Have We Always Felt This Tired?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 29 June 2017
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“Humans are the only species that willingly deprive themselves from sleep”. Ever since fire was discovered, we have traded off sleep time for other activities - from creating stone tools to partying. As our technology progressed, the list of things to do rather than sleep just got longer. But with sleep deprivation now a growing health problem, could we be reaching our limits? Or is tiredness part of our condition?
In this week’s programme, an evolutionary biologist, a historian and a neuroscientist give us their take on whether we are now any more tired than our ancestors. We hear what makes human sleep unique and how it has evolved in surprising ways. And finally we hear from a woman with a dream – that we may never have to sleep again.
Producer: Estelle Doyle and Sarah Shebbeare Presenter: James Fletcher
(Photo: A woman shows signs of tiredness as she counts ballot cards. Credit: Leon Neal/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Now Sleep Tell! |
| 0:02.0 | Tell! Brooklyn! |
| 0:05.0 | Welcome to the Inquiry |
| 0:09.0 | on the BBC World Service |
| 0:11.0 | with me James Fletcher. |
| 0:12.0 | Each week we bring you four expert witness. BBC World Service with me James Fletcher. |
| 0:12.9 | Each week we bring you four expert witnesses answering one pressing question from the news. |
| 0:18.6 | We live in a world of YOLO and Carpe diem, just do it and sleep when I'm dead. There's so much to do, working, commuting, caring, |
| 0:27.9 | relationships, family and friends, emails, Facebook, Netflix, a life full of obligations and temptations delivered on an ever-accelerating |
| 0:38.2 | conveyor belt. |
| 0:40.0 | And in a world of more-more more, there's one thing we seem to get less and less of. |
| 0:45.4 | Sleep. |
| 0:46.4 | How are you? we ask friends. |
| 0:48.6 | Tired comes the answer. |
| 0:51.1 | Last year, scientists in Canada launched the largest ever study of how sleep |
| 0:55.8 | deprivation affects the brain. Amid concern we're experiencing what some call |
| 1:00.5 | a global sleep crisis. One recent study estimated that sleep deprivation costs |
| 1:07.0 | the US economy up to $400 billion a year. But was there ever a past where we got the perfect amount of undisturbed |
| 1:16.0 | sleep? In this edition of the inquiry, first broadcast last July, we're asking, have we always felt this tired? |
| 1:25.0 | Part 1, Deep Sleep. sleep. I was basically nocturnal for about seven months. |
| 1:43.0 | If you're going to do this type of work, |
| 1:45.0 | you've got to be a really hungry graduate student |
... |
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