Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And today we're gonna be addressing a maybe a surprisingly
Speaker 1: cozy topic. We're gonna be doing a bit of an invention.
Speaker 1: Look at the bed, that's right. Uh. We we love
Speaker 1: to go to bed, especially this time of year. You know,
Speaker 1: It's just it just seems like the place to be, uh,
Speaker 1: under multiple layers of blanket, um totally over your body.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, my my head just between two pillows, just
Speaker 1: in the utter darkness there. Uh yeah, I mean we
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of a cliche, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to mattress commercials, but we do spend an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of time in bed, you know. It's we spend a
Speaker 1: large portion of our life the sleeping. Uh, and this
Speaker 1: is where we do it. One of the sources that
Speaker 1: I'm going to refer to in this episode as a
Speaker 1: book that I just started reading called What We Did
Speaker 1: in Bed, a Horizontal History by Yale University Press or
Speaker 1: Not by Yale University Press. From Yale University Press by
Speaker 1: uh Brian and Fagan and Nadia Durrani, And in one
Speaker 1: of their early chapters, they begin with a quote from
Speaker 1: a writer named Lawrence Wright, who I think wrote on architecture,
Speaker 1: but who said, from nearly all social history and biography,
Speaker 1: one third of the story is missing. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of true. I mean, we've talked before about how a
Speaker 1: lot of times it's interesting to try to get a
Speaker 1: flavor of everyday life from the histories written in a
Speaker 1: certain place and time, and that can be difficult because
Speaker 1: the histories that people write about are usually devoted to
Speaker 1: unusual events, are very like like high stakes events. Uh,
Speaker 1: the things we think of as making history, not what
Speaker 1: everybody happens to go home and do at night, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and the big part of that is sleeping. Not
Speaker 1: not as many maybe, I guess you do have paintings
Speaker 1: of people sleeping, but uh, for the most part, it's
Speaker 1: not the stuff of Soka's but it really does define
Speaker 1: the very texture of our lives. I mean, we you know,
Speaker 1: you spend maybe roughly a third of your life or
Speaker 1: so in bed, and so uh, what's happening there and
Speaker 1: what form that bed takes probably matters a lot for
Speaker 1: your experience of the world. That's right. If it's not
Speaker 1: the center of your house, it's kind of kind of
Speaker 1: a center of your house, you know, it's like one
Speaker 1: of the places that you you spend a lot of time.
Speaker 1: Uh it, I mean, it's it's it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that is you start talking about it, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of a an outrageous overstatement of the obvious. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, we we live in our beds, like, our
Speaker 1: beds are a place we live. So I was wondering,
Speaker 1: how did our ancestors sleep before the creation of beds.
Speaker 1: You know, whenever we look at an invention, we like
Speaker 1: to ask what came before? And uh, of course, obviously
Speaker 1: we've been sleep being much longer than we've been sleeping
Speaker 1: in beds, So what was that transition period like? And
Speaker 1: there's a lot we don't know, but what we do
Speaker 1: know is kind of interesting. So, for one thing, it
Speaker 1: seems like, if you go back far enough, much of
Speaker 1: the life of our hominid ancestors took place in trees.
Speaker 1: We were you know, we were descended from largely arboreal
Speaker 1: species and this probably included sleep. And for some evidence
Speaker 1: of this we can look to the sleeping habits of
Speaker 1: our nearest relatives in the animal world, which would be chimpanzees,
Speaker 1: whose relationship to their environment is we don't know for sure,
Speaker 1: but we think it is probably pretty similar to that
Speaker 1: of human ants of human ancestors from several million years ago.
Speaker 1: And in their book, Fagan and Durrani point out that
Speaker 1: chimpanzees in the Toro sim Leaky Reserve of western Uganda
Speaker 1: prefer to make their tree top nests out of branches
Speaker 1: of a particular tree. Actually like their picky about what
Speaker 1: kind of tree would they want to sleep on. They
Speaker 1: really like something called Ugandan iron wood. And I went
Speaker 1: actually to dig up the citation on this because I
Speaker 1: was wondering about the study, and it looks like this
Speaker 1: comes from a study by Samson and Hunt published in
Speaker 1: p Os one that looked at different types of nesting
Speaker 1: behaviors in chimpanzees and Uganda, and they sampled eighteen hundred
Speaker 1: and forty four nests and found that chimpanzees selected Ugandan
Speaker 1: ironwood for seventy three point six percent of all those nests,
Speaker 1: even though it was only a little bit less than
Speaker 1: ten percent of all the trees within the area that
Speaker 1: they surveyed. And they found that this was probably related
Speaker 1: to certain material properties of the ironwood, as would They
Speaker 1: said it was the stiffest of all the woods around,
Speaker 1: and they said it quote had the greatest bending strength
Speaker 1: of all the trees tested, had the smallest distance between
Speaker 1: leaves on the branches, and had the smallest leaf surface area.
Speaker 1: And so I'm wondering if all that just kind of
Speaker 1: add up to, well, this kind of tree makes the
Speaker 1: best natural mattress material. It's like that it's got the
Speaker 1: best sort of the best support structure for you, but
Speaker 1: it also bends is sort of nicely cushioned. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the idea too that it there's the smallest distance between
Speaker 1: leaves on the branches. Um, you know that that brings
Speaker 1: that makes you think of something that's almost uh, it's
Speaker 1: almost like it's woven together, you know. But of course,
Speaker 1: eventually our ancestors did come out of the trees for
Speaker 1: the majority of their lives, and the date of this
Speaker 1: transition is debatable, but uh, Fagan and Durrani right that
Speaker 1: probably roughly two million years ago or so, our ancestors
Speaker 1: first began to control fire, and it seems that this
Speaker 1: probably coincided with a transition to sleeping out on the
Speaker 1: ground in open camps or under the shelter of rock,
Speaker 1: overhangs or caves around fires instead of sleeping in trees.
Speaker 1: And I think that's an interesting possibility that that fire
Speaker 1: control of fire would be correlated with changes in where
Speaker 1: and how we slept. Yeah, we can easily imagine the
Speaker 1: Gary Larson far Side cartoon showing what happened to our
Speaker 1: ancestors that decided to have the fires in the tree
Speaker 1: with them. Yeah, that's not a good plan. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: then uh, Fagan and Doroni go on to mention something
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Now, this is speculation, but it is interesting
Speaker 1: to consider the possibility that the introduction of camp fires
Speaker 1: could very well have shaped the development of what we
Speaker 1: see as major features of human social life. And they
Speaker 1: give the example of huddling around fires for warmth and
Speaker 1: for protection against predators during and adjacent to sleep time
Speaker 1: that could have given rise to increasing habituation to prolonged
Speaker 1: close physical contact. That this could somehow be related towards
Speaker 1: repeated sex with the same partner in places otherwise used
Speaker 1: for sleep, as opposed to opportunistic sexual pairing. The possibility
Speaker 1: that if this is true, the author's right quote pair
Speaker 1: bonding maybe a recent feature of human evolution, and it's
Speaker 1: intriguing to imagine that technology fire and the bed played
Speaker 1: a role in its emergence. Now, unfortunately, it's impossible to
Speaker 1: know for sure at this point given the evidence we have,
Speaker 1: but that is an interesting possibility, I mean even today, Uh, Like,
Speaker 1: what do you think when you see um like this,
Speaker 1: this this setting, a roaring fireplace and some in the
Speaker 1: fur of some sort of animal placed in front of
Speaker 1: it like it is? It is? It is on some level.
