Stuff You Should Know - Is science phasing out sleep?

Episode Date: October 12, 2010

Sleep is a restorative state that's vital to human functioning -- or is it? In this episode, Josh and Chuck explore different ways in which science is trying to minimize or phase out sleep, from pills to genetic research. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that makes this Stuff You Should Know, the criterion collection. What are you doing tonight, buddy? What am I doing tonight? What am I doing tonight? I know what you're doing. What? I know

what we're doing. Oh, yeah, tonight, tonight. Tonight. So not like tonight in our physical No. Temporality. I mean tonight in the future. Yes, like as of, like someone listening to this, it would be there tonight. I would say possibly on October 12th. I am going to be at the Drunken Uni. That's right. The Drunken Unicorn on East Ponce d'Alion Avenue in Atlanta. Yeah. At the MJQ concourse. Yes. Sort of hard to find if you don't know what you're looking for. Well, this is what you do. You go along Ponce until you see the murder croaker on your left or right, depending on where you're coming from. Chipotle opposite the murder croaker on the other side of Ponce. Yeah. And behind that is MJQ. Yes. Beside that is Friends on Ponce, the bar you've been.

No. I'll take you there. Okay. It's going to blow your socks off. Really? And then below Friends is MJQ. Yes. Very little nondescript door, gray steel door, I think, some steps down. And I don't think there's any signage whatsoever, Chuck. No. We may have to stand outside and be like here. Everybody. Why are we there, Josh? We're going to be there because our house band, the Henry Clay people, are going to be playing there. That's right. And this is kind of the unofficial kickoff for our big trivia event night, which is tomorrow. Tomorrow night. Which is October 13th. Yes. And that is at the Five Seasons Brewery Westside on Marietta Street. And it is going to be fun. I'm getting excited, Chuck. I'm getting pretty

excited. It's going to be pretty cool. We have actor and author and former literary agent John Hodgman. And we have former Dukes of Hazard co-star Joe Randazzo. And we have Squidbilly's co-creator. And Aquitaine Hunger Force co-creator. Dave Willis. I've been really getting into Squidbilly's. It's awesomely wrong in so many ways. One of my friends, I don't know if he's so hazard or not, an original Squidbilly's oil painting on wood. And I haven't talked to him in a while. So I don't know if Dave Willis actually painted it. But I mean, it is dead on. So I need to ask him, do you also paint? I was watching last night in Earl the Dad, Squid. He always has on different baseball caps to say different redneck things.

Right, yeah. And one of them said, beware in big letters. And then in small little letters, it said Good stuff. Good stuff. So this is your chance to come out and meet John and Joe and Dave. And us and Jerry. And there'll be other podcasters there. Imagine the ones that don't hate us will be there. So Strickland. Strickland will be there. Yeah. Strickland will be there. Hopefully some other people. Yeah. So we invite everyone to come out. Six o'clock doors. Trivia starts at seven. The Henry Clay People Show is one of those later shows. But we encourage you to come in. That's on Tuesday. Yeah. Trivia's on Wednesday. Five Season Brewery. Yes. West Side. Experience some rock and or roll. And then some fun trivia. And Chuck, also you can look up our event on Facebook.

And there's all sorts of details and directions and stuff on that. Absolutely. Yeah. Check it out. The Stuff You Should Know Trivia event page. And this is the last you will hear of this. That's it. And then what we may be going on a national tour. Yeah. We're almost definitely going to Austin. It's so funny. Like everyone else is so sick of hearing this. But I guarantee you we will get people on that Thursday on Facebook that say, well, I never heard anything about your trivia event. And we'll just be like, go buy a tech camera at your local Ace Hardware. Right. Take it home. Yes. Put the receipt in the garbage can and smack yourself in the forehead with it. Don't return that after. Right. All right. On with the

show? On with the show, Chuck. That's it for Plugfest 2010. Yes, for now. Yeah. So Chuck, I've got a story for you. All right. Storytime. Okay. So remember when we were talking about roller derbies? Yeah. And there was that whole transcontinental roller derby where it was really just a roller rink that people went around 57,000 times for 11 hours a day until they passed out. So I know that you know that there's all sorts of ethons or what they called, what they're called, what they used to be called. People like to just do stuff to the extreme. Test their endurance. Right. Dance ethons. Yeah. Hunt Nazis ethons. Yeah. Just anything you could think of in like the 40s, 50s and 30s. Well, staying awake was not immune to the ethon fever.

