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At the beginning of this NFL season, the San Francisco 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams embarked on something of an experiment. In the first game of the season, they faced off in Australia, a league first. That’s a 16-hour flight from the west coast.
To deal with the jet lag and make sure they were at peak performance for the game, the teams took radically different approaches.The 49ers flew to Melbourne a week early so that their players had enough time to adjust to the timezone. The Rams however, chose a high-risk, high-reward strategy: flying their players in just 24 hours before the game. They said they were betting on their players’ brains and bodies not noticing the massive time zone difference.
In the end, that strategy didn’t pay off with a win: the Rams lost, 27-7. But sleep experts have weighed in since and said that actually, perhaps they were onto something. Flora sits down with one of those experts, neurologist Chris Winter, who consults for a variety of sports teams, on why the Rams made that decision.
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Segment Guests
W. Christopher Winter
W. Chris Winter, M.D. is author of The Sleep Solution: Why Your Sleep is Broken and How to Fix It (Berkley, 2017). He’s a neurologist and sleep specialist based in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Segment Transcript
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About Flora Lichtman
Flora Lichtman is a host of Science Friday. In a previous life, she lived on a research ship where apertivi were served on the top deck, hoisted there via pulley by the ship’s chef.
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Dee Peterschmidt is Science Friday’s audio production manager, hosted the podcast Universe of Art, and composes music for Science Friday’s podcasts. Their D&D character is a clumsy bard named Chip Chap Chopman.