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October 12, 2010 36 mins

Sleep is a restorative state that's vital to human functioning -- or is it? In this episode, Josh and Chuck explore different ways in which science is trying to minimize or phase out sleep, from pills to genetic research.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,

(00:21):
uh and that makes this stuff you should know? What
Criterion Collection? What are you doing tonight? Buddy? What am
I doing tonight? What am I doing tonight? I know
what you're doing. What I know what we're doing? Oh yeah, tonight,
tonight tonight. So not like tonight in our physical new temporality,
I mean tonight in the future. Yes, like as of

(00:42):
like someone listening to this, it would be there tonight,
I would say, possibly on October twelve. I am going
to be at the Drunken UNI. That's right, the Drunken
Unicorn on East Paul Stallion Avenue in Atlanta, at the
n j q CO of course. Yes, sort of hard
to find if you don't know where what you're looking for. Well,

(01:04):
this is what you do. You go along Ponce until
you see the murder Kroger. You left or right, depending
on where you're coming from. Chipotle opposite the murder Kroger
on the other side of Ponce and Um, behind that
is m j Q. Yes. Beside that is Friends on

(01:24):
Ponts the bar never been I'll take you there. It's
gonna blow your socks off. Uh. And then below Friends
is m j Q. Yes, a very little nondescript door,
gray steel door. I think some steps down and I
don't think there's any signage whatsoever. Chuck. We may have
to have stand outside and be like here, everybody, why

(01:47):
are there. We're going to be there because our house band,
the Henry Clay People, are going to be playing there.
And this is kind of the unofficial kickoff for a
big trivia event night, which is tomorrow Tomorrow night, which
is October, Yes, and that is at the Five Seasons
Brewery West Side on Marietta Street. And it is gonna

(02:08):
be fun. I'm getting excited. I'm getting pretty excited. It's
gonna be pretty cool. We have actor and author and
former literary agent John Hodgman, and we have former Dukes
of Hazzard co star Joe Randazzo, and we have Squidbillies
co creator and Aquitine Hunger Force co creator Dave Willis.

(02:29):
I've been really getting into squid Billies. Yeah, it's awesomely wrong.
I don't know if he still has it or not
an original um squid billies oil painting on wood, and
I don't I haven't talked to him in a while,
so I don't know if they've will actually painted it,
but I mean it is dead on, so I need

(02:49):
to ask him, do you also paint? I was watching
last night and Earl the Dad Squid had he always
has on different baseball caps that say different retenick things,
and one of them beware in big letters and then
in small little letters that said good stuff. Good stuff.

(03:11):
So there's your chance to come out and meet John
and Joe and Dave and Us and Jerry and uh
that there'll be other podcasters there, imagine the ones that
don't hate us will be there. So Strickland Struggle will
be there, Strickland will be there, hopefully some other people. Yeah,
so we invite everyone to come out six o'clock doors
Trivia starts at seven. The Henry Clay People shows one

(03:32):
of those later shows, but we encourage you to come.
And that's on Tuesday Trivias on Wednesday season Brewer west
Side experience some rock and or roll and then some
fun trivia and Chuck. Also, you can look up our
event on Facebook and there there's all sorts of details
and directions and stuff on absolutely yeah check it out,

(03:54):
um the stuff you should know trivia event page. And
this is the last you will hear of this. That's it.
And then what we may be going on a national tour.
We're almost definitely going to Austin. It's so funny, like
everyone else is so sick of hearing this, but I
guarantee you we will get people on that Thursday on Facebook.
That's say, well, I never heard anything about your trick,

(04:14):
and we'll just be like, go buy a tech hammer
at your local Ace Hardware. Take it home, Yes, put
the receipt in the garbage can and smack yourself in
the forehead with it. Don't return it after all. Right,
on with the show, On with the show, Chuck's plug
Fest two thousand ten for now. Yeah, So, Chuck, I've

