Notice, this file possesses cognitohazardous properties. While reading this text is not believed to be harmful, comprehension and interpretation of the text will be negatively affected. Please exercise discretion when reading this document. Item number SCP-2602 Library Class Former Special Containment Procedures SCP-2602 has been acquired under the cover story that it used to be a library. Large bushes and trees have been planted around the property in order to obscure SCP-2602. Access is denied to non-personnel. Amnestics have been administered to the town in which SCP-2602, a former library, is located. All known online references to SCP-2602 and the fact that it used to be a library, have been removed. Filters pertaining to the linguistic markers of SCP-2602's effects have been added to Foundation's webcrawling software in order to flag text that potentially pertains to SCP-2602 for review. All known physical documentation related to SCP-2602 has been identified and destroyed. Foundation documentation pertaining to SCP-2602 is to be edited as much as possible for readability by personnel with no familiarity with the anomaly. Typically, 40% of all references to the fact that SCP-2602 used to be a library can be removed. Description SCP-2602 is a building that, from June 8, 1921 to April 29, 1988, was a library. SCP-2602 is located in ████████████ England and developed its anomalous property in October 2004. When communicating any information about SCP-2602, subjects are compelled to make frequent reference to the fact that SCP-2602 used to be a library. The exact wording and nature of these references are mostly determined by the author in context, but always unambiguously communicate this information. Texts referring to SCP-2602 can have these references removed to a limited degree by subjects who have little knowledge of SCP-2602 outside of the fact that it used to be a library. The limited compulsion to allow these references to go unedited has hindered attempts at developing automated processes to remove these references. Any information regarding SCP-2602 is also anomalous. Subjects exposed to communication regarding SCP-2602 will identify the fact that it used to be a library as the primary causal element behind any number of properties of or observations about it. This is proportional to the extent that said information contains references to the fact that SCP-2602 used to be a library. While subjects will develop false beliefs to support these irrational causal linkages, they do not generalize and pose no general risk to cognition. For example, while several subjects have posited the effects of gravity within SCP-2602 are a result of it having been a library, but no longer serving that purpose, they do not hold this belief in regards to other buildings that used to be libraries. Subjects are incapable of communicating directly or otherwise any information pertaining to SCP-2602's use between this time of the library and the development of its anomalous properties. When prompted to do so, they will instead insistently repeatedly refer to the fact that SCP-2602 used to be a library. Due to this, and the fact that SCP-2602 used to be a library, it has been very difficult to determine what, if anything, occurred in SCP-2602 from 1988 to 2004. Addendum 2602-1 Summary of a survey of SCP-2602, which used to be a library, conducted by agents Roderick and Casey on December 9, 2004. Unreadable segments have been excised entirely. See also SCP-2602 photographic evidence. While SCP-2602's layout is generally appropriate for a former library, it is inconsistent with obtained blueprints from the local government and testimony from past patrons. It is thus assumed that SCP-2602 used to be a library. Most notably, SCP-2602 contains an extensive subterranean component of the kind generally found in former libraries. SCP-2602 experienced extensive fire damage on the same data it developed with anomalous properties. Consultation with actuarial tables have shown little deviation from what is expected of fire damage to former libraries. However, some of the debris exhibited elevated levels of dewey radiation, preventing access to several shrines that were likely used to assist SCP-2602's reading groups when it was a library. A number of advanced book-sorting machines were found, though long-term storage in a former library has rendered it inoperable. Restraints used by libraries to hold patrons with overdue books were similarly damaged, apparently violently by this storage.  However, in the process, ex-bibliothetic fluctuations in the waste resulted in aging cases suffering several major flesh wounds which later proved to be fatal. Notably, SCP-2602 used to be a library. Conclusions, as evidenced by the fact that SCP-2602 used to be a library, and was formerly a library, is probable that SCP-2602 used to be a library. It is likely that, shortly after it ceased to be a library, SCP-2602 was previously a library. This likely served to highlight the fact that SCP-2602 used to be a library, and obscure the SCP-2602 used to be a library. The following photos were tagged for immediate review by a panel of personnel with mental exposure to SCP-2602, which used to be a library. Image, 2602-114, Anthropology, Microfiche section. Analysis, a collection of anthropological records from a wide variety of cultures is by no means atypical for a former library. Image, 2602-116, Microfiche index. Analysis, feelings of intense admiration are a perfectly normal reaction through the organizational aplomb of a former library. Image, 2602-117, Microfiche reader. Analysis, many former libraries would take measures to preserve sensitive equipment from dust, light, and sentient edible life. Image, 2602-121, Fire Exit. Analysis, fire exits are often repurposed in former libraries, as are patron bodily fluids. Image, 2602-124, Quiet Study Area. Analysis, although sleeping is often against policy in an active library, it is common for former libraries to contain patrons who have knotted off in the quiet areas. Image, 2602-132, Compact Shelving. Analysis, graffiti from enthusiastic patrons is sadly atypical in former libraries, which lack both genders and carrion feeders. Image, 2602-124, Exbibliothetic Possession. Analysis, it's perfectly normal and arguably quite convenient for circulation cards to levitate in the presence of dewey radiation typical of former libraries. Image, 2602-133, Library Stacks. Analysis, collapsible shelving is typical of former libraries with space considerations.


Hello everyone in this video are going to go through is EV stock opportunities that many forget now Bear in mind many forget you may actually know about some of these as well and you know if you do then then you You're looking at doing your own research And you've done your own research and you've got information on EV stocks But these are some areas that we can think about and really shift our mind and focus towards Compared to just electric vehicles themselves a'r byd rwy'n deser i'r cyflodio'r cyflodio'r cyflodio a'r byd ydych chi'n dod i'r wahanol am gweithio sydd y cyflodio'r cyflodio'r cyflodio, fel y cyflodio'r cyflodio ar menamp.  So cyddiad hynny'n rhai, cyngor o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r sphau, cyngor o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r gweithio, cyngor o'r informatio, ac er mwy'n gweithio'r fideo mae'n gwybod i'ch gael ei gyrdd i'r rhaglen o'r cydyddian nhw'n gweithio'r lyth. Felly, ydych yn ei wneud o'n digwydd gweithio'r hyn yn eich bod yn ffantasig i'r helpu'r ymgyrchu yn y gweithiol ymgyrch. Mae'n gwybod i'n gweithio'r ffantasig. Mae'r newid ymgyrchio'r gweithio'r channel i'r gweithio'r ysgolwyr. Mae gennyn i'r rhaglen i'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gwybod, I'm by my own means an expert on the stock market. But let's get right into the information then in term of some of the EV stock opportunities that some people might forget.  Yn y bobl ydych chi'n gweithio'r hyn o'r cyfrind o'r cyfrind, ond mae'n gweithio'r cyfrind o'r cyfrind, muniaeth gar junction. Mae geswn gwahanol fathionoedd fynd 아 forwardsgoedd dalwedd yn fuddefwaith. es format ychydig yn mwyno bob gorfod yn eistedd yde wedi ardogfod y llyle. ADetigo a ein bod wedi mynd e wym lei mewn jael. Ychydig yn lle ys�o gra bentau blew roedd na'r ddweudf processor sydd teimlo'r bwynt firmly yr olwch iawn. On na hynny os yn cymdeithas y dalwedd sydd etw'r bob flyny a'r dim yn ei Lywol ledd. a that's only going to continue so there's a big demand for these sorts of materials not just in the electric vehicle space but in the other areas as well, but that's the area that we're looking at electric vehicles. But also says wind turbines, robotics and many other high growth advanced technologies. So ultimately this is a mining company for the future in the sense ond ond ond i gweithio'r materiall â'r cyfeilio hwyl, ond ond ond i gweithio'r cefnodau, i gweithio'r cefnodau sy'n unig o'n dod o'r leicfio, o d photographio. O ddim gymrydio ddweudio a'r drefaf, cyfetio'r dymian a'r rhaglion dydd. O'n ddweudio ddymian o'r leicfio ddymian a'r rhaglion, i ddwy'r ddymian o'n ddymian o'r materiall ymlaen i chi bwysig, yr un i'r rhaid yn ei ddabwys? is partly MP materials. In terms of the stock price I'll just look at it now here just one moment. We've gone up in the past month over 100% on this particular mining stock here MP materials. This is showing huge promise and it's a company I am trying to get in at the right your your ex-prone your all those areas brilliant because obviously they're the consumer side they're the vehicles that are needed okay but not many people are thinking and I'm sure many of you are but but there's some people are not thinking about that the mining companies that could be involved in terms of the resources needed there so that's that's a good one okay and another area there is as I mentioned there I'll move on to the next one actually because I said I want to make the video nice and short to respect your time so I'll stop waffling on okay so the next area is charging companies now these are more well known I'm sure you've done some research into these but if you if you're not yet invested in a charging company but you are invested in like a you know couple of electric vehicle