The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Scary Truth of How Screens Are Rotting Our Brains (With Carlos Whittaker)
The Dr. John Delony Show
Release Date: January 31, 2025

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of The Dr. John Delony Show, hosted by the Ramsey Network, Dr. John Delony engages in a profound conversation with Carlos Whittaker, an author and speaker who has dedicated his life to understanding the detrimental effects of excessive screen time on our brains and relationships. The discussion delves deep into personal experiments, neuroscientific insights, and actionable strategies to reclaim our humanity from the pervasive grip of digital screens.

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The Detrimental Impact of Screen Time

Carlos Whittaker opens the conversation by sharing a startling personal experiment that underscores the severe impact of screen dependency. He states:

[00:05] Carlos: "My cerebellum healed years. In a period of seven weeks when I did not look at a screen, my memory went from the 50th percentile of adult men in America to the 99th percentile. There was only 1% of men with better memory than me when I finished this experiment."

This dramatic improvement highlights the potential for cognitive restoration when individuals significantly reduce or eliminate screen usage.

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Carlos Whittaker's Seven-Week Screen Detox

Carlos narrates his transformative journey of abstaining from all digital screens for seven and a half weeks. This period included immersive experiences with Benedictine monks and an Amish farming family, environments devoid of modern digital distractions. He explains:

[08:18] Carlos: "I decided to do the math... I spend 49 hours a week on my phone. That's two entire cycles of the sun. Four days awake time... if I live to be 80, I will lose over 12 years of my life looking at a screen."

This realization was the catalyst for his commitment to detox from digital screens, aiming to understand the true damage inflicted on his soul, brain, and relationships.

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Neuroscientific Insights and Personal Transformation

Seeking empirical evidence to support his decision, Carlos collaborated with a neuroscientist who conducted pre- and post-experiment brain scans. The results were astonishing:

[14:48] Carlos: "My memory went from the 50th percentile of adult men in America to the 99th percentile."

Carlos emphasizes that his cerebellum showed significant healing, challenging the notion that screen time irreversibly damages our brains. This personal testament serves as a testament to the brain's remarkable capacity for recovery when given a break from constant digital stimulation.

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Reconnecting with Humanity: Lessons from Monks and Amish Farmers

During his screen-free period, Carlos immersed himself in the lives of monks and Amish farmers, learning to reconnect with fundamental human experiences. He recounts:

[35:35] Carlos: "Every meal is an hour to two hours long. When I was doing research for the book after I got home, this was the kicker. The average American meal in 1923 was 90 minutes long. 2023? It's 12 minutes."

These extended meal times fostered meaningful conversations and community bonding, starkly contrasting with today's rushed, screen-dominated interactions. Carlos highlights the loss of such deeply human connections, advocating for a return to more intentional and present living.

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Practical Steps to Reduce Screen Dependency

Carlos offers actionable advice for listeners grappling with similar screen dependencies:

1. Do the Math: Calculate your weekly screen time to grasp the extent of your digital consumption.

2. Embark on a Detox: Commit to a screen-free period to experience firsthand the benefits of reduced digital reliance.

3. Implement Practical Changes:

   • Use an Alarm Clock: Replace your phone alarm to prevent nocturnal screen use.
   • Permanent Do Not Disturb: Limit phone notifications to essential contacts only.
   • Savor Moments: Engage fully in activities without the interruption of digital devices.

[51:59] Carlos: "Trust me... on the other side of that reckoning is you're gonna fall back in love with wondering and savoring and being truly human."

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The Challenge of Modern Connectivity

The discussion acknowledges the complexity of modern life, where screens are integral to work, education, and personal relationships. Carlos reflects on his initial struggles:

[50:25] Carlos: "If you don't think you're worth... go talk to somebody. Because you're not a burden and you're worth, you're worth having that kind of depth."

He emphasizes that overcoming screen addiction often requires confronting deep-seated personal and relational issues, advocating for holistic healing rather than mere avoidance of digital devices.

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Closing Thoughts and Call to Action

As the conversation concludes, Carlos and John Delony reinforce the necessity of reclaiming human connection and mental well-being from the clutches of excessive screen use. Carlos urges listeners to take decisive actions:

[58:27] Carlos: "If you even just cut it in half, I can legitimately see on this microphone, beyond a shadow of a doubt, you will get half of your life that you were losing back."

The episode serves as a powerful call to action, encouraging individuals to prioritize their mental health, foster genuine relationships, and embrace a more present and intentional way of living free from the overbearing influence of digital screens.

