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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome back to Firewall. I'm your host, Bradley Tusk. My guest today is Minouche Samrati. You probably know her from all of her work on npr. And you might have read her first book, Bored and Brilliant, which came out in 2017. She's got a really great new book that's here to talk about. It's called the Body Electricity, the hidden health costs of the digital age and the new science to reclaim your well being. So it's, it's specifically really about like kind of how the world we're living in, which has obvious benefits but has real cost too, to our actual health and minutia, spent, you know, a lot of time documenting it in a really intelligent and compelling way. So thank you for joining us.
- [00:50]
B
Oh, thanks, Bradley.
- [00:51]
A
Yeah, so you've kind of become this like expert at the intersection of like health, physical health especially and tech. Had that happen.
- [01:01]
B
Okay, so for me it was always about the mental health.
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A
Yeah.
- [01:07]
B
As you mentioned, my first book was called Bored and Brilliant and that was about my just noticing my own habits, which was like after I got an iPhone, which some people probably can't even remember. But like there was this time where I was like this, this is so weird. Every time I'm waiting for the subway or waiting to get my coffee, I can do something, I can check the headlines, I can text my husband. Like, and then I started to be like, is that bad? Like I feel like I don't think as much as I used to because I'm always doing something. So that led me down the sort of rabbit hole to understand what happens when we get bored and our minds wander when we're not occupying our brains with something. And that was kind of fascinating to me that tech had taken the place of what had like a normal human state. Right. That we thought was bad, like getting bored.
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A
Right.
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B
And then more recently, and this was really over the pandemic that I was like, I don't get it. I'm at my laptop all day, I'm healthy, I am safe. Why am I so frickin tired? Like at the end, but like a weird tired. Like my brain was kind of buzzing, but I just felt like all I could do was slide off my desk and like over to the couch to scroll on my phone.
- [02:19]
A
Did you at first think, okay, it's just we're in the middle of a global pandemic, everything's weird. It must be that.
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B
Ye, yes. And then as things came back online, like the fe. Everything stayed on screens. It's not like you Know, being able to go outside changed that feeling. I was still working, mostly remotely.
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A
I didn't.
- [02:34]
B
I never went back to the office, actually, and. And I just couldn't. I couldn't. Like, I wanted to understand the biology of what all that sitting and looking at a screen was doing to us. And so at this time, I happened to hear about a study that had been done by Columbia University Medical center physiologist named Keith Diaz. So Keith has made it his mission to figure out the least amount of movement that the human body needs in order for this lifestyle that we've created, which revolves around screens and sitting. Doesn't lead you to an early grave, right? Like, he's setting the bar really low, right? And he had found that just five minutes of very gentle movement for every half hour during long, sedentary times had these dramatic results. They slashed people's blood glucose, they slashed their blood pressure. It gave back their focus, their mood. And I was like, what? That's it? Like, just all we have to do is move for five minutes every half hour.
- [03:33]
A
What's the human kind of natural tendency? Is it so for me, yeah, I do at least. I like to think I got kind of disturbed when I started looking at your work, honestly, that maybe I'm not. But, like, you know, I try to make sure I get 7 to 8,000 steps a day at least. I try to work out every day. And I'm sort of naturally fidgety, so I think that I move again. Until I started looking where you wrote, I wasn't totally sure. Now, looking at it, paying attention to it, is. Is a natural tendency to kind of move around, or is it that we are very sedentary creatures and if there's not an imperative to do so, we're just going to stay seated.
- [04:12]
B
I think the reason why technology has been so successful is in part because humans are always looking for shortcuts and efficiencies. So if there's a way for us to make something go faster, easier, take less steps, move less, we're all in, essentially. I mean, look at the history of transportation. Look at fast food restaurants. Look at escalators, right? We love a shortcut. And so some people are lucky, like you, that they're fidgety, but a lot
- [04:38]
A
of people, funny, no one ever said that to me.
- [04:40]
B
No, you are. I'm going to convince you of that by the end of this conversation. But I think most people are like, we. We're told from the minute we go to school that sitting and looking ahead, straight ahead, is what Diligence looks like. Right. Butts in chairs are what a good, productive worker looks like. And now we have, like, surveillance software technology tracking people to make sure their fingers are on the keyboard, that they're in documents, that. That is what we have been told is a good worker. But according to Keith, like, that's actually not good for your body or your brain.
- [05:14]
A
And is he saying, okay, so let's just say I'm Jeff Bezos or someone, and all I care about is maximization of. Of profit, and that's it. Right. And do I care what Keith thinks because it somehow makes my business better if people move around? Or am I just saying.
- [05:32]
B
Absolutely.
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A
Okay. Why.
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B
Yeah. So here's. And I should also say Jeff Bezos, I'm sure, is killing it at the gym. We've seen.
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A
He seems to look great.
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B
He seems to look great.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Yes.
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A
He's moving around.
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B
He's. Well. But probably the difference is what you were talking about is the amount as opposed to the frequency. The frequency. That is the difference. So we are told that physical. Like, we're supposed to get a certain amount of exercise per week. And actually it's more like per day, even per hour. And so what Keith told me was, like, even if you work out in the morning or you have a standing desk, those two things do not make a difference. Movement is the thing that you need to break up those sedentary hours. So I actually went up to his lab and I joined the study myself. So, like, one day I worked on my laptop, which was pretty much like a regular day, and I got up to use the bathroom. I, you know, ate lunch, that sort of thing. And then I went back and I did these movement breaks for every half hour, and my blood sugar was cut in half. My blood pressure dropped by five points. My mood was so much better, and I had focus again.
- [06:41]
A
So what was you. Was there data on how much or little you moved before you started focusing on it? Like, the first time you did it? Did they. Were they. Did they observe you and say minutiae moving, like, two minutes every two hours?
