Bittersweet Infamy - #18 - Fatal Insomnia

Episode Date: June 20, 2021

Guest host Francine Cunningham tells Josie and Taylor about the people who only sleep when they're dead. Plus: COVID shots in Dracula's castle, and a tiger on the loose in Houston.

Welcome to Bitter Sweden for me. I'm Taylor Basso. I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we tell the stories that live on in him, shocking, the unbelievable and the unforgettable truth may be better. Stories are always sweet. Hey, there, Taylor. Hey, Josie. Hi there, Fran. Hi. Hello. Welcome to the Bitter Sweet Infamy podcast.

Thank you. I'm super happy to be here. I'm long time listener, first time caller. Yeah, baby. Oh my goodness. How flattering. Yeah, I'm touched. For all of y'all out there listening and Francine Cunningham is our guest today and we are so thrilled to have her because she's going to tell a bad ass story. I can feel it already.

I am. No pressure. I am. I'm excited. I've been prepping. I have pages of notes. Yes, pages of notes. That's what I like to hear. Yeah. I was hope I was a little scared that you'd come in with your, you know, here's what I wrote down on a cocktail napkin at 11 p.m.

No, this was very interesting. And I love the whole premise of the infamous stuff. So it was a very good challenge. We're excited to have Francine here because she's so dope. She's a good friend of Taylor's from school days. Acquaintance. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Francine is very firmly a friend.

Definitely. We met at UBC many, many moons ago. I think a lot of her as an artist and a person and a collaborator and so on. So we've never actually worked on anything together before. So I'm excited for whatever this may be. But Francine is also an award winning writer. This is so do so do true, true, true. Award winning, indigenous writer, artist and educator.

Right. Yes. Yes. Yeah. From Calgary, from Alberta. Yeah, cool. Currently living under the prairie blue sky as we speak. And Francine has a new book that is out now on me, which is a book of poetry. And you are you dabble in like any and all genre. I do. I like my genres. I've like written for TV.

I've written nonfiction, fiction, poetry, I don't know, all the types. Awesome. And you have a new book of short stories coming out as well. I do next year. Right. Yeah, we think so. We're just sort of waiting for the pandemic to loosen its grip on our society. But yeah, it's called God Isn't Here Today, and it's a book of short stories that's going to be coming out with Invisible Press, which I'm very excited about. Sounds cheery.

Yeah, well, it's a lot of murder, a lot of blood and gore, as one would expect out of a Fran Cunningham short story. So we've really we've we've pulled in a ringer here. I want to point out to everybody that you can find Francine's book on me at her Etsy shop, which is dope because you can get a signed copy directly from Fran, which is so cool. But she also has a whole bunch of visual and beadwork art available there.

So you should go look at Francine Cunningham dot C.A. And then you can find the shop link there. And it takes her takes you to her Etsy. So that's just a smart idea to have an Etsy for all that stuff, too. Yeah, it was sort of like born out of a time where I really didn't know what I was going to do. And I was like, I just need like two hundred dollars more a month. Like that was like my budgeting. And I was like, what can I do?

And I was like, oh, I can sell my art, obviously. And then I did and it worked. So you're basically that's the dream. I hope you understand that for artists, that's the dream. Oh, I'll just sell my art and then you do. And then I did and it worked. Well, it's because I didn't have huge lofty expectations. I set them low, like two hundred dollars a month. And that was doable, right?

So. And Fran, you also teach. You also do traveling workshops across. Yeah, I'm a traveling teacher. I travel across Canada to different First Nations reserves and teach creative writing and visual art to the kids, spend some time with them and then move on and go to the next community. And I've been doing that for five years now. So. Yeah, it's super fun.

Do you ever go back to the same communities and see the same kids? Or is it kind of new batches? Mostly it's new, but occasionally I do. And that, you know, they keep in touch. And I'll write them reference letters and stuff when they go to college, university or I've had some kids who will like send me a story that they're working on for class and ask me to read it. And I don't know, it's just it's nice.

I have kids. It's nice. Yeah, it's nice. It's really nice, though. And like years later, five or six later, years later, a kid will like mention you like as their mentor or so or like the impact you had on them. And maybe I didn't see it at the time. But then it's something they care with them.

It's just really nice. And I'm like, OK, I've done OK in this life, you know. Yeah, I've used my time wisely. That's a nice. You're so cool, friend. Josie and I are just listening with like big smiles on her face. Like, oh, friend, stand up, lady. It's time to start getting into the blood and guts now, because that's what Fran really, truly loves.

Underneath the smiling facade of what she's she's here for. I saw today that to incentivize people in Romania to get their COVID vaccines, you can get your COVID vaccine at Dracula's Castle. Oh, my God, I would be there in a second. Let me sweeten the pot for you. Not only do you get the injection there, you also get a certificate with a cartoon nurse

with vampire fans holding up a syringe. And you get free access to the Torture Museum and all 52 implements of torture on display. Oh, my God, who wouldn't? I'd be like, fourth vaccine, fifth vaccine, sixth vaccine. Just faking your vaccine numbers. I've never gotten it before. What? I don't know.

OK, so I'm down for so I should clarify. This is not this is the castle that that seems to have inspired Dracula's Castle and Bram Stoker's novel. It is not the castle that Vlad the Impaler lived in. Different guy, but caveats. OK, caveats, caveats. The story is never what it appears.

I'm down for all of that until I don't know how I would do it at Torture Museum. I think I might get a little green, might get a little weak in the knees. I feel like it would be hard not to be imagining people being tortured. It's kind of the point. But I mean, I think it would be really great research.

For what, Jigsaw? I definitely know if I went to a place like that. That I would be writing a story with a lot of those things in it. You'd have to. Like, you know, because you could actually, like maybe touch them or like, I don't know. But what if they're like,

do you remember that movie, Constantine? I know it, but I didn't see it. Well, there's like, there's like the electric chair that they had sent all the people through that had died. And then they use the electric chair as like a conduit to like hell or something because it had all that like death in it. So like, what if you were at this Torture Museum

and you like and you like touch something but it was like almost like a like a memory time portal and you like saw every like torture that ever happened in that device. What the fuck is wrong with you? We were smiling so big last time you talked and now we're stunned. No, I, yes, obviously,

I think there's like a very cool horror movie or a gothic novel in that concept for sure. It's, but like I say, I don't know that I would read it. The, it's funny. The one, the one kind of soft limit Josie and I have when we put the stories together is, and it was my limit, I said it to her. I was like, nothing with just like hardcore torture.

