immune system is not used to pyrogens coming and messing with their hypothalamus. Like in adults. It is.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. It'll spike much faster. That's a good point.

[Josh Clark]

That's what I was trying to think of.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, that's true. You need to take that. Need to take that rectal temperature way more than you're comfortable with.

[Josh Clark]

I don't recall that ever having been done to me.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Well, because you don't remember being a baby.

[Josh Clark]

No, but my parents were pretty strict. Pretty stern.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

No, by the time a kid is old enough to where you can say like, hey, put this under your tongue, or hold still for a minute while I put this in your ear. Yeah, but pre that, when they're not sentient humans and they're just, you know, crying, whiny little sacks of flesh, I gotcha. You gotta stick it right up the butt.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Carrie's laughing.

[Josh Clark]

She almost spit out her shawarma salad.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Carrie's done plenty of that, so she knows. Okay, so into dreams. I always think we've done a general show on dreams.

[Josh Clark]

I think we did. Finally.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I didn't find it.

[Josh Clark]

What? Still no.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I saw lucid dreaming. Can you control your dreams.

[Josh Clark]

That's the same thing, wasn't it? I think that was the same episode. But no, we did one on dreams.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I didn't see it.

[Josh Clark]

Wow. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. Well, this contributes to the.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Little by little, someone will know. Okay, Jill Hurley, where are you when we need you? Our statistician, Minister of stats. Right. All right, well, we'll talk about dreams a bit here then. Even though we've explained this in various episodes here and there to some degree. But dreams. You know, if you're a psychologist, you really love to spend time talking and dissecting dreams, interpreting dreams. If you're a more into the neurology side of science, you don't really care about that kind of stuff. In fact, for many years they thought it was called activation synthesis hypothesis, which was you go to sleep and all these synapses are just randomly firing and they don't really add up to even a story. You just do that when you wake up because you're human. Yeah, but I mean, that's complete bs.

[Josh Clark]

Well, you almost get the impression that they came up with this and the neurologists came up with it to stake out their territory in response to years of psychoanalysts saying, this is what dreams are. They're like tapping into the collective unconscious or your repressed memories. Neuroscience said no, nothing. Yeah, they're just your stupid wet brain going crazy while you sleep.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. Which we all know now is not true.

[Josh Clark]

I saw another one too.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

What's that?

[Josh Clark]

Threat simulation theory. Have you heard of that one?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

No, but that's a great band name.

[Josh Clark]

Basically, it's you're training to be a ninja while you sleep. Like your brain is running threat simulations constantly, so that it's like working itself out. Like getting more and more agile and quick. And so you can get better at running from a saber toothed tiger if you actually encounter it.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I could see that early on, maybe.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. And there is an evolutionary advantage to it, so evolutionarily speaking, it would make sense. The point is that one came along and was like, no, there's obviously some reason for dreams. It's not just random.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, well, and then maybe I could have seen that early on, but then at some point, someone around the fire had a dream about Tuk Tuk's wife and woke up and went, whoa, there was no saber toothed tiger in that dream. I'm not sure what that meant,

[Chuck Bryant]

but

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I better not tell Tuk Tuk.

[Josh Clark]

And then they went, what's a rectal Thermometer, it hasn't even been invented yet.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

So these days they've done actual studies with EEG machines and MRI machines. And especially in Italy, these Italian researchers basically put people to sleep, not put

[Josh Clark]

them to sleep in a sleeper hole.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

They lay them down in a nice Italian bed, feed them some pasta fazul,

[Josh Clark]

get out the rectal thermometer.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yep. And they hook them up to all these wires and machines and then they will wake them up at different points in the night and say, hey, what were you dreaming of? We'd like to talk about it and study what was going on with these machines.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And they actually, what they found supports the current, the prevailing theory. I don't think it was their theory, I think it was around, but their research supports it called affect regulation theory, which is basically that we control our emotions or we process our emotions through our dreams.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And these Italians found support for this in that when they woke people up and asked them what they were dreaming about, the ones who had the best recall were the ones who had the most theta waves in their frontal lobes.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Right. Which are slow moving waves. Right.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

And when you look at an EEG machine, if you looked at those dreamers brainwaves, it looked like the brain waves of somebody who was sitting there forming and recalling memories.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

So these people said that's what they're doing. That's what all of us are doing. While we're dreaming, we're forming memories, we're taking emotions that we've experienced through the day and we're creating memories out of them so we can file them away. So we're processing our emotions in our dreams. That's the point of dreams. That's the current understanding.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. And then, I mean, other parts of the brain that have been active all sort of deal with emotion, whether it's the amygdala and the hippocampus or the lingual gyrus, which I think we just talked about that in another episode.

