{"id":47531,"date":"2015-05-21T17:19:03","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T22:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/?p=47531"},"modified":"2025-11-16T20:38:39","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T02:38:39","slug":"podcast-115-the-slumbering-masses-with-matthew-j-wolf-meyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beta.artofmanliness.com\/health-fitness\/health\/podcast-115-the-slumbering-masses-with-matthew-j-wolf-meyer\/","title":{"rendered":"Podcast #115: The Slumbering Masses With Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sometimes when I’m lying in my bed falling asleep, a thought will come across my mind: at this moment tens of millions of people are going completely unconscious and immobile and having crazy hallucinations. Because if you think about it, that’s what happens when you fall asleep. And you pretty much go to sleep whenever everybody in your timezone or near your timezone goes to sleep too.<\/p>\n

But my guest on today’s podcast argues that we take our current sleep schedule for granted. In fact, it wasn’t until about the middle of the 19th century that what we consider “normal sleep” — sleeping in one big chunk of time between the hours of 10 PM and 8 AM — even became a thing. What caused us to get on this “consolidated” sleep schedule, what was it like before, and what implications does it have for work and relationships?<\/p>\n

Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of California Santa Cruz and the author of the book The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine and Modern American Life<\/a>. <\/em>Today on the podcast Dr. Wolf-Meyer and I discuss the anthropology of sleep.<\/p>\n

Show Highlights<\/h3>\n