companies I'd certainly suggest getting involved in some charging companies I would say across the electric vehicle industry you need to invest a little bit in and again I'm not a financial advisor I'm a business teacher but I'm by no means an expert look at investing in within the electric vehicle ecosystem you know the business ecosystem around it look at investing in in various areas of it okay so you get your electric car stocks okay brilliant have something to do with the materials and resources invest in those so you got that covered and then I'll see your charging station so maybe one one or two there okay so then you've got a good kind of diversified approach within the whole industry of stocks there so you have got diversification in terms of you know you diversify your stocks in terms of being within loads of different areas and having loads of different stocks so you have diversified portfolio but also to go step further it's good to diversify within the industry you're invested in so not to put all the money on one electric vehicle company but diversify a little bit with a couple of those and other residual industries like the mining companies like the charging stations etc okay now who are some of the charging companies now you've probably heard of two of them so one of them is blink charging which is which is an interesting company it's shot up in price massively over the past sort of couple of months then you've also got switchback energy which is charge point which is essentially that the the market leader in charge points there and I like to kind of bet on the market leaders in terms of going with the market leader so I have actually bought stock on charge point and this is probably a lot a longer term hold I think they're going to do really really well as we see more electric vehicles on on the on the horizon so charge point is an interesting one but that is another area that you can look into actually investing in is actually charge point now what is the third one okay now again this is this is maybe the mining one's not as well known you're charging stations are sort of becoming more well known there wasn't a couple of months ago it was more towards just the EV vehicles themselves but also you've got EV related SPACs a special acquisition companies one of them is THCP which is microvast okay and they produce electric batteries like battery systems for the electric vehicles so and this is a component that is going to be needed so we sell more electric vehicles then obviously we're going to need more electric batteries and the thing I like about microvast is they've put a lot of money in research and development and trying to produce the best quality products because the success of that business is predicated on how high quality is the battery so that is another area that you can look into in terms of EV SPAC related companies particularly in terms of tools or aspects that are related to the EV space so anything that's battery in terms of producing electric batteries or producing certain components of electric vehicles that's an area to look into okay so those are those are three main areas of what you can look into for electric vehicles okay and not just electric vehicles themselves so so you've got the ecosystem around it like I said so I've made this video short and sweet as best as I can so if this is any sort of helpful information or you found it interesting or anything like that in anywhere please leave the video like so it goes up in the youtube algorithm and also subscribe to the channel if you want more sort of videos I do in-depth videos I've done a video on microvast I go right into the research of the company I've done I ain't done a video on charge point yet but I'm going to do that and we've got a range of areas I went through electromechanica I went through aero so some of the smaller EV companies here so have a look at the other videos that I've got subscribe to the channel and like this video not really much appreciate that anyways I'll see you everybody in the next video


Hello, and welcome to the Burlington Mayor's show for the month of April. We're getting together at the tail end of April here, and excited to have this show. Joining me today is the General Manager of the Burlington Electric Department, Darren Springer, and we are going to focus today's show on our Net Zero Energy Plan. And we just this week released an update to how we're doing with respect to the plan. As part of the roadmap that we committed to a couple years ago, we also are getting metrics every year. We can tell on an annual basis how we're doing versus this very ambitious plan. So we're going to get into that in a moment. As always, we're happy to answer other questions as well, and hope you'll consider calling in to talk about the Net Zero Energy Plan, but also if there's anything else going on in Burlington, and anything else about local government that you're interested in talking about, give us a call. And usually, I'm not sure if we can get the number up there on the screen. I'm sure we'll get that posted in a moment, and it's been a while since I managed the switchboard here, and I guess I've forgotten the number here, but we'll get posted shortly. Darren, we presented this update at the city council a couple of days ago, and I'm going to ask you to walk through it in a moment. I think, and there's the number 862-3966. We'd love to hear from you. This is our second update in terms of metrics. We published this plan in 2019 and then had the first numbers come in a year ago, which were in some ways shockingly good in that we had seen very substantial emissions over the course of that first a little more than a year segment. We all knew that part of that was this really exceptional thing that happened in the world of the pandemic hitting in March 2020, just months after we sort of launched the plan. And there's a big question mark hanging over the last year as, you know, as this economy started to recover, would those numbers go in the opposite direction? And the answer is to some degree yes, but still overall, I think the two big take-home messages for me were that this plan, this very concerted effort to move us away from fossil fuels. And that's what the goal is. I mean, we should start there. Just make sure everyone's clear what this net zero energy city goal is. It's a commitment to do everything we can over the next decade by 2030 to become a net zero energy city, which in large part means moving with ground transportation or vehicles and with the heating of our buildings to convert away from the burning of fossil fuels for those purposes and replace it with systems that run on electricity and then continuing to power that electricity as we have since 2014 with 100% renewable energy. That's what the plan says and lays out. It's the most ambitious local climate goal in the country, we believe. And we've got to do a lot of work to get there. Really, it will require a transformation of this community to achieve it. And why don't I hand it over to you now, Darren? You can talk about what this update said and how we're doing against that very ambitious goal. Great. Well, thank you, Mayor, and thanks for inviting us to join for the show. I think the slides I'm going to present are similar to slides that we presented at the City Council on Monday evening. So I'm going to pull those up and walk folks through what exactly we are doing here with net zero. A little about Burlington Electric for folks who may not be familiar. We're a public power utility, electric utility here in the city. We manage all of the electric grid and renewable generation plants for the city of Burlington. And we have over 21,000 customers now with about three quarters of those being residential customers and the quarter being commercial. We, I think you talked about this goal, this 2030 vision that we have of making Burlington a net zero energy city by eliminating fossil fuel use across not just electricity, which we've done by being 100% renewable, but also thermal and ground transportations. And that's what makes our goal uniquely ambitious is that we're trying to do that on a timeframe that very few are taking on. And Burlington is really in the lead was recognized as having the first US net zero 2030 plan by the smart electric power alliance. So how are we doing? And this, this set of graphs demonstrates what the business is usual path looks like compared to the green line on the left, which would be the net zero path by 2030. And as folks can see, and as you alluded to, Mayor, in 2020, we had reached a point where we were on the path for net zero, having achieved significant emissions reductions, although a portion of those were likely attributed to the pandemic, to people driving fewer miles, for example. And what we saw was a mild rebound in emissions in 2021. However, it was only about a one and a half percent increase relative to 2020. And when you look at the overall picture, we're still down 12 and a half percent on emissions compared to our 2018 baseline. So Burlington is still doing better now than we were when we started this effort, significantly better. And we're doing better as well, you know, particularly in the transportation sector, which you can see here. We have a pace that's actually still, you know, not only on the roadmap pace, but better than the roadmap pace when it comes to gas and diesel use, which is on the left here, natural gas use in buildings. We've had some downward trend as well. But we are a little bit off of the pace that the roadmap would have us on for natural gas use in buildings. Can you speak there before we advance? I mean, just a little bit about, like, how do we how do we make these projections and how confident are we in their accuracy? Absolutely. So we partner with a company called Synapse Energy Economics out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. They developed the roadmap data for us and update it each year. And we use as updated data as we possibly can. So with natural gas use, we partner with Vermont Gas Systems to get updated data for the city of Burlington on how much we're using. And then with the vehicle miles traveled in the gas and diesel use, we use Chittenden County and state of Vermont travel data. We look at