Pick of the Week: Radiolab – Wake Up and Dream

Radiolab Shorts – Wake Up and Dream
Podcast release date: January 23, 2012
Hosts: Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich
Time: 19:09

I started listening to Radiolab episodes last fall. Even though I haven’t listened to all of the archived episodes, the full hour “Sleep” episode is one of my favorites. So I was excited when Radiolab revisited the subject of dreams in this week’s “Wake Up and Dream” episode about lucid dreaming.

The episode tells the stories of how lucid dreaming helps Steve Volk, author of Fringe-ology, put an end to a nightmare he’s been having for 20 years and how a scientist provides evidence that he is lucid dreaming. I enjoyed the moments when Steve Volk becomes lucid in his nightmare and confronts his fear (I’m Neo!”) and when the scientist sends a message (“I’m having a lucid dream”) from his dream to the waking world through his eye movements.

I listened to this episode twice this week; once by itself, and once as part of a Radiolab double feature (the “Wake Up and Dream” short followed by the hour long “Sleep” episode). I also listened to part of This American Life’s “Fear of Sleep” episode again. I was partly curious about Steve Volk’s story; I thought I’d heard it somewhere before, but I didn’t find it in any of these podcasts. My preoccupation with sleep and dreams last week might have had something to do with me feeling sleep-deprived most of the week, too.