Hello there. It's Matt Walker here and welcome back to the podcast.

Ah, the wonderful art and skill of napping.

Well, actually, there's no art involved really.

It's all about rigorous science and the science of napping at least on this show and at least with

this episode. Previously on the podcast I've spoken about the basics of naps.

I've spoken about their origin, some of their functions, and also some of the dangers of napping.

And that's dangers in parentheses in terms of dangers for certain people and if you want to

listen to that episode it is number seven on this podcast show but today we're

going to focus on a different question. Indeed, an even more basic

and fundamental question, how to nap, and specifically for how long should you nap in the afternoon if you're going to nap at all

and as a structure in this episode we're going to walk through a number of steps

first we will briefly recap the basics of naps and then second we're going to start

examining exactly how long should you nap. In other words it's almost like a drug study where we develop what's called

a dose response curve and the dose here of course is the duration of the nap and the response is the benefit for your brain

and also some of the potential downsides and I do want to mention some of the downsides

because it's a big part of this equation of how we think

optimal naps can be designed. So in other words, there is a cost benefit ratio and we will walk through that dose response curve.

We will start with a low dose in other words a short nap and then we will go up and

then we will go up and up in nap length continuing to look at that cost benefit

curve does that make some sense again I ask as if I am expecting the microphone to give me an answer.

And then third, we will finally finish with a synopsis, some take-homes.

By the way, I love the word synopsis. Isn't it a wonderful sounding word?

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