I bet. There's a guy in 1959. He's 32 years old at the time. His name is Peter Tripp. And he's a disc jockey in New York City. New York City. Yeah. And he made a little studio in a storefront and said, I'm going to stay awake for as long as I can. And he did. And DJ while he's doing it. Oh yeah. Okay. He did for 201 straight hours. Wow. Yeah. He did. This is kind of a mark against him as far as stay awake ethoners or ethon enthusiasts go. But he was given amphetamines by two physicians to keep him up. Physicians. But the guy, yeah. Well, back in those days, Joey in the corner. Yeah. His physician. I was going to say back in those days, you know, like you, like doctors prescribed anything. I

thought, oh yeah, nothing's changed. Right. But he stayed awake for 201 hours, assisted by amphetamines, but still. Right. Quite an accomplishment. It was. And it stood for a while as I think the longest anyone ever stayed awake and then people started topping it and topping it. And then finally, in 1964, there was a teenager in San Diego, which is a town I know you love. And his name was Randy Gardner. And he's actually still around. That kid stayed up with nothing, no assistance whatsoever. Yeah. For 264 hours on purpose to try and set the record. Yeah. For a science fair. It was a science experiment. And the guy ended up setting the world record for a while. I bet he hallucinated like crazy. Now we, yes. Here's the thing. I think Randy had a bit

of a hard time. He had something kind of a, some sort of psychotic break here or there. I'm sure. Peter Tripp particularly had a hard time, especially because of the amphetamines. Yeah. He hallucinated cats chasing mice in the little studio. I thought one of the desk drawers that he was seated at where it was on fire. A man showed up in a dark suit and he confused him for an undertaker and ran out. That's probably because it was an undertaker. Probably. So yeah, there's all sorts of horrible stuff associated with sleep deprivation. Yeah. I don't like it. Bear with me. I'm with you. We're about to get to the want, want, want moment. Okay. In 2007, you may remember there was a guy named Mr. Wright. I can't remember Mr. Wright's first name. Can you? Tony. He was

from Cornwall, England. Oh yeah. He stayed up for 11 days through a pub in Cornwall. Yeah. Playing pool, just hanging out. We did that on the webcast, right? Yes. He broke the record and I'm making air quotes here. Right. He broke Randy Gardner's record. What he didn't know is that a year after Randy Gardner set the record, a guy in Finland beat Randy Gardner's record. So two problems here. Tony Wright didn't actually beat the world's record. And the second part is in 1990, Guinness stopped acknowledging the world records for staying awake the longest because of health reasons. Really? So Tony Wright stayed awake for 11 days for absolutely nothing. Well, he got a lot of coverage and he was a national hero in Wales, from what I understand. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would

have looked into that beforehand. I would have called Guinness the Guinness people. Yeah. One of his friends' court is saying, like, we've never heard of this guy in Finland. His name was Tomoi Soinoi. No. Toimi. That's got it. I've got it. His name is Toimi Soini of Finland. I've never heard of him either. Yeah. And that's a name you wouldn't forget. No. But thank you for bearing with me through that horribly long introduction. That was good. My point was this. We have this weird obsession with staying awake sometimes, right? I don't. Well, some people do. Yeah. It's like an endurance contest. And the guy in New York, Peter Tripp, was assisted by amphetamines. These days, there's entirely new classes of drugs that are designed to keep us awake, right? Yes,

they're called drugs. I don't want anywhere near me. So Chuck, you're big on sleeping, right? Well, yeah, but I don't sleep like Emily sleeps. She can sleep. Yeah. I mean, I'm still, you know, you get a little older, you start waking up early no matter what. So even if I have a late night at like 2am, I'm still up at 7. Yes. Okay. But you still require sleep? Yes. I, for one, am alarmed at the concept of synthetically phasing sleep out. Oh, me too. Even if we don't need it, even if we figure out how to get rest without sleep, it just seems wrong. Well, it is. And, you know, we'll talk a bit more about that because I have pretty strong feelings about messing with, you know, your natural human biology. Now, we do already Chuck through things like caffeine, speed, we stay awake. I know

you're huge on speed. Greenies. Not true. No, absolutely not true. I kid. But what do these things do to you? There's problems. There's side effects, right? Yeah, but there's a problem. Yeah. Caffeine. Although there are studies now that say that caffeine can be good for you in certain amounts, but caffeine can make you crash. It can give you diarrhea. It can make you really irritable if you don't get your caffeine in your system. I know that's right. And the same with amphetamines. You have a serious crash after an amphetamine high. Yes. And that's not what you're looking for. No, that's called sleep debt. Yeah. And you got to pay it back with amphetamines. Right. So sleep for a half a day if you've been up on greenies. Yes. I think greenies.

