What if treating insomnia were less like fixing a medical problem and more like earning a black belt in karate? Welcome to the Insomnia Dojo, a six-belt journey from the frightened white belt who desperately wants to control sleep to the enlightened black belt who realizes that sleep never needed controlling in the first place. Along the way, we'll draw inspiration from Bruce Lee, Mr. Miyagi, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and even Pai Mei from Kill Bill. Wax on, wax off, Grasshopper. Your insomnia t...
Nov 2
39 min
Dr. Saema Tahir (@thenycsleepdoctor) joins me for another countdown of the Top 10 Sleep Threats. From social media sleep hacks and nightly Benadryl to the dangers of relying on sleep trackers and chatbots for medical advice, Dr. Tahir takes aim at some of the most common misconceptions in sleep medicine. In this episode we will: Explore why AI and social media aren't substitutes for proper sleep evaluations.Discuss the risks of nightly Benadryl and the myth of the relaxing nightcap.Examine th...
Oct 26
45 min
“What do you think about peptides?” is one of the most common questions in the sleep clinic right now, and it’s about as answerable as “What do you think about sandwiches?” Insulin, Zepbound and a gray-market vial of BPC-157 are all peptides, but the word tells you nothing about what a molecule does or how well it’s been tested. In this episode we put the most popular “sleep peptides” to the test, including the one named after deep sleep that an FDA advisory panel rejected this summer while b...
Oct 19
36 min
Last November on Episode 178, we talked about three companies racing to bring orexin agonists to people with narcolepsy. In less than a year, one of those drugs has been approved, another company has been bought for billions, and the race now runs from the lab to the insurance company. In this episode we will: Break down the latest data from the SLEEP 2026 meeting in Baltimore, where each drug stands and when the rest might reach patients.Tackle the questions patients are already asking: will...
Oct 12
46 min
Imagine a sleep study where picturing yourself diving in a submarine boosted deep sleep by 81%, yet nobody slept a minute longer. It's a real result, and it points to an uncomfortable idea: with the right design, almost anything can be shown to "improve sleep." From free habits to FDA-approved pills to neurotech headbands, every claim has a study behind it, and how that study was built often matters more than the product being sold. In this episode we will Use that submarine study as a yardst...
Oct 5
42 min
Dr. Valerie Cacho (@drvalsleepgal) joins me for another countdown of the Top 10 Sleep Threats, and her list asks a question we should all be asking more often: Have we actually figured out what is disrupting someone’s sleep? From peptides marketed as cures to the assumption that a woman’s fatigue is simply part of being a working mom, Valerie takes aim at the shortcuts that can delay an accurate diagnosis. In this episode we will: Examine what the research does—and does not—say about peptides...
Sep 28
50 min
A courtroom, an insurance formula, and a supermarket receipt don't usually belong in the same sentence — but together they answer the question this episode is built around: what does a bad night's sleep actually cost, in dollars, tonight? Not the economy. You. We take the number everyone quotes and can't act on — sleep deprivation costs the U.S. $411 billion a year — and rebuild it from the ground up using the data that was actually measured on individuals, not GDP models. In this episode we ...
Sep 21
36 min
A few days ago, we did an experiment to see how well AI could interview me about sleep. In this bonus episode, I reveal the original attempt which was a bit all over the place. The interview was much more personal and strange which we corrected by adjusting the prompt in the "official" episode, but I thought it might be funny to share the trial run. In this episode we will: -Debate how much of my career success can reasonably be attributed to my looks -Discuss my questionable resemblanc...
Sep 16
32 min
What happens when the interviewer knows nearly everything you have said publicly and has zero fear of challenging or offending you? In this unusual episode of Sleep Unplugged, I turn over all control of the podcast to AI and let it ask the questions and dictate the program. The result is a surprisingly candid conversation about certainty, contradiction, expertise, and what an algorithm might see when it examines a career devoted to sleep. In this episode I (or we?) will: Turn the microphone a...
Sep 14
28 min
A Massachusetts courtroom just produced something that almost never survives into public record: a near-complete paper trail of one woman's psychiatric care in the three months before catastrophe. Her diary, her phone notes, and the testimony of every provider who tried to help her sleep all lead to a central question: what actually happens when insomnia and psychiatric illness feed each other, and how thin is the system supposed to catch it before it breaks? In this episode we will: Walk thr...
Sep 7
48 min
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