The Art of Manliness - #115： The Slumbering Masses With Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer

00:00:00.000 all right so tell me if this has happened to you guys you're lying in bed at night

00:00:18.520 and right before you doze off to sleep you have this thought that right now tens of millions of

00:00:24.640 people across the country at this exact moment same as you are lying down on these rectangular

00:00:30.620 shaped mattresses and are about to be unconscious for the next eight hours while having

00:00:37.600 hallucinations because that's what sleep is when you think about it and when you think about it

00:00:42.240 that way sleep's kind of weird and it's kind of weird that we sleep the way we do i think we take

00:00:46.740 it for granted that you sleep from you know about 10 until 8 or so if you wake up late but our guest

00:00:53.740 today makes the case that this hasn't always been the case and that for most of human history sleep

00:00:58.800 has actually been very unique to communities and individuals and it wasn't until about the 19th

00:01:05.280 century until the whole world basically got on this sleep schedule where you sleep from 10 o'clock

00:01:11.240 a night till about 7 o'clock in the morning then you work during the day no naps and then you repeat

00:01:16.800 the process before then sleep was much more individualistic it was unique to different

00:01:21.520 communities and it's this whole radical transformation of sleep has had profound

00:01:26.180 changes effects on the way we approach life work and sleep our guest is named matthew wolf meyer he's

00:01:33.440 a professor of anthropology at university of california santa cruz and he's the author of a very fascinating

00:01:38.900 book called the slumbering masses and it's basically a cultural study anthropological look at sleep and

00:01:47.180 why we sleep the way we do in this podcast we discuss when the transformation to sleep as we know

00:01:53.060 today happen we discuss the medicalization of sleep and all the things we do to improve our sleep with

00:01:59.220 over-the-counter medications but also the things we use to jolt ourselves awake so we can stick to this

00:02:03.920 work schedule that we have either through coffee tea now energy drinks anyways fascinating discussion i think

00:02:11.900 you really like it and we even get into what you can do if you have a sleep schedule where it just

00:02:18.120 doesn't fit with the the norm right the working norm or the school schedule what you can do to work with

00:02:24.900 that um so a great discussion i think you got a lot of out of it without further ado matthew wolf

00:02:29.560 meyer and the slumbering masses matthew wolf meyer thank you so much for being here welcome to the

00:02:38.280 show thanks i'm glad to be here all right so your book the slumbering masses is a book about sleep

00:02:45.380 but it's different from a lot of the books that have come out about sleep in the recent in the past

00:02:50.500 10 years i'd say where it's all had about how to get better sleep the science of sleep your book is a

00:02:56.940 is like it's cultural study of sleep and the sociology of sleep what made you want to research

00:03:04.780 the anthropology of sleep in america so um it depends how uh far back you want to go i mean if

00:03:13.180 you and we'll probably talk about a lot of the stuff as we go but um i was always a problem sleeper so

00:03:19.520 like as a kid throughout middle school and high school i had pretty what i thought were abnormal

00:03:26.180 sleeping times like going to sleep really late having to wake up for school needing to take naps

00:03:31.740 during the day um and then when i was in college it gave me the opportunity to tailor a schedule

00:03:38.480 sort of around my sleep and what ended up happening was i got a job working third shift so i worked from

00:03:46.840 like 10 p.m until 8 a.m which was okay with me and then i would go to school from 8 until 10 o'clock in

00:03:53.260 the morning and then go to school from like five until eight o'clock at night and that all totally

00:03:58.780 worked um and and at the time i had a bunch of co-workers who just could not handle the schedule

00:04:06.880 and whenever they were off work like on their weekends they would end up trying to sleep like

00:04:13.280 everybody else did and it was like a decade later as i started to do the research that i realized

00:04:19.240 how bad of an idea that actually is but at the so at the time i was always kind of attuned to

00:04:26.900 different kinds of sleeping and i always really enjoyed this is in metro detroit like at four o'clock

00:04:32.960 in the morning just being able to step out into the middle of a otherwise very busy street and seeing

00:04:39.080 the world kind of sleeping around me and being like the one person that was awake um and so when

00:04:46.420 it came it came time to actually develop a research project much later um i had initially thought that

00:04:54.240 what i was going to do is write a book about night work so um not just people kind of doing factory work

00:05:01.620 in the middle of the night but like all the stuff that happens at night in order to make society work

00:05:06.840 throughout the day so security guards and police ambulance drivers nurses er doctors um sanitation

00:05:17.280 workers construction workers i thought that i would just tell this kind of big story about

00:05:22.460 labor at night and in my initial idea about that project i thought that

00:05:28.160 i would write one chapter that would be about what everybody else was doing and so everyone else would

00:05:34.320 be sleeping the way that i would get into that would be uh going to a sleep clinic um and uh just by sheer

