Sahil Bloom (4:57)

Thank you so much for having me.

Mike Carruthers (4:59)

So explain why we're talking about this, because as I said, for most of us, wealth means money. So why do we need to dive deeper into these other types of wealth? So frame this picture for me, I.

Sahil Bloom (5:12)

Think it's best framed through a quote, which is one of my favorite quotes from the management theorist Peter Drucker, who said, what gets measured gets managed. And I've always loved that quote because what it implies is that the things that you measure end up being the things that you focus on, the things that you optimize around. And money has been the sole way that we measure our lives. It has been our focus and the way that we establish our worth as individuals and as people and as professionals. But unfortunately, money is just one piece of a more complete picture that contributes to a healthy, happy, fulfilling, wealthy life.

Mike Carruthers (5:53)

So what are the five types of wealth?

Sahil Bloom (5:56)

The five types of wealth are time wealth, which is the idea of the freedom to choose how you spend your time, who you spend it with, where you spend it, and when you trade it for other things. Social wealth, which is the idea of Your human connection, your relationships, the people with whom you are going to go on these journeys with mental wealth, which is your purpose, your pursuit of growth, and your ability to create space, to wrestle with bigger questions in your life. Physical wealth, which is all about your health and vitality, your ability to control the controllables, as it were, in your own life, in your pursuit of health. And then finally, financial wealth, which we all know, but in the context of financial wealth in particular, it is the idea of understanding your definition of enough, the idea that your expectations are actually your greatest financial liability, because if you allow them to accelerate and grow faster than your assets, you will never feel rich.

Mike Carruthers (6:59)

And what does that mean, to feel rich? Seems like if you feel rich, whatever your definition of feel rich is, then you're rich.

Sahil Bloom (7:08)

I think of rich as really about living your version of enough, which is funny to say, but there's a famous story that I love that really brings this to light. Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller, two very famous American authors, were at the home of this billionaire in the Hamptons. And Vonnegut says to Heller, joe, how does it feel that just yesterday the owner of this home made more money than your most famous book, Catch 22, made in its entire lifetime? And Heller replies and says, yes, but I've got something that he'll never have. And Vonnegut says, what's that? And Heller says, the knowledge that I've got enough. So really, that is at the heart of all of this. It's the idea that you need to define what your version of your enough life looks like. What does enough truly mean to you? Because when you get to that version of your life, when you've achieved the things that you view as enough, you will no longer find yourself on that incessant treadmill, that hedonic treadmill, the Sisyphean quest of continuing to push the boulder up the hill that so many people find themselves on.

Mike Carruthers (8:19)

So how do you determine that? How do you come to that conclusion that enough is enough, that this is enough? When we're bombarded with messages that you, oh, you should want more. Oh, you should get a bigger house, you should get a better car, you.

Sahil Bloom (8:34)

Should do more, you will never feel successful until you create your own definition of success. That is just a reality. As long as you allow yourself to default into the definition of success or the definition of wealth or the definition of richness that the world and that culture and that society hands you, you will never feel successful. Because we live in a consumerist world where you'll just be bombarded by exactly what you said, which is more and more information on the the next thing that you need to truly achieve the lasting happiness that's just on the horizon. It's just that mirage that you keep getting to. And unfortunately, most people allow themselves to accept that default definition. We accept those things blindly that are handed to us and we don't take the time to stop and ask ourselves the question of what do we truly want in life and how can we take actions to build around that? And part of this also just comes down to clearly defining the actual life that is around that definition of enough. It's not about the number. The thing that people do is they say, oh, it's once I make a million dollars, then then I'm going to be happy, then everything's going to be good. And then they get to a million and then they say it's 3 million and then they get to 3 and it's 10. There's actually studies around this. Michael Norton, a famous professor at Harvard Business School, did a study where he went and talked to high net worth individuals worth anywhere from a million on through 100 million plus. And he asked them, how happy are you on a scale of 1 to 10? And then he asked how much more money would you need to be at a 10? And across the board, whether they were worth a million or 100 million plus, everyone said two to three times as much money. So because we attach it to a number, it becomes this very easy thing to naturally inflate. When you attach it to an actual life, to an actual vision of the lifestyle that you are going to be living, what it does is it makes it a much more conscious and rational upward movement rather than a subconscious irrational one.

