Vivid Dreaming, Stephen LeBerge

Vivid dreaming is when you become aware, while dreaming, that you are in fact, dreaming. It's rare but many have had the experience. In essence, while being unconscious, you become conscious of the fact you are dreaming. You are now both conscious and unconscious. How's that work? Stephen LeBerge has spent his life trying to understand vivid dreaming. Vivid dreaming gives us an unusual peak into the fabric of reality and consciousness. "Consciousness is what makes consciousness interesting," says LeBerge "Why should realizing something isn't real make it more real," he asks, yet that is the feeling we get when realizing a vivid dream. Are mental and physical spaces the same, or entirely unrelated? If I'm sitting down with you talking there are three realities. My experience in my mind, your experience in your mind and the physical world. Which is real? If you can become conscious of yourself dreaming while asleep, can you wake up during waking life too? Imagine a snowflake, a unique individual in a world of billions, falling into a pond. Is is scared, worrying about the end of life, annilalation? But the snowflake may think, "I'm not just one frozen molecule of water. I am water."

Sleeping with the Enemy

Most of us have between 1-4% Neanderthal in our DNA. I have 2.1%. At least according to 23&Me and National Geographic.Paabo is the guy who figured all this out. See Elizabeth Kolbert's New Yorker article called Sleeping with the Enemy for details. It seems we slept with them before we eliminated them. Not just Neanderthals, Denisovans and thr Hobbit group, Homo floresiences. How we (Homo Sapiens) we're able to conquer and survive is a mystery. We rocked the planet, but no one can put their finger on quite the reasons for it.