DMV vehicle registrations for the city of Burlington, so we understand how many vehicles are electric versus conventional. And then we're able to extrapolate how much gas and diesel use is estimated for the community. So I think quite impressive, I think, as a serious data effort and one that in and of itself, I feel like, is changed the way we kind of think about and talk about and try to work on these issues that we're getting this regular data like this. Absolutely. I think, you know, the state of Vermont, which has a significant emissions inventory for the entire state, their data goes back, I think, to 2017-2018 timeframe. So to have data that's updated for 2021 gives us a really a clearer picture of how we're doing in Burlington. And, you know, it's very helpful as it guides our efforts. You're saying that when the state is looking at their performance, they're looking at data that's five years old? Yeah. In some cases, there are several years behind where we are, which granted they have more emissions inventories to track than we do. But having this updated data that we have is really useful as we're saying, how are we doing? How can we adjust our programs and our thinking and our outreach to customers? Awesome. I'll let you get back to it. I'll just advance this slide here and it'll come back up in a moment. So I mentioned some of this key takeaways, but one of them that's important is nationally in 2021, emissions jumped back up 6.2 percent. And we saw globally as well, emissions going back up after the economy more fully reopened coming out of the pandemic. So for Burlington to only have a one and a half percent increase means we did better relative to the national and global trends and we consolidated more of the gains that we've had here in Burlington. Importantly as well, there are a number of great initiatives that have taken place over the course of the last year that are not yet impacting this data, but will as we go forward. So the Burlington Electric Net Zero Energy Revenue Bond, which voters approved back in December, that will start to impact this data going forward as we roll out projects and incentives, weatherization standards for rental properties, which you worked on with the city council. That'll be impacting data going forward as we use less energy in our rental properties and weatherize them. That'll be a significant one, won't it? Right. I mean, I think we think something like 40 percent of the rental units in the city really are not meeting the kind of modern building standards for weatherization. And maybe they went into the modern building standards, but they're not meeting these really basic weatherization standards. And as that there will be a reduction as that happens. I mean, I saw it with my own house when I weatherized my old 100 year old house. We saw the consumption drop by 25 percent. I mean, this is going to be real measurable progress when we get that done with hundreds, thousands of units over the coming years. It is. You know, 60 percent of our residential customers are renters. There are a large number of buildings that are being going through the process over the next five years to get weatherized, become more efficient, save 25, 30 percent in terms of energy use. And we'll see that rolling through the data each year. Natural gas use in rental properties should be dropping year over year as that rolls out. I know there were concerns about sort of throughput and how many units could be converted a year and whether like the market was going to be able to handle us pushing so many. Do you have any sense of how that's working in the early days here? Yeah. I think the great thing is that it's a staged approach. So we're going to start with the buildings that use the most energy. And so we're going to get the most bang for the buck right away in terms of weatherizing those buildings. And then as we go to buildings that are a little bit more efficient and on down, you end up with more buildings. So there will be maybe some challenge at the back end trying to make sure that we have enough folks in the workforce to do this work, enough incentive program participation opportunities so that rental properties can participate in the incentives. But we think we have a good plan and we're hopeful that we'll see each successive year. This will have an impact for really the next five years and then beyond. And then just another thing that we should mention is for new construction now you have to have a renewable heating system. That's an ordinance that you signed back in the summer of last year that the City Council had enacted and that will help us as well. So we want to make sure that as we're building new, we're doing it with renewables, whether that's electrification like heat pumps or geothermal, renewable fuels. And so that will help us avoid adding new infrastructure because we're going to use fossil fuels for the future. And certainly there's more we can do, I think, in that area as well. Certainly, and we talked about this, we've been talking about this plan a lot this week. The, you know, when you have new construction, of course there will be, you're growing the community at some level. And this plan, I think what we're going to, we've talked about in the future, is where I think we're really going to see as new units come online and they're held to this different standard, the per unit, essentially per capita impact should really improve, even if it might be a little bit hard in the grass we've been looking at so far to see the cumulative impacts. The overall performance of the community is definitely going to get better on that kind of per capita basis. Absolutely. If we build new construction with renewables, that'll help our per square foot or per capita, per unit, you know, emissions come down and ensure that we're investing in the types of technologies that we want to see for the future. So I'll just, I'll jump back to the slides for a moment here and we'll pull them back up on the screen. And what folks will see is we have, at Burlington Electric, incredible incentives for a variety of things. And you can go to BurlingtonElectric.com to learn more. But if you're looking at an electric vehicle, a plug-in hybrid, an electric bike, an electric lawnmower, a cold climate heat pump, even electric leaf blowers, forklifts, induction cooking, you name it, if there's something that can use renewable electricity instead of fossil fuels, we're working to incentivize it for customers. And so again, anyone who's interested can go to BurlingtonElectric.com, check out our rebates right there. There are a number of exciting things. Really is an impressive list. I mean, and it's, I really hope this is, this is maybe one of the most important parts of this whole discussion for Burlingtonians to realize is their, this plan succeeding requires Burlingtonians, Burlington property owners, vehicle owners, and businesses to take action. And I think for this plan to succeed, it's really important that people understand these pretty remarkable and generous incentives that are available for this broad range of different devices that we use. Absolutely. I think, and we'll continue to expand them as we do each year over time. But customers of BurlingtonElectric have a great opportunity to take advantage of really strong incentives. In some cases, there are state and federal incentives that can be paired with the BurlingtonElectric incentives and really make an impact. And exciting new this week, even if you are a customer who's taking advantage of our incentive program, you can go to BurlingtonElectric.com slash yard sign and we're happy to get a new net zero lawn sign installed right in your front yard so you can let your neighbors know that you took a step to helping the community reach its goal. I took mine home today. I haven't been actually, I haven't gotten it home yet. I got to get it installed. I think this is, I'm glad you guys are doing this, Darren, and that I think, again, to the last point, that this is really something that, this is not just a government plan. This is a plan that is going to require Burlingtonians to act. And I think this kind of lawn sign campaign and other things that we're doing is just going to spread awareness and really hopefully just, I think kind of become more and more a part of the way of life is that people are thinking, maybe I should electrify that. Maybe there's not, you know, I've got to replace my weed whacker. I don't know if we have another weed whacker incentive yet, but we did. There we go. I'm going to go check out the incentives that are available for that. And maybe can you, we're trying to help people with that. Can you speak a little bit to, and I know some of these are early days, but just to give a sense of people, the way we're trying to be as proactive as we can about this, how we're marketing these incentives. Absolutely. So we are trying a lot of new things for an electric utility because typically, you know, you buy your power from the electric utility. The electric utility is not going to talk to you about different products and things like that. But really, if we think about it, we're competing as a renewable fuel provider against really well-financed and trenched incumbent oil companies, for example, that are selling you your transportation fuel. And we happen to be able to provide you renewable electricity for your vehicle if you have an electric or a plug-in vehicle for the equivalent of 65 cents a gallon if you charge overnight with our off-peak rate, you know, 450 a gallon right now in some cases at the pump. That's a great opportunity. And so we want to share that with people. We've run a radio ad for the first time recently. We've had digital ads that we've used where people, if they're looking for a vehicle in Burlington, we try to make sure that they can be aware of our incentives when they're doing their searching. We partner with a number of different providers, so heat pump installers, auto dealers in the community, hardware stores. We partner with them so they can let customers know about our incentives. And really, you know, community outreach is going to be a key component of our success here. And it is early days. I think we have much, much more we can do in this area. It's exciting to think that we offer those kind of price advantages on the...   