(04:37):
got a story for you, alright, story time. Okay, So
remember when we were talking about roller Derby's um and
there was that whole Transcontinental roller Derby where it was
really just a roller rink that people went around fifty
seven thousand times for eleven hours a day until they
passed out. So I know that that you know that
there's all sorts of a thons or what they call

(05:00):
what they're called, what they used to be called. People
like to just do stuff to the extreme test their endurance. Right,
dance a thons, um, hunt nazis a thons. Just anything
you could think of in like the forties, fifties and thirties. Well, um,
staying awake was not immune to the athon fever. Um.
There's a guy in the nineteen fifty nine. He's thirty
two years old at the time. His name is Peter Tripp,

(05:22):
and he's a disc jockey in New York City, New
York City. Yeah, and um, he made a little studio
in the storefront and said I'm going to stay awake
for as long as I can. And he did. And
while he's doing it, oh yeah, he did for two
one straight hours. Wow. Yeah, Um he did. This is

(05:44):
kind of a mark against him as far as stay
awake a thonors or than enthusiasts. But he was given
him feta means by two physicians to keep him up. Physicians.
But the guy, yeah, well back in those days, Joey
in the corner, Yeah, his physicis. Um. I was gonna say,
back in those days, you know, like you like doctors

(06:05):
prescribed to anything, and I thought, oh, yeah, nothing's changed, right, Um,
But he stayed awake for two d one hours, assisted
by amphetamans, but still right. Quite an accomplishment it was,
and it stood for a while as I think the
longest to anyone ever stayed awake, and then people started
topping it and topping it, and then finally in nineteen four,
there was a teenager in San Diego, which is a

(06:26):
town I know you love, uh, And his name was
Randy Gardner and he's actually still around. That kid stayed
up with nothing, no assistance whatsoever, for two hundred and
sixty four hours on purpose to try and set the record. Yeah,
for a science fairs. It was a science experiment, and
the guy ended up setting the world record for a while.

(06:48):
I bet he hallucinated like crazy. Now, yes, here's the thing, Um,
I think Randy had a bit of a hard time.
He um had something kind of a some sort of
psychotic break here there. Um. Peter Tripp particularly had a
hard time, especially because of the amphetamines he hallucinated. UM.

(07:10):
Cats chasing mice in the little studio. I thought one
of the desk drawers that um he was seated at
where it was on fire. A man uh showed up
in a dark suit, and he confused him for an
undertaker and ran out because it was an undertaker probably um.
So yeah, there's all sorts of horrible stuff associated with
sleep deprivation. I don't like it. Bear with me, I'm

(07:31):
with you. We're about to get to the want, Want
Want moment. Okay. In two thou seven you may remember
there was a guy named um Mr Wright. I can't
remember Mr Wright's first name, can you, Tony? He was
from Cornwall, England? Oh yeah, I stayed up for eleven
days pub in Cornwall, playing pool, just hanging out. We

(07:51):
did down the webcast right. Yes, he broke the record
and I'm making air quotes here. He broke um Randy
um Gardner's record. What he didn't know is that a
year after Randy Gardner set the record, a guy in
Finland beat Randy Gardner's records. So two problems here, Tony
Wright didn't actually beat the world record, And the second

(08:15):
part is in Guinness stopped acknowledging the world records for
staying awake the longest because of health reasons. So Tony
Wright stayed awake for eleven days for absolutely nothing. Well,
he got a lot of coverage and he was a
national hero in Wales from what I understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(08:36):
I would have looked into that beforehand. I would have
called Guinness, the Guinness people. Yeah. One of his friends's
quota is saying like, we've never heard of this guy
in Finland. His name was Tomoy so annoy No, toy me,
that's got it. I've got it. His name is Toymi
Soyny of Finland. I've never heard of him either, and

(08:56):
that's a name you wouldn't forget. No, but thank you
for bearing with me through that horribly long introduction. That
was good. My point was this, we have this weird
obsession with staying awake sometimes, right, it's it's well, some
people do. It's it's like an endurance contest. And the