Like I don't want to listen to, I personally wouldn't listen to a podcast about someone being like gruesomely tortured. I think it would put me off my, my Wheaties. Yeah. It's not necessary. Yeah, no, no. But I also get the grim appeal

that something like a Torture Museum has because I'm down up until then. I'm like, cool vampire castle. Yes, blood. And it's the same shit, really. Yeah, I guess the thing for me would be like, were the instruments used or were they props? For me, that's like the difference.

If they were props, it would be fine. It wouldn't mean anything really. But if they were like used, that's different because they hold history and memory in them. What if you, what if your novel happens where like you're at the Torture Museum and you put a hand on the rack and you flash back, but it's just a prop version.

So all you see is like drunk museum guys. I feel like that's your novel. Yes, that's true. That's, that's, I don't know if I could get a novel out of it. I could do a short story. That's your short story. Oh man.

Okay, I have a, a, a, a minfamous for us as well. No, this one I suppose is kind of related to, to quarantine pandemic life somewhat because it involves a, a tiger in an inappropriate place. I definitely watched all of Tiger King in one go last March. I haven't seen it. Really?

Haven't seen it? I wasn't interested in it. To me, I was just like, oh, it just made me too sad to see all the animals locked up. This is a very like seminal piece of like, like very early COVID nostalgia, isn't it? Yeah. This was like two weeks in and we were like, fuck,

I guess we've got to watch TV now and then they put out the show and everyone. I'll just binge this one TV show and then the pandemic will be over, right? Like that's, yeah, that's kind of the vibe. And it was good news, Josie. But so you've got it, but do you, this is I assume an unrelated frustrated tiger.

This is a tiger, a recent date of about last week or so that was loose in Houston. Oh, I read about that. Oh no. We had a tiger on our streets. Isn't it like a week or something? Yeah. It was a week where they couldn't find this tiger that was.

What's the tiger's name? I know this. I know this. I'm going to guess it was like Poppy. That would have been a nice Poppy. The tiger's on the loose. Watch out, lock up your sons. Poppy's out.

She's going to eat them up. She's a man eater. I wish it were Poppy. It's India. Okay. As in, as in tigers live in India. It's a little drab for me, but go for it. Yeah, yeah.

It was first reported when a guy was eating his dinner in his home, looked out the window and there was a tiger outside. Awesome. And then he browned all over his fucking chair. Not to be crass, but that's what I do. No, then he took photos of it and posted it on like a neighborhood.

Like I'm guessing it's next door, like a neighborhood app. Do they have a box you can check off for tiger? Not yet, but now maybe they do, probably. And so an off deputy cop living nearby saw it on the neighborhood forum and came by and he called the police, called in of control of that. And while he was waiting for all of that, he had his gun out and was pointing it at the tiger,

trying to like, I suppose make this thing. The tiger doesn't understand gun. I know, I know. But before anybody showed up, a man jumped into the yard from a nearby house. This was all in someone's backyard. And his name was Victor Hugo Cuevas. That's a perfect name for this guy.

Yeah, yeah, pretty much. And he grabbed the tiger by the collar. He kissed it on the forehead and he took it into a nearby house yelling, apparently off deputy cop claims. He said, that is my tiger. Don't shoot, that is my tiger. So moments, yeah, he takes it into the house

and then minutes later, he's seen leaving the house with the tiger and getting into a white SUV and driving off somewhere. So yeah, so then everybody, the entire Houston city was like, okay, there's a tiger out there. So we best be looking for it. Cuevas, he's a 26 year old guy. He was out on bond for a murder charge

in nearby county. Yeah, this story is just amazing. It's freaking wild and he's 26. Like he's just like little baby with the thing. That's a full life for 26. Yeah, yeah. Murder conviction and a loose tiger, like he's really, he's going for maximalism.

Exactly. What did he dress like? Did it show who he was as a person? There's a few photos. The dazzled cowboy hat. Is he goth is what Fran wants to know. Is he just a goth tiger murderer? Like I just want to know the picture of who he is.

There's a very kind of blurry photo that was released by Cuevas's attorney and he's holding the tiger and Cuevas has red pants on, red almost like baggy parachuty pants and maybe like a sweater. It's obscured by the tiger so you can't see, but I don't know, relatively stylish, I will say. No bedazzled cowboy hat, but Cuevas claims again and again

that it is not his animal, that it is not his tiger. He said it's my tiger. But he said it's my tiger as he kissed it. That was his whole thing. He's got one quote in this story. That's my tiger. It was a moment of passion, okay? He didn't mean it.

He put lips to fur, he meant it. I know, I know, I know. Well, when he was finally found by Houston authorities cause his bond had, no, what is it called? Lawyering things. Like his bail bond? A warrant was out. A warrant was out, yeah, yeah.

And then he was released on bond but his attorney claims that it of course is not his tiger. So I don't know, we can't, yeah. What else can the poor attorney do? Just lie about it, not being his tiger and we'll come up with a story when the SUV full of tiger resurfaces with him in it. Yeah, and like just go into his house.

If he has a tiger in his house, it's gonna be pretty obvious. Yeah, that's true. There'll be frosted flakes everywhere. Yeah. They'll just, they're just like obvious and like won't he, like his bills be like to the butcher a lot?

I don't know, I feel like it's just like. That's true, absolutely. Like it's an easy trail to be like, do you own a tiger? My client eats half a horse carcass every day, your honor. I've been actually in his house probably does not smell too great too. Probably smells like a fucking tiger lives there. Yeah, there's probably like shit everywhere.

Yeah. But owning a tiger is a violation of Houston, of Harris County law, but it is legal under Texas state law with certain restrictions. That's crazy to me. Shouldn't it just be like flat out like life illegal? Like just world illegal.

But if Texas, if you say that, Texas will be like, no, we'll make it legal. Quit trying to step on my four fathers. We're allowed to have tigers. Exactly. We're allowed to have a tiger. My great, great, great, great, great grandpa did not come to this country not to have a tiger.

Yeah, exactly. But all his other murder charge stuff, Quevas, it all came back into, back into the courts. So he was. Yeah, what's this murder? Oh, I don't, I don't fucking know. I don't know. It's a murder charge.