Mike Carruthers (10:44)

Do you find that people who seem to have one of the five types of wealth pretty well handled, have the others well handled, or if they have one handled, then the others don't do so well. Or what do you see?

Sahil Bloom (11:00)

Usually what happens is that people focus on financial wealth at the expense of the other ones. That they have this early in life, sort of patterning or conditioning that convinces them that incremental unit of money is going to equal an incremental unit of happiness. And that patterning actually gets cemented quite legitimately early in your life, you know, early on the curve. Money is a great driver of happiness because it reduces fundamental burdens and stresses. We can start to afford things, we can take care of the people around us, we can have two vacations a year. Those things really do drive it. Beyond that, what you find is that the incremental unit of money does not drive that same incremental unit of happiness. But because of the patterning that we've now reached, we continue to think it will. And as you continue to more and more narrowly pursue money as the means to your happy end, you start to see these other areas deteriorate. You see that people start to sacrifice their relationships or that they start to sacrifice their physical health, or they start to sacrifice their mental clarity. All of these other areas start to deteriorate along that pursuit. Part of that is because we don't think to invest in these other areas in the same way that we think to invest in financial wealth. When it comes to financial wealth, we know that investing $100 today will compound into our future. We know that investing $100 today is better than investing zero today because of that compounding that anything above zero compounds. But we don't think of that. We don't actually have that mindset around these other areas, when in fact, an investment in your relationships, I would argue, is the single best investment that you can make. Investments pay dividends, just like financial investments throughout the entirety of your life. So that simple mental reframe to tell people that investments in these other areas are just as powerful and just as important is a really simple and oddly effective way of getting people to understand this.

Mike Carruthers (13:05)

So explain to me, because I don't think people think of investing in these things, what investments in the other four look like. Examples would help.

Sahil Bloom (13:15)

Absolutely. So time wealth. We can start there. An investment in time wealth. The first step would be simply developing an awareness of the finite, impermanent nature of your time, understanding that time is your most precious asset. I say that that is an investment in time wealth because that awareness is what allows you to then use your time more effectively. If you don't develop an awareness of just how valuable your time is, you will never treat it accordingly. And so the question that I love to ask people to start this investment cycle is, would you trade lives with Warren Buffett? He's worth $130 billion. He has access to anyone in the world. He flies around on private jets and has mansions all over the place. He reads and learns for a living. It sounds pretty good. But you would not trade lives with him simply because he's 95 years old. There is no way you would agree to trade the amount of time you have left for $130 billion. So you acknowledge and understand that your time has quite literally incalculable value. And understanding that developing that awareness is the first investment you can make in your time wealth. Now you have an unlock. You have a mindset shift to recognize that your time is truly your most valuable asset.

Mike Carruthers (14:35)

Before you go on to investments in the other types of wealth, let me just remind people we're talking to Sahil Bloom. He is author of a book called the Five Types of Wealth, a transformative guide to design your dream life. I really love it when I find a great new podcast and then of course, I have to share that with everyone. And one I really want you to listen to is Curiosity Weekly. Curiosity Weekly from Discovery makes sense of some of the biggest questions and ideas shaping our world. It's all about new discoveries happening in science and tech, and they have expert guests that make it all make sense. It's a bit similar to something you should know, which is why I think you'll like it, but it takes a different spin. Listen to Curiosity Weekly and you'll discover things like how neuroscientists are studying TikTok and social media habits to see which chemicals are being released in your brain that make you so obsessed. Or how it is that you can fly from Florida to England on a plane using recycled plastic jet fuel. And how AI can now read hieroglyphics from Egyptian pyramids. What's so great about Curiosity Weekly is there's so much to learn about science and tech, and these guys seem to have their finger on the pulse of the most interesting food science, the science behind social media, the science of algorithms, computer science. And it's all explained in a fascinating way every week on Curiosity Weekly. Listen to Curiosity Weekly. Wherever you get your podcasts, think about all the online businesses selling products, ones that you probably buy. Mattel, Gymshark, Untuck It, Magic Spoon. All solid businesses. But a key ingredient to any successful online business is the business behind the business that makes the whole selling and checkout process work. And for millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Shopify is the number one checkout on the planet. And the not so secret secret is something they have called shop pay that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going. So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed, and everywhere in between. The fact is, businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout. Mattel and Gymshark and millions of other companies use. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.comsysk all lowercase go to shopify.comsysk to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.comsysk so Sahil, you you talked about investments in time wealth. Let's talk about the other wealths. Let's start say with social wealth.