- [06:53]
B
They had tracked me for. There was a baseline that they had tracked me for a week. So they collected my glucose for a week, heart rate, steps, the whole jammy.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And, you know, not every day was as sloth, like, as that first day for me, but, like, a lot of days, right, where I'm, like, running around in the morning, getting the kids to school, maybe working out, and then sitting from, let's say, 9 to 12, and then maybe I get up and I get, you know, make some lunch and then I sit down again one to five, and then I make dinner, and then I'm sitting again to watch some Netflix. Like, it adds up.
- [07:29]
A
Yeah. And that's. And does it matter where you live? Like, I like to tell myself, and this might not be true. Oh, I live in New York City, so I'm walking places, I'm taking the subway, I'm going up and down stairs. It's healthier for me. And I know there are other arguments about noise pollution or whatever, but, like, to be in a place like this. Is that true or is it sort
- [07:49]
B
of the same problem? Yes, true walkability is incredibly important. Blue zones, like, you know, we've heard about them. These are places where people can get to work, they can get run their errands on foot. They can integrate movement into their lives. Like, that is crucial. So the thing, though, that when I talked to Keith, he's like, I think this is stupid because I don't think anybody can actually do this. That was the question he had because.
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A
Right.
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B
Most of America does not live in a walkable sort of place. So what we ended up doing was combining forces together and doing a clinical trial. We recruited NPR listeners. We had 20,000. Well, 23,000 people sign up. We had to close the trial. And we tried to track could people integrate movement breaks into their lives every 30 minutes, every hour, or every two hours? And then we sort of. It's under peer review right now. But the resort, the results were really, really fascinating. We found that on average, fatigue dropped by 25%, which is pretty cool. We found that people, like, their aches and pains went away, their mood stabilized, they would come back to their desk able to focus again. But this is what's interesting, I think, goes back to Mr. Bezos. Productivity actually rose despite all the interruptions. Well, because I'll give you my firsthand experience. Because I also found that my productivity rose because I think we do less busy work. There was this sense of, like, instead of grinding through and producing crap, like, I would stop and I would actually consider, like, during my little walking break. Oh, yeah, I have to answer that email. What do I actually, really want to say instead of spinning my wheels? So.
- [09:30]
A
And then it makes you more efficient in the time you have. Actually, it's fun. I was listening to Derek Thompson's podcast yesterday. Someone on. He was telling the story of Frank Lloyd Wright, apparently was like a very famous procrastinator.
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B
Oh, really?
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A
And Falling Water, which is his most famous work. He had been Commissioned to do it, did nothing. And then, like, the person who hired him called and said, oh, I'm gonna. I'm in. I'm three hours away from your studio. I'm gonna stop by and see the drawings. He's like, oh. And then he literally. And it was exactly what it was like. They didn't even change it once.
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B
Perfect.
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A
So, yeah.
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B
Yeah, totally perfect. Well, so I think, you know, for some people, they're like, what do you mean? I'm gonna have to take all these walks. But the other thing that we found was, like, just taking four to five breaks a day really made a huge difference.
- [10:14]
A
And so what is it? Like, someone's listening to this. Okay, I believe you. Yeah, yeah, I want to do it. Like, what's your advice for what that should actually mean for someone who has a desk job where they're otherwise seated?
- [10:26]
B
Okay, so I had the same question, but I think it's really important to explain the biology.
- [10:30]
A
Yeah.
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B
Which is so different. Like tech. You can update it, you can upgrade it, it run. You know, sometimes you have to reset it, but not that often. Right. And I think we're sort of setting the standards for ourselves based on how quickly our operating system is working. But here's the biology of what happens to you when you're sitting and looking at a screen. Okay. So first of all, your leg muscles need stimulation. So if you're sitting or even, like, just standing still at a standing desk, that stimulation doesn't happen. The muscles need to be stimulated because that is how they pull the glucose and the fat out of your bloodstream. That's what lowers your blood sugar. That's what also can lower your blood pressure. And then also they pump oxygen up to your brain, which of course, you need to think. Then there's the fact that when we sit, we sort of curve over our devices like a boiled shrimp.
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A
Our posture must be historical terrible. Yeah.
- [11:23]
B
But, you know, never mind the pain that you have in your shoulders, etc. You're also constricting your diaphragm, which restricts, like, how big, deep breaths that you can take. We've all heard how important, you know, Silicon Valley is really into breath work and all those things. Well, there's a reason why you need those deep breaths to oxygenate your brain again. And then there's a third thing which I thought was, like, I'd never heard of. This is fascinating. It's called interoception. It's the sense your body tells you what it needs. So some of that is subconscious, like, you Know you, you're breathing. Right. It doesn't tell you, breathe, breathe, breathe. Once in a while it might say, take a deep breath. But other times it's like, oh, I'm gonna take off my jacket because it's getting warm in here. Interoception. A lot of times we don't listen to the signals that our body needs because what are we doing? We're staring at a screen and we're so captivated by what's on the screen that we don't hear our body saying, you kind of need to get up, you could use a break, your back is hurting, you need a snack, etc. Etc. So there was a study done at the University of Burn who, like, they, they tracked people's embodied sense. Like, did they feel in their bodies? If they took 10 minute breaks, that sort of sense went back online.
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A
Right. Is. Feels to me like zoom is a culprit here specifically. I don't know. Or any sort of Google Meet whatever team.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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A
In that, like, I don't. I'm not on that many phone calls anymore.
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B
Right.
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A
When I was on phone calls or when I'm on a phone call now, I pace. Which is good.
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B
Which is good. Yeah.
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A
But you can't really do that if you're on a zoom call where there's other people looking at you. Right. You can't sort of get up and leave. So have we. Did. Did Covid kind of change our specific behavior from a work standpoint, that has sort of made this problem even worse.
- [13:12]
B
So I think zoom, like, we've all sensed that, like, zoom fatigue, but there have now actually been some studies looking into it. And as you can guess, like the cognitive load looking at people trying to understand what, like when you sit, you and I are sitting here, I can see your body language. I see, like where you're looking. I'm getting all these signals from you. I'm getting so much data from you that isn't coming just out of your mouth. We don't get that on a zoom. So we're looking for all that that's taxing on us.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Also oftentimes we don't turn off our own camera, which drives me because I'm like, oh my God, what, do I really look that tired?