00:05:43.320 happenstance there was a piece um in the new york times magazine profiling a sleep center near where i was a

00:05:52.200 graduate student and so i got in touch with the director and they invited me over for lunch one day

00:05:59.020 and kind of gave me the tour and probably within 10 minutes of being there i thought like oh this is

00:06:04.400 the real project like that i can do everything that i want to do just by talking about sleep in american

00:06:10.320 society and they were all the doctors and the researchers that i was spending time with there

00:06:14.980 were all really interested in having an anthropologist hanging out with them like they had a bunch of

00:06:20.900 questions and they thought that i like i didn't know the answer to any of their questions at the time

00:06:25.620 but they figured that they could task me with answering the questions that they had and so it was just kind

00:06:33.080 of off to the races from that point like that as soon as i got into it i was like oh obviously this is

00:06:39.840 the project and the other thing like you kind of mentioned in the intro nobody's written this book

00:06:45.760 right that like if you look at the literature out there there's a lot of kind of self-help-y stuff

00:06:51.520 there's a lot of popular science books that are like this is why we sleep um although nobody actually

00:06:59.200 really knows why we sleep but they um and uh and stuff written by scientists right so there's a bunch

00:07:08.580 of books by scientists about sleep but they're really uncritical right they accept sleep as it is right

00:07:14.800 and so i figured there's a huge window here that uh i guess needs to be jumped through and i was the

00:07:22.360 guy who jumped through that window very good so one of the main points you make in the book is

00:07:27.320 americans today sort of take for granted our current sleeping schedule we all assume that

00:07:33.880 since time immemorial people have went to bed between the hours of 10 you know around then and they woke up

00:07:40.540 at seven or so by seven to go to work but you make the case that well no that's not how sleep was

00:07:47.100 until about the 19th century so what was sleep like before this sort of what's called consolidated sleep

00:07:55.640 right the eight hours one of the things that got me started on the project was this book written by

00:08:01.340 a historian named roger ekurch called at day's close and in at the end of that book he writes a chapter

00:08:07.840 about basically a hypothesis that he has that um people before industrialization slept in what

00:08:16.200 we now refer to as a biphasic model um and he was looking at the uk and some historical documents that

00:08:24.680 he had and what he was hinting at is that people would go to sleep around sundown they would sleep for

00:08:31.900 a few hours they'd wake up in the middle of the night for a period that could be anywhere between like an

00:08:37.320 hour and four hours then they would go back to sleep and then wake up around dawn to go to work

00:08:44.140 and um and when you think about it it makes a lot of sense because it's not like nighttime is eight

00:08:51.040 hours long and even if it you know even if it is some of the time it's not consistently eight hours

00:08:57.860 long nor is it eight hours long everywhere around the world all the time right so the idea that sleep

00:09:04.000 and darkness are necessarily tied together is just wrong on the face of it right and when you think

00:09:11.940 about the availability of electric light people like especially the working classes don't have

00:09:19.200 cheap accessible electric light in some cases until after the turn of the 20th century right so you

00:09:26.820 have so there's that that set of circumstances so i started to look at the historical record in the

00:09:36.140 united states and particularly the um medical monographs and medical pamphlets and medical articles

00:09:42.760 that are published kind of at the end of the 1700s through the 1800s and um what people are identifying

00:09:53.340 is is exactly this pattern of sleep right that people are going to sleep around sundown they sleep for a

00:09:59.860 few hours wake up go back to sleep and they sometimes refer to it as first sleep and second sleep or first

00:10:06.880 nap and second nap um first slumber second slumber that kind of thing and um and the reason why they're

00:10:15.300 talking about is because it's a problem for the new industrial work schedule and so historically what's

00:10:22.200 happening is that people are moving from the countryside where they're working either on their family farm

00:10:29.280 somebody else's family farm or in a trade that's probably owned by someone that they know very

00:10:34.760 intimately because they're living in small settings to big urban centers where they're one of thousands

00:10:42.720 of strangers working in a factory for somebody that they have no relationship to right and so in their

00:10:49.640 old work situations work times vary if you need to take a nap you can probably take a nap if you need

00:10:56.460 to go home early because there's an emergency no problem but when you're working for a large factory where

00:11:02.880 everybody's anonymous any of those kinds of uh variances are fireable offenses right and there's a long line

00:11:11.680 of people just waiting to take those jobs so people are put into these consolidated work days that are

00:11:19.760 structured by the availability of free sunlight right so electric lights not available for most of these

00:11:27.400 factories um there's some gas lighting but generally the way the factories are operating is they open at

00:11:34.940 dawn they close at dusk and there's one shift and everybody works from dawn until dusk and so what

00:11:41.880 happens to people's sleep is that they're so exhausted at the end of the day that they consolidate their

