(man) Now, the Director of East Coast Operations,
Cathy Marchioli.
(applause) As you can see,
I tripled my team's productivity this quarter,
all thanks to one simple motto:
Efficiency, efficiency, effi--
(chuckling) Well, that's weird.
Huh, what's with this?
Miss Marchioli, do you want to fail?
I'm not failing. You're failing.
You're not going to pass, Miss Marchioli.
(all chanting) You shall not pass. You shall not pass.
(voices deepen and distort) You shall not pass.
You shall not pass! You shall not pass!
No, no! You have to let me pass!
I put on my blinker!
(chanting continues) I have to pass!
Hey, roomie.
Would you like some eggs? (screams)
Lance Bass!
(gasping) Holy moly!
I fell asleep on a display mattress?
Looks like Kangy helped someone find a "match-ress."
(laughing) Hi, I'm Ben...
(in Australian accent) your Mattress Outback sales guy.
Listen, pal, I don't have time for your sales crap.
I got enough stress in my life
between my big presentation tomorrow
and my lazy bum of a son
not getting up for school on time.
I just need to relax and get a good night's sleep.
So just... tell me which one of these is the best.
The answer is, none of them!
Aah! In fact,
everything you think you know about sleep
should be put to bed. Aah!
This is another stress dream! Nope!
It's my TV show. Hi, I'm Adam Conover,
and this is "Adam Ruins Everything."
♪
Name's Cathy Marchioli.
Single mother, very busy always.
Even as we speak, I'm sending an email.
Loop back, action steps, synergy, sent.
Now, I may be busy, but I hate getting ripped off.
So if I'm getting scammed, I want to know. Oh, wow!
You are the first person to ever openly accept my presence.
You got 30 seconds, and I'm gonna do squats while you talk.
Uh, okay, well,
ever notice how stores like these
intentionally make mattress shopping
as confusing as possible?
This model has Insta-Snooze coils,
heat-sensitive memory foam, and pillow-top underwire.
And I'll let you take it home today
for just $39.99 a month
with no interest and no money down.
We leave the down to the comforter guys,
and that's not a blanket statement. Huh?
But it's all a big bed of lies
designed to rip you off.
Hey! That's illegal.
Yeah, it is, to protect us from you.
See, big mattress has been stuffed
with shifty scam artists since the beginning.
Back in the 1800s,
manufacturers would stuff mattresses
with literally anything.
♪
So the government forced them to label what was inside.
But then, those devious mattress stores
would just remove the tag.
So, in 1958, the government made that practice illegal.
Huh, so that's what those tags are for.
Nowadays, you can rest assured
that your mattress is garbage-free.
But the mattress industry is still full of it.
Come on down to The Mattress Store!
They've got so many scams, your head will explode!
Scam number one: Manufacturers will take
the exact same mattress and sell it
under different names in different stores.
So it's impossible for you to compare prices!
At Macy's, it's called a Simmons Beautyrest Recharge Allie.
At Sears, it's called a Beautyrest Recharge Devonwood Luxury.
At US-Mattress.com, it's called a Beautyrest Recharge Lyric Luxury.
And everywhere, it's the exact same mattress.
If I can't compare prices, how am I supposed to haggle?
Ugh! This is stressing me out.
Give me that wine!
Same number two: Manufacturers make up
special mattress features to jack up the price
even when they do nothing to help you sleep.
This mattress has fluff-stuff, inner springs,
outer springs, and flexicoil!
Ooh! Look at the sparkles!
What does flexicoil do?
It adds $300 to the price!
Scam number three:
Retailers profit off of your confusion
by regularly marking up prices 50% or more.
And here's the dirtiest little secret hiding... under the mattress.
This industry spends a lot of time
making its products seem different,
but the truth is, the majority of mattresses
are produced, owned, and sold by the same companies.
More than 60% of mattresses sold in America
are made by the same two manufacturers
with materials from the same suppliers.
Then they're often sold in mattress stores
owned by the same company.
(Cathy gasps) Oh, my!
Sorry, you shouldn't have seen that.
Embarrassing. (gasps) Wait!
I can order a mattress from one of those Internet companies.
I heard about it on my favorite podcast.
Welcome back to part 64 of our investigation
into a crime that's none of our business.