Why is it? Wait a minute, you didn't look, I don't mean to roast you, but you didn't look into the murder charge. I'm going to guess it wasn't premeditated. He doesn't seem smart enough for it to be bad. No, I will say that this was a, you spilled your drink on me at a club murder,

maybe I don't know. Yeah, this is just like a spur of passion murder for him. Yeah. I think, or someone tried to touch his tiger. Like. That's true. Did he kill someone with the tiger? I don't think there's just so many options here.

So they find Quevas, of course, and that was like Wednesday. Like the tiger was spotted Saturday, went missing Saturday. Quevas comes back into custody on the Wednesday, and then this past Sunday, they found the tiger. So while the tiger was on the loose, did India hurt anybody? Or did she just have a peaceful romp?

No, there's no reported cases at least. This is still fresh. It was yesterday, I guess, that they found her. So. Right. But. Good for her, good for India then. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I like that. If she just like wandered. Yeah, just had to chill like Houston outing, went to the turkey leg hut. I bet life with your man, Victor Hugo, was so intense. Yeah. That she was just like, oh my God, I can hear myself think.

Yeah, probably. That's probably what it was. It was like a little spa vacation for her. She went, she looked at some birds. She was loving it, I'm sure. What of India now, what becomes of India? She's being taken to a sanctuary to her new home at the Cleveland Armory Black Beauty Ranch,

which is about 200 miles north of Houston. And that's the story of the tiger in Houston. All right, I'm really, I'm like, I'm ready. I'm good to go. Let's go, let's go. My engines revved here. Woo-hoo! I'm so excited.

All right. So I would like to share a little story with you. There's a man, I'm gonna call him Peter. All right, it's not his real name, but I'm gonna call him Peter. Mystery from the get-go. And he starts to sweat uncontrollably. And when he looks into his eyes,

he looks into me or he looks into his eyes and he notices that his pupils are really small and that his eyes are glassy. And he knows that death is a few months away. First, it's his inability to regulate his temperature. And then his blood pressure gets really high. And then he loses the ability to sleep. He stops being able to focus.

He starts having intense hallucinations. Dementia starts to set in. And did I mention that he's only like in his 30s? He's lost control of his body and his mind. He falls into a coma and dies. And 12 months after his first symptoms appear, he's dead. But it's not just Peter, all right? It's something that he watched his dad die of,

his sister, his grandmother, his cousin. And back and back and back throughout the family line. When people started to record it, death marked by insomnia and a breaking of the mind, all starting around middle age and all fatal, within months to maybe if you're a little bit lucky, you'll get a year or two. Wait, you said 30 is middle age?

Well, they say 30, they say middle age. It usually starts- That's the one thing I hear. Okay, I'm in my mid-30s, all right? So I'm like, I'm not dissing the 30s. But, you know, it starts, so young middle age to like older, but you don't really get past a certain age of life, you know? Okay, yeah.

Before suddenly you start getting all these crazy symptoms. And then the main thing is you stop being able to sleep and then you die. Shall I just say it? Yeah, say it. What do you think it is? It's fatal insomnia.

Yeah, it is fatal insomnia. Well, in this case, it's fatal familia insomnia. Okay. Which is actually, so fatal familia insomnia, and this is like why I'm so interested in it, is that it only affects around 36 to 70, like the reason I say 70 is because I read like one paper that said 70,

but most places quote around 36 families on the entire planet have this like genetic mutation in which by the time they hit their middle age, it's a 50-50 chance, if you're gonna get it, and if you get it, you're dead. Fuck. Oh my God. And it was sort of like this like infamous

in the medical community, which is why I thought it would fit for this podcast. Beauty, yep, for sure it does. I am cacking my pants here. You had me or Peter. Damn. Peter. And now the reason why I say Peter is because all,

because I've read a lot of different medical literature, like I went to like actual sources, and they all just use like not real names, right? Cause they're like. Of course. Subject 151039. Yeah, so Peter. It was like so fatal familia insomnia

gives you a 50-50% chance of living. And the thing that I've read most is that like even if you don't have it, it haunts your waking life. And ultimately it like haunts what's left of your dreams because you're so worried about getting it. Cause you've seen so many in your people, like family, like die of it. So you never know, like is this night of restless sleep,

the like beginning. Stop, stop scaring the listeners. Oh my God. I think the listeners are getting upset. Fran, do I have it? Like how do you? But it's like, this is the familial thing. So it's a family line.

So you would know because like, obviously you would know because your family members are dying of this thing. Although like there's like some cases of people who their family members didn't tell them. And then they just all of a sudden couldn't sleep and they didn't know why. And then they were told, oh, by the way, you probably have this like genetic mutation

and you're going to die in a few months. I kind of understand from what you were saying, like if it haunts your waking hours and all, you know, if you don't have it, then don't think about it. Don't know about it, you know? So they call it FFI, which I think is great. So well, we can refer to it as FFI to sound like really medical and smart.

Oh wow. This is the new Fran. Do you know what you're doing right now? This is the new Munch Houses by Proxy. Like this is going to take the true crime world by storm and they'll be able to trace it back to this. For me, when I think of FFI, I can only imagine it as like a horrific unfolding

of a slow death filled with terror and confusion of the mind. Oh my gosh. So many well-placed eyebrow raises in that too. Yeah, no, no, she, I could hear, no, you can hear the eyebrows in her voice, it's fine. I have insomnia, I have chronic insomnia and have my entire life.

I have a really messed up kind of seductive love hate going with my dreams where they're very interesting and dramatic and well-drawn, but they're often very violent and very troubling and whatever. So just sleep in general, I've got a real, I'm real hit and miss on my sleep. Here, this particular ailment that is like tied up in sleep,

but it's also like tied up in this inability to, you kind of lose your ability to perceive reality. That kind of stuff all mixed up together is really haunting for me and I would imagine for a lot of people. So when I read about this, like I've been interested in fatal insomnia since I was a teenager,

because I also struggle with insomnia and it was always something that was just like on my mind. And then I remember just like reading, because this was when I was a teenager, it was like such a long time ago, but I'd have to go to the library and like read things, but just like reading books about it and like case studies and stuff

and I always wondered like, can insomnia kill you? And yeah, it can kill you. So I looked up. So like one of the first known cases of FFI was traced to a Venetian doctor like long time ago. And basically it just records like this doctor just fell into this like paralyzed stupor and he was just in this like stupor for a few months

until he just died. And that was it. He was a flourishing doctor living his life. And then all of a sudden it was just like can't sleep, dead. So a pretty clear, clear cut case, right? Cause it wasn't like other ailments or other like factors. Yeah, that was it. And then the thing is, is that like ever,

like he was like the first of his family that they recorded, but then after that it was like, his like kids started doing it, like a grandkids started dying and it was just like, and then it just kept going and going and going, and there's absolutely no cure for it. So these families kind of just have to suffer. There is no treatment for it.

