The siesta and the midnight sun
The siesta and the midnight sun by Jessa Gamble is a 2011 Society & Culture book written by TED speaker Jessa Gamble, paired here with the talk they gave.
In The Siesta and the Midnight Sun, award-winning science writer Jessa Gamble explores the continuing significance of the biological clocks that governed our lives before modern technology annihilated the night. She describes experiments that show both rats and people adhere to a 24-hour schedule even when deprived of daylight. When our days are disrupted by shift work, jet lag or space travel, things go wrong. The disastrous chemical leak at Bhopal, India and the calamitous launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger both were caused partly by sleepless workers. Insomnia is rampant in the Western world.