(09:18):
guy in New York, Peter Tripp, was assisted by amphetamines.
These days, there's entirely new classes of drugs that are
designed to keep us awake. Right, Yes, they're called drugs.
I don't want anywhere near me. So Chuck, you you
were big on sleeping. Right, Well, yeah, but I don't.
I don't sleep like Emily sleep. She can sleep. Yeah,

(09:39):
I mean I'm still you know, you get older, you
start waking up early no matter what. So even if
I have a late night at like two am, I'm
still up at seven. Yes, okay, but you still require sleep. Yes,
I for one am alarmed at the concept of synthetically
phasing sleep out, even if we don't need it, even
if we figure out how to get asked without sleep,

(10:01):
it just seems wrong. Well it is. You know. We'll
talk a bit more about that, because I have pretty
strong feelings about messing with you know, your natural human biology. Now,
we do already chuck through things like caffeine, speed, we
stay awake. I know you're huge on speed greenies. Not true,
absolutely not true. Um, but what are these things do

(10:25):
to you? There's problems, there's side effects, right, but there's
a problem. Yeah, caffeine. Um, although there are studies now
that say that caffeine can be good for you in
certain amounts, But caffeine can make you crash, it can
give you diarrhea, it can make you really irritable. If
you don't get your caffeine in your system, and the

(10:45):
same with amphetamines. You have a serious crash after an
amphetamine high. Yes, and that's not what you're looking for. No,
that's called sleep debt. Yeah, and you gotta pay it
back with amphetamines, right, So sleep for half a day
if you've been up on Greenies? Yes, Um, I think
when did Greenies? That was big and major League Baseball
they called him Greenies? Is that a bunch of baseball

(11:07):
players used to them being called Benny's a lot of
Caro aquinos in high school's Yeah, that's short for Ben's
a dream. Yeah. Yeah, So that's the bad effects of
caffeine and sleepitteriness, diarrhea. Plus the problem is that you're
being kept awake. You're awake, but you're not There's no

(11:30):
rest whatsoever. Yeah, your body is not getting used to
it or anything. No, and your mental faculties begin to
decline pretty rapidly once it starts, right, So, Chuck, what's
somebody who wants to stay up? It doesn't feel like
getting addicted to speed going to do? What can you do? Well, Josh?
You should try madefanel. What's medeffanel? It is a sort

(11:52):
of new drug. What is it about? Twelve? Years old
in total. No, some French researchers were even cats in
the early nineties, but it's really kind of taken off
for human use beginning in ninety I think it's Uh.
It's in a class of drugs called eugeroics, yeah, which
is Greek for quote good arousal. Yeah. So the idea

(12:16):
here is that you can stay awake uh with medeffanel
and it goes like all drugs, it goes by like
a dozen different names, and you don't have a sleep debt.
That's pretty amazing. It is. Um. What's more, it's in
this This article was written by Julia Layton on March seventh,
two thousand seven. It has quite a bit um. It's

(12:40):
at the time at two thousand and seven, medaffanel was
like this promise of the future. Um. And and not
only no side effects, no addictiveness. Um. All of this
stuff has been proven untrue over time. And it's actually
I've read one study that found that medaffanel for use
and shift to workers late shift workers, it kept them

(13:02):
awake one point seven minutes longer than a placebo. Yeah,
so it may not even work. But um, let's let's
take the two thousand seven view of my daffa. No first, Okay, okay,
so it's non addictive. How could that possibly be? Well,
it can't, but sorry, we're back in time. This is well,

(13:25):
are we explaining how it works? Um? Specifically, it doesn't
do what caffeine and emphetamines do, things like blocking uh
neuro receptors that triggered drowsiness. UM one's called a dinna
scene and they block the receptors that bind to it.
Caffeine does, and so it will keep you awake basically

