Something You Should Know - How to Make Money Selling Your Old Stuff & What’s Wrong with How You Sleep

Episode Date: January 30, 2020

It’s fun to play the lottery. If you do, you probably spend more on it than you think. This episode begins with a look at how much people really spend on lottery tickets and what the real odds are of winning the Powerball jackpot. http://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/01/07/heres-what-americans-are-spending-on-lottery-ticke.aspx eBay has made it a lot easier for people to sell stuff they don’t want anymore to someone who does want it. So, do you have stuff that other people want – and how much do you think it is worth? Aaron Lapedis author of The Garage Sale Millionaire (https://amzn.to/2NR3btP) is an expert on buying and selling stuff at garage sales, eBay, Craigslist and elsewhere. Listen as he tells you what just might be luring in old boxes in the attic that could be worth a lot of money. And what to do with it to get it sold. Sometimes you need to charge your phone fast. Listen as I explain some tips that can really speed up the process and getting your battery back up to 100%. Source: David Pogue author of "Pogue's Basics: Essential Tips & Shortcuts" (https://amzn.to/2RN1cb8) We have rules for sleep. For example, mom and dad sleep together in one room. Kids sleep in their room. We go to bed when we are supposed to – but says who? Where did these rules come? According to Benjamin Reiss, professor at Emory University and author of the book, Wild Nights (http://amzn.to/2lWdPP7) claims that our rules for sleeping today are very different than they have been for most of human history. Hear what he has to say and you be liberated from a sleep routine that doesn’t really work for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

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A lot of our trouble with sleep has to do with our society and our expectations. As soon as you have a rule, you have a conflict. Just tell a kid to go to bed at a certain time, you have a conflict. The way our society structures sleep creates a lot of these conflicts both within families and between groups of people. All this today on Something You Should Know. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast

that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars.

Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. Do you play the lottery? I play it sometimes. And I don't play it because I think I'm really going to win. I play it because it gives me a few moments of fantasy to think about what I would do if I did, even though I know I won't.

And that few moments of fantasy is worth a couple of bucks for a lottery ticket. But people spend more on lottery tickets than you might realize. In the states where the lottery is played, Americans in 2014, Americans spent $70 billion on lottery tickets. That's over $300 per person in those states. In fact, Americans spent more on lottery tickets that year than they did on sporting events, movie tickets, books, video games, and recorded music. According to Bloomberg Research, the average lottery player in America loses roughly 40 cents for every dollar in tickets purchased,

which is a really bad return on your investment. You've probably heard it before, but if you took the same money that you spent on lottery tickets and invested it and left it alone, over time you could create real wealth for yourself. The odds of that are almost certain. The odds of winning the Power Ball are 1 in 292,201,338. And that is something you should know. Have you ever had a garage sale, or an estate sale, or maybe you sold something on eBay or Craigslist? It's kind of fun to make money off of something that you don't want or need anymore,

and it's easy to imagine this would be kind of fun to do as a career, to buy and sell stuff on eBay or have garage sales or whatever. Well, one person who is really into this is Aaron Lapidus. He is the garage sale millionaire. He has a book called The Garage Sale Millionaire. His website is thegaragesalemillionaire.com, and this is his life. Welcome, Aaron. And so start by talking about how you got into this buying and collecting and selling stuff.

You know, I started when I was seven when my mother said I was not going to be able to get any more toys until I sold some old toys. And whatever I sold from my collection of toys, I could take that money and buy more toys. And we had our first garage sale and I've never looked back. And it's created me in my teens to keep on buying and selling and get bigger and more exciting things like coins and comic book collections. And I kept on rolling it and rolling it until I amassed a small little fortune, which I then turned into a well-known art gallery in Denver, Colorado. So where do you find this? I mean, is there stuff in my attic that maybe is worth some money or likely not?

You know, I think there is. You know, unless you know the value of every single piece in your house, there's a very good chance that something was passed on down to you that you have stored away in a box or a trunk that you haven't looked at for 5, 10, 20 years. And all it takes is for you to rediscovering that item and then doing a little research and finding out exactly what it's worth. People would be surprised if they went from top to bottom of their house and undid closets and drawers and garages. They will find a lot of stuff to have a great garage sale with. Stuff like what? What am I looking for? You know, you're looking, you could be looking for anywhere from old cameras to tin toys to coins to historical memorabilia to even old fishing rod, even the old antique bamboo rods and reels.

