Episode 026 = Sliding on Snow and Skipping on Sleep

How fast could a team of penguins complete a 4x100 relay race? Could they field a competitive (or uncompetitive) olympic team for Antarctica in 2024?

Matt spoke to a penguin expert (a human) on the ship, and he saw a lot of penguins, which he thinks are a stupid animal. On land, penguins are slow because they have no land-based predators. The fastest penguin is the

Gentoo (which Matt hears as "Gen. 2"), which goes 35.4 kmh under water. It would do a 100 m sprint in 10.17 s. Obviously, they would use fish batons. The entire race would take 40.67 s, which is better than the current women's record (on land) but worse than the current men's record (on land). They'd be a lot faster than the human swimming records.

On land, penguins can waddle and slide on their stomachs. Matt took a video of two penguins doing just that, and estimated their speeds. The waddling penguin went 0.7 m/s while the sliding penguin went 1.75 m/s. The waddling race would take 9 minutes 31 seconds, while the sliding race would take 5 minutes 26 seconds.

A simultaneous Bec "ding" and Beardyman ding

How can I fix my sleeping schedule? For the past year or so, it seems to have gotten worse and worse. I am a grad student and I have to work a lot, often into the night. But then I wake up very late in the day. I feel guilty about sleeping and stay up even later the next day, and sleep in even later. It doesn't matter how many alarms I set, I can't seem to wake up at a decent time. I have even tried multiple times to stay up all night, hoping to reset to a normal bedtime the next day, but that does not stick.

PS: As part of this endeavour, I've tried to stop looking at my phone before bed because I always hear that the changing lights stimulate your brain and prevent you from sleeping. No scrolling through social media or watching videos. Your podcast has been something relaxing that I can listen to but not watch while getting ready for bed.

Bec builds an analogy for the circadian rhythm based on a smart home with a control hub in the kitchen. There's multiple circadian rhythms, all connected to each other, and they can be disrupted.

Bec thinks Sleepy should let their body adjust to their current sleep cycle before trying to set a new sleep cycle. It might not be the schedule they want but it would be a schedule. They should then stay in that schedule for a few days. Circadian rhythms don't like hard resets (which is also why you have jet lag). As a rule of thumb, you should calculate one 24h cycle for one hour of time difference.

More tips: As soon as you wake up, get some sun light on you. Bec uses an alarm clock that slowly becomes brighter, which is great. No caffeine within 5 hours of your bedtime. Exercise helps a lot (Bec speaks from experience). Holidays are a good time to start new habits because your body is already in disarray a bit. Sleep in a cool room. Set your alarm earlier by small increments (e.g. 30 minutes).

Finally, there's A people (early birds) and B people (night owls), which is probably based on genetics and not possible to change. Different countries have different sleeping habits. Greece goes to bed the latest. Matt sleeps like a spanish woman.

Awaiting reply from Sleepy.