[Josh Clark]

I don't recall, can't remember.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

But they're all areas of the brain that relate to emotion and memory and some with visual activity and. But you know, that kind of makes sense. I like that theory.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And then under that current theory. So that's like the explanation for regular dreams. And you can't just have a theory for dreams without including nightmares or else your theory's broken. Right, Right. So the affect regulation theory considers nightmares. Basically. It's an emotion that's being put into the process of being, of creating a memory, a false memory. Right. A Dream memory, I guess you'd put it. But it's a real emotion, right? And it's so big, it breaks the process. And all of a sudden, this process of creating a fake memory, a fake experience goes haywire. And now all of a sudden you're enduring some terrible, horrifying experience because the emotion that was being processed was too big and got out of control. And now you have a nightmare ts for you.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, I think we did one in night terrors, right?

[Josh Clark]

We did for sure. And sleep paralysis.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

We've covered it all, I think.

[Josh Clark]

I guess we really haven't done a dreams one.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

All right, so let's take another break. We're going to come back and finally talk about fever dreams.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, everybody. Home security can be a real headache sometimes. There are expensive monthly fees. There are contracts that lock you in for years and years and system hardware that requires a technician to set up.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

Yeah, well, welcome to Simplisafe, friend, because they do away with all that stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. You can easily customize the system. That's right for your [e-mail], it's going to ship right to your door in just a few days. And with their app guided setup and no drilling required, you can install and arm your system in under an hour.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

Yeah, no need to wait around for a technician appointment. And we're not talking about just cameras. We're talking about what Simplisafe calls a comprehensive ecosystem of sensors, cameras for inside and out and 247 professional monitoring. In the event of a break in fire, flood, SimpliSafe's agents are ready to help you.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. No long term contracts, affordable pricing and proven trust. Over 5 million people trust Simplisafe every day. And right now you can get 50% off your new system by visiting simplisafe.com stuff. That's half [e-mail] stuff. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. Hey, everybody. Support for the show today comes from public. So it kind of feels like there's two types of investing platforms. You've got the old school brokerages that look like they were designed in like 1995. And then you have those other platforms, you know, the ones that feel less like investing and more like a casino.

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Joshua,

[Josh Clark]

You robbed me of a Saturday Night Fever reference. I just want to go on record

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

as saying that I was wrong.

[Josh Clark]

So, Chuck, here's where everything just kind of goes totally off the rails. We've talked about fevers, we've talked about nightmares. The problem is really understanding both doesn't necessarily amount to understanding them together.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

So knowing what fevers are, knowing what dreams are, doesn't mean you know what fever dreams are. But you can make stuff up if you want.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. And boy, I don't even think we even said if you've never had a fever dream, you might even know what we're talking about.

[Josh Clark]

Oh yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Feel kind of dumb at this point in the podcast, but the fever dream is basically a nightmare on steroids.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

It's just so vivid and so real and scary. Right. That happens when you are sick with a fever. Yes, obviously.

[Josh Clark]

So they're fever dreams. Right? So they are a thing.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But the scientific literature on them is super thin. Basically non existent.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Kids seem to get Them, if not more, at least they stand out more to children. And so anecdotally, people seem to recall having fever dreams more when they were kids. Whether or not that's true or just a baby memory is, or, you know, what do you call it? Like a memory bias or whatever? Yeah, no one really knows.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, we don't really know because I don't remember the

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

last time I had a fever and if I did, whether or not I had a fever dream.

[Josh Clark]

I don't think I've ever had a fever dream.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I did when I was a kid.

[Josh Clark]

I don't remember having fever dreams.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, I remember being sick as a kid and having like nightmares when I was sick.

[Josh Clark]

So, like, they're noticeably worse than your average nightmare.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

Really? So would you keep waking up from

[Advertisement Voice 2]

them

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

that I don't remember?