Yeah, this is one of those great opportunities where the clean fuel is the cheaper fuel. Yeah. We don't always have that advantage to that extent. And right now, we can say very clearly that you can buy local, you can buy renewable, and you can fuel cheaper with renewable electricity than with gasoline. I think this point is worth pausing on again to just in that I... So often when I talk to folks, I think people assume that doing the right thing for the earth involves some kind of sacrifice or premium or extra cost. And, you know, it's reasonable if people think that way because, well, it's still the case in some... sometimes, but certainly in the past, there was a big spread for some of these items. But these technologies keep getting better. The more they become mass produced and the kind of magic of the industrial process takes this course, the efficiencies improve. And we've seen it happen in solar panels where they went from really just not, in many cases, a really competitive or more affordable option. You know, and we've seen it in our own... the city's finances. I always like telling this story is, you know, when we became the first city in the country to source 100% of our electricity from renewable sources, we knew it was a kind of great environmental achievement, climate achievement. What we didn't expect was that Moody's would issue a report saying, giving us a credit positive, basically improving our outlook because they realized that Burlington Electric customers would, from this point forward, from that point forward, be really fully insulated from the volatility of the fossil fuel market. Well, you know, here we are again, you know, when that's very much on people's minds. Burlingtonians who have made this switch over to electric vehicles or electric elements of their thermal systems and their buildings are just not impacted by this volatility and what's going on in Ukraine in the same way. It's a great point, Mayor. I think whether you have a new vehicle or a pre-owned vehicle, whether it's a plug-in hybrid or an electric vehicle, if you're able to use renewable electricity as a fuel for part or all of your daily commute, you're going to be driving right past that gas station. You're not going to have to worry about the price at the pump because you're going to be paying a much cheaper price with your charging at home. And that's something that we want to expand access to for as many Burlingtonians as we can. And I think the point... Not by as many potato chips either.  So the point with Ukraine and what's happening globally is a really important point too. We don't control the price of oil at all. And even as a country that has developed more oil resources and become a bigger producer in recent years, oil is controlled as a global commodity. And so what happens when we have the situation that we have with Russia invading Ukraine, you know, we don't want to be sending dollars necessarily to support that effort. We want to be spending our dollars locally on renewables, not sending money over to finance a war. And what we have is an opportunity to control our price a little bit better too because we're a state-regulated electric utility. Our prices don't change day to day. If we have a rate change, it's going to be a public process that the community gets to weigh in on at the city council and at the electric commission. And we have much more stable pricing. Price of oil can be cheap for a period of time and then global events can drive it incredibly high and that hurts people when they have to pay at the pump. So we have a chance to decouple ourselves from that over time here. Really is striking. I mean, and you've been great about pointing this out, Karen, that this ethic in Vermont of it's something we believe in, it's very much part of the values. We'd like to help out our neighbors. We see the many benefits that flow to our sort of local quality of life, to buying local. I don't think we think about energy that way usually, but we should start because I mean, the jobs related to fossil fuels, our jobs, thousands of miles from here, the profits tend to, in many cases, go to these regimes that are, you know, governments, whether it's Russia or Saudi Arabia or Columbia in the last couple of decades that really have any emethetical values to what the kind of society we're trying to create here in Burlington. And you can really flip that on its head and be employing the local mechanical workers who are installing these heat pumps. That's where the related jobs are. The profits are not really profits. They're flowing to BED. They're helping us keep local electricity rates lower. And it's really something I think people should, we should just keep talking about because I think it's a profound change. Absolutely. We want to add local renewable energy to the local books, local foods, local beer, everything local, local renewable energy as well for our vehicles, for our homes, for our buildings. And we have that opportunity. We're getting close on time. Let's make sure there are a few more highlights we should hit on your deck here. Absolutely. I'll pull this back up here in just a moment and continue with the slide deck. So just briefly here, we have some exciting projects going on. I know you're making efforts to electrify the city fleet and improve city-building energy use as well. We talked about some of these. We have some new initiatives too. A couple here that I'll highlight. We have charging infrastructure expanding everywhere in the city. We're going to have new public charging in the Old North End and a partnership with Car Share. So more people can drive electric through Car Share, even if they don't own a vehicle themselves. More charging at rental and multi-fleet and enjoy the shopping and restaurants that we have here in Burlington. A couple other just, you know, we've talked about some of the progress here. This is a great example with heat pumps. We've had a 15X increase in heat pump adoption since we launched our green stimulus in 2020. In addition, electric vehicles, we've had about more than doubling of electric vehicles since we launched that green stimulus program. Let's go back one slide here because I think this is a good, since we're running out of time here, this sort of shows kind of the two big messages from this. I don't think I quite got this out at the beginning of the show. The two big messages are, from my perspective, this push towards electrification as a main strategy for achieving our local climate goals is having an impact. You can see we launched these targeted incentives, did some good publicity around it, really started to get the word out there and obviously the adoption rate at that moment increased dramatically. But you look at the top of the slide and you see as dramatic as that increase has been, we are way below, we're at basically a quarter of the adoption rate that we need to get to and sustain for the next eight years if we're going to really wean ourselves off fossil fuels by the end of the decade. So this should be both, I find this both reassuring, like what we're doing here matters and it's going to have an impact and it's awesome to have the data confirming that and we got a long way to go and we got to keep acting decisively, strategically and if we're going to get anywhere near these targets and that's exactly the value of having an ambitious near-term target. We had it in one of our recent town halls where that MIT professor John Sternum made the point, so many governments go out there and they create these goals for 2050 and then people will kind of forget about it. 2050 is too far away to have any accountability with it to have any, it doesn't drive the actions that are needed now. We're in a moment where we need action now. We need to make a lot of progress as a globe by 2030 and I think this plan is making us do that. I think you're right and the ambition of the plan drives us to think every day at Burlington Electric what we can do to help our customers, to help our community. We hope this becomes truly a community, a viral effort. There's nothing like having your neighbor take a step and then being able to ask them and say, hey, how's that working out? You have an electric lawn mower. How's that working for you? I saw you installed some heat pumps and for folks who are renters in the city who may not be able to do some of those things on their own we want to make it possible for them to see these benefits as well. So the ambition of the plan drives us to think big and to hopefully create a model that can be useful not only here in Burlington but other communities who are looking to us for leadership we can demonstrate that this can be done in a way that's economically beneficial. You know, I think a lot of kind of bad thinking sometimes or sloppy thinking is justified on the idea that we can be some kind of model. I think in this case it's actually, this is, we've earned the ability to do this because Burlington has been a leader on local climate policy for 30 years now going all the way back to the 80s pushing 40 years I guess now and we've delivered. We consume much less electricity than many other communities have. It's been real results there. We became the first city in the country to source 100% of our electricity for renewables and those achievements have impacted other municipalities and the country and they've given us, I think, an incredible credibility that we should be a leader in this area and there are a lot of places watching and if we can succeed at this I think it is going to have a much greater impact on this existential issue than just about anything else we're working on. Completely agree. I think that's an excellent point to end on and I couldn't agree more. Well, we will leave it there. Thank you for joining us. I hope you have found this interesting and you've learned something from it. We will be back to do this again in a month. We'll be back in the month of May. Not sure what the focus will be then but we have a lot of exciting work underway here in the city of Burlington. I hope you'll consider joining us. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next month on the mayor's show. Thank you.