You know, all that stuff is highly collectible. You know, antique pens, old marbles. Believe it or not, old marbles that are 100 years old are worth thousands of dollars. So there is money almost anywhere in your house if you just look. And if all you see is a whole bunch of what you think is nothing, well, that's great. It's still sellable at a garage sale and let's get it cleared out and make some money. So then you can go to the next chapter of the book where it teaches you how to buy and sell at Craigslist and estate sales and then resell everything on eBay. I mean, I've looked at stuff and I have found a few things I had laying around and my first instinct was, and what I did was, just put it on eBay and sell it.

If you do your research, there's nothing wrong with putting it up on eBay. But the big problem what people do is they don't know exactly what they have. They see something a lot like it on eBay, and they say, oh, that must be my piece. And that's not good, because they could be either misleading people what they said, oh, that must be my piece. And that's not good because they could be either misleading people what they have or they could be undervaluing what they have. So unless you're

100% sure, you want to make sure you do all your research and put it on properly with great pictures and a great description. But the argument has always been that if you sell anything on eBay, it will sell what it's worth because that's what happens in that kind of marketplace. People will pay for whatever it's worth. You know, that's kind of a great comeback, but it doesn't always hold true. I have been on eBay since 2001. I am a top-rated seller. You get like a little stamp on your little site.

And it basically means that I make everybody happy. So if somebody sees something on my website and they see I'm a top-rated seller and see something on your site and you're not and you're only have like a hundred list you've had a hundred sales in your lifetime people will pay more to buy it from me because they trust me more than they trust you just saying and and this is the way that I teach people to build up their eBay site and then so they can get as much possible money for that item. Take better pictures than the competition. Work on a better description. Maybe you give free shipping.

You do little things so you're going to get 5% to 10% above what other people would get. So it takes some work. It isn't just like you're going to find buried treasure in your basement and all of a sudden you're rich. I mean, this is going to take some work. It isn't just like, you know, you're going to find buried treasure in your basement and all of a sudden you're rich. I mean, this is going to take some work. And I would imagine that, you know, it's not going to be one thing that's going to make you rich. It's more of an ongoing process. I don't teach people how that they're going to find the Declaration of Independence behind an old picture. But I do teach you how to start the ball rolling where you get a kind of a roll, kind of a basically a small roll of money from the garage sale. And then you go out and you hunt

through Craigslist and you go to estate sales and you're at every garage sale during Saturdays. And you make this into a second job and maybe into your primary job because when you do it well, there is a lot of money to be made. You should be easily able to make several hundreds of dollars on a weekend if you're doing it right. Is a garage sale a good way to sell stuff or is it a good place to go find stuff? Both. It's a good way of selling stuff if the items are under $100 or very large. So if you have a bedroom set, putting a price tag on $250, great. If you need more money, then it's Craigslist. If it's small and valuable, then it's eBay. eBay, your garage sale is the best way to get rid of a lot of things

that are priced between $1 and $100 that are kind of don't have, it really takes somebody walking by to really want it. eBay is great for those collectibles, those things that you want several million people looking at every day, and that's what eBay has. You know, tens of millions of people look at at every day, and that's what eBay has. You know, tens of millions of people look at eBay every day, and that's where you're going to get the big money. Garage sales are good for you just to start out and get a cash roll going, and it's a good way to clean

out your house and move from there. What are, if there are any, some categories or items or things that are particularly valuable that people might not think of as being valuable. Stereo equipment is one. A lot of people think stereo equipment is junk, and they think old stereo equipment. Well, if you have stereo equipment that has those tubes in them that you kind of think of those old TVs. Well, the tubes and stereo equipment, a lot of brand new stereo equipment is actually putting tubes in them. And a lot of older stereo equipment, some of it's highly sought after. It can only be five years old. It could be 10 years old. And a lot of people don't understand stereo equipment has a lot of value to it. I truly believe there are stuff from the 60s, which people, that's not that far back. You know, baseball cards, comic books, toys, even toys, Beatles memorabilia, lunch boxes.