(13:46):
because you're not feeling tired. Right. So, like your neurotransmitters,
all of our neurotransmitters function by a release and then
they float around and have their effect and then they're
they're taken back up uptake re uptake. Yeah, well, in
dopamine plays a big part two in both of these, right.
But with with the neurotransmitter, including dopamine, you can activate
its release and or prevent its reuptake, so you're either

(14:10):
flooding the brain with it and or keeping it in
the brain longer. Right. Well, and that's what amphetamines too, specifically,
is they give the dopamine nowhere to go, so you're
just euphork sounds pretty good to me. It does sound good.
But the problem is is your brains like, oh, you
want to play that game, huh, while I'm just gonna
withhold dopamine unnaturally, So you're gonna be depressed for three

(14:33):
or four days. Okay. So that's how you get addicted
to something. Though, anytime dopamine is released artificially in the brain,
your body loves it, right, And that's here's the problem.
You're Dopamine is the centerpiece of the brain's reward system.
It's how we learn to eat and have sex, to

(14:54):
reproduce or have sex for whatever reason, and anything that
gives us a sense of pleasure. Dopa means involved, and
we're taught we're motivated to repeat that behavior through the
release of dopamine. So if we drink caffeine or take
speed or do cocaine or whatever, and dopamins released, we're
taught to do it again, which is the basis of addiction, which,

(15:17):
by the way, I think we should do a podcast
on just addiction. Yeah, it's a really interesting about that
how addiction works. Well, let's do it. Okay, let's do
it right now. Alright, you're ready, I'm not prepared. So
that's how those other uh well in two thousand seven,
more nefarious drugs would help keep you awake, and um,
medefanel didn't do that for some reason. It activated dopamine,

(15:40):
but just maybe not as much, right, And they believe
that medefanel actually targets a neurotransmitter G A B A.
We'll just call it gabba gabba, gabba gabba, and that
is the sleep regulator of the brain. And it seemed
to slow down uh gabba's release. So basically your brain
at it now that hey, it's time to go to

(16:02):
sleep now, right, like your circadian rhythms thrown off, right, Yeah,
So it's specifically targeted that and well not that alone,
because it did release a little bit of dopamine, right,
it did, But what they were saying was like it's
just such a little amount that you're not becoming addicted
like it does. But you're not becoming addicted. Don't worry
about it. Um gaba is not the only and there's

(16:23):
also um from what I found, there's four types of
gab gabba and apparently like gab before is like the
most sensitive one, and that's like the real it's the
trux of research right now is trying to figure out
GABBA or GABA four um. But in addition to GABA,
there's also histamines which make us drowsy. That's why antihistamines

(16:43):
can jet you up. UM. And there's also glutamate, and
glutamate is um basically the brain's natural speed, right um.
So they think that I think they figured it out
by now. But two thousand seven thought was that the
the medaffanel prevented the reuptake of glutamate, which keeps you

(17:07):
alert and functioning right. Yeah. And the end result of
all this is what they found was a miracle drug,
is what they called it, because there was no sleep
that when you came off of um this drug, you
didn't need to sleep for a half a day to
catch up on things. You would just go back and
fall into your regular pattern and be all rested. Yeah
it sounds great. Yeah, it does sound great. I mean
staying up for four day hours and then just being

(17:28):
able to get an average eight hour night sleep and
you're fine. I mean, why why wouldn't you want to
do that? Me personally, Well, we'll get to that later.
Well we should say too though, that it was developed
to treat U narcolepsy specifically, right, and we should probably
talk about this. There's a company called Cephalon, and Cephalon
took Madeffanel and marketed the heck out of it as

(17:50):
a pro vagil and provagil. According to a two thousand
two New York Times article, we read UM said call
said that um. It means provides vigilance. Right, And basically
it was adopted for off label use by everyone from

(18:11):
college students to the CEO of of UM Cephalon. Yeah,
what's uh, Frank Cabaldino. Frank Baldino, he took it and
he didn't say why he was taking it. No, but
the only thing it's approof for is NARCILEPSI is a
treatment of narcilepsy. They've tried to get it a proof
for jet lag, they tried to get it a proof

