The Snooze Button

Did you know that The Snooze Button podcast is really just the research phase of a book, made public?

Now, we're "leaking" the first three chapters of the manuscript, in audiobook form, read by the author - Neil Hedley.

Additionally, Dr. Michael Grandner returns with another weekly update on the latest in sleep science.

LINKAPALOOZA:

Here's the link to the page to support The Snooze Button book project.

Here's the first of the two studies Michael mentioned.

Here's the second of the two studies Michael referred to.

• Why the podcast originally existed as the public research phase of The Snooze Button book
• Neil reading three chapters of the raw 2020 manuscript
• “Phillips Is an Ass” and the internal absurdity of a sleepless night
• Clock-watching, bargaining, caffeine, meditation and sleep performance anxiety
• “Sleepless in Everywhere” and three decades of morning radio
• What a 3 a.m. alarm does to conventional sleep advice
• Why becoming a father again changed the stakes of Neil’s sleep problem
• “The Wake-Up Call” and the hazards of diagnosing yourself through Dr. Google
• Sleep, tau and the difference between association and causation in Alzheimer’s research
• Dr. Adrian Owen’s study of sleep duration and cognition in more than 10,000 people
• Reasoning and verbal performance versus short-term memory
• The correction from a “ten-year” cognitive-aging comparison to the published estimate of roughly eight years
• Why the Owen study cannot prove that long or short sleep caused poorer cognition
• Michael Grandner on expertise, humility and uncertainty
• Why CBT-I can be first-line treatment and still be poorly represented in professional training
• Consumer sleep trackers and the problem with “best,” “most accurate” and “gold standard”
• Why PSG remains the reference standard for validating sleep measurement
• Sleep-versus-wake accuracy versus actual sleep-stage accuracy
• How consumer sleep technology guidance changed between 2020 and 2025
• EEG-fMRI research into why some people remember dreams more often
• Dream recall versus actually dreaming more
• Grandner, Fabian-Xosé Fernandez and Julie Flygare on narcolepsy and COVID-19
• Emmanuel Mignot’s response and the lessons scientists were drawing from H1N1
• Why the Pandemrix-narcolepsy association should not be generalized to all H1N1 vaccines
• What later research says about COVID, the blood-brain barrier and direct brain invasion

Michael Grandner, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and behavioral sleep medicine specialist at the University of Arizona. In this recurring segment, he joins Neil to put new sleep research into context rather than simply repeating the headline.

Dissociable effects of self-reported daily sleep duration on high-level cognitive abilities

The 2018 Wild, Owen and colleagues study of more than 10,000 people discussed in Chapter Three.

Read the Adrian Owen cognition study

Reduced non-rapid eye movement sleep is associated with tau pathology in early Alzheimer’s disease

The 2019 Washington University study linking reduced slow-wave sleep with Alzheimer’s-related tau pathology.

Read the tau and slow-wave-sleep study

Wearable technologies for developing sleep and circadian biomarkers

The 2020 international workshop paper Michael references while discussing validation and the role of PSG as a reference standard.

Read the wearable-technology paper

World Sleep Society recommendations for wearable consumer health trackers

The 2025 guidance showing how the field’s view of consumer trackers has evolved while retaining important limits on interpretation.

Read the 2025 recommendations

Brain functional connectivity upon awakening from sleep predicts interindividual differences in dream recall frequency

The French EEG-fMRI dream-recall study Michael discusses.

Read the dream-recall study

Narcolepsy and COVID-19: sleeping on an opportunity?

The 2020 piece by Fabian-Xosé Fernandez, Julie Flygare and Michael Grandner asking what the pandemic might teach researchers about immune triggers and narcolepsy.

Read the Grandner/Fernandez/Flygare paper

Narcolepsy risk and COVID-19

Emmanuel Mignot and Steve Black’s response expanding on the H1N1, vaccination and narcolepsy questions.