Speaker 1: And this is of course probably a lot of this
Speaker 1: is probably just cultural uh coding as well, but it's
Speaker 1: it's an erotic situation. It's like they're a bed, they're
Speaker 1: a fire, right, you're you are in James Bond and
Speaker 1: the Russian Spies Shelley. But there is a certain point
Speaker 1: at which we we don't have to speculate as much
Speaker 1: what was going on, because we eventually do get some
Speaker 1: physical evidence from archaeology that can tell us something about
Speaker 1: the sleeping arrangements of our ancient human ancestors. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this would be especially during the Middle Stone Age of
Speaker 1: South Africa. Now, this next part refers to a study
Speaker 1: by Lynn Wadley Christine Seevers, Marian Bamford, Paul Goldberg, Francesco Berner,
Speaker 1: and Christopher Miller called Middle Stone Age bedding, construction and
Speaker 1: settlement patterns at Subadu, South Africa. This was published in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven and Science and according to Widely at All,
Speaker 1: there are a number of interesting adaptations that all appear
Speaker 1: or emerge in the Middle Stone Age of South Africa.
Speaker 1: We noticed the use of shell beads and engraving, uh
Speaker 1: innovations in stone technology, the creation and use of compound adhesives,
Speaker 1: so types of glue, heat treatment of rocks, and circumstantial
Speaker 1: evidence for snares and for bows and arrows. But along
Speaker 1: with this all all this stuff in the same period,
Speaker 1: there's also early evidence of domestic innovations in betting. And
Speaker 1: this evidence of betting comes from a place known as
Speaker 1: the Seeboodoo Rock shelter. To read from Fagan and Durrani
Speaker 1: quote in a cliff above the youth Ungathi River in
Speaker 1: South Africa, forty kilometers north of Durban and fifteen kilometers
Speaker 1: from the Indian Ocean. Modern people Homo sapiens, who were
Speaker 1: physically and mentally like ourselves, visited the shelter at least
Speaker 1: fifteen times between seventy seven thousand and thirty eight thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, and slept there. Thick swaths of grasses, sedges,
Speaker 1: and rushes that still grow by the river tell a
Speaker 1: story of regular but careful slumber. Now about the archaeological
Speaker 1: find the archaeologist Lynn Wadley, the lead author and the
Speaker 1: study I mentioned, she said in a separate interview that
Speaker 1: was quoted in an article I was reading. Quote, the
Speaker 1: fossilized leaves were uncovered as a sheet of white plant
Speaker 1: matter overlying layers of sedge leaves and stems. I suspected
Speaker 1: whilst excavating them that the leaves were deliberately elected as
Speaker 1: part of betting, because all of the leaves were clearly
Speaker 1: the same taxon meaning of the same plant. If leaves
Speaker 1: had simply blown into the site from the forest, there
Speaker 1: would have been several different tree species represented. So that's
Speaker 1: about the method of determining what this layer of vegetation
Speaker 1: that was repeatedly found buried in the ground meant. But
Speaker 1: Fagan and Durrani also mentioned that there was something careful
Speaker 1: going on about the construction of this ancient betting. Here
Speaker 1: where does the careful part come in. Well, when you're
Speaker 1: sleeping in a cave or a rock shelter, it can
Speaker 1: be extremely difficult to keep your sleeping area clean and
Speaker 1: free of insects. I mean, obviously, you know you're laying
Speaker 1: out there, and you are you and all the stuff
Speaker 1: you're doing is probably pretty attractive to insects for multiple reasons.
Speaker 1: There are mosquitoes that want to bite you and suck
Speaker 1: your blood. There are probably other opportunistic insects that are
Speaker 1: attracted to whatever foods you're eating around your dwelling space.
Speaker 1: You know, you're like a magnet for insect life. But
Speaker 1: the Stone Age inhabitants of this cave discovered away to
Speaker 1: to improve their their odds with insects. Essentially, they invented
Speaker 1: an insect repellent mattress. Now, this mattress was made out
Speaker 1: of not just any leaves and grasses, but very importantly,
Speaker 1: it contained the aromatic leaves of the Cape laurel tree
Speaker 1: or Cryptocaria woody eye, which smells very nice to humans,
Speaker 1: I'm told, I'm not sure if I know what that
Speaker 1: would smell like. But it also bears insecticidal compounds that
Speaker 1: can drive away mosquitoes and other pests. And this would
Speaker 1: have been not only to make the beds more pleasant,
Speaker 1: but to some extent this was a question of life
Speaker 1: and death, because insect borne illnesses were and are a
Speaker 1: real threat to survival, especially to young children. But beyond that,
Speaker 1: there's also evidence that the people who lived here frequently
Speaker 1: burned their bedding and then replaced it with fresh layers
Speaker 1: of foliage. And this would be to kill any insects
Speaker 1: that had taken up residence despite the repell leaves, and
Speaker 1: to get rid of trash and garbage. Because one thing
Speaker 1: is quite clear from the archaeological remains, these people liked
Speaker 1: to eat in bed. The remains showed that they would
Speaker 1: consume food on these grass mats that served as their beds,
Speaker 1: but they would also do other stuff. Tools, debris, and
Speaker 1: charred bone indicate that they probably worked and did other
Speaker 1: activities in bed, because hey, beds are nice, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a soft layer, Like, why leave if you
Speaker 1: don't have to. They also clearly liked large beds. Fagan
Speaker 1: and Dorani described these as king sized quote. Most of
Speaker 1: the bedding covers at least three well trodden square meters
Speaker 1: uh and the fact that they were burning their bedding
Speaker 1: and replacing it at regular intervals shows early human use
Speaker 1: not just to fire for warmth, cooking protection, and tool manufacture,
Speaker 1: but also for sanitation, which is an important milestone in
Speaker 1: the history of human hygiene. But I thought this was
Speaker 1: interesting for a number of reasons. I mean, one is
Speaker 1: the ancient insight into the insect repellent properties of these
Speaker 1: particular leaves that would be woven into the bedding material
Speaker 1: to keep the insects out. But another thing is what
Speaker 1: kind of role this bed location would have played in
Speaker 1: ancient culture, Because, at least in American culture today, we
Speaker 1: usually think of beds as well several things private right
Speaker 1: hidden from view, Like if you're showing somebody around your
Speaker 1: house that you know, you don't usually start with the bed.
