361: Fear of Sleep

This American Life

Society & Culture, News, Politics, Arts

4.6 • 88.8K Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mike Birbiglia got used to strange things happening to him when he slept—until something happened that almost killed him. This and other reasons to fear sleep, including bedbugs, "The Shining," and mild-mannered husbands who turn into maniacs while asleep.

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Prologue: Host Ira Glass talks about his fear of sleep, and reports on other people who have very strong reasons of their own to fear bedtime. (8 minutes)
Act One: Mike Birbiglia talks about the sleepwalking that nearly killed him. (13 minutes)
Act Two: Producers Nancy Updike and Robyn Semien report on critters that can kill sleep: cockroaches and bedbugs. (11 minutes)
Act Three: Joel Lovell explains why, as an 11-year-old, he trained himself not to fall asleep, and how that had some unintended consequences. (10 minutes)
Act Four: Seth Lind explains how he ended up watching Stanley Kubrick's The Shining when he was six years old, and how it led to two years where every night he had trouble falling asleep and nightmares. (7 minutes)
Act Five: For some people, the fear of sleep is linked to the fear of death. We hear from some of them. (5 minutes)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	As early as I remember, I was afraid to go to sleep.
0:04.7	This began when I was six.
0:06.0	My Uncle Lenny went off to Vietnam.
0:08.7	And that opened up this chapter in my life where I was obsessed with death.
0:12.8	I was scared that Uncle Lenny was going to be killed.
0:14.6	But more than that, his absence underscored the fact that someday, no matter what, I was going to be drafted,
0:21.8	and I'd have to go to Vietnam, and I'd be killed.
0:25.1	And there was nothing that I or anybody I knew could do to stop that.
0:29.8	I know he was going to be killed because I was chubby and I was terrible at sports.
0:32.7	I could barely run half a block.
0:34.7	On TV, war seemed to involve a lot of running. There was crouching, there was
0:39.3	shooting, but there was a disturbing amount of running. So I was six, and I knew it was going to die,
0:45.8	and my mom and dad couldn't help me. Nobody could help me. I'd be dead forever. Galaxies would spin,
0:54.3	humans would travel to other worlds, and I would miss all of that.
0:57.8	Nobody would remember me or anybody that I had ever known.
1:01.2	Forever.
1:03.3	And I got awake at night, scared to fall asleep.
1:07.6	Because sleep seemed no different than death.
1:10.5	You know? You were gone. Not moving, not talking, not thinking, not aware, not aware.
1:19.2	What could be more frightening?
1:21.9	What could be bigger?
1:24.9	And here was the weird part of it, I thought, when I was a kid.
	...

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