Read the Mignot and Black response

Infection, vaccination and narcolepsy type 1: Evidence and potential molecular mechanisms

A 2024 review of the evidence for autoimmune narcolepsy and the specific roles proposed for infection and Pandemrix vaccination.

Read the 2024 narcolepsy review

The neurobiology of SARS-CoV-2 infection

A 2024 Nature Reviews Neuroscience review explaining why COVID’s neurological effects do not automatically prove widespread direct viral invasion of the brain.

Read the SARS-CoV-2 neurobiology review

Known around the world for his WIRED video talking about sleep, Dr. Aric Prather joins the show to talk about his study linking sleep to resistance to the common cold - and how that study can inform our approach to viruses today.

But that's just the beginning in a wide-ranging discussion that touches on everything from vaccinations to tweaking the sleep patterns of a 4-year-old.

Plus, Dr. Michael Grandner is back to discuss the latest in sleep science.

LINKAPALOOZA:

Aric's study about sleep and the common cold

Aric's WIRED video

Recommendations and resources from Michael's group

• Why even a professional sleep scientist can have a four-year-old who wakes him at 4 a.m.
• Why children are not simply “little adults” when it comes to sleep
• Aric Prather’s viral-challenge experiment with rhinovirus and 164 healthy adults
• Why the study measured clinically verified colds rather than simply asking who felt sick
• The roughly fourfold increase in odds among the shortest sleepers
• Why shorter sleep did not significantly predict who became infected
• Clinical illness versus viral infection
• Why the common-cold findings should not be casually generalized to COVID-19
• Masking versus an extra hour of sleep in the middle of a pandemic
• Sleep and the immune system
• Hepatitis B vaccination and antibody response
• Influenza vaccination and sleep in the days before the shot
• Why poor sleep is not a reason to avoid vaccines
• The 2023 meta-analysis on objectively measured short sleep and vaccine response
• Why trying harder to sleep can become part of insomnia
• CBT-I and treating chronic insomnia without trying to force unconsciousness
• Aric’s WIRED “five levels” sleep video
• What sleep researchers lose when they build overly clean study samples
• Sleep, discrimination, cardiovascular risk and health equity
• Why Prather calls sleep a social-justice issue
• Aric’s 2026 appointment to lead the UCSF Center for Health and Community
• Michael Grandner’s “rule of threes” for chronic insomnia
• Why thirty minutes is a clinical rule of thumb, not a magical threshold
• A neural network stabilized by a sleep-like slow-wave surrogate
• Later research on sleep-like replay and catastrophic forgetting
• Fitbit data from Singapore during COVID lockdown
• What happened to weekday sleep when commuting disappeared
• The Society of Behavioral Sleep Medicine’s pandemic guidance
• Remembering William Dement, one of the founders of modern sleep medicine
• The Promise of Sleep
• The 2020 PTBP1 Parkinson’s mouse study
• Why later lineage-tracing work challenged its headline mechanism

Aric A. Prather, PhD, is a psychologist and sleep scientist at the University of California, San Francisco. His research examines how sleep and psychological stress affect health, including immune function, cardiovascular risk and health disparities. He also treats insomnia using cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia.

In August 2026, UCSF named Prather director of its Center for Health and Community. He also directs the UCSF Behavioral Sleep Medicine Research Program and is the author of the 2022 book The Sleep Prescription.

Michael Grandner, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and behavioral sleep medicine specialist at the University of Arizona. In this recurring segment, he joins Neil to put new sleep research into context rather than simply repeating the headline.

Dr. Aric Prather — UCSF

Current UCSF profile for Prather and his work in behavioral sleep medicine, stress and health.

Aric Prather at UCSF

Prather appointed director of the UCSF Center for Health and Community

UCSF’s August 20, 2026 announcement of Prather’s new leadership role.

UCSF announcement

Behaviorally Assessed Sleep and Susceptibility to the Common Cold

The 2015 rhinovirus challenge study at the center of the interview.

