Jul 31, 2026 · 10 min · 8 segments
Why do we dream — and do our dreams really mean anything? From flying through the air to your teeth falling out, dreams can feel intensely real, even when they make no logical sense. In this…
Jo KandolaGuestGraceHost
Why do we dream? So are dreams just meaningless byproducts of the sleeping brain or do they serve some important psychological purpose? Yeah.
So
I feel like it's going to be a trick question, Jo, and I feel like it could be something either really small, like we don't get one every night, or it's like a thousand.
So the average person experiences somewhere between four and six dreams during a typical night's sleep.
every night, whether you remember the dream or not.
So we've talked about the impact of sleep deprivation on a previous podcast and how active the brain is during sleep.
And during REM sleep, brain activity can actually resemble waking consciousness more than deep sleep.
So by the age of 80, the average person would have spent roughly six years of their life dreaming.
Wow.
That is a lot of time, which also suggests there must truly has got to be some kind of purpose to dreaming otherwise.
Why would we spend six years of our life doing it?
Why do we dream? So are dreams just meaningless byproducts of the sleeping brain or do they serve some important psychological purpose? Yeah.
So
I feel like it's going to be a trick question, Jo, and I feel like it could be something either really small, like we don't get one every night, or it's like a thousand.
So the average person experiences somewhere between four and six dreams during a typical night's sleep.
every night, whether you remember the dream or not.
So we've talked about the impact of sleep deprivation on a previous podcast and how active the brain is during sleep.
And during REM sleep, brain activity can actually resemble waking consciousness more than deep sleep.
So by the age of 80, the average person would have spent roughly six years of their life dreaming.
Wow.
That is a lot of time, which also suggests there must truly has got to be some kind of purpose to dreaming otherwise.
Why would we spend six years of our life doing it?
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