Speaker 1: You might not even show them the bed at all.
Speaker 1: We think of beds as solitary or at least secluded
Speaker 1: with a single partner. We think of beds as primarily
Speaker 1: for sleep, with secondary uses maybe including sex and low
Speaker 1: energy activities like reading. But historically and around the world,
Speaker 1: none of this is a given. Like for much of
Speaker 1: human history and for many people even today, beds have
Speaker 1: been more public or in plane view, often shared by
Speaker 1: many people sometimes even by strangers, and used for lots
Speaker 1: of activities other than sleep in sex like beds have
Speaker 1: many times in place has been used for socializing, eating,
Speaker 1: preparing food, working on projects, etcetera. And I wonder what
Speaker 1: kind of difference does this make in our lives. Well,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this, and I think of thinking
Speaker 1: about like my current living situation and past living situations,
Speaker 1: and I think one thing we have to to to
Speaker 1: recognize is that in the sort of you know, stereotypical
Speaker 1: American home, you have the bed, but you also have
Speaker 1: the couch. And the couch is a place where we
Speaker 1: do a lot of the same things that we do
Speaker 1: in the bed. It's certainly where we I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, but I certainly get in the occasional nap
Speaker 1: on my couch. Uh that there have been you know,
Speaker 1: there have been times. It was particularly recently I lived
Speaker 1: near some train tracks. There's a lot of bright lights
Speaker 1: that were visible through the bedroom window. So if it
Speaker 1: was too bright for me out there, I would come
Speaker 1: and I would sleep on the couch as well, because
Speaker 1: it was dark here in the living room. So you know,
Speaker 1: you can you can sleep on the couch. You can.
Speaker 1: But also I find that generally some of us that
Speaker 1: are maybe not okay with, say, eating dinner in their bed,
Speaker 1: you you're probably perfectly okay eating dinner at your couch,
Speaker 1: like in front of the television. Right, So the couch
Speaker 1: is basically a bad I mean, it's doing all the
Speaker 1: same things that a bed does, but it I think
Speaker 1: in many cases ends up absorbing some of the activities
Speaker 1: that then we we don't do in bed proper, you know,
Speaker 1: like eating a meal. That's a really interesting point. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, one very obvious thing is the way that
Speaker 1: a couch plays a role for like visiting and socialization.
Speaker 1: Socialization that maybe means something different socializing that would you
Speaker 1: know it's normal to like have friends over and I'll
Speaker 1: sit on the couch. It would be kind of weird
Speaker 1: for a lot of people in America today to have
Speaker 1: friends over and have everybody get in your bed. Right.
Speaker 1: But but I think the cases where like you and
Speaker 1: I I have been on the road doing podcast stuff
Speaker 1: and then what do you what do you do? You're
Speaker 1: in a hotel room and you gotta go over notes
Speaker 1: you end up in a hotel room is generally a
Speaker 1: space in which there is a bed, you know, you. Granted,
Speaker 1: you can go to a business center if they have one,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you have more of a little study in
Speaker 1: the room, but a lot of times it ends up
Speaker 1: like sitting around on the bed laying out notes. I
Speaker 1: mean that's what I think back to, say college, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of us and probably have this experience,
Speaker 1: like you don't have a lot of space. Your bed
Speaker 1: ends up being a place where you can print, take
Speaker 1: printed sheets and organize them. Uh it becomes a sort
Speaker 1: of a table half the time. Well no, I but
Speaker 1: I gotta say, as an adult, I have felt awkwardness
Speaker 1: before when you're like trying to hang out, say like
Speaker 1: when we've been on the road for the show and
Speaker 1: had to hang out in a hotel room and you
Speaker 1: just have to sit on the bed, Like it feels
Speaker 1: weird because yeah, you know this, it feels like you're
Speaker 1: doing something wrong. But uh no, I think I think
Speaker 1: it's just like you know, we're we're enculturated to think, no,
Speaker 1: you don't do that with this kind of furniture. The
Speaker 1: furniture should be shaped a little bit differently in order
Speaker 1: to do what you're doing right. But then again, we
Speaker 1: also have like thinking of meals and bad breakfast and
Speaker 1: bad still has a certain attractiveness to it. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's not something I want for myself, but I I
Speaker 1: am at least led to believe it is something that
Speaker 1: other people want. It's a good way to make a mess,
Speaker 1: a good way to find find crumbs later the following night,
Speaker 1: you know. Way, Yeah, but I don't know. But also
Speaker 1: like a good reminder to to clean your betting right
Speaker 1: if you're if you're actively eating dinner in there, maybe
Speaker 1: the betting gets clean more often, I don't know, possibly,
Speaker 1: or you could just burn it and start over, yeah,
Speaker 1: just to be sure. Well, so something though, I was
Speaker 1: just thinking about that. Maybe this is a psychologically insignificant.
Speaker 1: But I wonder if there are a lot of times
Speaker 1: in history when it's been more normal to gather around
Speaker 1: to bed and and socialize, even for like adults with
Speaker 1: their own living space or something. Um. But I wonder if,
Speaker 1: even in a culture where that's not very normal, does
Speaker 1: the effect somewhat reverse with how much we bring social
Speaker 1: media into our beds through mobile devices, like you know,
Speaker 1: you tweet from bed, you graham from bed and so forth. Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, it's I mean, from one level.
Speaker 1: On one level, we have always been bringing media into
Speaker 1: our beds. Uh, social media being a like a way
Speaker 1: of communicating. I mean, given that you're generally I mean,
Speaker 1: unless you're talking about like a video conferencing type thing.
Speaker 1: If you're like actively doing like an Instagram story or
Speaker 1: something from your bed, I could see where that might
Speaker 1: be a little weird. Otherwise, it's like you have are
Speaker 1: people tagging themselves as being like this, here's my missive
Speaker 1: from the bed. Um. You know. Otherwise you could be
Speaker 1: in your bed, you could be on the toilet. Uh,
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna know. Isn't it weird how people just read
Speaker 1: tweets all day without even acknowledging that a good number
Speaker 1: of these are sent from the toilet. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: they should be required to tag them. You know. It's like,
Speaker 1: did you where where are you tweeting from? And the
Speaker 1: immediate drop down menu is toilet? Um, you're in all
Speaker 1: or I don't know. I guess the bed would be
Speaker 1: on the list driving train, doctor's waiting room supposed to
Speaker 1: be paying attention in a meeting. All right, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Thank you, Thank you, Okay, we're back alright,
Speaker 1: So we talked a little bit about the prehistory of betting,
Speaker 1: what some some innovations in Middle Stone Age South Africa
Speaker 1: can can tell us about Stone Age life betting in
Speaker 1: under rock shelters and things like that. But later on
Speaker 1: in history we do get more kind of constructed beds,
Speaker 1: beds that become sort of permanent furniture within dwellings. Uh.