Read the common-cold study

Sleep and Antibody Response to Hepatitis B Vaccination

Prather and colleagues’ study linking objectively measured sleep duration with antibody response and clinical protection following hepatitis B vaccination.

Read the hepatitis B vaccine study

Temporal Links Between Self-Reported Sleep and Antibody Responses to the Influenza Vaccine

The influenza-vaccine study discussed in the episode.

Read the influenza vaccine study

2023 meta-analysis: insufficient sleep and antibody response to vaccination

A later meta-analysis finding a robust reduction in antibody response when short sleep was measured objectively.

Read the 2023 meta-analysis

WIRED: Sleep Expert Explains One Concept in Five Levels of Difficulty

The video Neil and Aric discuss during the interview.

Watch the WIRED video

The Sleep Prescription — Aric A. Prather

Prather’s 2022 practical guide to improving sleep without turning it into another source of pressure.

The Sleep Prescription

Society of Behavioral Sleep Medicine COVID-19 Task Force recommendations

The 2020 pandemic sleep guidance Michael discusses in his weekly segment.

Read the SBSM recommendations

COVID-19-related mobility reduction: heterogeneous effects on sleep and physical activity rhythms

The Singapore wearable study that was emerging when the episode was recorded and was later published using data from 1,824 adults.

Read the Singapore study

Using Sinusoidally-Modulated Noise as a Surrogate for Slow-Wave Sleep

The 2020 computer-science paper behind Michael’s discussion of a neural network that benefited from a sleep-like state.

Read the neural-network paper

William C. Dement, 1928–2020

Stanford Medicine’s remembrance of one of the founders of modern sleep medicine.

Remembering William Dement

Reversing a model of Parkinson’s disease with in situ converted nigral neurons

The dramatic 2020 mouse study Neil brings to Michael at the end of the episode.

Read the original Nature paper

Later PTBP1 replication challenge

A 2022 lineage-tracing study that failed to reproduce the reported astrocyte-to-dopamine-neuron conversion.

Read the 2022 challenge

Ptbp1 deletion does not induce astrocyte-to-neuron conversion

A 2023 Nature Matters Arising paper arguing that viral reporter leakage could account for the apparent conversion reported in the original work.

Read the 2023 critique

Dr, Dayna Johnson's review of how sleep is impacted by race is almost a year old; but it has never had more relevance than it does right now.

Toward the end of the chat, you'll hear the one piece of data from the review that actually made Neil angry.

Plus, we're joined by Dr. Michael Grandner in this first of his weekly visits to update us on the latest in sleep science.

“So when you encounter experience discrimination or experience, an act of racism, you have a physiologic response, a stress response. And so then that can affect your sleep. When we sleep, there are many things that happen that are important for our health. So whether it’s hormone secretion, whether it’s rest for our blood vessels, whether it’s our memory consolidation, when we have a disturbance to that it causes our sleep to be disturbed, and then we have a poor health outcome.”

“So if it’s memory, we’re thinking about cognitive decline, for example, or if it’s some damage to our cardiovascular system, we’re thinking about a higher risk of harm – hypertension or cardiovascular disease. And so if we have some groups of or some populations such as African-Americans that are consistently encountering discrimination and racism, other stressors, they’re they’re regularly at this and experiencing the stress at this high level, and then consistently have disruptions to sleep, which interrupt these other factors. And so it’s a linear effect. One thing happens and then another, and then you know, it affects your health overall.”

“Black people tend to under-report insomnia. So they under-report problems with sleeping. Some of the reasons for sleep disparities – which date back to slavery times – were that pictures of black people sleeping were labeled as lazy. And so this stereotype has emerged, that if you sleep enough – but really the amount that you need in order to be healthy and operate and have a good quality of life – implies that you are being lazy.”

LINKAPALOOZA

Dr. Dayna Johnson's bio on the Emory University website

Here's the link to the review referenced in the episode linking sleep quality with race.

