The Physical Cost of Our Digital Lives

Summary

Podcast Summary

Mostly Human with Laurie Segall

Episode: The Physical Cost of Our Digital Lives
Date: July 30, 2026
Host: Laurie Segall
Guest: Kara Swisher (Tech Journalist & Author)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the physical effects of our digital, screen-filled lives—how screens and sedentary tech habits impact our bodies, not just our minds. Host Laurie Segall and guest Kara Swisher dive into recent science, cultural attitudes, practical solutions, and personal stories. The conversation centers around Swisher’s new book "Body Electric," a research project with Columbia University, and actionable steps to reclaim one’s health amid technological immersion.

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Main Topics & Insights

1. The “Goldilocks Mode” Approach to Tech Usage

• Not all or nothing: Both speakers call out the false dichotomy between total tech adoption and full digital detox.
• Goldilocks Mode: The “just right” approach—embrace tech’s benefits but stay conscious of physical and mental health.

  "Can we not figure out this sort of middle zone...I want the amazing things that tech can give me and I also want to be a healthy, well adjusted human who enjoys the world."
  — Kara Swisher (01:57)

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2. Swisher’s Inspiration: The Pandemic & Physical Fatigue

• Swisher felt “crappy” during and after pandemic lockdowns. Though society reopened, many like herself remained stuck in sedentary, screen-centric routines.
• She describes her own exhaustion and how a sense of constant physical depletion spurred deeper investigation.

  "I would close my laptop at the end of the day and still have just enough energy to crawl over to the couch to scroll."
  — Kara Swisher (04:03)

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3. From Platitudes to Practical Action: What Does Sitting Do To Us?

• Popular phrases such as “sitting is the new smoking” get repeated without much actionable advice.
• Swisher’s inquiry: So what, and what now? People are aware of the warnings but want concrete solutions.

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4. Body Electric: The Clinical Study

• (16:31) Collaboration with Dr. Keith Diaz, Columbia University
• Sought to determine the minimum effective dose of movement needed to reduce health risks from sedentary work—“How little movement does a human need to avoid early death?”
• Study Structure: Participants tested whether five minutes of gentle movement every 30 mins, every hour, or every two hours made a difference during long periods of sitting.
• Participation: 23,000+ signed up (server crash at Columbia from demand!).
• Outcomes:
  • 80% of committed participants completed two weeks.
  • Fatigue dropped up to 28%.
  • Productivity increased 4%.
  • Mood, focus, and energy improved.
  • The most practical cadence was 5-minute breaks every two hours.

  "We saw across the whole thing that 80% of people who decided to commit themselves to the movement breaks actually completed the full two weeks. 80% actually enjoyed taking breaks...fatigue levels drop up to 28%."
  — Kara Swisher (23:48)

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5. Why Does Movement Help? (The Nerdy Explanation)

• Analogy: Sitting kinks the body at hips and knees, like a garden hose; circulation, oxygen, and glucose to the muscles and brain are impaired.
• Cognitive fatigue is not just psychological—it's caused by cellular lack of fuel and toxin buildup (CO₂).
• Moving every so often brings "outsized" positive results and is comparable to starting moderate exercise or diabetes medication in clinical impact.

  "When you sit, you're actually kinking your body in two places...That means that fresh oxygen, glucose are not getting into your leg muscles..."
  — Kara Swisher (25:34)

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6. Practical Solutions

• Simple movement: It’s not about standing desks or running marathons—it’s about regular, light activity.

• Ideas:

  • Take phone calls while walking, not sitting.
  • Tiny desk changes (smaller water bottles to prompt more refill breaks).
  • “Move breaks” in meetings: finish at 55 min instead of 60 to allow a walk/stretch.
  • Intention is key: “After lunch, always take a 5-minute walk.”

  "...it stopped being like, 'oh, I gotta take a break,' to 'I get to take a break,' because it feels good."
  — Kara Swisher (34:01)

• Latest Published Research: Four to five short breaks a day is plenty for most people’s mood, energy, and anxiety (32:41).

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7. Beyond Sitting: Other Physical Effects

a. Vision Issues & Myopia in Kids:

• Nearsightedness epidemic linked to intense close-up screen reading, especially among children.
• Early intervention (e.g., outdoor time, special lenses) can help, but prevention is best: encourage looking far away, go outside, get sun.

  "It wants to please you. If you are like, I really want to look at a screen all day, and it's like, I got you. I am gonna change into a shape. Literally, it changes into an egg shape so that it can focus better on what's in front of you."
  — Kara Swisher (38:59)

b. Tech & Kids:

• Shaming parents is unhelpful. Focus on positive, movement- and vision-building routines.
• Waldorf schooling trend noted among tech leaders: ban screens for their own kids.

c. Hearing Loss:

• 1 billion young people at risk from loud, frequent headphone use (46:14).
• Damage is cumulative and permanent; take ‘ear breaks’ and check device volume settings.
• Silence for 5 minutes a day is crucial to let ear “cilia” recover.

d. Breathing & Posture (Screen Apnea):

• Sitting and screens prompt shallow breathing or breath-holding, which can worsen anxiety and stress.
• Kazoo exercise: Exhaling through a kazoo (or laughing, singing) promotes deep diaphragmatic breathing.

  "Blowing in a kazoo increases your diaphragmatic...It builds your lung capacity...just remind yourself to have fun and breathe."
  — Kara Swisher (56:58)

e. Debunking Tech “Horns” and TikTok Tics:

• Sensational studies about “phone-related horns” were overblown and based on problematic research.
• Temporary behavioral mimicking (e.g., TikTok tics) is possible in specific vulnerable cohorts, but not a universal threat.

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8. Attention, ADHD & “Interoception”

• The rise in “adult ADHD” might reflect both increased awareness and screen-induced mimicry of symptoms (66:10–68:45).
• Swisher references “interoception”—our ability to sense internal bodily cues—which can be dulled by constant touchscreen engagement but can recover with physical awareness and new habits.

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9. Moderation & Cultural Change

• Swisher calls for a “middle zone” attitude in American and tech culture.
• "Active couch potatoes"—people who work out hard but then sit most of the day—still suffer health risks, underscoring the importance of steady, low-grade movement.
• Moderation and discernment—classic philosophical values—are more beneficial than extreme stances.

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10. A Manifesto for the Next 24 Months (77:18)

• Normalize “move breaks” (like old smoking breaks).
• Teach teens that restorative breaks actually help mental and physical performance.
• Push for cultural and workplace policies supporting these habits.
• Address root causes in tech design and policy, not just individual responsibility.
• Emphasis on small, sustainable changes and human agency.

  "I want to say, to feel like we have agency, that we want to use the tech tools and think harder about what they do best for us, how they help us figure things out, but also that we begin to trust and listen to our own bodies and our minds too."
  — Kara Swisher (79:47)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the necessity of simple movement:

  "Sometimes the most revolutionary things are actually tiny little things that aren’t so tiny."
  — Lori Siegel (22:57)

• On the “active couch potato” problem:

  "Those people are referred to by researchers as active couch potatoes, because it's great that you're working out during the day, but then the other extreme is also not good for you."
  — Kara Swisher (75:34)

• On tech and children:

  "I want the amazing things that tech can give me and I also want to be a healthy, well adjusted human who enjoys the world..."
  — Kara Swisher (01:57 & 45:50)

• On moderation:

  "Moderation sounds so boring, but as a philosopher pointed out to me, that goes back to Aristotle...you don't have to be extreme to live a good life."
  — Kara Swisher (75:49)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• 01:57–02:35: Goldilocks Mode—finding that middle ground with tech and health.
• 04:03–05:51: Physical realization post-pandemic; what happens to our bodies, not just minds.
• 16:30–25:21: Discussion of the Body Electric study and research partnership.
• 25:34–28:59: Detailed biological explanation of sitting’s impact, and why movement breaks work.
• 34:36–41:00: Digital life’s broader physical effects: vision, hearing, posture, sleep.
• 46:14–51:07: Hearing loss, AirPods, and why breaks matter.
• 55:02–58:29: Breathing, posture, the kazoo exercise, and screen apnea.
• 61:15–63:51: Debunking “tech horns” and TikTok tics.
• 66:10–68:45: ADHD, interoception, and the self-diagnosis trend.
• 77:18–80:23: Swisher’s “manifesto” for a technology–humanity reset over the next two years.

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Small, frequent, intentional movement profoundly counters the harms of sedentary, screen-rich lives. Consistency trumps intensity.
• Breaks are essential for productivity and mental health, not a sign of weakness or laziness.
• Eye and ear health need equal attention—and breaks!
• Don’t trust sensational health-tech headlines. Seek evidence and context.
• Don’t shame yourself or others—kindness, context, and achievable routines work best.
• Model “Goldilocks Mode”: Find your individual “just right” tech–life balance.

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Recommended Next Steps:

• Try five-minute movement breaks four times a day.
• Take regular “ear breaks” from headphones.
• Get outside daily, especially with kids, for vision and well-being.
• When in doubt, pick the simplest, most sustainable option.

