Loading summary
Transcript137 lines
- [00:01]
Jennifer Senior
This message comes from Capital One. Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts. What's in your wallet terms apply. See capitalone.com bank for details. Capital One NA Member FDIC.
- [00:16]
Terry Gross
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. If you've ever had trouble sleeping, you know that the more you worry about not being able to fall asleep, the more likely you are to keep staying awake. So what do you do? Pills, therapy, meditation or just learn to accept that you'll feel like a zombie the next day. My guest, Jennifer Sr. Knows this feeling. She suddenly went from sleeping through the night to suffering from insomnia that started about 25 years ago when she was 29. Senior is a staff writer at the Atlantic magazine. So she eventually decided to write an article about her own insomnia and the latest science surrounding sleep and insomnia. She interviewed some of the top sleep researchers. Her article in the new issue of the Atlantic is titled why Can't Americans Sleep? Insomnia Has Become a Public Health Emergency. It's on the Atlantic website. The newsstand edition will be available July 15. Her article in the Atlantic about grief, love, loss and won a Pulitzer Prize. She also won two National Magazine Awards. She spent five years at the New York Times as a book critic and opinion columnist and 18 years at New York Magazine. She's also the author of the book All Joy and no the Paradox of Modern Parenthood. Jennifer Sr. Welcome back to FRESH air.
- [01:38]
Jennifer Senior
Thank you so much for having me. It's wonderful to be here.
- [01:41]
Terry Gross
It's wonderful to have you as preparation for this interview. I I had trouble sleeping last night at about 5am I couldn't get back to sleep. Occasionally I'd fall back asleep and wake up and look at the clock. And each time that happened, only five minutes had elapsed. So I slept for a full five minutes, woke up tossed and turned and then slept five minutes more, et cetera, et cetera. I wanted to get out of bed desperately. I was like, feeling hopeless and uncomfortable. But I knew I'd regret it during the day. So I just thought I'd tell you a little bit of backstory. I don't have insomnia per se, but I have my nights when it's just like really hard to sleep. I've come to think of sleep as a talent, you know, that some people have and some people don't.
- [02:25]
Jennifer Senior
You know what I would call it? A gift. I mean, a talent suggests that, like, people have worked at it and some people have I want to thank you for telling me that it is interesting post publication. How many people have written me saying I'm a fellow traveler and, you know, you wouldn't know.
- [02:43]
Terry Gross
You write, I like to tell people that the night before I stopped sleeping, I slept. Not only that, I slept well. And you go on to say that you used to sleep through the night. Like, you'd go to bed and you just, like, wake up seven or eight hours later. That's amazing to me. I don't think I've ever slept through the whole night in my life. What was that first sleepless night like?
- [03:04]
Jennifer Senior
Puzzling. I mean, it's a cliche among sleep clinicians that everyone idealizes their pre insomnia selves, right? That they say that everybody says, oh, my sleep was perfect. I'm sorry. My sleep was really great. And it was so consistent that I didn't need an alarm clock when I lost one. I always slept from 1 until 9. And I had standing appointments at like 10 o' clock that I'd never miss. I mean, it was so remarkably regular. I. So that when it first happened, I thought, like, have I been poisoned? I really had no idea. I mean, it just. I greeted it with bafflement and kind of curiosity more than anything else. It wasn't alarm. It was just like, huh, that's weird. I thought sort of nothing of it until it became regular and then really regular and then super intense. And then I wasn't waking up at 5 in the morning. I was just staying up all night. So, you know, it got bad in a hurry.
- [04:10]
Terry Gross
Did it lead to panic?
- [04:11]
Jennifer Senior
Or as Ron Burgundy says in Anchorman, you know, that escalated quickly. I mean, it just got bad.
- [04:16]
Terry Gross
Did it lead to panic in bed?
- [04:19]
Jennifer Senior
Yeah. Oh, God. A lot. And I remember one time I did exactly the wrong thing. You're never supposed to do this for anybody who's suffering. I left a lot of Runway. I went to bed at like 8 o', clock, even though, you know, I was a 1 o' clock sleeper, because I was exhausted, I wanted to sleep and I wanted to leave a lot of extra time. And I happened to fall asleep very quickly and then woke up thinking, oh, great. I slept through the night and I had slept until 10:30, so two hours.
- [04:50]
Terry Gross
What did you think was wrong with you?
- [04:52]
Jennifer Senior
I didn't know. I mean, this is the problem. I was not perseverating or stressing or lying awake thinking about anything. People would say to me, I what are you thinking about? What are you obsessing about? And I would say, my Mind is a whistling prairie It's a whistling cocktail There is nothing in my head at all. I'm just lying there expecting to fall asleep. And so I couldn't determine what happened.
- [05:19]
Terry Gross
The only thing you were thinking was, like, I can't fall asleep. Oh, God. Give me. Like, I can't sleep.