That was big and major league baseball. They called them greenies. Is that okay? A bunch of baseball players used to take them. I'm used to them being called Benny's because I ran a lot of Kerouac when I was in high school. Yeah, Benny's. Yeah. That's short for Benza Dream. Yeah. So that's the bad effects of caffeine and amphetamines for sure. Sleep debt, jitteriness, diarrhea. Plus the problem is that you're being kept awake. You're awake, but there's no rest whatsoever. Yeah. Your body's not getting used to it or anything. No. And your mental faculties begin to decline pretty rapidly once it starts. Right? So Chuck, what's somebody who wants to stay up but doesn't feel like getting addicted to speed going to do? What can you do? Well, Josh,

you should try modafinil. What's modafinil? It is a sort of new drug. What is it about? 12 years old in total? 98. No. Some French researchers were given it at cats in the early 90s, but it's really kind of taken off for human use beginning in 99, I think. Right. It's in a class of drugs called eugiroics. Yeah, which is Greek for quote, good arousal. Good arousal. Yeah. So the idea here is that you can stay awake with modafinil and it goes like all drugs. It goes by like a dozen different names and you don't have a sleep debt. That's pretty amazing. It is. What's more, it's in this article was written by Julia Layton on March 7, 2007. It's changed a lot to 10. It has quite a bit. At the time, at 2007, modafinil was like

this promise of the future. No side effects. No side effects. No addictiveness. Yeah. All of this stuff has been proven untrue over time. I read one study that found that modafinil for use in shift workers, late shift workers. Right. It kept them awake 1.7 minutes longer than a placebo. Oh, really? Yeah. So it may not even work. But let's take the 2007 view of modafinil first. Okay. Okay. So it's non-addictive. How could that possibly be? Well, it can't, but this is the 2007. Oh, sorry. We're back in time. This is naive. Well, are we explaining how it works? Specifically, it doesn't do what caffeine and amphetamines do things like blocking neuro receptors that trigger drowsiness. One's called adenosine. And they

block the receptors that bind to it. Caffeine does. And so it will keep you awake basically because you're not feeling tired. Right. So like your neurotransmitters, all of our neurotransmitters function by a release and they float around and have their effect. And then they're taken back up, uptake, reuptake. Yeah. Well, dopamine plays a big part too in both of these. Right. But with the neurotransmitter, including dopamine, you can activate its release and or prevent its reuptake. So you're either flooding the brain with it and or keeping it in the brain longer, right? Well, and that's what amphetamines do specifically is they give the dopamine nowhere to go. Right. So you're just euphoric. Yeah. Sounds pretty good to me. It does sound good.

But the problem is, is your brain's like, oh, you want to play that game, huh? Well, I'm just going to withhold dopamine. Right. Unnaturally. So you're going to be depressed for three or four days. Absolutely. Okay. So that's how you get addicted to something though. Anytime dopamine is released artificially in the brain, your body loves it. Right. And that's, that's, here's the problem. Your dopamine is the centerpiece of the brain's reward system. Right. It's how we learn to eat and have sex to reproduce or have sex for whatever reason. And anything that gives us a sense of pleasure, dopamine's involved and we're taught, we're motivated to repeat that behavior through the release of dopamine. So if we drink caffeine

or take speed or do cocaine or whatever and dopamine's released, we're taught to do it again, which is the basis of addiction. Which, by the way, I think we should do a podcast on. Just addiction. Yeah. It's a really interesting concept. You wrote some about that, didn't you? A while back. I wrote how addiction works. Well, let's do it. Okay, Chuck. Let's do it right now. All right. You ready? I'm not prepared. So that's how those other, well, in 2007, more nefarious drugs would help keep you awake. And Medaffinil didn't do that for some reason. Right. It activated dopamine, but just maybe not as much. Right. And they believe that Medaffinil actually targets a neurotransmitter GABA. We'll just call