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This summary captures the heart and actionable advice of the episode for anyone wanting to reclaim their physical health without abandoning the digital world.

Transcript

[Kara Swisher]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Jessa]

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[Lori Siegel]

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Lori Siegel]

I care because it's what I was put on this earth to do.

[Jessa]

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Jessa]

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Kara Swisher]

dichotomy of like either you're like a Luddite and you're off screens and flip phones only, or you're a token maxer and you're all freaking in like hi, I live in the middle and I want the amazing things that tech can give me and I also want to be a healthy, well adjusted human who enjoys the world. Like can we not figure out this sort of middle zone. Like, I've been thinking about it. Tell me if this resonates with you as Goldilocks mode. Not too much, not too little. It's kind of just right. I love that.

[Lori Siegel]

I'm Lori Siegel, and you're listening to Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens. I'm so happy to be here with you. I'm a longtime fan. Just full disclosure.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, I am too. And I brought you something. Oh, is that okay if I give it to you now? I have a little gift.

[Lori Siegel]

Wow. I love that you came.

[Kara Swisher]

Extremely high tech.

[Lori Siegel]

You brought an offering of some sort.

[Kara Swisher]

I did. I brought you a kazoo. And really annoying offering, some might say.

[Lori Siegel]

I love it so much. And there's a reason why.

[Kara Swisher]

There is a reason why I brought you a kazoo. Not to just annoy the crap out of your family, friends, and coworkers, but because it increases your airflow.

[Lori Siegel]

I love that.

[Kara Swisher]

I love that. Because I'm guessing you do spend a lot of time on your laptop.

[Lori Siegel]

Oh, do I? And before we did this interview, I was asked to kind of monitor how much I was sitting.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh.

[Lori Siegel]

And I think the headline was too much. Like, I started counting the hours yesterday.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Lori Siegel]

And I don't say, like, minutes. We're talking hours. Like, it must have been, like, 9, 10. And I'm like, you know, I promise I'm not just watching, like, bad reality television. I was working, but, like, it was an extraordinary amount of time sitting, which is a good way to introduce the topic of today's conversation. You know, we've talked so much about what tech has done to our minds.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Lori Siegel]

But honestly, I don't think I've ever really talked about what it does to our bodies.

[Kara Swisher]

I know, right?

[Lori Siegel]

So thank God for you. This is the topic that you are bringing to the table. What got you interested in this?

[Kara Swisher]

It was feeling like crap got me interested in this. I think it was, you know, during the pandemic, everything obviously went online, and it was kind of amazing. Right. Like, we adapted so quickly to being on WhatsApp with our parents and Zoom and, you know, lying on the couch and watching Netflix when we couldn't go outside. And I think we all felt pretty crappy. And that made sense. It was a pandemic, after all. But 2023 was the moment where we were coming out of that. And I noticed, like, just because we were allowed to go outside didn't mean that things had shifted back into real, quote, unquote, life. My life was totally still Zoom. Zoom, zoom. My job went remote. It was just this constant sort of screen, and combined with that, I just sort of noticed, like, I would close my laptop at the end of the day and still have just enough energy to sort of crawl over to the couch to scroll. Like, that was it.

[Lori Siegel]

I just really understand that and relate to that.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, well, everybody did. Everybody I talked to was like, I'm drained. I'm exhausted. And like you said, we have heard, like, oh, you know, too much screen time is fracturing our attention. It's making people anxious, depressed. But to me, this felt so physical. And so it made me realize the gaps in my basic biology knowledge and how little I knew about how the body would respond to a constant. Not just barrage of screens, but all the sitting. Like, I had heard, sitting is the new smoking, like, a decade ago. But I was kind of like, okay, and yet what?

[Lori Siegel]

Like, so what? I think this is what we were saying even before the cameras are rolling. It's, like, so often now, we just hear these platitudes that, you know, that we're looking at on social media, and they're getting lots of views, and everyone's, like, so outraged, like, shocking. But we're like, so what and what now what? Totally. I think that's, like, the part that I kind of struggle with.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Lori Siegel]

And I think your book really kind of gets into the now what? And how do we shift culture before we get into it? I just want to look at your background, which is fun. You're a longtime tech journalist. Yeah, you, I imagine, because, like, I know. I'm a longtime tech journalist. I've seen some weird things in my career. You know, just like, there was, like. During COVID I was, like, embedding with QAnon, which was, you know, falling in

[Kara Swisher]

love with God about that.

[Lori Siegel]

It was such a nice, beautiful. I remember it fondly. I'm curious about you. Like, what is. Are there stories that stick with you? Any tech products?

[Kara Swisher]

Any.

[Lori Siegel]

Like, what is the weirdest thing? What's, like, keeping you. When you. When you're writing the film of your career, like, the book of your life, what's the chapter that you're like, huh? Wow. That is really something that stuck with me.

[Kara Swisher]

Well, it's interesting to me that when you have these experiences with tech at the time, it feels like, what is happening? This is crazy. Gonna change society. And then five, 10 years later, you're like, duh. Like, nobody even. I mean, the first time I got an iPhone, I was like, holy.

[Lori Siegel]

What is this?

[Kara Swisher]

This is crazy. I can be at the playground, watching. Well, watching my. And also, like, checking the library hours and emailing my boss and all of it at the same time. Like, we forget how incredibly life altering that was, especially as a parent for me, I felt like, oh, I can actually maybe manage both.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

Obviously that was not entirely true as the years went on and we knew how hard that was, but I think it kept me in the game, like, for my career, being able to have a smartphone, which is like a kind of big statement, but I'm standing by that. And so the most recent similar sort of situation I guess I've had is. I mean, I'm really having a great time playing around with LLMs.

[Lori Siegel]

Oh, me too.

[Kara Swisher]

I can't help it.

[Lori Siegel]

I go back and forth between chat and Claude. Me too. I'm just like, dating all around, if you will, with these LLMs.

[Kara Swisher]

What do you think?

[Lori Siegel]

Totally. I literally took an answer from Claude, put it into chat and said, rate this answer.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes.

[Lori Siegel]

I mean, it was. I love it. I'm totally with you on this.

[Kara Swisher]

And I love to prompt something and then watch the thinking process. I'm like, where's it going? What's it asking itself? Like, how is that working? I'm fascinated. So recently, a few months ago, I created. You know, I keep thinking I'm a journalist. We don't make a crazy amount of money. I wish I had, like, a personal advisory board. So I created one on ChatGPT. I have a CFO, a CMO, my longtime alleged therapist, a journalist mentor, a. Who else do I have on there? Oh, a showrunner.

[Lori Siegel]

Oh, my God.

[Kara Swisher]

I think those are the top five. Oh, a lawyer. Well, you gotta have a lawyer.

[Lori Siegel]

I mean, and lawyers are so expensive for journalists to have to pay for lawyers. This is like the unspoken. I hope people take a lot from this podcast, but it is really to keep us out of jail. You really need a.

[Kara Swisher]

Totally.

[Lori Siegel]

You're getting sued.

[Kara Swisher]

Exactly right. And so for me, like, to be able to look, are they. Do I take all their advice? No, but what I love doing is presenting a sort of strategic question to the advisory board, having them each answer from their perspective. Like, so financially, this is what you're saying? This would be the implications. Or my therapist. Therapist in quotation marks would be like, you have to ask how much energy it would take to do this project. Can you manage that right now? So they each come with their own way. And then I ask them to debate amongst themselves and present me with the least worst options that I have.

[Lori Siegel]

Wow.

[Kara Swisher]

It's fun.

[Lori Siegel]

That's Amazing.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Lori Siegel]

That is so much more fun than how I'm just kind of using them to play off. And did you train them each or are they.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes, I tried to give them a person to, you know, go like sort of model themselves on. And I tried to also give them a set of ethical guidelines. Right. Like the financial person, I want to make clear, like, I am not about extracting people. 10x returns is not the goal.

[Lori Siegel]

Right.

[Kara Swisher]

And so, like, I tried to give them guidelines as to what I was looking for, to model themselves after people I admire, I love. And also, like, I will disagree, like, you know, I will say, like, I think the board is missing something, you know, and they're like, good point. Of course they're like, good point. But they work for me, so they have to say that. Exactly. And it's just really fun.

[Lori Siegel]

That's amazing. I love that so much. And I really am a big believer that like, we've been through these, these moments in tech where like you do something and then nothing is ever the same after this. Then it becomes so normalized. Like back in the, when I got my start, it was like, oh, sleep in a stranger's home or get in a stranger's car, like Uber Airbnb. Not just your 20s, like, just in general.

[Kara Swisher]

It's the way you say it.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah, but it seemed so crazy. And then all of a sudden it wasn't. And then all of a sudden it was just life. And so I'm actually experiencing the same thing with LLMs that you talk about that I think is so fascinating. For the good, the bad. You say in the book, tech is not neutral. I totally agree with you. Like, there are all these things we have to discuss and I think if we look at. Note to self, your show, this was like one of the first shows that really treated our relationship with devices as a subject worth a show, which was so cool and so really groundbreaking and forward thinking. Thank you. Bored and brilliant. Your book, your other book had asked what we lose creatively when we're never bored. Which I just, I think is such a brilliant question. Again, a question that was ahead of its time. It was so.