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Key Takeaways

• Cognitive Restoration: Significant reduction in screen time can lead to remarkable improvements in memory and brain health.

• Reconnecting with Humanity: Engaging in screen-free environments fosters deeper human connections and enhances overall well-being.

• Actionable Steps: Practical strategies such as calculating screen time, implementing device-free periods, and savoring moments can mitigate the adverse effects of digital dependency.

• Holistic Healing: Overcoming screen addiction involves addressing underlying personal and relational challenges, promoting comprehensive mental and emotional health.

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For those seeking to deepen their understanding of screen addiction and its impact, Carlos Whittaker's book and continued discussions on The Dr. John Delony Show provide valuable insights and guidance.

Transcript

[A]

My cerebellum healed years. In a period of seven weeks when I did not look at a screen, my memory went from the 50th percentile of adult men in America to the 99th percentile. There was only 1% of men with better memory than me when I finished this experiment.

[B]

What's going on? What's going on? This is John with a doct John Deloney Show. Hope you are doing so great. Hey. On today's show, we have a special episode, all things social media. Screens, the Internets, all of it. If you're like me, you know that this. And you're reading, you read Jonathan Hyatt's book the Anxious Generation. You are paying attention to what's out in the world with the tik tok bands and the social media stuff and the. The insane rise of mental health challenges, especially with young teen girls. But I think it's actually in boys too. It just manifests itself differently. Everybody's concerned about it, social media, and they've gamified human connection. It is hard to get off. It's hard to even cons like. It's just the whole thing's chaotic. And if you pull your kids off of it, then they're crying in their bedrooms that they're missing out on friendships and birthday party. It's just the whole thing's a mess. So I've got a buddy here in Nashville. His name's Carlos Whitaker, and Carlos wrote a book. He is an author and speaker. He's here in Nashville, Tennessee. And I invited him. We went and had lunch and I was like, man, you need to come on the show. And I want to talk about your new book. But more importantly, I want to talk about your experience as you unwound this thing. And this is one of the most important conversations I think I've had on this show. And, and I hope you will not just scroll past it because this isn't us talking about the science. You can talk, you can hear about the neuroscience of social media and the dopamine, the. All that stuff. And it's not a couple of guys just complaining and ranting and raving. I think this is the most honest conversation I've had on this particular topic about all of us and screens and real life and meals and, and family time and friends and what we can actually do about it. So I'm super excited to have this conversation with my friend Carlos Whitaker. Check it out. Pass this episode along to your friends. I think it's a really important conversation and it's one that the moment it was over, I changed my life. My life's different now, so I hope yours will be too. Check it out. My conversation with Carlos Whitaker. I'm. I'm super grateful that you're. You're here. You have tapped into something that's. I. That's haunted me for a decade. And I often, I don't say. I don't say this lightly. And. And, you know, I've talked like I'm. I'm super selective about who's here.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And it's always somebody that has a direct impact on how I'm seeing the world or experiencing or somebody. I'm going to do something different in my life because. And so to paint you a picture, in 2009 or 10, I was working at a university that was a Beta campus, okay. For this new little product called Gmail. And they were also a Beta campus for this new little thing called, hey, we got this new thing. We're gonna call it an iPhone.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

And so they shipped them to the university and overnight they passed them out to every student and said, we're gonna follow it and see what happens. And we think this is going to change everything. And so I was working in student affairs, which is like student mental health, student crisis care, drug use, where they live, all that kind of stuff. And I saw in real time, wow, the. The unwinding of what Jonathan Haidt's writing about now. I watched it just in real time and it was wild. And then was try, let's fix it with this new thing called an iPad. Let's fix it with. And as I left then I. I began working with students. And I mean, I've been working with students forever, but I've been working with different kinds of students. And my 20 year higher ed career went from, hey, I think I want to do this job, to hey, me and my mom are struggling, or to, I don't want to be alive anymore.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that arc went so fast, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The second thing, and I've talked about this to the people who check this show out. I had no social media when I took this job. And I remember a couple years ago, I was in my closet, there's a door inside my bathroom that has a door inside my bedroom, there's a door and my kids are running around and I was in the dark scrolling. And I remember I just started laughing and I was like, oh, you got me. Y'all got me. Y'all got me. I used to preach to parents, like, I like, you got, like, well played. Well, Played. Yep. And so I found myself in this loop of. Of I don't know what to do.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I say that like I know what to do.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

And yet.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

And then your book shows up. And so I'm like, who's this guy? So I called a bud, a mutual friend of ours. He's like, no, Carlos is the real deal. And so. And then you spoke this morning and I, I mean, I literally walked out of the, the event this morning and, and talked to my wife and I was like, hey, I. You hit the final domino piece for me.