- [05:24]
Jennifer Senior
Oh, so eventually you do the countdown clock. Absolutely. Okay, so that's, like, down the road. In the beginning, it was just all bewilderment and, like, this must be biologically driven. What happened? Eventually, it was sheer blinding panic where I was. My mind was racing, and I was going, what's going on? Something must be happening. Oh, my God. And I'd be staring at the clock and going, oh, my God. Now I only have five hours to sleep. Now I only have four hours to sleep. Now I only HAVE three. Now I only HAVE two. Now I only HAVE one. Now I HAVE 20 minutes. I mean, that was certainly happening. And there would also be this kind of soundcloud of, I'm gonna get fired. I'm not gonna be able to do my job. I'll never be an appealing girlfriend. Any of these things, right? Like the things that you think when you're 20, you know, I'll be perceived as a basket case, or I'll not be able to exercise. You know, And I was quite active. I'd run, I'd do whatever. Oh, and eventually I would have these weird, repetitive thoughts. At the time, I was covering, like, theater. It was a really fun job. I was covering theater for New York Magazine for no money. Just writing all these kind of squibs about things that would open. And I would see all these kind of cool musicals like Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and, you know, cool stuff and snippets of songs would run through my head, and I would just sit there and think, would the orchestra please pack up and go home? I can't deal with this.
- [06:53]
Terry Gross
So among the things you tried early on were acupuncture, Tylenol, pm, Melatonin, running four miles, breathing exercises, listening to a meditation tape. What did you learn about those approaches and how effective they were for you, and what did you learn about yourself after trying them?
- [07:11]
Jennifer Senior
I learned I'd never done acupuncture before. And I learned that it was wonderful, just not particularly helpful for that. I did acupressure too, and Same deal, I guess. I learned also that there was this whole alternative medicine kind of shadow world that was starting to bloom back in the late 90s. Maybe it even had before. I learned that once you're in a certain state of panic. Trying to meditate is very hard, Right. Because it's something that most people fail at initially. I mean, there's no such thing as failing. When you meditate, you always have to bring yourself back to paying attention to your body or to a mantra or whatever form of meditation you do. Your mind is prone to wander. That's what it does. But if you're having trouble sleeping, that's a super alarming quality. Quality to be noticing in yourself. And it's wandering to catastrophic thoughts. So I noticed that. I noticed that melatonin, particularly in the megawatt doses that Americans take, What do you consider melatonin? Oh, so it's often sold in 3 milligram and 5 milligram doses. You can even find 10. The people who really look at this stuff will tell you, first of all, if you take it late at night, that's when your melatonin peaks. And anyway, what melatonin does is regulate your circadian rhythms. So it's not necessarily what your body responds to for sleep itself. So it tells you it starts signaling when you're supposed to wind down and when sleep is coming and when it's supposed to happen. But taking these giant doses, which in some countries are regulated, you know, like, they're widely available here for 3 milligrams and 5 milligrams. That kind of stuff is regulated in some countries in Europe. It's not necessarily the best solution for everyone. So. And it wasn't for me, because if.
- [09:06]
Terry Gross
You'Re going to be already dark and you're on a regular schedule, it's not going to help your circadian rhythms. Is that the theory?
- [09:13]
Jennifer Senior
Yes, the theory is that your body is already producing quite a bit of it. So just hammering it with more won't necessarily tell it, you know, to go to bed. It's already being told to go to bed, and it might just make you feel off. If you really want to use it, right, you can order like 300 microgram doses online and start taking them. You know, take one when the sun sets, take another maybe two hours later to start telling your body, hey, hey, hey, it's time. But that would be the way to do it for me.
- [09:42]
Terry Gross
So you interviewed a lot of sleep researchers, and the first question you asked each of them was, what's the myth about sleep that you'd most like to debunk? So what was the most frequent answer.
- [09:56]
Jennifer Senior
That you need? Eight hours.
- [09:59]
Terry Gross
You know, when I read that, I cheered, because for me, if I'm in bed, forget how much of the time in bed, I'm actually sleeping. But if I'm in bed for seven hours, I feel like victory is mine. Because more typically, it's like six and a half hours. And I feel so bad. I feel like you're harming yourself. You really have to find a way to get more sleep, but it never seems to work. And so that was really great to read that. But everybody told you that. That you really don't need eight hours of sleep.
- [10:31]
Jennifer Senior
It wasn't that they said, you really don't need it. They said that this was this myth out there that was just a kind of tyranny, and I'll explain why. And I spoke to so many people that I was really struck by how many people did say it. So here are the things to bear in mind. Obviously, people vary, right? And there's even this vanishingly. But it's really interesting. Small number of people who are called short sleepers who need only four to six hours. Very few people are like that. But you can always sort of tell who they are. They hurtle through the world as if they've been fired from a slingshot. They're just kind of amazing. But it varies from person to person. It varies depending on your age. So a lot of clinicians would tell me about people in their late 60s or their 70s coming into their clinic and saying, I can't sleep eight hours. And the doctors would just look at them or therapists would look at them and say, well, at this age, you're not supposed to. It's a bummer, but it's true.
- [11:29]
Terry Gross
And why is that?
