The Rich Roll Podcast - Arianna Huffington’s Sleep Revolution: A Formula For Enhanced Productivity, Performance, Success & Happiness

Episode Date: April 25, 2016

Arianna Huffington is more productive than you are. In addition to co-founding The Huffington Post in 2005 (which famously sold to AOL in 2011 for $315 million), she has dominated television news for decades as a globally recognized political pundit; authored 15 books; built multiple profitable businesses; pioneered online journalism; and even ran for Governor of California as an independent in 2003. Under Arianna's stewardship, in 2012 HuffPo won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, representing a seismic shift in journalism from traditional print prominence to online, cementing digital media's permanence, force, and legitimacy. Not enough? Arianna has been named to the Time 100 list of most influential people and the Forbes Most Powerful Women list. So what's her secret? The answer might surprise you: a great night of sleep. A devoted mom of two college-aged girls, Arianna learned the value of sleep the hard way. A burnout episode several years ago left her chronically exhausted, priming an exploration to redefine what it means to live well — beyond business and financial success. Her NY Times bestselling smash hit Thrive* established her authority on well-being and today she is pioneering a movement — make that a revolution — that debunks the false bravado and cultural, mythical pride associated with burning the midnight oil to instead champion sleep as the key to unlock maximum potential. The tip of Arianna's latest campaign of insurrection is her new book, The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life One Night At A Time*. A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with Arianna at the LA Book Fair to learn more. Arriving replete with full entourage in tow, I admit to being a little intimidated. But with grace and presence, she quickly put me at ease. In a perfect world, I would have loved the time and bandwidth to delve deeply into Arianna's upbringing, her political evolution from conservative to liberal, her authorship and her spiritual perspective on the important matters of life. However, I only had a tight hour, so this exchange is focused predominantly on sleep and provides a nice complement to my recent podcast, How To Sleep Smarter With Shawn Stevenson. Specific topics include: * the cultural devaluation of sleep in the Industrial Revolution * Arianna’s ‘wake-up' call after collapse from exhaustion * the cutting-edge science behind sleep * Arianna's “Third Metric” * sleep as athletic recovery enhancement * the foundation of sleep deprivation in colleges * persistent use of sleep aids & links to Alzheimer’s * simple transition to sleep & removal of stimuli * the power of taking naps * workaholic ethos & the cost of burnout * finding optimum balance to improve relationships * segmented sleep & other sleep conventions Arianna was absolutely delightful. I sincerely hope you enjoy the exchange. Peace + Plants, Rich

Getting enough sleep doesn't mean that you're giving up your goals or your desire to achieve and succeed. On the contrary, it makes you more effective. It's a performance enhancer. That's Ariana Huffington, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Greetings, citizens of planet Earth. My name is Rich Roll.

I am your host. Welcome to The Rich Roll Podcast, the show where each week I sit down with the world's brightest thought leaders, paradigm-breaking minds across all categories of health, wellness, diet, nutrition, fitness, athletic performance, spirituality, mindfulness, meditation, creativity, artistry, entrepreneurship. You get the picture. Why do I do this? I do it to help all of us, myself included, unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves. So thank you so much for tuning in today. I appreciate everybody who has shared the show with your friends and your colleagues

and big love, mad props to everybody who has made a habit of always using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. You can find that banner ad on any episode page on my website, or you can just type into your browser, richroll.com forward slash website, or you can just type into your browser, richroll.com forward slash Amazon takes you to Amazon. Amazon will not charge you one cent extra on any of your purchases, but they send us

some loose commission change that allows us to continue to do what we do and build on that. So thank you so much to everybody who has made a habit, a practice of doing that. Really exciting show for you guys today. The great Ariana Huffington is with us. Most famously known, obviously you may know already, as the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post. She is quite an extraordinary individual,

very accomplished and very, very interesting. I really enjoyed talking to her and I got a whole bunch more I wanna say about her in a second, but first, let's acknowledge the awesome organizations that make this show possible. All right, Arianna Huffington. There are so many incredibly fascinating aspects of this woman's life. I mean, she has really lived. She is clearly a very powerful manifester. And, you know, some of the fascinating things about her life and her evolution, I mean, she used to be this conservative political commentator, and then she later jumped the fence and became a liberal. In 2003, she ran for governor of California as an

independent. In 2009, she was listed as number 12 in Forbes list of most influential women in media. She's authored 15 books. Her latest book is called The Sleep Revolution, Transforming Your Life One Night at a Time. And that's really the focus of today's conversation. You know, I would have loved the time and the bandwidth to delve into her upbringing, her history, her authorship, her political evolution, her evolving spiritual perspective. I mean, she's, you know, done some really interesting things in that realm. She explored the Rajneesh movement. She once dated the founder of Est, Werner Erhard. She explored the Rajneesh movement. She once dated the founder of Est, Werner Erhard. Unfortunately, I only had a very tight hour with her just before she took the stage at the LA Book Fair. And so by virtue of that, this conversation is really predominantly focused on sleep, which is the subject, obviously, of her new book. But it makes for a really nice complement to my recent conversation with Shawn Stevenson. That was RRP 219. If you missed it, I strongly suggest you check that out. That was a really popular episode. All right, let's talk to Ariana.

Where do you live most of the time? In Malibu Canyon. Oh, fabulous. Like near... So you didn't have to go far. No, no, no. I'm local. But I love you. Do you still have a home in Los Angeles or do you live in New York? Yes, I still do.

I'm mostly in New York, but I love it here. It's like my kind of recharging time. Yeah. Recharging? Well, I don't know. You're on quite a hectic schedule these days. But still, you know, I'm fine. Don't you find I love what you said here? I made some notes, you see, from you.

I like what you said, that although you rarely get a full eight hours, when you do, everything is better. Of course. More present, alert, and protected. I want to talk about that. Yeah. Well, we can just go right into it whenever you're ready. Anytime you want.