Speaker 1: So maybe we should explore something about that. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I immediately turned, of course to Brian and Fagan, same
Speaker 1: Fagan that we mentioned earlier. His his book The Seventy
Speaker 1: Great Inventions of the Ancient World, and there is indeed
Speaker 1: a section in there not about betting, but about furniture. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this was written with Jeffrey P. Killing, a specialist
Speaker 1: in ancient furniture and woodworking, particularly ancient Egyptian furniture. So
Speaker 1: they point out that to have furniture of any kind,
Speaker 1: you of course need specialized tools and the ability to
Speaker 1: work natural materials into new forms. Now, at first you
Speaker 1: would have been limited to materials in your immediate surroundings,
Speaker 1: um within your range at least, right, but eventually trade
Speaker 1: opens humans up to more materials and this would expand
Speaker 1: what they were able to create. So they point to
Speaker 1: a particular example, uh that stands as one of the
Speaker 1: earliest examples of furniture within a domestic environment. That's supposed
Speaker 1: to say, within a tomb, as will explore in a
Speaker 1: bet And this example certainly includes a bed. It's from
Speaker 1: the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland circa thirty
Speaker 1: one hundred to b c. E. Now, Uh, wood is
Speaker 1: scarce on the Orkney Islands, so stone was the primary
Speaker 1: building material. So there were stone dressers, stone cupboards, and yes,
Speaker 1: stone beds are more particularly stone bed boxes. Okay, so
Speaker 1: this might be imagining something that looks a little bit
Speaker 1: more like a stone bath tub that you could fill
Speaker 1: with betting material exactly. Yeah. And and if you you
Speaker 1: travel to the Orkney Islands you can you can actually
Speaker 1: see an example that The site here in question is
Speaker 1: called Scara Bray. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Uh.
Speaker 1: The domicile here features two beds, one smaller one a
Speaker 1: bit larger, often interpreted as belonging to the husband and
Speaker 1: wife of the people who would have lived here. Now
Speaker 1: we don't know for sure, but there there might have
Speaker 1: been based on the evidence. There might have been a
Speaker 1: curtain of some sorts separating the beds from the rest
Speaker 1: of the domicile. Uh though there would have had little
Speaker 1: privacy either way. And these stone beds would have been
Speaker 1: filled with a mattress of bracken or heather, and for
Speaker 1: covers they would have used animal skins. I feel like
Speaker 1: I should know what bracken and heather are. What are they? Well,
Speaker 1: by bracken, it's a you know, it's a type of fern.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, that's nice. And head there is an evergreen
Speaker 1: flowering plant. Okay, okay, Oh well, the brackens I just
Speaker 1: looked up they have their their immature fronds or fiddle heads,
Speaker 1: like fiddle head ferns. Yeah, so you know that it
Speaker 1: doesn't doesn't sound horrible at all. I mean, I encourage
Speaker 1: you to look up examples of this out there as
Speaker 1: you're listening to this episode, if you have a chance
Speaker 1: after you listen to it, because it it looks fairly comfortable.
Speaker 1: I mean, like you said, it looks kind of like
Speaker 1: a stone bathtub, but you can imagine it filled with
Speaker 1: some some cushy mattress material and it being you know,
Speaker 1: not bad. Get me in there. I'll sleep in it,
Speaker 1: I'll sleep there, I'll do it now. I mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: that Killing's main area of focus is ancient Egypt, So
Speaker 1: that raises the question what about ancient Egypt? Well, Fagin
Speaker 1: and Killing right, that ancient Egyptian homes were sparse, and
Speaker 1: most people could not afford wooden or certainly ivory objects
Speaker 1: or any kind of you know of fancy metalwork, so
Speaker 1: they would have had simple stools, tables, and screens made
Speaker 1: from bound read stems and rush that were employed for
Speaker 1: most things. And that the bed consisted of, quote, a
Speaker 1: small platform built from mud brick. This is something I've
Speaker 1: noticed in looking at a bunch of ancient beds and
Speaker 1: ancient bedding materials. They don't always really seem to emphasize softness.
Speaker 1: A lot of them are just sort of like hard
Speaker 1: platforms of various kinds. Yeah, and I guess part of
Speaker 1: that is there is the idea that there would be
Speaker 1: something else there as well, you know, that they would
Speaker 1: have furs or you know, or or vegetation that would
Speaker 1: be added into the mix. Um. But but then, but
Speaker 1: then also I guess it's kind of like raising something up, right,
Speaker 1: creating a platform on which to sleep that is a
Speaker 1: little separate, that's not quite the floor, which if you're
Speaker 1: thinking about you know, I'm just imagining like all the
Speaker 1: kind of things that could happen in a space like this.
Speaker 1: You have water, say running in, or you have um,
Speaker 1: you know, any kind of you know, insect or or
Speaker 1: a crab or whatnot that wanders into I'm mainly thinking
Speaker 1: back to um, yeah, my my honeymoon when I was
Speaker 1: in this like little beach side place and there with
Speaker 1: the crabs would come in at night and it would
Speaker 1: just be all over the floor. They just came right
Speaker 1: in under the door, and so you had to watch
Speaker 1: where you step. But of course they're not gonna get
Speaker 1: up in the bed, but they are going to like
Speaker 1: crawl the walls a bit. You've mentioned that before. That
Speaker 1: sounds awesome. Yeah, I'm sure that would make midnight trips
Speaker 1: to the bathroom a little bit scary. Yeah, well, you know,
Speaker 1: more like a video game. Yeah, but but I mean
Speaker 1: just as a yeah, reminder, it's like it it makes
Speaker 1: sense to maybe lift your sleeping area up a little
Speaker 1: bit from the surrounding floor or or ground. Well i'd
Speaker 1: imagine also uh heat, heat plays a role there because
Speaker 1: sleeping on the floor is usually going to be cold. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll come back to that because there's a there's a
Speaker 1: wonderful example from from from Chinese history. But as for
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians, Fagin and Killing mentioned that there were
Speaker 1: crude batted frame attempts during the pre Dynastic period third
Speaker 1: one BC, which they described as boundary branches and twigs,
Speaker 1: But it wasn't until the following Dynastic period the copper
Speaker 1: woodworking tools began to make a real difference in what
Speaker 1: was possible, and this resulted in wooden stools, frames and
Speaker 1: carcasses or cabinet frameworks. UH. Simple joint cuts and woodworking
Speaker 1: were key here, but materials played a big role as well.
Speaker 1: At first, they were limited by the wood UH that
Speaker 1: was available to them, which was sparse and poor in quality.