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A
I know I am good about turning off my own camera. Otherwise I'm just like upset the entire time.
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B
The worst. And then if there's the teeniest lag, like even, just like you don't even notice, like humanly notice if there's just a Teeny lag. Your brain is making up for that as well. So scientists, cognitive scientists have been like, if you can turn off your camera, do it. If this one researcher in Austria told me that, like he and his researchers, they get online, they say hello to each other, and then they all turn off their cameras and they limit meetings to 10 minutes, that's good.
- [14:18]
A
I have also found myself lately occasionally saying to people like, let's just have a conference call. Like, why Totally. We have to go log in and all this stuff. And then invariably you log in and says, well, zoom needs to update. Or teens, it's like a new hour to log into that one. Right. So talk a little bit about. I want to kind of finish like the science and the problem and then start talking through the solutions.
- [14:44]
B
Yeah.
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A
So you might have something you want to. I would want to ask about the relationship between the biology of your physical health and then the impact on your mental health and kind of the connection between the two. Because, you know, you were saying that. I think you're right, but it's a little counterintuitive, which is that people do seek the shortcut, the efficiency, and I think we are taught some of that too. But at the same time, those are all acts that tend to then increase our depression and decrease our happiness and well being. So that first thing before we even get into the sort of, like, how do we deal with that? Like, what is, how should people think about the connection between the two? If I'm sitting for too long, we know that it's going to impact my blood sugar, my blood pressure, all that stuff. How is it impacting my brain chemistry?
- [15:34]
B
Yeah. I think we've talked so much about rising rates of anxiety and depression in particularly young people, but in us adults as well. And I think we are leaving the physical costs out of the equation. Your body is one system. Right. It's not like your brain on a stick and then like a meat sack attached to it. Right. Like those. It's a, it's a. That to me is the big thing that I felt like I learned. I was like, we talk about like, oh, it's the content that's making me depressed. Oh, it's the hours of comparing myself to people, etc. Etc. I think it's also because we're sitting on our butts a lot of the time and that, you know, you. Can I give you another example? We're starting to understand some of the other connections. So there's a researcher at University of Pittsburgh named Peter Strick, who his kids Were like, dad, you're so stressed out, you should do yoga. You really need to deal with your stress. And he was like, there is no scientific evidence that yoga actually decreases your stress levels. And then he was like, actually is there? Somebody said so then he went to find out and he, he mapped neural pathways between the adrenal glands, which is where, you know, cortisol is squirting out. And our stomach, the muscles around our torso and areas in the brain, the motor cortex.
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A
Right.
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B
So there's a constant.
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A
Yeah, yeah. I've been reading about sort of the microbiome and its impact on your kind of mental.
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B
Totally, exactly. But I'm talking about the muscles, the actual muscle itself, yoga. If you're doing pilates and you get that blood list out feeling there are actual pathways that explain that. I also talked to another guy who's mapping. It's preliminary, but they think maybe some of the colon cancer, you know, that rates of colon cancer are really high, that he has mapped a pathway between the colon and leg muscles. So he, there's, you know, sudden. Maybe it's not the thing that's calling causing these reasons, but it's might be one of the key things that is also causing these rising rates of colon cancer. So, you know, people studying this are on this new horizon of understanding how our organs, our muscles and our brain are talking to each other non stop. And it is one beautiful loop in terms of dealing with how movement breaks affect people's mental health. We saw it in terms of not just fatigue and tiredness, but also in the sense that like I saw my mood just go like this at the, like on the day where I sat and on the day that I moved, I was oxygenated, my brain was firing. It's good for learning, it's good for understand processing the information you get from remembering it all the constant switching, switching, switching that we do between tasks burns through glucose, glucose, glucose.
- [18:23]
A
Right. So work from home. You mentioned that you never really went back to work.
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B
Yeah.
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A
How much would if there were a. If work from home just became banned. Right. If Trump issued one of the executive orders and said everyone who works from home will be shot and everyone had to go back to the office wherever they go. How much would that help on this?
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B
Well, I don't think it's whether we work from home or not. I think there needs to be a culture change that we think that sitting in a chair and looking at a screen is what productivity looks like. Like, and so some of the hacks that we saw people use is like you can do settings in Google Calendar, make your meetings 55 minutes instead of an hour.
- [19:00]
A
By the way, everyone would thank you for that.
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B
Yeah, 100% right.
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A
No one ever said that meeting was too short. Yeah.
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B
But what I do hear from people is that they're like in meeting to meeting to meeting, they don't remember what happened in any of the meetings, despite all the AI transcriptions that are coming in, which nobody ever looks at. And so nobody actually processes what they're talking about. They never actually can have taken time to do the work that needs to be done. And then the other thing, like I've been talking to a lot of people in tech and they're like, this AI thing is killing me. I'm working 16, 17, 18 hour days. I'm overseeing eight agents. I have to check all of the agents work to make sure it's not bs. And so I don't know if you saw recently, a couple months ago, researchers at Berkeley termed it like, or was it bcg. In any case, they called it AI brain fry. Because people are describing this like out of body experience. They feel like they are disconnected from what they biologically need. I'm like, we've been here before. Like Shoshana Zuboff, the Harvard researcher back in the 70s and early 80s, watched bank employees who are the first ones to use PCs, and she would ask them, how do you feel? And they, they said something like, I, I feel like I'm floating in space. I feel like I'm trapped behind like glass, Right?
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A
Yeah, you're almost, you are in a different reality.
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B
You are in a different reality. Exactly right. And I honestly, like, I, I am not a Luddite. Like I know there's this Luddite movement among Gen Z and God Bless, but like I have teenagers, I have elderly parents, I really love my job. I don't want to get rid of my deck. I would like to live with it without it destroying my health.