[Kara Swisher]

It didn't do as well as it probably would do now.

[Lori Siegel]

Don't you hate that? Right? Like, you just republish. What was the shift for you from. From Mind to Body to. To Body Electric, which is your new book. Was this always where it was headed or was this something that really specifically. Was there something that really specifically redirected you?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, I think, you know, again, it was for Me, that sense of not just, oh, I can't concentrate, or, oh, I, you know, feel like out of, like, sucked into my screens. It was more my back hurts.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

And I don't like the way my shoulders look rounded over and tech neck's a real thing. And I feel anxious. And those all felt so visceral to me. And it made me think, like, have we, like, neglected the fact that we're contorting our. Our anatomy around these objects all day long? Like, we contort around them. They don't contort around us. I mean, are the meta glasses gonna take off? That's a question I have for you. We can discuss. But right now we, you know, open up our phone and we have to hold it a certain way to look at it. I think there's more sort of audio interfaces are coming into the world, but we're definitely not there yet. I carry around my laptop everywhere I go and wherever I can put. That's how I arrange my body in order to do the things I need to do. And so it just really begged the question, like, wait a second, what about our blood, flesh, bones? How do they respond to this?

[Lori Siegel]

It's literally the most human question you could ask about technology. And not enough people are asking it, but we're all feeling it to some degree.

[Kara Swisher]

Totally.

[Lori Siegel]

I love the opening sentence of your book. The first sentence is, I'm scared to write this book now. Just like, you know, for reference, you, even before tech journalism, you know, have. Have done all sorts of journalism that has taken you into high risk scenarios. You've worn a bulletproof vest. You've been trained in kidnapping situations. You've learned. This was my favorite. To decode stick signals left by guerrilla fighters to warn of homemade bombs.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes. These were back in the day when I was a foreign news producer and like, running around the world.

[Lori Siegel]

So you've been running around the world, you've been in some gnarly situations, but you're sitting down to write this book and you say, I am scared to write this book. Why? What were you so afraid of?

[Kara Swisher]

I was afraid of that feeling. That feeling when you look up and you don't know what time it is, and you realize you haven't peed in three to four hours. Your left foot is asleep, your vision is blurry. You feel a disassociation with the world going around you and. And you know, that's doable occasionally. But writing a book requires hours at your laptop. And some of it is delightful when you get into flow and you feel like you're connecting ideas and your creative juices are flowing. It is the best feeling in the world. But all good things must come to an end. The flow cycle does not last for eight, nine, ten hours. It cannot. And so, like, how do you manage the physical capacity that you have when you're working with a machine that never stops? That's what I was nervous about finding the relationship between.

[Lori Siegel]

And ironically, this is also what the book is, like, really about. Right.

[Kara Swisher]

So it's, like, really meta about it.

[Lori Siegel]

You know, it's like, this is such a meta thing because, like, you're talking about the impact of what happens when we're sedentary like this, and what happens when we wrap ourselves around technology or technology wraps itself around us to some degree. And now you're sitting here writing this book, and I think there was a bit in it where I saw, like, a study you cited in 2024, a study found that sitting more than 10 hours a day significantly raises by 40 to 60% that is definitely significant the risk of heart attack, heart failure, and cardiovascular death.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Lori Siegel]

So I get it. I'd be afraid now that, like, now that I've read your book or, you know, I'm like, whoa, this is a real. This is very, very real.

[Kara Swisher]

But I don't want to, like, freak people out because, like, I think I felt relieved that the answers were pretty simple.

[Lori Siegel]

Totally. And I want to get into all of that part of the book. You teamed up with scientist Keith Diaz.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Lori Siegel]

And you did the Body Electric study. So tell us about this study. How did this partnership with Columbia University Medical center come together? And in a. If I remember correctly, you got something like 20,000 participants, which is pretty extraordinary. How did this all happen?

[Kara Swisher]

So I was feeling crappy back to that moment, and I actually heard. Was listening to the radio and heard about a study that had been done by this guy at Columbia University Medical School who was looking for the least amount of movement that the human body needs in order not to die an early death, like setting the bar pretty darn low. But what I loved was that he had actually found the answer. He had found that five minutes of gentle movement walking for two miles an hour on a treadmill, a stroll, actually had outsized results when it came to people's glucose, their blood pressure, their mood, their ability to focus, their fatigue levels. In his lab, he had found this. And so I was like, oh, what? Like, that's all we have to do? Like, the idea was like, this interstitial movement throughout the day. And to be clear, it didn't matter if you worked out in the morning, if you sat for all those hours the rest of the day, you still face these health harms and, like, probably hated your job at the end of the day after sitting there for eight hours. So I was like, the man has the answer. So I called him up. I was like, dude, why aren't we all doing this? This should be, like, in schools and workplaces everywhere. And he's like, yeah. Think about it, though. You walk into kindergarten and what is the first thing you learn? That sitting and looking ahead or looking down is what a good student or a good worker looks like. We have software now that tracks people's. To make sure that they're in their documents, but their cursor is constantly, like, moving around.

[Lori Siegel]

That's crazy.

[Kara Swisher]

Sitting is how we define success. Diligence success. Exactly. He's like, this is never gonna happen. And it made me so mad, Lori. I was like, no, but that's, like, wrong. Because the other thing that there has been research into and we can go deeper into this, is that actually taking breaks is good for working habits. That it actually is not a bad thing when it comes to people's work habits. So I said to him, I was like, well, this is stupid. We need to ask people if they can do it. Like, you don't know if you don't try. You've had this small thing in the lab and, like, I'm so tired of academics, like, being locked. Having their amazing things that they're learning locked up in their labs. Like, let's get it out into the world. So we invited listeners, my NPR listeners, you know, we were like, are you feeling like crap? If so, would you like to join a clinical trial, a scientific study, to find out if we can integrate movement breaks into our days and to track the effects that they have. So they could sign up to take a five minute movement break every half hour during long sedentary screen time. Every hour or every two hours. Because we also wanted to test, like, maybe it was impossible to do every half hour. Maybe two hours was better. Let's see what they. What they feel. So we had 23,000 people sign up. We crashed the servers at Columbia because they don't plan for that many people.

[Lori Siegel]

What a great signal, though, that, you know, when you go out.

[Kara Swisher]

Totally.

[Lori Siegel]

Are you feeling bad? You want to be a part of this? Like, a lot of people are like, no, I don't want to be a part of, like, a medical study, this and that. Turns out all of us are feeling the same Thing that you really saw

[Kara Swisher]

that you felt totally, totally. And I mean, let's be clear, these are public radio listeners. And so it's a self selecting group of people, obviously, like people who are interested in exactly all those things. So we had them sign up. But before we actually did that, he invited me, Keith invited me to come up and try enter his actual study in his lab myself. And I love to be a lab rat. I know you do too.

[Lori Siegel]

Love it.

[Kara Swisher]

So fun. So I was like, I am so in. So. But the week before he, like, I had to wear like three different accelerometers and pedometers. I had to wear a glucose monitor. I can't even remember the other things that I had to. So they wanted to track, like, what was my baseline, right? Like, how did I process sugar, how many, how much did I move in a typical day? Was I baseline a healthy person? And I was. And so I was like, I was skeptical that this would really make that much of a difference just taking like little breaks. So the first day I went up to his lab and I brought my laptop. And they were like, we just. They gave me an office. They were like, we just want you to sit for eight hours. You can take a break to use the bathroom. You'll have lunch. And then we're gonna track your vital signs and you'll do a survey throughout the day of how your concentration is, your mood, your fatigue levels. And it sucked. It was just the usual. I was like, I basically just came up here to do what I usually do. And then I fell asleep on the subway going home. And then the other day that I went, every half hour, his assistant, Keith's assistant would tap me on the shoulder and lead me over to this treadmill in the corner. And she'd tap in two miles per hour. And I would take this five minute stroll. And I'm not gonna lie. At first I was like, well, this is annoying. I just wrote two emails, like, I have so much more I need to get done. But after, like around midday, I started to realize I was using the time to strategize and be smarter about the work that I did. I also didn't need to wear the sweatshirt that I had brought with me last time. It was freezing in that office, but I didn't need it. Cause I was moving. And when they came back to me with my actual biological results, my glucose was cut in half. My blood pressure dropped by 5 points. I rated my fatigue as far lower, my ability to concentrate much higher. And this was the weird part. I actually rated my productivity as higher.

[Lori Siegel]

Huh.

[Kara Swisher]

Even though I felt like I got less done, the work that I did get done was better. I didn't have to go back to it the next day. Like, I read to the end of emails and responded to the actual question that someone was asking me. As opposed to, you know when you're banging through email and you're like, yeah, yeah, let me know. And they're like, I did let you know. It was at the end of the email, like, slow down. So it just was like, it felt doable and it felt revolutionary in the smallest, tiniest way possible.