Sahil Bloom (17:50)

Social wealth the idea of investing is as simple as sending a text to a friend that you haven't talked to in a while or getting together for a cup of coffee with that person that you've been wanting to see but have been neglecting. It could be a 15 minute truly present moment with your partner or spouse. Social wealth investments are as simple as recognizing that being present in a single moment is something that is going to compound positively into your future. And it's an important concept to internalize just that. These investments don't have to be dramatic actions. They can be very, very simple and anyone can do them. We all have time to send that text to the friend or make that phone call when we think about them. Mental wealth and an investment that you could make in mental wealth, I would argue is as simple as taking three to five minutes to do a very, very simple journaling exercise in the evening to create a bit of clarity and help yourself with winding down and going to sleep at night. You could do what I call my one, one, one method. The idea is you take a piece of paper and at the end of your day, right before bed, you write down one win from the day. That's something that you felt good about, something that went well, one point of stress, tension or anxiety, something that you want to get off your brain and onto the paper, and then one point of gratitude, something that you felt grateful for during the day. It takes three to five minutes and it truly does provide a calming sensation in the evening before going to bed. And it forces the highly ambitious go getter to actually acknowledge the things that are going well in their life, which for very ambitious people is something that tends to be difficult to do. And then finally, in the world of physical wealth, an investment you could make is to take yourself for a 30 minute walk without technology. If you just go out and get a little bit of movement in that you previously weren't going to do, that will stack a positive win in your life that compounds into the future.

Mike Carruthers (19:56)

Well, I love that example about Warren Buffett because as you say, I mean, clearly he has all the wealth in the world and yet he's 95, so people probably wouldn't want to change places with him. And it just shows you the value of time. And yet when we look at our own lives, we perhaps don't value our time as much as we should.

Sahil Bloom (20:20)

There was this investor named Graham Duncan who several years ago raised this idea of the time billionaire. And when I spoke to him recently, I asked how he came up with that concept. And what he said was that he interviews hundreds of young people to join his firm and that he noticed that all of them have this common goal of wanting to become billionaires. They all want to become dollar billionaires. And what he noticed was that they are all billionaires in one very important way, which is they are time billionaires. They are literally rich with time. But until you start relating to yourself that way, you don't understand just how much that is your most valuable asset that you have. Because when you're young especially, time is quite literally the only asset that you have. You don't have the networks, you don't have the money, you don't have the resources, the experience, the wisdom, any of those things. And so you actually need to take your time and trade it those things so that you can live well in those other areas as you progress in your life. But starting to relate, relate to yourself in that way is a really powerful thing for how you live. And frankly, you are a time billionaire up through, you know, on a technical basis, 50 plus, I think a billion seconds is about 30 years, if I'm correct. And you know, so at 20 you maybe have 2 billion seconds ish left, depending on life expectancy. And at 50, you have maybe a billion seconds left. So we are all time billionaires. We're doing quite well in that one regard.

Mike Carruthers (21:53)

Yeah, but people think, well, if you have a lot of time, or especially if you look at time as you have a lot of free time, that that's somehow bad, you're lazy, you don't have anything to do that. That kind of time is not an asset.

Sahil Bloom (22:12)

Time has become this funny thing, particularly in Western culture where being busy is like this interesting, almost pseudo dystopian status flex. You go to a, you go to a cocktail party and people ask how you're doing and you say, I'm busy. And you say it with this, you know, intense pride, as if being more stressed and more strained is something to be proud of because it's an indication for a lot of people that they must be important. You're saying it because it means that you are working on a lot of things, like you must be doing well. And you know, oftentimes in a more toxic workplace culture too Being busy is a protection mechanism because it, it shows to your superiors and the people around you that you are working on things, that you are doing a whole bunch of, of stuff. And unfortunately that busyness, treadmill, if you will, is actually not conducive to making a whole lot of progress. Because what you find is that you are working on a whole lot of the things that are sort of the one for one trades that are not actually moving you forward. You sort of become like a rocking horse, if you will. You're moving a whole lot, but you're not really getting anywhere.

Mike Carruthers (23:25)

Talk about social wealth, because that's one kind of wealth that I think people tend to overlook, that friends and social connections can be like the first thing to go when there's something else to do.