It's so, it's so rare that, you know, if you put to most people, what do we need a cure for? You know, let's say breast cancer or fatal familial insomnia. Everyone knows someone who has been touched by cancer in some way, but this is, like I hadn't even heard about this, you know, until you kind of have mentioned it. And like, so I was curious as to like what it is, like what is this thing that can like strike

these families down? And so you guys have, have you heard of mad cow disease? Oh yeah, that's a classic. Oh, I know mad cow. You know mad cow disease, right? 1998, good times. So mad cow is a prion disease. And so there's only like caveat here,

I'm not a medical professional. And now you, that's how you know you're one of us. Once you've made that caveat, you're officially a host of this show. You know, I, I read a lot of stuff and I'm going to try and like figure it out in my like non-medical brain. But so from what I understand,

there's only like three prion diseases. FFI is like one of them. And so, okay, I'm actually going to read something because it explains it in a much better way. And it's from an article called sporadic fatal insomnia in a young woman, a diagnostic challenge case report. So wait, you actually did research for this.

That's how that works. I did lots of research. The database. This was on the BMC neurology database, whatever. Okay. Okay, so human prion diseases are rare. They're transmissible, scary. They're invariably fatal, neurodegenerative diseases

that are characterized by the accumulation of a misfolded host protein, which is the prion protein in the brain tissue. So I guess this prion brain tissue like kind of goes crazy and causes a lot of problems. They are classified into three main groups, sporadic, acquired and genetic. Sporadic cases with no known environmental source

of infection include CJD, which is a crushed fueled Jacob disease. And it's like the most known, yeah. And then there's the sporadic fatal insomnia, which is one of the beast common. And then there's like a subset of CJD, which is mad cow disease, basically. And so that's kind of like these three things.

And what they do is infect the thalamus, which is like this walnut piece of brain that sort of like filters information from your body, like sensations and stuff into your frontal cortex. So like if you get a sensation and then it sort of like zips up and goes into your thalamus and like your thalamus sends it to the brain,

like that's hot. And then you're like, ouch, that's hot. And so it like does that. And then it also helps to like regulate your temperature. And it also like regulates your blood pressure and just like all these different things. It's like in charge of a lot. An important piece of your brain to say the least.

And so like this prion infects that important little piece. And so like when we think about going to sleep, something our bodies do is they like lower our blood pressure. They lower our temperature. They do all these like regulating things through the thalamus and like that puts our body to sleep. And so this disease affects the thalamus, so it can't do that anymore.

And then it's sort of like you can't sleep and then you die. So it's just like a very like interesting thing. And something else that felt really interesting was the way they were wording it. Like the thalamus is like, it interprets like sensory projection. And then I was just like, oh, like what is like like sensory projection? Like what is reality almost?

That's like where my agreement. You had some metaphysical awakenings in this research chair. I was like, what is real? And like, because you know, like our like our eyes don't actually see what we're seeing. Like right, it's just like. No, we see it upside down and backwards.

Is there a bunch of stuff in this world that our brains aren't letting us perceive because they're not relevant to like our daily lives? You know, it's like a whole, it's a whole journey that you can go on. No, for sure, for sure. Oh, does that explain angels, aliens, et cetera, et cetera? If you want to go down that route.

Okay, stop it. Now you're milking it. Tigers. Now you're milking it. I don't know. The brain is so interesting to me. Like what does your brain allow you to do because it controls you, right?

And then like when you have this tiny little like imperfection in like your genetic code. A misfolded protein or whatever it is. And it like stops you from sleeping. That's it. You're done. One of the things I asked myself and maybe you're asking yourselves is like,

well, why don't they just take some sleeping pills? I didn't, I assumed this was something that pills couldn't cure, but tell us why they can't just take some sleeping pills. Well, take a melatonin, man, calm down. Just like smoke a joint, like come on, go to sleep. But it's like they just don't work really. But I'll tell you the story of this guy named Daniel.

Please. So there was a man named Daniel who had FFI. He's one of the people where his mom didn't tell him that this ran in their family. I think just hoping that he wouldn't get it, but then he did and then he found out and they're like, oh yeah, a few months to live. He's like, well, shit.

So what he did is he bought a van and decided just to travel America. And he was like, whatever, like fuck it, I'm gonna do what I want. I'm not gonna sleep, by the way. I've got all this time. I'm not gonna sleep. I would maybe wonder if such a person

should be driving a van out of America. He had to hire a driver and he had to hire a nurse to take care of him. That's legit, that's legit. And then as he was doing this, he decided to, so the reason why he's super unique in the literature is because nobody had really tried experimental treatments before, because it's like so rare.

So he went around and was like just trying all these different treatments, like whatever. He was like, I might as well just try everything. He noticed sleeping pills didn't work because they would only put him to sleep for about max 15 minutes and it wasn't really restful. Or if he would drift off and one noise would wake him up because the thing with the thalamus is it's like,

if it doesn't calm you down, you're on high alert, like high, high alert 24-7. So you just can't sleep. So even sleeping pills can't dampen that. So there was a really cool autopsy report I read. Yeah, I read an autopsy report. Look at you, look at you. My god, round of applause for Fran Puttingham, truly.

She was in the microfiche, she was in the library where you crank the handle and the bookcase moves. She was there. Don't squish no one, yeah. I was like, what is up with this thing? But it was super cool because while I couldn't understand most of it, because it was in medical talk, there was this really cool image that stuck out to me

was where they like sliced into his brain, the Daniel's brain. And when they looked at the thalamus, they described it as if a bunch of worms had been tunneling through the thalamus. Ooh. Like, that's what it kind of like looks like. Oh my gosh.

So they just like, it was just like this disease, just like ate through the thing. And I guess like with the other one I was talking about, like CDG, it was like, they kind of describe it as like Swiss cheese brain. When they do the autopsy, like there's holes through it and stuff. But a lot of it, I guess they do a lot of autopsies after.