00:11:48.340 sleep and so the idea of consolidated sleep is really something that's based on a new model of

00:11:56.360 exhaustion so if you were working in a way where you could take a nap whenever you needed to

00:12:01.320 you're never as exhausted as you are when you have to stay awake for 16 hours at a stretch right

00:12:08.240 um and so what happens in the medical literature is all these doctors are identifying the biphasic

00:12:17.020 model as being a problem they start to refer to it as insomnia and they start to think about ways to

00:12:23.840 treat that problem right there's a lot of scare tactics involved too that um the they're really

00:12:31.000 trying to shame people away from sleeping in a biphasic way um and so you really see from

00:12:37.500 basically the beginning of american medicine and american industrial capitalism this tie between

00:12:44.180 medicine and capitalism around shaping what workers are supposed to do and how they operate the thing is

00:12:51.480 that um that consolidated model of the workday links up with the consolidated model of the school

00:13:00.900 day right so for the working classes what do you do with your kids you have to send them somewhere 1.00

00:13:05.360 so the state basically steps in and gives public education um to the working classes in a way that

00:13:12.500 had never been available before and so kids are going to school at the same time that their parents are

00:13:17.320 at work and um and so you slowly see over the course of the 19th century all of these institutions that

00:13:25.180 we kind of take for granted in american social life abiding by the same set of ideas about time

00:13:31.060 and um and so by the turn of the 20th century and this is really the beginning of sleep science as a

00:13:39.260 science the earliest guy whose name is nathaniel kleitman and he's a professor of physiology at the

00:13:47.220 university of chicago he's starting to do research on sleep and his assumption is that people sleep in

00:13:53.440 consolidated way right so he's carrying it into the basis of the science and he's not allowing

00:14:00.100 napping or variations and sleeping the schedules it's really what you're testing is consolidated sleep

00:14:06.600 and so what happens is he develops a model of our circadian rhythms that's based on consolidated sleep

00:14:14.480 rather than biphasic sleep and that's the model of circadian rhythms that everybody uses to this day

00:14:21.680 basically so we really don't know what human sleep would look like outside of the context of

00:14:29.440 sort of industrial capitalism and the structure around time yeah i want to get back to that uh your

00:14:34.860 point about insomnia and sleep disorders i think that's really interesting what i found fascinating

00:14:38.660 in your book is that you yeah you point out that the way we sleep is primarily economically and

00:14:45.240 productivity driven you made an interesting point how ben franklin was one of the early guys you know

00:14:50.900 early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy wealthy and wise and one of his reasons he kind

00:14:56.080 of advocated for uh consolidated sleep was that it saved money on candles right like right like he went

00:15:03.140 to france and he saw that they just they wasted all this this candle wick you know partying and carousing

00:15:08.060 in the night and they didn't get up in the day to go you know be productive he said well no if they just

00:15:12.960 slept eight hours they would save on candles right and if they just slept when it's dark rather than

00:15:21.140 having to use the light everything right and the i mean the great thing about that essay of his is that

00:15:27.360 he does the math to figure out how much it costs to burn something like 40 000 candles a week right which

00:15:34.480 like is an insane amount of candles right but if you're a french aristocrat apparently that's what you do

00:15:40.560 yeah so yeah we we this consolidated sleep model we take for granted and it was because of cultural

00:15:46.920 and economic changes in america going from an agrarian to an an industrial economy and you make

00:15:53.540 the point that this american way of sleeping has been has spread to other countries can you talk a little

00:16:00.460 bit about how that how our idea of sleeping has spread across the world so in two ways primarily so first

00:16:07.500 like i was just talking about the uh in the science what happens is scientific models that are

00:16:13.860 invented in the united states get exported elsewhere and so you would think that societies where there's

00:16:21.520 long-standing napping traditions like spain and their siesta culture like china like taiwan like italy

00:16:28.440 um that they would have sleep scientists working under different assumptions but in fact they just buy

00:16:35.520 into the american model whole hog and so it really shapes the science and medicine of sleep around

00:16:42.040 the world and uh and secondarily it's structured around uh ideas around capitalist work time right so

00:16:51.460 recently um maybe not that recently anymore 10 years ago um in the early stages of the european union

00:17:01.640 spain came under a lot of fire in part from conservative movements within spain about getting

00:17:08.300 rid of the siesta so that they would be more productive like germany and france and england

00:17:14.120 and so what they do in order to make that happen is they pass laws that all state agencies like the

00:17:22.780 postal service only operates between nine and five o'clock right so everybody else has to sync up to that

00:17:30.120 time and and and so we see that kind of synchronization pressure happen in a variety of ways one of the

00:17:38.340 things that i was really interested in um is the synchronization between like the united states