Sahil Bloom (23:38)

Yeah, I, I mean I recently saw a statistic that was terrifying, which was that teenagers in the United states are spending 70% time in person with their friends than they were two decades ago. 70%. I mean, a shocking, shocking statistic. And when you overlay that with the robust body of scientific research that supports the fact that relationships are the key to living a healthy, happy life, it's even more terrifying. The Harvard Study of Adult Development was this incredible study done over the course of 85 plus years. They tracked the lives of 1300 original participants plus their 700 plus descendants. And they found that the single greatest predictor of physical health at age 80 was relationship satisfaction at age 50. It wasn't blood pressure, it wasn't cholesterol, it wasn't smoking or drinking habits. It was how they felt about their relationships that determined their long term health outcomes.

Mike Carruthers (24:38)

And don't you think people have a sense of this, that we know we should be putting more effort into our social relationships and all that, but, but somehow it just gets pushed aside.

Sahil Bloom (24:49)

I think it is stuff that we all know in the back of our minds, but that has never been brought to the front. That's at least how I've thought about it historically. It's like you already have these answers within you, but you just haven't asked the right questions yet to reveal them in your own life. And that is really what I want to do, is I want to encourage people to ask these questions, identify what truly matters to you, and then start taking tiny actions to build your life around those things. And I say tiny actions, I really mean it. It doesn't take a lot to start building your social wealth. It is as simple as sending the one text to the friend that you haven't caught up with in A while. It's being the catalyst to get that group of friends together for the annual trip so that it doesn't just fall by the wayside. I mean, I think about that one all the time. How often do you get together with your group of friends from college years? It was very easy in the years during college. It was very easy in the years right after when people were getting married and there were bachelor bachelorette parties. But it starts to become harder and harder. And unless one person is the catalyst for bringing that group together, it just stops happening. And you start to lose that social wealth because of the natural decay during your life. But you can be that catalyst. You can take that one tiny action today that again, compounds positively into the future.

Mike Carruthers (26:10)

Do you think, well, you would know. When you ask people to sit down and figure out what's important to them in these five areas, do people have the answer? Do they know if they think about it, or do they have to really struggle with that?

Sahil Bloom (26:25)

People know, what you find is there are two types of priorities in life. There are the priorities people say they have, and then there are the priorities that people's actions show they have. And for most of us, there is a large gap between those two. So you sit people down and you ask them for their priorities, and they say all the right things. They say these five types of wealth. They'll talk about the fact that their relationships and the people and their freedom and their health and all of these things they'll talk about as being priorities. And then when you ask what they do during a week or you go look at their calendar, there is a big, big gap in what their actions are actually showing their priorities are. And so the whole idea here is to start closing that gap, to take the priorities that your ideal self has in mind and start aligning your actions with building toward that set of priorities.

Mike Carruthers (27:19)

Well, this is such a different way of looking at wealth and really a more comprehensive way of looking at wealth. All kinds of wealth that all add up to a happy life. And I appreciate you sharing it. Sahil Bloom has been my guest. He is an entrepreneur and managing partner of SRB Ventures, which is an early stage investment fund. He's author of a book called the five Types of A Transformative Guide to design your Dream Life. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Sahil, thank you. I really enjoy the conversation.

Sahil Bloom (27:53)

All right, thank you, Mike. Take care.

Mike Carruthers (27:56)