[Lori Siegel]

Well, isn't that right, that sometimes the most revolutionary things are actually these, like, tiny little things that aren't so tiny.

[Kara Swisher]

Totally.

[Lori Siegel]

When we look back at it.

[Kara Swisher]

Totally.

[Lori Siegel]

So this is from you just getting up for five minutes every 30 minutes.

[Kara Swisher]

This was every 30 minutes. So it was pretty intense.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

And I. That was what I wanted to know. I was like, are people actually doing this?

[Lori Siegel]

Will people actually do this?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, totally. So we invited them. Everybody did their own baseline, and then they did. For two weeks. We had them track. And this was all on Columbia. This was a proper IRB scientific study. I did not touch the data. It was all anonymized. It was rigorous. And in the end, after two weeks. So we. We saw that the people who had the most compliance were the people who stuck to it for every two hours. Cause that was easier, right?

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

But we did see across the whole thing that 80% of people who decided to commit themselves to the movement breaks actually completed the full two weeks. 80% actually enjoyed taking breaks, which was fascinating. We saw fatigue levels drop up to 28%.

[Lori Siegel]

Wow.

[Kara Swisher]

We saw. And this was, again, the surprise to me, we saw productivity rise by 4%. So not high, but it didn't make it worse. And we also saw mood was just better. People were like, I actually, like, had enough energy for the 4 o' clock meeting. I actually had enough energy to come home and play with my kids. It just felt like life wasn't quite as exhausting and tiring and depressing.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah, no, I hear that. It's so funny. I say to my husband all the time, I'm like, God, I'm so tired. So tired. He's like, are you sure you're not just, like, stressed? I'm like, I just feel tired. But I think there really is that correlation. It's like, I'm on screens all day, and if it's not this screen, it's that screen. And if we're not here, then we're there. And it is. And I do think it really. I was really blown away by these results. And in a weird way, I wasn't shocked because I think that we're all feeling this to some degree. The part that was crazy to me was that it had. This is from the book. It had comparable physical effects to someone starting diabetes medication and exercising five days a week, 30 minutes a day for six months. I mean, what do you make of that?

[Kara Swisher]

Well, I didn't understand why. Because I said to Keith, I was like, I don't get it. Like, what's what? Can you just, like, break it down for me? Like, what is happening? And so I'll just go through, like, let's nerd out for a minute. Cause it's so interesting.

[Lori Siegel]

Love it.

[Kara Swisher]

So I hate to tell you, listener, I'm gonna give you an image that you will never be able to shake. And I apologize in advance, but it's for our own good. So when you sit, you are actually kinking your body in two places. Your hips and your knees. Kind of like a garden hose, right? So you have a garden hose. Like, when water is flowing, it works great. Yay. But if you kink it, the water starts to back up, right? And pressure builds. And at some point, the pressure has to go somewhere. So the same thing is happening with your blood flow in your body when you're sitting for hours and hours on end. That means that fresh oxygen, glucose are not getting into your leg muscles. Your leg muscles do an incredible job when they are stimulated. They actually suck in the oxygen and the glucose and release other chemicals, push them up to your brain. So when you're switching between, like, I gotta answer this email. Oh, I got a text. Ooh, should I put that on my calendar?

[Lori Siegel]

Right.

[Kara Swisher]

All that switching, you're burning through glucose and oxygen, right? You're. Your brain needs those things.

[Lori Siegel]

Something physical is actually happening to you.

[Kara Swisher]

Exactly. And if you keep going for too long, you start to build up CO2. And usually the brain is like, I got you. It flushes out the CO2, it brings in the new oxygen, the more of the sugar to keep going. But at some point, you have to refill the system. So when you have that buildup of CO2 and it doesn't get flushed out, that's when you get that foggy feeling. I can't concentrate. What am I doing? Wait, what was I doing? Sound familiar? And it's an actual physical mechanism that we are talking about.

[Lori Siegel]

This is random. This isn't just you. I mean, I Think that is such an interesting. Thank you for nerding out like that. That was a total. It was worth it. Yeah, that was a total worth it. Nerd out. I mean, one of the things, and I don't mean to just read scary quotes, but we can read scary quotes because we have solutions. Yes, but you know, you said you estimate. An estimate you have in the book is that the average American adult now spends the equivalent of 187 days per year sitting.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah.

[Lori Siegel]

That means over half a year sitting.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes.

[Lori Siegel]

Oh my gosh.

[Kara Swisher]

I know. And the average 19 year old, it's estimated, moves as much as the average 60 year old.

[Lori Siegel]

Wow.

[Kara Swisher]

And it's not cause they're lazy and it's not cause they're bad people or addicted to their screens. This is a design issue, right. We have built this world around sitting and looking at screens. And so I think what we're also talking about in addition to biology is we're talking about a culture that needs to normalize basic biology, that like the body needs movement, it needs to have breaks. It's delightful that you can have eight agents working on your behalf. But like, as we go forth, like, and need judgment and decision making skills and deciding, like, is this good information? Is it not? We have to think of ourselves as like athletes, right? Like we gotta be in it for the long haul. And how does an athlete treat their body? They give it rest, they give it the right food, they give it water. You know, they know the power of working hard, but then also pulling back. And I think we need to think about that. Not just in, you know, like soccer players or you know, airline pilots for that matter, but like us, the information workers, the lowly information.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah, I mean, especially as kind of like AI, as you're saying, like completely reshapes humanity and our, and our role in, in the world to some degree. I, I think it goes to my next question. You met, you just said this. We've built our lives around screens. Like, this is a world designed and optimized for convenience. Now we're, we click a button and food comes. You know, we click a button and car comes. Like, everything is optimized. Silicon Valley is selling a frictionless world. How do you design a world that is just less sedentary? Are there specific things you would do? Are there specific things you would say to people who are listening to. Actually, I don't know. Yeah, totally figure it out.

[Kara Swisher]

So in the short term, there are things you can do. So I'm sure many people have a standing desk. I Hate to tell you that actually the research is in and there's been a ton of studies and it's the movement that you need. So standing is just another way of being sedentary. So if you.

[Lori Siegel]

It's like a least comfortable way. Honestly, honestly, I would just rather sit if we're gonna have, you know.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, totally. But if we can say like, okay, so keep your standing desk. If it works for you as a sort of prompt to move right? Then, like, you know, during zoom meetings, say hi to your colleagues and then make it okay to shut off the cameras so you can shuffle in place or march in place or. I as often as possible say to people, do you mind if we actually just do an old school phone call so I can walk and talk to you? Especially if it's not something I need, like a spreadsheet in front of me, right? Like if I'm checking in with a friend or checking in with a colleague to. Just to see how they're doing. I loved walking. I actually, I think better walking while I'm really able to listen to them. So, you know, just little things like that or deciding. This other woman said to me, she's like, we're actually not allowed to get up from our desk. I was like, what? So she got a smaller water bottle, Which I was like, that kind of doesn't make sense. But okay. Just as a way to be like, I'm out, you know, so she could go like the two floors to go get water and come back. Like, that's painful to me. But I also hear from like, we had a lot of teachers try to do this with their classes and they were like, the kids clearly need movement. And it has been shown that getting movement for kids increases their comprehension, their memory, all of those things that we need them to be doing. So. And also, why not? You know, it's easy to change in your Google. Like change your. Make it a 60 minute meeting, turn it into a 55 minute meeting. That's a setting that bosses can do. Just to say, like, not only like, should you have a break, but also, how about you think about what we just talked about in our meeting before you click over to the next meeting, right? Like, these are actually things that are beneficial not just to the worker, but to the workplace, to productivity, to the way that we want to live.

[Lori Siegel]

It almost feels like there needs to be training for a lot of these corporations to help them understand. Like, this hasn't actually been an emphasis. We haven't had this a part of the cultural conversation. And you Talk a lot about that, like, how do we actually make this part of the cultural conversation? We've now had the conversation and we can still have it, God help us, like on children and social media and AI and impact. But we really, in our workplaces and our homes are not having the larger conversation on, okay, these little things. Walking for five minutes. How do you actually plan your days or plan your workplaces around these small but not insignificant changes that can help boost productivity and the mental health of folks? I mean, it doesn't seem like it's part of the conversation.

[Kara Swisher]

And I want to add another good news thing. So this actually did not get codified in the book because the data had not been fully like processed, et cetera. But so the scientific study was actually published just a few weeks ago officially in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. And Keith in the end found that if your main goal is to be less anxious, to be able to focus more, to be less tired, taking four to five breaks a day is enough. So you're talking like instead of sitting and you know, scrolling while you drink your coffee, walk to the coffee shop with the dog in the morning.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

Takes five minutes. If you take are going out for lunch, like instead of ordering in, go out and get your sandwich and bring it back. Take a lap around like for a meeting. If you have to check in with someone, go out to the parking lot and do a lap. It's not like that actually is pretty doable. It just requires as you said, intention to say, like, oh, after lunch every day I take a five minute break and I walk up the stairs to the top of the building and I look at the view and then I come back. It can be nice, it can feel good. And what we really heard from people was like, it stopped being like, oh, I gotta take a break to I get to take a break.