00:17:45.120 and call centers in india and the philippines too right and so they what we've exported to them

00:17:52.520 in order to harness their labor is our calendar and our work week so they get synced up in a kind of

00:18:01.260 inverted way to our work time so that they're awake while we're awake right um and they're asleep while

00:18:08.780 everybody else in their society is awake right and they abide by our holidays and you know like the

00:18:17.740 structure of how and so like our work week if you look at how it maps onto their work week is hours

00:18:24.520 different right and yet they're working on their sundays in order to be available on our mondays right

00:18:30.160 um so there's really pervasive and sort of subtle ways that that has uh that our ideas about sleep have

00:18:39.360 kind of structured other societies so going back to that uh this idea of sleeping disorders because

00:18:44.940 before sleep science there really wasn't such a such as there wasn't sleep disorders right

00:18:50.680 insomnia didn't really exist because people were in a biphasic model so and you make the point in the

00:18:57.180 book or the case that sleeping disorders aren't so much a well they are a health issue but they're also a

00:19:02.540 social problem and that's the thing that drives people to sleep centers and to medication so can you

00:19:10.420 explain that a little bit how how is how has how are sleep disorders social problems

00:19:15.800 well so one really quick thing that like we actually have pretty good descriptions of a lot

00:19:23.340 of the sleep disorders that goes back at least to 1820 so there's a scottish physician named robert

00:19:31.300 mcnish who writes this book called the philosophy of sleep um where he is basically coming up with

00:19:38.160 descriptions for insomnia and narcolepsy um and like drowsiness of various kinds and um he basically

00:19:46.980 gets written out of the history of sleep science and medicine i'm not entirely sure why um but i think

00:19:55.160 part of it is that they're by the conditions of the 1820s all of these kinds of medical uh experiences

00:20:05.860 are very very rare and it's not until the 1840s and really the 1880s that something like insomnia

00:20:13.080 is something that's generalizable to broad swaths of the population right um and you know that medicine

00:20:21.340 is more and more available to people more broadly but in terms of the kind of like how are sleep

00:20:27.360 disorders social disorders probably you know the the best examples are the ones that are about

00:20:39.500 like schedules for sleep interfering with schedules for work or for school and so um for example one of

00:20:48.320 the um stories that i often tell and i'll tell again is that at the sleep clinic they would often see

00:20:56.460 adolescents or teenagers who had problems waking up for uh public school time so they couldn't get to

00:21:06.040 school by 7 30 in the morning it was probably more like 10 o'clock and so what they had done is figured

00:21:13.460 out um what the school start times for all of the schools in the area were they would figure out what a

00:21:21.800 individual student um would wake up around and what kind of sleep need they would go need and they

00:21:28.920 would recommend them to particular schools right so there were a bunch of kids who couldn't wake up

00:21:33.780 until 10 o'clock in the morning that all went to catholic school despite not being catholic because it

00:21:38.880 fit their sleep schedule right and um the alternative is that like you end up having to wake up to go to

00:21:47.640 school at 7 30 and you're a teenager who needs provigil or something else in order to stay awake um

00:21:55.780 or drink coffee or whatever um and that like the your sleeping problem is really a kind of mismatch

00:22:09.340 between your biological desire for sleep and the institutional times that are normative right and so if we

00:22:17.400 just had different institutional times or even flexible institutional times then you would see far

00:22:24.560 fewer sleep disorders in society which doesn't mean that like narcolepsy would go away there are like

00:22:31.700 very clear biological conditions that lead to narcolepsy and it's always a challenge but like you could have

00:22:39.460 more tolerant institutions that would allow people to be sleepy at all sorts of different times of the day

00:22:46.820 yeah we'll get back to i want to get back to that what we can do about our different sleeping schedules

00:22:50.900 and trying to fit into work and school but um yeah you also make the point in the past 10 years

00:22:57.200 there's been this proliferation of uh medications to get us awake and to put us to sleep and so a lot of

00:23:05.360 people are on this vicious cycle where they'll you know they'll take an energy drink to wake up or a pot of

00:23:11.140 coffee and then at night and then they keep drinking during the day so they stay awake and then at night

00:23:17.140 they take some sort of medicine uh to help them fall asleep um so and what's what's going on there is

00:23:24.580 this something that's just recent or was this something that started you know a century ago or decades ago

00:23:29.820 um this seems pretty recent like it seems like a real intensification of things that have been

00:23:37.300 happening for a long time so it and so it's not like it's totally new but the intensity of it is

00:23:45.680 pretty new so one of um one of my favorite books that i'll plug is called sweetness and power by a

00:23:54.260 anthropologist named sydney mince and the story that he tells is that industrialization in europe

00:24:00.680 really depends on exporting sugar and coffee and tea from the caribbean in order to keep workers

