The War on Sleep
Jessa Gamble/ Matthew Wolf-Meyer
Lullabies may help us fall asleep faster -- but they don't do much for improving sleep's quality. There is some new research, however, that's trying to find ways to deliver better slumber... to make it so we need far less of it.
And there are new technologies to help us sleep, such as this thing, the Fisher Wallace Stimulator.
Chip Fisher's personal shock therapy device is marketed as a cure for insomniacs and people suffering from anxiety.
Our next guest calls it "part of a new class of armament in the war against sleep." Jessa Gamble is a science writer based in Yellowknife, and the author of Siesta and the Midnight Sun: How Our Bodies Experience Time. We reached her in Zurich, Switzerland today.
And Matthew Wolf-Meyer is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of California Santa Cruz and the author of The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine, and Modern American Life. He was in Santa Cruz.
This segment was produced by The Current's Jessica deMello.
To add your thoughts to anything you hear on the show, tweet us @thecurrentcbc. Or on Facebook. Or email us from our website. And if you missed the conversation on yesterday's edition of The Current, you can hear it on our podcast.
Last Word - Judy Graves
Coming up tomorrow, we will speak with Judy Graves ... known to some as Vancouver's Mother Teresa. As the city's "Advocate for the Homeless," she's spent more than two decades befriending the down-and-out and hard-to-house.
She's spent her days and nights on the Downtown Eastside, introducing herself to people sleeping on the street, under bridges and in doorways.
Judy Graves retires tomorrow, but her overnight walks remain the stuff of legend. The Current joined her on one of her final walks. We'll have the full story tomorrow, but we aired a clip with a little of what we heard to end today's program.
Other segments from today's show: