TEXT OF INTERVIEW
Bill Radke: Now, here is your autumnal reminder. Daylight saving time ends early Sunday morning, so you’ll reset your clocks backward, which means an extra hour of sleep. And sleep is the topic of this morning’s Marketplace Globalist Quiz, with the editor of TheGlobalist.com, Stephan Richter. Good morning.
Stephan Ricther: Good morning Bill. Are you ready for today’s quiz?
Radke: I am.
Richter: So here’s my question: Which industrialized country’s citizens spend the least time asleep per night? Is it: A) the United States, B) France, C) Mexico, or D) South Korea?
Radke: OK. Well Stephan, I’m always hearing that we work too much in this country and we don’t sleep. So I’m going to say Americans.
Richter: One would thinks so, but they get beat in the world. In fact, they’re some of the longest sleepers according to the OECD, sleeping more than eight-and-a-half hours a day.
Radke: We work too much and we’re lazy bums?
Richter: Well we’ve got it right in some sense. But who is the real American by your rule of sleeping short and working hard? Who in the world?
Radke: Hmm. My next guess? I’ll say the South Koreans don’t sleep enough.
Richter: Bingo. They’re also, as you may know, the hardest workers. They work the most hours, so they are the real Americans by your definition. And what we need to remember as Americans is that we just sleep 12 minutes less a day than the French. By golly, the French again. So that’s some troubling news for all of us.
Radke: Sad. Sad. Stephan Richter is publisher and editor-in-chief of TheGlobalist.com — the daily online magazine on the global economy, politics and culture.
Richter: Thanks for having me on Bill.
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