But first, let's talk about Casper.
I needed to buy a new mattress but I was too busy
playing amateur detective with real people's lives.
With Casper, I just clicked, they shipped,
and it showed up straight to my door
in a neat little package.
Could Casper be disrupting the mattress industry?
Oh, definitely not! (feedback in headphones)
Those online companies are just as sneaky as the stores.
Too late. I already ordered one.
(doorbell rings) Oh, nice!
Cheap and easy, like my ex on our first date!
(air hissing)
Actually, online mattresses aren't always cheaper.
You can find plenty of memory foam mattresses
in the store for the same price.
And they're often made
by the very same subcontractors
the brick-and-mortar guys use.
And since you're shopping online,
you can't try before you buy.
So, once again, comparison shopping
is basically impossible.
Ah! Nice try, Mr. Smarty-pajama-pants.
I checked a bunch of review sites first.
Oh, that's no guarantee at all.
Online review sites are infested with conflicts of interest,
and mattress reviews are some of the worst.
Most mattress reviewers get kickbacks
from sales generated from their site,
incentivizing positive reviews.
This mattress gives me all the feels.
10 out of 10 Winks. (bell tings)
Ooh! Someone purchased via my link.
Oh, babe, you're so cute when you're working for me.
The reviewers and the reviewed are in bed together?
Oh, that was very good, Cathy.
Thank you. But it's true.
Casper has even bought out an entire review site.
You know what? Let's make this official.
(bell tings)
Putting all that together, if you do a Google search
for "mattress reviews," you might just be seeing advertisements
from the companies themselves.
So where the heck do I go to get a new mattress?
Honestly, there aren't really any better options.
No matter what you do, shopping for a mattress
is just a big old nightmare.
(voice distorts and deepens) Whoa! (screams)
Adam Conover!
(gasping)
Oh, it was a dream!
Within a dream?
What is this, "Inception" with Lame-o-nerd-o Dork-Craprio?
(groaning) Gotta wake up my lazy bum of a son and get him to school.
(Adam) Sorry, Cathy, you're not awake yet.
And you are all wrong about your teenage son.
(maniacal laughter)
(bell ringing) (Cathy) Late for school again!
I don't know how you can sleep so much.
You're gonna end up like your good-for-nothing father.
You wanna fix tanning beds for a living, Jeremy?
Jeremy, you lazy bum! Up! Up!
Ah, Ma, stop it! I'm awake!
Wait. Give me a kiss.
(sighing)
I love him, but that lazy bum's gonna fall asleep
and die in a ditch someday.
Actually... (screams)
...Jeremy isn't sleeping in because he's lazy.
Like most teens, he's chronically sleep-deprived.
♪
Holy moly!
Why are my boobs up here?
Am I a teenager again? Psst! Shut up!
The teacher's explaining how our sleep patterns change as we age.
You're gonna get us in trouble.
She's talking about our circadian rhythms.
The older you get, the less sleep you need.
When you're born, you need 16 to 20 hours per day.
By the time you're an adult, you only need seven.
And in adolescents? Ooh! Ooh!
Teenagers' bodies are still developing,
so they need more sleep than adults.
Eight to ten hours a night.
Correct, Mr. Conover. Psst!
And as you age, when you sleep changes too.
Teenagers aren't wired to get sleepy until 11:00 p.m.
So if teens fall asleep after 11:00 p.m.
and first period starts at 7:00 a.m., that equals?
Ooh! Not enough sleep.
(chuckles) Thank you, Adam. Teacher's pet.
Now, Cathy, can you tell me
what this formula means for your son?
I've been assuming that Jeremy's been sleeping too late 'cause he's lazy,
but it's actually that school starts too early for his changing body.
(bell ringing) Well, that just isn't fair!
If teenagers need more sleep, why are we making them get up so early?
Because the school district is cheap as heck!
(Cathy) Oh, my God! These are shiny!
I wanna buy thousands of these and I don't know why.
(Adam) Up until a few decades ago,
most schools started at 9:00 a.m.
and had separate bus fleets for elementary,
junior high, and high school students.
But in the '70s,
the student population grew higher than ever,
and schools had to cut costs.
Why are we spending so much money on buses?
Let's just have the kids take the same bus to school at different times.