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Hi, let's answer your questions about dreams and disorders of dreaming Have you ever experienced a sensation of being? awake, but unable to move or speak or what about the more immersive experience of being aware that you're dreaming and Perhaps even having some control over those dreams Today, we'll be discussing these questions and more by touching upon topics such as the interpretations and functions of dreams about sleep paralysis and about lucid dreaming So welcome to our ask an expert live stream My name is Monica your host and I am honored to be joined by Dr. Jalal today who is our expert on dreams sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming You have submitted your questions to our YouTube community page and our discord server and We've picked the top questions to answer today So I invite you to deeply engage with our live stream by leaving your questions your thoughts or your comments in the chat box to the right as we'll have an Opportunity to answer these questions live at the end of the stream. So hope you stay tuned for that In addition you can leave your thoughts comments or questions in the comment section below and I'll do my best and the team will as well to answer them after this stream So we hope you stay till the end to learn some interesting facts about sleep paralysis lucid dreaming and about dreams in general The plan is during this time I will be giving you a brief introduction to myself a side to go team member To our expert Dr. Jalal and then we'll dive straight into the questions that you sent in So let's begin That's an introduction to myself I'm Monica and I'm a clinical neuroscience graduate student who is very interested in Psychiatry and outreach initiatives One of these outreach initiatives includes psych to go where I'm very grateful to be able to interact with you and see your questions chat with you all and of course host these live stream with experts to make psychiatry accessible to all as I know that many of you are joining us from all different parts of the world and at different times Do you want to remind you that this stream will be available for you to watch later? But we do encourage you to engage with us today And now I will introduce you to our expert Hello, Dr. Jalal. Thank you for joining us today. My pleasure Monica. How are you? I'm very well super excited for our discussions and to share our knowledge with everyone here Yeah, same here same here Thought I might be a good opportunity to begin with a Introduction so the community gets to know you a bit better. How does that sound? Sounds great So we are very very fortunate to have Dr. Balan Jalal who is a researcher at Harvard University and a visiting researcher at the Cambridge He also completed his PhD there and he has published 45 academic papers and is a co-author in a recent book by Cambridge University Press The telegraph described him as one of the world's leading expert on sleep paralysis He was also ranked as the top rated expert in sleep paralysis in the world on expert scope base expert scape sorry based on the scientific impact His work has been featured in major media like New York Times Washington Post the Today Show BBC the Guardian and the Times Furthermore, he has written about his research for the Scientific American the Boston Globe and the Big Think He is truly an expert in this field and we are so excited to have him join us today to share his expertise on this topic So thank you so much for joining. Oh, thank you so much and your Monica and thank you so much for the generous introduction Of course, so I thought let's begin with maybe just general questions that the community has submitted Regarding dreams in general Yeah Yeah, so one of the top questions were actually sent by Justin via YouTube His general ideas that many people or many psychologists and neuroscientists tend to think that dreams either have meaning or They don't it's kind of usually split right so which leads to his question of What do you think the functions of dreams are or do you want to give an overview? Overview about some of the different theories and discuss those maybe. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well dreams is a heavy topic Right, so we're diving right in So what's going on going on during dreams, right?  They're usually very strange and oddly you don't know You don't feel like it's not even though it's a novel environments You don't feel like it's necessarily novel and you don't feel like it's bizarre and strange Even though the fabric of reality is all warped right so time places people everything sort of shifted So what's going on and and can can your brain sort of explain this bizarre world? Can can can the brain and neuroscience explain the fact that people all around the world when I go lecture in Whatever country people will tell me I was chased by this monster and I couldn't get away my my legs were they felt so heavy You know, did you have that dream once in a while Monica? Are you trying to move your legs are so heavy? You can't really get away and the monster is chasing you or whatever it is things are very strange and also dreams tend to be Heavily populated by people so there's something about the way that we construct a theory of other minds That's sort of heavily involved during dreams. So so what's going on? So let's look at the brain, right? So what's happening during dreams but in order for us to understand dreams We have to understand that these vivid lifelike crisp dreams that we all have and remember for the most of the time Emerge out of something called REM sleep. So Each night we go through different phases of sleep So we have stages one and two where a heart rate and blood pressure drops, right? And then we go into sort of what's called deep sleep where we have a lot of shop keeping going on so things like repair of like, you know muscles and DNA repair and things like that So it's really like really like a shop keeping time, right? And then from there we into into what's called REM the REM phase and here we have the lifelike and crisp dreams where we are paralyzed Okay, and we are paralyzed during these dreams in order to avoid You know to avoid hurting ourselves during these dreams, okay? So during this REM phase the neurochemistry the neurochemical environment is different than life Waking life basically, okay? So you have chemicals like serotonin. So this chemical involved in mood the neurons that produce serotonin are Stop act are not inactive during a REM sleep. Okay, so they replenish They need to sort of be recharged like you recharge your iPhone for example your smartphone, right? So they are recharged and and so that means, you know the cortex that the top layer of the brain Which is important for a lot of different things like logic and Agency and awareness of the soul and things like that Since that chemical is not available during REM sleep and during dreams and that means our logic centers in the brain Don't work as they should they're not optimally functioning and that explains why dreams are strange and bizarre to get to the You know the question right why dreams do they have a meaning? Well, they are strange and bizarre because a part of the brain known known as the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex a fancy name for a structure important instance of logic logic and Putting the world together in a coherent way. Well that part of the brain is not working So dreams are strange so that's an explanation for that Or why do you have these dreams while you can't move for example and the monster is chasing you? Well, it turns out because you need that cortex to be working right during dreams and the serotonin that chemical is not there to Give gasoline to the CEO or that part of the brain that's important for those functions Well, the emotional part of the brain gets the upper hand in a way because the cortex is Important for inhibiting your emotions and so the emotions Represents that monster chasing you and since you can't really dampen those emotions. Well, that means you're heavy You know and the motor cortex is also in the in that region And so that explains why you are weak in sort of movement Does that make sense or was that a sort of a long-winded answer to explain to basically say that you know The the brain and the neurochemistry the neurochemical environment of the brain Explained very explains well why dreams have that you know Reality to them that we experience each night basically That's such a fascinating response. I never really thought of it really being centered around the dorsolato prefrontal cortex and having that kind of being Dampened down a bit as a reason why we have such bizarre dreams. So that was really really cool to hear Which is actually very interesting Because I wonder do you know if there's any differences between people who have healthy brains and those who might have lesions to That area In their dreams, that's a great question. Would there be differences? Well, we've hypothesized. So that we think that Yes, probably there would be some some some changes, but I'm not even aware of what the literature would say So obviously if you are blind your visual cortex is out of is not you don't have a visual cortex or you're sort of Congenitally blind right then you won't have visual dreams Right that that so you will have auditory dreams You will have tactile sensations, but you won't actually see things But yeah, I would I would venture that if there's something wrong in those structures of the brain, you know Things would be different. Let me give you an example. So One thing about dream is the sense of self right the sense of by the sense of Beland or Monica, right? I feel like I feel anchored in this body, right? I don't feel like I'm floating out in space and their their structures in the brain call this Superior parietal lobby or the TPJ basically structures in the parietal lobes that creates a sense of self Okay, and it turns out when you are in REM sleep the TPJ for example That's a region deactivates It doesn't work as it should and that that explains why your sense of self is loosened up during dreams That explains why you can take the vantage point of Monica during your dreams, right? Like a first person's perspective. I see myself or you can feel like you're actually seeing yourself from outside perspective So it's almost like your dreams or I've had a dream where I've worked I was catapulted into somebody else's, you know body and I was seeing the world through their point of view and this and the Explanation is then that the sense of self is not or that that structure the brain is not working as it should now I would my guess would be that if you have visions for that parts of the brain There is that you know that those those partial portions of the brain aren't working as they should well then likely you might have Dreams where the sense of self is distorted, you know And because they actually that their sense of self is distorted during waking life So people with strokes in that part of the brain will attribute their limbs for example to other people and things like that So yeah, I guess so but definitely it's a great question tricky question Yeah, it's super cool and just knowing that for example, we're going to talk about memory and dreams memory is not only You know Apart like the hippocampus is not just the the center for memory like people I think I've known that it's more integrative like the neocortex is involved for example Which leads me to one of the questions that Kyoto from YouTube has asked Which is are there any chords to the frequency in what makes people remember