The Snooze Button

Major General Melvin Spiese joins me for a conversation about sleep, fatigue, military training and high performance, including:

• his unusual 37-year career path as he describes it in the interview, much of it eventually focused on Marine Corps training and education;
• how modern warfare pushed increasingly complex decision-making farther down the chain of command;
• why Marines needed to become not merely tougher, but better thinkers;
• his connection with Dr. Elizabeth Stanley and how her work first brought him to my attention;
• why Spiese was initially skeptical about Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training;
• what persuaded him that mindfulness deserved serious investigation rather than immediate dismissal;
• the experiment involving Marine units with very different levels of enthusiasm for the training;
• what happened when one commander wasn't especially interested in cooperating;
• why Spiese himself participated rather than simply ordering Marines to do it;
• his own longstanding difficulty with interrupted sleep;
• the retired Marine general who had already been pushing commanders to think more seriously about sleep;
• the difference between being forced to stay awake because the mission demands it and being chronically exhausted when it doesn't;
• why aviation had already developed stricter thinking around fatigue and operational safety;
• fatigue behind the wheel of military vehicles;
• Spiese's extremely low-tech personal sleep aid in the field: earplugs;
• why managing fatigue can't begin only after somebody develops a serious problem;
• teaching sleep, recovery and self-management alongside physical readiness from the beginning of a Marine's career;
• why people who need to perform instantly under extreme stress also need to know how to come down from that state;
• how repetitive training can become lifesaving when there's suddenly no time to think;
• Spiese's own terrifying experience with a parachute malfunction;
• the moment Dr. Stanley noticed his body reacting while he merely retold that story years later;
• why he once chose a training program because he wanted “smarter divers, not harder divers”;
• what happens when poor sleep becomes something you start beating yourself up about;
• and why the military was still trying to work out how to make sleep and recovery part of the culture rather than something addressed only after trouble appears.

Major General Melvin G. Spiese is a retired United States Marine Corps officer.

His senior assignments included command of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Brigade and service as deputy commanding general of I Marine Expeditionary Force. The Marine Corps' official retirement coverage records his retirement in March 2013 after more than three decades of service.

https://www.marines.mil/News/News-Display/Article/535141/maj-gen-spiese-retires/

• Dr. Elizabeth Stanley / Widen the Window — Stanley introduced me to Spiese. Her work on resilience, stress and Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training provides much of the bridge between Episode 15 and this conversation.
• https://elizabeth-stanley.com/
• Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT) — Spiese discusses the Marine Corps' experimentation with Stanley's program and his progression from skeptic to supporter. Research involving Marines preparing for deployment subsequently reported measurable differences in physiological stress-response and recovery mechanisms following MMFT.
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24832476/
• “Minds at attention” — another study involving military cohorts, co-authored by Stanley, examined mindfulness training and attentional lapses under demanding conditions.
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25671579/
• Mental skills training in Marine reconnaissance training — later research compared MMFT, general mental-skills training and training-as-usual among Marines in the Basic Reconnaissance Course.
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31993011/
• Marine Corps fatigue and warfighting readiness — the Marine Corps now explicitly maintains resources addressing fatigue as a readiness and safety issue, including operational fatigue management and sleep leadership.
• https://www.safety.marines.mil/Resources/Fatigue-and-Warfighting-Readiness/

Erin Davis and Mike Cooper had the #1 morning radio show in Canada for about a decade.

You'll hear the chemistry that put them there while they talk to Neil about the impact their careers had on their sleep and vice-versa.