- [20:38]
A
Right. And then the other thing still on sort of the problem slash benefit is the constant stimulation probably has a counterproductive effect on our ability to be creative and thoughtful and like, you kind of almost need like, I'll give you an example. So I'm a really failed meditator, right. Can't do it. Like I see you, my friend, put the effort in. Right. I took weekly classes and then I read an article yesterday in the Athletic about like someone saying that Kobe Bryant, and I'm not like one of these Kobe, you know, disciples, but nonetheless would just for 15 minutes a day, just Sit with his eyes closed, not meditate.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Think about whatever he felt like thinking about, but just not have any stimulation.
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B
Okay.
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A
And so I tried that this morning. It's n of 1 so far, 1 day. But, like, I actually thought it was pretty great because when I meditate or try to, and then I fail to focus on my breath, I start berating myself. I get upset. This was just like, take whatever the fuck you want. Doesn't matter. Just sit there for 15 minutes with no stimulation. And that I think that's a forced version of, I think the. Of the solution to the. To the norm now of sort of constantly seeking stimulation and trying to be productive. So talk a little about kind of
- [22:00]
B
the science absolutely backs that up. There is a researcher that I worked with for the book named Saeed Khalsa. He's now at ucla. So he's. This is interoception. Right. There are some people who take in their. The signs that their body is sending them in different ways. Some people he's been studying, particularly people with anxiety disorders and eating disorders. And one of the treatments that they've been looking at is those floating pods, you know, those places you go in. It's like sensory deprivation kind of to sort of reset the brain, listening to the body. I've also talked to a lot of parents who have autistic kids whose interoception is dialed way down. Like, these are kids who don't know that they need to go to the bathroom. Right. Or forget to eat. Then there are other people who are like, oh, my God, my heart's racing. Am I having a heart attack? Right. So interoception needs to be dialed in. You want a little bit so that you know what your body needs, but not too much.
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A
Right.
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B
So Saeeb said to me, we are bombarded all day long between the notifications, answering everything. I mean, we live in New York City, so there's all that as well. All the constant audio, visual chaos. We're processing, processing, processing. He is like, if you, you know, he's. He. Based on the papers that he's written, he think float tanks are the best way to go. If you can't do that, he says, create your own float tank at home. Close all the shades, get rid of the dog, don't listen to any music, don't try to meditate. Exactly what you did. Basically just take in nothing. Take in nothing. Just be right.
- [23:33]
A
Right. Which is such a. It seems like the most obvious state of being, and yet these days is sort of the least likely.
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B
Totally, you Know, I've been thinking about that so much. Like we never said that we needed to get out in nature until we started having cities. Right. Like we. It's like that story like David Foster Wallace, you know where the. He talks about the fish who they're like how's the water man and the fish like water. Yeah. So I think that's what we're talking about here. We have to talk about movement. The human body is no longer needed for labor.
- [24:03]
A
Right. And by the way, that as AI and robotics increases, well that much more so. So are you in the camp of that what we just talked about will therefore even become more problematic because you won't even be doing, you won't even have blue collar jobs necessarily doing the labor. Once they can figure out the hands for robotics or is it AI will be able to do so much of the work that people will have a lot more free time and therefore can get the movement they need and things like that.
- [24:34]
B
Look, I would love to like be set free by AI to go frolic in fields whenever I want to. Every time we hear just be digital fields. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, I might be strapping on my VR and like dancing around.
- [24:50]
A
That's ever going to catch on. I don't either.
- [24:52]
B
There's something to say. So gross.
- [24:53]
A
Just don't want it feels dirty.
- [24:54]
B
I don't know. Anyway, but to each their own. I'm trying not to be judgmental. Like whatever works for you. Whatever like gets you moving. Great. I don't believe it. Like again, the human body doesn't necessarily crave movement. So and this is interesting to me, there are some people like you who feel the need to move and fidget and at. For my. So my mom is one of those people, she like can't stop moving, never stops moving. It used to annoy the crap out of me. And I was like, I clearly did not get the gene for this. But we saw something really interesting. Just going back to our clinical trial. The people who succeeded with sticking with the movement breaks, they started by setting timers. Like, okay, I'm going to take a movement break at 11. I'm going to take one at noon and one at one. But by the end of the two weeks, they didn't need a timer anymore. Their interoception had sort of kicked back
- [25:48]
A
in and their body was the reset you were talking about before.
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B
Exactly, exactly. So I got, just got back from the TED Conference.
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A
Yeah, I'm going to ask you about that.
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B
Yeah, dude, I was like an 8 year old boy in these long sessions, squirming, had to get up like I could not sit still. And I was like if that's me, like you know, middle aged woman who can't sit still. Think of all these kids who we are asking to sit and like we know.
- [26:12]
A
Well. Right. And you know, it's funny. So I had been saying just sort of that if you were. So the kids that seem to me to be the. The people most likely diagnosed with ADD are rich kids in cities. Because my kids. Right. Because I can afford to have them go get a neuropsych.
- [26:30]
B
Yes.
- [26:31]
A
And but I'm pretty sure that if we all got neuropsychs, 99% of us at this point would be diagnosed as ADD. Because the phones by definition create all that stimulation creates it. But I think maybe also it is the, the lack of movement perhaps also exacerbates it employees into it. So we have these two. You have the devices doing it, then you have the culture.
- [26:55]
B
Yes.
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A
And you put them together and it's really creating this issue which by the way, therefore maybe some of the. Again, I'm not anti medicine at all, but maybe the answer is not just Ritalin, but it's Ritalin plus prescribed movement.
- [27:11]
B
I think I absolutely agree with you that there is a more nuanced conversation. So there are researchers in Toronto who are probably proposing that there be like, you know how there's two kinds of diabetes, like behind genetic and the kind lifestyle. They think there should also be two kinds of adhd. The kind that's genetic and the kind that's like.