The list goes on. And it's not an antique. We're only talking about, you know, 45 years, 40 to 50 years away, and that stuff, there's a genre of 50s, 60s, and early 70s stuff that has a lot of value. Albums still have value on certain albums. So there is still a lot of stuff out there that people are just discarding for a dollar or two when they're basically it's you know worth a hundred or two and on the flip side of that is there stuff that people are collecting or that they they have that they think someday they'll retire on that maybe is not worth much but there's kind of this perception that it is i'll give you an example from my mother my mother said a, we're going to give you

something that you're going to be able to retire on. Made this big old spiel, opened up a bottle of champagne, kind of was a big, big momentous night. Said, Aaron, I'm going to give this to your family. I would hope that you would only sell it in emergencies or when you retire or, you know, when you need to pay for your son's college education because it's going more than pay for it. And I'm all excited because I have no idea. I thought I know everything this person owns. And she walks me into this big closet and shows me all these boxes and she goes, son, this is every single National Geographic that was ever printed, and they're all yours. You're welcome.

And let's just say I almost fell over, because all that is worth whatever recycling of paper goes for about now. So there's the story of not everything's worth as much as people think that it is. I imagine that's true for a lot of things, that people value in their own mind something much higher than perhaps the marketplace. Yeah, like furs. Women, you know, furs was really a big thing in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. But then fur kind of fell out of style. And some people still wear fur, but some people have furs that were given to them from their parents, and they want to sell it. Well, you know, that is very hard to sell furs. Old newspapers,

people think just they have a newspaper of the landing on the moon. Well, you know, so does a million other people. So family Bibles, another thing. Everybody says, my family Bible's 200 years old. Unless your family is famous, that Bible's only worth something to you. So those are kind of the things that people are misled that have true value. I think that people think that you would be more of the exception than the rule that, you know, maybe you've devoted your life to this, but that for just an average Joe to start to do what you're doing would take a long time to get to the point of actually

supporting themselves doing this kind of stuff. You know, it did take me a long time because I was learning as I was going. And I started really young with no money, not even a vehicle. And now people have, you know, back then I did not have eBay. There was no Craigslist. So I was doing everything from classified ads and walking around the neighborhood and calling stores. So people actually have it easy. And all you have to do is read a book like mine, read other books that can make you an expert in certain collectibles. And people can just,

if they take it slow, they can get up and running easily in a couple of months. And the more that they participate, the better they will get. Will they be an expert overnight? Absolutely not. But can they actually make this into a money-making career in six months to a year? I believe so. I'm speaking with Aaron Lapidus. He is author of the book, The Garage Sale Millionaire, and his website, thegaragesalemillionaire.com. Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Bantwine, Come. And we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Redolph Bantwine. Wherever podcasts are available. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast.

And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents

pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named the Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Aaron, you were talking about negotiating, but you can't really negotiate

on eBay. I mean, it's an auction, so you wait until the auction's over and give the best price you can, but there isn't a lot of negotiating, is there? I actually stand to differ on you with that. On eBay, of course, you can negotiate. People, just because they say, buy it now for $500 and there's no best offer next to it, you send them an email saying, you know, your best, your buy it now offer is $500. If you don't sell it in a week, I'll be more than happy to give you $350 for it anytime. There you go. I will have to say, when I do that, 60% of the time people accept my offer. I even will, when people have it in an auction where it's seven days and nobody's bid on it, and I think it's too high, I will send them another, an email saying, if it doesn't sell,

please think about my offer. I know it's a couple hundred dollars what your starting price is, but I think that's what it's valued at. I really like the item. Please consider me, something like that. So everything is to be able to be negotiated on. So you never give up. You always try. You know, people in my art gallery, people come to me all the time.

It's a high, high-end art gallery in a beautiful neighborhood. It's an area called Cherry Creek North and right inside Denver. People ask for a deal all the time, but I'm a fine art gallery. You would think nobody would make me ask me to do a better price. Anything, there's always a way to ask for a better deal. And when they ask your art gallery for a better price, do they get one? They usually do. If I don't feel like I can work something else by switching out the frame or throwing in a book or something, and I've had that item for a long time, I don't want to lose the sale.