Doesn't affect me. I swim to school.
(Cathy) So to save a few bucks on buses,
they threw the kids under the bus.
Classy. That's right.
These changes completely ignored
students' natural sleep patterns.
High schoolers, who need to sleep in,
were forced to get up earliest, while younger kids,
who are more awake in the mornings,
had the latest start times.
This is completely backwards! Yup.
And it's also dangerous.
(Dr. Owens) That's right, Adam.
They really crossed the yellow line.
Cathy, this is sleep expert, medical doctor,
and substitute bus driver Judith Owens.
And this is Bessie. (horn honking)
Teens are just hard-wired to sleep later.
And the research shows that,
when they don't get enough sleep,
they're at increased risk for obesity, for heart problems,
depression, suicidal thoughts, and drowsy driving.
And drowsy driving is a serious problem.
20% of fatal car crashes involve a drowsy driver.
That's almost as many as drunk drivers.
(Adam) And car crashes are one
of the leading causes of death for teens.
So if your teen doesn't get enough sleep,
it could actually kill him.
(Dr. Owens) Adam, stop drawing on the seats!
Oh! Please don't call my parents!
The American Medical Association
and the American Academy of Pediatrics
have been begging to start schools later for years.
But school boards, parents,
and local politicians don't want to.
Rather than face facts and change our schedules,
we are putting our kids at risk
just to save a little bit of money on buses.
At the end of the day,
it's not the teens who are the lazy bums.
It's the adults. (screams)
I'm a bad mother!
Ugh! No, you're not.
Aah!
Jeremy! Jeremy!
Where are you?
Jeremy! Oh, thank God!
Thank God you're okay!
Oh, I'm sorry I didn't let you sleep.
Would you like some toast with your eggs?
Lance Bass!
(gasping) Ugh!
I can't keep waking up
in the middle of the night like this!
Better take a sleeping pill. (whimpering)
(Adam) No! Wait!
Sleep aids like this one might actually be making your sleep worse.
(Adam screams)
(groaning) Pull yourself together, Cathy!
You gotta be sharp for your big presentation tomorrow.
(Kangy) Are you sure you wanna take that?
Yes, Kangy!
I take these all the time and they're completely safe.
Oh, there's no such thing
as a completely safe sleeping pill, Cathy.
In fact, they can have some pretty hairy side effects, even hallucinations.
Ha! Please!
I haven't hallucinated since I was a...
(voice deepens and slows) ...Deadhead!
(gasping)
(normal voice) Hello?
(rats squeaking) Jeremy?
(glass shatters) Is that you?
Your ominous scurrying is waking me up, sweetie.
If I'm gonna nail my presentation,
I need eight hours straight.
Actually, Cathy, waking up in the middle
of the night is completely natural.
You only think you need eight unbroken hours of shuteye
because, 200 years ago,
humans began to actively change their sleep patterns.
No! I don't want to hear it!
Once upon a time, way back before
the Industrial Revolution,
people actually slept in two blocks
separated by an hour or so of wakefulness
in the middle of the night.
(yawning)
My first sleep has ended, but that's no big deal.
I'll make love to my hand or go eat a meal.
And instead of getting up with an alarm clock,
folks just stayed in bed until they woke up naturally.
Time to go back to bed for my second slumber.
I'll wake with the sun when my sight's unencumbered.
But once artificial light became more common,
wake-up times were no longer dictated
by whether it was light or dark outside.
Some factory bosses took advantage
of this newfound "daytime"
by making their employees work longer hours.
Ooh.
Get up! Get up! You sleep in excess!
Work time should be longer and sleep less and less.
As a society, we all started to consider
the second sleep unnecessary, unprofitable, and lazy.
Who needs two sleeps? Just cram it into one!
Back off to work! I don't care there's no sun!
Factory workers were forced to toil away for grueling hours
that made it impossible for them to get enough sleep.
So the labor movement fought back.
(chanting) The more we work, the less we sleep.
Eight hours of rest as a standard to keep!
So, "eight hours of sleep"
was just some anti-capitalist slogan?
As a titan of industry, I'm offended!
And who cares anyway?
One block of sleep instead of two, what's the big deal?
(deep distorted voice) I can answer that.