- [11:30]
Jennifer Senior
We don't function optimally as we get older in most ways. And there are cognitive decrements in ways that the brain changes, right? So I'm sure it's broadly a part of that. But the specifics and circadian signaling. You know, there's some thought that we're designed to sleep biphasically in two episodes. And as we get older, that seems to happen. We seem to wake up early, and if we had enough time, we could probably fall back asleep. But don't, because our jobs tell us we can't, or we just have to get on with our days. But it seems that we settle into that rhythm again. So that's some of it. But there is a really robust body of literature. One of them was done by this famous guy named Kripke. Looking at like a million people, and it's 6.5 hours to 7.4 was associated with the best health outcomes. Now there are Design issues with all of these studies, right? It's because they are almost by definition gonna be observational. They're not gonna be randomized. Also, you can only control for what you can control for. It's just what you can think of. So you can control for age, for body weight, for do you smoke, for sex, did you once have cancer? Things like this. But to quote Donald Rumsfeld, there are unknown unknowns, Right? So you justthere are things you just can't think of to control for. So there are people who believe Kripke's data and people who don't. These kinds of studies have been replicated, though.
- [13:07]
Terry Gross
So people who are night owls usually get scolded by the rest of their family. Like, you're staying up too late. It's not healthy. Is it not healthy? Like, as long as you could get a sufficient amount of sleep and sleep later in the day, is it not healthy?
- [13:22]
Jennifer Senior
You have just put your finger on what I think people are coming around to believing. I spoke to a circadian rhythms expert who said exactly this, that the studies that sort of show, oh, night owls have worse health outcomes. It's likely because we night owls have to rise early for our jobs, and if we were given more time to sleep, we'd be fine. And then there was one other study that recently came along that said, actually it's that night owls sort of are more likely to drink or to smoke cigarettes. So if you're correct, if you don't like your Jamesons, or if you don't smoke your Marlboros, you're okay, right? So, yeah, that's correct.
- [14:06]
Terry Gross
So you say you want to reframe the discussion around drugs that are used as sleeping aids. And I'd like to talk with you about some of the drugs most frequently recommended for sleep and the advantages and disadvantages of them. But let's start with why do you think the discussion around drugs needs to be reframed?
- [14:27]
Jennifer Senior
I'm so glad you asked me that. I really think it does. I have, since writing about this, also discovered what a lot of people take, you know, and that a lot of people rely on stuff. And why do I think it should be reframed? Well, because I think that there is a real stigma associated with sleep drugs and taking drugs for sleep that is no longer associated with, say, taking antidepressants. I think we've come a remarkable distance as a culture in talking openly about depression and destigmatizing antidepressants. I don't think that's true at all. For sleep. I think people still think of sleep meds as being you're addicted to them. Think about. I'm hoping a number of people in the audience have, or a good percentage have watched White Lotus. I mean, think about Park Posy just narcotizing herself into La La Land every night, which is where she resided during the day too. Frankly, that was not a favorable depiction. There's some pretty ugly associations with sleep meds.
- [15:36]
Terry Gross
You quote an editorial from 2024 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, and I want to read that. Read the part that you quote. Weak science, alarming FDA black box warnings and media reporting have fueled an anti benzodiazepine movement. This has created an atmosphere of fear and stigma among patients, many of whom can benefit from such medications. I'm not sure if that editorial was referring to the use of benzos for insomnia, but is that something you found other doctors agreed with, that there is a stigma about taking medication for sleep?
- [16:15]
Jennifer Senior
Interestingly, yes. And often, by the way, it is people who prescribe who talk about the stigma. You know, I should be clear, although I think clinicians would say this too, who don't, that there shouldn't be a stigma. You know, there was a fellow named Andrew Crystal who was on a sleep panel. He is a prescribing doctor. He said during a sleep panel that I attended last year at this big sleep conference that he was always just kind of saddened by how many accomplished people and well educated people, really well educated people, this was the difference who he would say, like, look, let's just start you on something. There's no shame in this. And they would instantly look at him and think that they were about to tumble into the gutter. That was like his phrase, you know, that they'd wind up in the gutter if they took this stuff. And that was my fear. When I first developed insomnia, I refused ref to take anything to help, thinking that I would become an addict. And the irony now is that I refused for so long that now I have developed a dependence. I think the other thing, or if you want to talk about some of the misconceptions out there or some of the misleading stuff that this editorial was referring to. There was a very well publicized study that came out that said that benzos were associated or caused dementia. But two years later, another study came along in the exact same journal, the British Medical Journal, saying actually there's no association between benzodiazepines and dementia at all. So it's really hard to determine these things. More work needs to be done. It's very hard to see, but people were really anxious for two years and people who had gone completely off the rails and were suddenly in a panic and could have benefited from, let's say, short term use of benzos probably were very afraid of them on account of that. Right. And you have to sort of weigh benefits and risks. And I think that's what I'd say about this.
- [18:31]
Terry Gross
What medications come under the category of benzos? Benzodiazepines.