When you buy stuff and resell it, what types of margins are you talking about? The difference between what you buy it for and what you sell it for? Let's just tell you, everything, I incorporate my time. And not everybody, you know, when you start out small and just starting it, I think people should be making $35 to $50 an hour with their time. That's starting out. So if you go to a garage sale, you incorporate the hours that you've had in that day, how long it's going to take you to list it on eBay. And with all the items, then you kind of divide what you need to make.

If you're making any less than $35 an hour on picking out things, you're doing something wrong. Literally, you're doing something wrong. And I try, for me, I need to make about $250 to $400 an hour. And I do it all the time. It is a point where you get good at it and you are able to make everything work smoothly to how you list it on eBay, to how you ship it, how you answer questions on eBay and in your inbox. And you do it where you try to template it and do everything about exactly the same. And it gets easy and you get better and you make more money. Do you ever buy stuff on eBay and then sell it right back again on eBay for a profit? One step better. I do that all the time. 40% of everything bought on eBay is resold on eBay.

What that means is people are either listing it wrong or they're undervaluing that item. And that's why you have to be on top of how you sell your items so you're not the one somebody's making money off of. 40% of stuff is sold again? Yes. When the market was so bad a couple of years ago, I almost lost my gallery. And it's not something that I'm happy about, but about three years ago, I almost lost my gallery. And it's not something that I'm happy about. But about three years ago, the economy for everybody was horrible and nobody was buying art. And it was the last thing people needed on their top 50 things that they need to live their life.

And I'm not even on the top 50. And it got really bad. And basically, I went back to what I knew. And that is how to buy stuff inexpensively and flip it. And I was doing that on eBay all the time. People did not know what they had. They were misspelling it. They put on the wrong description. the pictures were bad, and I basically swooped on in, I bought it, repackaged it, I had good ratings on eBay, and I made money on it. And I would double, triple, quadruple what I made on it because people were just not paying attention. That's really surprising. You would think that if people were putting things on eBay to make money, they, first of all, would spell things correctly and take a little time. But, you know, people are people, I guess.

You know, I'll give you a, there's a fun, fun artist. His name is Michael, people pronounce it Goddard. It's really pronounced Goddard. How would you spell his last name? Just spell it for me. How would you spell it? G-O-D-D-A-R-D. Very good. That's the way a lot of people, when they're selling his art, spell it. They don't take time. They never look to the certificate. For some reason, they have no sense because they don't know who they're collecting. It's spelled G-O-D-A-R-D. And so they list it G-O-D-D-A-R-D. And so only one hundredth of the people looking for Goddard's are thinking to misspell the word to find the piece. So now, instead of getting all the money that they can on selling that item,

they're getting very little, and it's maybe not even selling because people are not thinking about misspelling the name to find the art. Lastly, what's the biggest mistake you think people make when they do this that they get burned or they end up selling it for less than they paid for it or you know where's the the big novice pitfall is that there's kind of a two-prong one they buy something and they need the money really really badly and they need they they're all excited and they need to flip it and get it on eBay. And one, they don't do the research to find out what it's truly worth. They don't take the time to Google it and see what it's sold for on eBay. And they just throw it on. So they make the same mistake that whoever they sold, bought it from, made the mistake selling to them. That's the huge thing. The second thing is they sell at the wrong time of the year, and that can make a big

deal when it's sold. So give me an example of selling something at the wrong time of year. The best time to sell anything is from Thanksgiving to a week before Christmas, you'll get your highest amount of money. The worst time is January because people have what I like to call a credit card overload. And they have to pay for their credit card somehow. So they're dumping anything that they have of value on eBay Craigslist. So it really lowers the value another great time Mother's Day right before Mother's Day right before Father's Day those are like and right before Valentine's so right before those major kind of holidays that

people need to buy stuff as gifts those are all great times August is a very very slow time people are vacationing they're spending money on travel, so that's another bad time. So that's another thing people have to be aware of, and it's just a mistake of when they put things on the market. Well, I know a lot of people have a lot of fun doing this, and I've sold stuff on eBay, and I've had garage sales, and had a big estate sale when I moved across the country, and it's just, it's fun. I mean, it's a lot of work, or it can be a lot of country. And it's just, it's fun. I mean, it's a lot of work, or it can be a lot of work,

but it's fun and it's good to get some expert advice from somebody who's in the trenches doing this every day. Thanks, Aaron. Aaron Lapidus is my guest. He is the author of the book, The Garage Sale Millionaire. His website is thegaragesalemillionaire.com. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan,

the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong?

Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister poll results from But Am I Wrong?

And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. People talk a lot about sleep, how they sleep, how much they sleep, how much sleep they need, how they can get by on less.

And there's been a lot of coverage in the media about how people are not sleeping enough and the toll that takes on us. Interestingly, we have rules for sleeping that no one ever questions as to when you sleep, where you sleep, who you sleep with or don't sleep with. And the interesting thing is that lack of sleep and the problems associated with it are a problem for everyone at some point in their life, it seems. Here to talk about it is Benjamin Rees. He is a professor of English at Emory University and author of the book Wild Nights. Hi, Professor. Welcome. Thanks for having me. So, let's start by talking about the rules of sleep.

We have a lot of very tight set of expectations and rules for sleep that we've been led to believe are natural or normal, but that are actually fairly recent inventions. And there's a lot of economic interest in making sleep productive in ways that I think kind of put undue pressure on it. Everybody has trouble sleeping sometime, and it certainly is a conversation that people seem to have a lot. I mean, it's one of those things, you know, religion, politics, and people talk about sleep and how they don't sleep or how they,

I only need four hours of sleep or whatever. I mean, it's a thing on people's minds. Yeah, it is. And I think it's on people's minds a lot because the way that we're expected to sleep doesn't work for a lot of people. I mean, if you were to ask your listeners what their image of a good night's sleep is, you'd probably get a pretty standard set of answers. So you do it at night for around seven or eight hours. You do it more or less in one straight shot. You do it in a private, you know, noise-free room that's probably climate-controlled. You do it with at most one other consenting adult. You get yourself on a schedule.

You do it more or less the same time and with the same routines every night. And you separate out the children from the parents. You train the kids from a very young age to sleep on their own in their own separate rooms through the night. And what's interesting about that from a historical perspective is that almost nobody in human history did any of that until about the last couple hundred years. And so that's what I mean when I talk about taming sleep, making it conform to these rules that are really rather recent inventions. Well, I've never heard her to express that way, but you're right. I mean, those are the rules. You have just outlined the rule book of how a family is supposed to sleep. And, you know, I've always thought

I sleep in bed with my wife, but a lot of times I wish I'd just be in bed by myself. I'd rather sleep in my own room. And because, you know, as she rolls over, I wake up, she snores or coughs, and I wake up. And sometimes I would just rather be in my own bed. Yeah, well, look at it this way. I mean, you probably grew up sleeping in your own room, in your own bed, right? Sure. As a kid? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that's the way parents expend an enormous amount of time and energy training their kids to do this, despite the fact that no kid ever wants to do it on their own, right? I mean, you've got to have a method. And go to this great lengths to do it, and then you expect that when the kids grow up, they'll peaceably share a bed with somebody else. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Through most of human history, families slept in pretty close proximity, sometimes even sharing

same bed space. And when you train somebody to control their own space, and then expect them to share it with somebody else, it's a recipe for conflict. So you know, that other person is going to be snoring or, or playing with their phone or taking a trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night. And it's, it's discombobulating. So are you saying that it would have been better if we all slept together so that those things don't bother us? Maybe. I mean, I think there are good reasons why parents want kids to sleep in different rooms. I mean, I certainly did that with my kids, and I wouldn't want to sleep with my kids. You know, parents have to get up and punch the clock and go to work, and our natural sleep

systems are different enough that we need to kind of separate each other out spatially in the home in order for people to kind of follow their own schedules. But that's really, that's kind of a function of the economic organization of our society rather than anything natural about our species. And I think, I just think understanding that might give people some flexibility or leeway for thinking about arranging things differently. Well, when you think about it, if one, like my wife, when she goes to work in the morning, she works in a hospital as a nurse, and she has to be there at seven o'clock. So she gets up very early to go to work on the days that she works. And I always wake up when she gets up.

Well, we've never had the discussion of, well, on those days, why don't you sleep in the other room? Yeah, maybe it would make more sense. But you're right. It's not even something people would consider discussing. It would be an insult, almost, to suggest that somebody sleep in another room. Yeah, right. I mean, but I think, you know, one could have that conversation with a partner and say, listen, I love you while you're awake, but this sleeping thing just isn't working out so well. Maybe it would decrease stress. But I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all solution for anybody.