it GABA. GABA. Yeah, GABA GABA. And that is the sleep regulator of the brain. And it seemed to slow down GABA's release. So basically your brain didn't know that, hey, it's time to go to sleep now. Right. Like your circadian rhythm's thrown off, right? Yeah. So it specifically targeted that. And well, not that alone, because it did release a little bit of dopamine, right? It did. But what they were saying was like, it's just such a little amount that you're not becoming addicted. Like it does, but you're not becoming addicted. Don't worry about it. Right. GABA is not the only, and there's also, from what I found, there's four types of GABA. And apparently like GABA four is like the most sensitive one. And that's like the real

is that the one that it's the crux of research right now is trying to figure out GABA or GABA four. But in addition to GABA, there's also histamines, which make us drowsy, which why anti histamines can jack you up. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The

property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. From Wall Street to Main Street and from Hollywood to Washington, the news is filled with decisions, turning points, deals and collisions. I'm Tim O'Brien, the senior executive editor for Bloomberg opinion. And I'm your host for Crash Course, a weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart radio. Every week on Crash Course, I'll bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic

upheavals occur. And I'm going to explore the lessons we can learn when creativity and ambition collide with competition and power. Each Tuesday, I'll talk to Bloomberg reporters around the world, as well as experts and big names in the news. Together, we'll explore business, political and social disruptions and what we can learn from them. I'm Tim O'Brien, host of Crash Course, a new weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart radio. Listen to Crash Course every Tuesday on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. And there's also Glutamate. And Glutamate is basically the brain's natural speed, right? So they think that, I think they figured it out by now, but 2007 thought was that the modafinil prevented the re-uptake of Glutamate,

which keeps you alert and functioning, right? Yeah. And the end result of all this is what they found was a miracle drug, is what they called it, because there was no sleep debt. When you came off of this drug, you didn't need to sleep for a half a day to catch up on things. You would just go back and fall into your regular pattern and be all rested. Yeah. It sounds great. Yeah, it does sound great. I mean, staying up for four to eight hours and then just being able to get an average eight-hour night's sleep and you're fine. I mean, why wouldn't you want to do that? Me personally, well, we'll get to that later. Well, we should say too, though, that it was developed to treat narcolepsy specifically. Right. And we should probably talk about this. There's a company called

Cephalon. And Cephalon took modafinil and marketed the heck out of it as a provigil. And provigil, according to a 2002 New York Times article we read, said that it means provides vigilance. Promotes vigilance is what it was short for. And basically, it was adopted for off-label use by everyone from college students to the CEO of Cephalon. Frank Baldino. Frank Baldino, he took it and he didn't say why he was taking it. No, but the only thing it's approved for is narcolepsy. Narcolepsy is a treatment of narcolepsy. They've tried to get it approved for jet lag. They tried to get it approved for shift workers syndrome. Oh, yeah. They tried to get it approved for general drowsiness, tiredness, and they couldn't. The FDA was like, no, we'll let

you sell this for narcolepsy to treat narcoleptics. Sure. The problem is, that's not how it worked out though, right? Well, the problem is, there's only about 200,000 narcoleptics in the United States. Right. So Cephalon's like, we need to get this out there. And they started marketing it off-label. Kind of nefariously as well. Yeah, it became a lifestyle drug is what they classified it as. Yeah, a new tropic, N-O-O-T-R-O-P-I-C, which means it's another name for smart drug. Like, transhumanists love new tropics. Do they? Yes. All those pharma names are so like, I don't know. They rub me the wrong way. Yeah. So, like I said, nefarious. I'm basing this nefariousness on this really great article, Chuck. There's two parts called The Rise and Fall of Provigil. Yeah.

And it's by investigative journalist Evelyn Pringle. And I think everybody should read this. It's really interesting. This is hot off the, like yesterday it was released, I think. Yeah, it was. Hot off the presses. How odd is that? I know that you picked this. Yeah, because I had no idea that this was written yesterday and we picked it like two days before. Crazy. A week before. Anyway, in the article she talks about how Cephalon had physicians that they were underwriting that didn't reveal their relationship to the company. Right. But we're saying like, this is a great drug and it should be used for all these off-market purposes. Stuff that if the company had done it, they would have been prosecuted federally.

There was a, and the attorney general of Pennsylvania oversaw a bunch of lawsuits and the company hired him as executive legal counsel. Really? Yeah. Just all sorts of stuff like that. There's allegations of paid-to-delay programs with their competitors. They found that 80% of the prescriptions written had nothing to do with narcolepsy. Yeah. It was depression, MS, sleepiness, and like you said, the shift workers syndrome. They were prescribing it for all kinds of things basically to make you feel better. They had their reps actually visiting psychiatrists, dentists were prescribing this stuff. Really? Yeah. And again, 200,000 narcoleptics, 25% of them were on the drug within a year of its release, right? Yeah. And it just wasn't enough.