LINKAPALOOZA:

Erin's remarkable book, "Mourning Has Broken"

Erin's website

Erin Davis on Twitter

OTHER LINKS:

BuyMeACoffee - to support this podcast

RateThisPodcast - to support by rating and reviewing

Erin Davis and Mike Cooper reunite for a conversation about morning radio, sleep and life on the other side of the alarm clock, including:

• why Erin and Mike's chemistry worked — and why both of them think trust was the thing underneath it;
• the difference between making your co-host laugh and remembering there's an audience listening;
• why some of their best radio happened when the planned bit fell apart;
• the almost wordless communication that developed between them after years of working together;
• how Erin wound up doing morning radio almost continuously from the age of 18;
• Mike's much different path from afternoon-drive “rock jock” to morning-show host;
• the radio rivalry that existed before Erin and Mike ever became partners;
• how they were eventually put together — and what happened when the chemistry was immediately obvious;
• Erin's insistence that Cooper come with her when CHFI invited her back;
• the reality behind that cheerful voice you hear coming out of the radio at 6 a.m.;
• getting up at three, three-thirty or four in the morning;
• why Erin's working-day sleep was essentially divided into two substantial blocks;
• why a short nap wasn't enough for her and could actually leave her feeling worse;
• the importance of having spouses who were willing to live on roughly the same unusual schedule;
• getting dressed, prepared and increasingly camera-ready before most people had even considered waking up;
• how show preparation began almost as soon as Erin opened her eyes;
• Mike waking early even in semi-retirement because his brain still thought there was a radio show to prepare;
• Erin's profoundly different post-retirement reaction to seeing four o'clock on the clock;
• what happened when she repeatedly changed her weekend schedule while still working mornings;
• the especially brutal stretch when she was performing in an 11-piece rock tribute band and could be tearing down equipment at 3 a.m. Sunday before facing another 3 a.m. wake-up Monday;
• Mike's sleep being disrupted while caring for his wife Debbie during her long illness — and the way he continued listening for her after her death;
• how laughter became part of the way Erin and Mike handled grief together;
• menopause and the sleep disruption Erin experienced around it;
• the various remedies and supplements she had experimented with;
• why my own sleep problems were turning out to be considerably more complicated than simply “I worked mornings for 30 years”;
• the danger of hearing someone's personal sleep trick and immediately treating it as medical advice;
• alcohol and why even Mike concedes the “wine will put you to sleep” idea comes with a rather important catch;
• meditation and conscious breathing;
• Calm and its Sleep Stories;
• Dan Harris and what was then the 10% Happier meditation app;
• Mike's remarkably practical way of occupying his mind when he couldn't sleep: mentally working through a construction project;
• Erin's rather stranger solution: reciting the alphabet backwards;
• body scanning and deliberately relaxing tense muscles;
• daytime napping and the value Erin found in good earplugs;
• why Mike hated the idea of blocking out the noises of his house;
• and what happens when three veteran morning broadcasters get together and spend half an hour comparing the damage.

Erin Davis spent nearly three decades at 98.1 CHFI in Toronto, including more than a decade partnered with Mike Cooper. She retired from daily morning radio in December 2016. Her official biography says the Davis-Cooper partnership began after they worked together in 2004 and continued at CHFI until Cooper retired from mornings in January 2016.

Since this interview, there's a particularly appropriate sequel to her Snooze Button appearance: Erin now hosts a sleep-story podcast called Drift with Erin Davis. She also co-hosts Gracefully and Frankly with Lisa Brandt.

https://www.erindavis.com/

https://drift-with-erin-davis.simplecast.com/

Mike Cooper is a veteran Canadian broadcaster whose career included CHUM, CFTR, EZ Rock and CHFI. Canadian broadcasting-history records describe his retirement from the CHFI morning show in January 2016 after a 45-year broadcasting career, while continuing his Saturday-night Coop's Classics program.

The interview itself traces the much more interesting part of that résumé: Cooper had spent years in afternoon radio before deliberately pursuing mornings, eventually meeting Davis and forming the partnership that took them to the top of the Toronto market.