You know, we have had several experts on this podcast talk about the risks of being overweight and the heavier you are and the longer you remain that way, the more substantial the risks. But losing weight on your own? Well, that is so difficult and often unsuccessful. Hers is changing the weight loss game and making weight loss actually achievable. Hers offers a weight loss program with personalized solutions including compounded GLP1 weekly injections featuring the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy or oral medication kits all at one low cost with compounded GLP1 injection starting at $165 a month with a 12 month plan paid up front for new subscribers. Your initial online visit is free, so start right now@fourhers.com sysk that's F O R H E R S.com sysk for your personalized weight loss treatment options. Forhers.com sysk hers weight loss is not available everywhere. Compounded products are not FDA approved or verified for safety, effectiveness or quality. Prescription required restrictions apply. Wegovy and Ozempic are not compounded. Actual price depends on product and planned purchase. I'm really excited to have Factor back as a sponsor. Factor provides delicious chef made gourmet meals right to your door. And just to be clear, this is not a box of ingredients that you have to make. These are not frozen meals. These are fresh, fully prepared meals ready to heat and eat in two minutes. And they're so good. I first had Factor Meals delivered to me. It's been a few years now and everyone in the house has loved them. What's really special about Factor Meals is they're dietitian approved and the variety is impressive. There are 40 options across eight dietary preferences on the menu each week and you can choose from preferences like Calorie Smart, Protein plus or Keto. What kind of meals are they? Well, I think you'd find these pretty tasty. Chicken Florentine with Spinach and Garlic Chili Cauliflower Cajun Spiced Salmon and Shrimp Garlic Pork Tenderloin. It's like a gourmet restaurant and this is going to make it easy for you to try. Eat Smart with Factor get started@factormeals.com something50off and use code something50OFF to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's code something50OFF@factormeals.com something:50OFF to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. And I'll put that code in the show notes to make this simple. Isn't it strange that we have all this digital technology, the Internet, social media, all these things at our fingertips that seemingly can bring us closer together? Yet in some Ways it can be argued that these same technologies can also drive us apart. Here to make that case for you is my guest, Nicholas Carr. He writes for the Atlantic, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. And he was a Pulitzer Prize winning finalist for a book he wrote called the Shallows, which he was here discussing a few years ago. His latest book is called How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart. Hey, Nicholas. Welcome back.

Nicholas Carr (31:38)

Thanks, Mike. It's good to be here.

Mike Carruthers (31:40)

So you claim, if I understand you correctly, you claim that the Internet and all these tools of digital communication are really incompatible with the way humans are meant to communicate and that it is worsening, not strengthening relationships. So if that's true, explain what you mean.

Nicholas Carr (32:00)

When we're overwhelmed by messages from many different people, many different sources, some people who we know, some people who we don't, we have to start speeding up our interpretation of what we're receiving. And as a result, we become much more superficial in the way we converse with other people, the way we assess other people, the relationships we form with other people. And that triggers, you know, sometimes you can make friends and have a good conversation online, but it tends to trigger that kind of overwhelming amount of information, tends to trigger quite negative qualities in our psyche. So things like animosity, aggression, a sense of mistrust of people.

Mike Carruthers (32:46)

So here's the thing, though, what you're saying isn't entirely news to people. We've all heard. There are podcasts, there are books and seminars, and there's plenty of information out there about the dangers of digital technology, the dangers of social media. We've talked about it here many times. People already know this.

Nicholas Carr (33:09)

But even though most of us recognize these problems, we haven't changed our behavior. The intense flow of information and stimulation may be bad for us, and I think it is, particularly when we look at social relations, but we love it. Human beings, like other animals, have this very deep and very powerful seeking instinct. We want to know everything that's going on in our environment, everything that's going on around us. And you can understand this in evolutionary terms because, you know, if you knew that there was a predator out there, or if you knew that there was some supply of food over there that helped you survive. So. So we're wired to constantly seek out information. Now we have a medium and a device, the smartphone, where there's no end to new information. So there's no end to stuff that stimulates. Stimulates us and triggers this seeking instinct. So we've. We have this. We have this conflict within ourselves where we where we crave the stimulation that comes through the technology, even though it's undermining our ability to think deeply, to form deep relationships, and to really understand one another at more than a superficial and often very biased level.

Mike Carruthers (34:32)

Okay, well, now you've made the case that we have a problem and we need to change our behavior. But change it to what? What are we supposed to do?

Nicholas Carr (34:41)

I have to say that I am not hopeful that, that as a society we are going to change our behavior. I think we have very much adapted to this new communication medium and we have in, in some ways we've reshaped all of society around the assumption that everybody is always online, everybody is always reachable, everybody is always monitoring all these message flows. But I do think that at an individual level, we can come to a realization that there is a conflict between the technology in our nature and begin to think differently about how we use the technology. I'm not suggesting that people throw away their phones or disconnect from the Internet, but I guess the best way I can put it is that we should, should, we should use the best tool for the job. And what we've come to believe mistakenly is when it comes to communicating with other people, gathering information, making sense of the world, we've come to believe that the Internet is our all purpose tool. It's good for everything, and that's how we use it. And I think that's a mistake, that actually when it comes to interpersonal communication, talking to people, gathering information and making sense of complex issues, the Internet is actually a really bad tool. And so that means for those kind of things, particularly conversing with other people and building relationships, if we really want to escape the problems, we have to back away from the Internet for those purposes and think about different tools or no tools at all to use in building relationships, getting to know other people, and understanding the world.