(gasping)
(footfalls booming)
Oh, this is A. Roger Ekirch,
professor at Virginia Tech and the pioneering researcher in how we used to sleep.
Our society has dramatically shifted
in valuing productivity.
And since our demanding jobs and busy lives
don't permit us to sleep enough,
if we wake up in the middle of the night,
we feel that we're not sleeping properly.
But for much of human history,
waking up in the middle of the night
was totally normal, right?
That's right. But because we don't permit
enough time to sleep, and we expect that sleep
to be perfect, we're vulnerable to dubious quick fixes.
And not only can such fixes be expensive and unnecessary,
they can also be harmful.
And that brings us to your pills.
True insomnia is a medical condition,
but briefly waking up in the middle of the night
isn't a disorder that requires medication,
yet we all too often treat it that way.
Your night waking is a serious condition
called middle-of-the-night insomnia.
You need... pills!
(maniacal laughter)
Between 1993 and 2007,
prescriptions for sleep drugs like Ambien
grew 21 times more rapidly than sleeplessness complaints.
But, but, I take Ambien every night!
It helps me sleep! For now.
But in the long run, it could actually hurt
your ability to catch Zs, or even kill you.
(Cathy) No!
Most sleep aids are designed
for when you need to hit the hay
for eight uninterrupted hours.
So, if you pop a pill and get less than that,
you better not get behind the wheel,
because it'll be the same as driving drunk.
In fact, you're not supposed to drive
for the entire next day after you take Ambien CR,
but one in four patients do anyway.
That's why people prescribed sleep medication
are twice as likely to be in a car crash.
(horn honking and vehicles crashing)
And people taking Ambien can have hallucinations
and forget things they did just minutes earlier.
Oh, I hope that lady's okay.
How did I get here? What's this magazine?
Taking these pills on a regular basis
can be so bad for you,
one study even found that habitual users
were five times as likely to die as non-users
and 35% more likely to develop cancer.
Well, what about these? These look safe.
Oh, even over-the-counter sleep aids
can have serious side-effects.
Sominex and ZzzQuil have been known to cause kidney damage.
Tylenol PM and Advil PM can wreak havoc
on your liver with cumulative use,
and they can even put users at higher risk for dementia.
Ugh! Boy! That sounds bad.
But I just really need to sleep.
One more night of pills couldn't hurt.
Actually, the worst part is,
they could make your insomnia worse.
Prescription sleeping pills are less effective
the longer you take them, but they're also addictive,
meaning that you end up taking even more pills,
leading to an endless feedback loop of insomnia.
No! No!
I need to sleep but it's impossible!
Oh, no sleep aid is safe, my mattress stinks,
and my son is gonna die!
I've been sleeping wrong my entire life!
(Adam) Wait! You can fix it!
(screaming)
We live in a society that doesn't value sleep.
We all face different obstacles
that limit our sleep.
If you don't get any sleep, you'll go crazy and die.
And then you'll miss breakfast.
What do I do? What's the perfect way to sleep?
How do I fix this?!
(gasping)
(sighs)
Well, you definitely don't need a fancy mattress.
Most people who experience disordered sleep
don't have to take sleep medications.
They often benefit from non-pharmaceutical interventions
like cognitive behavioral therapy.
But it sounds like you really need to improve your sleep hygiene.
That means doing things like avoiding alcohol, caffeine,
and nicotine, establishing a pre-sleep routine,
going to sleep only when you're truly tired,
and keeping a consistent sleep schedule
on weekdays and weekends.
And most importantly, value your sleep,
but don't expect it to be perfect.
Just give yourself plenty of time to slumber,
and if you wake up in the middle of the night,
don't worry about it too much.
Oh, mm-kay, Nerdy Krueger.
And just one more thing. Beep! Beep!
(alarm blaring) (yawning)
(gasps softly) Oh, my God.
It was all a dream, and...
(giggling) ...this mattress feels fine!
♪
Boy, what day is it?
It's Monday, Miss.
Take these pills and flush them down the nearest toilet!
(bell tolling in distance)
But isn't the nearest toilet in your house?
♪
(groans) Go ahead and sleep in,
my little sleep-deprived bum.
(alarm blaring) Whoops!
Mama's gotta get to work!