- [27:29]
A
Right. So the genetics should be relatively constant.
- [27:32]
B
Right, exactly.
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A
But then I think you're gonna, if
- [27:34]
B
you did like a spectrum, there might be combinations of.
- [27:37]
A
For sure. Right. But I would imagine like the lifestyle would have been like at some point close to zero. And now it's just like a absolute hockey stick of growth.
- [27:45]
B
Yeah. 100%. And wait, where were we on that? I had something else to add now.
- [27:50]
A
Movement ADD kids.
- [27:53]
B
Oh, controversial here.
- [27:55]
A
Yeah.
- [27:56]
B
I am sort of over shaming kids for being on social media and online because the more I talk to people who are studying teens and screens, the more they say there are so many other reasons why kids are quote unquote sad.
- [28:14]
A
Yeah.
- [28:15]
B
And that screens. Yes. There may be one of the things. But we run the risk of looking at kids phones and not looking at the whole situation.
- [28:23]
A
Yeah. Let me push back that a little bit. Which is. I don't think that's wrong. There's certainly a lot of factors. Right. For sure. And we Have a sort of a tendency to just focus on one thing and blame it. Right. And obviously the demagoguery of our politics today is specialized in that, you know, more than anything, right? Yeah, but I would say so. Human beings have an evolutionary negativity bias which is critical. Right. Otherwise, you know, when you smell gas, that's how you know to leave the house. You see, you go the other way. But we always, you don't lose it, right? You always have it. And the social media platforms are very well aware of this and they know that if they give us two different headlines, the one that is more toxic by definition is the one we're more likely to click on. When their entire business model is just based on clicks, right? Clicks mean revenue. They are heavily incentivized to push the more toxic content. And because I don't think this mutually exclusive to what you're saying, but there is no liability for the platforms in the content, in the lack of any moderation and of the content that they push, it's basically in their interest to push the most harmful stuff. So while social media may only be one of multiple causes because the social media companies effectively make their money by showing kids the worst possible stuff, we're just, they're just sitting ducks.
- [29:49]
B
I absolutely could not agree more. There needs to be more legislation. There needs to be regulation of big tech companies. They're like, there's predatory things happening.
- [29:58]
A
Section230, if you just repealed that, that in of itself would cause a chunk of it.
- [30:02]
B
Here's what I worry about, that people are like, see, we did it. We regulated.
- [30:07]
A
That's always the problem.
- [30:08]
B
And we fix the problem. Kids are going to be safe now for sure. That's bullshit.
- [30:13]
A
By the way. In my day job, sometimes if I want, if I oppose a regulation for say a portfolio company of mine, I'll actually push a regulation that's pretty milquetoast. So they feel like, oh, we dealt with it, you know, so. Which is not what you would expect. But it's like, oh, if we just fight it off, it's going to keep coming back. Give them like a little bit of win and you solve the problem. We're you know, we're so, you know, you, you showed us and then you just go about your sort of the
- [30:42]
B
thing like, good, I'm glad that we are banning phones from schools. That's great. But then what are we doing in schools to give kids more opportunity to have social situations, to move their bodies, all of those things.
- [30:56]
A
Right? So that's a good segue. Into the solutions. So let's start with that and then I'll reverse the order of how I was going to ask you about it. So there we were talking before we started recording about some states are either have adopted or considering legislation to mandate things like recess to try to actually create what you're talking about. What do you think of those? And. And what are the things that government could do through regulation before we get to the other types of solutions?
- [31:24]
B
Yeah, right now in most places it's left up to the schools and it's actually left up to the teachers one by one in the classrooms of how they want to. Whether they want to integrate movement into their day at all, whether the school has recess and. Or it's. You know, my kids went to New York City schools. There were definitely days when the weather was bad where they were put in front of SpongeBob SquarePants and that was a big old bummer. Like, Right. So I think more resources for teachers, like teaching them ways of letting movement happen in the classroom, which will actually
- [31:59]
A
make their job easier. Even if it seems more chaotic, it will actually help them.
- [32:03]
B
I totally get that. Like, if you have 30 kids, like that's a lot of kids moving around. Chaos may rain. However, I would love for teachers to get more resources so that they can do things like there's a program called Math and Movement where they do like, you know, time stamps using their body. Exactly.
- [32:23]
A
Which by the way, is probably more engaging material for the kids anyway. And if you give the kids the chance to move around a little bit, then the odds of them then being able to sort of sit the rest of the time seem higher. Because all of the problems that you talked about are less likely to occur.
- [32:39]
B
Exactly. So that as part of this sort of movement in many states to either increase recess or have a law at all, it's this idea that it's not like it's not a punishment to take recess away. Growing up, that was like a big thing. Like you were bad in the lunchroom. You stay here and you don't get recession and the kids who need to move, which is every kid, it's a disaster. It's a total disaster.
- [33:06]
A
Right. Actually you're fucking over the teacher for the rest of the day more than anyone else. Right. Because now you have a kid that's out of his mind 100%. Okay.
- [33:14]
B
And I also.
- [33:14]
A
Yeah.
- [33:16]
B
Just because you need like recession and at sixth grade, like there are days where it's beautiful outside and I've said to my 16 year old, did you get outside at all today. No.
- [33:25]
A
Right.
- [33:26]
B
Nothing. And there was a time where it had been like, well, that's good. You know, your teachers are taking this seriously. You have SATs coming up, Etc. But the more I have learned about how the brain needs movement in order to learn, in order to process information and to. To hold on to information.