Mike Carruthers (36:35)

So give me some examples of that.

Nicholas Carr (36:37)

One thing I discuss is how social media and messaging platforms have changed the way we converse, the way we talk to each other. It used to be if you wanted to talk to someone who was far away, you wrote them a letter. And that meant sitting down, thinking carefully about what you wanted to say, writing it out, using complete sentences, and then mailing it off. And they got it and there was this delay. Then email came along and we kind of got used to email and messages coming into our email mailboxes all the time. And so we began to compress the way we talked to each other. And we lost some of the courtesies and some of the niceties of letter writing. And then texting took over. And now most of how we communicate with other people is through these very short, very abrupt, very sloppy messages. And we've kind of gotten used to it. So we don't even notice the fact that, oh, we're sending out and receiving messages, including to family members and close friends that are filled with typos, that have weird autocorrect things, that have poor punctuation, that often don't make much sense. One thing you can do is to say, look, I need to make more of an effort in talking to people and conversing with people, to talk to them in person, to actually use the phone function and maybe even actually sit down once in a while and write them a letter. Because all of those tools, I would argue, are actually better for talking to one another and for conversing. And we've abandoned them for what I think is a very silly reason, that they're not as efficient as texting. But is efficiency really the measure we want to use for communicating with other people? I believe if you think about it, you realize that actually efficiency is absolutely the wrong criterion for most of our interpersonal communication. And yet the technology has encouraged us to kind of take this industrial view of even intimate conversations, that they need to be fast and they need to be blunt and we need to go through high speed networks to conduct them.

Mike Carruthers (39:01)

I've always thought it was interesting. I know people who use texting as a way to exchange information and conversation with people that I would never do that. It's far too important, it's far too intimate, it's far too potentially misunderstood. And it seems that although I understand what you said, that people do it because it's blunt, it's quick, it's efficient. I also think it's kind of a chicken way out in a lot of ways too. It's easier to text somebody, it's easier to break up with somebody on a text than to actually go see them and say, look, we can't see each other anymore.

Nicholas Carr (39:43)

Beyond the fact that it's efficient and quick and easy, it certainly seems that another of the reasons we default to texting or emailing rather than calling someone or getting together with them in person, is because the distance involved in this kind of mediated communication where you send a message and then the person gets it and reads and then sends another message back, it kind of it in our mind, it reduces the social risk of conversation. You, you have distance from the person, you're not exposing yourself through your gestures and Your facial expressions. So there is kind of. There one aspect of this is we kind of use. When we use the technology as a communication medium, we're often hiding behind the technology in trying to take some of the risk and sensitivity out of conversations, particularly conversations that are difficult ones. So you can understand that at a human level, why we do it. The unfortunate thing is it usually backfires because just makes difficult conversations much more likely to go wrong.

Mike Carruthers (41:00)

I wonder when people do that, if they consciously do that for that reason, to put that distance between them, or are they thinking more of, well, this is just a fast way to dispose of this.

Nicholas Carr (41:13)

I think it's both. I mean, I think in some cases, and you can see this in kind of some of the. The deep studies that have been done about how kids, or teenagers in particular, communicate. They're what we know now, and this kind of blows my mind is that a strong majority of teenagers prefer to converse with their friends, their closest friends, even through texting or through email or through social media, than face to face. They'd rather sit at home and communicate through the machine, through the phone, rather than go out and get together and hang out together. And one of the reasons is because they do feel safer when communicating with this kind of buffer, this. This technological buffer between them. And I think that's true for adults as well. But. But I think in the. In the. Because there's been a lot more research done and into how kids use these communication tools, it kind of comes through clearly there. So there's both that desire to reduce social risk and also the sense that I have to communicate so much and I have to follow so many messages and respond to so many messages that I just don't have time to concentrate on one conversation for very much time. So texting in particular, gives me a way to very quickly respond and read other people's messages. And it allows me to kind of stay afloat on this constant flood of messages and information.

Mike Carruthers (43:00)

People who are old enough to remember the days of, you know, the kitchen wall phone often remember it fondly that with that phone on the wall, if it didn't ring, you didn't go over and check to see if anybody was there with new information. If it didn't ring, you just went about your life. But with today's cell phones, with smartphones, it's constantly sending you information, and there are limitless things you can do. That's creating a lot of anxiety in people.