Speaker 1: But by the mid third millennium BC, Syrian and Lebanese
Speaker 1: timber provided far improved raw materials, and Egyptian furniture surged
Speaker 1: in quality. And we have some surviving examples of this
Speaker 1: sort of thing. And again this is coming via what
Speaker 1: was put into the tombs of royal individuals. And does
Speaker 1: it seem like that that would mainly be because a
Speaker 1: tomb provided an opportunity for furniture to be preserved across
Speaker 1: the ages, as opposed to just sort of like chucked
Speaker 1: when it fell into disrepair. Right, I mean, even though
Speaker 1: the the wooden furniture in question, um, you know, basically
Speaker 1: turned to dust. Uh, at least the dust and the
Speaker 1: pieces are still all in the same place. It's far
Speaker 1: easier to put things back together again. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: key bed from this period is the bed of Hteferies
Speaker 1: from around twenty b C, which was buried with the
Speaker 1: queen in her Giza tomb as So this would have
Speaker 1: been a fine wooden bed frame with a portable bed canopy.
Speaker 1: The wood just decayed to powder, but egypt Egyptologist George
Speaker 1: Reisner was able to reconstruct it from the remaining metallic parts.
Speaker 1: And you can look up images of this. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: it looks nice. It's it's just of a wooden flat
Speaker 1: bed with a like a head. You look at it
Speaker 1: and you you instantly recognize, like that's a bed. That's
Speaker 1: the invention. That is the thing now, one thing that
Speaker 1: we should come back to in just a minute. But
Speaker 1: it's an interesting visual feature of this bed is it
Speaker 1: has this little spike at one end. It's almost like
Speaker 1: a like an eagle at up a pedestal or a
Speaker 1: little y shaped stud of some kind. I wonder what
Speaker 1: that's for. Yeah, the the Egyptian headrest, which is very
Speaker 1: y shaped or kind of slingshot frames shaped. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: we'll come back to that in a minute, because that's
Speaker 1: certainly one of the more interesting artifacts you tend to
Speaker 1: see when you see, um, you know, ancient Egyptian beds
Speaker 1: uh or reconstructions of them in museums, and you think, what,
Speaker 1: what was that? How did that? How did that work?
Speaker 1: Can I imagine myself using such a thing at night?
Speaker 1: But we'll come back to that in a minute. Um.
Speaker 1: Some of the other beds that they mentioned, there's a
Speaker 1: really nice folding Z type bed frame with metal hinges
Speaker 1: found in the tomb of twot in Common from the
Speaker 1: fourteenth century BC. You can you can look up images
Speaker 1: this as well. But kind of think of the way
Speaker 1: that some beach recliners fold up, and that's basically what
Speaker 1: you have here. Now. Some of these ancient Egyptian beds,
Speaker 1: they were made to be not flat, but at an
Speaker 1: angle right, Uh. Is the two in common example, like
Speaker 1: that it would be kind of like slightly inclined towards
Speaker 1: the headrest. I think so. Now, the Hataferies example from
Speaker 1: earlier is is pretty um or as a least reconstructed
Speaker 1: as being pretty flat across the top. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: think some of them had kind of a slant to them.
Speaker 1: It looks like it might have a slight incline you've
Speaker 1: read some of them had a slight incline, and then
Speaker 1: often had like a little wall down at the bottom
Speaker 1: that you would put your feet on that would prevent you,
Speaker 1: I guess, from sliding out of the bed. Well, it's
Speaker 1: interesting to remind ourselves of the role the gravity plays
Speaker 1: in sleep. Come back to that in a bit. But
Speaker 1: but you know, sleeping in a bed is very much
Speaker 1: a gravity dependent, um mode of human behavior. Now, let's
Speaker 1: get back to the headrest though, because there, Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot that's interesting here. Um. It's one of the
Speaker 1: most notable aspects of Royal Egyptian sleeping arrangements. Often you'll
Speaker 1: find gilded ornate examples because yeah, the ancient Egyptians did
Speaker 1: not use pillows, but instead used a wooden or stone
Speaker 1: stand for their head. Why does that not sound very comfortable.
Speaker 1: Uh that that? I mean, that's the thing I always
Speaker 1: I always wondered when I when I looked at It's
Speaker 1: like I I tried to imagine what that was like,
Speaker 1: you know, because I would think, well, wouldn't you just
Speaker 1: fold your arms up under your head? Instead? Like? Why is?
Speaker 1: Why is this a good choice to make? And I
Speaker 1: found an interesting article about this from Kira Foley. She
Speaker 1: wrote an article for the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum, and
Speaker 1: she points out that Egyptian headrests had two purposes, one
Speaker 1: practical and the other um apotropaic. So first of all,
Speaker 1: they did the same thing that a pillow does. They
Speaker 1: account for the gap between your head and shoulders during sleep.
Speaker 1: But they also were items of of apotropaic magic. In
Speaker 1: other words, they served to protect the individual from evil
Speaker 1: influences during sleep. Ah. So they were kind of like
Speaker 1: a like almost like an amulet, but a feature of
Speaker 1: furniture that served the same purpose well both actually, because
Speaker 1: they start off as being this thing that is seen
Speaker 1: as a magical item of key importance, like so important
Speaker 1: that when you die you are buried with your head
Speaker 1: rest in order that you can take it with you
Speaker 1: to provide protection in the next life. But eventually, by
Speaker 1: the third Intermediate period this would have been seven seven
Speaker 1: b C, they start using amulets in the shape of
Speaker 1: headrests instead, like the thing becomes a symbol of the thing,
Speaker 1: and you take this with you into into the grave
Speaker 1: for the same purpose. Interesting. Yeah, so it's like a
Speaker 1: little you can look up images of this amulet and
Speaker 1: it it's basically just a small version of the headrest,
Speaker 1: the headrest made into a symbol. You know. It looks, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, look looks a little bit like if you
Speaker 1: don't know what it is, you might think, what looks
Speaker 1: kind of like a saddle on a stand or something,
Speaker 1: and fully writes that The Book of the Dead, the
Speaker 1: Egyptian Book of the Dead, elaborates that these amulets could
Speaker 1: protect you from decapitation in the afterlife. Whoa, yeah, so
Speaker 1: I had to look this up. Uh. It's often referred
Speaker 1: to as the chapter of the pillow uh in the
Speaker 1: Book of the Dead, and this particular example, I believe
Speaker 1: is from the Wallace Budge translation from I'm just going
Speaker 1: to read a part of this. Uh. You can you
Speaker 1: can look up the whole text online, but it goes
Speaker 1: son of hathor nessert nessertet who giveth back the head
Speaker 1: after the slaughter, Thy head shall not be carried away
Speaker 1: from the after the slaughter, thy head shall never never
Speaker 1: be carried away from the That's the headrest guarantee. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the big things from any Westerners when we
Speaker 1: view Egyptian headrest is again not the idea that they
Speaker 1: might protect us from evil, but rather that this sort
Speaker 1: of thing is comfortable at all during sleep. Well, I
Speaker 1: ran across a wonderful article about this very topic. This
Speaker 1: is for the Glencren Museum in Pennsylvania. They have a
Speaker 1: nice article with illustrations on this topic from Jennifer hawser Vegner,
Speaker 1: pH d, Associate Curator Egyptian Section Pin Museum, and in
Speaker 1: it she points out several key facts about the use
Speaker 1: of of headrest and this headrest in these headrests in
Speaker 1: particular during sleep. So for starters, this wasn't just an
Speaker 1: Egyptian thing. Uh, Ceramic pillows were used during the Ming
Speaker 1: dynasty of China through sixty four. She mentions that this
Speaker 1: was a time when elaborate female hairstyles were fashionable, so
Speaker 1: a headrest in these cases would protect an elaborate hair
Speaker 1: treatment from what we would think of as bed head today. Oh. Interesting.
