Narrator: Imagine a steelworker in the early 20th century. After finishing a grueling twelve-hour day shift, he doesn't go home. Instead, he stays at the mill, working through the night for another twelve hours. This was the "long turn," a brutal, twenty-four-hour shift designed to rotate workers from day to night schedules. One worker recalled the experience, stating, "At three o'clock in the morning of a long turn a man could die without knowing it." This wasn't an anomaly; it was a cornerstone of American industrial might, built on the exhausted backs of its laborers.

This systemic exhaustion is the central subject of Alan Derickson's book, Dangerously Sleepy: Overworked Americans and the Cult of Manly Wakefulness. Derickson argues that sleep deprivation in America is not a modern inconvenience or a personal failing. Instead, it's a deeply ingrained cultural and economic problem, historically celebrated as a masculine virtue and protected by a system that has consistently prioritized productivity over the fundamental human need for rest.

Narrator: The idea that sleep is for the weak has deep roots in American culture, championed by some of the nation's most influential men. This "cult of manly wakefulness" positioned sleep deprivation not as a problem, but as a virtue—a sign of ambition, strength, and dedication.

Thomas Edison, the celebrated inventor, was a master of self-promotion and a key architect of this ideology. He famously claimed to sleep no more than four or five hours a night, publicly ridiculing sleep as "an absurdity, a bad habit" and a relic of our "caveman" past. He wasn't just talking; he pushed his employees to adopt his sleepless ethos, believing it was the key to innovation and industrial dominance. His invention of the light bulb didn't just illuminate the night; it created the potential for a 24-hour workday, and Edison became its most fervent evangelist.

This narrative of heroic sleeplessness was further cemented by figures like Charles Lindbergh. His 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic was initially portrayed as a triumph of a man who simply didn't need sleep. The reality, which Lindbergh later revealed in his autobiography, was a desperate, hallucinatory battle against exhaustion. Yet, even this revised story of struggle reinforced the same core message: true heroes, true men, conquer sleep. This cultural narrative has persisted, echoing in the boardrooms of executives who boast about 1 A.M. emails and on the football fields of coaches who believe "leisure time is the five or six hours you sleep each night."

Narrator: While cultural icons glorified sleeplessness, the American legal and political system did little to protect workers from its consequences. Historically, the state has been reluctant to regulate working hours, intervening only when public safety was undeniably at risk, not to protect the well-being of the worker.

This was starkly illustrated in the early 20th century. In the 1905 case Lochner v. New York, the Supreme Court struck down a law limiting bakers' work hours to ten per day. The court argued the law interfered with the "freedom of contract" between an employer and an employee, establishing a powerful precedent that crippled efforts to regulate hours for adult men. However, just three years later in Muller v. Oregon, the court upheld a similar law for women. The reasoning was not based on a universal right to rest, but on the idea that women were weaker, their health was essential for "vigorous offspring," and therefore the state had an interest in protecting their reproductive capacity.

This created a system where protections were based on perceived vulnerability, not universal rights. The focus of labor law shifted from limiting hours to mandating premium pay for overtime, as seen in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. This didn't stop overwork; it just made it more expensive for employers, a cost many were willing to pay. The result was a framework that tacitly accepted overwork, leaving the vast majority of workers to fend for themselves in a culture that demanded more and more of their waking hours.

Narrator: Nowhere was the human cost of this system more visible than in the steel mills of the early 20th century. The industry ran 24/7, and for decades, so did its workforce. Most steelworkers toiled through twelve-hour days, seven days a week. To switch between day and night shifts, they endured the infamous "long turn"—a continuous 24-hour workday.

The physical toll was immense. Reformers documented the grim reality for these men. One investigator, Crystal Eastman, recounted the deaths of two young workers at the Homestead works. One, a 15-year-old, fell asleep in a wheelbarrow and was struck by a massive ladle of molten metal. Another, an 18-year-old, dozed off in a buggy and was crushed by an iron bucket. These were not isolated incidents. A 1913 government report confirmed that accident rates spiked during night shifts and long turns.

Living conditions offered no relief. Workers, many of them recent immigrants, were packed into crowded boarding houses, sometimes four or more to a single room, making restorative sleep impossible. One worker poignantly summarized his existence: "Home is just the place I eat and sleep. I live in the mills." The abolition of the 84-hour workweek in 1923 was a major victory, but it came only after decades of public pressure, strikes, and the slow realization by industry leaders that exhausted workers were not just a moral crisis, but bad for business.

Narrator: The struggle for rest was also a central battle in the fight for civil rights, powerfully demonstrated by the experience of the Pullman porters. These African American men were the face of luxury train travel, expected to provide impeccable service around the clock. Their reality was one of relentless work and profound sleep deprivation.

Porters were often on duty for up to 400 hours a month. Management's official position was that porters could sleep in the smoking room after all passengers were in their berths, but only if they remained fully dressed and ready to answer a call bell at any moment. As one porter, Ashley Totten, described it, the expectation was that he was "to be asleep and awake at the same time." This impossible demand was a deliberate management strategy to extract maximum labor for minimum cost.

The fight against this "sleep denial" became a primary motivation for the formation of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) in 1925. The union challenged the Pullman Company's paternalistic image, arguing that sleep deprivation was not an unfortunate side effect of the job but a calculated form of exploitation. They framed adequate rest not as a luxury, but as a fundamental health and safety issue. Their long and arduous struggle eventually won them reduced hours and better sleeping arrangements, demonstrating how collective action could successfully redefine rest as a non-negotiable worker's right.

Narrator: The dangers of a sleep-deprived workforce have not disappeared; they have simply shifted to new arenas, most notably the nation's highways. Long-haul truckers have long faced a deadly combination of economic pressure, grueling schedules, and a culture of rugged independence that discourages rest.

Since the Great Depression, truckers have pushed their bodies to the limit. One driver from that era, Bert Glupker, recalled a four-night round trip where he got no sleep at all, splashing his face with cold water to stay conscious. This culture of overwork was supercharged by the widespread use of amphetamines, or "little white pills," immortalized in the song "Six Days on the Road." An undercover FDA investigation in the 1950s found one driver who slept only six hours during a five-day cross-country trip, propped up by Benzedrine and coffee.

The deregulation of the trucking industry in 1980 only intensified the pressure. With increased competition and lower rates, drivers were forced to spend even more hours on the road to make a living. Falsifying logbooks became common practice. As a result, our highways are shared with drivers who are often dangerously sleepy. Surveys in the late 1990s found that nearly one in five long-haul drivers admitted to falling asleep at the wheel in the past month, a stark reminder that the battle between the demand for constant delivery and the need for human rest is still being fought, mile by mile.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Dangerously Sleepy is that America's exhaustion is by design. It is the logical outcome of a culture that has consistently equated wakefulness with worth, masculinity with endurance, and productivity with profit. From the steel mills to the sleeper cars to the interstate highways, the story is the same: the human need for rest has been systematically subordinated to the demands of the 24/7 economy. This is not a series of individual choices, but a collective, historical inheritance.

The book leaves us with a profound challenge to our modern "hustle culture." It forces us to ask whether the relentless pursuit of efficiency and flexibility has come at too high a price. As we build a future of even greater connectivity and on-demand service, we must confront a critical question: Can we create a society that finally recognizes rest not as a weakness to be overcome or a commodity to be managed, but as an inalienable human right, essential for a healthy and humane life?