[Lori Siegel]

Right.

[Kara Swisher]

Because it feels good.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

We're not asking you to like do like a CrossFit workout here. We're just asking you which is, I

[Lori Siegel]

actually think kind of one of the more interesting parts of like this is like shown even more from a data standpoint on having long term health benefits and productivity benefits than just going for, I mean not going to the gym you say in the book is always good, but this is not an and or but really you don't have to go do the CrossFit workout, which is, is interesting.

[Jessa]

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[Lori Siegel]

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Lori Siegel]

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Lori Siegel]

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Lori Siegel]

Wait, did I just finish a marathon? Where is my banana?

[Jessa]

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[Lori Siegel]

We can make it easier.

[Kara Swisher]

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Jessa]

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Lori Siegel]

another thing, because we you really, you really in the book talk about our digital lives affecting our physical lives. We're talking eye issues, hearing issues, breathing, posture, sleeping, all of it, which you really cover. I would love to talk about our eyes.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, this is crazy stuff.

[Lori Siegel]

I mean this. This is wild.

[Kara Swisher]

The human body is amazing. It really is. And as you know, as a journalist, you get to, like, call up, up the experts and be like, explain it to me. Like, I'm five.

[Lori Siegel]

It's my favorite part of the job is, like, calling, like, the best people and the best experts in the world and being like, I know nothing. I kind of get it. But for other folks, you might not,

[Kara Swisher]

you know, love that line. So for people who've never heard of

[Lori Siegel]

this, listening for the first time, and

[Kara Swisher]

you're like, that's me. So this is a woman, Maria Lu. She's an ophthalmologist in Berkeley, California. But she's from China originally, where they saw earlier than anywhere else else in the world this epidemic of nearsightedness in young people. So this is, you know, you can see really well, like a book or a screen, but you have trouble seeing into the distance. Myopia. And they think that those, like, the levels were just skyrocketing. This was 20, 30 years ago. And they think it had to do with the Cultural Revolution and this idea that, like, academics were really enforced at home. If you did well in school and, you know, got a degree, you were your parents, your family's ticket into the middle class. And so kids just, you know, buckled down and, like, worked really hard. And then they saw that all these kids were wearing glasses earlier and earlier and having trouble seeing. So the other thing they started doing in China way earlier than here is actually developing techniques to turn back myopia earlier in kids. So these are now available in the US They're Ortho K Lenses is one of the brands where you wear contact lenses, actually at night. And it reshapes the eyeball so that it can. I know, wacky. So it can see in the distance and close up, and you can get. Kids can get rid of their glasses. And that is because the eyeball wants to. Not to anthropomorphize, but let's anthropomorphize. Cause it's fun. It wants to please you. If you are like, I really want to look at a screen all day, and it's like, I got you. I am gonna change into a shape. Literally, it changes into an egg shape so that it can focus better on what's in front of you. It's basically saying, like, you don't need me to see far cool, then I won't.

[Lori Siegel]

Right?

[Kara Swisher]

So Maria's like, this is something like, they're seeing kids earlier and earlier, coming in with eye issues. And the thing is, you don't really wanna have myopia. It's not just annoying and like, oh, so what, you wear glasses? Actually it can lead to glaucoma. Real like potentially loss of eyesight later in life. This is something you want to nip in the bud. And if you're listening and you are like in your late 20s and you're like, oh, oops, my childhood, actually the eyeball continues to grow longer than for some people even into their early 30s. So this is something that can be like at least slowed down or mitigated. So but Maria is like, the key is you have to use your distance eyesight. By the way, I have myopia because I'm older and it does kind of happen to everyone. And once you are myopic and your eyes have stopped growing, like that's kind of it, you're fully baked. But that blurry sensation, the burning sensation, the fatigue, this benefits also from what Maria suggests, which is like you have to go outside. Because even if you're looking out a window, your brain is so smart, it knows that there's like finite points of the wall. So going outside, gazing into the horizon, really using that long distance eyesight. They also really say, like getting outside and getting sunlight on your eyes is crucial. They're not entirely sure why, like in animals they've seen the. And it releases serotonin. Maybe it's the vitamin D. They're not entirely sure. They just know that sunlight on young kids eyes is vital. And it feels good for us too.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah, I mean, cause you talk about the study and this was like 30 years or you know, these people looking at this like 30 years ago. Now if you look at something in the book, it said if a young person looks at a screen for four hours a day, their odds of going nearsighted can increase by 97%. I'm just thinking about walking down the street and seeing all these young people like on the phones. By the way, I sound like such an old person saying that.

[Kara Swisher]

I know that's hard, you know, to not sound like an old person, but

[Lori Siegel]

also like, but I have a 17 month old, right? I have my child's a year and a half. And so I'm thinking, I'm beginning like, I know parents are like, welcome to the club. But like I'm beginning to think quite a bit about screen time are there, you know, where I mean, just knowing what I know, having covered technology, I'm like, oh, Charlie, the Internet does not exist. You can't be on it at all.

[Kara Swisher]

And for little ones, that makes total sense to me. And I Guess I feel like rather than being like, you're a terrible parent, if you give your kid their phone while they're screaming and you're at the supermarket being like, you know, what are you doing when they're not like, you know, most of the rest of the time, are they mostly like going outside? Are they moving their bodies? Are you reading to them? Are you talking? Those are the most important things. And if you slip and need to put on Peppa Pig because you need a frickin minute, like, that's fine. Being a parent is really hard.

[Lori Siegel]

Like, what do you say to that end? Like, what are the tangible? So I read a stat like this where I'm like, oh, a young person looks at a screen for four hours and they'll be nearsighted. The odds that they're gonna be nearsighted is steady. Yeah, we're all screwed. This is. So what do you say to say, like, parents who are looking at these stats and seeing this and saying, like, well, what are some tangible things? Is it go outside? Is it, you know, I know Apple has a feature for, you know, you know, what are the. Like, what do you say to me, a parent who's scared?

[Kara Swisher]

Well, I think it's. Fear is not much of a motivator, right? Because fear means that anytime you do do something, you feel shame. You feel shame that you gave your kid an iPad. You feel, you know, I'm a bad parent because I did this instead. Like, look at how you structure your kids time, right? And I think it's more about like, okay, fine, so let's talk about what you can do with your kid. Like, keep toys around the house. Swap them out so that they seem fresh and new and more exciting than an iPad. Like, make movement like a game. Make it like normal. After dinner, you always go for a walk and you look for birds. That is like the best thing you can do because you're looking into the distance, you're getting air, you're moving yourself, you're doing something with your kid, experiencing the world. I think it's nice that all these tech people are putting their kids into Waldorf schools. That's lovely.

[Lori Siegel]

Explain what that means to folks.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, it's like this.

[Lori Siegel]

We'll be here all day.

[Kara Swisher]

We'll be here all day. It's been a trend where people who actually make the products that we're talking about don't give them, forbid them from their children from using them and put them into Waldorf schools, which are all about, you know, playing with natural elements and absolutely no Screens whatsoever, which. God bless.

[Lori Siegel]

Like, right? God bless. And I'm only laughing because, like, there's so much irony in this. It's like you can't. You get to.

[Kara Swisher]

It's good enough for you, but not for my children.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah. It's like, it's almost like you create these products that almost are like junk food, but then you don't give it to your own children.

[Kara Swisher]

You have a private chef for your own children who only cooks organic macrobiotic meals. Yes. It's sort of nauseating.

[Lori Siegel]

Be nice. You might have to get into their compound when AI takes over. You might have to talk your way into one of their bunkers.

[Kara Swisher]

I'll be like, listen, I can help you use the tech you created.

[Lori Siegel]

Right?

[Kara Swisher]

But I think this dichotomy of either you're a Luddite and you're off screens and flu flip phones only, or you're a token maxer and you're all freaking in like, hi, I live in the middle and I want the amazing things that tech can give me. And I also want to be a healthy, well adjusted human who enjoys the world. Like, can we not figure out this sort of middle zone? Like, I've been thinking about it. Tell me if this resonates with you as Goldilocks mode. Like, I'm trying. Like, I'm like, go into Goldilocks mode. Don't go crazy with the AI. Like, you don't need extra laptops to run agents, as much as you're, like, kind of fascinated by that. But also, like, I have teenagers, I have elderly parents. I need to be on my phone. Like, you know, going to Walden Pond or doing a digital detox is not an option. So I want to live in Goldilocks mode. Not too much, not too little. It's kind of just right. I love that.

[Lori Siegel]

And that's actually what I love about the this book. And that it isn't saying, okay, just, like, get rid of technology or are shaming people for interacting with the world as it was built for us. And I think that's really important. I think one of the things that was so shocking to me in this. I guess I keep saying that because, like, a lot of this seems, like, obvious, but when it's in front of you with data, you're like, wait, what?

[Kara Swisher]

You're like, ugh.