[A]

Yeah. Wow.

[B]

And so I'd love just to kind of start here. Walk me through. It's Sunday afternoon, and that little tag comes across your phone.

[A]

You know, Sunday afternoon, we all get it. Unless you've turned it off, whether you're an Android user, an iPhone user, or iOS user. And the screen time notification comes across and it says you have averaged so many hours and minutes a day on your phone, which honestly, it's not a very impactful moment for any of us. We swipe it away or we see the number, which mine happened to be seven hours in 23 minutes a day. And I, I would see that for weeks on end or eight hours or nine hours or six hours. And I just swipe it away. Okay, cool, whatever. But for some reason, this one particular Sunday, I decided to do the math. I don't know why, I was like, let me just do the math. So the math told me that I spend 49 hours a week on my phone. So I was like, okay, hold on. That's two entire cycles of the sun. But awake time, that's like four days, right? So. So like I'm not counting sleeping. Whose nose on the phone when they're asleep? So just being awake, 49 hours of awake time, that's actually four days.

[B]

That's work plus overtime.

[A]

Yes. That's crazy, right?

[B]

And so that is a full time job plus overtime.

[A]

Yes, that I'm staring at 6 inches of LCD in my hand. So then I was like, well, that's kind of crazy. So then I kept doing the math, and that math showed 100 days a year. So over three months a year, I'm looking at my phone and I'm like, oh my gosh. How I know why the notification doesn't say this? Can you imagine if the notification said you spend three months a year looking at like that would change things. But it doesn't do that on purpose, I'm sure. Then I did one more equation and it showed that if I live to be 80 some odd years old. And again, at the time I was 48. I will lose over 12 years of my life looking at a screen. And that was my tipping point. That was the point for me where I was like, okay, I don't want to lose a decade of what I have left staring at this stupid thing. What's it doing to my soul? What's it doing to my brain? What's it doing to my relationships? I want to know what this is actually doing, the damage it's doing, because I know some of the good things that it does. Like, I help people, I talk to people, and I know that it helps people, but it's gotta be. There's no way we weren't created for this.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So that began. That tipped my domino. And I just. I watched them fall. And I made a decision to not look at a single screen. So not a iPhone, an Apple watch, an iPad, a TV, a laptop, not a single screen for basically two months, seven and a half weeks. And I wanted to see what would happen. So in order to add a little data to it, I got a hold of a neuroscientist in Los Angeles and I said, would you scan my brain before and after so I could at least see if there's anything that would happen?

[B]

This is. This is wise. This was wise.

[A]

Yes. You know, just so I could see. And he's like, absolutely, we'll do it before, we'll do it after, and I'll do some cognitive memory testing on you as well. So I was like, sweet. So I go and I. He scans my brain. Now, in the middle of these seven and a half weeks, it's not like I just chilled or I didn't move to a cabin for two months. And you know what? I spent two of the seven weeks at a Benedictine monastery with 21 Benedictine monks at Saint Andrews Abbey in Valley Remo, California. Then after those two weeks, I went and lived with an Amish family, a sheep farming family in Mount Hope, Ohio. And listen, I went all in with the monks and the Amish. Like, I became a monk, I became Amish. I'm all in.

[B]

I'm do the thing.

[A]

Yeah, I'm going to do the thing. I'm going to go in, lived with them for two weeks, then my wife picked me up and I lived with my family at home for three weeks. Because I was like, well, they need to see the benefits of whatever's happening. Let me try this with them, though. They can still be on their screens, but I'll not be on one. So a total of seven and a half weeks. And I went back and got my brain rescanned and ended up writing a book and making a documentary. And I, I, I, I've hit a pain point that Christians, Buddhists, atheists, Republicans, Democrat, like everybody, not a single human being doesn't know this pain point. And so what I'm trying to do, and we talked about this at lunch yesterday, what I'm trying to do is to approach this conversation in a different way than maybe a lot of other people have approached it. Because, John, the truth is when I, when the reason I made this choice to do this is that, you know, I went on Amazon, I started just looking up books on screen time and on how they're damaging, and there were all these books out there telling me the research shows and this and that, but I couldn't find the book from anyone that had done it.

[B]

Yes, yes.