- [18:36]
Jennifer Senior
Ah, great question. Valium, Ativan, Restoril, Klonopin, Xanax. I'm sure I'm missing some. Oh, actually, Ambien is considered one for the purpose of these studies. I think its mechanism of action is slightly different. But when they're doing this lump, they're talking about Ambien as well. And also for that matter, the quote unquote Z drugs. Ambien has siblings as well.
- [19:08]
Terry Gross
So when you talk about people taking those drugs, you're talking about a lot of people.
- [19:12]
Jennifer Senior
Oh, yeah.
- [19:12]
Terry Gross
Are you just counting people who take them for insomnia or those people who take it for other things like just anxiety?
- [19:18]
Jennifer Senior
So here is the statistic that I think is the most relevant. 18% of Americans take sleep medication every night or some nights. And that's a lot of people. And when I mention that to someone, as I was fact checking, it was a doctor who was one of the most prominent in the field, Suzanne Burdish from Brigham and Women's. She wrote me back and she said that can't be right. That's too low. It's a lot, you know. So I don't know. Were people lying in the survey? I don't really know. But a lot of people take stuff. And, you know, 30 to 35% of Americans suffer from some symptoms of insomnia at least temporarily. And 12% suffer from insomnia as a really obdurate condition. And that's in at least at least 12%. And if you're a millennial, that number goes to 15. So there's a lot of people out there who are suffering.
- [20:21]
Terry Gross
Yeah. Well, let me reintroduce you again. My guest is Jennifer Senior, a staff writer at the Atlantic. Her latest article called why Americans Can't Sleep is about her insomnia and the latest research into insomnia and ways of treating it. We'll talk more after a break. I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH air.
- [20:40]
Jennifer Senior
This message comes from ritual.
- [20:42]
Terry Gross
What makes ritual vitamins different?
- [20:44]
C
Ritual vitamins are made with bioavailable clinically.
- [20:47]
Jennifer Senior
Studied key ingredients, as well as the essence of Mint.
- [20:51]
Terry Gross
Get 25% off your first purchase when.
- [20:53]
Jennifer Senior
You visit ritual.com NPR the House of.
- [20:58]
Terry Gross
Representatives has approved a White House request to claw back two years of previously.
- [21:03]
Jennifer Senior
Approved funding for public media. The rescissions package now moves on to the Senate. This move poses a serious threat to.
- [21:11]
Terry Gross
Local stations and public media as we know it. Please take a stand for public media today@goacpr.org thank you. @ Planet Money, we know that economic jargon can sometimes feel like speaking another language. Yeah, like arbitrage, alpha, otarchy.
- [21:30]
C
That's just what's in the news these days. There's also absolute advantage, aggregate demand, aggregate supply.
- [21:36]
Terry Gross
And this is just the A's.
- [21:37]
Jennifer Senior
Oh, animal spirits.
- [21:39]
Terry Gross
That's a pretty good one.
- [21:40]
Jennifer Senior
Planet Money from npr.
- [21:41]
Terry Gross
We help you translate the economy so.
- [21:43]
Jennifer Senior
You can understand the world.
- [21:44]
Terry Gross
Wherever you get your podcasts, you're listening.
- [21:47]
Jennifer Senior
To NPR because you're curious. You want to know what the world is like beyond the surface. NPR feeds that curiosity with stories from.
- [21:56]
C
Real people, with real experiences and all.
- [21:59]
Jennifer Senior
The perspectives that come with them. It's our right to be curious and.
- [22:03]
C
Our prerogative to listen.
- [22:05]
Jennifer Senior
So keep your curiosity alive. Hear the bigger picture every day on npr.
- [22:12]
Terry Gross
So we've been talking about some medical treatments, you know, medicines that are prescribed for insomnia. Let's talk about psychological therapies that are tried for insomnia. And one of them is cbti. So that stands for cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia. So would you describe what that therapy is? You've read about it. You've also tried it twice?
- [22:36]
Jennifer Senior
Yes, I have. Okay. So it is a very effective therapy. It's just very hard to do. But here is what it is in a nutshell. You have to change your thinking about not sleeping. That's the cognitive part. Right. And you have to change your behaviors around sleep. So you kind of set the same bed times and wake up times. And as you said, you try to regard the bed only as like a place to sleep and have sex. You don't want to associate it with a zone of total torment. You want to wind down at night. But the big behavioral shift that you want to do, this is like the tent pole of cognitive behavioral therapy. And it's super torturous. I mean, it's murder for some people, and it certainly was for me. But it's effective if you can stick with it, is you want to do sleep restriction. So you basically, let's say from looking over your sleep diaries, you discover that you spend nine hours in bed, but you only sleep five hours of them. You compress those five hours into a teeny tiny window. You decide when you want to wake up every morning, let's say at 7, and you only go to bed at 2. So you can only get those five hours in that window from 2 to 7. That's it. You have to be out of bed besides that. And once you've done a majority of nights for that two to seven period, you can reward yourself with 15 extra minutes going to bed 15 extra minutes earlier. It's really hard because most people can't just squish that sleep in sleep is not like some accordion. You can contract into a case. So it's hard and people drop out. But the idea is that you just eventually both capitulate to exhaustion and you kind of re regulate and you reset and you accumulate the sleep debt and eventually start really falling asleep. There's sleep pressure is what they call it.