Well, and then that's when they started jacking up the price when they found out that people really love this stuff. From November to March, it rose 28% in price and it was 74% more expensive than it was four years previous in 2004. And I think it topped out at like $13.18. $18 a pill? Yeah. That is insane. Yeah. And along and short of all this, as of this week, the European Medicines Agency basically came out and said, you know what, you can't use this for anything but narcolepsy because we have found out that there are certain psychiatric disorders this causes like suicidal thoughts and depression and psychotic episodes and potentially life-threatening skin reactions. And also first, I'm sorry, you're right, it topped out at $13.62 a pill when it was originally

$5.53 a pill and for no reason whatsoever, it just rose in cost in the U.S. We'll make money. And you were talking about the psychiatric disorders that it exacerbated. Yeah. Yeah. They basically reformulated Monafidel into a kid's version for the treatment of ADHD. And they found that what would be the equivalent in the in the actual population of one in about 200 or no, 20 and 100 cases of things like psychotic breaks, suicidal thoughts and children. And this drug, it was called Sparlon, was taken out of FDA testing. They just dropped it. Really? Yeah. Well, and not only that, but it's supposedly non-addictive. Not so. In 2009, a psychiatrist and addiction specialist said to USA Today that he had seen his third case

of pro-vigil addiction and two doctors back to back admitted that they were addicted to it. And they were also alcoholics. Right. And this is kind of interesting. I guess so the hammer kind of fell down on Monafidel and Cephalon kind of simultaneously. It's currently falling, it sounds like. Yeah. The FTC has a lawsuit. There's I think three different employees turned whistleblower on the company and filed lawsuits against it. And then, yeah, that psychiatrist came out in USA Today and said that he was treating people for addiction to it, which is huge. And then Bloomberg also the same day. Bloomberg News released a report about its addictiveness. But it's really interesting to read the stuff that's going on now compared to our 2007 article

that I think probably should be taken down and rewritten pretty soon. Yeah, because it's basically claims it's a wonder drug like Viagra. Yeah. It actually compares it to Viagra and says it's better because you don't get five hour erections. Right. Or worse, depending on your viewpoint. So Josh, that is just one drug that we have picked out, but that is not the whole story of science phasing out sleep. Yeah. And this whole podcast isn't intended to target Cephalon. It was just really interesting that we ran across this during our research. Yeah. And again, I think you should read The Rise and Fall of Provigil by Evelyn Pringle. Just look it up online. I think it's up there for free, right? Yeah, it's a good one. So Monofidel is not the only thing,

like you said, targeting sleep. No, there's another drug from Cortex, a pharmaceutical company called CX717. And it works sort of like the other one in that it keeps you awake by triggering glutamate activity. And glutamate was the brain speed. Yeah. Specifically triggers that. And it also targets histamine. So it sort of works in the same way. But science is all over. What they're trying to do is they're trying to research and see if they can get people by on less sleep with the same effects as having a full night of sleep. That seems to be the goal. Get three hours of sleep. But your body feels like it got eight hours. And not only eight hours, the best eight hours. Yeah, the best eight hours. And it's safe. It can't be addictive, which means it can't have any

effect on your reward system. So no dopamine could be released. Right. Right. And that what you were talking about CX17. CX717. CX717, it's an amputine. That's the class of drug. And like you said, it targets the reuptake of glutamate has nothing to do with the reward system as far as we know right now. Right. And that's the one that DARPA is looking into. DARPA is leading the way they're driving this sleep deprivation research because, you know, it's military. Yes. And apparently the special ops guys have to stay up for 72 straight hours, usually with very, very little, if any rest and be sharp enough to, you know, assassinate somebody. Right. Well, the military did a lot of testing on Monofidil. Yes. And this is the, this is a, I can't remember what article

it was, but somebody talked to a DARPA researcher who said we, we found it was about as good as caffeine. Oh really? Which is weird. Like I don't understand because this, the article that Layton wrote is saying like it has a huge following. Right. People swear by the stuff. It clearly did and probably still does. So I don't understand how clinical results could show it's no better than caffeine while other people are like, this is the greatest thing ever. Well, it could be the placebo going on again. I guess it could be. With the military though, they would give it to these pilots for a couple of days, make them stay awake and then have them go out and fly their fighter jet and just to see what happened. Yeah. And they found that after that it did a good job