• 98.1 CHFI — the Toronto station where Erin Davis and Mike Cooper spent more than a decade together on the morning show. The Canadian Communications Foundation maintains a detailed station history, including both of their 2016 retirements from mornings.
• https://broadcasting-history.ca/radio/radio-stations/ontario/ontario-city-of-toronto/chfi-fm/
• Calm Sleep Stories — Erin eventually admits this is the app she uses for bedtime stories. Calm still maintains a large Sleep Stories library.
• https://www.calm.com/sleep
• Dan Harris / 10% Happier — I mention the meditation platform then known as 10% Happier and Harris's famous on-air panic attack. Harris's meditation offering has since evolved into 10% with Dan Harris.
• https://www.danharris.com/meditation-app
• Mad About You — the conversation begins by referring back to the earlier Snooze Button interview with Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt, whose chemistry prompted me to think about Erin and Mike's radio partnership. 

U.S. Army veteran and award-winning author Liz Stanley talks with Neil about her new book, Widen the Window - Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma, and how better sleep can contribute to resilience and recovery. They also flip the script and talk about the impact PTSD and stress can have on your sleep.

LINKAPALOOZA:

Widen the Window on Amazon (affiliate link)

Elizabeth's website

Dr. Elizabeth Stanley joins me for a conversation about stress, trauma and sleep, including:

• how her own experiences with chronic stress and trauma eventually led to Widen the Window;
• her service as a U.S. Army intelligence officer and how work with military populations influenced her thinking;
• the origins of Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training, or MMFT;
• what Stanley means by the “thinking brain” and “survival brain”;
• why chronic sleep deprivation can affect attention, memory, executive function, decision-making and social connection;
• the unsettling problem that people don't always recognize how impaired they've become;
• why sleep deprivation can itself become another source of chronic stress;
• PTSD outside the military and first-responder world;
• how experiences from much earlier in life can continue influencing reactions years later;
• the idea of implicit associations operating outside conscious awareness;
• why someone can consciously know they're safe while their body continues behaving as though danger is present;
• my own history with PTSD and why I began wondering whether trauma might be involved in my longstanding difficulty sleeping;
• EMDR and my experience discovering that something which initially seemed completely ridiculous to me was anything but;
• where Stanley believes body-based approaches may complement cognitive understanding;
• how she describes unresolved trauma memories and triggers;
• why sleep problems can become part of a vicious cycle of stress, hyperarousal and inadequate recovery;
• whether improving sleep can make it easier to interrupt that cycle;
• the difference between sleep advice and actually addressing what may be keeping a nervous system activated;
• exercise, daylight, evening routines and other basic behavioural factors surrounding sleep;
• why Stanley's own recovery involved more than simply adopting better “sleep hygiene”;
• the MMFT exercise she says some of her students use before sleep;
• the Contact Points exercise and directing attention toward the physical sensation of the body being supported;
• and why teaching the nervous system to recognize the present moment may matter just as much as trying to reason with it.

Dr. Elizabeth A. Stanley is Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University, with appointments in the Walsh School of Foreign Service and Department of Government. Earlier in her career she served as a U.S. Army intelligence officer in South Korea, Germany and the Balkans, leaving active service as a captain. She created Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training, which has been studied in military populations, and is the author of Widen the Window.

https://elizabeth-stanley.com/

https://globalhealth.georgetown.edu/profiles/elizabeth-stanley/

• Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma — Stanley's 2019 book and the framework underlying much of this conversation.
• https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/553620/widen-the-window-by-elizabeth-a-stanley-phd-foreword-by-bessel-van-der-kolk-md/
• Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training — MMFT — the resilience program Stanley created and discusses throughout the episode. A current online version remains available through her official site.
• https://elizabeth-stanley.com/courses/mmft-online/
• Research on MMFT in active-duty Marines — a controlled study of Marines preparing for deployment examined physiological and neural measures associated with stress response and recovery following MMFT.
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24832476/
• MMFT and attention under high demand — another military-cohort study examined whether mindfulness training could reduce attentional lapses during demanding predeployment training.
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25671579/
• The Contact Points Exercise — Stanley mentions this as the first MMFT exercise and directs listeners to her website. Her current site continues to offer an audio version through her mailing-list signup.
• https://elizabeth-stanley.com/
• EMDR — Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing — I describe my own experience with EMDR during the episode. It remains one of the major evidence-based trauma-focused psychotherapies recommended for PTSD.
• https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand_tx/emdr.asp
• Sleep problems and PTSD — insomnia, nightmares and feeling persistently “on alert” are well-recognized problems associated with PTSD.
• https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/related/sleep_problems.asp

Dr. Tucker Peck joins Neil to talk about - among other things - the intersection of sleep and meditation.