(18:32):
for shift workers UM syndrome. They tried to get it
a proof for general drowsiness tiredness UM and they couldn't that.
THEA was like, no, we'll let you sell this for narcilepsy,
to treat narcileptics. The problem is it's not how it
wor right. Well, the problem is there's only about two
thousand narcileptics in the United States. So Cephalon is like,

(18:54):
we need to get this out there, and they started
marketing it off label. It's kind of nefariously as well. Yeah,
it became a lifestyle drug, is what they classified it as. Yeah,
UM a new tropic and O O T R O
P I C, which means it's it's another name for
smart drug, like trans humanists love new tropics. Yes, all

(19:16):
those farmer names were so like, I don't know, they
rubbed me the wrong way. So like I said, uh, nefarious,
I'm basing this nefarious nous on UM. This really great article, Chuck.
There's two parts called UM The Rise and Fall of Provigil,
and it's by UM investigative journalist Evelyn Pringle, And I
think everybody should read this. It's really interesting. This is

(19:36):
hot off like yesterday it was released. I think, yeah,
it was hot off the press. How how odd is
that I know that you picked this, Yeah, because I
had no idea that this was written yesterday and we
picked it like two days before a week before. Anyway,
in the article, she talks about how um Cephalon had
UM physicians that they were underwriting. It didn't reveal their

(20:00):
relationship to the company. But we're saying, like, this is
a great drug and it should be used for all
these off market purposes. Stuff that if the company had
done it, they would have been prosecuted federally. There was
a and the Attorney General of Pennsylvania oversaw a bunch
of lawsuits and the company hired him as executive legal counsel. Yeah,
just all sorts of stuff like that. There's allegations of

(20:23):
UM paid to delay UM programs with UH, with their
competitors that they found that of the prescriptions written had
nothing to do with an ecalepsy. Yeah, it was depression, MS, sleepiness,
and like you said, the shift workers syndrome. They were

(20:44):
prescribing it for all kinds of things, basically to make
you feel better. They had their UM reps actually visiting psychiatrists,
dentists were prescribing this stuff. Yeah, UM. And and again
two arcileptics of them were on the drug within a
year of its release, right, Yeah, And it just wasn't enough. Well,

(21:04):
and then that's when they started jacking up the price,
when they found out that people really love this stuff.
From November to March it rose in price and it
was seventy seventy percent more expensive than it was four
years previous in two thousand four, and I think it
topped out at like thirteen eighteen dollars a pill. That
is insane. And the long and short of all this,

(21:27):
as of this week, the European Medicines Agency basically came
out and said, you know what, you can't use this
for anything but narcolepsy, because we have found out that
there are certain psychiatric disorders this causes, like suicidal thoughts
and depression in psychotic episodes and potentially life threatening skin reactions.
And also, first, I'm sorry, you're right it topped out

(21:49):
at thirteen sixty two a pill when it was originally
five dollars and fifty three cents a pill for no
reason whatsoever. It just rose and costs in the US
make money, UM, and you were talking king about the
psychiatric disorders that it exacerbated. They basically reformulated um MD
affodel into a kid's version for the treatment of a

(22:12):
d h D, and they found that what would be
the equivalent in the in the UM actual population of
one in about two hundred or no. Twenty in a
hundred cases of things like psychotic breaks, suicidal thoughts and children.
And this drug, it was called Sparlon, was taken out
of FDA testing. They just dropped it. Yeah. Well, and

(22:35):
not only that, but it's supposedly non addictive. Not so.
In two thousand nine, a psychiatrist an addiction specialists said
UH to USA Today that he had seen his third
case of probagil addiction and UM two doctors back to
back admitted that they were addicted to it and they
were also alcoholics. Right, And it's kind of interesting. I guess.