Nicholas Carr (43:33)

Yeah, it comes out in not only a sense of anxiety and in sometimes even depression, but it can come out in aggression, because when you're, when you're making snap judgments about information you're receiving, messages you're receiving from other people, you're also. You also have to make snap judgments about the people themselves. And one thing I discovered in doing the research is that when we gather lots of information about other people, even though we don't realize it, we start to place more emphasis on evidence of their dissimilarities with us than on their similarities. So if you, you know, if you have a casual acquaintance, a friend of a friend who you've only met a couple of times, and you happen to see that that person, you know, posted something on Facebook or Instagram or whatever and said, oh, I saw this movie yesterday and I really, really loved it. I think it's the greatest thing. And you had seen the movie two days ago and you thought it was horrible, you'll suddenly say, oh, gee, maybe this guy's a dope, or whatever. And then after that, when you receive more information about the person or from the person, you'll emphasize. You'll give much more emphasis on other evidence that they're dissimilar to you. And what we know from psychology, and this is very clear, is that we tend to like people who we feel are more similar to us and dislike people who are dissimilar. The phrase is. Dissimilarity cascades from the psychological literature that there's a danger in just gathering lots and lots of information from people because it tends to tear you apart rather than bring you together. And so if you think about social media in particular, you know, it's a, It's a machine for dissimilarity cascades because it, it encourages everyone to expose a lot about themselves all the time. You know, when we're, when you're talking face to face, you kind of are conscious. You. You want to kind of not talk too much. You don't. You don't want to say too much about yourself because, you know, you know, people will judge you as a, As a blowhard or anything but online because, because you're rewarded with likes and, and, and views and everything. We're very much rewarded for constantly talking about ourselves, sending out pictures of ourselves. And we might think that that will gain other people's. Will gain other people's affection or at least empathy or understanding. Actually, it often, more often than not, has the opposite effect.

Mike Carruthers (46:10)

People, as you say, you know, we do like this stuff. You know, people wake up in the morning, the first thing they do is check their phone and if you ask people, well, what if you stop doing that? What if you didn't do that so much? What if you did something else instead? You know, people I think would say, well, you know, it never occurred to me that you could actually stop. It's like jumping off a moving train. You know, you got, you can't, you just can't do that. But you can do that. And why don't people do that? And what would happen if they did?

Nicholas Carr (46:45)

Well, one thing we know both from how people describe their experience and also if you've, if you've ever done it yourself. If, for instance, you've lost your phone or it stopped working and you're cut off, the first thing people feel is panic. Because we're so used to being in touch with everything all the time. And as I say, we have this deep seated, seeking interest seeking instinct that urges us to want to know everything that's going on around us. So when you lose that connection, the first thing that happens is panic. But after a couple of days, two or three days, the panic shifts to a sense of relief. You suddenly realize, oh, gosh, I was paying so much attention to trivial stuff. I was constantly distracted and constantly interrupted. I can actually think deeply again. I can kind of get my thoughts in order. If I have a conversation with someone, I can concentrate on the conversation rather than kind of the conversation competing with what I know is new on my phone. So it's so. So once you kind of get over that initial panic, I think people realize what they've lost in being kind of beholden to the technology. The problem is, of course, is as soon as they get the phone back or it starts working again or they replace it, they immediately go back to those bad habits. There's a very kind of melancholy phrase in psychology and social psychology called MIS wanting. And it means that people often desire the very things that end up making them unhappy or make them feel unsatisfied. And I think our craving for connection and information and constant communication is a very good example of MIS wanting.

Mike Carruthers (48:46)

Anybody who has had that experience, though, maybe on vacation or you go away somewhere where there's no cell reception and no WI fi. Like you say, it's panicky, maybe for a little while, but boy, it's happened to me and I love it. I mean, it feels great, but it's hard to not get back on the train when you get home.

Nicholas Carr (49:09)

Yeah. And, you know, a lot of it has to do with that fact that the phone does everything for us. So. So all, you know, it's our camera, it's our photo album, it's our radio, it's our tv, it's our mail system. It. It's kind of all our relationships, all our information of interest is compressed into this tiny little device. So it's very, very hard to separate yourself from it because. Because you really feel like you're kind of amputating some fundament nervous system. So it. Yeah, so. So we tend to. Even if you, if you, even if you feel this relief when you're, when you're at a distance from the technology, as soon as it's at hand again, you tend to fall back into the, into your patterns of kind of compulsive information gathering.

