Why You Should Use a Radio Alarm Clock

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Sleep has been made unnecessarily complicated as a means to sell you things. I’m here to tell you how to drop out of that process. Because unless you have a proper sleep disorder, you don’t need to track any of your sleep vitals. Your “Sleep Score,” is not real. Someone at a tech company made it up one day. The end game is to have you tracking nighttime erections like Bryan Johnson, who you should only follow because he’s a consenting human guinea pig—the ultimate unintentional comedian—not because he says anything of substance.

All you need is a mattress you like and a radio alarm clock. That’s right radio, AM/FM. The technology of how to wake up a human was perfected and put in every American home and hotel room. We replaced it with rings and phones. I went backwards with a retro Sony Dream Machine from eBay, and it changed my life. But if you don’t want to hunt this $20 Emerson clock will change your life just as much.

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Smartphones should stay out of the bedroom

I’m not going to tell you to be on your phone less. I’m not an idiot. I know that won’t happen. But keeping the phone out of the bedroom was life changing for me. At night, the iPhone charges in the living room, and it’s set so that the only notification I get is a call because that’s what anyone would do in an emergency. Cutting off phone access 30 minutes to an hour before bed, and I found that I’d lie down with less manic thoughts, less work stress, less general anxiety.

I’m not talking about “blue light,” because I’m not a scientist, and I’m not exactly sure it tricks your body the way bro influencers claim. What I’m saying is that phones cause physical anxiety, and it’s not just from the soft buzz of notifications. For the first few weeks I tossed mine out of the bedroom, I would wake up and reach for it, forgetting it wasn’t there. I was chained to it. It’s insane. I was Pavlov’s little dog reaching for my treat that Big Tech conditioned me to use. Check the time, maybe open the phone and see what’s happening on Instagram or (God forbid) read an email. Two years out from that choice, I’m living the dream. When I wake up, I look over, check the time, and go back to fucking sleep. Now I sleep better, have more dreams, and wake up feeling rested.

Radio is the perfect wakeup

Think about what humans have always woken up to. Birds chirping, rooster crowing, or maybe a church bell or call to prayer. These are all natural, melodic sounds. Even a baby crying, piercing as it may be, is a natural sound. My iPhone ringtone is not natural. Radio is. Pretty much anywhere in America, you can catch an NPR station. I never listen to NPR on my own, but it’s nice to wake up to. At 7 A.M., it’s gentle voices telling you the news. You have a storyline to listen to, which naturally pulls you out of sleep.

If you hate the idea of waking up to news, American radio is still good. You can always get morning talk radio or, if you’re lucky, some weird local station. If you live anywhere near a university, tap into college radio. Some universities have kids on-air 24/7, but all of them will have weirdos programming cool music. On Mondays, there’s an 8 A.M. show from WNYU that plays Appalachian string music. If I have a late Sunday night and sleep in on Monday, I’m actually excited to wake up and hear what she’s playing. My phone never does that.

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You just don’t need all the tech

Really though, my argument comes down to the sacredness of sleep. I wasn’t consciously choosing to use my phone in the bedroom. I was scrolling as I fell asleep or woke up out of that weird Pavlovian social media habit. Or worse, I was checking emails because my employer wants me to make them more money. And anytime I track my Sleep Score when testing a product, I’m just playing a game created by a nerd in Silicon Valley where I wear a ring, make my numbers go from red to green, and it “helps” me sleep. Once I thought about it like that, the phone left the bedroom.

Y’all can keep tracking your Sleep Scores like Bryan Johnson tracking his son’s erections. No hate from my end. But me? I’ll be going to sleep reading by my amber reading light and waking up to the sweet sounds of college radio.

Photographs by Florence Sullivan