Should you take naps?
What's Up Docs?
BBC
4.4 • 659 Ratings
🗓️ 21 October 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to What’s Up Docs?, the podcast where doctors and identical twins Chris and Xand van Tulleken tackle the confusion around every aspect of our health and wellbeing.
In this episode, they’re asking, what’s the deal with naps? Some people nod off in minutes, while others can’t manage it at all. So why is napping so different from person to person? Is it actually good for us? Is there a “right” way to nap - and should we all be making time for it? Also, they uncover what’s really happening inside the brain when we drift off.
To help answer these questions, they’re joined once again by Russell Foster, Professor of Circadian Neuroscience at the University of Oxford. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at whatsupdocs@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp us on 08000 665 123.
Presenters: Drs Chris and Xand van Tulleken Guest: Professor Russell Foster Producer: Maia Miller-Lewis Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar and Jo Rowntree Editor: Kirsten Lass Researcher: Grace Revill Tech Lead: Reuben Huxtable Social Media: Leon Gower Digital Lead: Richard Berry Composer: Phoebe McFarlane Sound Design: Ruth Rainey
At the BBC: Assistant Commissioner: Greg Smith Commissioning Editor: Rhian Roberts
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.5 | It's like going into an ice path with your hands as the ice. |
| 0:10.8 | In 2025, we were here for the entertainment. |
| 0:13.8 | Ellis and John. |
| 0:14.9 | Have you not considered just coffee, which is what I do? |
| 0:17.6 | Sightracked with Annie and Nick. |
| 0:19.4 | Stevie Wonder, welcome. I'm pleasure. Loyal Carnar is with us. Want to hear all about Glastonbury. And Celebrity Traitors Uncloaked. Welcome to Uncloaked, Alan. Oh, thanks for having me, Ed. The winner. I know, still hasn't sunk in. Get the best of 2025 with podcasts on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:41.7 | Hello and welcome to WhatsApp Docs. I'm Dr. Chris Viti. |
| 0:48.0 | I'm Dr. Zandviti and for BBC Radio 4, we hurtle headfirst into the complicated and conflicted world of health and well-being. We debunk some myths, we bunk other myths, |
| 0:53.1 | we find out the facts about how we can |
| 0:55.3 | best look after our health, our minds and our bodies. From smiling to protein intake to looking |
| 1:01.2 | after our knees. And today's on, we're returning to a really important topic, sleep. |
| 1:06.4 | That's right, Chris, because as part of the BBC-wide celebration of sleeping well, we're talking |
| 1:12.0 | about the snooze, taking 40 winks. |
| 1:15.6 | We're talking about taking naps. |
| 1:17.0 | The nap, and you and I differ in this regard. |
| 1:19.5 | You, I would say, are a napper. |
| 1:21.4 | Well, I would fight that, but I would say you're a nap skeptic. |
| 1:24.6 | I'm a never napper, but I'm going to try and approach this with an open mind. |
| 1:29.7 | Chris, before we get into napping, what have you got for me? How have you been? So I had the experience |
| 1:34.4 | recently of becoming a meme. You know the expression, hold my beer. Hold my beer and then you |
| 1:40.3 | go and do something daft or stupid. Yeah. So I became this meme on the family holiday recently |
... |
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