[Lori Siegel]

Like, is hearing loss. Like, there's the warning that a billion young people ages 12 to 35 are at risk of permanent, avoidable hearing loss from unsafe listening practices. We are in a world where you go on the subway or if you're not in New York, you know, go on the subway all the time. Like where you walk down the street, people are listening in their earbuds. They have AirPods. Like, we are constantly on these things. So what did your research find and what can we do?

[Kara Swisher]

So there are amazing academics doing very cool things, and this guy, Rick Neitzel at the University of Michigan has partnered with Apple. And I know some people are like, what, you partner with a tech company, this can't be real. But there, there are actually. These companies are so vast that there are parts of the companies that are doing pure research. And whether that gets, you know, built into a product or not is a whole nother conversation. In any case, Rick has been getting thousands and thousands of people to anonymously share their listening habits. So. So not what they're listening to, but, like, how long are they listening, what volume are they listening at? And then they can also remotely give them hearing tests to see, like, tinnitus. Are you experiencing tinnitus? Can you hear this tone or not? You can opt into different levels. You can sign up right now. It's fascinating stuff. And so he's an. Actually an exposure scientist, meaning that he's not only measuring, like, you know, what we artificially are putting into our ears, but. But generally like, the world, like, what are we exposed to in terms of sound? The world is getting louder, right? We are more people, there's more traffic, all of those things. And I don't know about you, but what do you do when you walk by a construction site and you have your AirPods in you boost the volume.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

So what he's trying to see is, we don't know necessarily, like, if all that listening is affecting cognitive function. Some people think it is. We don't actually know. But what we do know is that all that listening and. And it particularly at loud volumes, affects the little tiny hairs in your ear. So if you listen, you know when you come out of, like, a concert and you, like, can't hear very well, Those are the cilia. They get damaged and tired. And here we go back to the original discussion. What do they need? They need breaks. So if you're listening all the time, make sure you give yourself some silence every day to let those little hairs rest, recharge, come back. But if you constantly bombard them with levels that are unsafe, and you can actually go into your iPhone settings and make sure you have, like, a max set, it is possible in your settings to do a better job with that. But also lie down and Listen to nothing for five minutes, let your little guys in there rest and come back. Cause once they are killed, that's it. You are born with a finite amount of these guys. They don't regenerate and they don't. You can't grow more.

[Lori Siegel]

I mean, why do you think that this risk gets so little airtime compared to something like screen time, mental health? Because when you talk about the larger points, it's like, this actually isn't just about hearing loss. This can contribute to loss of memory, balance, socialization. Yeah, right.

[Kara Swisher]

I think we think of it as an old person's problem, like hearing loss, you know, and it's a slow motion sort of thing that's happening. It's not gonna happen to like tomorrow. It's a slow build. It is a months, years of habits that add up. And as someone who's now extremely middle aged, I don't think I would have believed that when I was 25. You know, whatever. Like, okay, old, you know, Gen Xer, whatever. But then as you get older, you're like, oh, wow, these long days. It's the why I was scared to write the book. It's like I feel it in my body. Or like my husband, who is a TV reporter who's been wearing an ifb, one of those ear things, for years and years and years. He can't hear well out of that ear. And it's annoying to have a husband who can't hear you very well. You're repeating yourself constantly. And like, we're not elderly, you know, So I think it's just. It's hard to feel something, feel urgent about a situation that is a slow moving crisis.

[Lori Siegel]

You know, speaking of a slow moving crisis, I just, in reading this, I was thinking, I'm just gonna confess this to you because I feel like if I say it out loud, I'll be more accountable.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, good. Okay, I'm listening.

[Lori Siegel]

Okay. So oftentimes my son, you know, if he gets up in the middle of the night, like he's 17 months, this happens. You know, we just don't sleep. So.

[Kara Swisher]

Sorry. What is this? You are in it right now.

[Lori Siegel]

Thank you for your thoughts during this time. And I will sometimes go, you know, be with him. Then I can't get back to sleep. But my husband's sitting next to me asleep, so I don't know what to do.

[Kara Swisher]

So you look at your phone.

[Lori Siegel]

Not only do I look at my phone, this is where we go, like all in. I sometimes relax to Law and Order, svu. So like, obviously there's like, some psychological issues with that. But, like, let's put those aside. So I will watch.

[Kara Swisher]

And how long will you watch?

[Lori Siegel]

Okay, this is, like, multiple episodes, so I will.

[Kara Swisher]

Till the sun comes up.

[Lori Siegel]

What is happening? This is so upsetting. I will. And I've tried to do a little. I can't believe I'm saying this out loud, but I will put in my AirPods and I will just watch it and try, you know, like, curl up and, like, pray that Charlie doesn't get up again.

[Kara Swisher]

You're so amazing.

[Lori Siegel]

And watch some, like, char. And then watch some SVU. And I will have the AirPods in, and then I'll fall asleep and I'll wake up and maybe one will be out and, like, maybe, like, the phone is whatever. But I'm like, how long?

[Kara Swisher]

So it is putting you back to

[Lori Siegel]

sleep, but I'm like, how long did I just sit with that in my ears? Right. Overnight. Anyway. And so in reading this, I'm like, like, seagull, get it together. Like, this is not something you can get used to.

[Kara Swisher]

Is it very loud?

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah, probably.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay, so just, like, go into your settings. Make sure you have it set at the lowest max that there is so that you can't boost it.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

And I mean, give yourself a break,

[Lori Siegel]

too, like you have a baby. Sorry, I don't want to turn this into a lorry therapy session.

[Kara Swisher]

I think there is this sort of like, let's think critically about it, right? Like, I know we all love rules. Never do this, always do that. But, like, you're a human being and you are in a really tough time in your life and, like, sleep. If this is working for you the most. What's the most important thing? Is it that you don't have AirPods? No, the most important thing is that you and your baby rest.

[Lori Siegel]

And honestly, I want Olivia and Elliot to get together finally. SVU fans, you know what I'm talking.

[Kara Swisher]

I can't help you with that.

[Lori Siegel]

I don't know what you're talking about, but you're 100%. You're 100% correct.

[Kara Swisher]

And let's think of what the alternative was. That you're like, I get on my laptop and I answer emails. At least you're trying to disconnect and just power down a little bit. And the way you're doing it is okay, maybe not ideal, but you're figuring out a way that's working for you.

[Lori Siegel]

What's interesting about the book is that it really. The kindness that you just gave me. Thank you.

[Kara Swisher]

I've Been there.

[Lori Siegel]

But that it really, it does give a lot of solutions that don't feel like impossible. Like it sounds like a no brainer, go outside. But when you put science behind some of this and you say actually you don't need to do this X amount of times, four breaks a day, you need to build out your day. And it actually seems really tangible in a way that, that isn't as scary and dystopian as what we hear oftentimes on social media or just in general when we're looking at stats with no context. So the last one I wanna get to and I will just say also

[Kara Swisher]

like, my hope is like you and I and anybody listening that we're gonna live for a long time and this is something you can do for the rest of your life. And I wanna be clear, like if walking is not an option, you can pump your arms for five minutes while you watch tv. That is great too. That's been show a lot of benefits. And so this I just want, I feel like we talk like these, these outrageous goals and really like just move more.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

And that feels good. And try to do it for five minutes five times a day.

[Lori Siegel]

And there's like huge benefits like from, from what you're. From all what all the research shows the connection between breath and our posture. Also very interesting.

[Kara Swisher]

Bringing us back to the kazoo.

[Lori Siegel]

I know we, you know, we started with the kazoo and we're, we're coming full circle. So can you walk us through what when we sit down and how that connects to our breathing and our mental health and maybe perhaps this kazoo that you have offered me how this can help?

[Kara Swisher]

Yes, glad to. So this was actually something that was brought to my attention years and years ago, many people's attention, by a tech executive, now retired, named Linda Stone. So Linda was just one of those people who's ahead of her time and she wrote about something called, she called it screen apnea. And this idea that she was having actually health issues. And she would notice that whenever she was on her laptop, she was, she would hold her breath or she would have shallow breaths. And then you start thinking about it, you're like, oh shit, I do that too.

[Lori Siegel]

Right.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay. So when you're seated, you are sort of bent in a, I don't know, cashew or boiled shrimp position. Right. Which constricts your diaphragm. It means that you can't fully fill. Like if you touch your midsection right now and you breathe in, that should open up. Right. And sitting makes it harder to do that, it means you have to take more breaths in order to get the same amount of oxygen. More breaths actually starts to increase your anxiety, increases the fight or flight sort of mode. It turns into a whole thing. So she did a kitchen sort of table, scientific experiment where she invited different people of different walks of life. Musicians, you know, software engineers, a pilot, all kinds of people. And she measured, like, she put them in front of the computer to answer their email to see how they. And she measured their breath and their heart rate variability, which is a. A way of measuring stress as well. And the people who did the best were the musician, the dancer, the pilot, people who learned how to use their body with their tools, and they continued to breathe properly.

[Lori Siegel]

Wow, that's interesting.