They don't really know what's happening. But anyways, I thought that was really cool. Like, I was like, ooh, worms tunneling through it. Sleepy worms. So, okay, so the one thing that Daniel did find that worked, because he ended up living for years, actually. They gave him months, but he got a couple years. And one of the reasons they think

is because he started to sleep in an egg. It was like a sensory deprivation egg. Good call. I don't know. Go Daniel. Yes. I don't mean to laugh. I don't mean to laugh.

And I feel, I do want to like take a moment to register that like, I feel incredibly bad for anyone who's kind of stuck with this genetic lottery loser. That's terrible. I'm so sorry. An egg, you say. An egg. It was a sensory deprivation egg

where I guess he could just float in the darkness without any sound. Nice. And I guess it would kind of, it would work. But the downside would be when he would wake up, he would only get about four hours max. But when he would wake up, his brain would flip out and he would have these intense terrifying hallucinations.

And he wouldn't know if he was alive or dead. And it was just like pure terror. This is, this is, this cuts. So to the core of all of my sleep-based anxiety and shit. Like I have those, because like I say, I have these vivid dreams. Every morning, particularly, I have these vivid, vivid dreams. And I wake up and I'm like, was that real?

Is that reality? Is Julia Roberts really 72? You know? I don't have three aunts who are those women. Like I properly do. And it can be like a very, at its best. It's funny, like I've just kind of described it to you. But at its worst, that's like a really hellish and dissociative.

Yeah. Like I've definitely woken up from a dream like and not been sure what was happening and like convinced that what was in my dream was real. Like it's very terrifying. It really, really is. And so I can't even imagine like falling asleep in an egg and then waking up in the pitch black floating egg

and being like, am I like a lot? Am I? No, I know poor guy. And this poor guy's brain is like flipping out. Oh, after only four hours. Four hours. Like it's not like you've slept for days or something. Yeah.

And it's not every day. It was just like once in a while. And the reason why they think it worked like he stayed alive longer was because he got these like micro four hours every once in a while. And like every time he did it with like, they described it as like washing his brain. One of one of the scientists, he's like described it as he's like, imagine like before like the high tide comes in,

there's like all this like crap on the beach. Yeah. And then then sleep comes in as the tide and like washes it away and it's clean again. And he's like, that's what sleep does to our brain. So kind of like when you don't sleep, it just gets cluttered and cluttered and cluttered with garbage. And there's no chance to wash it clean to start again.

And so the reason why maybe he lived longer was because he got these like little micro like washings every once in a while. Yeah. So. Anyways, so that's like FFI. But the thing that I also wanted to talk about, which may be more relevant to you, Taylor, is something called SFI, which anyone in the world could get.

Why are you being like this? It's called Sporadic Fatal Insomnia. I believe I stated really early on that my one hard limit was torture. Why are you torturing me like this? And I'm just going to keep going because this is this is the shit that that can happen like a bolt of lightning out of the fucking sky, I assume. Pretty much. Yeah.

It's anybody in the world could be like hit with SFI, although only 12 like two dozen cases have ever been recorded in the scientific literature. So you've got to think out of the billions of people on this planet. There's only been 12 people recorded having it. So the chances of you being like 13. They're there. They're not zero. I'm not going to give you that, but thank you.

I will, you know. So it's extremely where the disease duration is typically 13 to 24 months. But there was one case where someone lived for 73 months in this like horrible, halfway, half sleep, dementia, mad stage. So, I mean, there's hope, Taylor. There's high achiever. Yeah, I want to read you a pair like a little thing about a family member who like observed their daughter, who was struck down with this.

So this poor woman, she was 33. OK. She didn't have like a medical history or whatever. And she just developed this sporadic thing. No history of insomnia, right? No, no, it's insomnia, nothing. She just like at 33 years old, she just stopped being stopped sleeping. Unlike you, Taylor, just want to point that out. After she got like they thought she was they thought she had like schizophrenia

or like they didn't know what was wrong there because like, I guess, when you're in this state of like. Like in a more in advanced state of this disease, you. You're awake, but your body mimics actions like you're sleeping. So like there was this one woman who had it and she used to be a piano teacher. And so for like hours and hour, countless hours, she would just sit there like pretend playing the piano, like just staring off into nothing. Oh, my goodness.

So her brain would just do these actions. And like a lot of these people just end up doing actions that they used to do when they were like awake. That is so horrifying. That's fucking terrifying. May I ask may I ask a question? Of course. How does a person like that end up getting diagnosed with something like this that is so rare, whose symptoms mimic,

like you say, various mental illness, they could mimic addiction. They could mimic, you know, something else that is similar to but not as like rare and random as sporadic fatal insomnia. Yeah. So that was that that was the point of the paper that I read. It was like in a medical journal and it was like what to do if you're like if you have a patient who's like showing all these different sides of mental illness and stuff, but then you take like a family history and find out that they stop sleeping at some point and you're like, oh,

this is weird. The only way they can really diagnosis is after you've died to slice your brain open and do an autopsy. And like here are specific things to look for in the brain. And here's like the proteins to like look like the prion protein like thing in the brain. And that's really the only way that they'll know. So they won't know while you're alive. But it kind of doesn't matter because there's no there's nothing they can do.

The grim inevitability of it. Yeah, they're like they can't even treat you like there's just nothing they can do. They just put you in like a home and make and try and make you as comfortable in an egg as possible. So OK, so this is what this family said, how they described the early beginnings of her SFI. So when questioned about insomnia, the family member recalled that the patient had experienced a stirred sleep at the time of her disease onset.

The family member also reported that the patient's sleep pattern progressively deteriorated throughout her illness. Some nights, for example, the patient just did not sleep. On other nights, she did appear to be sleeping, but it was intermittent. During nights that the patient did not sleep, she would roam the house at all hours, unable to calm down. By August of 2006, four hours was the maximum amount of sleep the patient would get in one stretch.

And at times we go for three to four days without any sleep. Medications were prescribed, but they did not work. And then they sort of like this report went on for like when she was actually in the facility and it just was sounded horrible. Like she would just be like scratching at herself because she just wasn't there really anymore. Man, Daniel was kind of like a super cool dude. Yeah, he was like one of the guys.

And the thing was that he like allowed like some like it to be recorded. And like he's just one of like the only people. So there was like a study that was that they're trying to do on this one family line, I think in Italy. And they're having problems because a lot of the family members don't want to be tested because they don't want to know if they have it or not. Yeah, like because like you say the the curse of knowing. So they're just like, no.