00:24:08.660 awake throughout the day right and so like the idea of tea time in britain is really based on this idea

00:24:16.340 that like you could either take a nap or you drink some caffeine at that point in the day right um and

00:24:22.880 that we've lost taking those naps and accepted having some caffeine in the afternoon in order to stay

00:24:29.960 awake for the rest of the work day right um and and so you know coffee or caffeination really and sugar

00:24:41.940 have always been tied to labor as we know it but the way that we're um medicalizing the sleep and kind

00:24:50.620 of alertness these days is is much more intense right so you can just think about the widespread popularity

00:24:58.360 of starbucks right that like 20 years ago there were not coffee shops the way that there are now

00:25:04.200 right and now there's starbucks everywhere right that this like incitement to always be caffeinated

00:25:11.380 is something that's really pervasive right and um and so if you look at the numbers about people who

00:25:18.800 have problems sleeping at night something like a third of americans the numbers change a little bit

00:25:24.620 but it's about like a third to um almost a half of americans complain about problems falling to sleep

00:25:31.200 or staying asleep in any given year right that people have at least intermittent insomnia and so

00:25:39.160 you know there's more and more people who are using off-label um sleep aids so like tylenol pm right

00:25:47.300 rather than lunester or ambien or something like that or nyquil which is a terrible idea right but that

00:25:53.720 you know there are a variety of ways that people are helping themselves get to sleep and also keeping

00:25:59.440 themselves awake throughout the day right and it becomes this kind of vicious cycle because

00:26:03.780 if you're taking more and more ambien you need more and more coffee to offset the debt that you're kind

00:26:12.040 of accruing the sleep what's sometimes referred to as sleep drunkenness that you wake up and you're still

00:26:17.460 kind of sleepy so you need more and more coffee right um and there can be i you know there's stories

00:26:23.720 in the book about there's one guy who reports to his uh sleep doctor that he drinks something like

00:26:31.320 four pots of coffee a day there's like five pots yeah uh but like you know that that's like 16 cups

00:26:41.880 of coffee a day right and um that you know that's a profound amount of caffeine to be putting into your

00:26:48.140 system yeah but the assumption is that like we need to do it in order to meet the work needs

00:26:53.560 that we have right so the alternative might be that you know you have workplace napping right that

00:27:00.340 like instead of having you know coffee free for everybody that you give people a place to go take

00:27:07.180 a nap and there's some workplaces that have experimented with that but the big problem that

00:27:13.420 they run into is that people don't want to be the napper right like they don't want to be the guy

00:27:19.100 who's sleeping at his desk or in some cases what they'll do is they'll take an office and turn it

00:27:24.040 into a napping space and so you don't want to be the guy that's you know going into the napping space

00:27:29.500 or coming out of the napping space and so a lot of the people that i talk to about napping at work

00:27:34.440 they're like you know i just like will get in my car go to the nearest fast food place and you know

00:27:39.560 sleep in the parking lot right like rather than see my have my co-workers see me sleep um and so there's

00:27:45.660 really like we need an attitude shift about sleeping in some respects um i think it's funny

00:27:52.120 about nyquils that they have z-quil now because they just realized oh everyone's just taking this

00:27:57.620 to go to sleep they don't really have a they don't have the flu or the cold so let's just make

00:28:01.360 something with alcohol and you know whatever that drug is that make you sleepy yeah yeah yeah and i

00:28:08.720 think it's interesting with the nap thing in businesses that's sort of becoming a thing

00:28:11.800 and it's not because you know businesses are like they want to take care of their employees

00:28:17.560 they want it they're doing it for productivity right i think it's kind of ironic you know

00:28:21.220 decades ago they're like no no napping you need to work be productive and now they're saying oh well

00:28:26.800 yeah nap because you're going to be more productive we can get more out of you

00:28:30.060 yeah and that's it that's the weird the paradox of it right is that like

00:28:35.240 um you as an employee might really want to take a nap but what employers have discovered

00:28:43.660 is that if you take that nap they'll get way more labor out of you for free right so if you're a

00:28:50.020 salaried employee by five o'clock you just want to go home right if you take a nap at 2 30 and you

00:28:56.920 wake up at three you're good until seven or eight o'clock at night right um maybe even later than that

00:29:02.720 and so a lot of businesses realize that they can get more work out of people just by giving them

00:29:09.560 a nap allowance pretty much and so i had also talked to a bunch of people at a law firm where they

00:29:17.380 had a napping facility and they all realized that they were self-exploiting right that like

00:29:24.280 they had started staying later and later and they collectively decided to stop using the napping

00:29:29.780 facilities right that like they just wanted to go home um and so there is this kind of like

00:29:36.700 uh damned if you do damned if you don't around the workplace stamp yeah so so besides using uh

