The Man Who Could Record Your Dreams

On October 26, 2010, Dr. Moran Cerf was a UCLA neuroscience researcher whose project, on the connections between single nerve cells and specific thoughts, had just been written up in the journal Nature. Affirmation. Life was good. For a few hours. Then he made a verbal slip in an interview with the BBC and, before long a "dream recording machine," not of Dr. Cerf's making but bearing his name, had come humming to life and was careening across continents by way of Internet news sites and blogs. Moran Cerf tells the story of what it's like to try and subdue a science fiction monster as it threatens to devour years of serious research.

This program originally aired on September 9, 2011.