Why Blue Light Gets (unfairly) Blamed
From "News From The Future" with Dr Catherine Ball by The Future Is Already Here.... Meet The Humans At The Cutting Edge
May 15, 2026 · 7 min
About this episode
The episode discusses the misconceptions surrounding blue light and its impact on sleep, highlighting a nuanced understanding of modern life’s effects on our circadian rhythms.
Podcast transcript: Hello and Welcome to News From The Future, spoken by the eleven labs audio clone of Dr Catherine Ball. In this new short series we will be focussing on Sleep. We all do it, and we all recognise when we have not had enough of it. Dr Cath’s new book The Future of Sleep is out now and available globally in paperback, audiobook, and ebook formats. We think you’ll get something life changing from it. Today we are talking about something a bit controversial - Blue Light Enjoy! For over a decade, warnings about blue light from our screens have dominated conversations about poor sleep. The narrative is simple: the blue glow of our devices disrupts our circadian rhythm, delaying sleep and leaving us groggy the next day. However, Hana Mendel’s deep dive into the science behind these claims reveals that the story is far more nuanced. The issue isn’t just about blue light—it’s about how modern life, in its entirety, disrupts our exposure to light and dark. Let’s unpack the details of her findings. The blue light panic began in 2014 with a small study that compared participants reading on an iPad before bed to those reading physical books. The iPad users took longer to…
People in this episode
Host: Dr Catherine Ball
Topics covered
- blue light
- sleep
- circadian rhythm
- modern life
- sleep disruption
Keywords
- blue light
- sleep
- circadian rhythm
- melatonin
- Hana Mendel
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: The Future of Sleep
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