00:29:46.260 medication for off-label uses you know tylenol pm or nyquil um to go to sleep there's also 0.95

00:29:54.080 a lot of entrepreneurs you're reading about this a lot entrepreneurs business executives you know high

00:29:59.400 powered attorneys who are taking very powerful stimulating drugs that you know that are used

00:30:05.000 for people who have you know severe sleep disorders uh like provigil or modafinil um not because they

00:30:11.220 don't have a problem with sleep or waking up it's like they just want to stay awake longer so they can

00:30:16.820 get more work done have you looked into that sort of like there's like a cult of modafinil on the

00:30:21.980 internet yeah um and you know students talk about it all the time like in among my students i've seen

00:30:31.460 over the last 10 years total ignorance to provigil to widespread knowledge about it and sometimes use

00:30:39.660 of it right that like um like ritalin drugs you know so for a long time only people with ritalin

00:30:46.800 use those drugs and now it's like well everybody does it during exams right um and you know there's

00:30:52.920 a lot of people who swear by provigil um and the new version of it which is called new vigil um you

00:31:00.200 know it's used by the military to keep people awake for a while um it's expensive you know like the

00:31:08.000 and i think one of the real challenges around it is that um what we see in the kind of off-label

00:31:17.220 pharmaceuticalization of um everyday life is that you know some of these things are available to

00:31:24.940 certain classes of people and they're not available to other classes of people right and so you know

00:31:30.800 sure if you're an elite business person you can get your doctor to write you a prescription

00:31:34.940 for a new vigil but most of us don't have access to that right um and so instead we drink a bunch

00:31:42.480 of caffeine to keep up with people who are using that kind of drug nobody really knows what the

00:31:47.620 long-term effects of drugs like that are yeah because it's only been out for you know like 10

00:31:51.580 years or so right yeah you know and so even the military has kind of backed away from using it quite so

00:31:56.700 much because they they're not sure what the effects of it are going to be and you know it's a it's a

00:32:04.320 it's a new kind of stimulant for the central nervous system and you know there's some doubts about what

00:32:13.900 its effects will be so you know in some cases what people might be doing is getting some kind of gain

00:32:19.320 in the short term but really facing neurological problems in the long term and we just kind of have

00:32:24.660 to wait and see yeah well speaking of sort of like this sort of division between individuals who can

00:32:30.720 afford drugs to keep them away can be super productive and individual individuals who can't

00:32:34.440 let's talk about like the future of sleep i mean you kind of allude to this a little bit in your book

00:32:38.640 and no one really knows what the future of sleep but it seems like there's this push to end sleep

00:32:45.200 right amongst a certain group of people so they can be super productive all the time um what is the

00:32:51.660 future sleep is that going to happen are we going to genetically modify ourselves where we don't

00:32:55.360 need sleep anymore yeah i the um i think the future of sleep is to keep asking about the future of

00:33:03.620 sleep yeah right you know that um and it's one of the things that i track in the the book that like

00:33:10.920 you know people have been asking about the future of sleep since at least the turn of the 20th century

00:33:16.020 right that's how it always goes yeah uh um and um you know so like the early the the there's uh early

00:33:28.120 stuff about like how do you maximize your sleep like can you learn a foreign language in your sleep

00:33:32.880 which you know you still see people talking about can you learn while you're sleeping

00:33:38.120 not really um can we get rid of sleep altogether probably not you know that if you think about

00:33:46.000 life on earth we everything sleeps right so plants sleep every other animal species sleep

00:33:55.300 we sleep um and you know we're not entirely sure what sleep does we do know it has some pretty

00:34:02.360 important effects on like our memory and our ability to learn new things our stress levels you

00:34:08.760 know so if you're not sleeping really well um you get stressed out way more easy and so

00:34:15.220 you know the question might be like if we get rid of sleep at what cost right so like our chances are

00:34:23.040 if we get rid of sleep we're not going to be the humans that we are today we're going to look very

00:34:28.120 different right and um so there there's a book series by nancy kress called beggars in spain where

00:34:35.900 they do genetically modify humans to get rid of sleep and her presumption is that like when you lose

00:34:43.220 sleeping you lose basically creative potential right that like there's something about sleeping and

00:34:50.000 dreaming that's really important to our ability to create and even kind of be human and so the people

00:34:56.240 who get rid of sleep in her world are just like cold calculating computer people right um and so you know

00:35:06.520 that might index us sort of anxiety about like what we would actually be losing when we lose sleep um

00:35:13.940 that being said you know the future of sleep might be um tinkering with it more right and so

00:35:24.060 one of the one of the scientists i've kind of i find really interesting is this italian uh guy named

00:35:31.680 claudia stampy who is a yacht racer and he uh does these experiments on um what he refers to as ultra