Speaker 1: And then headrests are not just an ancient or even
Speaker 1: historical things. She points out that we see them used
Speaker 1: to this day in parts of Africa, and it comes
Speaker 1: down to two key reasons. First, there's the elaborate hair
Speaker 1: issue thing quote groups whose cultural expressions involved the wearing
Speaker 1: of elaborate hairstyles. Uh. These are the types of cultures
Speaker 1: where we may see the use of a headrest at night,
Speaker 1: and this would have included the Egyptians. Uh. Secondly, there's climate.
Speaker 1: So if you use a traditional fabric pillow, you know
Speaker 1: as well as we know, that the cold side of
Speaker 1: the pillow is where it's at right in a hot climate. Uh.
Speaker 1: This feeling, the feeling of the cold pillow that may
Speaker 1: be harder to come by. A headrest provides a cooler
Speaker 1: sleeping experience by lifting the head up from the sleeping
Speaker 1: surface and allowing air to flow under and around the
Speaker 1: head and neck. Nice. Okay, I think I understand now.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. And then another reason
Speaker 1: they mentioned this comes back to what you were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier. With the burning of the betting. Organic fabric
Speaker 1: pillows may have posed more of an infestation risk, but
Speaker 1: a solid headrest, Uh, that would have that would have
Speaker 1: removed this particular threat. You know, you might have to
Speaker 1: worry with the rest of your betting, but at least
Speaker 1: the head region is is safe and secure. Oh. This
Speaker 1: is uh sort of the same logic for why I
Speaker 1: was kind of grossed out when we were reading about
Speaker 1: in the history of the toilet that there were these
Speaker 1: cushioned toilets with like fabric that for the seat area,
Speaker 1: which just seemed awful, Like, wouldn't it be better to
Speaker 1: just have like hard, non porous surfaces that are easy
Speaker 1: to clean. And I guess the same that's true of
Speaker 1: a toilet would apply to a bed. Uh. They're probably
Speaker 1: equally like germ infested and gross. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you have just um, you know this
Speaker 1: this wooden platform on which to lay your head. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that removes at least some of the risk here, But
Speaker 1: it still leaves that that remaining question was this comfortable?
Speaker 1: Is this a comfortable way to sleep? Well? Vegner takes
Speaker 1: the extra step of testing it out herself in this
Speaker 1: article so um, she constructed a wonder one replica of
Speaker 1: one of the headrests found in the Pen Museum's collection,
Speaker 1: and I just want to read her results here she
Speaker 1: she writes it up rather nicely, quote the experiment clarify
Speaker 1: had a few things from me. Firstly, I had always
Speaker 1: assumed that the curved support of the headrest could be
Speaker 1: used to support either the head or the neck. This
Speaker 1: was an incorrect assumption. The headrest can only be used
Speaker 1: to support the head, not the neck. Trying to use
Speaker 1: the headrest on one's neck was an uncomfortable impossibility. There
Speaker 1: is a reason it is called a headrest. Secondly, the headrest,
Speaker 1: when positioned correctly on the head, can be used fairly
Speaker 1: comfortably while resting on one's back. Many representations of the
Speaker 1: headrest in use, such as in the Glencrere and figurine,
Speaker 1: show the sleeper resting on their side. Again, it was
Speaker 1: possible to position the headrest in such a way just
Speaker 1: above one's ear that this pose was also not completely uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: I can also let any stomach sleepers know that using
Speaker 1: headrest and trying to position it on the forehead while
Speaker 1: facing downwards is impossible. There seems to be some evidence
Speaker 1: that the headrests in ancient Egypt were padded or wrapped
Speaker 1: with linen when used. I would imagine this would make
Speaker 1: the headrest even more comfortable as it lightening. As this
Speaker 1: experiment was, I do not think I will trade my
Speaker 1: trusty pillow for a wooden head rest anytime soon. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wonder if it's a it's a matter
Speaker 1: if it's a matter of getting used to it, or
Speaker 1: if it's a matter of maybe like we don't know
Speaker 1: exactly how it was used. It sounds like it's a
Speaker 1: it's it's a combination of those. Yeah, Like like there
Speaker 1: are particularly what particular ways to use it and not
Speaker 1: to use it, and you have to take an account
Speaker 1: that you would have like added um uh you know,
Speaker 1: padding and whatnot. But kudos to Vegner for for taking
Speaker 1: the you know, the step of trying it out for herself.
Speaker 1: It makes me wonder too. It's just the kind of
Speaker 1: thing we can see make a comeback, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm surprised. I mean, on one one hand, it's something
Speaker 1: humans do and certainly did in the past as well.
Speaker 1: So it's the kind of uh sleep choice that could
Speaker 1: make a comeback. You could also imagine it becoming fashionable,
Speaker 1: be becoming the next big thing that you buy, you know,
Speaker 1: on line or you know, order with a podcast code.
Speaker 1: It's the next squaddy potty. Well, and then on the
Speaker 1: other hand, you could imagine someone coming up with outrageous
Speaker 1: claims for why like this is the this is the
Speaker 1: way to sleep, you know, give you the the enlightened
Speaker 1: mind of the ancient Egyptian or something, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: some sort of you know, spiritual or pseudo scientific reason
Speaker 1: for why this is the best way to sleep, like
Speaker 1: some chiropractors theory about how pillows are responsible for all
Speaker 1: Western diseases. Now, now, Vegner, you know very much, and
Speaker 1: is someone who normally uses a you know, a soft
Speaker 1: pillow and try it out using uh one of these
Speaker 1: headrest I would be interested to hear from any listeners
Speaker 1: out there who either have tried the same experiment or
Speaker 1: have any experience using a headrest regularly. Uh yeah, I'd
Speaker 1: love to I'd love to hear the reverse, you know,
Speaker 1: someone who regularly uses a headrest, a hard headrest, and
Speaker 1: then tries a soft pillow, because I mean, I'm very
Speaker 1: particular about my pillows. I need a certain amount of
Speaker 1: firmness otherwise I'm not getting that that next support agreed, Now,
Speaker 1: Fagan and Killing back in, they're they're right up. They
Speaker 1: mentioned some other examples of note. The ancient Greeks developed
Speaker 1: a bed that was larger and higher than the Egyptian bed,
Speaker 1: called a client, and it was the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that you could lay on, prop yourself up on a
Speaker 1: pillow on, and of course enjoy a hearty meal upon
Speaker 1: more in bed. Yeah. Uh, you know you. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you were in the city at at this point,
Speaker 1: but that's there was a There was a restaurant in
Speaker 1: Atlanta for a while called Bed and all of the tables,
Speaker 1: or at least a number of the tables, were beds,
Speaker 1: and that was the whole attraction. It was like a
Speaker 1: big canopy bed and you hung out on it and
Speaker 1: you ate. Uh huh, yeah, I mean I never went,
Speaker 1: but I I've heard about it. Oh, maybe I'm being unfair.
