
38 segments available
Dr Matthew Walker is a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the world’s leading experts on sleep science, with over 20 years of research. He is host of The Matt Walker Podcast and bestselling author of ‘Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams’. He explains: ◼️The shocking link between poor sleep timing and increased cancer risk ◼️How alcohol and caffeine silently sabotage deep sleep and mental performance ◼️Why screen time and light exposure before bed are secretly rewiring your brain ◼️How “sleep banking” before stress, travel, or work sprints can boost resilience ◼️Why parents, professionals, and athletes all need radically different sleep strategies Enjoyed the episode? Share it using this link and get points for every referral: https://doac-perks.com 00:00 Intro 02:20 Sleep Changes Your DNA 04:48 The Stigma Around Sleep and Laziness 08:29 What's Stopping People From Sleeping? 10:45 The Shocking Link Between Weekend Sleep-Ins and Heart Disease 14:35 New Research: Sleep Banking for Low-Sleep Periods 16:11 Boost Cognitive Performance With This Sleep Hack 19:01 3 Ways to Instantly Improve Sleep Quality 20:29 It's Not Blue Light That's Keeping You Awake 21:48 Melatonin Doesn’t Make You Sleep – Here's What It Does 24:15 How Much Melatonin Is Right? 25:41 The 1% With a Nocturnal Clock Who Can't Sleep Until 3 AM 27:12 Is Melatonin Really the Magic Sleep Pill? 30:19 The Trade-Offs of Sleep Medication 34:51 The Key to a Digital Detox 35:32 The 4 Macros of Good Sleep: QQRT 36:49 The Minimum Sleep Needed to Stay Alive 42:35 How Sleep Regularity Predicts Life Expectancy 46:37 Try This 7-Day Sleep Enhancer Challenge 53:11 How to Tell If Your Room Is Dark Enough for Sleep 01:00:50 Why Counting Sheep Doesn’t Work 01:02:44 The Better Alternative to Counting Sheep 01:04:23 Magnesium for Sleep: Does It Really Work? 01:11:34 Ads 01:13:20 How REM Sleep Works and How to Maximize It 01:20:17 Why REM Sleep Is Important 01:21:54 Entering a 'Psychosis' State During Dreams 01:24:51 Rewriting Trauma Through Dream Healing 01:30:58 Nightmares as a Warning Sign for Mental Health 01:35:55 REM Sleep Is Like Group Therapy for Memories 01:39:17 Ads 01:41:04 The Dystopian Future: Superhumans Who Sleep Only 6 Hours 01:45:04 Could Humans Be Engineered to Sleep Less? 01:50:06 Why You Crave Junk Food When Underslept 01:54:23 A New Drug That Could Help With Insomnia 02:03:37 What Did Success Bring You? 02:07:20 I Didn’t Believe in Finding “The One” 02:28:54 The Future of AI and Sleep Follow Dr Matthew: X - https://bit.ly/4oIRpAY Instagram - https://bit.ly/49OgFB4 Podcast - https://bit.ly/489MJhA You can purchase Dr Matthew’s book, ‘Why We Sleep’, here: https://amzn.to/4pbpp8n The Diary Of A CEO: ◼️Join DOAC circle here - https://doaccircle.com/ ◼️Be the first to hear about Steven's new book - https://bit.ly/jfdi-doac ◼️Shop the 1% Diary - https://bit.ly/3YFbJbt ◼️The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards (Third Edition) - https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb ◼️Get email updates - https://bit.ly/diary-of-a-ceo-yt ◼️Follow Steven - https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb Independent Research: https://stevenbartlett.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/DOAC-Matthew-Walker-2-Independent-Research-further-reading.pdf Sponsors: Linkedin Ads - https://www.linkedin.com/DIARY Pipedrive - http://pipedrive.com/CEO Stan Store - https://stevenbartlett.stan.store for your 14-Day free trial Last chance to join the waitlist for the limited edition Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards here: https://bit.ly/cardswaitlist
"Here's the problem with magnesium supplementation when it comes to sleep. The first thing to note is that most forms of magnesium don't cross the brain barrier and sleep is produced by your brain. So,..."
"introduce some of these new sort of treatments to improve how our brain performs. And I want to talk about all of that as well, but to start for anyone that is unfamiliar with you and has been hiding ..."
"variety of different reasons. So we actually asked them a thousand of them their questions to ask you today. But also the other reason I really wanted to chat to you is the science of sleep I mean as ..."
"listener at home can you tell me what the different groups of people that are listening to this conversation right now are seeking from the extreme end being sleep apnnea. I get no sleep. I'm an insom..."
"of sleep deficient sleep disorders, lifestyle factors and then the optimizers. >> Yeah, I think there's there's a broad collection of new evidence that we have. But maybe let me come on to the middle ..."
">> Oh, so if I've got a big thing coming up where I'm traveling across the world and I know I'm going to be sleep deficient, can I sleep a lot before it to create a What would the financial analogy be..."
"they went from probably an average of about 7 7 and 1/2 hours of sleep to about 8 and 1/2 almost 9 hours of sleep. So they were extending their sleep duration and so that they had built up this buffer..."