to a little about the 48 hour point. And then after that, regardless of what you're on, your body is going to start showing effects of sluggishness and maybe hallucinations and the things that you don't want if you're a fighter pilot. No. Or just a regular guy trying to make a living in this world. Exactly. There was a 2009 study. Monofidel actually did contribute to our understanding of the human brain. Some researchers at UC Davis slapped people into a wonder machine, loaded them up on Monofidel, kept them awake and watched their brain and they saw heightened activity in the locus ceruleus. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind

the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you

get your podcasts. From Wall Street to Main Street and from Hollywood to Washington, the news is filled with decisions, turning points, deals and collisions. I'm Tim O'Brien, the senior executive editor for Bloomberg opinion. And I'm your host for Crash Course, a weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart radio. Every week on Crash Course, I'll bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic upheavals occur. And I'm going to explore the lessons we can learn when creativity and ambition collide with competition and power. Each Tuesday, I'll talk to Bloomberg reporters around the world, as well as experts and big names in the news. Together, we'll explore business, political and social disruptions and what we can learn from them. I'm Tim O'Brien,

host of Crash Course, a new weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart radio. Listen to Crash Course every Tuesday on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I can imagine being in a wonder machine for two days straight. I think they probably sleep deprived them and then probably toward the end of the second day or something. They put them, I don't know. Who knows. But they also gave them tests and found that some tests have found that people actually do better on psychological tests, tests of skill, feats of strength, you know, festivist stuff on Monofidil than they do, you know, just awake or on caffeine or amphetamines or something like that. So there's mixed results. But we didn't know

what part of the brain was keeping people awake or was subject to sleep deprivation. And now we do is the locus ceruleus. So that's probably going to play a role in this endless quest to do away with sleep, right? Part of it. Yeah. It's not just drugs either. They're looking for a sleep gene. That one's really interesting to me. Don't you think? Take it away. Because drugs are drugs, but they believe that there are people that can get by unless sleep that they're called short sleepers. About one in a thousand people can function just fine on a few hours of sleep. They don't need the big eight or nine hours. And they believe it's hereditary and they're trying to find this gene so they can tweak it and make us all into short sleepers so we don't get more stuff done.

Yeah. And there's actually a species of fruit fly that is a short sleeper fruit fly. And it has a mutation and what they found is a mutation has to do with potassium channels. No one knows exactly what yet. But that's interesting because there's an autoimmune deficiency or an autoimmune disease called Morvan syndrome. And people with Morvan syndrome have trouble sleeping and their syndrome has it affects the transport of potassium through cell membranes. So there's a tie there for sure. Definitely. What's it has something to do with bananas? Is that where this is all headed? I guess. Wow. Fruit flies. Potassium. Oh my God. So if they find this gene, I think what they're looking for is a future where people can program their lifestyle how they want it. If you want to work

80 hours a week and work till 4 a.m. and get up at 7 maybe there's a pill that can help you do that with no side effects. Maybe. I don't buy it. What I find alarming is that sleep like sleep being synthetically reduced or eliminated natural sleep. Yeah. Even among sleep researchers who are like this is a horrible, horrible idea. They still say it's inevitable. And apparently the predictions are like 10 to 20 years off where we either have a pill that we can take and sleep for three hours but feel like we slept for eight and keep going or we won't have to sleep at all. The problem is remember John Maynard Keynes, the economist, and he came up with the leisure society in the 1930s. He was like people in 100 years won't even have to work and we'll just sit around and have fun.

He was right about us being wealthy and having more leisure time. But what he missed the mark on was that we don't spend our leisure time on leisure. No, we'd spend it trying to acquire more wealth. Yeah. So why would you possibly want to have a 22 hour day of wakefulness? The whole point of our eight hour work day is to divide the day into three parts. Eight hours working, eight hours of leisure time, which we now spend vacuuming and going to the grocery store, and eight hours for sleep. I find it really discouraging to think that we're going in that direction to where we're carving at the eight hours. We've already done away with the eight hours of leisure time and now we're going after sleep. It's a huge mistake. I don't think it's a huge

mistake but there are some people out there that would love to be able to only get three hours of sleep a night and all the stuff that they could get done. I don't know man. What is there to do from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m.? First of all, you got Taco Bell, right? So you can go to Taco Bell. That's one thing. Sure. There's all sorts of stuff you can do but imagine if everybody else is up. Oh, that's true. I guess if they build a 24 hour society like New York City, those freaks in that town, there would be more things. There would be libraries open, businesses would be open. Everything would be open for 24 hours. Everything would go to shift work. The key here is if we're going to do that, don't ever, ever agree to a salaried position. Always, always make it hourly.