Speaker 1: That strikes me as very gimmicky, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'd give it a shot if somebody at trusted said
Speaker 1: the food was good. Now, we mentioned the idea of
Speaker 1: a platform and temperature earlier, um, the ancient Chineese Fagan
Speaker 1: and and Killing right where a matt level culture so
Speaker 1: they used lower simply wooden bed frames, and they don't
Speaker 1: really get into this, but one of the cooler sleep
Speaker 1: innovations in Chinese culture, at least in Northern China, was
Speaker 1: the kind an integrated home heating system for cooking, sleeping,
Speaker 1: domestic heating and ventilation that still apparently widely used in
Speaker 1: northern China. And it's a heated h raised bed pat
Speaker 1: platform that is thought to have its origins and Neolithic
Speaker 1: designs but for for a long time. Basically, what you
Speaker 1: have is you have hot exhaust from a fire housed
Speaker 1: in another room circulating through this platform of stone or brick,
Speaker 1: creating a heated platform on which to sleep but also
Speaker 1: to work and to live. If you if you end
Speaker 1: up looking at it, you probably have seen images of
Speaker 1: this of a Chinese household, either contemporary or historic, and
Speaker 1: maybe not realize exactly what you're looking at, but it's
Speaker 1: like a it looks like a raised warner or portion
Speaker 1: of a room, but it is also heated. Now. Uh,
Speaker 1: one quick note about something we're not really going to
Speaker 1: get into in these in this episode, and that is
Speaker 1: the hammock Um. Because the Hammock I was looking into
Speaker 1: this a little bit. It seems to have its own
Speaker 1: really interesting history, one that we could potentially come back
Speaker 1: and discuss in greater detail. But it's an example the
Speaker 1: hanging bed that is based on fabric technology, and so
Speaker 1: we see examples of its use in the ancient world
Speaker 1: as well as among the fiber technology using people's of
Speaker 1: the of the America's. We should definitely come back to
Speaker 1: the hammock. Yeah, I love I love a good hammock.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna take another break, but we'll be
Speaker 1: right back. Than alright, we're back. So I want to
Speaker 1: come back to some of what we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: about just sort of the basic function of a bed,
Speaker 1: like what does a bed do? Um? You know, because
Speaker 1: it is essentially a kind of nest, like like the
Speaker 1: nest of her Really any terrestrial animal you can name, um,
Speaker 1: if not nest construction, then at least nest behavior. But
Speaker 1: we also have to think of the human bed in
Speaker 1: terms of physiological and techno cultural adaptation. So I was
Speaker 1: looking for for some examples of this. I was looking
Speaker 1: at a article and Evolutionary anthropology titled Sleep Intensity and
Speaker 1: the Evolution of Human Cognition by David R. Sampson and
Speaker 1: Charles L. Nonne, which considers the view that our our
Speaker 1: species sleep architecture is in accord with that of other
Speaker 1: animals and presents and they present an alternate hypothesis that
Speaker 1: human sleep is highly derived relative to that of other primates.
Speaker 1: So the idea that they present here is that the
Speaker 1: human sleep is superior to that of other primates. It's shorter,
Speaker 1: it's deeper, it exhibits a higher proportion of of of
Speaker 1: rim sleep than expected. They call it the sleep intensity hypothesis.
Speaker 1: That early humans would have experienced selective pressure to fulfill
Speaker 1: sleep needs in the shortest time possible. Interesting, So what
Speaker 1: would that selective pressure be other that was different than
Speaker 1: other animals. Well, that's a part of it was of
Speaker 1: course survival from predation like all animals would have had
Speaker 1: to deal with, as well as from human violence, uh,
Speaker 1: the violence of other humans. But it also this would
Speaker 1: have by being able to get like maximum but short sleep,
Speaker 1: it would have allowed them more time to engage in
Speaker 1: social interactions. Again we're talking, we're talking earlier about these
Speaker 1: these these creatures that we're living around fires, sleeping among fires,
Speaker 1: having this enhanced social time. But then part of that
Speaker 1: also becomes you know, becomes essential to humans that were
Speaker 1: transmitting skills and knowledge to the next generation of humans, uh,
Speaker 1: and to each other. And so the less time you're sleeping,
Speaker 1: the more time you have to do that and most
Speaker 1: of that knowledge. I mean pretty much, I guess all
Speaker 1: of the knowledge and skills that you're dealing with at
Speaker 1: that point, our survival skills and survival knowledge. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is one of those hypotheses that would that it seems
Speaker 1: like it would be hard to prove something like this,
Speaker 1: but it is interesting and I often find myself at
Speaker 1: least intuitively sympathetic to um explanations for in human origins
Speaker 1: that have a lot to do with social groups and
Speaker 1: social relationships. Yeah, it seems very likely to me that
Speaker 1: it's actually social pressures that were some of the dominant
Speaker 1: pressures on early humans. Yeah. I mean, it also lines
Speaker 1: up with the old addity snooze you lose, right yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: They also point out that that deeper sleep might have
Speaker 1: also been key to the consolidation of the skills and questions.