00:35:39.500 short sleep so it's basically catnapping for humans that like you're awake for a short period you go to

00:35:47.940 sleep for a short period you're awake for a short period so you don't have long sleeping periods like

00:35:53.280 polyphagic sleep right yeah yeah and so you can i think it's still online there's this uh frontline

00:36:01.040 episode i think that he was on uh and you can find this footage of him running this experiment with an

00:36:06.800 undergraduate where the kid has to wake up do a performance test every two hours then he goes back

00:36:12.160 to sleep and after about 30 days it's just getting harder and harder for this kid to wake up but in the

00:36:19.520 and you know he's pretty groggy when he does get up but he can still actually get through his

00:36:25.380 performance tests pretty well which points to you know this idea that maybe we could organize sleep

00:36:32.800 differently right that like the 24-hour society might not be everybody being awake all the time

00:36:39.200 but it might be that you know some people are going to be able to organize their work in ways

00:36:44.380 that are different than this kind of consolidated work in the period yeah didn't kramer on seinfeld

00:36:52.440 like do an experiment with that like yeah it didn't work out for him yeah they call it the like uh

00:36:58.440 it's how leonard da vinci apparently slept which is um it's something like

00:37:03.860 half an hour every four hours yeah like that right and it really doesn't work out for kramer doesn't work

00:37:11.200 out for him and yeah the whole idea of like getting rid of sleep like if they did i don't know what i

00:37:15.780 would do with myself honestly right it's like i would be bored out and one of the reasons i enjoy

00:37:21.960 sleep is like it takes up time when i have nothing else going on well that's the thing that um one

00:37:28.880 you know like i love my family yeah we spend a lot of time together already sure and the prospect

00:37:37.120 of spending eight more hours a day with my four-year-old son is like is a crazy prospect right

00:37:44.340 and so if we did get to the point where we're awake all the time um we would have to really

00:37:51.100 restructure what society looks like yeah right like um we it doesn't mean that we would have eight hours

00:37:57.260 of recreation we would probably be finding other ways to organize what we're doing yeah um so and that's

00:38:05.980 what i kind of mean that like if we get rid of sleep we're not going to be the human beings that

00:38:09.120 we are today right that like everything is going to change if we got rid of sleep so i don't know i

00:38:14.500 think your book came out right before like this the uptick in like tracking devices where you can track

00:38:20.720 your steps and there's even device where you can track your sleep it's this whole quantified self

00:38:26.040 thing so this idea of you know the track not only how many hours you sleep but your quality of sleep i

00:38:31.120 even bought one of those like zeo things like you strap it to your head and like it reads your brain

00:38:36.360 waves does this sort of entrench people more into the idea that okay you need to sleep you know eight

00:38:43.220 hours straight or nine hours or does it give people information where they can start tinkering and with

00:38:49.100 their own sleep schedule i think it does both right and so the the thing that i would point to and i is

00:38:58.520 and um is that you know there are cultural assumptions embedded in all of this technology

00:39:06.260 right so if the technology really assumes that consolidated sleep is the only way that you're

00:39:14.140 getting good sleep then it's probably a problem if the technology is a little more flexible and is able

00:39:22.380 to work with whatever kind of sleep schedule you want to work towards then it might be a little more

00:39:29.520 liberatory right and so like one of the things that i tell people to do and this is based on

00:39:35.320 clinical practice is that like if you really want to figure out what kind of sleeper you are

00:39:39.920 you need probably about two weeks of not waking up to an alarm clock right and so like what the project is

00:39:46.540 is that you go to sleep when you're tired you time how long you go to sleep for you are awake when

00:39:54.320 you're awake right and you you know maybe you have a cup of coffee right but you don't drink lots of

00:40:00.960 caffeine you also don't drink a lot of alcohol or anything like that you're just trying to isolate

00:40:05.220 what your sleep is actually like right and um and so what one of the things that you can discern by

00:40:13.000 doing that is what an actual sleep period is so if you look at what the physiology of sleep is you

00:40:20.980 have these roughly two hour periods of um moving through the different stages of sleep and um and so

00:40:30.860 our sleep is always kind of built up of a certain number of those periods right so when we talk about

00:40:36.340 consolidated sleep what we're thinking about is four of those periods kind of smashed together

00:40:40.700 but it because the two hour number is pretty soft like it can be anywhere between an hour and a half

00:40:48.780 or three hours that a sleep period is and you always want to be sleeping in factors of that period right

00:40:56.860 so like if you've got a technology that helps you figure out what your sleep period actually is

00:41:02.460 and is helping you kind of abide by the it's like those a factor of those periods then you're

00:41:10.360 probably using that technology pretty well or it's it's decent technology right um

00:41:15.580 if you're being shamed by your technology because you're not sleeping eight hours a night that's a

