"You sound like a sleep-teacher with a stuck tape". In a 1988 episode of the BBC2 sitcom Red Dwarf, "Me2", Arnold Rimmer uses sleep-learning tapes such as Learn Esperanto While You Sleep and Learn Quantum Theory While You Sleep, to the dismay of his bunkmate Dave Lister. In the 1990 movie Dragon Ball Z: The Tree of Might, Chi-Chi packs for her son Gohan a tape recorder so he can learn while he sleeps on a camping trip. In a 1992 episode of The Simpsons, "Bart's Friend Falls in Love", Homer orders hypnosis tapes which are supposed to induce weight loss. However, the mail-order company sends him vocabulary builder tapes instead, and Homer gets fatter and fatter while his vocabulary increases, through hypnopædia. In a 1996 episode of Dexter's Laboratory, "The Big Cheese", Dexter hooks himself up to a gramophone that repeats his lesson for a French class test the next morning. The gramophone gets stuck at the phrase omelette du fromage, and Dexter finds out the next morning that it is all he is capable of saying. In a 1997 episode of Friends, "The One with the Hypnosis Tape", Chandler borrows from Rachel a smoking-cessation audiocassette, to which he listens while he is asleep. The tape tells him that he is "a strong, confident woman" who does not need to smoke. He stops smoking, but also begins acting effeminately. In the 1997 PC game Outpost 2: Divided Destiny, one of the items available for research was hypnopædia, which allowed scientists to be trained more quickly. In a 2001 episode of Homestar Runner, "A Jorb Well Done", Coach Z attempts to overcome his speech impediment with the word "job" (which he pronounces as "jorb"). After unsuccessfully trying several methods, Strong Sad gives him a tape of him repeating the word job thousands of times, "from when (he) was practicing the dictionary". Coach Z takes it home and listens to it while he sleeps, and the next day is able to pronounce "job" correctly, but forgets Homestar's name. The twins Hank and Dean Venture, of the animated television program The Venture Bros., are homeschooled through the use of hypnopædic beds. See also Educational technology Mozart effect Sleep and learning, the science that ties sleep to learning References Further reading Fox, B.H. (1968). Current research in Hypnopaedia. Macdonald & Co. [PDF] Sleep Educational technology Pseudoscience