(22:58):
So the hammer kind of all down on um munafodil
and cephalon kind of simultaneously. It's currently falling. It sounds like, yeah,
the um FTC has a lawsuit. There's UM. I think
three different employees turned whistleblow around the company and file
lawsuits against it UM. And then yeah, that psychiatrists came
out in USA today and said that he was treating

(23:21):
people for addiction to it, which is huge. And then
Bloomberg also the same day, Bloomberg News released a report
about its addictiveness. But it's really interesting to read the
stuff that's going on now compared to our two thousand
seven articles that I think probably should be taken down
and rewritten pretty soon because it's basically claims it's a

(23:42):
wonder drug, like, yeah, it makes it actually compared it
to viagran and says it's better because you don't get
five hour erections, right or worse depending on your viewpoint.
Uh So, Josh, that is just one drug that we
have picked out, but that is not the whole story
of science phasing out sleep. Yeah, and this, this whole
podcast isn't intended to to target cephalon. It was just

(24:05):
really interesting that we ran across this during our research.
And again, I think you should read um The Rise
and Fall of Provigil by Evelyn Pringle. Just look it
up online. I think it's up there for free, right. Yeah,
it's a good one. So, uh, Munafodel is not the
only thing, like you said, targeting sleep. There's another drug
from Cortex, the pharmaceutical company called c X seven seventeen,

(24:28):
and it works sort of like the other one, and
that it keeps you awake by triggering glutamate activity and
specifically triggers that and it also targets histamine, so it
sort of works in the same way. But science is
all over. What they're trying to do is they're trying
to research and see if they can get people by

(24:51):
on less sleep with the same effects as having a
full nine a sleep. That seems to be the goal.
Get three hours of sleep, but your body feel is
like it got eight hours, and not only hours, the
best eight hours bets and it's safe. It can't be addictive,
which means it can't have any effect on your reward system,
so no dopamine could be released, right, Um, and that

(25:13):
what you were talking about c X seventeen seven seventeen.
C X seven seventeen. It's an amp keene. That's the
class of drug and like you said, it targets the reuptake.
A glutamate has nothing to do with the reward system
as far as we know right now, And that's the
one that DARP was looking into. DARP is leading the
way they're driving this sleep deprivation research because you know

(25:34):
it's military, yes, and apparently the special ops guys have
to stay up for seventy two straight hours usually with
very very little, if any rest, and be sharp enough
to you know, assassinate somebody. Um, well, the military did
a lot of testing on nafadel. Yes, and this is

(25:55):
the this is a I can't remember what article it was,
but somebody talked to a Darper research true who said,
we we found it was about as good as caffeine,
which is weird. Like, I don't understand because this, the
article that Layton wrote, is saying like this has a
huge following. People swear by the stuff. It clearly did

(26:15):
and probably still does. So I don't understand how clinical
results could show it's no better than caffeine while other
people are like, this is the greatest thing ever. Well,
it could be the placebo going on again. I guess
it could be. With the military though, they would give
it to these pilots for a couple of days, make
them stay awake, and then have them go out and
fight their fighter jet and just to see what happened,

(26:36):
and they found that after that it did. It did
a good job till about the forty eight hour point,
and then after that, regardless of what you're on, your
body is going to start showing effects of sluggishness and
maybe hallucinations and the things that you don't want if
you're a fighter pilot, no, or just a regular guy
trying to make a living in this world. Exactly. There
was a two thousand ninth study, Munofadel actually did contribute

(26:58):
to our understanding of the human brain. Um. Some researchers
that you see Davis slapped people into a wonder machine,
loaded them up on munofadel, kept them awake, and watched
their brain, and they saw heightened activity in the locusts ceruleus.
I can't imagine being in a wonder machine for two

(27:18):
days straight. I think they probably sleep deprived him and
then probably towards the end of the second day or
something they put them I don't know. But they also
gave them tests and found that that some tests have
found that people actually do better on psychological tests, tests
of skill, feats of strength, you know, festivus stuff um