All right. Ready to go? Let's start. First of all, you were at, were you at Oprah's? Oh, we have coffee coming in over there. Oh, that's Bruce Wagner. Wow. Thank you very much.

Was that Bruce Wagner? I'm fanboying out on that. I don't know. We can go find out for you. All right, cool. Thanks, you guys. So you were at Oprah's Super Soul Sunday brunch this morning? Yes, which is supposed to be off the record yet until they announce in May they're going to announce the Super Soul 100.

Oh, okay. Well, it was all over Twitter. I had some friends that were there this morning as well. Oh, it was? I love a Twitter. That's funny. Nothing can be off the record anymore, right? No, no, no. Those days, I think, are long over.

Those days, exactly. One shouldn't even try. Right, exactly. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. I know this is a crazy schedule for you today. Oh, I'm delighted. I love your podcast. Appreciate it. And I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Congrats on the new book. This is very exciting. As you know, I recently interviewed Shawn Stevenson, who wrote the Sleep Smarter book. And so sleep, the sleep revolution is in the air, is it not? It really is. You know, there are these zeitgeist moments and sleep seems to be

having its moment in the sun. We're kind of in the middle of this transition period, you have a golden age of new sleep science, which is really exploding and making it absolutely clear that sleep is not negotiable. Right. I've always been a proponent of getting maximum sleep. I mean, I'm an athlete. I'm very well versed in the impact of having a good night's sleep on performance, and I feel like culturally, we're at this moment, like if you reflect on

what's going on in wellness right now, there's never been more interest in wellness, like an explosion of, you know, there's definitely a zeitgeist moment happening around all things wellness, and yet at the same time, we've never been more unhealthy as a culture, right? Obesity rates are through the roof, heart disease, diabetes, et cetera. And I think it's analogous to what's going on with sleep right now. We have a lot of fascination and interest in all the new

sleep science that's coming out. People are more and more convinced of the benefits of prioritizing sleep and our busy, you know, technological, you know, sort of infused lives. And yet at the same time, we're more sleep deprived than ever. Absolutely. That's exactly the paradox that I wanted to study in the book, that you have like this perfect storm of the new science, the new awareness, the new wearables that can track our sleep. And at the same time, you have this invasion of technology into every aspect of our lives, including our beds, that makes it so much harder to disconnect from our devices and from our world and to be able to surrender to sleep. Right, right. So let's take it back to kind of the genesis of sort of this problem that we're having around sleep. You know, as you so eloquently discuss in your book,

it really began around the Industrial Revolution. And there's this famous quote by Thomas Edison. And, you know, here we are rushing into the modern era, and now we're in the midst of another, you know, new era with the explosion of technology. And that's, I think, bringing it to the forefront era, and now we're in the midst of another new era with the explosion of technology, and that's, I think, bringing it to the forefront once again. Absolutely. So we basically need to go back to the first industrial revolution to understand when we started devaluing sleep. Because after all, in ancient you know ancient rome ancient egypt ancient greece sleep

was revered there were special sleep temples where you would go to incubate dreams to give you guidance for your life for your leadership for your healing and then fast forward to the first industrial revolution when we start treating human beings like machines. And we really begin to think that the goal of life is to minimize downtime. And it's not. This is such a false delusion. It's equivalent really to thinking the earth is flat

or climate change doesn't exist and it's one of those foundational flaws in what we believe that has affected how we live and how we work that has led to wearing sleep deprivation like a badge of honor especially among you guys you know men brag literally how much how little sleep they need. I had dinner with a guy recently who said, I only got four hours sleep the night before, and I thought to myself, I didn't say it, but I thought, you know what, if you had gotten five,

this dinner would have been more interesting. Right, right. So that reluctance to recognize that we all need, according to all scientists, unless you are what they call a short sleeper, there's about 1% of us who are. There are certain people that do exist that really can function well. There are about 1% of people who can function for four or five hours without any adverse consequences. It's a genetic mutation. You either have it or you don't.

You can't train yourself. Well, there's probably a lot of guys walking around convincing themselves that they have it when they in fact don't. When they don't. You can test yourself. Any friend of mine who says, oh, you know, I don't need a lot of sleep. I said, great. Go test yourself. Because what happens is that we don't even notice anymore.

I know it happened to me. Everything I'm saying, I've been through. The day that I collapsed from sleep deprivation and exhaustion nine years ago and broke my cheekbone on the way down, if you had asked me that morning, how are you, Ariana? I would have said fine because I really had forgotten what it is like to be fine.

I had forgotten what it is like to be fully recharged. Well, let's camp out here for a minute. I think it provides some great context for why you wrote this book, which is this history, this life of being an entrepreneur, being an author. You've written 14 books. I mean, you've built empires and what you've created with Huffington Post and your gubernatorial campaign, all these things that you've done. I mean, there are, there are a few people on planet earth that are as accomplished or as busy as you are. Right. And, and so I would presume that there was a lifetime

or many decades of, you know, adopting that workaholic lifestyle until you kind of have this crisis, right, which you write about in Thrive. And I feel like, and correct me if I'm wrong, this is really kind of a foundational moment, a turning point in your life that really tips the scales to you reprioritizing how you live, what's important to you, and how you conduct yourself on a daily basis. live, what's important to you, and how you conduct yourself on a daily basis. Absolutely. It was a rough wake-up call. What was going on at that time? So I was two years into building the Huffington Post, and I was living under the delusion that so many entrepreneurs live under that nothing can happen without me.

Right. under that nothing can happen without me. And also I was a single mom with two teenage daughters, one of whom was going through anorexia. She's fine now. And the other was looking for a college to apply to. So we were going on a college tour. We had made the agreement that I would be fully present during the day with her, not be on my BlackBerry. That was nine years ago. And so we would check into a hotel every night. She would go to sleep and I would start working. So I got back to L.A., to our home here.