So they're really having trouble like experiment, like trying out new drugs and like different things because people just don't want to know because it's like it's such a horrible thing to have. So I did want to talk a little bit about sleep deprivation in general and like sleep deprivation experiments. Sure. So we talked about like how you can you can get this fatal familial one, which us three, none of us that we know of have this genetic mutation.

We could get this barotic until we get it. And then our parents are like, oh, that we were we're in the 50 percent that keeps it from you. Yeah, exactly. Right. This sporadic insomnia. And these are sort of like diseases you have no control over. Yes. But something that we do have control over is forcing ourselves to sleep awake.

And so I thought it was really interesting. I was like, I just did a little Google and I was like, like longest awake record, like person who did it on purpose. Like what's the story here? So the guy, the longest guy on record, his name is Randy Gardner. He was born in 1946 and at the age of 17, he wanted to be the person who stayed awake the longest. Do you guys want to guess?

17 year old move. Totally. Do you want to guess how long he lasted? Randy. This is the most fun I've had since you said the word insomnia. I want to milk this moment of guessing how long this man consensually stayed awake. Yeah. And this was in 1963. OK.

I'm going to say 11 days. I'll go six. 11 days, 25 minutes. Whoa. You get both showcases, babe. That was close. So he really just wanted to see how long he could go to sleep. And it was actually really interesting the way it started.

So back in 1959, there was a radio DJ named Peter Tripp. He was a New York City DJ. And he held a wake-a-thon for charity. So he really wanted to make himself famous and get a name for himself. So he decided, hey, I'm just going to stay awake the longest. That bulletproof. Bulletproof. Like, right?

Hey, baby, want to know how long I can stay awake? So I guess he like he went behind a piece of glass and he stayed on air or whatever the whole time. And he'd let people observe him. There was like scientists there, whatever, doctors. And he stayed away for eight days. And the interesting story about Peter is like after he did that, other radio DJs across America started to take up the challenge

and see how long they could stay awake. I spuck it, challenge-esque. Yeah. OK. So it was like eight days, nine days, 10 days. And then Randy was like, screw you guys, 11 days. And so he did it for 11 days, 25 minutes. And then about a few days in, because he was like recording it or something,

a couple of scientists came to observe him and a couple of doctors. So the thing with his case is that like other people have said they've done it longer, but there's actually no like proof. And like the thing with like forcing yourself to stay awake is your brain does this thing called microsleeps. And they last for like a few seconds and they. So your brain will just like go to sleep for a second. And you don't know what's happening.

Like you have no idea. People around you don't won't even know. Like you could be driving and you could do a microsleep and your brain just will auto take over. Like so this is the thing. So I think I've done a few of those. I must have. You must have. Yeah. Yeah. And so unless you have scientists there

like recording your like brain things and making sure that you're actually awake the whole time. I mean, you know, so anyways, he's the one on record. I read an interview with him now. He's like in his well, the time of the interview, he was like in his seventies and he's still he's still riding off that. Yeah. But the interesting thing is, is that it haunted his life. Fuck. It was like I should have known.

So the thing was like for like, it was the only thing he really ever accomplished of note. And it was brought up like throughout his whole life. Anything he did, he was the guy who stayed up to wake the longest. But interestingly, when he turned 50, he got like what he calls karmic payback in that he got insomnia for real and he was unable to sleep and it drove him mad.

And he thinks he thinks it was because that he tempted fate with this contest. He was playing God. You were meant to sleep once a day, my friend. He would talk about how he would like go outside at like 2 a.m. and just howl and frustration at the moon and being unable to sleep and just like how horrible it felt. And so it was just like it was just horrible for him.

But he said like in terms of like the progression of the actual 11 days, it was like he said like on day two or three, he got incredibly nauseous and he was nauseous the rest of the time. Like well, about like about like day five, if he felt like he had Alzheimer's, I remember he was 17. He couldn't remember anything like facts and stuff. Like he was just so disoriented. And then he just remembers getting really angry.

And by the end, he was just mean. He was like, I was just so mean. And then he when they when they called it, he fell in he immediately fell into a 14. I'm sorry. Please go ahead. He fell into like a 14 hour sleep. Of course. And then he woke up kind of fine. Hey, I sorry.

The thing that's the thing that's making me laugh is the idea of him maybe trying to keep a semblance of a no more social life. So like imagine me and me and Josie are eating at Denny's and Fran rolls up and she's like nine days into staying up for no reason. And she's incredibly hostile. Just like. And she's just like, well, Fran, maybe you should. Maybe you should.

What do you say? I'm going to stop doing the record. Is that what you say? No, Fran. No, Fran, it's fine. So he's got this like karmic retribution for not sleeping and which there was like a like a doctor, scientist or whatever, who was like piping into this like thing that I read and he was like, yeah, actually, if you like miss sleep, you you can't recover it.

It's sort of just like lost your body, can't function. And it kind of like takes away like chips away at you over time. But if we go back to like Peter Tripp, that New York City DJ, who started off this whole thing, it actually really ruined his life. So after his eight days when he woke up finally, when he woke back up, his friends and colleagues said he was not the same person as when he started it, like mentally, he was not the same. His temperament was different.

And he he was never able to like get back to like equal equilibrium with himself. He lost his job. He ended up like becoming just like a traveling salesman, wandering the country with no real prospects. And he really credited that eight days of not sleeping to kind of the downfall of his life. Wow.

So moral of the story, don't experiment with your sleep. It's not worth it. Was it a question? It was all dudes who were doing it. Is this correct? Yeah, there was like a Guinness World Record for a woman who apparently stayed awake for 25 days in a rocking chair marathon. But I'm guessing she was micro sleeping the whole time.

In a rocking chair, totally. Yeah. And the Guinness Book of World Records actually after that pulled that category because they didn't want people to try it because it's so dangerous. So it's not even a thing you can do for the Guinness World Record anymore. Smart. There's a very famous.

Do either of you I I don't know. I'll just say it. Do either of you read like creepypastas? No, no. So do you know what creepypastas are? No. OK. So basically, they're like very commonly circulated

internet things to spook and scare. They're usually they're they're fictional, but are often presented as real. I think Slenderman half-assed started as a creepypasta. You know what I mean? OK, yeah. Like that kind of vibe. OK, yeah. There is one of them that is about this.

