Selects: How Narcolepsy Works

**Josh Clark** (0:00)
Hey guys, it's me, Josh, and for this week's Select, I'm going with our May 2020 episode on Narcolepsy.
It's one of those S-Y-S-K-esque episodes that covers something we've all heard of, but really know nothing about. And it's deeply satisfying because it all makes sense, and it fits together once you understand it. Good stuff. I hope you enjoy it.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:29)
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

**Josh Clark** (0:39)
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there. And still no Jerry. Chuck, wake up.
We're going to get some mail for that right off of the bat.

**Charles W. Bryant** (0:54)
I feel quite refreshed.

**Josh Clark** (0:57)
So Chuck, you might have narcolepsy then. If you just fell asleep, were you able to resist that urge to sleep just now?

**Charles W. Bryant** (1:04)
No. As soon as I heard, hey, welcome to the podcast, I went lights out.

**Josh Clark** (1:10)
I think that happens to a lot of people.

**Charles W. Bryant** (1:13)
Have you ever known anyone with narcolepsy?

**Josh Clark** (1:15)
I haven't. The closest I've come to that is, watching my own private Idaho.

**Charles W. Bryant** (1:23)
What? Do you find that sleep-inducing?

**Josh Clark** (1:27)
No, no. I think it's River Phoenix or Keanu Reeves has narcolepsy. No, that's right.

**Charles W. Bryant** (1:32)
I forgot about that. I thought you were saying, it's so boring, you can't stay awake.

**Josh Clark** (1:36)
No, no. No, that's cats.

**Charles W. Bryant** (1:40)
Did you see that?

**Josh Clark** (1:42)
No, don't you remember that I tried to make myself go to sleep in cats in the middle of the cats? Oh, that's right. No, I have not seen the movie now.

**Charles W. Bryant** (1:48)
Yeah, that's what I was wondering about.

**Josh Clark** (1:50)
After having been on Movie Crush, now I can't tell what's what anymore, what I said where.

**Charles W. Bryant** (1:57)
So, my great aunt Laura had narcolepsy, which is my paternal grandmother's sister.
And I only met her a few times. This is from my dad's side of the Mississippi clan. So, I think I only remember going to Mississippi like once when I was a kid and visiting her. And I just remember my brother and I, this is my only memory of the visit, is Scott and I sitting in a room talking with her, and her being in the middle of a sentence, and then her head falling down. And then 10 seconds later, she would pick her head up and continue that sentence.

**Josh Clark** (2:34)
Wow, like without missing a beat? Was she aware that she had just fallen asleep and woken up?

**Charles W. Bryant** (2:41)
In my memory, from being like 10 years old, she didn't miss a beat and just finished her sentence, like right in the middle of a sentence, and didn't mention it. And my brother and I were just like, what is going on here?

**Josh Clark** (2:53)
Wait, your dad didn't prepare you for it?

**Charles W. Bryant** (2:56)
I don't remember. I purposely blocked out a lot of my childhood.

**Josh Clark** (3:01)
Right, right, sure.

**Charles W. Bryant** (3:02)
So, I don't know.

**Josh Clark** (3:03)
And that guy folded into the shuffle?

**Charles W. Bryant** (3:06)
That's the only thing I remember. It may be a child's memory that is a little trumped up, but that's how I remember it.

**Josh Clark** (3:15)
Wow, man. Well, yeah, I've never known anybody with narcolepsy.
Based on that, going into this whole episode, I was just basically going in like I'm sure most of our listeners are, where it's just like, yeah, somebody falls asleep in the middle of the day, they can't help it, and then they wake back up and who cares, basically. But the more that I've researched this, the more I'm like, even if it were just that alone, it would be pretty disruptive to your normal life, depending on how often it happened to you every day. But the fact is, it's not just that alone, and there's a lot of extra symptoms to it that make it frightening, or terrifying, or depressing, or just completely disruptive, or make it so that you are maybe unable to hold down a job or go to school. It's actually a much sadder condition than I think most people think of, because it seems innocuous. It's just like, hey, you fall asleep here or there, it's fine, and it's not. There's a lot more to it than that.

**Charles W. Bryant** (4:18)
Yeah, for sure. I should also mention too that something that should not be confused with narcolepsy is something that Emily's family has.