And I had booked myself for a morning television show because I think what happens when you are exhausted, you really make stupid decisions. And when you are not even in a position to be making decisions, like that was completely unnecessary. You know, you keep adding things to your schedule. Right, but you don't want to say no to something like that, right? Well, but because you really want to say no to something like that, right? Well, but because

you really have given up prioritizing yourself. And now with everything we know scientifically, you see what I love about this modern age is that everything can be backed by science and we have tons of data. So it's not like my opinion or your opinion. Every aspect of my life had been degraded by then. Clearly my health, but also my decision making, not to mention my ability to judge my life by how much stuff I get done, but also by the quality of myself that I bring to what I'm doing. Right. And this is what you call the third metric. Yes. The third metric of success. So explain what that is. So, you know, we tend to look at success in terms of two metrics, money and power.

But this is like the two legs of a stool. And without the third leg, which consists of well-being, starting with sleep, wisdom, which again is degraded if we are not rested and recharged, wonder, which is incredibly degraded because the last thing that happens when you're exhausted is be able to wonder at life and to experience it fully and then giving. And when you're running on empty, you're less likely to be able to give to

anyone. I feel like that should be the first metric. Absolutely. But, you know, at least if we can include it as the third, it will be a good starting point in our culture. And I think, you know, in sort of preparing for today and, you know, reading up on you online, I feel like somebody could form the impression that, you know, in the wake of this experience, this was kind of the birth of your interest in, you know, things not only wellness oriented, but spiritually oriented as well. But I don't think that's entirely accurate because I feel like your quest for personal growth and your interest in things spiritual really roots back all the way back many, many decades.

Oh, yes. It goes back to my teenage years. I learned to meditate in Athens, Greece when I was 13. I went to India when I was 17 and studied comparative religion. No, this has been a longing and a quest all my life. But our culture is so shaped

to kind of reward getting stuff done that it became much harder for me to navigate all these different interests and reconcile these two things. And now I see how important it is to reconcile them. Because if you think of it, life for me now is these two threads. You know, there is a thread that takes us out to the world to achieve, to get things done, to contribute.

And then there is the other thread that takes us back to ourselves, to refuel, to recharge. And when these two get out of balance, that's when problems start in every area of our lives. And if you think of it, every culture sees life in that way, whether it's the Chinese wisdom of the yin yang, which is exactly that, you know, the inward and the outward thrust, or Zen philosophy, or

ancient Greek philosophy. So it's all very grounded in fundamental truths. So it's all very grounded in fundamental truths. But I feel like there's this gap that exists between the intellectual understanding of the importance of these things, whether it's sleep or other aspects of wellness. We can read books. We know this. We know firsthand how we feel and how our day goes when we sleep well. And yet we struggle so fundamentally with putting that into practice on a daily basis or simply prioritizing these things because of the way the gestalt of our, you know, busy professional lives. Absolutely. In fact, you said something which I've marked here. I like how research, I like how you have notes on my podcast. Oh, yeah.

This is a first, Ariana. I'm very honored by that. I'm a research freak I research everything but you said that when you get your full 8 hours obviously you've established that you need 8 hours to be operating on all cylinders absolutely

I need 8 hours too so you said that when you do get them everything is better I'm more present, alert, and productive. So here's really what is amazing. Once you've established that, shouldn't that be prioritized? Because you have the evidence. Yeah, of course.

It's not even that you are more productive because you have more hours available to work. We are more productive when we are operating from the highest level of ourselves and I think athletes really are pioneers in this as you've discovered being an athlete yourself I mean that's why in the book I quote Kobe Bryant I quote Andre Inguidola from the Golden State Warriors because Andre has actually tracked the dramatic improvement to his game when he started getting eight hours sleep. Yeah, it's unquestionable. I mean, the holy grail in athletic performance is recovery. If you can expedite your recovery

in between your training sessions, then that is going to have a profound impact on your performance in both the short term and the long term. And the most powerful way to expedite that recovery process is to get a great deep night of sleep, unquestionably. So I feel like athletes fundamentally understand that. And I also feel like the technology sector is really, you know, embracing this as kind of an early adopter. Like, you know, these startup companies are charged with imagining the future of our culture, right? So I feel like they're going to be more attuned to getting on board with this kind of thing. And that's what we're seeing, right? Absolutely. We're seeing it everywhere. And in fact, we launched on Friday a college tour to about 100 colleges, and we've partnered with a lot of these companies to create sleep fairs in colleges to help students reprioritize sleep. Because now in most colleges, you have... This is where it begins.

This is where it begins. You have this saying that is, sleep grades social life peak too. And sleep is the one thing that they think they have to give up. And now with the mental health crisis in colleges getting worse and worse, with an explosion in the amount of anxiety and depression and binge drinking and drugs, sleep deprivation is foundational. Yeah, there was something really interesting in your book when you talked about the nexus between depression and sleep deprivation. The statistics were pretty incredible in terms of how these two things are linked and how sort of changing habits around sleep and really prioritizing quality around sleep can actually have a profound impact on people that are affected by depression. Absolutely. And yet, we are more likely in our culture to go for a pill

rather than make some fundamental changes in our behavior and winning what we prioritize and that I think of everything in your book That was the most shocking the statistics around big pharma when it comes to sleeping pills and benzodiazepine Yeah, I think it's you said it was like 41 percent of people are on some form of sleep aid, right? That's really crazy. And then the link between persistent use of sleep aids and Alzheimer's, right, range from like 32% all the way up to like 84%. Exactly. That's really shocking.