(27:40):
on munofadel. Then they do, you know, just awake or
on caffeine or in photomanes or something like that. So
that mixed results. But we didn't know what part of
the brain was keeping people awake or was subject to
sleep deprivation, and now we do it's the locus ceruleus.
So that's probably going to play a role in this
endless quest to do away with sleep, right part of it. Yeah,

(28:00):
it's not just drugs either. They're looking for a sleep gene.
That one's really interesting to me, don't you think take
it away? Because drugs are drugs. But they believe that
there are people that can get by on less sleep,
that they're called short sleepers. About one in a thousand
people can function just fine on a few hours asleep.
They don't need a big eight or nine hours. And uh,

(28:21):
they believe it's hereditary and they're trying to find this
gene so they can tweak it and make us all
into short sleeper so wet all get more stuff done? Yeah,
and there's um, there's actually a species of fruit fly
that is a short sleeper fruit fly and it has
a mutation. And what they found is a mutation has
to do with potassium channels. No one knows exactly what yet,

(28:44):
but that's interesting because there's an autoimmune deficiency or an
autoimmune disease called more Vans syndrome and people in more
vents and people with more Van syndrome have trouble sleeping.
And there's uh, their syndrome has a affects the transport
of potassium through sheell membranes. So there's a tie there
for sure. Definitely. So it has something to do with bananas.

(29:06):
Is that where this is all headed. I guess fruit
flies potassium. Oh my god. So if they find this gene,
I think what they're looking for as a future where
people can um program their lifestyle how they want it.
If you're if you want to work eighty hours a
week and work till four am and get up at seven,

(29:29):
maybe there's a pill that can help you do that
with no side effects. Maybe I don't. What I find
alarming is that sleep, um like sleep being synthetically reduced
or eliminated natural sleep. Even among sleep researchers who are like,
this is a horrible, horrible idea, they still say it's inevitable.

(29:52):
And apparently the predictions are like ten to twenty years off,
where we either have a pill that we can take
and sleep for three hours but feel like we slept
for a and keep going, or we won't have to
sleep at all. Um. The problem is remember John Maynard Keynes,
the economists, and he came up with the leisure society
in the nineteen thirties. He was like, people in a

(30:14):
hundred years won't even have to work, and we'll all
just sit around and and have fun. He was right
about us being wealthy and having more leisure time. But
what he missed the mark on was that we don't
spend our leisure time on leisure now, we'd spent it
trying to acquire more wealth. So why why would you
possibly want to have a twenty two hour day of wakefulness?

(30:37):
The whole point of our eight hour work day is
to divide the day into three parts, eight hours working,
eight hours of leisure time, which we now spend vacuuming
and going to the grocery store, and eight hours for sleep.
I find it really discouraging to think that we're going
in that direction to where we're carving at the eight hours.
We've already done away with the eight hours of leisure

(31:00):
your time, and now we're going after sleep. Would mistake.
I think it's a huge mistake. But there are some
people out there that would love to be able to
only get three hours of sleep at night and all
the stuff that they could get done. Ah, I don't know, man,
I mean, what is there to do from two am
to five am? Oh? They'll be I mean, first of all,

(31:22):
you got taco bell, right, so you can go to
taco Bell. It's one thing. There's all sorts of stuff
you can do. But imagine if everybody else is up. Well,
that's true. And I guess if if they build a
twenty four hour society like New York City, those freaks
in that town, it would there would be more things,
would be, libraries open, businesses would be open, everything would

(31:43):
be open for twenty four hours. Everything would go to
shift work. The key here is, if we're going to
do that, don't ever ever agree to a salaried position.
Always always make it hourly or else you're just in
big trouble. Yeah, so I say no, thank you, I
do too, chuckers um. Also, if the pills don't work,

(32:04):
if they don't find the sleep gene, they've got this
one thing. It's called brain polarization. Remember transcranial magnetic stimulation.
How could I forget? Okay, So this is called the
poor man's version of that, where rather than using electromagnetism,
it uses a DC current to jolt your brain awake.
Oh that's that machine. So look for that. Look for