- [33:43]
A
Well, I mean, you could even. We. We got touched on this on a podcast the other day. Just sort of take a step back from the philosophy of teaching that we have, which has always been like, okay, students need to learn these subjects at these points in their educational career in order to have the skills they need to have a job or whatever else. Okay? But in a world now of AI and everything else, the access to information is so great that it's not clear that memorizing a bunch of facts really does, if it ever did, does you any good now. Right? And, like, I made a proposal that I'm sure a lot of people would hate to say if there's only X amount of time in the school day, which there is. Like, my daughter under what's called dialectical behavioral therapy, which was unbelievably helpful in learning how to handle stressful situations, handle anxiety, deal with other people, understand your own body, understand your own brain. And she did it because she had developed issues by all the toxic content that she was seeing on Instagram, but it was so remarkably transformative for her. So I did the class too, because I was curious what she was learning. Learning. When I came out of it, I was like, you know what? Instead of, like, teaching Spanish, where, like, kind of kids learn it and then they forget it the minute they leave school anyway, making an elective or something's got to go. I get that. And teach kids how to take care of themselves, mentally, emotionally, financially, financially. Right. Their physical health. And, like, don't treat, like, health class as a joke. Like, in many ways, that may be the single most important thing to helping people learn how to go about their lives in a way that maximizes their chances of feeling good and not depressed. And movement could be built into all of this. And also, like, you know, in a world of AI where we just don't know what the future's gonna be. Right. Like, I was talking to someone today. Like, they were saying, oh, well, the answer is job training. I said, look, I'm an early stage venture capitalist, so if anyone should know what the jobs of tomorrow are gonna be, it's me and my peers. Right? I know. We don't know. Right? So instead of trying to like make everyone learn how to become a plumber. You know, why don't we just say like, okay, there are critical thinking skills that are clearly going to matter, narrow AI so let's teach those in school. And it doesn't matter what bucket it falls in. Maybe we get rid of the buckets entirely and we just say, what are the skills that kids need to learn to be able to think rationally and intelligently for sort of the economy of tomorrow, understand their minds, understand their bodies, understand their lives and just give them the tools. And maybe that doesn't mean first you have science and you have math, then you have history. It might be a total rethinking of it, but it would seem like I think we should be moving in that direction anyway. And then I think what you're talking about, A, is totally logically consistent with it. And then B could easily be. If you were going to rethink the school day anyway, you could really incorporate a lot of what you talk about book.
- [36:48]
B
There is a school, it's a private school in Washington D.C. called the River School, where movement is integrated into everything. They do, they move the desks around, they go, they're out of their class, they rarely spend time in their classrooms. They're outside, they're walking, they're moving, they do math on the basketball court. So there are models and I guess
- [37:07]
A
Montessori is sort of a variation of it in a way, right?
- [37:10]
B
Definitely. Yeah. But the other thing that I keep thinking about as you were talking about different kinds of jobs is one of the things I talk about in the book is thinking of yourself as an information athlete. Right. Like people who are musicians or dancers or airline pilots, they know that they need to regulate how they use their body and their mind so that they can produce their best work. And so I think we need to start thinking of ourselves that way as well. We understand how the brain processes information enough that we understand that there are things we can do physically in order to help ourselves develop good decision making skills. Develop judgment. Is this a good output from our AI or a piece of poop?
- [37:53]
A
Right.
- [37:54]
B
You know, like, because that's what I spend a lot of my day doing right now too. And I think obviously in journalism we're not supposed to use it at all, which I think is extremely short sighted because everybody is moving that way. So I just spend a lot of time testing it. Like, what kind of answers am I getting? What is useful? How can I cut corners? And I mean, is the fantasy that I spend more time walking my dog? Sure, I don't think that people want to work less. We like to work.
- [38:22]
A
You need meaning and purpose.
- [38:23]
B
Yes, exactly. And so what we want to do though, I think is bring back like a little sense of joy in our lives. Right now it feels like we are grinding it out, right. The headlines are exhausting us.
- [38:35]
A
Everyone feels like now, I mean, I have. There are days where I just decide, screw it, I'm not going to read the Times today or the Journal or whatever it is, because I'm just like, I can't.
- [38:43]
B
And that's self preservation. Absolutely. So to me, it's like, let's. Like Keith did with his 5 minutes movement. Let's set the bar really low, right? Let's get people to just move a little more to feel good in their bodies. Not because they're killing it at the gym, but because they're a human being.
- [39:01]
A
Right.
- [39:01]
B
Who can breathe.
- [39:02]
A
So that gets into, though you talked earlier, sort of the social norms around productivity and efficiency, right? So we are taught to believe that. And I don't disagree. Like anyone who's successful in any profession. And I've been teaching, trying to teach, because it works hard, right? There's no, there's no like, shortcut where like, oh, I can work so smart that I only. No, if you're really ambitious, you got to work really hard, right? But if it's solely focused on maximum productivity and efficiency at all times, it's not only physically unhealthy and mentally unhealthy, but to the point you made counterproductive to your output itself.
- [39:47]
B
It's really hard.
- [39:48]
A
How do you change those norms?
- [39:49]
B
It's. I. It's a struggle for me every single day. I'm like, I just want to keep doing this. I want to finish this. But I can tell that, like, my brain is like, starting to get, like, mushy. Yeah, you should step away. You should take a break. Yeah, but should I. If I just work another hour, I think I'll be done. And then I'm spinning my wheels. We need to look like the data is there. And so for me, it's reminding myself every day. You've done this before. It works. Just freaking stand up and do it.
- [40:14]
A
Right?
- [40:15]
B
So to me, it's like cultural norms. Like, there was one person who described it's totally normal to be bobbing up and down on a zoom call because they're doing the zoom and shuffle. Or they all have walking pads in their office. Or my personal fantasy is that there are offices that are ringed by a walking, like, on a Cruise ship. You know how there's, like a walking
- [40:34]
A
place we'll get neurovirus at work?
- [40:36]
B
Well, yeah, not more Hansavirus, but that you'll walk and talk, right? That you'll be able to do that.
- [40:42]
A
Yeah, sure. I. By the way, sometimes, I mean you with my. Especially with kids. But in general, when you are sometimes walking with someone and talking to them, you can have harder conversations in a better way. Especially with kids, because if it's an embarrassing topic for them, not having to physically look at you makes it easier for them to engage but also work sometimes. Right. I mean, if. If at least the weather's okay. New York's not always great. I'll say someone like, you want to just take a walk and talk about this just because, like, our office is on Gramercy park and, like, let's just walk around the park. You know, we're not allowed inside, but we can walk around the park.
