It's the Brian Laird show here on WNYC.

I'm Tiffany Hanson in for Brian.

We're going to end today's show with a conversation about insomnia.

For most of us, sleep is a refuge that helps us recharge after a long day.

But in his recent New Yorker essay, what an insomnia knows, Adam Gopnik offers a look at what happens when that refuge is not so readily available.

Rather than just lamenting sleeplessness, Gopnik portrays his insomnia as an experience with its own

conscious architecture. Be warned, however, Gopnik writes, veteran insomniacs seeking reassurance

in these pages will not find it. While many of us are told to find comfort in the idea that

creative giants wrestled with sleeplessness, his essay reminds us that mythologizing does little to ease the

isolation and frustration of insomnia. So let's talk more about sleeplessness and the way it

defies and defines our expectations about sleep.

Adam Gopnik is a New Yorker staff writer, and he joins us now.

Hi, Adam.

Hey, Tiffany.

How are you?

Good.

How'd you sleep last night?

Glad you asked.

Very much, as I always do, is exactly as you quoted, you know, insomnia except an architecture of the night that in a way imitates the architecture of sleep itself, which is everyone knows, you know, has deep sleep and REM sleep.

And so us insomniacs aren't just kind of awake and working. We're pursuing sleep as best we can.

So my usual hour, I took because all insomniacs have their own rituals.

I took a melatonin, a chewable melatonin. Then I fell asleep, woke up again at 3.30, lay in bed for

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