Field notes

Sleep history and
everyday experiences

Historical records, published personal accounts, and studies of everyday sleep questions—from sharing a bed to interpreting a tracker.

Sleep history

What first and second sleep reveal about history, human adaptability, and the limits of ancestral sleep advice.

Sleep stories

Three attributable sleep stories, from John Adams and Benjamin Franklin to a modern sleep clinic and a researcher’s evening shower.

Life and sleep

Practical arrangements for different bedtimes, snoring, movement, temperature preferences, separate sleeping spaces, and overnight caregiving.

Sleep science

What consumer sleep trackers measure, how to interpret validation studies, and when a score stops being useful.

Sleep science

How sleep supports learning before and after practice, why memory cues are not sleep learning, and what brain clearance studies can actually tell us.

Sleep science

What dream research can establish, where interpretation outruns evidence, and how to seek useful care for nightmares or physical dream enactment.

Where the accounts come from

Personal accounts make sleep tangible. We identify where each account comes from and keep it separate from evidence that a treatment works.