Why sleep? Of all the things that you could commit so much of your time to, because it appears

you've been really thinking and working on the subject matter of sleep for about sort of 20

odd years, two decades roughly? Yeah, something like that, yeah. Why? Well, I think the first thing

is, is that we spend a third of our lives doing it.

And yet we, whatever people like me will tell you,

we still understand relatively little about it.

We understand relatively little about, you know, what it's for,

what it does to our biology.

Obviously, that's changing very, very quickly now.

It has a great deal of overlap with the world of clinical neurology. So I also do, I do specialist clinics in epilepsy

and I do specialist clinics in general neurology. So, and sleep and the brain intersect at every single level. Of course,

you know, it's not me saying this, but a famous statement is sleep is of the brain, by the

brain and for the brain. It's intimately linked to every aspect of how our brain works.

So one of the really exciting things is that because it's a relatively

new area, our understanding of it is exploding in ways that are not paralleled across other

areas of clinical medicine. Is it important? Is it important? Yeah. I think it is of fundamental importance.

You know, the fact is that if sleep wasn't important, it would be a very stupid thing for evolution to create in us.

The fact that we are essentially switched off from our external environment for a third of our lives.

And actually there's a whole

host of evidence when you look at how certain animals have developed the ability to be able to

sleep with only half their brain at a time, you know, animals like aquatic mammals or certain birds

and dolphins that very much suggests, well, you know, that must be of great importance if it's, if sleep is

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