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah. Really fascinating. So to me, the lesson is, like, you again, you are an information athlete. You need to breathe. Getting up, taking deep breaths makes a difference. And then Linda turned me on. I mean, can you be turned on by a kazoo? No, I don't think you really can. However, I don't know. Provokes.

[Lori Siegel]

This is a very sexy blue kazoo.

[Kara Swisher]

It's a pretty sexy body electric kazoo. But they now are sending kazoos, and there's a hospital in North Carolina to people who have had lung cancer. Because blowing in a kazoo increases your diaphragmatic, like, ability to sort of build it, right? It builds your lung capacity. It gets more air going. So her trick is play your fricking kazoo. Laugh at yourself. That also increases your oxygenation of your brain, and just remind yourself to, like, have fun and breathe. I love that. I know, right?

[Lori Siegel]

I love that, like, for people we love, we could just send them kazoos to somebody and say, this is actually something.

[Kara Swisher]

So at this point, I really need to embarrass you and get you to play the kazoo.

[Lori Siegel]

Oh, oh, don't worry. I was already gonna embarrass myself and say, don't worry, I'm in with you.

[Kara Swisher]

You could vibe code, or you could play I'm playing the kazoo.

[Lori Siegel]

And then I. I also would love for us to try the physiological psy together.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, yeah.

[Lori Siegel]

I've never even, like, played a kazoo.

[Kara Swisher]

Just.

[Lori Siegel]

Just do it.

[Kara Swisher]

You just hum. You don't blow. Actually, you hum.

[Lori Siegel]

So embarrassing. This is almost as embarrassing as when, like, AI generated me with, like, very large breasts, which was the last. The last one we did.

[Kara Swisher]

How did I miss that one?

[Lori Siegel]

It's because it comes out tomorrow. So.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

Excited for that.

[Lori Siegel]

Okay, so.

[Kara Swisher]

So just hum and just hum Yankee doodle Yeah, there you go. God, it's ludicrous and you look really silly, but it's kind of fun.

[Lori Siegel]

I like that.

[Kara Swisher]

I know.

[Lori Siegel]

I love it.

[Kara Swisher]

That's one you can do with Charlie. The two of you.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah. That's amazing. To kind of teach him to breathe.

[Kara Swisher]

So get up, do a little Yankee Doodle. You will be like, who cares about that nasty email I got? And whatever about my deadline. I feel good about that.

[Lori Siegel]

I want that kazoo to be like my. My safe instrument. If I'm on a really bad call, I would love to just like use the kazoo, which I can't, obviously, but that's, you know.

[Kara Swisher]

Right.

[Lori Siegel]

You could call things all of us.

[Jessa]

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[Lori Siegel]

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Lori Siegel]

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Lori Siegel]

Wait, did I just finish a marathon? Where's my banana?

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[Lori Siegel]

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Lori Siegel]

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[Lori Siegel]

so I want to talk horns and ticks, if you will. Just like, I know. Go with me first.

[Kara Swisher]

You're going way back to misinformation. I know.

[Lori Siegel]

Years ago, there was a study that implied that smartphones were making millennials grow horns.

[Jessa]

Yes.

[Lori Siegel]

I just remember.

[Kara Swisher]

Do you remember that?

[Lori Siegel]

How could I not? I remember sending this to, like, to someone and being like, yeah, now we're gonna have horns. Cool. Can you just fact check us?

[Kara Swisher]

Yeah, no, no. And I think this is. Okay. So this thing was, like, in Australia, they've discovered that, you know, millennials, from hunching over their phones, are now growing horns. What they really mean, meant was, like, a couple people in this study that was done by people who actually were pedaling an ergonomic tool. They had found that there were, like, bone spurs on their backs. Like, there was. I don't exactly know the details, but there were a lot of problems with this study.

[Lori Siegel]

And.

[Kara Swisher]

But I think what it does really well is illustrate, like, if you've got a sexy headline and there's a. And the headline is saying something that you're letting. I kind of feel like that's possible. Right. Like, I have a hunch growing Lawrence. I don't know. Like, it just spreads like wildfire. But it is not helpful. And I think, you know, we're in this weird place with misinformation, particularly wellness or health misinformation, where an AI is, wow, supercharging this. We have to. We're in this. Science is not moving fast enough. Right. We are not keeping up with all the things that are changing us. So my thinking is, let's bring people into the process. Let's not rely on these headlines that are being peddled by all kinds of people. Let's have bigger conversations. Like, let's test things ourselves and report back. And I'm not talking about, like, peptide stacks. I'm talking about, like, basic things that we all are feeling are true, but that small things that have been scientifically verified, like movement, like getting Fresh air, like exercise, like getting in nature can make a difference.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah, I thought. I really remember that. And I'm annoyed that it got as far as it did with all of us thinking these types of things. But you're right, it was a really sexy headline based on some scientific research where there was maybe one teeny little part that if you looked at it through this lens.

[Kara Swisher]

Yes, exactly. Cause, like, right now, do you know anyone who has. I mean, they've been looking at their phone for a long time now, or

[Lori Siegel]

like a decade since then?

[Kara Swisher]

Not that I know of.

[Lori Siegel]

But please call in listeners. Yes, we do have horns. We want to hear from you.

[Kara Swisher]

Definitely.

[Lori Siegel]

So I want to talk about the TikTok tics.

[Kara Swisher]

Oh, yeah.

[Lori Siegel]

Can social media really give us a physical tick?

[Kara Swisher]

So people might remember there was this phenomenon during the pandemic where it seemed like young women in particular were coming down with having verbal tics. And it's. It. You know, this has been seen before. There was, like, the dancing plague centuries. People couldn't stop dancing. They literally danced themselves to death. Death. Havana syndrome is another sort of thing. Like this idea of, like, a. A behavior that spreads in a contagious sort of way. But this was the first time it was documented to happen actually on social media. So that was the question, can this happen? And. But what happened was, like, they kind of came and then went as quickly as possible. And it. It's not like you or I could. This would necessarily happen to us. When researchers went back and studied, you know, this, the girls and young women who had this. They had a propensity towards anxiety and depression and, like, being in a pandemic, being stuck inside it. Yes. It can affect people in all kinds of ways. And they don't. You know, maybe it would. Was some. Each child is different. Right. Maybe they wanted to be part of something. Maybe they were sort of like, very cracked open. The point is, there are vulnerable populations who, you know, need extra care and, like, being stuck inside without being, like, regular socialization. We're still seeing the effects of that on teenagers today and people in their 20s. So, yes, things can happen, but it's not like wildfire. Everybody's gonna have ticks. Like, that's the crucial thing.

[Lori Siegel]

So part of what I love to do with the show is tell people I'm interviewing someone, see if they have questions. And a lot of folks are very excited about this topic when I put this out there, which doesn't shock me because, like, I just feel like it's like your study. We all have a Body, you know, for now. This is from a woman named Ash Brown. She says, has our screen use led to more increase, to more of an increase in adult ADHD diagnosis or is it simply increased awareness?

[Kara Swisher]

Complex, complex question. So I'll give a complex answer. Sorry.

[Lori Siegel]

Great.

[Kara Swisher]

So first of all, multiple things are happening here. One is like, yes, if you are. This is research done by informatics researcher at UC Irvine, Gloria Mark, who studies attention and how we pay attention to things. And she has found that if you've had like a really busy morning, like you're switching between tasks on your computer for an hour, hour, you're checking your email, you're doing all these things, and then the next hour is kind of like it slows down and nobody's really interrupting you. You will start to interrupt yourself. So almost, not quite half of all the interruptions we experience in a day are self interruptions, which is kind of hilarious, but also a little bit depressing.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

Is that adhd? No. Right. Like that is a. There is a diagnosable way of studying or of deciding whether somebody has adhd, but it can mimic the symptoms. So there are some researchers, I think they're in Toronto who are saying, you know, we have two types of diabetes, right. There's the kind you're born with and then there's the kind that develops based on lifestyle and habits. Yeah, maybe we need two diagnoses for adhd. This is not a thing. But they're proposing it. They're saying maybe there's the kind that, that genetically you are born with. And then there's the kind that it mimics the same symptoms. It feels like you have ADHD because you can't concentrate. So I think there's also a rising awareness. Like people talk about anxiety, depression, ADHD more than they did when I was growing up. And then there's also like, you know, social media where there's a lot of self diagnosis or we throw things around, like I'm addicted to my phone. Technically, according to the psychiatric experts, you are not actually addicted, but it mimics the symptoms and you feel that way. And so that's the language that we use. And so it's a nuanced conversation, one that has to happen between your doctor and to say to yourself, like, these feelings that I'm having, they're real for sure. One of the best ways I think, to sort of, of try to get back to equilibrium and feel good is by thinking of interoception. So interoception is that conversation between the body and the brain, right? Like, you know, you absentmindedly take off your jacket cause it got hot in the room or you know, you need to go to the bathroom, right. There is early research showing that too much time on screens is actually interrupts that interoceptive ability. And I've felt that like I'm sucked into my screen. I totally lose track of time. Oh my God. I look up, hours have gone by, my back is killing me. So what we found though with our study just to go to Body Electric was that many people used a timer to remind themselves to take breaks. But by the end of the two week period, they didn't need the timer. They said, I actually don't need to set a timer. My body tells me when I need to move. So listening to what is your body telling you or what is that feeling that you have that you have to switch between screens, that's a sign, right? It's, it's your body saying like this isn't working for me. Yo, can we literally go lie down for half an hour and just decompress? Yeah, that's a reset, an easy reset.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah, not complex. I think it's interesting. I mean that's, you know, that's fascinating. From Sarah Adler. She says as a former spine researcher I've been following TED Neck syndrome. Can you talk about rising incident rates if this can be reversed? And other texting, other than texting less. Are there advisable positions with which to text?