Speaker 1: So you know, the more you're you're you're out of bed,
Speaker 1: the more you're potentially learning new skills and then I
Speaker 1: have sleep, is is indeed important to the consolidation of
Speaker 1: those skills in the mind. Then it it pays to
Speaker 1: have deep sleep when you are sleeping. But of course,
Speaker 1: in order to get the sleep they needed, our ancestors
Speaker 1: would have needed social and physical security, and beds are
Speaker 1: just part of that equation, both in terms of the
Speaker 1: general sort of bed that primates make and the technological
Speaker 1: bed that humans developed. They also point to an interesting
Speaker 1: study that Samson, along with Rob Shoemaker wrote in looking
Speaker 1: at how nests and sleep enhance cognitive performance in non
Speaker 1: human grade apes. They quote quantified the sleeping platform complexity
Speaker 1: each night, measuring it as an index of the number
Speaker 1: of material items available to construct a bed, and found
Speaker 1: that complexity co varied positively with reduced nighttime motor activity,
Speaker 1: less fragmentation, and greater sleep efficiency. I think one of
Speaker 1: the authors here, David Sampson, is also one of the
Speaker 1: authors of that study about chimpanzees preferring certain kinds of
Speaker 1: wood for their sleeping arrangements, the wood of the Ugandan
Speaker 1: ironwood tree. Oh that well, that would make sense, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I did look him. Look him up in a
Speaker 1: lot of his work seems to revolve around um sleep
Speaker 1: cognition and uh and primates. Interesting. Yeah, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: I breding this up not so much to to lobby
Speaker 1: for their hypothesis here, but I do think it's a
Speaker 1: very interesting hypothesis, but rather to use it as a
Speaker 1: way of rethinking exactly what role of bead plays in
Speaker 1: our lives, you know, as part of this suite of
Speaker 1: techno cultural adaptations that support human sleep cycles, sleep cycles
Speaker 1: that that you know very well could could be essential
Speaker 1: to um to many of the other cultural and technical
Speaker 1: um adaptations that end up taking place afterwards. Yeah. On
Speaker 1: one hand, I think like, well, okay, so the bed
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like a realm of technology that's ripe to
Speaker 1: change much in the future. But then again, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, the human sleep patterns have changed before. I
Speaker 1: think there's like, there's some evidence that throughout much of
Speaker 1: history people slept at kind of different times and in
Speaker 1: different segments than they often do at least you know
Speaker 1: that we're familiar with in the in America today. Uh,
Speaker 1: And so so I don't know, maybe there is more
Speaker 1: room for change in the technology support structure of our
Speaker 1: sleeping habits. And then I would be led to assume
Speaker 1: I wonder, Yeah, I guess one of the questions would be, like,
Speaker 1: what would we intentionally change about human sleep? You know,
Speaker 1: we've all had those those sort of lingering fantasies like
Speaker 1: what if I didn't have to sleep, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to own a bed. I could just I don't wander around,
Speaker 1: not pay rent. But um, I could doom scroll all
Speaker 1: night long. I know. I mean I certainly don't feel
Speaker 1: that way now. I'm kind of like, oh, man, sleep,
Speaker 1: that's um, you know, when it's when sleep is good
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, and you're not dealing with nightmares
Speaker 1: or awkward dreams, it's a pretty great place to be.
Speaker 1: But but but I guess what one of the things
Speaker 1: like we can sort of fantasize about what we want
Speaker 1: sleep to be. But one of the problems is that
Speaker 1: we don't have a perfect understanding of what sleep really is,
Speaker 1: like what what it's key role is for for human existence.
Speaker 1: You know, Um, yeah, we know it, we know it's necessary,
Speaker 1: we know it's necessarious, but we but we don't fully
Speaker 1: understand all of it, all the roles that plays in
Speaker 1: human health and psychology and all that. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: is it is it defragmenting the hardware? Is it as
Speaker 1: David Eagleman hypothesizes, is it is it is? It? Is
Speaker 1: it tied to um uh to to to neural visual processes. H.
Speaker 1: You know, we were not entirely sure. So before we
Speaker 1: start messing with it and and reshaping sleep in our image,
Speaker 1: it would pay to to understand exactly what it is doing. Oh,
Speaker 1: humans would never intentionally mess with their sleeping patterns through technology,
Speaker 1: saying like bringing a small blue light device into their
Speaker 1: bed and staring at it for four hours before they
Speaker 1: go to sleep. Oh. One other thing. Long time listeners
Speaker 1: of the show remember previous co host Christian Savior, who
Speaker 1: joined me on topics such as Timothy Leary, we could
Speaker 1: problems and are creepy pasta episodes. Well, Christian has an
Speaker 1: awesome new project, Corridor Magazine, a new horror magazine that
Speaker 1: brings the weird worlds, short fiction, art, comics and essays
Speaker 1: together under one roof. It's going to feature a new
Speaker 1: original work of science fiction by me titled Leviathan c.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited about it. Touches on some stuff to
Speaker 1: bow your mind topics. I think many of you will
Speaker 1: dig it, as well as Christian story rescue and alter.
Speaker 1: It will also feature fiction by other names you may
Speaker 1: be familiar with, such as the incredible horror author Christie Demester,
Speaker 1: and you also find works in there by authors you
Speaker 1: might know, such as ed Garbanowski. You might recognize him
Speaker 1: from his work with stuff you should know. As far
Speaker 1: as art goes, this is gonna be a beautiful publication
Speaker 1: with work from from such artists as j M. Joe Grants,
Speaker 1: who creates these amazing woodcut style images super into his work,
Speaker 1: but also the psychedelic art of Malachi Ward. But for
Speaker 1: this magazine to actually exist as a digital and physical product,
Speaker 1: they have to they have to reach their Kickstarter go
Speaker 1: and as of this recording, they're not quite there yet.
Speaker 1: So if you want to get your eyes or hands
Speaker 1: on Corridor, you'll need to back it, and the easiest
Speaker 1: way to do that is to head on over to
Speaker 1: kickstarter dot com and search for Corridor Magazine again. Go
Speaker 1: to kickstarter dot com search for Corridor Magazine and you'll
Speaker 1: find it. Back it, and then you can get your
Speaker 1: your hands and your eyes on this. Uh, this very
Speaker 1: promising project. I'm I'm super excited about it. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and close out this episode here,
Speaker 1: But like I said, we may have come back in
Speaker 1: the future to talk about hammocks, etcetera. This is this
Speaker 1: is an Invention based episode of stuff to blow your mind,
Speaker 1: continuing the legacy of the show that we did for
Speaker 1: what about a year titled Invention. Uh. You can still
Speaker 1: find all those episodes online as a podcast that you
Speaker 1: can subscribe to and download, etcetera. But we're we're continuing
Speaker 1: that here. We're gonna continue to do Invention episodes from
Speaker 1: time to time as we enjoy doing them, and we're
Speaker 1: lad to believe you enjoy listening to them as well.
Speaker 1: This book by Fake and Granny about the history of
Speaker 1: sleeping habits is interesting and I think there's stuff in
Speaker 1: it that we could come back to again in the future. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean, sleep Again is one of those things we
Speaker 1: all can relate to. We we all have have some
Speaker 1: bit of insight there, and likewise, we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from everyone out there, if you've ever used a headrest,
Speaker 1: if you have thoughts on different beds and different cultures,
Speaker 1: if you've you know, tried out a wide variety of
Speaker 1: them and would like to, uh to share what works,
Speaker 1: what doesn't work. Yeah, we we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you'll find us
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to be.
Speaker 1: We just asked that you rate, review and subscribe. You
Speaker 1: can always find us by going to stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That will take you to the
Speaker 1: I Heart listing for our show. And if you look
Speaker 1: around on that page long enough, you'll find a little
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Speaker 1: to a T shirt shop where you can buy some
Speaker 1: shirts or bags or stickers or what have you that
Speaker 1: have our logo or various monsters or fund designs on them.
Speaker 1: Huge things. As always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
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