Michael: I'm going to give you a number, Kevin: 160. That's how many more hours per year the average American works compared to their peers in other wealthy nations. But here’s the twist: what if I told you the pressure to work those hours isn't just about economics, but a 200-year-old cult of 'manly wakefulness'? Kevin: A cult of manly wakefulness? That sounds like something out of a bizarre, hyper-caffeinated self-help seminar. Where on earth is this coming from? Michael: It's the central idea in a fascinating and frankly, unsettling book called Dangerously Sleepy: Overworked Americans and the Cult of Manly Wakefulness by Alan Derickson. And Derickson is the perfect person to write this—he's a labor and public health historian, so he's spent his career digging into how workplace conditions physically affect people. This book connects the dots between our modern burnout culture and its deep, and often disturbing, historical roots. Kevin: I see. So he’s not a sleep guru, he’s a historian tracing the origins of our collective exhaustion. The book itself has a bit of a mixed reception, right? Some find it incredibly insightful, others a bit dense and academic. Michael: Exactly. Which is why we're here—to unpack the powerful stories inside it. Because this 'cult' has some surprisingly famous, and very influential, founding fathers.

Kevin: Okay, you can't just drop "founding fathers of a cult" and not elaborate. Who are we talking about? Please don't say it's the guys on the dollar bills. Michael: Almost. Think of the ultimate American icon of invention and relentless work: Thomas Edison. We remember him for the lightbulb, but Derickson argues we should also remember him as a master of PR for sleeplessness. Edison didn't just invent things; he invented a persona. Kevin: The sleepless genius persona. I know this one. The guy who only needed four hours of sleep a night. Michael: He made sure everyone knew it. He went on a public campaign, giving interviews where he called sleep "an absurdity, a bad habit" and a "thraldom" we needed to throw off. In 1914, he flat-out said, "We can't suddenly throw off the thraldom of the habit, but we shall throw it off." He was basically preaching a gospel of wakefulness. Kevin: That is such a modern, hustle-culture-influencer thing to say. It's the 1914 version of "You have the same 24 hours as Beyoncé." But come on, was Edison really not sleeping, or was he just the first guy to perfect the humblebrag on a national scale? It feels like a performance. Michael: It was almost entirely a performance! The book points out that Edison was a notorious cat-napper. He had cots stashed all over his laboratories. He'd work in these intense bursts and then crash. But the image he sold to the public was one of superhuman, continuous wakefulness. He was crafting a myth, and America bought it hook, line, and sinker. Kevin: Why, though? What was in it for him, besides ego? Michael: It was brilliant marketing. His greatest invention was electric light, which literally conquered the night. By framing sleep as an enemy—as inefficient and old-fashioned—he was creating a cultural demand for his product. He was selling a 24-hour society, and he was its perfect, sleepless mascot. He even ran experiments on his own factory workers to try and prove they could get by on less sleep. Kevin: Whoa, that's a much darker spin. He wasn't just a quirky inventor; he was actively trying to re-engineer human biology for the sake of industry. Michael: Precisely. And he wasn't alone. Even someone like Benjamin Franklin, who we associate with "early to bed, early to rise," had a complicated relationship with sleep. On one hand, he advocated for a healthy seven hours. On the other, he published sayings like, "Up, Sluggard, and waste not life; in the grave will be sleeping enough." Kevin: That's the kind of thing you see on a motivational poster in a soulless corporate office. It frames rest as laziness. Michael: Exactly. It plants this seed that time spent sleeping is time wasted. And when these ideas come from heroic, masculine figures—the inventor, the statesman, the entrepreneur—they become aspirational. Wakefulness becomes a sign of ambition, of virility, of being a man who is building something, whether it's a nation or a new technology. It's the birth of the "sleep is for sissies" mindset. Kevin: And I can see how that trickles down. If the boss, the hero, the icon, says they don't need sleep, then you, the employee, feel pressure to prove you're just as tough. Michael: You've hit on the core of it. It's one thing for a famous inventor to preach this stuff from his mansion. But what happens when that ideology gets weaponized against ordinary workers who don't have the luxury of a hidden cot?