their dreams more? Can they be explained by having one part of the brain more activated or anything like that? Yes, a great question. So it turns out 95% of dreams are not women some people forget their dreams all the time and the reason is the Unique really really needs their tone in you need, you know, these structures to be These chemicals to be available when you sleep so you can transfer short-term memories to long-term memories, right? So given that Chemical is not available. So serotonin is important for that process You will forget your dreams, but in fact when you wake up when wakefulness occurs There's a surge of serotonin to your sort of your brain is flooded Your cortex is flooded with serotonin and nor adrenaline and that explains why you can remember your dreams Exactly in that time window of like a minute or 30 seconds That's because your brain is flooded with serotonin and so it's a good time to do it having a dream journal Now in terms of remembering your dreams, there is a correlate. So people that are To my people that have more was it it escapes me now because you know, I think it was If you can't remember your dreams I was either heavy sleepers or people that have a fragmented sleep It escapes me right now, but there's certainly a correlate of how people that remember I think it was yeah, I have to I have to think about it. I can't remember. Maybe maybe it comes back memory You see it's about remembering dreams There is certainly a correlate of that But but yeah, 95 or so percent of dreams are not remembered it has to do with this transfer of memory from short to long and to do with with that being You know that part of the brain not working as it should during during REM sleep Thank you, that's very very interesting I'd love just to know how you know neuroscience connects with our conscious perceptions dreams all that Interesting another question that was submitted along these lines of remembering our dreams was From free who has asked why do you think that some people experience reoccurring dreams? Ah Reoccurring dreams is a good question So I think there are different explanations for it Probably one thing could be in people with trauma and PTSD, right? So because the dreams are so salient and in this like the circuits mediating those dreams, right? Let's say there's a negative association of a night, you know, so it becomes a nightmare and reoccurse Perhaps because your emotional brain the limbic system is overactive and then that dreams keep reoccurring but in terms of people that just have have the same positive remover over like all the time as a good question I think it probably has to do with how often they think about a drink waking life if it has a salient Important meaning for them and then they think about it and it just keep reoccurring So I think so it has to do with salience this term meaning that it's important It has some emotional value for you and then it just keeps reoccurring to that would be my my thought on that That makes a lot of sense actually I was writing my applications for uni and As a part of it I had to write a personal statement and this is an important piece of writing So people kind of understand why I want to do what I want to do and I kept thinking about it So actually two nights ago. I don't know what happened I literally wrote the first paragraph in my dreams and then I woke up and wrote this down and it was it's literally in my Applications right now. So I think that makes a lot of sense just to you know Explain it by Having that emotional salience aspect. It's definitely very true for me Yeah, and that too but also I was just interesting about the whole idea like having insights in your dreams So it turns out because so we mentioned that this chemical and serotonin is not available Right so during REM during REM sleep and that explains the logic and all that not working, right? But also so nor adrenaline also the neurons that produce this chemical is also on sort of taking a nap forgive me But they're taking a nap and and so for that reason because you know adrenaline and nor adrenaline, right? You need a adrenaline to really focus in and be sort of really narrow and focused and because nor adrenaline is not available during REM sleep Well, that explains why Cons you can think in a more sort of broad way that concepts can float around more and you are less focused than on things Well in a sense that allows you to be more creative, right? Because then again because logic is out of the picture and because you you have this more broad perspective You can think of things in novel new ways and give have fresh insights And there's lots of examples of like didn't you know the great mathematician at Trinity College Ramanujan did Yes, I know. Yeah, you know, right? So So yeah, Monica and I you're Oxford and I use I did my PC at Cambridge. So we have You know, so well this guy he was he was he was having insights in his dreams and sort of mathematical insights that Were great for his time, you know and stuff like that and and we had Edison to so Edison I believe it was Edison. I'm pretty sure so what he would do is that he would sleep like he would sit on a table like this Or a chair like this, excuse me, and you have like a spoon in his hand and and And a plate on the floor and he would keep the spoon like this, right? So like this there's a camera is here. Yeah Who'd have the spoon in his hand and there was a plate on the floor and he would sort of drift off to sleep And and then by the time he would fall asleep, you know, the spoon would go on the on the plate and you know And then he would wake up and write down his dreams and this was a way to get insight to The dream information so he could have new discoveries. So yeah dreams are an insight Interesting world and I've certainly been able to actually get some of my own ideas scientific ideas from dreams, you know So yeah, it's it's a it's a very interesting world You've probably heard of Kekule the scientist who apparently dreamt about the structure of benzene so the story was people didn't really know what benzene would have looked like but he had this dream where a snake was chasing his own tail and It created that, you know sick click structure of benzene, which Was true to an extent. There were some details that were lacking But the basis of it was essentially or so-called informed by dreams. So it's lovely to see this Interaction between creativity and applications to science or real life. Yeah, exactly And especially because dreams are supposed to be this like weird fluffy world that lacks sort of, you know The laws of reality Don't don't come here to our sort of, you know Scientists would like to be precise and all that and here you are in this sort of world where everything is bizarre and strange And yet you can have you know striking scientific insights that can that can guide your science So it shows you how how, you know, how amazing that is but yeah for sure We actually have a question that was just sent in and it's quite relevant to our discussion now So I thought maybe we can chat about that and if there are any more live questions from our members Just do put it in the chat. We'll get to it Charmaine has asked Contrary to how Dreams can be used to inform scientific findings.  It's a great question. Is there is there a meaning to that so There's the brain right there is the brain as we mentioned somebody chasing you Well, that can explain by the brain and your emotional centers being overactive, right? And I want to really make sure this point is clear, right? So the frontal cortex is like that the super ego of Freud or the sort of CEO and it's sort of dampens your emotions That's so when you go out and face a bear or whatever situation, right? Your emotions will flare up and then you will have your cortex telling you telling the emotional part Well, relax or whatever the case might be, right? It will sort of have that and during dreams the cortex is simply simply so weak that the emotion will get the better of you, right? So so that and so this shift in neurochemistry can explain a lot of things So the question is is there then additional meaning to all of that and and and I think well potentially There might be other meanings to it like psychological or whatever But but but you can also definitely there's a descriptive Meaning I think in terms of the brain So somebody then that I knew briefly at Harvard Alan Hopson, he I knew him I contracted with him a few times, you know, it was a very caring guy he was very warm very warm person a great dream researcher and Unfortunately passed away recently So he has a lot of ideas about how you know how you have all this neural firing dream You know REM sleep or you have the dreams in fact if you look at the brain of somebody in REM sleep, right? You know and you each job on the activity of neurons the guy in REM sleep looks just like the person who's awake, right? So there's the fact if you look deep enough the guy in REM He looks more awake than the guy who's actually awake in some cases. There's a burst of activity of neurons So the question is is the brain just trying to make sense of all these neurons by creating coherent stories? Like the brain is a storyteller.  I think there's that's up to to question and it depends on the perspective you're coming from So if you're somebody looking at it from a spiritual perspective, you might have one view If you're coming from the brain perspective, you have one view But definitely the descriptive brain perspective makes a lot of sense from from that, you know, a point of view. So so yeah, that's uh Was there anything else embedded in that question? So there was a question of Uh, if the dreams have meaning, right? Is was that yes, they have interpretation. Yeah, that was Charmaine's question Hope you enjoyed the answer Charmaine if you have any follow-ups well Do let us know we did touch on the topics of like themes that come up in dreams So I'll put time stamps on those parts later on for them to check out And I just want to say for people who are just joining us That we're currently talking about the questions that you submitted on our youtube and our discord regarding dreams in general But we'll soon get into sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming So please continue watching and then we'll get to answer your questions live all very exciting stuff to come um So another question that was submitted by alexander I think it's one of our last questions in their dream section Is that can dreams be so mundane that they're often confused for real memories? It's quite specific, but very interesting. Yeah, it's a good question. Can dreams be so mundane that they would be? Um sort of confused for memories Well, the thing is in people with narcolepsy. So these these are patient population Where the people they might fall asleep So I usually give a lecture and I say if I if you fall asleep during the lecture Then that makes sense. I'm just being boring But if I fall asleep as the lecture then I might have narcolepsy, right? So it's this these are people who've just fall asleep all of a sudden Now it turns out people with narcolepsy ironically Or strangely rather tend to these people tend to sometimes mistake a dream The dream world with with the the wakeful world so there can be some confusing or things leaking over but typically Can people forget I think they're yeah, they probably could um My but it's not it's not really that common. I think um Yeah, I don't think it's common there so that there's actually a debate about what deja vu, right? Whether when you go see something like you go and you see You go to Egypt for the first time right first time