#267 — The Kingdom of Sleep

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 November 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode of the podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Matthew Walker about the nature and importance of sleep. They discuss sleep and consciousness, the stages of sleep, sleep regularity, light and temperature, the evolutionary origins of sleep, reducing sleep, the connection between poor sleep and all-cause mortality (as well as Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease), sleep across species, learning and memory, mental health, dreams as therapy, lucid dreaming, heart-rate variability, REM-sleep behavior disorder and parasomnias, meditation and sleep, sleep hygiene, different types of insomnia, caffeine and alcohol, sleep efficiency, bedtime restriction, cognitive-behavioral therapy, napping, sleep tracking, and other topics.

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Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're
0:12.2	hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber feed and will only be hearing
0:16.3	the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense
0:20.8	Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharis.org. There you'll find our private RSS feed
0:26.2	to add to your favorite pod catcher, along with other subscriber-only content. We don't
0:30.9	run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support
0:34.7	of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.
0:46.8	Today I'm speaking with Matthew Walker. Matt is a professor of neuroscience and psychology
0:52.3	at UC Berkeley, and the director of its sleep and neuroimaging lab, and he's also a former professor
0:58.0	of psychiatry at Harvard University. He has published over 100 scientific studies, and has appeared on
1:04.9	60 minutes, Nova, BBC News, and many other outlets. His first book, Why We Sleep, has been an
1:12.5	international bestseller, and he also hosts his own podcast, The Matt Walker Podcast. I've been
1:19.3	wanting to speak to Matt for quite some time, because as you'll hear, I've been increasingly worried
1:24.2	about the quality of my own sleep. I'm late to the party here, but now I'm convinced of the importance
1:30.9	of sleeping well most nights. And Matt and I get into all the details here about the nature and
1:38.3	importance of sleep. We discuss sleep and consciousness, the stages of sleep, sleep regularity,
1:45.9	light and temperature, the evolutionary origins of sleep, the generally doomed attempt to reduce
1:54.1	one's need for sleep, the connection between deficiencies in sleep, and all cause mortality,
2:00.6	Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease, the role that sleep plays in learning
2:08.5	and memory, and mental health, heart rate variability, REM sleep behavior disorder, and various
2:15.7	parasyms, we discuss elucid dreaming, dreams as a kind of therapy, the connection between meditation
2:24.0	and sleep, the various forms of insomnia, and there are practical tips for what to do about them
	...

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