If you could control your dreams, what would you do while you slept? Fly? Get romantic with some unattainable object of desire? Or embark on a fantasy odyssey with no equivalent in reality? Lucid dreams – where we know we’re dreaming and we can control what we do – come to many of us  at some point in our lives. But can we learn how to do it? And does lucid dreaming have real-world benefits beyond just being loads of fun? 

Olly Mann talks to Mark Blagrove, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Sleep Lab at Swansea University, all about the science of lucid dreaming. 

• “Lucid dreaming gives you something quite extraordinary to think about. It can increase your level of awe at what is possible in the world.” - Mark Blagrove

• "People who frequently lucid dream have an ‘internal locus of control’, meaning that they feel in charge of their own life, as opposed to feeling that their life is under the control of chance.” - Mark Blagrove

WHY? is written and presented by Olly Mann. Produced by Anne-Marie Luff and Eliza Davis Beard. Audio production by Jade Bailey. Managing editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Artwork by James Parrett. Music by DJ Food. WHY? is a Podmasters Production.

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