- [41:16]
B
And when you're. When you move in tandem with someone, your brains actually sync up. So which I.
- [41:22]
A
That's interesting. Yeah.
- [41:23]
B
So I had been doing that with over the Pandemic. When my kids would drive me crazy, I would make them l arms with me and try to walk. You know, you'd like. Yeah, right, then left, then right, then left. Like, how fast can we do it? How long can we do it? And it always ended up with us cracking up and laughing. But then the more I looked into it, there's like, your brain, actually you feel connected in some way.
- [41:47]
A
For employers listening, what advice would you give them to get? Have the best, happiest, healthiest workforce that actually gives you the best output.
- [41:58]
B
You need to make it okay for people to take breaks. And those breaks should not be scrolling on their phones. Those breaks should be getting up and moving. It's tricky because Americans love to be like, well, you know, we're going to actually add that to your insurance policy, and if you don't get 7,000 steps, then you'll pay a higher premium. Right. We love to turn things into extremes, but I think what we're talking about is a culture of getting up and moving is not only acceptable, it's encouraged. If you want to join it, you can. I mean, we heard funny stories where people would, like, one dude would just run up and down the cubicles yelling, like, break time. And people wanted to stand up. Good. Right. There's other things that you can embed. There is a. In teams, actually. There's something called breakthrough where you can it so that it doesn't look like something Else you can stay in your office, you click that, you can stand up and do a two minute break. I think it just has to be normal. Like it used to be completely normal to go out for a smoke break. Like to essentially fill your lung.
- [43:00]
A
Everyone should take up smoking.
- [43:01]
B
Yeah, well, but why? You know what I mean?
- [43:04]
A
Like, if you're, I got to get
- [43:05]
B
out and take a movement break, like that should be fine. Move break.
- [43:08]
A
Bloomberg's the one that made us all sick.
- [43:10]
B
Yeah, but how weird is that to think it was, I remember it was completely normal.
- [43:17]
A
And there are so like, I would say, at least for, for my, you know, employees, my companies, like, we have a view of like, there's a certain amount of work to get done, it needs to get done. We'll kind of give you the autonomy to figure out how and when. I mean, if you're not doing it right, we're going to have a problem. But if you are, and that means you say like, I need to leave at 5 and go to the gym or do this or that and then pick it back up at 8 or whatever, fine. If it's, you know, I'm going to do a meeting this way instead of that way or a conference call, like, fine. Like just not. Maybe the work we do requires less prescription than other types of work. But like, you know, generally, in my view of giving your employees a little bit of autonomy to get the best work out of themselves, I find tends to pay off from an economic standpoint.
- [44:03]
B
Yeah. And like we heard of some bosses who would say if we're in a meeting together, movement breaks are totally acceptable. If we're with clients, they're not, you know, like it's on the boss to make it feel normal. But to your point of what you just said, I think what's hard about all of these prescriptions and ideas is that we, we actually are all very special snowflakes. Like genetically lifestyle, the way our brains work, the way we use our tools in particular, like it's. On average a person uses 11 different digital tools at work. And like we all use them differently. It's not like it's like a hammer and everybody hits the nail pretty much the same way.
- [44:39]
A
Although I bet carpenters would tell you that's not true.
- [44:41]
B
Maybe. But there is a way. Like if you're going to make a bench, you follow these rules. Whereas if you're going to use Google,
- [44:48]
A
I can't make a bench. Doesn't matter what the rules are.
- [44:50]
B
You're like my husband. So. Yeah. So I think we Are every person has to be able to figure it out on their own. But that, as you said earlier, telling people that it's important that they tend to their brain and their mind. In a world where it feels like we're just racing ahead all the time, it, it could cause a lot of our, our health insurance problems as well. I mean, you know, type 2 diabetes has doubled in young people over the past 20 years. A 19 year old moves as much as a 60 year old on average today.
- [45:21]
A
Right. All of these things sort of like are all phenomenons of kind of the modern culture we have, which, you know, has made our lives better in some ways and also created challenges in others. And like I would say you mentioned a lot, the answer isn't to put your head in the sand. It's to figure out what works and what doesn't work. And if something doesn't work, what are the adjustments we make? Right.
- [45:41]
B
I agree. Pragmatism. Yeah.
- [45:44]
A
Real fast. You just came back from TED like two weeks ago or that. So how was this year? What was kind of the most interesting stuff you saw?
- [45:52]
B
Well, I had a great time because I curated a session actually which was about back to biological basics. So I had Michael Snyder, he's a wearables guy from Stanford University who like I love it. You're like, michael, show us your hands. He's wearing like four different aura rings and like all kinds of different wristbands and all the rest of it. And he is showing like the future of personalized medicine in, in terms of type 2 diabetes. There's so many different kinds of type 2 diabetes based on some of the work that he's doing, which was really interesting. Candace Odgers, she is one of those teens and screens researchers at UC Irvine. She presented a rebuttal to John Height who was also there, which was really so his.
- [46:35]
A
What was her we all know kind of Heights work. What was her case to say John was wrong?
- [46:41]
B
She says it's not in the data based on all the work that she's been doing. Social media is actually doesn't even rank as one of the things that is affecting kids mental health. It's. She believes the number one thing is adult mental health. That if you have a kid who's adult in their life is struggling. That's where it comes from.
