Sleep...

The episode I choose to listen to dealt with sleep and simply the question: Why do we sleep? I personally think our bodies need rest and time to regroup and in a way "charge" and get ready for another day. In relation to other things, rest is needed to function right. Take a computer for instance, if left on all the time the computer might run a little bit slow at times, but if you "shut down" the computer frequently after using it, it will run smoother when running again-although the comparison of humans to computers is a stretch of thought I do not want to get into.

The episode highlights different views on sleep and why we do it. Dolphins can stay under water for only a few minutes and have to come up to breath "air", because their not fish, but they still manage to get all the sleep they need. Half of the dolphins brain is asleep. Their brain is literally split and half of it is asleep. Ducks, on the other hand, have the ability to sleep with one eye open, in look out for predators. All of this was new to me and quite interesting.

Sleep is characterized differently by investigators throughout the episode. Most say that sleep is in fact a "cleaner upper" and basically filters out all the things in your brain or memories that occurred throughout the day that you don't need.

A portion of the episode deals with "dreams" and simply why and how do we dream. The view that caught my attention is what scientist Matt Wilson said. In summary he pointed out that dreams are things that happened throughout the day, week, month, year, life that are in a way relived but creatively changed by you, considering all the options you have in your dreams. It's a bit complicated but interesting.

Imagine if we did not have "sleep", Would everything in the world be figured out? Would we have already found the meaning to life? It's a bit complicated but I sure love to sleep and it's 3:30am so I think it's about that time, thank god I don't have class tomorrow.