It's about like a Russian sleep experiment where the the patients all went mad and started clawing. It gets like obviously very graphic and spooky, but it's entirely premised around this kind of fear that you're tapping into here, which is like, if I don't sleep, I'll go mad, which yeah. Yeah, but you kind of yes. Yeah, you kind of will.

And you may not recover afterwards. It may be you may like permanently damage your brain. And and there's something about like you can't you can't get your rhythm back. Like and so that sort of led me to the idea of circadian rhythms and like body rhythms. And I was like, well, is that like what is the research on that? Like what what did people have to say? What what wacky experiments have been done?

Because I know there's wacky experiments and I was right. Good. So don't you love when that feeling is justified when you're like, I bet if I turn over this rock and ant will come out and then it does. And then it does. And so throughout history, the way that scientists have like tried to study circadian rhythm, body rhythm stuff, is that they put people in caves in like pitch black caves

and they like force them to be in there for a certain amount of time to see if their body clock will self regulate to like a circadian rhythm, which is like Sir Sir means like round and like day. Daya means like day. So like a round day rhythm. OK, etymology. So it was like. We put out such a shitty product with friends out here.

I know. I just really really really really get back to some episodes. I'm like, oh, I mispronounce the word ladder. Wow. OK, so yes, go ahead. So circadian rhythms and these caves. I'm going to try it. OK, they would put people in caves and they did that like throughout

like 100 years here, 100 years there, new people in caves, new people in caves. But what they found out was that, yeah, our bodies, we naturally like wake up when the sun is up, even if we can't see the sun. And even if it's been 32 days that we haven't seen the sun, we kind of just naturally do that anyway. So we go to sleep when it's dark. I didn't know if you guys know this, but humans are something called monophasic sleepers versus phylophasic sleepers,

which is like monophasic means that we sleep at night and are awake during the day versus other animals who are like polyphasic, whereas that they take mini sleeps all throughout the 24 hour cycle. And so can't nap. So they're just like and that's how like a lot of animals function in the polyphasic. But we actually used to be polyphasic until about 70,000 to 480,000 B.C. when Neanderthal man, for whatever reason, became monophasic sleepers. And we don't know why?

No, they don't know why. It just sort of happened, I guess, in that like huge range of like 30,000 years. We sort of just became these monophasic sleepers. In my guess, the reason why we do have these like body rhythms is because it's been from like 40,000 years before Christ that we've like people didn't know B.C. means before Christ. Wow, another round of applause for Fran. She's pulling out all the stops.

If you didn't know that little piece of knowledge, to be fair, I don't think we've gone B.C. yet. This is our first redip in our. No, that's true. We've never gone B.C. That is true. That is true. Very cool.

It was also interesting where they like tried this with plants and they put plants in a completely sunless, dark loose room. And they found that plants opened up with the sun and closed with the sun like they would normally do independently of seeing the sun. Yeah, yeah. So they kept the rhythm. If you if you sort of mess up your rhythm in this like really intentional way, you can really have like a super effect on the rest of your life.

So don't do it. Thank you. Don't try this at home. Don't please. Every one of our audience members is sitting there like 11 days. I think I could do like 12 and a half. No, don't don't do it. Don't do it. Plus, you're probably going to be micro sleeping.

So you're not going to be doing it for real. That's true. You're going to be a cheater. I had a buddy in high school who tried to not sleep because he wanted to hallucinate. He was like an experiment by drugs. I know he was also there's better ways. There's better way. Yeah, he was also the kid who like on track team,

refused to wear shoes and got ringworm because he was he deserves. He deserves his life. Yeah, yeah. So one of the things that I was thinking about when I was like reading all these things, like I do remember, though, when I was like younger, when I would like I would force myself to stay awake for like a like 24 hours, 36 hours, whatever, because it's kind of like felt good at the end. Like by that, like, yeah, no, I did too.

Right, because it feels like kind of like you're all tingly. Summer, summer, you do it and then you crash for like 16 hours. But it feels so oh, it's the sleep of kings truly. Yeah, right? Like I just imagine like it's like a dark room. The bed's like cold and you like slip into it when you're like a warm and fuzzy and like I need and then you're in your egg. Yeah, you're in your egg and you just like sleep hard.

Like I freaking loved that. But like that is like a totally different feeling from when you can't sleep, you know, if it's the same amount of time and you want to sleep, but you can't. It you never get to that hazy warm feeling. You're just in that frustration feeling. But something you might like, Taylor, like harken back to interrogating. So sleep deprivation. Yeah, it's actually a way of torture.

Yeah, the first time I mentioned on air that we have a no-torture rule is the time that we get a torture straight. Beautiful, bring it. Good, break the rules. So, OK, so there is this guy, Mecham Benjen, the Prime Minister of Israel, from 1977 to 1983, as everyone knows. And so he described his experience of sleep deprivation as a prisoner of the NKVD. In the Soviet Union, so how he says it feels like.

In the head of the interrogator prisoner, a haze begins to form. His spirit is weary to death. His legs are unsteady and he has one sole desire to sleep. Anyone who has experienced this desire knows that not even hunger and thirst are comparable to it. And like, I guess something that they would do when they torture people this way is that like you're kept awake for several days like forcefully. They finally let you sleep and then they will suddenly wake you up within like 20

minutes and start questioning right away. And so you're in this like haze of not knowing what's happening. And it's like your brain has finally got it what it desired. And they rip it away from you. And then they keep you up before a few more days. And they just keep doing this over and over and over again. It's one of the like things you're not supposed to do in torture, like the rules. The Geneva Convention kind of thing.

Yeah, it's like it because it's one of the most like horrible forms of torture, I guess, is to keep sleep from someone. I know. And then like, have you guys ever heard of like those like you're an Instagram or whatever and you're scrolling and they'll be like, oh, if you're going to be a productive human, you should only sleep for three hours a day, four hours a day. Like this famous person only slept for like this long. Cold showers at 7 p.m. at 7 a.m. every morning, you know,

and they just like shame you for sleeping for eight hours. But like I just I hate that. And like apparently Margaret Thatcher only slept for four hours a night. And like she sucked. Yeah. And they put the like pull out all these other famous people who they didn't. But I'm like, how do you know that? I've heard that with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but she didn't. I've heard it with Donald Trump.

