Sleep and dreams

essayBiology
Could humans hibernate?
Hibernation allows many animals to time-travel from difficult times to plenty. Could humans learn how to do it too?
Vladyslav Vyazovskiy

essaySleep and dreams
Spinning the night self
After years of insomnia, I threw off the effort to sleep and embraced the peculiar openness I found in the darkest hours
Annabel Abbs

videoWork
A Swedish expat in the Philippines wonders: what’s up with people sleeping at work?
14 minutes

videoSleep and dreams
How might the dreamworlds of other animals differ from our own?
8 minutes

essayStories and literature
The diaries of Kafka
By day an insurance official, by night he was an incessant, insomniacal scribe of the space between waking and dreaming
Ross Benjamin

essayNeuroscience
A thickness in the air
The spooky sensation that someone or something else is right there haunts us all. But what does this felt presence mean?
Ben Alderson-Day

essaySleep and dreams
The dreams of animals
The psychic lives of nonhuman dreamers reveal colours, harmonies and beauties of which we had little inkling until now
David M Peña-Guzmán

essayFairness and equality
Poor sleep
Being on-call, out-of-sync and underslept is not just personal but a pervasive political injustice. Bold change is needed
Jonathan White

essaySleep and dreams
Ancestral dreams
We’re not the only beings that dream. What visions might sleep bring to a cell, an insect, a mollusk, an ape?
Sidarta Ribeiro

essaySleep and dreams
Inside your dreamscape
Dream-hacking techniques can help us create, heal and have fun. They could also become tools of commercial manipulation
Adam Haar Horowitz, Robert Stickgold & Antonio Zadra

essaySleep and dreams
Why do we sleep?
Adults sleep less than babies. Sperm whales sleep less again. A new mathematical theory unlocks the mysteries of slumber
Van Savage & Geoffrey West

essaySleep and dreams
Nightmares becalmed
I’m a dream engineer. Through touch, scent and sound, we help people rescript the dramas of their sleeping lives
Michelle Carr

essaySleep and dreams
In exile from the dreamscape
We live in a wake-centric world that devalues dreaming, yet we need to experience dreams to be our authentic selves
Rubin Naiman

videoNeurodiversity
The work of a sleepwalking artist offers a glimpse into the fertile slumbering brain
4 minutes

essaySleep and dreams
Here’s to naps and snoozes
American work culture, seeping around the globe, threatens to ruin the pleasures and benefits of public, communal sleep
Todd Pitock

videoSleep and dreams
Chocolate, monsters and mothers – surreal glimpses of our most common dreams
2 minutes

ideaSleep and dreams
Down with the larks: on the virtues of sleeping like a sloth
Joel Frohlich

ideaSleep and dreams
The lucid dreaming playbook: how to take charge of your dreams
Denholm Aspy

ideaSleep and dreams
Our dreams have many purposes, changing across the lifespan
Patrick McNamara

ideaSleep and dreams
How sound and smell cues can enhance learning while you sleep
Sadie Witkowski

essayHistory
The empire dreamt back
To help rule its empire, Britain turned to psychoanalysis. But they weren’t willing to hear the truth it told
Erik Linstrum

essayPolitics and government
American dreaming 3.0
Embrace dreams as a counter to the naive realism of politics today, and they could become a potent democratic force
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

ideaSleep and dreams
Sleepwalking is the result of a survival mechanism gone awry
Phil Jaekl

videoStories and literature
Leonard Cohen turns an erotic fantasy that wasn’t into a sleepless night’s work
6 minutes