Click here for the Project Implicit test from Harvard that will privately and anonymously evaluate your unconscious biases.

• Why Neil nearly shut down The Snooze Button after the murder of George Floyd
• Why a sleep podcast still had something relevant to say about racism
• Dr. Dayna Johnson’s 2019 review of racial and ethnic disparities in sleep
• Why race should not be treated as a biological explanation for sleep differences
• Race as a social construct and a proxy for different lived exposures
• How racism and discrimination can act as chronic physiological stressors
• Sleep as one pathway connecting social conditions with broader health disparities
• Redlining, residential segregation and the environments people inherit
• Noise, pollution, neighborhood safety, walkability and sleep
• Why ZIP code can be a powerful part of the sleep-health story
• Dayna’s experience as a Black woman in a predominantly white scientific field
• Microaggressions, professional titles and assumptions about affirmative action
• The 2020 #BlackInTheIvory conversation
• John Henryism and high-effort coping with chronic social stress
• The Chicago Area Sleep Study
• Where the 47.9-minute Black–White sleep-duration gap discussed in the episode actually came from
• Why one sample should not be turned into a universal racial sleep average
• Objective sleep differences versus self-reported sleep complaints
• Why Black adults may under-report insomnia symptoms in some studies
• The historical stereotype connecting sleep and laziness
• Benjamin Reiss’s Wild Nights
• Sleep apnea, hypertension and the Jackson Heart Sleep Study
• The striking level of previously undiagnosed sleep apnea in that sample
• How access to specialists, transportation, work flexibility and family obligations affect sleep care
• Sleep disparities and COVID-19
• Why Dayna resisted claiming that sleep directly explained racial COVID disparities
• Essential work, shift work and unequal exposure to risk
• Harvard’s Project Implicit and the limits of interpreting one IAT score
• Writing down worries to interrupt bedtime rumination
• David Allen, Getting Things Done and “psychic RAM”
• Michael Grandner’s first weekly sleep-science update
• Trying to sleep while a wildfire threatens your neighborhood
• The practical question: “Is this useful?”
• Early COVID-era research on sleep timing, duration and mental health
• The pandemic as a natural experiment in commuting and school start times
• Repeated online cognitive testing and the promise of longitudinal big data
• Cannabinoids, insomnia and what the evidence could — and could not — support in 2020
• Why the accidental phrase “a blunt approach” was never going to survive the edit

Dayna Johnson, PhD, MPH, MS, MSW, is an associate professor at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, with appointments in Epidemiology and the Gangarosa Department of Environmental Health.

Her research focuses on sleep epidemiology and health equity — particularly the social and environmental conditions that contribute to insufficient sleep, sleep disorders and downstream health outcomes such as hypertension and cognitive decline. Her work has placed particular emphasis on African American communities and on identifying modifiable environmental targets for reducing sleep disparities.

Michael Grandner, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and behavioral sleep medicine specialist at the University of Arizona. This episode marks the beginning of his recurring weekly appearances on The Snooze Button to help Neil unpack new sleep research.

Dr. Dayna Johnson — Emory University

Current faculty profile and overview of Johnson’s work on sleep epidemiology, environmental health and health disparities.

Dayna Johnson at Rollins School of Public Health

Are Sleep Patterns Influenced by Race/Ethnicity — a Marker of Relative Advantage or Disadvantage? Evidence to Date

The 2019 review by Dayna Johnson, Chandra Jackson, Natasha Williams and Carmela Alcántara that anchors the main interview.

Read the review

Chicago Area Sleep Study

The population-based actigraphy study behind the 399.5-minute Black and 447.4-minute White average sleep-duration figures discussed in the episode.

Disparities in Sleep Characteristics by Race/Ethnicity

Association Between Sleep Apnea and Blood Pressure Control Among Blacks

Dayna Johnson and colleagues’ Jackson Heart Sleep Study paper on obstructive sleep apnea, blood-pressure control and the very high proportion of previously undiagnosed OSA in the study sample.