- [24:48]
Terry Gross
Yeah, I can see if it typically takes you a while to fall asleep and you're only allowing yourself to five hours, you won't necessarily get the five hours sleep because it's going to maybe take you an hour to fall asleep, even if you're tired. Is that the problem?
- [25:02]
Jennifer Senior
That's the problem. There's also the soundtrack of terror in your head. Oh, no, now I've only got four hours. Now I've only got three. There's another paradoxical kind of soundtrack. I mean, this is the cognitive piece of cbt, which is that you have to change your thinking around sleep. What the most persuasive person about this, you know, on the subject told me was, he's a guy named Wilfred Pidgeon, and he was just delightful. What he said to me was, look, just because you've smoked for 20 years doesn't mean you shouldn't stop smoking, right? You're looking from this point forward, right. And what health benefits you're gonna get from not smoking from this moment forward. Same with not sleeping. Like, just forget it, right? Like you're done. And now you've gotta, now you've gotta refocus and think, oh, this is gonna be so good for my health.
- [25:49]
Terry Gross
I'm going to paraphrase you here. You say that throughout the night, people with insomnia, the arousal centers of the brain keep chattering or clattering away, as does the prefrontal cortex, which is in charge of planning and decision making. So in regular sleepers, those regions of the brain go offline, they quiet down. So the parts of the brain that should be resting, aren't resting. If you have insomnia, can you go into that in some more detail?
- [26:18]
Jennifer Senior
So particularly in depressed insomniacs, in depressed people, and insomnia is a really good recipe for depression. Your brain, when you are in REM sleep, it's much more intense. And so that part of your brain is more active, Right. And that's the part with all the primal drives. It's your fears and your anger. It's not necessarily the stuff that you're basking in. Right. So that's one thing. And also, yeah, the part of you that's really supposed to go offline is your prefrontal cortex, which plans. It's the executive function part. It's decision making, all that stuff. And that really is supposed to go offline when you sleep, which is why your dreams can be so wild and sort of have no logic. It's because there's no director there, Right. But in insomniacs or poor sleepers, it's half there. It's not entirely offline. So when people say they haven't slept a wink, in some ways that's what they feel like, because they feel like their waking brain was still active. And in point of fact, to some degree, it was.
- [27:28]
Terry Gross
And although parts of your brain go offline when you're sleeping, parts of the brain are doing really important stuff. What are the parts of the brain doing when you're sleeping?
- [27:39]
Jennifer Senior
The most important thing, which I've only recently discovered, is rinsing out toxins, which is super fascinating. It's called the glymphatic system. This is something they just found. And it's this water way in your brain of these kind of micro canals that flush out all sorts of terrible stuff out, including amyloid proteins, which are associated with dementia. I mean, so imagine the importance in that way, too. And then there's just all the healing that goes on during sleep. There' syour heart is repairing, your muscles are repairing. Sleep is essential to regeneration and growth. Adolescents need it for this reason, and older people need it just to heal, you know, so there's that too. Oh, and also emotional regulation. Let's not forget that. Right. You know, and we all know that you wake up and you haven't slept and you're irritable and awful.
- [28:35]
Terry Gross
I want to ask you about antidepressants, because that's something that you tried in the hopes that it would help you sleep, and it did. I don't know how long you stayed on the antidepressant. You were taking. But are antidepressants often prescribed for insomnia?
- [28:52]
Jennifer Senior
Yes, and sometimes they help and sometimes they don't. If depression is at the root, then absolutely they can. Although it's important to note, and this is absolutely true for me, many antidepressants can have a paradoxical effect and make you extremely wakeful. So it's important for people who are seeking relief not to lose hope if they try one antidepressant and it does not work. They all have slightly different or very different depends mechanisms of action. Some of them are not well known. They're mysterious, but they have different effects on different people.
- [29:32]
Terry Gross
Is it sometimes hard to tell whether the depression was caused by the insomnia or the insomnia was caused by the depression?
- [29:38]
Jennifer Senior
Totally. Yes. And I was told that I was just depressed and my insomnia was a symptom. And I didn't believe it because, no, I wasn't. But it made me depressed. I mean, it made me depressed fairly quickly because you can't live for very long if you are extreme, extremely sleep deprived and not be really miserable. So I was responsive when I took the antidepressant, but the one that I took made me really vague. It blew out all the circuitry that was responsible for generating metaphors, which is what I do as a writer. So it made my writing really flat and unexciting. So I had to go off that. And as soon as I went on one that left my metaphors intact, I needed a sleep medication. So, I don't know, it made me feel better, but it didn't sort of solve the sleep problem. The problem is, as doctors like to say, bidirectional depression can cause insomnia. Insomnia can cause depression. It can be a loop. There's now some thinking that it's more often that insomnia causes depression than the other way around. It's just very hard to know.