00:41:21.100 problem right yeah um yeah i think the the zeo does that because like it'll give you a sleep score

00:41:27.280 and like give you suggestions like you need to do this like to improve your sleep i'm like okay

00:41:32.960 i will do that algorithm yeah right right um and so like the and you know the other thing i like

00:41:42.360 apps on your phone that like are supposed to monitor how well you're sleeping by putting it under your

00:41:48.080 pillow probably not worth the money right that like even we it's called actigraphy technology and it's a

00:41:56.160 bracelet that people put on in order to um clinically track their movements and so you can look at

00:42:03.460 somebody's actigraphy report to see when they're awake and when they're asleep pretty much right but if

00:42:09.260 you're a really active sleeper it's a bad technology for you right and if you sit at a desk all day

00:42:16.000 and you don't move your left arm very much yeah it's also a bad technology yeah that's happened to me

00:42:21.020 with this the fitbit like it'll i'll be like on you know sitting writing for you know two hours and

00:42:26.620 they'll say you were taking a nap it's like no i wasn't i was i was writing right um yeah and so i

00:42:33.600 think that's you know that's one of those things that people always need to think about like what is

00:42:38.020 the cultural assumption embedded in this technology right and i'm a little the whole quantified self

00:42:43.620 stuff i'm a little skeptical of more broadly because it you know it really is emphasizing

00:42:51.120 these ideas about productivity right and um and i think that you know ideas about being productive

00:42:58.520 are ways that we tie ourselves to self-exploitation right that like if all we're thinking about is

00:43:05.600 whether or not we're being productive like we have sold out to the system

00:43:12.300 sold your soul so i mean here's the question i know your book is primarily descriptive and it's

00:43:19.740 not prescriptive but and you've kind of alluded this a bit what people can do but what if you have

00:43:24.140 a sleep schedule that just doesn't fit the norm um what can you do and do you think technology

00:43:31.780 is giving us more flexibility in how we work and how we school that will allow us to

00:43:37.940 i don't know change our schedule so it fits our personal sleep schedule

00:43:41.640 i um for some people yes right that like one of the um so one of the recommendations that i make

00:43:54.820 is that we need to think about flex time for all the institutions that we interact with right

00:44:01.720 so some workplaces have this idea that you can come into work late and work late right or you can

00:44:09.120 take a day off and make that day up some other way right and that that flexibility in the schedule

00:44:16.180 is something that um historically has really been for the most elite workers right um and but it

00:44:28.100 provides us a model for thinking about how we might structure institutional time across different

00:44:32.980 kinds of workplaces within schools especially i think having that model in schools would be great

00:44:39.140 um but you can also think about it related to you know family and recreation and stuff like that

00:44:46.300 that like we need a little more flexibility in order to address the different styles of sleep that

00:44:52.600 people have and um and the challenge in that kind of recommendation is that it you know it's really

00:45:01.260 because it's so tied to elite labor in the past it's difficult to get um other kinds of labor

00:45:10.600 on board with that schedule right so if we want to pick on starbucks right that like because it's a

00:45:19.560 low-paying job they're going to give you the hours that they can give you if you can't work those hours

00:45:23.920 you're just going to get fired right and and so what you know what we might need to think about is the

00:45:30.860 kind of like careful management of a work population right so if you find workers that are good in the

00:45:37.260 morning and bad at night then you schedule them in the morning and you schedule other workers at night

00:45:41.820 right and it depends on kind of taking seriously people's variation in sleep and how it might

00:45:50.180 actually fit into scheduling more generally right um you know i think for like the so-called creative

00:45:58.020 class technology makes things a lot easier right that we can telecommute all the time um or you can

00:46:04.140 work kind of flexible hours but you know the real question is what do we do with everybody else

00:46:10.300 right um because everybody else are also the people who have the worst health insurance and

00:46:16.500 they're probably most likely to self-medicate through zequel or alcohol or amphetamines or whatever

00:46:22.900 else right so if you really want a kind of equitable society we need to think about how we arrange school

00:46:31.020 time and work time and family time in a way that's in some ways agreeable to everybody right and so

00:46:39.160 instead of having this static schedule we need to think about what can we actually do in order to

00:46:44.940 make it a little more livable interesting well matthew wolfmeyer this has been a fascinating discussion

00:46:50.380 um thanks so much for your time it's been a pleasure thanks brett it's been a pleasure for me too

00:46:55.700 our guest here is matthew j wolfmeyer he is the author of the book the slumbering masses you can find

00:47:01.100 that on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere well that wraps up another edition of the art of

00:47:08.280 manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website

00:47:12.180 at artofmanliness.com and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

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The Art of Manliness - May 21, 2015

#115： The Slumbering Masses With Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer

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