Yeah. Or else you're just in big trouble. Yeah. So I say no thank you. I do too, Chuckers. Great. Also, if the pills don't work, if they don't find the sleep gene, they've got this one thing. It's called brain polarization. Remember transcranial magnetic stimulation? How can I forget? Okay. So this is called the poor man's version of that where rather than using electromagnetism, it uses a DC current to jolt your brain awake. Oh, that's that machine? Yeah. So look for that. Look for a future where you have a cattle prod in your brain so you can work longer. You think, oh, I'm really sleepy. I'm falling asleep and it feels so good. Oh, I feel great and I can get some more spreadsheets done. Yes. If there's going to be any future for humanity, we have to rail

against this, everybody. So let's band together. Else everyone go to sleep. You should probably go on to howstuffworks.com and read the hilariously out of date. Is science phasing out sleep? Type in phasing and sleep in the search bar at howstuffworks.com that will take you elsewhere. Also, don't forget the rise and fall of Prova Jill, P-R-O-V-I-G-I-L by Evelyn Pringle and also the Stay Awake Men on the New York Times. It was an opinion column written by Thomas Bartlett. Pretty good stuff. Just his opinion. Yeah. All right. It's time for what? Listener mail? Do we have listener mail? Yeah, we do. Let's do it. The return of listener mail, Josh, and this is specific to our trivia night because it is about Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Awesome. This is from Kate and Hunter

who are married. Hey, guys, when I heard that the creator of Aqua Teen would be joining your trivia festival in a trivia festival, I felt compelled to write you guys to tell you of how that show changed my life. I was in my junior year of college when I went to a potluck dinner at a friend's apartment. I met a sweet, handsome, and funny guy there, and we chatted most of the evening. At the end of the night, he mentioned Aqua Teen. He did his meatwad voice and asked if I'd like to go over to his place and watch A-T-H because he had season one on DVD. That's like the etchings of the 21st century. You want to come back to my place and see my etching? He's a very smooth character. We stayed up all night watching the show, laughing and talking.

Two years later, we were spending our date night watching A-T-H and eating pizza when he proposed to me. When we were planning our wedding, we wanted to put Meatwad and Master Shake on top of the cake as an homage to their role in our meeting with Frylock as the minister. But we couldn't find any little figures of them. We tried several times to get in touch with someone connected to the show, see if they could hook us up or tell us where we could buy him, but we never had any luck. Our wedding was perfect anyway, and we've been married close to three years now. Needless to say, we still love Aqua Teen. So, if you guys think to share our story with Dave Willis, tell him thank you for us from Kate and Hunter. And this is our way of sharing it. And I hope Dave Willis is listening

to our show. Yeah, I wonder if he does now. Now that he's like, oh, I didn't know these guys existed. I guess I'll listen to him since I'm playing. I bet he checked it out and may have listened to a poor episode and never tuned in again. Probably. Or maybe he's our number one fan. Yeah, I think that's a great story. And I, for one, think that they should manufacture the characters from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Like, remember the little Smurf figurines? Yeah. Perfect size. Handy. You know, back in the day when South Park first came on, I made a little Sculpey. You know what Sculpey is? A very Sculpey. It's like Play-Doh and Clay, but you can bake it in your oven at home. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Sculpey. Yeah. I made little Sculpey

South Park guys because they didn't exist at the time. It was so new. And people were like, oh my gosh, where'd you get those? And I said, I made them. And then, you know, they started mass manufacturing South Park and everything after that. Nice. That's anyway. I would have recommended to Kate and Hunter to get Sculpey and make your Frylock and Master Shake and Meatwad. They're pretty demanding. They like things to just be kind of given to them. Sounds like it. Yeah. Well, thanks, Kate. Thanks, Hunter. Mazletov on your wedding. Sorry, didn't work out exactly according to plan, but we'll see if God can change things for you. If you have something you want to let us know about, a wedding, a funeral, or a voyage at sea,

we want to hear about it. Wrap it up in an email and send it to stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for it.

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