The Sleepless Ape: The Story of Sleep in Human Evolution is officially out today! To celebrate, here are some of my favorite clips and images from the fieldwork and research that shaped it — chimp nests, hunter-gatherer sleep camps, and the evolutionary puzzle of why humans became the “sleepless ape.”

I had a terrific conversation with Katie Hunt at @CNN about The Sleepless Ape and what human evolution can teach us about sleep. One of the big ideas in the book is that humans are evolutionary outliers: we sleep less than other primates, but we get an unusually high proportion of REM sleep. That pattern only makes sense when we look at sleep not as an isolated individual performance metric, but as something shaped by fire, shelter, social groups, safety, light, timing, and the body clock. Modern sleep advice often tells us to perfect the bedroom. That matters, of course. But our ancestors also slept in dynamic social environments, with powerful daily cues from sunlight, darkness, food timing, and community. My hope is that evolutionary sleep science can help us move from “Am I sleeping perfectly?” toward a better question: “Am I living in sync with the biology that makes good sleep possible?” Read the interview here: edition.cnn.com/2026/06/01/s…

"Humans went through a radical evolutionary experiment. We are the primates that sleep the least." This "human sleep paradox" sits at the heart of my new book *The Sleepless Ape*. Grateful to @elpaisinenglish for the feature and to @PaleoAnthropology for sharing it! From climbing 70 chimpanzee nests to living with Hadza and BaYaka communities, this is the science I’ve been chasing. The full story is out now from Princeton University Press — link in the original post. Are we truly the ultimate sleep-deprived primates? #TheSleeplessApe #HumanEvolution #SleepParadox

Huge thanks to @seize_podcast for having me on Episode 258! We dove deep into the human sleep paradox, why we misunderstand “sleep optimization,” the wellness industry’s blind spots, communal SHELL sleep sites, ancestral vs. modern sleep, and how all of this ties into mental health. Full episode is live: YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=HHe0Akfs…: [link from their post]

Just dropped a visual thread on publication day for The Sleepless Ape — chimp nests, orangutan REM sleep, Hadza camps, SHELL, Paleo Gear vs Optimal Gear, and why humans became the sleepless ape. Huge thanks to @sleepdiplomat — he’s been a major inspiration to me since graduate school. His work on the importance of sleep for health and cognition has shaped so much of how I think about this topic. Thread below 👇

I’m delighted to share that @Nature has reviewed The Sleepless Ape. Nathaniel Dominy describes the book as “lively and ambitious” and calls it “an agenda-setting narrative that will shape sleep research for years to come.” He also writes that The Sleepless Ape offers “a vision of sleep that is both scientifically rigorous and socially relevant.” I’m grateful for such a thoughtful and generous review—especially from a scholar whose work I admire. The book asks why humans sleep less than our closest primate relatives, and whether our unusual sleep evolved not as a flaw, but as one of the great adaptive features of our species. The Sleepless Ape is available now / available for preorder from Princeton University Press. nature.com/articles/d41586-0…