Empire of Sweat

Adam Gopnik muses on why he'll always love the steam baths in New York.

'My own pet answer,' Adam says, 'justified by intuition and half-heard rumours, is that it helps sleep to have a low internal body temperature. All that sweating lowers my own burning inner furnace and makes me more able to sleep.' This is, he admits, 'a perfectly sound scientific explanation that I have no intention of checking.'

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Liam Morrey Editor: Tom Bigwood