If you do it over six months. Right. And I think one of the problems here is that the United States and New Zealand are the only countries allowed to advertise on television sleeping pills. And so you have these beautiful ads with happy people govorting through fields. a quick recitation of 92 dreadful side effects that include possible suicide or getting behind a car and driving without being conscious and maybe killing somebody, which has happened. And it's really tragic. And beyond that, they're not even really helping enhance your sleep. No. And they're certainly not getting at the core of what's causing you to have a sleep disorder to begin with. It's sort of like taking Viagra for an erection. You're not getting at the cause of why you have erectile dysfunction. Right. But I think it's even worse because the

truth is that there are alternatives. And incidentally, there's a very direct connection between erectile dysfunction and sleep deprivation. So a faster way to actually deal with that problem would be to get enough sleep but when it comes to the general question of alternatives to be able to get sleep i try to cover them all in the second part of the book because there's so many natural alternatives starting with a very simple transition to sleep which is lacking in most of our lives i offer a lot of ingredients so that everybody can create their own transition mine is very simple 30 minutes before i go to sleep i turn off all my devices and gently escort them out of my bedroom for me that is key gently gently yes and i want them out of my bedroom. For me, that is key. Gently. Gently, yes.

I want them to be there in the morning, but I don't want them on my nightstand. Yes, this is so hard for so many people. I know, but what happens is that even if you start five minutes before you're going to sleep, I believe, like you said, in microscopic steps. Don't try to write the great American novel in a day. Just take manageable steps. You know, don't try to write the great American novel in a day. You know, just take manageable steps. I hope it's easy, relatively speaking, to turn off your devices

five minutes before you turn off the light and charge them not on your nightstand. Right, right, right. And little by little, the way you feel the next day becomes a magnet that draws you to this behavior. So it starts as a discipline, and then it becomes a magnet. I think it's interesting how there's been some shifts in technology with programs like F-Lux, and now with the new iOS update, they allow you to take the night shift, which is great. But I think at the same time, that almost encourages people to keep their devices in the bedroom because, oh, well, I've blocked the blue light out of this, so now it's not a problem. Where, in truth, it's still a jarring thing to have with you that's impacting those circadian rhythms

and making it more difficult for you to get a restful night. And also it's particularly jarring because if you wake up in the middle of the night and your phone is within reach and you can't fall asleep right away, chances are you're going to be tempted to go to your phone to check texts or emails or look at social media. And that's the end of a restorative night's sleep.

Did you look into the science behind just the Wi-Fi signals? Like a lot of people are saying to actually completely turn off all Wi-Fi anywhere near the bedroom because that has some kind of impact on brainwaves or something like that. I think there's some science on that. Yeah. I mean, the science is not conclusive on this, but if you want to be on the safe side, why not do it? Why not try to create an environment which is as sacred as possible for going to sleep? I mean, my bedroom is a device-free zone, no screens. And in fact, as we are trying to raise awareness

about a good night's sleep we are doing a contest together with Airbnb I saw this, so explain what this is so basically first of all Airbnb curated some of the best places you can sleep

all around the world and I offered my apartment in New York to the person who wins a contest which includes just answering

in less than 550 words the question how would your life be different if you had gotten a full night's sleep the night before and so the person who wins it and they can bring somebody with them how would your life be different if you had gotten a full night's sleep the night before? And so the person who wins it, and they can bring somebody with them, will get a personal sleep consultation with me. We'll get a Greek meal that is intended to elicit a good night's sleep,

no spicy foods, etc. And then I will leave them. I have all their recommendations of them having a bath and getting ready for sleep. And then in the morning, there will be hair and makeup to put them on our half-post morning show to talk about their experience. Where are you going to sleep, though? So I probably will have to sleep at a different Airbnb. All right. I love it. That's great. Where are you going to sleep, though? So I probably will have to sleep at a different Airbnb. All right.

I love it. That's great. And I think what's so cool about that is that this book isn't just a book. You're really about this creating a movement with the sleep fairs and the college tour. It's really about catalyzing social change, right? And this contest is just a fun example of that. But I mean, you're doing like 50 colleges, right? Yes, we were going to do 50. And then I wrote a piece about it. And there was such demand from other colleges. We're now up to 100. Wow. And brands. You're not even going to be

in your bedroom in New York anyway. I'm not going to go to all of them. But we have, I went to the University of Denver on Friday and to Dominican University on Saturday I'm doing Stanford tomorrow and then USC and UCLA but we have a team of people who are working on to put up the first to bring in different brands with to your point a lot of wearables and a lot of simple things also white noise machines and a lot of Products like eye masks and PJs and pillows so that you can also rekindle our romance with sleep Mm-hmm One of the things that this is a very personal question

But you know, I started using an eye mask and sometimes I use white noise in earphones at night. And now I feel like I'm almost addicted to those. Like if I travel and I realize, oh, my gosh, I left my eye mask at home, I have trouble going to sleep. Like I'm dependent upon it, which I don't like that feeling. But there's something kind of natural about it because the darker the outside environment, the easier it is to go to sleep. So I actually stuff an eye mask in my handbag and everywhere because sometimes you may be on the subway or on a short flight even when normally you wouldn't prepare for a real night's sleep. But you can catch like 20 minutes and now there's such powerful evidence about

napping. Right. And napping, you know, along with just priding yourself on getting a good night's sleep, these things are, you know, anathema. And it's almost like you couldn't say that publicly, or how dare you nap? They're so associated with laziness and kind of outdated cultural. Yeah, exactly. So how do we begin to overcome this? Well, that's the key thing that you said about how do we catalyze cultural change? So we change norms and expectations.

And I think it starts with new role models. I think athletes are a new role model. Business leaders who are willing to speak about how much more effective they are when they get eight hours sleep, like Jeff Bezos, like Satya Nadella, the new CEO of Microsoft. So people can say, yes, getting enough sleep doesn't mean that you're giving up your goals or your desire to achieve and succeed. On the contrary, it makes you more effective. It's a performance enhancer. But at the same time, I just want us not aspect is kind of the easy entry point. Well, that's what gets guys interested.

