It is difficult to believe that a mix of Big Bird and Black Sabbath could bring a person to their knees. But, as officers in the US army’s psychological operations (PSYOP) know, few combinations are more effective at breaking a prisoner’s will. In Iraq, Sesame Street and heavy metal were combined to keep prisoners awake for long periods. “They can’t take it,” an officer was quoted as saying in 2003. “If you play it for 24 hours, your brain and body functions start to slide…your will is broken.”
Sleep is one of the enduring mysteries of human consciousness. We need it for our cognitive and physical wellbeing, and, indeed, for our very survival. Yet, despite decades of research, the scientific explanation for why we need sleep, what it does, and how it evolved, remains elusive. It is not for want of theories; in fact, the problem is that there are too many seemingly contradictory ones.
Many non-scientific theories have filled the gap —most of them worrying that we aren’t getting our full eight hours. It is often claimed that the harried 21st-century man sleeps, on average, at least an hour a night less than in the 19th century. Popular sleep-depriving villains range from too much television and internet to overwork. The think tank Demos even ran a project in 2004 calling for a “well-slept society,” an idea so revolutionary that the Observer heralded it as one of the “ideas of the year.”
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