How do they know? How do they know? I'm like, come on. No, you know, if I don't get my nine hours, I'm like, I can't do life. Yeah. My sleep is erratic and unpredictable. It can go anywhere from four to 12, four to 12, four to 12. Yeah. Wow. Once in a while, if I have to wake up for a flight, sure, I can go on the five hour. I want to actually just step in here and out somebody

who's been laying low for this entire discussion. Josie Conks out when her fucking head hits the pillow. Yeah, I do. Truly, truly within seconds. And I've been micro sleeping this whole time. So it's her. It's her worst quality is that any time I'm around, I just like not any time I'm around.

Narcolepsy, she doesn't have narcolepsy. There was a rumor that our principal had narcolepsy in high school. At least what a rumor. I know. And the secretary had to like strategically place pillows around his office in case he fell asleep. That's that. Yeah, that's weird. I know. In this research, I actually like read this like quick little thing about like

how apparently there was like two Doberman pinchers who had narcolepsy. So then they put together like a Doberman narcolepsy lab and they got all these Dobermans to like and this is how they like studied narcolepsy. And that's like why we know so much about it now is because of these dogs. Wow, Dobermans. Well, Fran, are you I mean, nine hours. Are you like a head hits the pillow and you're out kind of gal? I am a

shameful secret. I am a have to take melatonin every single night because I've like made myself addicted to it, sleeper. So be careful. I take my melatonin and I have for six years. And by this point, I'm like, whatever. So I just like I'm giving it. So I just take it and then I'm asleep within like 20 minutes.

I nibble on I have a 3 Mg of I've learned that I can only like barely suckle at the teeth of melatonin. Otherwise, it gets too intense. So I just have a little three milligram tab that I nibble a little bit off of every night. Oh, my God, I'm at like 15 milligrams. And Jesus Christ, that's that's horse tranquilizer shit. I'm like, pop it. And then I'm like, oh, and then I sleep for my nine hours and I wake up refresh.

Yeah, you do sleep for your nine hours. I bet taking 15 milligrams of melatonin. I use I started off at one milligram. So it's a dangerous beast. People don't, you know, you have to you have to increase. Do you. So here's a question. Do either of you ever work with sleep in the writing that you do or dreams? I have a lot of I have a lot of dreams in my stories, which I feel like

by common consensus is supposed to be gauche or something, but I don't find it. So I think you can write about dreams really interestingly. Yeah, I dare to. Trying to think it doesn't enter my work a whole lot, but I definitely come up with ideas with sleep. Like I will be writing. I'll be like, I think I need a nap and then I'll nap in like a plot point or something, an image or something will come.

That's how your girl Stephanie Meyer did Twilight for the first time. She had she had a dream. Wow. To true. I am during the like, I guess, height of the pandemic. I was having a lot of dreams about bees and wasps crawling into my ear and I would reach in and like grab their buzzing butts. And I would try and pull them out, but they'd like break in half

and like one half would just keep going in. And I like kept having that dream over and over and over again. And I don't know what it was. I just maybe it's the 15 milligrams of melatonin. They're inserting it into your ear. It's just like, it was just like in there. And now being like, you're just you're going to lay in bed one night. You're just going to be laying there and be like and then an hour is

going to go by and then two hours and then three hours and four hours. And you're going to be tossing and turning. And you're going to look at the clock and the times can be closer to dawn. And then the next day is going to happen. And the next night it's the same thing until one day you're like, that's it. I got sporadic fatal insomnia. And then you're going to be a guest on the show, friend. What was the name of your book?

No, my gosh, don't even joke that's terrifying. I can happen. I'm just saying I know I know I know it can. I know it can. It probably won't. But it could. It probably won't. But it could. That's what I want everyone to take home. That's true. That's true of everything in life. It probably won't happen. But maybe it could. But it could.

I loved that. That was so cool. That was a hellish nightmare. I loved it. No, I think that that was first of all, I want to thank you for like some truly outstanding research. Yeah, that was really cool. Because that, like you say, it's it's different getting your research off some French murder blog versus getting your research

from like accredited sources and journals and so on. So so kudos for that. And you and you had a good range. It was really interesting. Really did frighten me for a good hour and 20 minutes, whatever we've been talking here, you really did put the screws to me. So that's five out of five. Taylor, I really want to get you an egg for your birthday.

Thank you. I would love if you got me an egg. Maybe we'll start at like a kickstart or something. That's a good use of people's funds right now. Yes. But like if you get like would you get like a water egg or a bad egg? Because I do know there's like different types of eggs. Like there are ones where it's like it's your like bed inside of the egg. Yeah, there's some that where there's just the water and you float in the water in the egg, but the water what you'd be so soggy if you woke up.

I'm going to go water and here's why. My big concern is that a fire will start in the night and a piece of rafter will fall down upon my egg, thus barricading me inside. And oh, my God, it would boil me alive. You'd be the little yolk. Oh, no. I'm sure you'd die of like smoke inhalation, some sort of vent system that would just like pump in smoke.

So you would die really fast or you think it's a nightmare and you'll wake up at any second, but you won't because it's real. So I'm going to get you that egg. Thanks for tuning in. If you want more infamy, go to bittersweetinfamy.com or search for us wherever you find podcasts. We usually release new episodes every other Sunday. You can also follow us on Instagram at bittersweetinfamy. If you liked the show, consider subscribing, leaving a review, or just telling a friend. Stay sweet. Thanks again to our guest host Francine Cunningham, who did a fantastic job with this story. You

can find out more about Fran and buy her book of poetry on me at FrancineCunningham.ca. The sources she used for this story were the pages on fatal familial insomnia from the genetic and rare diseases information center, as well as the national organization for rare disorders, sporadic fatal insomnia in a young woman, a diagnostic challenge case report by Moody, Schoenberger, Maddox, Zoo, Krakow, and Kali for BMC Neurology in 2011, the tragic fate of the people who stopped sleeping by David Robson for BBC January 19, 2016, sporadic fatal insomnia masquerading as a perineoplastic cerebellar syndrome that was by Meta Huddleston Scalabrine et al. for JAMA Network July 2008, Dreams and Dreaming by Jennifer M. Wint in the Stanford

Encyclopedia of Philosophy Last Revised 2019, The History of Sleep Science by Stuart Jeffries for The Guardian in 2011, 11 Days Without Sleep, The Haunting Effects of a Record-breaking Stunt from WBUR News by Parthshaw Shankar Vedantam, Jennifer Schmidt, Tara Boyle, and Renee Clark 2017 and the Wikipedia article for sleep deprivation. The song you're listening to is Tea Street by Brian Steele. Stay woke.