- [30:52]
Terry Gross
You know, let me reintroduce you because I want to talk about Long Covid after the break. If you're just joining us, my guest is Jennifer Sr. Her new article in the Atlantic is titled why Can't Americans Sleep? Insomnia Has Become a Public Health Emergency. We'll be right back. This is FRESH air.
- [31:10]
C
You know those things you shout at the radio or maybe even at this.
- [31:13]
Jennifer Senior
Very NPR podcast on NPR's Wait, Wait.
- [31:16]
C
Don'T tell me we actually say those things on the radio and on the podcast. We're rude across all media.
- [31:21]
Jennifer Senior
We think the news can take it.
- [31:23]
C
Listen to NPR's Wait, Wait don't tell me.
- [31:25]
Jennifer Senior
Wherever you get your podcasts, recycling can feel like a lost cause. But one college student started a grassroots efforts to turn beer bottles into sand for eroding beaches. We have some music bump in and like some people are sorting.
- [31:39]
Terry Gross
There's one person crushing and the rest.
- [31:41]
Jennifer Senior
Of us are like hand sifting the material. How you can come up with creative ideas by taking a second look. Double takes. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast from npr. What would you think if you saw a robot dog out for a walk in your neighborhood? What the hell is that? Oh my God. This is Basia just hanging out with us. So could I have a medium? Double takes and how they can change your point of view. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast from npr.
- [32:18]
Terry Gross
So I want to move away from insomnia to talk about Long Covid, which you have, although I suspect there's probably some interconnection there. But in 2022, and this was long after you developed insomnia, you got Covid in a very mild case. You were barely symptomatic. You basically still went about your day. But after that you got Long Covid and you wrote an article about it in the Atlantic. And the article was titled what not to Ask Me About My Long Covid. And you write, asking, are you doing any better? Doesn't help. You have to think of it as a chronic illness. But I do want to ask you because I think with every year we know a little bit more about Long Covid, although so much of it is still a mystery because Covid itself is so new. But have you improved over time? Has it changed for better or worse over time? And my follow up will be like, have you learned more about it? Do you feel like you know more about what it is?
- [33:21]
Jennifer Senior
Thank you for asking. I don't consider that a ridiculous question now, particularly because it's been my three year anniversary was like June 28th, and the symptoms really started like on day six when I was positive the first time and just waxed until they were really debilitating and sort of unbearable. I'm worse. I'm a lot worse. And I think some of it is just that I got reinfected. And that makes you worse. I couldn't fight it once and I was already weakened and I think it was just another assault. Well, I got the Novavax, which long haulers love. It improves some of them. And I got that one year and it really improved me. It functioned as a medicine, but I got it this year and it made me worse. So you know, and I'm sure that every anti vaxxer in the world is going to seize on this but you know, the fact is that boosters and vaccinations reduce the risk of long Covid by about a third. So I think once you have it it's really hard to know how things are going to. So many people report feeling better after vaccines and like I said when I got vaccinated once I felt so much better. So you know, we know more about it and we don't. We still don't really understand the underlying pathophysiology actually we still. Everybody in my long Covid zoom group talks about this. No one's really found anything that's worked for them in any significant way. I mean it's really enraging. And now of course the budget's been slashed. Research, it's down to very, you know, it was 11 billion, now it's 2 billion for research. And there's an, it's an administration that's very vaccine hostile and is very hostile to research generally. So that's very dispiriting. And I have a couple of things that are well known. They happen post virus to lots of people. They're happening to more people now because so many people got Covid. So I have two autoimmune things. One is called pots, another is called mcas. They are acronyms for if you care. Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. It means that when I stand up my heart races and my blood pressure plunges and my autonomic nervous system, it's just totally offline. People know some stuff about that. They can treat it. There's no cure. Mast cell activation syndrome is the other. It basically means that histamines are running rampant through your body. They can treat it, they can't cure it. What I really have is perpetual dizziness and it's awful. I'm dizzy now. I'm dizzy sitting up, I'm dizzy standing. The world bounces in my field of vision. It's like everything looks like the Blair Witch Project. It's really tough and people can't really figure it out and that's upsetting.
- [36:26]
Terry Gross
That sounds so life changing. Has it changed your sense of identity too?
- [36:31]
Jennifer Senior
Totally. And it is life changing. I'm taking an 18 month leave from the Atlantic. I might write a book about. Yeah, this story was the last thing I'm doing for a while. I might write a book about living in a broken body. But I won't take an advance for it because that would be too stressful and I might not want to do it. Although my natural inclination is to convert most experiences into writing. So, you know, whether it's mine or other people's experiences, I actually write about myself very little. This was like the first time I really did it. And I don't know how I feel about it, but it has totally changed my identity and not. You want to know what? It's almost worse to not have my identity changed. It's almost worse to wake up every morning and think, oh, I can just stand up and get out of bed and brush my teeth and go about my day. I forget actually, some of the time, a lot of the time. And I forget when I'm lying down. And I still plan like a person sometimes who has all this energy and then sputter out and remember I'm not very strange. And also, we're all trapped in limbo because this is still new. So some of us are. I mean, it's ridiculous at this point, but are sort of hanging onto the idea that people will get a better beat on it. But, you know, my body hasn't fixed itself in three years. Who am I kidding?