He'll also throw you a fun curve ball about melatonin.

Also, during the opening of the show, Neil gives details about a terrific book giveaway we're doing at thesnoozebutton.com/contests!

LINKAPALOOZA

MeditateWithTucker.com

DrugFreeSleep.com - remember the discount code 'Snooze' to get 1/3 off!

Dr. Tucker Peck joins me for an unusually wide-ranging conversation about insomnia, meditation and the strange things our brains do when we're desperately trying to make them sleep, including:

• why his own night's sleep was disrupted by the rather unusual problem of his house temporarily having no foundation;
• what he does when he realizes sleep simply isn't happening;
• how anxiety about a bad night can turn one difficult night into a much longer insomnia problem;
• how Peck accidentally became a sleep researcher while really wanting to study meditation;
• his years working in sleep psychology and treating insomnia;
• his professional connection with Dr. Michael Grandner — prompting my realization that they were essentially Hall & Oates of the Tucson sleep world;
• why insomnia treatment is different from hunting for the next pillow, weighted blanket, supplement or other sleep hack;
• cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, or CBT-I;
• why behavioral treatment can temporarily make sleep more difficult before it improves;
• the counterintuitive role that going about your normal life may play when you're worried about a poor night's sleep;
• sleep medications, melatonin and some strong opinions from Peck about both;
• why the subjective feeling of being exhausted doesn't necessarily tell us exactly what sleep deprivation has done to performance;
• the difficulty of separating cause from correlation when researchers study people who habitually sleep very long or very short amounts;
• Peck's PhD work connecting sleep and meditation;
• whether one particular style of meditation seems better for sleep than another;
• what brain-wave measurements may tell us about short versus longer meditation sessions;
• why meditation shouldn't be confused with actually getting a night's sleep;
• why people in sleep laboratories sometimes fall asleep much more easily than they insist they possibly could;
• whether meditation itself can become another performance test that we're convinced we're failing;
• why trying to force your brain to stop thinking is a losing proposition;
• whether guided meditation immediately before bed is always a good idea;
• Headspace, Andy Puddicombe and the occupational hazard of a broadcaster becoming fascinated by the meditation teacher's accent instead of the meditation;
• Dan Harris and 10% Happier;
• Sharon Salzberg;
• why some meditation practices are intended to increase alertness rather than decrease it;
• researcher Willoughby Britton's argument that, in Buddhist meditation, “awakening” may be more literal than the modern relaxation framing suggests;
• why intensive meditation can occasionally produce difficult or destabilizing experiences;
• what Peck calls his more circadian-friendly approach to residential retreats;
• and where to find his meditation teaching and his online sleep program.

At the time of this conversation, Dr. Tucker Peck was a clinical psychologist, sleep specialist and meditation teacher whose professional life had ended up straddling the two subjects at the centre of this episode. He describes having treated insomnia with CBT-I, conducted sleep research and taught residential meditation retreats around the world.

Peck remains a clinical psychologist and meditation teacher. His current biography says he trained at Brown University and the University of Arizona, studied meditation with Sharon Salzberg and Upasaka Culadasa, and previously served on the faculty of the University of Arizona. In 2025 he published Sanity and Sainthood.