[Kara Swisher]

I mean, you know, your body wants to be in different positions. So if you're holding your body at this position for hours and hours, as we talked about, like with our eyeballs, like it will comply. It will get into the position that it, you, it thinks you basically want to be in all the time. So the key is just not being static. It's like if you, even if you're looking to, I mean, I do it too. It's not easy, let's acknowledge that. But I'm really working hard to go the opposite way with my physical therapist, which is like, okay, I spend my all my time like this, hunched over my devices. I need to spend more time going the other way and building back my back muscles. I think this is a lifelong struggle in a world built around screens. Will that change with VR and you know, dictation software and devices that talk to us? Maybe it might, that it'll be interesting to see. But right now I think there's also something nice in a way about having like a phone that you can put down and not being ambiently surrounded by your tech. Totally so these are all the trade offs that we have to consider.

[Lori Siegel]

I want to talk a little bit about tech and kids and I know we've talked about this a bit. You have an interesting take on this. I want to play you a quick clip. We had Dr. Becky on the show. Oh, love Dr. Becky, parenting expert extraordinaire. And we played a parenting question for her. A parent wanted to know how to talk to her 12 year old about artificial intelligence. This is what she said. So just want your response.

[Kara Swisher]

If we don't understand what feels good about something, we're going to always miss out with our kids about the things that draw them to that thing. And if we don't understand what's going to draw them to AI emotionally and a lot of not will, then they're gonna have to keep that entire part of their life separate from us and we won't hear about it. And the way I would just keep that conversation open versus closed is if I was gonna close the conversation and it would feel better to a parent because it feels final, you'd say, I'm glad we talked about this. So don't go to chatgpt for emotional stuff. Do go to logical stuff. Right, right. Like I tell myself, oh, I feel like really good as a parent. And I just think life is a lot messier than that. Like, I just don't think at age 12. Now, from 12 through whenever, every time my kid's going through something emotionally, they're gonna be like, I remember that talk I had with my parent. They said, yes, this, no, this. So that's what I'm gonna do. That's not how our emotions work. I'd rather leave a conversation open like this again. I'm so glad you told me that. Look, there's probably gonna be a moment when something feels emotionally hard, emotionally messy. And maybe you might think about coming to make, but there might be something enticing about just talking to a computer who probably is always available, never has their own agenda, never gets upset, and always does something that's like, oh, that feels good. And I just want to tell you, when that moment comes, when that feels interesting or enticing, that's actually a moment I'd love you to tell me about. I anticipate the moment's gonna come. Maybe it already has. I'm not kind of ignorant to that fact. And so what I'm really doing is in some ways I'm opening the door for, for more conversations instead of kind of closing all those future doors. So wise. I know, so wise. So hard. You know, I have a 16 year old and a 19 year old. And like you, those conversations need to start really early before they want to test out being an adult. Right. I think those crucial conversations, like age, I mean, starting pretty young, 8, 9, 10, like that, just laying the groundwork for that. It is not easy. But what Dr. Becky said also reminds me of advice that another researcher, Candice Odgers, she's a child developmental psychologist who does a lot of research into teens and screens. And she said, like, crucially, the key thing is to say we can talk about this, but also they need to know you're not gonna take away their device or their access, that they won't be punished if they tell you about something, that they can have the conversation with you, and it doesn't mean that it's forbidden.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah.

[Kara Swisher]

And I think that's just such good advice. And also what I think they're both saying is like, you know, I think it was Candace who told me this, actually. She was totally anti Fortnite, and with her kids, like, she's like, we don't do shooting them up games in this household. And then the pandemic happened, and all the kids were like, you know, on headphones, and it was the only way they could socialize was on Fortnite. And her kids were like, what the hell? We're not allowed to play. So she was like, let's do it. So she sat down with them and they played for an entire weekend. And she's like, I get it. This is a social thing. And then they could also talk about, like, oh, my God, mom, we played the blah, blah, blah. And she said it just was so, like, before you shut it out, be willing to try. Be willing to have the conversation, do the experiment together. I always say to parents, too, like, blame me. Be like, this weird woman wants us to experiment with movement breaks. She sounds crazy. And then find out together. And maybe it doesn't work for you, but maybe it does.

[Lori Siegel]

Yeah. I like so much about your work that you really resist the demonize the device approach, which I think is important. Now, there's an inevitability about this, and there are good things that do come from it and bad, and we have to. To have space for a bit of all of it. So I don't think I really see on social media a lot about what the device is doing to your neck, your body, your breathing, your eyesight. Why is that? And how can we inspire a cultural change around that?

[Kara Swisher]

I mean, my theory is this is very American. In many ways, like, you have people. We're a nation of extremes in so many topics, but particularly when it to. Comes. Comes to our bodies, right like that. We are like, I kill it at the gym, and then I grind it out during the day. And actually, those people are referred to by researchers as active couch potatoes, because it's great that you're working out during the day, but then the other extreme is also not good for you. So this idea, like, I mean, moderation sounds so boring, but as a philosopher pointed out to me, they're like. That goes back to Aristotle. Like, this idea that, like, you don't have to be extreme to live a good life, to feel something, you know? And so this middle ground, again, this discernment, this idea of, like, I think we're so hungry to feel amazing, to max ourselves out, whether it's our muscles or our bank accounts, that we forget the smaller pleasures like walking down the street, talking to our neighbor. Maybe you don't know their name, but that's fine. Like, just talk. Like, the World cup was so nice for that. I felt like it's the simpler pleasures that I think that we're missing out on these days, and that can make such a huge difference and add just texture and vibrancy to our lives.

[Lori Siegel]

Which is something I really appreciate about Body Electric, which is just this idea of, how do you actually make real small changes in a very tangible way? I always like to kind of end with, this is gonna. What I'm about to say just sounds so cheesy now that I'm about to say it, but I'm like, I love to end with a manifest. That is not me. I'm not a wellness person who ends with a manifest.

[Kara Swisher]

I can go there.

[Lori Siegel]

But I kind of love this idea of, like. So you say, like, tech isn't neutral. It changes us. And right now it feels like our bodies are collateral damage. I don't disagree with that. The next part you say is, but we can't just upgrade the operating system. That's not how humans work. But we can recalibrate them and reclaim what makes us human. Beautifully written. You must be a writer. Love that. I want to manifest it now. Paint me a picture of a world where we reclaim our humanity, where tech is at its best. We're designed for movement. Let's just manifest this right here, right now.

[Kara Swisher]

So I am not a futurist. I feel like I live in. In the mediocre middle, which is like looking at 12 months to 24 months out.

[Lori Siegel]

So let's go there, let's manifest 12 to 24 months out.

[Kara Swisher]

Okay, that seems reasonable to me. I would love in a year or two for people to be able to say to their colleagues, I need a move break. And then I'll be like, oh, you know what? I'll come out with you two. Not that different than a smoke break. We used to go outside and put poison into our lungs and that was socially acceptable. What if we were like, I need a move break. Cool, cool. I would like for teenagers not to think that they have to grind it out for hours and hours on their laptops, but to be able to tell themselves that taking breaks is actually okay. Not to look at another screen as a break, but to feel better in their body. I would like us to do the hard work of not just having bans on 16 and unders from social media, but to do the things that we actually know is good for adult and child mental health and reduces anxiety and depression, which is have more teachers in schools to pay them proper wages to make sure people have health care to. Shocking. I know, Imagine that, right? To actually potentially legislate tech companies where they have to get the toxicity off of their platforms and make it safe for everyone, not ask kids to send in photos of themselves to verify that they're under 16, which. Wait, haven't we been telling our kids not to give away their privacy? Yeah, so there's that. I'm going all over the place here.

[Lori Siegel]

I love this.

[Kara Swisher]

I want to say, to feel like we have agency, that we want to use the tech tools and think harder about what they do best for us, how they help us figure things out, but also that we begin to trust and listen to our own bodies and our minds too. I'm really, I'm feeling this and I would like us to just take a moment, each one of us every day, to not just ask, like, what do I want to achieve today? But like, what do I want to feel today? Like one emotion or one sensation that we'd like to feel.

[Lori Siegel]

I really like that.

[Kara Swisher]

That's all I've got.

[Jessa]

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[Kara Swisher]

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[Lori Siegel]

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[Jessa]

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[Kara Swisher]

Segmentation this is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.