- [38:06]
Terry Gross
Does the long Covid and the insomnia have any interconnection?
- [38:12]
Jennifer Senior
Yes, very possibly. There's a confound here. Autoimmune diseases run in my family. My mother has one. She has also an immunodeficiency. The critical infantrymen and her immune system are not there. And she has already an autoimmune disease. My son has an autoimmune disease. I was immunocompromised. I had a shortage of natural killer cells going into this epidemic. And the ones that I did have were inert. I was sickly starting from the time I was a kid. It could have been that I would have gotten long Covid no matter what. God knows I got every imaginable infectious disease before this pandemic, including spinal meningitis, like, really impressive things. That said, people who have insomnia are natural killer cell deficient and insomniacs were more likely to get long Covid. They found this out from a study, I believe nurses who had gotten less sleep versus those who had not, they were more likely to develop long Covid. So maybe that. It's hard to know, right? It's really hard to know.
- [39:27]
Terry Gross
So one more question about insomnia. Are you afraid to go to bed? Do you like, dread going to bed at night?
- [39:34]
Jennifer Senior
Oh, no, no. And I haven't for a long time. No, no, no. I've learned enough of the cognitive kind of restructuring stuff to say to myself, particularly since I've changed jobs, I'm no longer being fed like a foie gras goose. As a book critic having to review so many books in such a short period of time, I now have a schedule where I can think, okay, a lost night of sleep is fine, you know, and if I don't sleep tonight, I'll sleep the next night and it's okay. And I know how to meditate, so, you know, I can do that. So, no, no, I'm no longer beset by those kinds of terrors. Definitely not.
- [40:13]
Terry Gross
All right. Well, listen, I wish you well with your sleep and your health. And thank you so much for coming back to FRESH air.
- [40:21]
Jennifer Senior
Thank you so much for having me back on.
- [40:24]
Terry Gross
Jennifer Sr. S new article, why Can't Americans Sleep? Is on the Atlantic's website and will be on newsstands July 15. She's a staff writer at the Atlantis. After we take a short break, TV critic David Biancooli will review the new HBO and Max documentary about the history of Ms. Magazine called Dear A Revolution in Print. This is FRESH air. Here on the indicator from Planet Money.
- [40:50]
Jennifer Senior
We fanned out across the country to ask how you are feeling about the 2025 economy.
- [40:56]
Terry Gross
Anxious, uncertain, unfair, turbulent, crazy.
- [41:00]
Jennifer Senior
We don't just recite the headlines, we.
- [41:02]
Terry Gross
Show you how the economy is affecting your life.
- [41:05]
Jennifer Senior
In 10 minutes or less each weekday, listen to the indicator from Planet Money.
- [41:09]
Terry Gross
Wherever you get your podcasts.
- [41:12]
Jennifer Senior
Hey, everybody, it's Ian from How to Do Everything.
- [41:14]
C
On our show, we attempt to answer your how to questions. We don't know how to do anything.
- [41:20]
Jennifer Senior
So we call experts.
- [41:22]
C
Last season, both Tom Hanks and Martha.
- [41:24]
Jennifer Senior
Stewart stopped by to help.
- [41:25]
Terry Gross
Help.
- [41:25]
Jennifer Senior
Our next season is launching in just a few months, so get us your.
- [41:28]
C
Questions now by emailing howtopr.org or calling 1-800-424-2935.
- [41:36]
Terry Gross
HBO has a new documentary also streaming on Max, about the formation, contents and legacy of one of the more influential and controversial magazines of the 20th century. The magazine was called Miz, and the documentary is called Dear A Revolution in print. Our TV critic David Biancooli has this review.
- [41:58]
C
Ms. Magazine was launched more than 50 years ago with a test balloon sneak preview issue that had to break even if the magazine were to keep publishing. HBO's new documentary, Dear A Revolution in Print, takes an inventive approach in explaining what made this particular publication and its contents so unusual and meaningful. The documentary is divided into three parts, each telling a different aspect of the Ms. Magazine story. And each is told by a different director, each with her own specific perspective. One major theme of the documentary is that the women's movement, like many political movements, contained activists from all over the spectrum. Giving voice to three different voices in Dear Ms. Is one way to reflect. But another major theme of the documentary is how important and groundbreaking it was to identify and publicize concerns that women had in common. In the program's first part, director Salima Koroma examines the genesis of Ms. Magazine. Original staffer Letty Cotton Pogrebin remembers the meetings that led to the articles in that first issue. And even the magazine's name we assigned.
- [43:11]
Terry Gross
We got, that manuscript we edited, we put into production. It was a blur of glorious hyperactivity. And, you know, we were still batting around a title. We had a lot of maybes. Maybe gonna be Sojourner Lilith, Bimbo Sister was thrown out because it sounded like a Nuns magazine. But Ms. It's a synthesis of Miz and Ms. Ms. Was the all purpose business nomenclature for women whose marital status you didn't know. Ms. Seemed to me perfect.