So, if your employees all get enough sleep,
you will see an increase in productivity,
creativity, and your bottom line.
Sleep is indispensable.
We love it.
(applause)
Oh, you like me. You really like me!
I love you, Mom!
(Cathy) Oh, thank you!
Cathy, over here! It's me, Kangy!
(laughing)
Aah! Kangy!
Oh...
Now, that was a weird dream.
♪
(Adam) How long are we gonna go for? (woman) Couple minutes.
Okay, that's enough time for a good conversation.
What do you think of the-- Of my wardrobe?
I like-- I liked your persona. Am I a convincing teenager?
Or do you think I-- I think I kind of look like
Russell Brand at a day at the beach.
Okay, so this is-- this is great
'cause I can finally get
all my sleep questions answered. Yeah.
Like, I'll confess. So, I'm the type of person,
I have a drink at night before I go to sleep,
and my girlfriend tells me I shouldn't do that, that's bad for me,
and I'm like, "It helps me go to sleep."
Which one of us is right?
Well, I don't want to create domestic disharmony,
but you're wrong, you're wrong. She'll never see this episode. Oh!
Okay, now she'll definitely never see this episode. Yeah.
So I assume you're talking about alcohol, first of all.
Yes. So there are two problems.
One is that, even though alcohol helps you fall asleep,
when it wears off, which is around
the middle of the night... Ahh.
...your sleep becomes more disrupted.
She does say I talk in my sleep.
Uh-oh, there you go. So could that be why? Okay, all right.
The other thing that alcohol does is it suppresses
what's called rapid eye movement,
or REM sleep, which is dream sleep.
Mm-hmm. So when your alcohol level drops,
you have a rebound in the-- In REM sleep,
and you might have very vivid dreams or even nightmares.
You actually get less of a good night's sleep if you have alcohol?
Absolutely. What about people who say--
This is, like, you see this in magazines,
or, like, my mom told me this, "Oh, you shouldn't be
on your phone before you go to sleep."
What about that one? Your mom is also right.
Ugh! Yeah, sorry.
(laughter) This is how I fall asleep!
I have a glass of whiskey and I'm going through Twitter.
You're-- yeah, you're not doing well here.
Crap.
The light from screens, in particular... Mmm.
...has blue light. Mmm.
And that suppresses your body's release
of the hormone melatonin... Hmm.
...which is one of the key things
that helps you fall asleep at night.
Is it just, like, this deep-down, like,
rhythm of life, you know?
Like, evolution noticed, "Hey, the lights are going
"on and off outside, so let's just have
an active period and a rest period"?
We used to think that sleep was just
this sort of waste of time, right?
Right. You know?
It's, like, eight hours a day that you spend doing nothing
and you're not productive. People say, "Oh, I wish
there was a pill I could take so I wouldn't have to sleep." Right, right.
Now that we know all of the things in the body
and in the brain that can go wrong
when you don't sleep... Yeah.
...from a brain development standpoint...
It's very important. ...there's gotta be something really important there, right?
So wha-- So what do you do?
Is it just a matter of trying to get
on a regular daily schedule?
That's critical.
As far as science has shown us
is to have a regular sleep schedule every day,
to go to bed and get up at around the same time,
say within an hour or so.
Because one of the things that people often do
when they can't sleep during the week
is they sleep in on the weekends,
kind of in an attempt to make up for lost sleep.
Well, that doesn't really work. I've heard about it.
You can't make up for lost sleep? No.
So this-- this leads me to my biggest question.
I lay up awake at night thinking about this.
What the hell is sleep? Why do we-- Why do we do it?
We know now that there's something called
the glymphatic system in the brain... Okay.
...which rids the brain of the toxins
that have been accumulated during the day.
And that system is only operational during sleep.
We also know that things like
memory consolidation happen during sleep.
Right. We know that we're all bombarded
by all this sensory input all day long,
and you have to prune that down and organize that... Mm-hmm.
...and that happens during sleep.
This is mind-blowing to me.
Sleep is so fascinating! Yes!
I wanna do three more episodes about sleep.
Thank you so much for coming on the show to talk to us about it.
It's really wonderful having you. You're very welcome. And sleep well.
And I will keep the phone away, I promise. Thank you so much. Good idea.