When you start calling it a performance enhancer, suddenly, you know, the ears of the men perk up. Right. And before I go to the mystery, actually, there was a real tipping point last week when McKinsey published a study in the Harvard Business Review with a title that you would have thought had come from the onion. It was the proven link between effective leadership and sleep.

It's kind of an amazing moment that they walked us through the science of what happens to the prefrontal cortex where the executive functions of leadership are housed when the brain is sleep-deprived and how degraded it becomes so that all the functions of leadership, which they enumerated from decision- to team building, are significantly degraded.

And yet we have a culture that celebrates that kind of FOMO, fear of missing out, workaholism kind of ethos that we see. You've been very outspoken about everybody who's running for president and how they pride themselves on not sleeping. And then we've, of course, we have, you know, an entire medical institution where we're training doctors through their residencies of, you know, working, I don't know how long their shifts are, but they're ridiculously long. We have doctors that are walking around like zombies who are taking care of very sick people. I mean, to me, that's absolute insanity. It is. And again, we can measure the adverse medical effects, as they call them, accidents, even deaths, because nurses and doctors are doing their jobs while sleep deprived. Yeah, which is crazy. I mean, you know, if somebody

came to operate on you and they said, you know, I was at this bachelor party last night and got a little drunk, you would say, stop. Right. You know, let's get another surgeon. Let's postpone this. But nobody thinks of how much sleep did you get? Yeah, they're at that tail end of a 48-hour shift or something like that. And then they're charged with cracking open your sternum. It's like, it's pretty crazy. Right.

But yet at the same time, if a candidate was to approach the podium before some kind of rally and say, you know, I'm taking naps and I'm sleeping eight hours. I'm just not going to burn the midnight oil anymore. That that person, I feel, would almost be laughed off the stage or become unelectable. Well, I think this is the transition we are in. I feel that we are at a moment similar to moving from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. And I think in all transition points in history, every kind of behavior is coexisting. So you have the pioneers of the new and you have Neanderthal behavior

still celebrated. So it depends on where you look. I mean, are you looking at what is dying or what is being born? But I have no doubt that the kind of behavior that celebrates sleep deprivation and burnout as kind of badges of honor is dying, is on the way out. And last year, we had such an amazing number of casualties of executives collapsing on their treadmills and either dying

or suffering from massive heart attacks like the CEO of United. And that is beginning to change our awareness of the cost of burnout. Right. Well, this book is incredibly, impeccably well-researched. You have like 60 pages of annotations or something like that, right? So what is, you know, the state-of-the-art science of sleep saying right now? Like, what is at the cutting edge and what are we discovering and finding out? Well, first of all, I think it's important to remind everyone how young the science of sleep is. Like, the first scientific sleep center in the United States was at Stanford in 1970. Yeah, they do great work at Stanford.

They do amazing work, yes. And now we have over 2,500 scientific sleep centers in the United States alone. And one of the most fascinating new findings for me is about what happens in the brain. We used to think that sleep was a time of brain inactivity. As Dr. DeMend from Stanford put it, the metaphor was you put the car in the garage and you turn the ignition off. And now it's clear that sleep is a time of frenetic activity in the brain. And the brain has been found has two functions, either awake and alert or asleep and cleaning up. So all the accumulated toxins in the brain between the brain cells in the course of the day need to be washed away.

And they can only be washed away when we sleep. They cannot be washed away when we are awake. As one of the scientists put it, it's as though you can either entertain the guests or clean the house up. And then there was another amazing metaphor I had. I did a panel in Munich with Dr. Ronneberg, who is the leading German sleep scientist. And he said, if you wake up before you've gotten enough sleep, he said it's the equivalent of stopping the laundry cycle

before it has completed the process of cleaning up the laundry. And that's such a horrific image. You basically take the laundry out of the machine half cleaned. Right. Which is, I think that's a cool analogy because you sort of think of it, well, I got one hour less than I'd like to, but you know, pretty good. But you wouldn't wear clothes that were only halfway washed. It doesn't work at all. It's either done or it's not done at all. Right? Exactly. That's why, um, what you said, you know, about how much sleep you've, you, you need to, to operate at your optimal is the equivalent of how many cycles does the laundry machine have to

go to to really clean the clothes and and i was even talking to the head of them of nih and um who is very familiar with all the latest research and he said well i don't always get it and i said well you have to always get it because you you know all the science so it's what you said at the beginning you know even when we intellectually know something because we're swimming in a culture which is still operating under the old assumptions it's much harder for us to actually put this new knowledge into practice. And that's why it's important to, A, start with micro steps, and B, have a kind of support system, a kind of little tribe. That's why some of the new wearables are great,

because they gamify getting more sleep and tracking our sleep and how deep it is. And ultimately, the goal is to wake up without an alarm waking up with an alarm is actually barbaric because just think of the word alarm like you wake up in a fight or flight mode before anything has even happened right yeah yeah yeah it's very violent it's very violent and it's like and then i think one of the other barbaric habits is the snooze button so for me it's like i i that's like chinese water torture it's like chinese water torture you never really recharge in the 10 minutes or whatever that you have yourself, you know, be walking up again and then push the snooze button.

In fact, I think I get irritated when hotel, I call a hotel for an alarm clock, an alarm call, because even though 90% of the time I wake up naturally, if I have a plane to catch or an early meeting or something, I'll put an alarm call in as protection. And you say to them, wake me up at such and such an hour. And they say, do you want a follow-up call? And I said, no, I don't. I don't want a follow-up call. I'm asking you to wake me up at the last possible moment for me to make my appointment.

I'm not asking you to wake me up half an hour before the last possible moment. I don't understand why I would do that. What's amazing is, and this is clearly documented in your book, is that it seems like there's no aspect of your physical, mental, emotional well-being that isn't impacted by the quality of your sleep. So everything from productivity, creativity, memory, performance, athletic performance we talked about, problem solving, immune system, you know, all of these things are so profoundly impacted by the quality of our sleep. We all know we feel alert and better, but it's amazing how many other things are controlled by this mysterious mechanism.

