Sleep may seem like the most natural thing in all of our lives. We need it each and every day for the entirety of our time on Earth. At night, we're taught to draw the shades, tuck ourselves in for about eight hours,

and wake up in the morning refreshed. Simple, right? But for many of us, sleep is complicated,

even agonizing. From KERA in Dallas, this is Think. I'm Courtney Collins in for Chris Boyd.

The internal monologue might sound like this. Am I getting enough sleep? What will tomorrow look like if I don't?

How much do I really need?

How do I teach my baby to sleep through the night?

Why do I wake up at 3 a.m.?

As a sleep scientist, psychologist, and recovering insomniac,

Dr. Morain van de lair is familiar with these questions.

He decided to explore them through the lens

of archaeological research and new science in his new book. It's called How to Sleep Like a

Caveman, Ancient Wisdom for a Better Night's Rest. And he joins us now to talk about it. But Iin,

welcome to think. Yeah, thanks for having me. So before we dig into why you wrote this book and

the fascinating research that fueled it,

can you explain why good sleep is kind of subjective and not necessarily one size fits all?

Yeah, well, I think there are a lot of differences between people.

So what you see is that some people need more sleep than other people.

So in general, you see that people sleep for seven hours per night, and there's a lot of variation in that. So you see people who need like

six hours, people who need eight hours. And there's also a lot of variation in how somebody

sees the quality of its own sleep. So some people might experience a sleep problem when they're awake during the night for like half an hour or an hour,

and other people won't even experience that as a sleep problem.

So it's a very subjective complaint.

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