https://meditatewithtucker.com/

https://meditatewithtucker.com/about/

• Drug-Free Sleep — Peck's online sleep program remains active. The current program describes itself as a five-week course based around behavioral approaches to sleep.
• https://drugfreesleep.com/
• Meditate With Tucker — Peck's meditation site, including information about teaching, retreats and recordings.
• https://meditatewithtucker.com/
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia — CBT-I — this is the major evidence-based treatment Peck discusses. Current AASM guidance continues to give CBT-I a strong recommendation as treatment for chronic insomnia in adults, generally over four to eight sessions.
• https://aasm.org/new-guideline-supports-behavioral-psychological-treatments-for-insomnia/
• “Awakening is not a metaphor” — Willoughby Britton, Jared Lindahl and B. Rael Cahn — the paper Peck references when explaining why meditation shouldn't automatically be equated with sedation. It reviews evidence that some Buddhist meditation practices may promote alertness and wakefulness rather than simply relaxation.
• https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4054695/
• The Varieties of Contemplative Experience — the research we discuss concerning difficult or adverse experiences associated with meditation, particularly more intensive practice. The study documented a broad range of experiences and emphasized that their impact varied substantially between practitioners.
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28542181/
• Sharon Salzberg — Peck describes Salzberg as one of his meditation teachers and discusses her approach to meditation and retreats. His current biography continues to identify her as one of his teachers.
• https://www.sharonsalzberg.com/
• Meditation and behavioral sleep treatment research involving Tucker Peck — Peck was a co-author on a 2010 study examining mindfulness practice as part of a multicomponent behavioral sleep intervention.
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20408060/

"Mad About You" is back on television, and Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt are here to talk about the series' resumption, about the "cry it out" episode where they sleep-train their baby, and a pile of other subjects.

We're also joined by Dr. Lynelle Schneeberg from Yale and Connecticut Children's Medical Center on the "cry it out" thing.

• Paul Reiser on returning to stand-up after roughly two decades away
• Why stand-up feels simpler after years of television production
• Reiser on audiences who already know him — and why performing is more fun now
• Returning to Paul and Jamie Buchman twenty years later
• Why the revival was designed as a continuation rather than a recreation of 1990s Mad About You
• The relationship rule at the heart of Paul and Jamie: they can fight, but the audience wants them together
• Helen Hunt on the original script that convinced her to play Jamie
• Why Jamie was conceived as an equal character rather than the conventional sitcom wife
• The unusual creative chemistry between Hunt and Reiser
• The making of “The Conversation”
• How a real parenting argument became the basis for one of the series’ most memorable episodes
• Dr. Lynelle Schneeberg on independent sleep, parental presence and alternatives to simply leaving a baby to cry

Paul Reiser is a comedian, actor, writer and co-creator of Mad About You. In this conversation he talks not only about returning to Paul Buchman, but about rediscovering stand-up and the direct relationship between a comedian and an audience.

Helen Hunt starred opposite Reiser as Jamie Buchman and served as an executive producer on the 2019 continuation. She also directed the first episode of the revival. Hunt talks here about why the original material caught her attention, the equality built into Paul and Jamie’s relationship, and the creative partnership that made the show work.

Dr. Lynelle Schneeberg, PsyD is a clinical psychologist specializing in pediatric sleep medicine. She is currently Director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at Connecticut Children’s Sleep Center and is affiliated with Yale School of Medicine.

Mad About You — Sony Pictures

The 2019 continuation brought Reiser and Hunt back as newly empty-nested Paul and Jamie Buchman. Sony confirms the limited event consisted of 12 episodes, released in two six-episode batches in November and December 2019. Mad About You — Sony Pictures

“The Conversation” — Mad About You, Season 6, Episode 9

Originally aired December 16, 1997. Apple’s episode listing describes Paul and Jamie discovering that letting Mabel cry herself to sleep may be harder on them than on her. Watch or view “The Conversation” on Apple TV

Dr. Lynelle Schneeberg

Connecticut Children’s profile

Yale Medicine profile

Become Your Child’s Sleep Coach: The Bedtime Doctor’s 5-Step Guide, Ages 3–10

Schneeberg’s 2019 book on helping children develop healthier, more independent sleep habits. Book information from Hachette

Neil's sleep doctor, Dr. Mark Boulos from Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, made exactly two tweaks to Neil's sleep after his first in-lab sleep test.  Now it's time to see the results of the second sleep test, to see if those tweaks made a difference.

Also, we have some great news to share about Episode 14 from a couple of different angles!