and you see the pyramid or something or that's a bad question That's because you've seen that in movies We won't see someplace new right and you say oh my god I've been here before what's going on and the question then so some people explain that away by saying look you had a dream Where you saw some similar landscape in your dream you forgot about it and you're seeing that now and then that's deja vu So, uh, it's it's a good question. I'm not sure if it's 100% known, but but I'm but I'm sure it could be possible Yeah, I've heard some I think it was a concept called like false awakening where you essentially just dream about Going about your day and I've had that happen to me once I would dream that I just get up brush my teeth Like eat and then only to wake up and realize that it was a dream and that's exactly what I'm gonna do Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's that's that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's really well There's a lot of these things or when you do a certain task a lot like You know if you do something over and over during particular day Then you like driving like I've had where I was driving like three or four hours Then I go to bed and I dream of myself driving and things like that where so that's another example of Yeah, of something that uh, but but yeah Yeah, let's um Transfer into more interesting experiences of sleep. So things like sleep paralysis and lose a dreaming now But before we do I just want to give a thank you to nancy g for being our new member It's our members that allow us to make these streams possible. So thank you very much And yeah, so for sleep paralysis, we definitely have a lot of questions for these I think it might be a good plan to just Give our viewers an idea of what sleep paralysis is for those who don't know or who thought for those who are just curious to learn more Yeah, yeah, so sleep paralysis is a very interesting phenomenon and it affects about 20 percent of the population We've had at least one of these episodes. So it sort of entails you being paralyzed During during uh, you know waking up from sleep or falling asleep Which is the technical definition, but like typically you would be sleeping and then you realize my god I'm actually awake. I can see my surroundings, but uh, I can't move. I can't speak So I'm paralyzed Then you might feel like there's a shadow or or being from the corner of the room approaching you Pressing on your chest. Um, and yeah, you might see shadow like creatures Um, and so it has this basic You know experience to it But we call what we call phenomenology of like you being paralyzed upon falling asleep or awakening and then yeah being unable to move or speak Yeah, so it's quite quite interesting and spooky experience Are there any triggers that can give rise to someone being more likely to have sleep paralysis? Yes, so there there are there are triggers. Um, so sleep paralysis So let me just yes if you have the sort of fragmented sleep So if your sleep is fragmented if you have anxiety It's repellent drink alcohol and things like that. Uh, college students were stressed tend to have higher rates There's a genetic component that would push you into waking up during during REM So this phenomenon just to be clear it is it occurs out of REM sleep, right? So as we mentioned during REM sleep, you are paralyzed from head to toe, right? So you can't move you cannot speak now And and and that paralysis occurs because structures in the lower part of your brain are paralyzing you As we mentioned preventing you from acting out your dreams and hurting yourself Now occasionally for some reason that's actually not completely known Your perceptual part of the brain can start becoming active And you start being perceptually awake Even though you're physically in REM sleep in the sense that you are paralyzed And so you have this collision between sort of the waking world perception Colliding with the REM physiology So you have these two worlds colliding and then on top of that you can then have What we would call a remmentation or dream the dream world projecting into your wakeful world So the world of dreams can you know, you're technically Dreaming with your eyes open in that situation, which is quite You know peculiar. So that's what it is. But yes, definitely these triggers these things I mentioned could could lead you to have more sleep paralysis And and we've done research around the world on this. I think I like five or six countries now and It's a really deep phenomenon people around the world explains the paralysis in different ways so In italy people will talk about in some parts of italy people will talk about a pandafica Which is like a witch or a giant cat that comes at night attacks you in egypt It's something called the jinn or the evil genies of like Aladdin if you've seen that cartoon Yeah, so that's that's the egyptian version And in denmark people just say it's stress physiology anxiety things like that to help people denmark tends to explain it And then yeah in the us and in some populations people will talk about space alien abduction You're lying you're paralyzed unable to move or speak. So that's a subgroup in in the u.s We'll talk about that. So there are these explanations But interestingly what our research shows is that if you have fearful terrifying you know Explanations for sleep paralysis.  Well, this is the opposite.  It's not really anything Then you're you react to it. So similarly, we think that because of these these explanations these very exotic elaborate explanation for sleep paralysis A lot of you know, it can lead to the experience becoming much more Profound in ways. I'm happy to go into detail. Do you want me to go explain what our research shows or yeah? I think that'd be wonderful. I think okay We're happy to hear it. All right. Very cool. So basically it's something like this. So We found that in I want I really wanted to look at Egypt because it's a place with a lot of you know spiritual traditions going back to the pharaohs and all that you know magic and mystery And Denmark is typically more of a sort of a secular place Irrational I grew up in Denmark. I love Denmark and I love Egypt. I've spent time there, too Okay, so uh, it turns out in Egypt people have excessive fear of sleep paralysis because of some of the cultural Explanations so they will you know 50 percent of people will say that they can die from sleep paralysis So it's much more terrifying and and and fearful in that way But it also turns out that people in In Egypt will have sleep paralysis Three times more frequently so the people who have sleep paralysis Have it three times more often than people from Denmark And also their perceived length of the paralysis meaning how long they think they're paralyzed is Significantly longer than the Danish people. So it turns out it seems from their Understanding their minds have changed the experience into something much more fearful frequent and salient emotionally, you know powerful and What we think might be going on is something I usually explain by the little Lisa example So let me tell you what I mean. This little Lisa example. This is the following. So if you live in a culture, okay Let's say, uh, this is far far away Uh fictitious island. There's this little girl. Okay.  Okay. It looks like this and this and this. Okay.  She's scared now She goes and mind you she has never experienced sleep paralysis in her entire life She goes to bed now and she experiences sleep paralysis for the first time. Okay, what's going on?  So this is a form of Conformatory serving serving of your body and bodily sensation.  She will try to move and when she tries to move She might see whatever her culture culture dictates in terms of what the hallucinations might look like So she will see that ghost or that monster or whatever that her her grandmother was talking about and she wakes up the next day She's terrified. She will get she will go tell other people and her friends in school Oh, I saw this monster. It looks like this and that and they will also start perhaps hallucinating You know having the same type of sleep paralysis occur And little Lisa will be more terrified for the next night and the third night and the fourth night So she will have it even more and then by a month later She might even be predisposed to anxiety and chronic, you know, perhaps maybe even PTSD from these kinds of experiences And that's what our research suggests that in these cultures in Italy, for example, we found that sleep paralysis having this experience was associated with things like, you know trauma things like You know anxiety and in Italy as well We found a similar pattern in Italy where people have Cultural explanations. Does this make sense or am I just rambling here? What do you think? No, I think it's very fascinating And it really goes to show that neuroscience is truly not an isolated discipline. It borrows a lot from Even philosophy, I think and psychology and it blends it all together and gives each person a unique experience because ultimately everyone's different everyone has gone through different things and For Lisa it might it might be this and who knows maybe for like bob. They might have a different experience. So It's very interesting to see in different contexts how people interpret the same situation Absolutely. No, no, it's very true. You know how these things work and and and it's certainly Interesting to see how your your your culture can dictates dictates the things but at the same time, I want to add here that There also seems to be a strong Neurological component in terms of explaining why people have certain hallucinations, right? So we have I have theories for why people see shadow like beings Why, you know, people have out of body experiences and it has to do with those structures in the brain That, you know, are creating a sense of eye sense of self, right?  I hope this portion portion is not too complicated It's very simple in the sense that your sense of self gets distorted And it explains why people not only will have like see shadow like beings, but they will also often I've had those hallucinations sleep paralysis or visions or whatever where you see your legs flying up in the air or you're seeing yourself slightly, you know flying outside yourself or I've had a copy of myself hovering over me and having a chat with him and out of body experience And so all of this is a part of of the sleep paralysis experience the self being heavily distorted. Um So yeah Yeah, let's talk further about this whole experience of dreams or how we can shift into questions that we have about lucid dreaming um, so before we do so we have a new Member gypsy. Thank you so much for being a member on the psych to go youtube channel Um, jc has actually asked the question before we shift Do you believe it's possible when we sleep in our consciousness? Um could cause us to get sucked into someone else's body I think that's very interesting Is it a perception? Yeah So I want to can you can you say that again? Yeah, I think their question is probably asking more about How real it is that there's the perception in sleep paralysis that you can get like sucked into someone else's body I'm not quite sure exactly, but um, if you have any thoughts on that you can comment. Otherwise we can See if gypsy you have any other Kind of way to rephrase it. So I'm fine with either. What are your thoughts? Yeah, so I think that um The thing is without it's a great question. Um In a sense, right? So the sense of self is sort of is is is float It's you feel like you're floating outside your body and and things like that. So It gets to the question of whether