- [47:01]
A
Yeah, I mean I'll, I'll say this because I spent an amount of time reading the World Happiness Report and thinking about it, so. So the US this year was 62nd for kids under the age of people under the age of 25, 23rd overall, which is not great either, but especially bad. And you know, I think I probably, I'm not sure that I would be willing to say that he's wrong, but I would say that. So the country that is number two is Israel. And what was fascinating to me is it's a country that is under existential threat all the time, especially now. But like all the time. Right. And everyone is forced to serve in the military and it increases their happiness because they have a shared sense of purpose and culture and mission and they believe in something greater than themselves. And to me, look, as great as I believe that capitalism is, and I think capitalism, you've probably been at the TED Talk where Steven Pinker or someone talks about the 3 billion people lifted out of extreme poverty because of capitalism. And I agree with that. But the way we do it in the US which is so much taken to its logical conclusion, is a zero sum mentality where to be happy, have to be successful. To be successful, you specifically have to accumulate as much status and wealth as possible. I think Trump is the ultimate manifestation of that mentality. And by definition, if only the most successful, the 1% can be happy, then you're basically telling the other 99% you're not going to be happy. And then there's someone in the 1%. I can tell you they're all fucking relative to happiness is relative to how well they do they're doing against each other also. Right. So there's definitely, I would agree that there's at least a lot of causes for it. And a lot of them are more than just looking at a screen and what you see on it.
- [48:41]
B
So after I went to ted, I went to Summit at Sea, which. Which speaks to the 1% who seem pretty damn unhappy. I mean, these were like the hardest bodies I have ever seen. The amount of conspiracy theories that were floating around, the obsession with peptide stacks, etc, it was pretty intense.
- [49:01]
A
Yeah, yeah. So, all right, what was the final. You see those are two people. Who else in your curation were you excited about?
- [49:08]
B
Well, actually Dhruv Kular, he's a New York Times, he's a. Oh yeah, New Yorker writer. Yeah. He talked about Ozempic and how it's changing what we think about addiction. And that actually starting to show it's very much in the biology, not personality related because of the ways it turns off, the need to do. Have you seen some of that?
- [49:29]
A
Yeah, but you're saying that the Ozempic changes the biology or the addiction is biological.
- [49:35]
B
Addiction is Biological, which we've heard before.
- [49:37]
A
Genetic.
- [49:37]
B
Yes, yes, I believe that.
- [49:38]
A
Yeah.
- [49:39]
B
But what he's also shown is that what he talked about was specifically, and I'm sure you know about this, which is that it can turn off the ability to feel pleasure at all or it can't for some people and that for other people it completely takes away their need to drink at all. And so not just addiction as a biology, but specifically in the brain that recept. So that was really great.
- [50:03]
A
Yeah, I'm very excited for his work. For listen in New York is always really, I find very good.
- [50:08]
B
Yeah.
- [50:09]
A
For the variations of GO now that they're sort of okay. They know that it has these incredible things that it can do across all the cardiovascular, neurodegenerative, metabolic, cancer, addiction. I assume they're going to start coming up with variations on it that can focus specifically on like okay, here is the GLP strain that will focus specifically, really help you with addiction or whatever it might be because you might not want or need all of the things that a GLP does. And by the way, they come with downsides. Right. So it seems to me that there's a lot of promise there. You could even. I remember one time just for fun, shows you how dorky I am. But like thinking about like what industries would I short or buy based on the long term success of GLP?
- [50:57]
B
1.
- [50:58]
A
Oh, so, so like you would buy for example like fitness. Right. And you might sell casinos right. Now obviously all the sports betting does not suggest that. But, but if you had a world and obviously we have a different type of Right now. Yeah, but if you had a world where you know of some form of a GLP was like fluoride, Right. It was in the water and it just became a normal part of our mental.
- [51:25]
B
He's like fluoride. That's a crazy.
- [51:27]
A
But you know, it could be right and it became a normal part of our care or they develop in a way that it's a, a vaccine that you're taking a shot every five years or whatever it is. At that point, if those changes physiologically, mentally, normatively take hold, that will result in what we need more of and less of. Right. Or you might short HMOs because you're going to say that we're just going to need less medical care because we're solving for a lot of problems on the front end. So you know, it's, it's just interesting since we're all yeah, the problem with that, then I look a little more. There's not Like a lot of really good, like, buying opportunities for like, fitness. The wearables might be one.
- [52:11]
B
Yeah.
- [52:11]
A
Although that's mixed. Do you have.
- [52:14]
B
I tried it and be crazy. Same thing.
- [52:17]
A
I was too stressful for me. I was so upset. I was waking the middle of the night to check my sleep dad, and I was like, I'm making my sleep worse because I'm thinking about this. Right. So like it's. And that kind of. Maybe that actually is a good way to end this. Which is like a lot of. I think what you're talking about is it's sort of actually extremely logical and obvious, even though it doesn't. Somehow we don't think about it until someone like you writes about it. But it is like there are things. Our goal is ultimately to promote our well being as much as we can. Right. And not all of the ways that we currently live are designed to do that.
- [52:55]
B
Yeah.
- [52:56]
A
And sometimes a combination of like, common sense and adaptation to what works for you and everything else is kind of how you ultimately have the habits that can, you know, as our friend Gretchen Rubin would say, you know, you're developing the right habits to then be able to, you know, live a life that. Where you just feel better.
- [53:15]
B
Yeah, totally. I feel like for me it's like asking yourself, what do you need right now? Wait, no, what do you really need right now? Like, because I feel like I need to finish this document. I need to look at Instagram. I need to. No, no, what do you. Oh, I need a walk. I really need water. I need like.
- [53:33]
A
Yeah.
- [53:33]
B
And sometimes slow the down and go lie down for a minute.
- [53:36]
A
And that. That may be the. So, all right, book is we talk with Body Electric. If you like this podcast, you'll love the book. Manouche. Thank you for joining us.
- [53:43]
B
So great to be here. Thank you.
- [53:46]
A
Firewall is recorded at my bookstore, PNT Knitwear, located at 180 Orchard street on the Lower east side of Manhattan. We'd love to hear from you with questions, feedbacks or idea for a guest. Just email me at Bradley Firewall Media or find me on LinkedIn. And to keep up with what's on my mind and my latest writing, please follow my new substack at Bradley. Thanks again for listening.