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Birds do it, bees do it...yet science still can't answer the basic question: why do we sleep?
Duration
1h 1m
Broadcast on
24 May 2007
Audio Format
other

Birds do it, bees do it...yet science still can't answer the basic question: why do we sleep?


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I don't have to tell you how good sleep is. You do it yourself every night when you try. And how wonderful when it actually works when you can close your eyes and forget the day and just drift off into oblivion. Like a little baby. But let's suppose that you are a little baby, this little baby, and you grow up to become a scientist. Like one of the scientists we'll hear from in this program and you decide to ask what should be the dumbest question ever. Why do we sleep? And not just us. Well, pretty much everything sleeps. As far as we know, all mammals do it. All birds. Bees, locusts, cockroaches, crayfish, reptiles, insects, scorpions. Everything that's been studied has something that looks like sleep. It's a mystery. Most things we sort of know what they are for and also how they work. But sleep is really in your face. I mean, everybody does it. You do it from the cradle to the grave. You can't help doing it because if you try to stay awake, you know, at some point it's irrepressible. And we don't know why. That's a shameful state of affairs. How can you be a scientist at the 21st century and not know the answer to that? There you go. Okay. That's a pretty good way to begin.

Transcription truncated.

Birds do it, bees do it...yet science still can't answer the basic question: why do we sleep?