This is how the self is constructed, right? So as a neuroscientist, we would say that well Because your self sense of self is loosened up, uh, then then Of course, we wouldn't say that you can be sucked into somebody else's body per se because there's no mechanism in in neuroscience That brain but but but but certainly from from the perception point of view, you know, you might feel like you are You know Going into somebody else's body that could Yeah, I hope that yeah, I hope that answered your question Gypsy if you have any more specific things or any follow-up then please let us know in the Um comment section. I'm monitoring it. So for any of you just join you can still ask questions there We'll be very happy to tackle them in our last 15 minutes or so and Yeah, so gypsy just sent a follow-up saying that she experienced being sucked into someone's body and started to experience What was happening to her that is like very scary. Isn't it is very scary? Yeah, so so I think it's it's the idea of the subjective self, right and what's going on And what I want to add here is that during sleep paralysis and this is during my own sleep paralysis experiences too. So You and I Monica had a chat about this a long time ago where my actually my first sleep paralysis episode that I had As coming out of high school. I had this very vivid Experience ups like I feel like it was a ghost in my room trying to choke me and all that and it was so real Right. It was as real as this conversation. I felt like you and I are having so The question was how do how do you know that it's not the real world versus this other world, right? Yeah, always this idea of subjective reality and then physical You know Scientific the world that we're living in that we can observe and measure Now the question is during these subjective experiences We will try to explain that in terms of science, but there's still a strong subjective component to it Like and what does that mean in itself? Now we can we can try to explain that in scientific terms But people have their own subjective experiences of the world that is that it's hard to argue with at the same time Even though you give it this descriptive meaning like I had mentioned before I say that you know your dreams mean this and that But it's not negating that it could not have a spiritual meaning of sorts But it's not negating that it could still have a deeper meaning as well You know But but the point is there is this this subjective and there's the third person scientific view and as a scientist I I just stick to the scientific Point of view and uh, but but but yes, you know, it's not to negate the personal subjective experience of things feeling very real, of course So let's talk about the science of lucid dreaming It's a very interesting thing Sometimes my sister would tell me how she knows that she's dreaming and that she can have control of what she wants to do But for me, I've never experienced lucid dreaming. I think it'd be super interesting to be able to do so So I was thinking maybe we can start off with telling the audience what lucid dreams are and Are there any ways to kind of induce this very realistic sense or sensation of dreaming? It's yeah, a great question lucid dreams are intriguing, right? I mean here you find yourself then in these strange worlds these bizarre landscapes But yet you are aware that it's a dream like, you know, oh my god, I'm dreaming so I can therefore Uh, you know manipulate the this world. I can I can meet people I want to meet I can engage in dreams and fantasies that I've had right people fly People meet people that they want to meet and to all kinds of things So it's it's really a magical and wondrous world And I've certainly found myself in those dreams as I remember as a kid when I first had some dreams like that I it started with me saying to myself. I wanted to fly in my dream. I'm gonna fly. I want to fly. I want to fly This was how it started as a kid, you know, I want to fly and so I slept and then just one day I magically realized my god I can actually I know that I'm dreaming and I can fly now and like peter pan I was just flying all around sort of the landscape It was it was amazing, right? It feels so good and and so since then I've had lucid dreams once in a while and It turns it turns out Dreaming dreaming that you can fly is one of the most common themes in lucid well of lucid dreams So what are lucid dreams? What are they about? Well, it turns out it's our The cortex part of the brain the frontal the logical part of the brain Remember I mentioned that your sense of awareness and logic goes away that we mentioned the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex What not right? So those structures are important for agency knowing Being aware of yourself and they go away during the REM dreams, right? So that's why you don't know that you're dreaming when you're dreaming but occasionally for some reason They can be activated prematurely and then you'll find yourself in this dream where you know You can influence things and and can you induce these? Well, it turns out by telling yourself You know, I want to know that it's a dream, right? That's a way to do it Right or tell yourself if I meet, you know, or you can use light cues So people have like goggles they will use and then seeing certain Light flashing before their eyes and that can help them You know wake up. So there's actually a commercial product, you know, you the usa they do everything, you know Everything so there's like this product where you see light and then that will help you remember Oh, when I see like three flashes of light that means I'm in a dream So remember now something like that Uh, so those are all things and typically people will if they see like William Shakespeare or something like that or death A death relative that can help them remember.  Um on the topic of lucid dreams or Interesting experiences during dreams. We have a new member Eleanor. Thank you for being a member She has mentioned about the experience of having Dreams within dreams, which essentially is this She mentions that she will dream that falls asleep and then dream insider dream Is there a kind of interesting interpretation of this or? Well, it's a nurse. Yeah, it's a great question how this works. Well, let me let me tell you Dreams within dreams is a very curious phenomenon and I've had that I've had dreams And then a dream within that dream So I was in a in and then so I was in a dream and then I had another dream within that and then a third layer So I've gone down three layers and the thing about it.  It was so amazing, but now I'm awake. What a magical Great dream I had but then you're actually still inside the dream and then you wake up Here in this world, right? Where you realize all these all layers. So what's going on in the brain? I think it's a good question I don't think it's known what is going on in terms of the circuitry while you have that Dream but I've had also I've had dreams. I only remembered in other dreams So I would have like a dream And then I forget about it seemingly and then I wake then I have another dream and I remember that other dream Oh, I had a dream like two weeks and I only remember that You know, it's almost like those circuits are only activated in another dream So that's another really weird phenomenon, but but let me tell you this The dream world is fascinating and it's strange because Look, I've had a dream where I woke myself up from laughter during a dream So I had a joke.  Oh, it was just a dream But when you think about it a dream is only funny or jokes are excuse me It's only funny when you don't know the the punchline of the joke That's what makes the joke funny, right? So you have a certain story plot and then you have the punchline But you have to not know the whole story plot You know the whole thing before it's funny But the other guy in my dream presumably was myself telling me a joke And my brain was suppressing the information of the joke in order to make it funny to me and then wake me up So it's strange how the brain works in layers like this And uh, yeah So so absolutely the dream has the dream world and the brain has all these these interesting layers And when you think about it when you have a meaningful meaningful conversation with someone in your dream I've had those so I uh, I've had dreams with sort of Really intense meaningful conversations with people Uh in my dreams, but you know, my brain was creating a theory of mind or Constructing agency and good at being and allowing that person to have a meaningful conversation with me So I was it was me having a meaningful conversation with myself in that way. So yes, it's quite it's quite astonishing Yeah, I remember only I think three of my dreams like in my entire life I know I've dreamt more than that but it's very interesting to kind of see and analyze the themes of the dreams I've had I've had one dream about visiting different universities I have no idea why probably because uni is such a big part of my life another dream about Literally eating chocolate and being able to taste it like I could taste it. It felt so real It was amazing frankly Yeah, they want you to taste something. What was it? So you've only remembered three dreams in your life Is that what you're yeah, I'm I'm sure it's a bit of a recency bias because all of these were really In the past month or so. I forgot about everything before and It's just very interesting. It seems kind of random But lastly I had a dream that I was in London I have no it's just it's crazy, but soon thinking about it. I realized that yeah, you need a big part of my life I love chocolate and I love London. So Yeah, it kind of makes sense. Are you a heavy sleeper? I suppose you're very heavy sleeper. Is that right? Um, I'm actually not sure. I think in the middle of the night, of course I think nothing can wake me up, but close to around The morning I feel like I hear things. I hear people talking I don't know if it's actually a dream or if it's real life But I do hear people talking and that eventually wakes me up Yeah, yeah for my recollection it turns out it's it's it's people that are heavy sleepers that that don't That remember their dreams less, right? So they usually say drink a Probably wine. Yeah drink drink more water and a big cup of water before you go to bed Then that can help you remember your dreams is People say that sometimes but but um, yeah, it's interesting about not remembering your dreams and and sort of uh Yeah, that that that whole world isn't it? It's it's it's quite something. Uh, I was trying to say something but I forgot It's a slip my slip my mind right now, but yeah Yeah, I always love to hear what people generally their themes their dreams Because it's really interesting to see how it correlates with their life, right? Like yep, it's super interesting So if any of our viewers have any Interesting themes or things I just keep coming up just let us know in the chat and I'll respond to them after the live stream But yeah, let's end this on a very creative note and for those who want to learn more about neural science or psychology or Receive some expertise through dr. Jalal's video Please check out our description box because I linked his youtube channel and other social media links there So please follow him if you like this content and also let us know in the comment section what you want to see next As I'm very excited to be able to host More ask an expert live streams about topics that you want to learn about So with that, thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much dr. Jalal for joining And Yeah, we'll see you all in the comment section. Bye