Let night owls be night owls: How the pandemic could dethrone the larks

When the light starts to fade in the evening is when I start feeling it. A rush of heightened awareness, a palpable sense of increased IQ, like my brain is a Sim City growing on fast forward. Daytime's rural village of slow-talking neurons explodes into a bustling metropolis full of taxis, neon signs, and hot jazz. The sundown rush, I can confirm after years of experimentation, is unrelated to anything I might have imbibed, inhaled, or ingested. If anything, it feels like my morning coffee fully, finally, kicked in. 

Science is just waking up to why this might be a feature of my brain I can't and shouldn't try to change, at least not until I reach old age. No matter how many times we set the alarm early, or read books with hopeful and masochistic titles like The 5 a.m. Miracle: Dominate Your Day Before Breakfast, around one in five of us will never not be cranky and hard to rev up in the mornings.  Read more...