I just think people ought to feel some license to experiment with the rules. It's nice to hear you say that, because now people could start to think, well, wait a minute, yeah, let's get that rule book out and see if these rules really make sense for us. And let's talk about the problem of sleep quality, because people, you know, there's a whole industry of sleep clinics and sleep aids and sleep snore things. And, you know, I mean, it seems like sleep should be such a natural thing. So why is this huge industry in existence? Yeah, it's almost as if we've forgotten how to do it.

And we need to buy products to either retrain ourselves or to correct for some kind of damage that's been done to our sleep. There are over 2,500 sleep clinics in this country alone. And now, you know, you don't even need to go into a sleep clinic to really measure what's happening to your sleep. There's all kinds of wearable devices, even smart beds that'll monitor your movements and your perspiration and, you know, and then feed it into a data stream where you can analyze what's happening to yourself, I think we've become completely obsessed by sleep. And I think there were certain economic forces in our society that tried to shoehorn people into a certain kind of sleep.

But when that doesn't work for people, we now have all kinds of products and services and experts helping us try to fix it and make it conform to those rules. So there's a lot of money to be made from sleep. But it is true that people have trouble sleep. I have trouble sleeping sometimes. I mean, sometimes it just doesn't seem to work. Yeah, as do I. And insomnia and other kinds of sleep disorders are very real things, and they can cause great pain for people.

And I don't want to say that everything about contemporary sleep has gone to hell. Certainly, it's a huge advantage that we have sleep scientists really understanding what's happening at the level of the brain and the level of the body. And many people get relief from these various kinds of services and products that have been developed. So I don't want to dismiss that. But what I do want to say is that a lot of our trouble with sleep has to do with our society and our expectations. As soon as you have a rule, you have a conflict. Just tell a kid to go to bed at a certain time, you have a conflict. And the way our society organizes and structures sleep creates a lot of these conflicts, both within families and between different groups of people. What's the prescription then? What are you suggesting people do differently?

Well, the first thing I want to say is that Wild Nights isn't a self-help book. It's not going to tell you how to sleep better or what's the right way to do it. I think in some ways the sleep self-help books can be part of the problem. You get all this conflicting advice and you don't know which system or method to choose. But what I want to say is that one way to think about your sleep is to think about the role that sleep plays in your life and how is your waking life organized and what is the best way for sleep to mesh with that waking life rather than to think about, oh, do I have a problem? Do I need a pill? Do I need this device? Yes, you may need one of those things. But if you think about sleep

as a part of your social world, rather than a retreat from it, you might just have a different perspective on how you handle it. So give me an example of what you mean by that. How would that play out? For instance, the debate about parents co-sleeping with children. If you have a child that just simply won't be tamed and become a good baby and sleep on their own, it might be helpful to say that the rule about putting a child in another room is something that was invented over the last 150 years or so in our culture, and it doesn't correspond with any kind of basic need that humans have, recognizing that child's need for comfort, soothing, proximity at night. If you look at the scope of human history and the variety of

ways that different cultures practice sleep, you might start to think that maybe the way we've been taught to do it isn't the correct way. And so it might not be a problem with your child's development or some sleep deficiency that they have, but it might just be a way that your family is set up. Yeah. Well, and two, even if, because I know when my son was young, he was one of those kids that didn't want to sleep alone. I wish we'd talked to you then. But I knew, and it happened, that he grew out of that.

And, you know, I mean, he now wants to sleep. He wouldn't want to sleep in our room even if we paid him. So, I mean, at some point, kids will fix that. Yeah, but if you push him too hard, you might have some blowback in the other direction. Right. And there's a new book out that's a history of the teenage bedroom, and it's called Get Out of My Room. Right? And the teenage bedroom has become sort of a fortress. And I think, you know, there have been anthropological studies that show that

families that co-sleep and societies that privilege co-sleeping actually have less intergenerational conflict than those that insist on children being apart from the parents at night. So where did that come from? Where did that start? Well, I think it really started in the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century. The idea that everybody had to be on a very strict schedule and that work happened outside of the home. You know, when people's work was in the home, either they had a blacksmith shop downstairs or they were farming or spinning fabrics in the home or had a shop front, there wasn't a great pressure for everybody to get on a really strict sleep-wake schedule. But as soon as people had to clock in at the sound of the factory bell, get out of the home.