Well, and even you mentioned the immune system. The irony is that despite the fact that we are now in America working a week more than we were working in the 1980s, we are actually losing 11 days of productivity a year. And one of the reasons is that because our immune system is suppressed, we have more sick days. We are more likely to even just get a cold. And also, we are less engaged in our work. There was a global study by Gallup that shows that only 13% of employees are fully engaged at work. So what's the point of kind of showing up sleep deprived? Well, it's that weird thing where you think time works linearly. Like, well, if I get less sleep, then I go to work and I get more done.

And it's myopic because it doesn't account for how well and how smooth your work is going. Like when you sleep well, you just get more done in a shorter period of time. It's that same thing that applies to mindfulness and meditation practices. The time that you take out to do your meditation will be paid back, you know, 10x in terms of your productivity and the sort of efficiency with which you can kind of manage your day and keep stress reduced uh to get things done more expeditiously and you mentioned stress you know the the cortisol hormone the stress hormone again is released when you are sleep deprived and um you know sean Sean Stevenson at your podcast said that a good night's

sleep starts the minute you wake up. I was going to raise that. Like, yeah, I was going to use that as a sort of, it's a very interesting thing to make you more mindful of this throughout the day, not 10 minutes before you go to bed. You're sort of planning for your evening. And, you know, maybe that's a good place for you to launch into what you're, you know, how do you maintain mindfulness over that throughout your day? And what is your routine in terms of preparing for that optimal night of sleep? Well, for me, it starts with how you wake up. That's why I don't like waking up with an alarm. And I definitely do not go to my phone first thing.

Definitely do not go to my phone first thing even if I take just one minute To set my intention for the day Remember what I'm grateful for it sets kind of a different quality to my day Otherwise, it's as though I'm saying the most important thing happening in my world right now is what the world demands of me As opposed to what what we want to create this this day and i think the most creative people do not run their lives based on their inbox and if you are at the mercy of your inbox you're going to be very transactional if you're going to be creative but so many many people are. Yes. It's so difficult. And we pay a big price for that. Yes. So you need times when you're not going to be on your phone

during the day, times when you can work on the things that really matter, and little breaks for recharging throughout the day. I mean, I like to start my day with meditation and my workout, even if it's a 30-minute workout. And then I like during the day to sort of stay connected with my body and how am I feeling rather than operate completely from my head and allow the stress to become cumulative because that becomes the obstacle to sleep. We are all going to be dealing with stress. You know, nobody lives a life which is stress-free. The question is, how quickly do we course correct? And how much do we allow that stress to build until it becomes... Well, things that happen to you throughout the day

are completely neutral, right? It's your reaction to them that creates the anxiety or the stress. And it's the meditation and the mindfulness and how much sleep you get and how, you know, exercise and nutrition and all of these things that determine your reaction to things that occur to you that drive that, you know that sort of anxiety, stress reaction or lack thereof? Well, actually, that's what I find fascinating,

that I have observed myself, and my reaction to what happens during the day is completely determined by how much sleep I got. When I'm sleep-deprived, I become like a person I really do not like. I can relate to that. I become reactive, I'm more emotional, I take things more personally, I'm not as clear about how to resolve a problem, and also, I'm not as joyful.

And I feel like I'm dragging myself through my day, sort of getting stuff done. And God, is it really worth it? I think a lot of people would, their reaction to these ideas would be, well, that's all fine and well. But like, you don't understand my life. And I'm so busy. And I've got to do this. And I've got to do that. But I'm hard pressed to imagine there's anybody busier than you. Like, how do you navigate all the things that you have to do on a daily basis? Do you segment them? Like,

how do you sort of construct your professional life so that you remain balanced and even keeled? so that you remain balanced and even keeled? Well, for me, the first thing is to acknowledge that this whole conversation we are having is for people who want to be in the arena. We're not talking about people who want to check out and go sit under a mango tree. I mean, there are a lot of friends of mine who want to do that and I admire it,

but that's not really what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how can you stay in the arena and maximize your effectiveness while also staying connected with the fact that we are more than our successes and our failures. And that we are more than the comings and goings of our daily life. So for me, that's the idea. For me, for my dharma, you know, for my mission, this life. And so everything I'm saying in the book is related to that. I mean, if you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you will know that I haven't exactly, quote-unquote, slowed down.

But I have prioritized recovery. Ruthlessly prioritized recovery, which means that I'm on a book tour. If I have an early start, I'm not going to go out to dinner with friends. You know, decisions like that now have become automatic because the idea of

waking up early in the morning to go through a day and not really be present, I mean, i'm enjoying the fact that we're having a conversation i can be fully present instead of saying i have to check this uh off my list which is a terrible way to live so um and that brings us really to the mystery of sleep, because we haven't talked about that. And I think this is kind of ironically, for me, one of the most important chapters in the book about dreams, which have been such an essential part of humanity and of every religion. And I feel that when we don't remember our dreams, we're kind of missing out. And when we're sleep deprived, we don't remember our dreams, we're kind of missing out. And when we're sleep deprived, we don't remember our dreams. And now that I remember my dreams, it's a little bit like,

hey, what's in the movies tonight? So do you remember your dreams on a daily basis now? Yes, I don't always remember them vividly. But I remember them and I write them down. I have a little notebook that I travel with and I have a pen which has a flashlight so I can write in my dream book without putting on the light

which helps you remember more details and I kind of love it. It's not that every dream is important or meaningful or full of insights but it's more like connecting me with another part of myself. And it also puts the challenges and the obstacles of our daily lives in perspective. What does the science say about dreams and the importance of dreams and from whence they come and how they impact our lives well the science is kind of

amazing and for me one of the most amazing things is that scientists have often come up with their most dramatic inventions through dreams like things are resolved in dreams and they lead to incredible discoveries and he's not he he's not a scientist in the theoretical sense, but Larry Page speaks about how he came up with the idea of Google. Right. Yeah, that's an apocryphal story. No, it's not, actually.

