Jessa Gamble on The Science Behind Our Body Clock

In today's world, balancing school, work, kids and more, most of us can only hope for the recommended eight hours of sleep.

Examining the science behind our body's internal clock, Jessa Gamble reveals the surprising and substantial program of rest we should be observing.

Jessa Gamble writes about sleep and time, showing how our internal body clock struggles against our always-on global culture.

Jessa Gamble is an award-winning writer from Oxford, who lives in the Canadian Subarctic. Now that humanity has spread right to the Earth's poles and adopted a 24-hour business day, Gamble argues that our internal clocks struggle against our urban schedules.

Her work documents the rituals surrounding daily rhythms, which along with local languages and beliefs are losing their rich global diversity and succumbing to a kind of circadian imperialism.

A dynamic new voice in popular science, Gamble was awarded a 2007 Science in Society journalism award from the Canadian Science Writers Association for her first-person account of daily life at the Eureka High Arctic Weather Station.

She is the author of The Siesta and The Midnight Sun: How We Measure and Experience Time.

Susan notes: Thanks to TED for making TED Talks downloadable and embeddable, and for providing the biographical information that goes along with them.