The parents had to get themselves on a schedule, and school times, compulsory school education was also developed around the same period. Children had to get out of the home to be schooled, so everybody had to get on a strict schedule. But because adults need less sleep than children do, it became important to separate out the generations at night. And that's a big part of where the trouble began. But another source of this is just our culture really prizes individualism and privacy. And we use nighttime sleeping for children as a way to train kids to become these sort of hardy individuals.

And there's a long history going back to the 19th century of, you know, kind of pathologizing families where the parents sleep with the children. You know, I wonder if the electric light had a part to play in this, because now parents could turn the light on and read or do something else while the kids were sleeping, and so we needed to push the kids into another room. That's right. Well, the electric light and all the other kinds of entertainments that came along with electricity, radio and television, suddenly you brought possibilities for nighttime leisure into the home. Parents want to enjoy that during the night hours, and that will disturb the child's sleeping. When sleep was more attuned to the rise and fall of the sun and interior spaces were darker,

everybody tended to retire at an earlier period. So, yeah, that certainly played a big role in changing family dynamics. Well, I really like this discussion just because it's like, wow, yeah, you know, we don't have to just follow the rules because those are the rules. You can customize the whole sleep situation so it actually works for you rather than try to work around the rules? Well, you can to an extent. But you have to remember that sometimes rules that are made by societies are just as strong as rules that are made by nature. And, you know, our system of using money is a made-up system. It doesn't correspond to anything in nature. But if you don't play by the rules of money, there are consequences.

And there are often consequences for people who can't play by the rules, either because, you know, if you think about it, think again about a middle-class family arrangement with children off in different parts of the house and parents sharing a bed together. That takes a lot of money to make possible for many families. You have to have a home of a certain space, of a certain size. And many families who can't afford that then really have difficulties getting people on the schedule that they want. As you said, your wife has to get to her job at 7.30, and your kids probably have to get to school at a certain time,

and there's just no way around it. So just recognizing that this is a made-up rule doesn't make it easy for people to throw it out the window. But I do think the first step is recognizing what's social and what's biological. Well, but I think that's a huge start. I mean, there are rules, but they're not in stone, and you can manipulate them, if possible, to make things better for you. Just because it's a rule doesn't mean it's the right rule for you. Yeah, and I'll give you a little story from my own experience that

shows both the possibility of changing the rules and also the difficulty. When I was in my early 20s, I spent a year living in Israel, and I lived on a kibbutz, which is a collective kind of socialist utopian society. And in order to free up the parents to follow their own schedules, and particularly to free up women to work at the same level as men, they decided in the early days, back in the 1920s and 30s, to have children raised collectively at night. So there was somebody who was a professional caregiver who would look over a room full of sleeping children, and the parents would be free to sleep and wake on their own schedule. It was a really dramatic kind of change, and I think it had far-reaching consequences. It also led to,

you know, the kids feeling like their cohort was almost more important than the family unit. So there are consequences to doing it different ways as well. But that was a really fascinating example of a society that said, you know, we're just not going to accept these rules about sleep. Yeah, I agree. Why not? Question the rules, see what works. Benjamin Reese has been my guest. He is a professor at Emory University, and the name of his book is Wild Nights. And you will find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Professor. Okay, thanks very much.

If you need to charge your smartphone in a hurry, it's a good idea to turn it off. This can really give you more juice in less time because if your phone is on, it's using up battery power at the same time you're trying to charge it. Here are some other charging tips. If you don't want to turn it off completely, put your phone in airplane mode. Your phone won't keep searching for Wi-Fi and cellular signals, which will save you power. Lock your screen

and resist looking at your phone while it's charging. Every time you peek at something, it slows the charge down. Use a wall charger. Phones charge faster through an electric outlet than through a USB port. And take the cover off. Phones heat up when they're charging and covers lock that heat in. Heat will kill the battery. And that is something you should know. There have been some great reviews on Apple Podcasts of late. I really appreciate that. If you have a moment, please leave one at Apple Podcasts or on whatever platform you listen to this. I'm Micah Ruthers.

Thanks for listening to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible

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hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll of course have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes.

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