Mike Carruthers (50:01)

So what's the lesson here? What's the big so what, what is. Okay, so now that we know this, what and it.

Nicholas Carr (50:09)

You know, it's something my father used to tell me when I was a kid that you need, you should use the right tool for the job. And what we have to get over is this idea that because the phone is there, the smartphone or the computer is always there, it's efficient. We can do lots of different things with it. We have to get over the belief that we should do everything with it. And we need to realize that the technology is really good for some things and it's really bad for other things. Things. And if we can just be more thoughtful about how we use the technology, I think we can end up using it in a much better way, getting the benefits from it, because there are also lots of benefits, but not falling into the trap of thinking, oh, the best way to live my life and the best way to build and sustain relationships is through this little screen that I hold in front of myself. That's. I'm absolutely convinced that that's a big mistake. But I have to say I'm also absolutely convinced that breaking that habit is extraordinarily difficult now that we're so thoroughly adapted to and dependent on the technology.

Mike Carruthers (51:26)

Well, this is something I think everybody who uses the Internet, which is everybody thinks about. And listening to your research into this topic gives people just more fuel for the fire that something's going to need to change. I've been speaking with Nicholas Carr. The name of his book is How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart. And if you'd like to read it, there is a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Nicholas, thanks for coming on today.

Nicholas Carr (51:56)

Thanks, Mike. I really enjoyed it. Enjoyed the conversation.

Mike Carruthers (52:03)

Particularly in the winter months, it seems a lot of people experience nasal congestion, a stuffy nose. In fact, nasal congestion is one of the most common medical conditions in the country. It affects millions of people and costs billions and billions of dollars every year to treat. But here's the thing. Nasal congestion is hard to treat because it's more of a sensation than an actual physical obstruction of airflow. In other words, it feels like you can't breathe, but air is actually flowing through your nose. Research shows that the feeling of nasal congestion has more to do with the temperature and the humidity of the air you breathe. Turns out that breathing cold, dry air helps reduce the sensation of congestion. This is because of sensors in your nose. Cooler air leads to a greater feeling of airflow and a less sensation of obstruction. And that is something you should know. You know, our business, the podcast business is a highly competitive business. There are literally millions and millions of podcasts. So we're always trying to get people's attention and have them come listen to our podcast. And you can help by just telling a person or two that you know that you listen and suggest that they do. You can even send them the link and suggest they listen so they too will hopefully become a regular listener. I'd appreciate that. I'm Mic Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know.

Sahil Bloom (53:34)

From the podcast that brought you to each of the last lesbian bars in the country and back in time, through the sapphic history that shaped them, comes a brand new season of cruising beyond the bars. This is your host. Hi, I'm Sarah Gabrielli, and I've spent the past year interviewing history making lesbians and queer folks about all kinds of queer spaces, from bookstores to farms to line dancing and much more.

Mike Carruthers (53:59)

For 11 years, every night women slept.

Nicholas Carr (54:02)

Illegally on the common. We would move down to the West.

Mike Carruthers (54:05)

Indies to form a lesbian nation. Meg Kristen coined the phrase women's music, but she would have liked to say.

Nicholas Carr (54:11)

It was lesbian music.

Mike Carruthers (54:13)

And that's kind of the origins of the Combaheever collective.

Sahil Bloom (54:18)

You can listen to Cruising on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes air every other Tuesday, starting February 4th. Hello, I am Kristen Russo. And I am Jenny Owen Youngs. We are the hosts of Buffering the Vampire Slayer. Once more with spoilers, a rewatch podcast covering all 144 episodes of, you guessed it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We are here to humbly invite you to join us for our fifth Buffy prom, which, if you can believe it, we are hosting at the actual Sunnydale High School. That's right. On April 4th and 5th, we will be descending upon the campus of Torrance High School, which was the filming location for Buffy's Sunnydale High to dance the night away to 90s music in the iconic courtyard, to sip on punch right next to the Sunnydale High fountain, and to nerd out together in our prom best inside of the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All information and tickets can be found@bufferingcast.com prom come join us.