He said it. But I mean, I guess maybe I'm misdefining apocryphal. I meant like that's a story that is kind of everybody knows, you know, a very famous story. Because I think it surprises people that somebody who is so data-driven. Right. But anecdotally, we all know for ourselves and people that we know, like, oh, I dreamed this song that I wrote. Yeah.

Or I came up with this idea. Came up in a dream. Right. Exactly. Yeah. But it happened to all of us in some way or another. And even if it is in less dramatic ways than Google or Let It Be, even if it is just that we go to bed with a problem and it somehow seems untangled during the night, which I think has happened to all of us.

Right. I think that's the difference between holding on and letting go. And you have this sort of beautiful quote by Ray Bradbury in the book, which is that we should all be learning to let go before we learn to get right. And it's beautiful, right? The idea of letting go is so difficult for us in this in this era. Like I think a lot of people don't even understand what that means or they equate it to some form of surrender or weakness. So what does letting go mean to you and how does that apply to sleep? It's so central to sleep. And a phrase that I use is life is a dance between making it happen and letting it happen. And it's the same thing.

It's like I think we have the illusion that we make everything happen in our lives. And yet, if we look back, if I look back on my life, some of the best things that happened, I didn't make happen. And some of the worst things that happened, I made happen. and some of the worst things that happened I made happen. So I think the Ray Bradbury thing of letting go, for me, means connecting with something deeper in ourselves, and that's really the key. It's like recognizing that however magnificent our job may be,

there is something in us that's more magnificent, and if we don't get in touch with that we're missing out yeah it's a leap of faith and it's uh it's a development of trust right to let go and to to know that if you create that open space that's an open door for something perhaps more beautiful or more powerful to come in. I know, like you, you know, when I'm driving the train, I'll drive it right off the tracks most of the time, right? I have to stop and just sometimes allow, you know, to surrender. And that's directed my life in beautiful ways when I'm able to get into that space. But, you know, it's a practice like anything else.

It's a discipline. I know. And, you know, I know, you know, you've written about your experience with drugs and I've written about my daughter's experience with drugs in her last year in college. And she's now been sober for four years and sleep has been incredibly important in her recovery because when she's now been sober for four years. And sleep has been incredibly important in her recovery.

Because when she's sleep deprived, she gets more anxious. And so I also see in her journey, you know, the connection between self-care and prioritizing what's good for you and how that affects every other aspect of life. Yeah, well, and surrender is such a big part of addiction recovery as well. Yes. Yeah, very interesting. So I wanted to kind of get into a little bit of the different phases of sleep. One of the questions that... I put it out on Twitter the other day, what do you want to know about sleep from Ariana?

And one of the questions I thought was interesting that came up was from somebody who wanted to know about the difference between the phases of sleep. Like people that sleep two to three hours and then wake up and then sleep two to three hours, separating out their sleep. Is there any evidence that this is a good idea or is this just a bad idea? Well, it depends on on what happens naturally as opposed to what happens as a stunt and segmented sleep and was very much the more

universal way of sleeping before the invention of the light bulb. People would go to sleep when it got dark, and then they would wake up sometime during the night. And it happens to a lot of people. It happens to me often that I wake up in the middle of the night. The question is, what do we do when we wake up? Historically, when people woke up, they never went about their daily tasks. There were even like special prayer books entitled, you know,

for when waking up in the middle of the night. They were supposed to just have more intimate conversations if they were sleeping with somebody, more connected to the spiritual side of life. So it's kind of interesting. For me, if I wake up now in the middle of the night, I don't stress about it. I just prop up myself with lots of pillows and meditate.

And inevitably, I fall asleep at some point. So the key is not to stress about it. In fact, there's an experiment I write about in the book that they had a control group that woke up and stressed about waking up, and then they had a group to whom they said

that your goal is to stay awake. And they fell asleep because they didn't stress about being awake. Right, right. They're not getting all up in their head and anxious about how they're going to fall asleep. Yeah, so they naturally, they were still tired,

they fell asleep. So that's the most important thing. If you wake up, you walk up. Don't turn on the TV. Don't go to your phone. If you want to read, read something that has nothing to do with work or politics. You know, read, I mean, has nothing to do with work or politics.

You know, read, I mean, what I do is I have books on my nightstand that are about poetry and philosophy and novels. I don't even read modern novels. I read like Trollope or Jane Austen or like connecting with bygone worlds. Right. If you had discovered these truths about sleep you know 20 years ago how do you think that would have impacted your career oh i think that there's nothing i have done that i couldn't have done and done it even better and done it with less damage to my health or my relationships or

my joy and my sense of gratitude about my life absolutely I mean when I look back there is no question that falling into this delusion, this collective delusion that burnout and sleep deprivation are essential for success was nothing but damaging. Right. And beyond the kind of easy, simple sleep hacks that we've kind of already talked about, like removing the devices from your bedroom and the eye mask and uh you know taking a bath temperature is huge here's the thing here's what's going on in my house ariana my wife uh bless her she likes the room a little bit warm and i run hot like i i need the room to be cold what do you need

what's your optimum oh like 60 like i like it cold yeah and i sleep so much better when it's cold she likes it at you know closer to 70 wow i know i don't get it i don't understand it but this has created a thing and it's like i love my what we've been together forever we have an amazing relationship but i we have a flat roof on our house and i went and got a tent and i put a mattress in it and i've been sleeping out on it in a tent on our house. And I went and got a tent. And I put a mattress in it. And I've been sleeping in a tent on our roof. And do you like it? Since February.