[Josh Clark]

See, that's a big question to me. Well, let's talk about the anecdotal theory of what is behind fever dreams.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

Right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

So when your body's undergoing a fever, we said that your body's not functioning at its top performance.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

No.

[Josh Clark]

And that includes the brain. The brain itself is an extremely special organ, if you didn't know already. It's like, I think 2% of the body's mass, but it requires 20% of the body's energy.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. And the neurons, compared to regular old dumb cells, they burn or they need about between 320500 times more energy than a regular old dumb cell in your body.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And so when all these chemical processes, when all of this energy is being exploited to power cells, it produces the byproduct of heat.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So the brain is super sensitive to overheating. Right. Already just under normal circumstances.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. And it's generally taken care of by your body. Like, as you know, it's cooled down.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And regulated.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So if you have a fever and your brain is not operating at optimal conditions, but you're asleep, so it's trying to go through its normal processes. If you have a nightmare, it's entirely possible that that nightmare is going to be far, far worse because the normal processes have broken down. Or it's even further possible. Apparently the amygdala is frequently implicated with nightmares because it has to do with being terrified or angry or fearful. The amygdala might be functioning at an abnormal level and is just basically going haywire while you have a fever.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. And then the fact that most dreams occur during REM sleep, and I think that's when you're body is warmest during sleep anyway. Right.

[Josh Clark]

That's when. See, this is where it all gets kind of hinky. During REM sleep, your hypothalamus says, I'm done. I'm not working right now. So it stops regulating temperature. Which is usually why your body temperature is lowest right before you wake up.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Oh, I thought it was highest right before you wake up.

[Josh Clark]

No, it's highest in the afternoon while you're awake. It's lowest right before you wake up.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I feel like I always wake up hot.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, you may be like sleeping with too many blankets. Your room might be a little too warm. Huh.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Or maybe it's my stupid schedule of my ac.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, it could be.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

It might have cut off a couple hours before or something.

[Josh Clark]

Right? It could be. Right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Fires up after I get up.

[Josh Clark]

Because supposedly when you are sleeping and you're in REM sleep, your hypothalamus is not regulating temperature during that period. So if you are already hot. And remember, high body temperature is associated with wakefulness, then maybe you are waking up more frequently than you normally would. And when you wake up in the middle of a dream, you're more prone to remember it. If you wake up in the middle of a nightmare, it's going to seem even worse than one that you had and woke up normally from.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, I had a series of. Not nightmares last night, but just sort of anxiety dreams. And I don't have any anxiety about anything right now. I think it was just after reading all this stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I'm just suggestible.

[Josh Clark]

You had anxiety dreams?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah. But not about, like, nothing specific. No, like there's. You know, usually if I have anxiety dreams, I'm just like, because something's going on in my life, I'm anxious about it.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

But I'm.

[Josh Clark]

It was just the research. Huh?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I think so.

[Josh Clark]

Man, you're a dedicated.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

But there are also celebrity dreams because, you know, I've talked about those before.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

No.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, yeah. That I have just celebrity dreams all the time, but they're just very normal. That I'm just like friends with celebrity people.

[Josh Clark]

But were they anxiety ridden last night?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yes. Like I was hanging out with the band Luna.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Dean Wareham of Luna.

[Josh Clark]

All right.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And there was. But there was. I can't remember exactly what was going on, but you know, there was anxiety involved. Like I was trying to get somewhere and couldn't get there. Like the typical stupid dream stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Gotcha.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

You know?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

But some dean was in there somehow.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Have you talked to him today?

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I don't Know him. But I think I know why they were in there. That's all I'll say.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, okay. Wink, wink.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I guess. So. Here's another thing that was in our own article I thought was interesting. Just a little tidbit was that some recreational drugs like meth and ecstasy can raise brain temperatures. That is one of the reasons they think that it like kills so many brain cells when you do those drugs.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Supposedly you're not supposed to take ecstasy in warm climates.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, Never have heard that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, just Norway.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Well, there you have it.

[Josh Clark]

Only it's Svalbard.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

What else? Is there anything else in here?

[Josh Clark]

No. Man, I can't believe we stretched this one out as far as we did.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Alrighty.

[Josh Clark]

We never have to talk about fever dreams again, Chuck.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Good.