- [43:53]
C
A feminist magazine aimed at and run by women from today's perspective seems like an obvious, even brilliant idea. Back then, though it was seen by many as a threat or a mistake or both. Take, for example, ABC News anchor and commentator Harry Reid.
- [44:11]
Terry Gross
We put 300,000 copies out on the newsstands and hoped that they would sell over the course of eight weeks. See if people are interested. See if maybe people might use the subscription card. Maybe. Maybe it'll get a little news. The first edition of ms, described as a new magazine for women, is at hand, and it's pretty sad. There's so clearly just another in the great but irrelevant tradition of American shock magazines. I was talking to a couple of other chauvinist pigs over the weekend, and one of them wanted to bet I'll take five issues and under.
- [44:44]
Jennifer Senior
He said, you take the field and I'll give you 2 to 1. He got no takers.
- [44:49]
C
Reasoner was wrong. And later in the documentary, he's shown admitting as much. Magazine founder Gloria Steinem, on the other hand, gets to look back with no small sense of pride.
- [44:59]
Terry Gross
I have to say I think we.
- [45:02]
Jennifer Senior
Were smarter than we thought we were. I feel good about this issue.
- [45:07]
Terry Gross
A lot of these articles could still be relevant.
- [45:10]
C
The first part of Dear miss Recounts the early feminist voices championed by the magazine, such as Shirley Chisholm, the first woman to run for President of the United States, and Alice Walker, published in Ms. Before she wrote the Color Purple Part 2, directed by Alice Goo, examines the magazine's reach and impact. The first editor of Ms. Magazine, Suzanne Braun Levine, explains how its 1977 cover story on sexual sexual harassment gave name to an issue that soon became a central part of the national conversation three years later. It was the basis of the 1980 hit movie 9 to 5, starring Dolly Parton as a secretary rebelling against her chauvinistic boss.
- [45:53]
Terry Gross
If something doesn't have a name, you can't build a response to it, you can't talk about it, you can't rebel against it.
- [46:03]
Jennifer Senior
Let's don't get excited. Get your scummy hands off of me. Look, I've been straight with you from the first day I got here.
- [46:08]
Terry Gross
And I put up with all your.
- [46:09]
Jennifer Senior
Pens and staring and chasing me around the desk cause I need this job. But this is the last straw.
- [46:14]
Terry Gross
In the movie 9 to 5, women.
- [46:16]
Jennifer Senior
Get even in real life. Many women can't afford to confront the boss. But women are reporting sexual harassment more than ever before.
- [46:25]
Terry Gross
The minute it had a name, things took off and changed.
- [46:31]
C
And in Part three, director Cecilia Aldorando looks frankly at some of the issues that divided women in the movement and even women on the magazine staff. One of them, Lindsey Van Gelder, recalls the sexual revolution that was brewing in 1972. Not only was Ms. Magazine released that year, but so were such attention getting porn films as Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door.
- [46:55]
Jennifer Senior
I was the last generation to grow up without porn. I was born in 1944. Porn really hit the mainstream in 1972.
- [47:07]
Terry Gross
It was the golden age of pornography.
- [47:09]
Jennifer Senior
They called it.
- [47:12]
Terry Gross
Porn chic. You thought it was kind of liberating to go to these porn films.
- [47:18]
C
The magazine dealt with that issue and others in the decades since in ways that were anything but consistent or unifying. But the complexity is what makes this documentary so intriguing. And from the very first issue, what made Ms. Magazine so distinctive.
- [47:35]
Terry Gross
David Biancooli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed the new HBO documentary called Dear A Revolution in Print. It's also streaming on max. Tomorrow on FRESH air. Our guest will be RB singer, songwriter, musician and producer Rafael Siddiq. Before going solo, he led the group Toni Toni, Tony and formed the group Lucy Pearl. He's produced recordings by d', Angelo, Whitney Houston, John Legend, Erykah Badu, Alicia Keys and Beyonce. I hope you'll join us.
- [48:12]
Jennifer Senior
To keep.
- [48:13]
Terry Gross
Up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews. Follow us on Instagram @nprfreshair Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is R.D. bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Reboldonato, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly CV Nessberg. Hope Wilson is our consulting visual producer. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co host is Tanya Moseley. I'm Terry Gross.
- [48:54]
Jennifer Senior
It is so hot outside.
- [48:56]
Terry Gross
Why not chill out with a nice breezy book? Over on NPR's Book of the Day podcast, we're doing a whole week of summer reads. Novels about romance and friendship and weddings and sex.
- [49:06]
Jennifer Senior
You know what summer is all about.
- [49:08]
Terry Gross
So if you are packing for a vacation or just appreciating a nice air conditioned library, find your next read by listening to NPR's Book of the Day Podcast. Podcast. You have your job, but you also have a life. And you're not just one thing. Neither is the Here and Now Anytime podcast. Every weekday we break down the biggest story of the day and something else, like a new trend everyone's talking about. It's Here and Now Anytime. A daily podcast from NPR and WBUR.