Jackson Heart Sleep Study paper

Sleep Disparities in the Era of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The 2020 commentary by Chandra Jackson and Dayna Johnson connecting sleep disparities, the pandemic and the social determinants of health.

Read the commentary

Social and Environmental Determinants of Sleep Health Disparities

Johnson’s 2024 overview of the evidence connecting racism, discrimination, socioeconomic conditions, neighborhood environments and access to care with sleep inequities.

Read the 2024 overview

Day-by-Day Changes in the Indoor Environment and Sleep Health Among African American Adults

A small 2026 study from Johnson’s group examining indoor noise, temperature, carbon dioxide, humidity, pressure and objectively measured sleep.

Read the 2026 study

Project Implicit

The Implicit Association Test discussed by Neil. Best treated as a tool for education, reflection and research rather than as an individual diagnostic test of prejudice.

Project Implicit

Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created Our Restless World — Benjamin Reiss

The 2017 cultural history of sleep Dayna references while discussing historical ideas about work, rest and laziness.

Wild Nights on Google Books

Getting Things Done — David Allen

Neil connects Dayna’s habit of writing down bedtime worries with David Allen’s idea of getting commitments out of your head and into a trusted system.

Getting Things Done

Cannabinoid Therapies in the Management of Sleep Disorders

The 2020 systematic review Michael and Neil discuss at the end of the episode: 14 preclinical and 12 clinical studies, with insufficient evidence at the time for routine cannabinoid treatment of sleep disorders.

Sleep Medicine Reviews: Cannabinoid Therapies and Sleep

2025 Cannabinoid Sleep Meta-Analysis

A later randomized-trial meta-analysis finding improvement in subjective sleep quality, particularly with non-CBD formulations, while also reporting high heterogeneity and no clear CBD-only benefit.

Effectiveness of Cannabinoids on Subjective Sleep Quality

Dr. Seema Khosla is the medical director of the North Dakota Center for Sleep, board certified in internal medicine, pulmonary disease, critical care medicine, and sleep medicine. And yes, she’s the Consumer and Clinical Technology Committee with the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

But she’s ALSO the host of Talking Sleep, a brand new podcast from that same American Academy of Sleep Medicine. As soon as we heard her show, we knew we needed to have Seema on The Snooze Button.

Plenty of sleep information to geek out on here.

LINKAPALOOZA

Talking Sleep - the new podcast from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine

• How Seema slept the night before the interview — and how her dogs got involved
• Whether dogs belong in the bedroom or in the bed
• What the Mayo Clinic dog-and-sleep study actually found
• Why the “women sleep better with dogs than partners” headline overstates the underlying research
• Seema’s path from pulmonary and critical care medicine into sleep medicine
• The severe sleep-apnea patient who changed how she thought about treatment
• Why “the patient couldn’t tolerate CPAP” should not automatically end the treatment conversation
• Why sleep-lab testing feels so unnatural
• Performance anxiety on the first night of polysomnography
• Normal sleep-study values and the PSG norms project
• Why Neil’s sleep-study data became part of his own sleep investigation
• Seema’s three years chairing the AASM Consumer and Clinical Technology Committee
• How sleep doctors evaluate trackers, apps, sensors and gadgets
• The difference between an FDA-cleared component and a validated consumer claim
• Proprietary algorithms and the “black box” problem
• Why a phone sitting on a mattress cannot prove that sleeping on the floor cured anything
• Fitbit, sleep scores and the gap between measured sleep and how you actually feel
• Orthosomnia and the danger of trying to perfect sleep data
• Why consumer sleep technology can be useful without being diagnostic
• Why more data is not necessarily more useful data
• When feeling unrefreshed matters more than a “good” tracker score
• Why Dr. Reddit and Dr. Google are poor substitutes for a proper sleep evaluation
• Different ways obstructive sleep apnea can be treated
• Why getting people to care about sleep may require meeting them where they are
• Sleep, performance, athletes and hard-charging executives
• Seema falling asleep at a stop sign during medical training — and initially treating it as a badge of honor
• How exhaustion became culturally confused with dedication
• Sleep envy and comparing your sleep-onset time with your partner’s
• Why falling asleep immediately is not necessarily something to aspire to
• Different sleep timing preferences and Seema’s tendency toward later sleep
• Neil’s inability to understand people who can casually take a 30-minute nap
• How early COVID-era schedule changes gave some people more opportunity to sleep
• The limits of generic sleep-hygiene advice
• Why chronic insomnia requires more than “put down your phone and take melatonin”
• CBT-I as the evidence-based first-line behavioral treatment for chronic insomnia
• The launch of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s Talking Sleep podcast
• Why Seema wanted the AASM show to reach beyond sleep physicians
• Dr. Chris Winter as the first Talking Sleep guest
• Why more people talking intelligently about sleep is good for everyone