"pushing the subject into the world. I remember when you first went on Joe Rogan's show, the amount of my friends that sent me that episode and then sent me your book was just staggering. It was like t..."
"subscribe, would you say? I would say that you know like and subscribe and then just click here so that you get the latest notification you get that bell just click on the bell icon so that you >> so ..."
"of your melatonin. And melatonin is a hormone. It simply tells your brain and your body when it's nighttime, when it's time to fall asleep. It doesn't participate in the generation of sleep. Melatonin..."
">> And do you advise melatonin for people? >> Yes, in two conditions. The first or circumstances I should say. The first is when you're going through jet lag. Wonderfully helpful. But timing is critic..."
"melatonin can also be helpful because once again their melatonin part of their problem is that their melatonin is very delayed so they don't get the signal of oh it's night until maybe 4:00 in the mor..."
"to solve lifestyle issues that have caused sleep impairment? Because I'm seeing loads of, you know, I'm an investor, so I see lots of companies now pitching me different products that have melatonin i..."
"time someone offered me melatonin is from doing this podcast and speaking to smart people like yourself, I've come to learn this sort of principle that if you start making something for your body in t..."
">> And and what happens is that you you're there and you think after about seven or eight minutes, I'm just I'm just going to have a bit of a sit down here. as soon as that phone goes away. So I would..."
"of food, macronutrients, fat, protein, carbohydrate. To me, there are four macros of good sleep. And it's QQQRT. QQRT and it stands for quantity, quality, regularity, and timing. And think of it less ..."
">> Short sleep predicts all cause mortality. Now, we say that there's the minimum of 7 hours of sleep. And some people have argued perhaps correctly that look, if you look at these mortality curves, t..."
"individuals, but they looked at 60,000 individuals. And they decided that they were going to compare and split them into quartiles. So the most regular to the second most regular to then sort of the t..."
"brightness and all of the rest of the lights out so you can kind of just still see some illumination so I'm not sort of, you know, looking desperately uncool uh in in front of her when I'm tripping ov..."
">> is not going to necessarily do you a disservice. Probably below 50 lux. Now, lux lux is just a measure of light intensity. And you can download on the app store a free looks meter. And if you're an..."
"well, with every kind of little bleeting cotton wool ball with a strange look on its face that leaps over the fence that you're counting, you're reinforcing every minute of sleep that you're not getti..."
">> If you find it subjectively wonderfully pacifying and calming and there is not death, naming, blood, and limbs being distributed at high velocity all over the scene, I would say it's great. But if ..."
">> Okay. >> What you need to do is think about the fundamentals. Regularity. Watch your caffeine intake. Make sure you're not drinking too much alcohol. Get regular. Dim down half of the lights. Digit..."
"is they're not having the right conversation because that ad never reached the right person. And if you're in B2B marketing, that is much of the game. And this is where LinkedIn ads solves that proble..."
"blocks of sleep. So when we first fall asleep, we go into light non rapid eye movement sleep. Stage one. This is the stage of sleep that if I wake you up out of it, you say, "I wasn't sleeping." Now y..."
"centers of the brain as I pull this brain apart. So we've got these sort of deep emotional centers in the brain that sit and in fact the sort of they're more just underneath in here tucked in inside j..."
"became confused about time, place, and person. So in psychiatry, we call that being disorientated. Fourth, you had wildly fluctuating emotions. Something that we call being emotionally labile. You're ..."
"have the flashback to the the sort of detonation on the military field. And what's happening there is that the brain has not stripped the emotion from the memory. So every time they relive the memory,..."
"is in some ways what's the difference between a bad dream and a nightmare >> because all of us will have bad dreams. Bad dreams are usually things that happen infrequently. Maybe you have them once ev..."
"experience is and should be for me at night. And therefore, I don't need to worry about it. I shouldn't try to force anything. That's the first function of dream sleep is that it's emotional first aid..."
"here was that it might alleviate some of the unnecessary cognitive overload that my team was carrying so that they could spend less time in the weeds of admin and more time with clients, in-person mee..."
"What is the uh most important thing we haven't talked about as it relates to the personas of those people that are probably listening right now and for the reasons why they might have clicked? You kno..."
"Mother nature has figured out a way genetically to zip file sleep. >> Zip file. You can compress eight down into six. You know on your computer how you can get a collection of files, you group them al..."
"over there are in ketosis right now. I was wondering if you >> when you think about brain performance and sleep and different sort of states do you think much about fasting or >> about ketosis or >> Y..."
"about five five six hours, my Whoop scores plummet. >> Yeah. >> Until I kind of come out the other end, which might take a couple of weeks and then my sleep scores seem to stabilize again. But that in..."
"that you never could have dreamed of? It brought me two things. one beneficial one less. So beneficial is that I have now the chance and have gifted the chance to fly around the world and tried to spe..."
">> Did you have peace last time we spoke? I wouldn't say I was without peace. I didn't know this type of peace and I never believed in this notion of the one. You know, I was a scientist. I'm a hard-n..."