The 24 Hours
One episode for every hour of the day
Twenty-four episodes, one for every hour of the day. Each hour tells one aspect of sleepiness while driving: biology, the road, work, chemistry, technology, society. We produce them in-house, one after the other, and publish them here as the series takes shape.
Latest episode · 2026-09-0808:00 The commuterA long road costs you sleep, too. When you can't shorten the journey, protect your sleep.
Tap an hour to hear it. Every hour has its note: low when the body asks for sleep, brighter as alertness rises.
The inner circle follows the body's alertness over 24 hours: it widens towards the rim when we are awake and pulls back towards the centre when the body asks for sleep. The lowest point is around 4, the peak in mid-morning, a second dip after lunch.
The hours
The graphic signature
The Drive Awake mark is a clock. This series fills its dial. The graphic signature closes every episode: two chimes, the circle drawing itself, the orange hand reaching the threshold, night turning into wakefulness. In each episode the hand marks the hour of the chapter.
The collection 6 of 24
Hover for a preview, tap to watch here, open the details to understand it.
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08:00The commuter sociology of work · 48 s
A long road costs you sleep, too. When you can't shorten the journey, protect your sleep.
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07:00School and the road chronotypes · 48 s
At eighteen you can drive. But you still need to sleep. Protect your sleep before you leave.
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06:00The way home prevention · 48 s
The drive home is part of the shift. Sleep before you leave, or get a lift.
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05:00The night shift occupational medicine · 48 s
After a night at work, sleep is not a reward. It comes first.
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04:00The absolute minimum physiology · 48 s
The absolute minimum is not fought. It is waited out.
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03:00The critical window chronobiology · 48 s
Sleepiness is prevented. Not fought behind the wheel.
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More hours to come, one at a time.
A diary that began before the series
The 24 hours were not born on the day of the first episode. They were born with Drive Awake, when the project was still an idea to be explained: the mark was already a clock, and a clock asks to be filled. Since then we have taken notes sparingly, during the concept and then while building the platform, of the ideas that seemed to hold: one hour, one aspect of sleepiness, one figure with its source. The diary that follows is the visible part of that notebook.
If three episodes are now born in a few days, it is not haste: the earlier work built the template. The platform in four languages, the science sections with their DOIs, the Monte Verità voices, the graphic signature: every piece was an exercise, and continuous exercise became method. The images are generated with artificial intelligence tools, chosen and corrected by us, and declared; editing, typography, music, texts and scientific verification remain ours. Every episode goes from the sheet to the director before any image, and from the images to the voice, in four languages.
The project is the mediation of an author and his team between science and storytelling, between what can be proven and what can be said in fifty seconds. The series completes itself one hour at a time; the state of every hour is declared, never simulated. When the dial is full, the campaign will begin. Until then, the diary tells how we get there.
Production diary 7 notes · last 2026-09-08
- Episode 08 online, The commuter: the city at 8, tram and queue, milky sky; one more hour of commuting and almost a third of it taken from sleep (Christian 2012, Basner 2007). New one-hour share form; first city episode, generated and declared imagery.
- Episode 07 online, School and the road: a school forecourt at 7, white winter light, an eighteen-year-old's midpoint of sleep around 4:30 (Fischer 2017, Roenneberg 2004). New two-curve form, adult and adolescent; generated and declared imagery, teenagers always seen from behind.
- Episode 06 online, The way home: the mountain road at 6, light coming down the hairpins, one drive in three with a near-collision after the night shift (Lee 2016). First colour curve of dawn and new drive form; born from the template in one night, generated and declared imagery.
- Episode 05 online, The night shift: a hospital forecourt at 5, a nurse in profile, daytime sleep 2 to 4 hours shorter (Åkerstedt 2003). Third episode, the first with the bar form; born entirely from the template, generated and declared imagery.
- Episodes 03 and 04 realigned to the final template: text and mark outside the zones covered by social interfaces, the 24-hour curve also in 03, captions and thumbnails for every scene. From here on every episode is born with the same form.
- Episode 04 online: the first with the infographic layer (circadian curve, core temperature, reaction distance, 24-hour ring), every figure with a DOI. The rest area is a still frame we animated ourselves: mist, light, leaves.
- Episode 03 complete: pilot of the series, editing template, voice in four languages, graphic signature. The other twenty-three hours are declared ideas.