The Dreaming Brain with Matt Walker

**Chuck Nice** (0:00)
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**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (1:17)
Gary, I'm a little sleepy.

**Gary O'Reilly** (1:19)
Well, I have the solution for that. We're about to talk to sleep expert Matt Walker.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (1:24)
Matt Walker?

**Gary O'Reilly** (1:25)
Yeah.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (1:26)
Second time on the show. Looking forward to that.

**Chuck Nice** (1:29)
I'm looking forward to a nap now.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (1:32)
Coming up on StarTalk Special Edition.
Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Special Edition, which means I got Gary O'Reilly here. Hi, Neil. All right. Add Chuck Nice, baby.

**Chuck Nice** (1:58)
That's right.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (1:58)
And we've been calling you the Lord of Nice, not just Lord Nice.

**Chuck Nice** (2:01)
The Lord of Nice.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (2:02)
The Lord of Nice. Very nice. So, Gary, we're talking about sleep today, I'm told. Which is people spend like a third of their life doing just that.

**Gary O'Reilly** (2:11)
I know.

**Chuck Nice** (2:12)
If you're lucky.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (2:13)
If you're lucky.

**Chuck Nice** (2:13)
If you're lucky.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (2:14)
If you don't have kids, you spend a third of your life.

**Gary O'Reilly** (2:16)
There you go.

**Chuck Nice** (2:18)
I sleep like absolute dog crap, so.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (2:22)
I don't know what that means.

**Gary O'Reilly** (2:23)
But can you guess?

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (2:25)
I haven't checked how much dog crap sleep. So what do you got for the show today?

**Gary O'Reilly** (2:29)
All right, sleep, as we've decided, is an inescapable part of our daily lives.
It's weird. It can transport us into a psychotic state. It can even leave us experiencing time dilation. It can heal us. It's, anyway, the last time we had a sleep expert on, our audience were very, very impressed. And so it's been a couple of years in the making, but we have brought him back. Along with, Neil, our audience's curiosity. So we're going to have some questions from our audience tagged on to our conversation.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (3:02)
Nice, nice, nice. Okay.

**Gary O'Reilly** (3:05)
Yeah.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (3:05)
So let us introduce our returning champion, our sleep chair power returning guest, Professor Matt Walker. Matt, welcome back to StarTalk.

**Matt Walker** (3:14)
It's lovely to be back, gents. Thank you so much for having me.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (3:17)
Excellent. And we last we caught up with you, you were at UC Berkeley, just tearing down the house, but you've got new digs. What's the latest with you?

**Matt Walker** (3:25)
I have, I have shifted. I am now a professor of neuroscience and biomedical engineering at UT Dallas at the Center for Brain Health. And here I'm starting a new center for advanced brain performance and sleep innovation. So I thought I would try and mix it up a little bit.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (3:41)
Wait, wait, wait. Advanced brain performance while you're sleeping? Or is that a separate thing from sleeping?

**Matt Walker** (3:48)
It's 24 hour. So we're going to try to augment the human brain, both when we are wide awake, as well as when we are sleeping.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (3:55)
Okay, now you're spooking me out here.

**Gary O'Reilly** (3:58)
Look at that.

**Neil deGrasse Tyson** (3:59)
The word augment, I think, is what spooks me a little bit.

**Chuck Nice** (4:02)
He's gonna make sleep zombies.