[Josh Clark]

If you want to know more about fever dreams, well, you might as well [e-mail]. there's nothing wrong with that. And you can also just go around and look at how sparse the research is on the Internet for yourself. And if you are a researcher and you know more stuff about fever dreams that you can point us to, let us know.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

In the meantime, I think I said search bar somewhere in there. Which means it's time for listeners.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

You know what? I think another reason the anxiety dreams is because I'm barreling through the season of Fargo, the third season. Yeah. And the two episodes I watched last night, which I believe were, if there are 10, I think it was eight and nine were both just like ratcheted up with tension.

[Josh Clark]

I'm sure that's what it was.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And I think that probably had be to something to do with it.

[Josh Clark]

That happens to me sometimes. I'll be watching something and I won't realize how on top of me it's gotten. And then all of a sudden like it goes to an ad and I'm like really uptight about like this scratch and dent washing machine sale that's going on somewhere. And I don't understand why. And I'm like, oh, wow, that TV show really got to me.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, I think. I think Fargo had something to do with it.

[Josh Clark]

I think you may have nailed it.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

All right, I'm gonna call this one garden variety fan mail. Which we don't really a lot of these.

[Josh Clark]

So I'm going to dig in.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Hey, guys. That's all this is, fan mail. You guys are doing a great job. Always have. It's clear that with every episode you take great pains to provide the most accurate information you can in the most thoughtful way possible.

[Josh Clark]

How ironic that you would read this on the Fever Dreams episode.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

This has never been more evident to me than in the episodes you did on puberty. I know it's been a little while since these came out, but just listen to them. And it's was touching to see how frequently you tried to reassure young listeners what they're experiencing is normal and that there was nothing wrong about what was happening. To hear two grown men do their best to talk to young boys and girls about such sensitive material was a pleasure. Yes, at times I could practically feel you nervously twitching while trying to discuss menstruation in an informative yet reassuring way, but it was absolutely charming. Just reaffirm what we've always known. You two are just a pair of great dudes. Oh, that's nice.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I like this guy.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

I've only been listening for a few years, but I'm a lifetime fan now. If you're keeping count. Like to put in a vote for D.C. for live shows. Josh. E, D, G, E, E. Sorry, E,

[Josh Clark]

D, G, E is edge.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

And then Ed. 2 L's. Edgel.

[Josh Clark]

Edgel, sure, yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Joss. Edgell or Edgelli.

[Josh Clark]

I like Edgell.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Or Edgill or Edgar.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I think Edgell. Edgell sounds like a kid next door. Josh. Edgel.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

It's Josh and Josh. You know what, we usually come to D.C. once a year. I don't think we're coming this year, though.

[Josh Clark]

No, we probably will be there early. Ish. 2018.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Yeah, DC's always great to us. So we'll definitely be back.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Soonish.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And you can always fly somewhere in the continental United States or Canada.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

Josh, take that Acela Express up to Brooklyn.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's a pleasure train.

[Josh Clark]

There you go. There's rectal thermometers everywhere. And if you want to get in touch with us, you can send us both. And Jerry, an email to stuff [e-mail]

[Narrator]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcast podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, everybody. Home security can be a real headache sometimes. There are expensive monthly fees. There are contracts that lock you in for years and years and system hardware that requires a technician to set up.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

Yeah, well, welcome to SimpliSafe, friend, because they do away with all that stuff.

[Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

You can easily customize a system that's right for your [e-mail], it's going to ship right to your door in just a few days. And with their app guided setup and no drilling required, you can install and arm your system in under an hour.

[Advertisement Voice 2]

Yeah, no need to wait around for a technician appointment. And we're not talking about just cameras. We're Talking about what SimpliSafe calls a comprehensive ecosystem of sensors, cameras for inside and out and 24,7 professional monitoring in the event of a break in fire, flood. Simplisafe's agents are ready to help you.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. No long term contracts, affordable pricing and proven trust. Over 5 million people trust SimpliSafe every day. And right now you can get 50% off your new system by visiting simplisafe.com stuff that's half off at simplisafe.com stuff there's no safe like SimpliSafe. Here's a paradox. We buy insurance for peace of mind. Yet the very policies you trust can deliver the biggest financial shocks. Across America. Millions of claims are denied every year, not because people did anything wrong, but because their policies quietly excluded the thing that happened.

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[Chuck Bryant]

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