Seema Khosla, MD, is a sleep physician in Fargo, North Dakota, and medical director of the North Dakota Center for Sleep. She is board certified in internal medicine, pulmonary disease, critical care medicine and sleep medicine.

Dr. Khosla has held several leadership roles with the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. She previously chaired its Consumer and Clinical Technology Committee, contributed to the AASM position statement on consumer sleep technology and served on its sleep-telemedicine task force. She currently chairs the AASM Public Awareness Advisory Committee.

She is also the longtime host of Talking Sleep, the AASM podcast devoted to developments in clinical sleep medicine. In 2022, the AASM honored her with its Excellence in Education Award.

Talking Sleep — American Academy of Sleep Medicine

The AASM podcast Seema had just launched when this conversation was recorded. It remains active in 2026 with Seema as host.

Talking Sleep

Consumer Sleep Technology — AASM Position Statement

The 2018 position statement led by Seema on how clinicians should think about consumer sleep apps, wearables and patient-generated sleep data.

Consumer Sleep Technology: AASM Position Statement

Wearable Sleep Tech: Clinical Use and Best Practices

A 2026 Talking Sleep episode revisiting the exact technology questions Seema and Neil were discussing here in 2020.

Talking Sleep: Wearable Sleep Tech

The Effect of Dogs on Human Sleep in the Home Sleep Environment

The 2017 Mayo Clinic Proceedings study discussed in the episode. A dog in the bedroom was compatible with good sleep efficiency, while having the dog on the bed was associated with lower sleep efficiency.

PubMed: Dogs and Human Sleep

Adult Women’s Sleep, Pet Ownership and Bed-Sharing

The 2018 survey behind headlines about women preferring dogs as bed partners. The results were primarily about perceived disruption, comfort and security and did not establish that dogs objectively produce better sleep than human partners.

Anthrozoös: Women, Pets and Bed-Sharing

Normal Polysomnography Parameters in Healthy Adults

The interactive reference tool developed from the systematic review by Mark Boulos and colleagues, discussed when Neil and Seema compare sleep-lab results with normative data.

PSG Norms

AASM Insomnia Toolkit

Current clinical resources and guidelines for insomnia, including the 2021 guideline strongly recommending CBT-I and advising against sleep hygiene as a stand-alone treatment for chronic insomnia.

AASM Insomnia Toolkit

Julie Flygare is - if you'll pardon the expression - a tireless advocate for people suffering with narcolepsy.

Learn how much you didn't know - including how the movies have made it worse for everyone - and what can be done to help.

LINKAPALOOZA:

Project Sleep's website

Everything else you wanted to know about Julie, you can learn here.