(32:26):
a future where you're you have a cattle prod in
your brain so you can work longer. You think, really sleep,
I'm falling asleep and it feels so good. Yeah, Oh,
I feel great and I can get some more spreadsheets done. Yes. Uh,
if there's going to be any future for humanity, we
have to rail against this, everybody. So let's stand together. Else,
everyone go to sleep. You should probably go onto how

(32:46):
stuff works dot com and read the hilariously out of
date is Science Phasing out sleep, type in phasing and
sleep in the search bar at how stuff works dot Com.
That will take you elsewhere. Also, don't forget the Rise
and Fall of Provigil p R O V I g
I L by Evelyn Pringle, and also the Stay Awake
Men on the New York Times. It was an opinion

(33:08):
calum written by Thomas Bartlett. Pretty good stuff, just his opinion. Yeah,
all right, it's time for what listener mail? Do we
have listener mail? Yeah? We do. Let's do it. The
return of listener Mail Josh. And this is specific to
our trivia night because it is about Aquitine Hunger course awesome.
This is from Kate and Hunter, who are married. Hey, guys,

(33:29):
when I heard that the creator of Aquitine would be
joining your trivia festival and Trivia Festival, I felt compelled
to write you guys to tell you of how that
show changed my life. I was in my junior year
of college, when I went to a potluck dinner at
a friend's apartment. I met a sweet, handsome and funny
guy there and we chatted most of the evening. At
the end of the night, he mentioned aquitine. He did

(33:49):
his meat Wad voice and asked if I'd like to
go over to his place and watch a t H
because he had season one on DVD. It's like the
Etchings of the Century. You want to come inspect to
my place? My Actually, he's a very smooth character. We
stayed up all night watching the show, laughing and talking.
Two years later, we were spending our date night watching
a t H and eating pizza when he proposed to me.

(34:12):
When we were planning our wedding, we wanted to put
meat Wad and Master Shake on top of the cake
asaid homage to their role in our meeting with Frylock
as the minister, but we couldn't find any little figures
of them. We tried several times to get in touch
with someone connected to the show see if they could
hook us up or tell us where we could buy them,
but we never had any luck. Our wedding was perfect anyway,

(34:32):
and we've been married close to three years now. Needless
to say, we still love Aquitine. So if you guys
think to share our story with Dave Willis, tell him
thank you for us from Kate and Hunter and this
is our way of sharing it. And I hope everybody
is listening to our show. Yeah, I wonder if he
does now now that he's like, oh, I didn't know

(34:53):
these guys existed. I guess I'll listen to him since
I'm playing Betty he checked it out and uh may
have listened to poor episode and never tuned an again,
or maybe he's our number one fan. Now. Yeah, I
think that's a great story, And I for one think
that they should manufacture the characters from Aquatine Hunger Force,
like remember the little figurings. Yeah, perfect size handy. You know,

(35:16):
back in the day when South Park first came on,
I made uh little Sculpi. You know what Sculpi is,
very sculpie. It's like Plato and Clay, but you can
bake it in your oven at home. Yeah, yeah, sculp
I made little Sculpie South Park guys, because they didn't
exist at the time. It was so new and people

(35:37):
are like, oh my gosh, where'd you get those? And
said I made him? And then you know they started
mass manufacturing South Park and everything after that. Anyway, I
would have recommended to Kate and Hunter to get sculpie
and make your frylock and master shaking meat one. They're
pretty demanding. They like things to just be kind of
given to him, and it sounds like it. Well. Thanks Kate,
Thanks Hunter Mozeltov on your wedding. Sorry it didn't work

(36:00):
out exactly according to plan, but we'll see if um
God can change things for you. If you have something
you want to um, let us know about a wedding,
a funeral, um or a voyagency. We want to hear
about it. Wrapping up in an email and send it

(36:21):
to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com For
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot
Com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two

(36:42):
thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you

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