The Guinness Book of World Records has done away with the category of going without sleep because of the health dangers of severe sleep loss. VEDANTAM: Such a path to fame is no longer possible. KITTY CARLISLE: I voted for number two because he looks the sleepiest. VEDANTAM: Most of the panelists figured out that this Randy was the real Randy. He's soft spoken and direct when answering questions. He wears dark, horn-rimmed glasses, his hair swoops to the left. VEDANTAM: On the show, the real Randy Gardner is number two. VEDANTAM: The panelists have to guess which one was the real Randy. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: My name is Randy Gardner. VEDANTAM: The panelists face three people who all claim to be the same person.
IF I SLEEP NOW TV
VEDANTAM: This is sound from the popular 1960s TV game show "To Tell The Truth." The show brings together four celebrity panelists. (SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "TO TELL THE TRUTH") VEDANTAM: Randy's sleep project owned him and his friends first place in the 10th Annual Greater San Diego Science Fair. VEDANTAM: And did you find that over the next several days or weeks, you'd needed extra sleep? I remember when I woke up, I was groggy, but not any groggier than a normal person. He was whisked off to a naval hospital where researchers attached electrodes to his head to monitor his brain waves, and he went to sleep. He had gone 11 days, 264 hours, without drifting off. VEDANTAM: At 2:00 in the morning on January 8th, 1964, Randy broke the world record. That really helped me because that was, like, afresh of something different and new to keep me going. GARDNER: And he rented a car, a convertible, and we drove around in that. His name - and this will feel like a pun - was William Dement. VEDANTAM: A few days into the wake-a-thon, a sleep researcher from Stanford University showed up. GARDNER: I mean, it was crazy, where you couldn't remember things, it was almost like an early Alzheimer's thing brought on by lack of sleep. VEDANTAM: Did you start to feel like your mental faculties were slipping, that it was harder to answer questions, it was harder to remember something to formulate a phrase or a sentence? Tangerines or oranges seemed to take the nausea away. GARDNER: I noticed that in the morning I was really nauseous, and that's when I stumbled on eating citrus for some reason. He stayed away from beds and tried to stand as much as he could. GARDNER: If you're on your own, you're going to succumb. And asked them to stay awake on rotations around the clock to help him stay awake. GARDNER: Bruce McAllister, and Joe Marciano. The idea he came up with? Going without sleep for 264 hours, exactly 11 days - long enough to break a world record. VEDANTAM: If he wanted to win the science fair here, he'd have to pull out all the stops. When we came to this town, San Diego, I thought, boy, this is a big city. GARDNER: I was a kind of a science nerd when I was young. VEDANTAM: In every town he lived in, Randy entered the science fair. RANDY GARDNER: I'm the oldest of four siblings in a military family. It was the last in a long line of childhood moves. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Our story begins in 1963, when Randy Gardner moved to San Diego. And because of that, scientists were able to learn something about the price we pay when we don't get enough rest. Decades ago, a teenage boy named Randy Gardner stopped sleeping for 11 nights. And this next story is about something we think about a lot at MORNING EDITION.
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