A sleep scientist's guide to rest, community, and Maine beaches

Tony Cunningham studies sleep for a living—how it shapes memory, emotion, and mental health. He's an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and runs the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. But his real expertise might be in knowing when to stop working and actually live.

Thursday nights in Jamaica Plain

Every summer and fall Thursday, Cunningham's neighborhood fills the lawn of the historic Loring Greenough House in Jamaica Plain. Food trucks arrive. Local breweries set up. Musicians play. Community groups run activities. For Cunningham, it's the antidote to the week—an "easy, joyful way to spend time outdoors with friends and family." There's something particular about it with young kids: they have space to run, burn energy, get tired. The adults actually get to talk.

This is what community looks like when it doesn't require much planning. Just show up Thursday evening. The infrastructure already exists.

The 90-minute reset

When Cunningham's family needs to step back, they drive 90 minutes to Ogunquit, Maine. The beach has soft sand and waves that actually crash. There are tide pools that stay warm enough to explore even in colder months. The Marginal Way—a clifftop walking path—delivers ocean views that shift with the seasons. The town has a welcoming, inclusive feeling, the kind of place where families return year after year and mark milestones. Birthdays, anniversaries, quiet weekends—they've celebrated them all there, usually over meals at restaurants that actually know what they're doing.

It's not complicated. It's just far enough away.

The caffeine math

Here's where the sleep scientist part comes back in. Cunningham's days are spent helping people understand why they can't sleep, why they forget things, why their mood spirals. His nights, with young kids at home, are often spent dreaming of catching up on sleep himself. He's not lecturing from theory.

One thing he shares: caffeine has a six-hour half-life. That afternoon coffee or energy drink? Half of it is still in your system at midnight. Not ideal if you want to actually sleep, retain what you learned, or wake up feeling human.

It's a small detail that lands harder when you know the person saying it has spent years in the lab watching what sleep deprivation does to the brain.