Kevin: Right. That's the question. Because for Edison, it's a brand. For the person on the factory floor, it's a command. What did that actually look like for people? Michael: It looked brutal. Derickson takes us into the heart of the American steel industry at the turn of the 20th century. These mills ran 24/7, and to keep them going, they implemented a schedule that is almost impossible to comprehend today. Most men worked 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. Kevin: An 84-hour work week. That's already insane. Michael: But it gets worse. To rotate the shifts, every two weeks workers had to endure something called the "long turn." This meant working a full 24-hour shift. You'd go in at 7 AM on Sunday and not leave until 7 AM on Monday morning. Kevin: Twenty-four hours? Of manual labor in a steel mill? That's not work; that's a form of torture. How did anyone even survive that? Michael: Many didn't. The book is filled with harrowing accounts. One investigator, Crystal Eastman, documented the deaths of two young boys at a mill. A 15-year-old, exhausted after a long shift, fell asleep in a wheelbarrow and was struck and killed by a ladle of molten metal. An 18-year-old fell asleep in a buggy and was crushed by an iron bucket. They were literally too tired to stay alive. Kevin: Oh my god. That's just heartbreaking. And it wasn't an accident in the sense of a random failure; it was an inevitable outcome of the system. Michael: The system was designed for it. One worker in a novel from the era said, "At three o'clock in the morning of a long turn a man could die without knowing it." The exhaustion was so profound it was disassociating. Derickson tells the story of a 14-year-old Italian immigrant, Eduardo Furio, working these shifts. Fourteen. The reformers of the day were horrified, but the industry saw it as business as usual. Kevin: And this wasn't just in steel, was it? The book talks about other industries. Michael: Absolutely. Take the Pullman porters. These were the African American men who worked on the luxury sleeper cars on trains. They were symbols of high-class service, but their reality was a waking nightmare. They were expected to be on call for up to 400 hours a month. Kevin: Four hundred hours? How is that even mathematically possible? Michael: By essentially never being off-duty. A porter was responsible for the car from the moment it left the station until it arrived, often on multi-day journeys. They had to be available at all hours for the passengers. Management's official stance was that they could catch some sleep on a couch in the smoking room, but only when no passengers were there. Kevin: So, never. Michael: Pretty much. One porter, Ashley Totten, described the expectation perfectly. He said a porter was supposed to be "asleep and awake at the same time." It was a physical impossibility. This led to the formation of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, one of the first major Black unions. And their central fight wasn't just about wages; it was about the right to rest. They brilliantly reframed the issue not as 'sleeplessness' but as 'sleep denial'—an active, management-driven policy of exhaustion. Kevin: I love that reframing. It shifts the blame. It’s not that the workers are weak; it’s that the company is actively denying them a basic human need. It turns a health issue into a justice issue. Michael: And that's the thread that runs through the whole book. This legacy of pushing human bodies to their absolute limit for the sake of profit didn't end with the steel mills or the railroads. It just got wheels.

Kevin: You mean long-haul truckers. The modern cowboys of the open road. I have a feeling their story isn't as romantic as the movies make it out to be. Michael: Not even close. Derickson dedicates a whole chapter to them, and it's one of the most eye-opening parts of the book. The pressure on truckers to cover vast distances on tight deadlines has created a culture of extreme overwork from the very beginning. But it got supercharged by deregulation in the 1980s. Kevin: How so? Michael: Deregulation flooded the market with competition, driving down prices. To make a living, drivers, especially independent owner-operators, had to drive more miles for less money. This meant more hours, less rest, and falsified logbooks. And to stay awake, many turned to stimulants. Kevin: The "little white pills" from all the old country songs. Michael: Exactly. The book details a shocking FDA undercover investigation from the 1950s. An agent posed as a trainee and rode along with a veteran trucker on a 4,400-mile round trip from the Southwest to Maine. The journey took over five days. In that time, the driver slept a total of six hours. Kevin: Six hours in five days? While operating a multi-ton vehicle? That's terrifying. Michael: The agent thought so too. He said the driver was propped up by Benzedrine and coffee. When they finally got back, the driver was ready to turn around and start another cross-country run the next day. The FDA agent was so frightened he refused to get back in the truck. Kevin: I don't blame him! And this directly connects to our modern 'on-demand' world, doesn't it? The pressure for next-day delivery, for 24/7 service... someone, somewhere, is paying the price with their sleep. The book calls this a 'sleep divide,' right? Michael: That's the crucial modern takeaway. A 'sleep divide' exists where the burden of sleeplessness falls disproportionately on low-wage, hourly workers. The person stocking shelves at the supermarket overnight, the cleaner in your office building, the gig economy driver bringing you food at 1 AM. Their nonstandard, often rotating schedules are physiologically punishing. Kevin: And they don't have the same flexibility as a salaried professional who can maybe come in late after a rough night. Their time is rigidly controlled. Michael: Precisely. The book quotes a great line from two sociologists: "On the other side of the smiling face of endless consumer ‘convenience’ is the stern regime of coerced labor ‘flexibility.’" Our convenience is built on the exhaustion of others.

Kevin: Wow. So putting this all together, this isn't just a book about being tired. It's about how an idea—that sleep is a weakness—was created, promoted, and then used as a tool of economic exploitation for over a century. Michael: That's the deep insight. The 'cult of manly wakefulness' was never just about individual grit or ambition. It was a powerful cultural narrative that served a clear economic purpose. It made workers feel like their exhaustion was a personal failing of toughness, not the result of an inhumane system. It made them complicit in their own burnout. Kevin: Which is a pattern we still see today. People brag about how little sleep they got, as if it's a badge of honor, without questioning the system that demands it of them. Michael: And it makes you rethink what the fight for a better life even means. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 24, explicitly states that "Everyone has the right to rest and leisure." It's a fundamental human right, not a luxury. Kevin: So the question this book leaves me with isn't just 'Am I getting enough sleep?' but 'What systems am I participating in that demand sleeplessness from others?' It makes you look at that 2 AM Amazon order a little differently. Michael: Exactly. Derickson's work forces you to see sleep not just as a personal health issue, but as a social justice issue. It's about who has the right to rest, and who is forced to sacrifice it for the rest of us. Kevin: We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Have you ever felt this pressure to sacrifice sleep for work or school? Do you see this 'sleep divide' in your own community? Find us on our socials and share your story. This is a conversation that really needs to happen. Michael: It really does. The history is dark, but understanding it is the first step toward building a more rested, and more humane, future. Kevin: This is Aibrary, signing off.