And my sleep has improved tenfold. Like, it's so much better. And I'm so much more present. And all the things that we've talked about have been improved in my life. And so it's separating out this kind of colloquial, traditional sense of, you know, a couple married or not, like sharing a bed and understanding that, you know, the sleep aspect of our relationship has to be, you know, in our case, handled a little bit differently. And this has improved our relationship, in fact. But it is it was a little bit of a mental, emotional thing to go like, you know, I want to sleep with my wife. You know, we're married. But it was a little bit of a mental, emotional thing to go like, I want to sleep with my wife.

We're married. And what kind of signal does that send to my children? And I don't want any kind of disruption with that. But my sleep is so much better. Well, I'm so happy you're talking about that. I hope you can write about it. We'd love to post on the Huffington Post because I have a whole section about how important it is for couples to optimize what makes them sleep better and how that in fact improves the relationship rather than fall into

this conventional assumption that you always have to sleep with each other you know sleeping apart doesn't mean you don't have sex it doesn't mean you don't love each other it just means that you want to wake up fully recharged and be fully present for each other. And there's nothing that damages a relationship faster than two sleep deprived people. Yeah. I mean, it has improved our relationship because, you know, when the room's too warm and I'm not sleeping well, or I'm just barely asleep and she rolls over and bumps me and then I'm awake. And then I start to resent her. And then it has this trickle-down effect that is detrimental to our relationship. Absolutely. I'm so glad you're raising that.

It's an ongoing thing, but it's tricky, right? And then I have this fear of what is the public, like if I talk about this, then is the public going to presume that I'm having an issue in my marriage, which I'm not, right? But not if you explain it. And you know, it's like, I think it's almost like we're giving permission to each other to talk about these things. And also, I want actually to do a big story on the Huffington Post, now that you told me that I'm going to ask for it, that traces why in Europe, most couples did not sleep with each other.

In fact, the royal couples, their aristocracy. They had their own, yeah, they had their own wings of the castle, right? And then it's kind of, you really keep the romance going, too. You know, you come together, you have sex, you recharge yourselves, you come together. So I think doing the history of that and and how un unnatural no is the expectation that you always need to sleep together i mean there are couples who when the minute you start talking to them about start saying oh my god my husband snores so much i can't sleep whatever the issue is whether it's temperature sn. You wake up at different times of the morning and you wake each other up.

Let's address it. Let's have a frank conversation about it. Let's put it all out. So I know that we're running out of time and you have to take the stage. I appreciate that. But maybe we can wrap it up. I have two things I want to ask you if I can indulge you quickly. And the first one is for people that are listening that are struggling with sleep,

beyond getting your book, maybe just some simple, less obvious kind of tips that they could take away that they could implement immediately to improve their sleep quality. I really think that the first most obvious thing is the transition to sleep and deciding what that is for them. And I think the combination of removing devices and having a hot bath or a hot shower that kind of like ritualistically almost washes the day away is the first easiest hack. Mm-hmm. Great. And one final thing. We've sat here for almost an hour and I haven't asked a single question about the Huffington Post or your career outside of sleep. There's so many things. I hope

that you will come back and talk to me some more at length, but I am interested in where you think online publishing is going in this era of now everybody becoming their own content creator? How do you sort of future trip on where things are headed in terms of the Huffington Post and beyond? So I really believe that for all online publishers, it's becoming more and more important to be differentiated and not to produce commodity journalism. And for us at the Huffington Post, the priorities beyond news and politics are focusing on solutions and what is working

and focusing on wellness. And these are sort of our differentiators and we're doubling down on these and the response has been amazing. Right, fantastic. Well, in preparation for today on my drive over here this morning i called our mutual friend kathy freston oh i love kathy she's the best right yes like tell me about ariana what can i ask her about and the one thing that she said is

you know what ariana really walks her talk like this isn't just a book about something that she suddenly got interested in. She lives this every single day. And she told this beautiful story about years ago, a recollection that she had when you were running for governor. And I guess you were staying with her at the time. And you guys shared a cab and you actually took a nap in the cab. So you were really doing this. And I applaud your kind of broad step into wellness and the advocacy that you're doing. This is a fantastic book that I think is going to help a lot of people. And more importantly, the movement beyond the book.

So thank you for taking the time. Thank you so much for giving me the time. I loved our conversation. I appreciate it. Me too. So everybody, pick up The Sleep Revolution. And if you want to connect with Ariana, you can find her on the internet, Twitter probably. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.

Ariana Huffington everywhere. She's pretty easy to find. So thank you. Thank you. Peace. Plants. All right, we did it. That's the show.

Hope you guys enjoyed it. I found her delightful. You know, there is that thing. You know, I just wish I had a little more time to get into her life a little bit more. But hopefully I'll have another chance to sit down with her at some point in the near future. Don't forget to check out the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. I've got tons of links, articles about Ariana, a wonderful blog post that I've written, all kinds of good stuff. So please make a point of checking that out to take your edification, your infotainment beyond the earbuds. I want to thank Jason Camiolo,

who came on board recently as a new producer and audio engineer for the podcast. He's done a great job. I appreciate that. So you can give him a shout out on Twitter. He's at Jason Camiolo, C-A-M-I-O-L-O. Thanks to Sean Patterson for help on graphics, Chris Swan for production assistance,

theme music done by Annalema. So thanks for all the support, you guys. I really appreciate it. Final thoughts. What are you doing to ensure the best possible night of sleep? And maybe there's one thing that you can change this week to improve your sleep quality. Maybe it's turning off the TV or the laptop or the tablet in the bed. Maybe it's making sure that you have a nice cup of tea or a bath before you go to sleep.

Some kind of ritual. What is it that you can switch up and improve? I don't know. Only you guys know what that might be in your own personal case. But my kind of assignment for you guys is to find one thing and switch it up, see how it goes, and then let me know about it on Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat. All right? And I'll see you guys again soon. Probably next week, right?

Yeah, I think probably next week. All right. Peace. Peace. Peace. Thank you.