Why We Sleep

Guest: Matthew Walker, PhD, Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California Berkeley, Director of the UC Berkeley Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab, Author of “Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams” How did you sleep last night? Americans are chronically sleep-deprived. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” some say. And guess what? The research is pretty conclusive that you’ll die sooner without sleep. Getting less than six or seven hours of sleep a night demolishes your immune system, more than doubles your risk of cancer, shortens your life span and makes it harder for you to learn new things.