Dreams Of The Dead

On a summer afternoon in the early 1980s, a young man named Jeff was shot in the head with a sawed-off shotgun outside a Jack in the Box. He survived, but his vocabulary was reduced to about seventy words and he could no longer use one side of his body. Years later, his mother told her grandson something strange: she had always been able to picture her children as adults, but she could never do that with Jeff. Even though he lived into his fifties, something blocked that image. That story, told by podcast host Jason Carviter, opens a week of episodes about people who dream of death before it happens—dreams that show them information they should not otherwise know.

The Drone Swarm That Sprays Pepper

The episode begins not with dreams, but with a technology designed to stop mass shootings. A company called Mithril Defense has developed a box containing dozens of miniature drones equipped with pepper spray, sirens, and flashing lights. When an administrator hits a button, the box opens and remote operators at Mithril Defense take control, flying the drones through a school to locate an active shooter, surround them, and incapacitate them non-lethally. Pilot programs are running in five schools in Georgia and Florida at a total cost of $500,000.