• Why the familiar movie and sitcom version of narcolepsy is misleading
• Julie’s first symptoms while she was in law school
• Thinking difficulty with coursework meant she was not cut out for law school
• Knees buckling with laughter — and the clue that finally led to the word cataplexy
• Terrifying burglar hallucinations at the edge of sleep
• Sleep paralysis and the experience of being conscious but unable to move
• The classic five major symptoms associated with narcolepsy
• Excessive daytime sleepiness
• Cataplexy
• Sleep-related hallucinations
• Sleep paralysis
• Disrupted nighttime sleep
• Why narcolepsy affects both day and night
• REM-related symptoms and the broken boundaries between sleep and wakefulness
• Narcolepsy type 1 versus type 2
• Why cataplexy does not mean the person is asleep
• How daytime sleepiness can look like brain fog, memory trouble, lost cognition or mood changes rather than visibly falling asleep
• Why narcolepsy can be simultaneously serious and invisible
• Julie’s path from a sports therapist’s observation to a proper diagnosis
• Why people with narcolepsy can spend years without the language to describe what is happening
• Being told by a doctor that “everyone gets tired sometimes”
• The continuing problem of long diagnostic delays
• Why public awareness and medical education both matter
• Sleep specialists, overnight sleep studies and the Multiple Sleep Latency Test
• Drowsy driving and the less-visible cognitive dangers of severe sleepiness
• Julie’s experience adjusting to nighttime medication and daytime stimulants
• Medication side effects, anxiety, meal timing, alcohol, dating and travel
• Why treatment response differs so much from person to person
• How the narcolepsy treatment landscape has expanded since 2020
• The 2026 FDA approval of the first orexin-signaling treatment for narcolepsy type 1
• Why Julie founded Project Sleep
• Bringing sleep disorders into the broader conversation about healthy sleep
• Project Sleep’s advocacy and public-awareness work
• Why Project Sleep deliberately avoids relying on stereotypical images of people asleep in strange places
• Hollywood portrayals including Deuce Bigalow and why inaccurate comedy can reinforce stigma
• How humor can also be a powerful tool for changing public understanding
• Wide Awake and Dreaming, Julie’s memoir of developing and learning to live with narcolepsy

Julie Flygare, JD, is President & CEO of Project Sleep, an internationally recognized patient advocate, speaker and the award-winning author of Wide Awake and Dreaming: A Memoir of Narcolepsy.

Julie began experiencing symptoms of narcolepsy with cataplexy while she was a law student and received her diagnosis in 2007. She earned her B.A. from Brown University and her J.D. from Boston College Law School, and went on to become one of the most visible patient-perspective leaders in sleep medicine.

Through Project Sleep, she has helped build awareness, advocacy, education, scholarships and patient-storytelling programs around narcolepsy and other sleep disorders. She received the Sleep Research Society’s 2024 Public Service Award, and in 2026 her memoir was selected for the Stanford Anesthesia Summer Institute Book Club.

Project Sleep

Julie’s nonprofit organization focused on sleep-health awareness, sleep disorders, advocacy, education and patient support.

Project Sleep

Julie Flygare

Julie’s website, speaking work, writing and narcolepsy resources.

JulieFlygare.com

Wide Awake and Dreaming: A Memoir of Narcolepsy

Julie’s first-person account of developing narcolepsy in law school, reaching a diagnosis and rebuilding her life around the condition.

Wide Awake and Dreaming

Project Sleep Narcolepsy Resources

Toolkits, fact sheets and guides for people living with narcolepsy, families, educators, healthcare professionals and journalists.

Project Sleep Sleep Resources

Narcolepsy — National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

Current NIH overview of narcolepsy symptoms, types, biology, diagnosis and treatment.

NHLBI: Narcolepsy

AASM Treatment Guideline for Central Disorders of Hypersomnolence

American Academy of Sleep Medicine treatment recommendations covering narcolepsy and other central disorders of hypersomnolence.

AASM Guidelines at a Glance

FDA: Oveporexton / Orzeyful Approval

On August 5, 2026, the FDA approved the first medicine for adults with narcolepsy type 1 designed to directly restore orexin signaling.

FDA Approval Announcement