[A]

Like, like I was like, okay, all these people are these, you know, PhDs, all these people are telling me what, what it's doing to me, but no one's done it. So I couldn't find the book. So I was like, well then I'm gonna be the guy. I, I'm the perfect lab rat. Seven and a half hours a day on my phone, tick tock, Instagram, YouTube, all the things. I'm making videos every day, talking to the little camera that's staring at me, getting my identity based on what people think about what I post and likes and shares. And I'm the perfect guinea pig. So let me remove my identity. Let me remove everything and live it. And then that's, that's why I'm sitting in front of you right now.

[B]

Well, and, and you offer the most compelling what's next. Yeah, and I, I like you, man. I've been lit. I've watched this in real time. I've lived it. I've had my own haunting. Just, just golf, clapping.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

The, the tech guys plus the neuroscientists, plus the, the guys that created like digital heroin. Like, yeah, they beat me. Yeah, they have beat me. They won and they, they beat my wife, who is a Luddite. Right? She's from the wrong century. They, they, they beat us. She, I mean, she is.

[A]

Yeah, it's so good.

[B]

And I remember my 2 year old son like, we were, we. Dude, we were crazy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

No screens, no tv, no nothing. And I'll never, like, I rem. They slid a, it was like at a burger joint in nowhere, Texas, and they slid a laminated menu and his two little non like functioning fingers.

[A]

He was trying, trying to like.

[B]

And I remember going, and, But I told my wife, I said it's in the water. It's in the water.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

IPads weren't, were barely out, bro. But he was trying to make it bigger. And I was like, oh, it's, this is in the air. And, and I always, I go to two things that are compelling to me. Number one, when they discovered penicillin, partridges in a pear tree do this, death from infection fell off a map. They solved that problem. Right. And the other one is, and I always forget one of the famous psychology godfather said, I thought if I took away my client's depression, anxiety, I would heal them. And what I did was I made them empty.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

The ancient, the, the, the, the anxiety and depression were serving a role.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so it was not just about removal, it's about what do we put there replacement. And I have not seen that.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

It's all been, here's five steps, here's the room. And so you give such a compelling vision. I want to start here. Tell me what happened to your brain.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And this to me takes it out of the woo woo.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is why I'm glad I did it. Now, to be fair to everybody that's listening, this, this wasn't a scientific experiment. Right. I am, I'm the one picture.

[B]

It's a snapshot.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

So articles. I mean, it equals one.

[A]

Yeah. Yep. So it was just me, the only lab rat. But let me tell you what happened to the lab rat. My, my cerebellum healed, he said years in a period of seven weeks. Now he's like, I see, I see traumatic brain injuries, I see healing. So I can see a lot of healing. He's like, it's significant. But the kicker was my cognitive memory score. This is mind blowing. When I did not look at a screen for seven and a half weeks. Now the cognitive memory testing, I felt like I was in Stranger Things. Like I walked into this office with fluorescent lights. It looked like a hospital room with a 1987 IBM computer. And it would just flash faces on, on the screen. And so it flash different black and white portraits at me. And I'd watch it for like two minutes. Then it would stop for a minute. This is one of the tests. And then it would flash more faces. And every time I remembered a face, I'd have to hit the space bar. Right. So those are the kind of tests that I was doing, remembering numbers, numerals, all those things. My memory went from the 50th percentile of adult men in America to the 99th percentile. There was only 1% of men with better memory than me when I finished this experiment.

[B]

So that is profound. Profound in a, in a, in a country where cognitive decline is taking everything from us.

[A]

And my father has dementia.

[B]

Right.

[A]

My, my, my, I moved my mom and dad a year ago into the house across the street because my father, who's one of the brightest minds, incredible speakers, communicators, now doesn't even recognize me and who I am. And so, so let me tell you, when I went to the neuroscientist clinic, I was not only. There was this fear. I'll just, I'll be honest, there was this fear when I first got the brain scan.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That he's gonna be like, oh, bro, I know you want to do this experiment, but you got about five years, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because they can see it. You can see it coming. And the breath that filled my lungs when Dr. Amen walked in and goes, I know your father has dementia, and I know you're worried, but I just need to tell you something. I, I've seen dementia brain. You don't have it. Like, bro, it was like I could take the biggest breath. So, you know, the, the brain part was very important to me because I wanted people to know that things were shifting, that I, I, I wouldn't have been able to tell just by telling the story.

[B]

Well, it's not.

[A]

Woo woo.

[B]

And it's not like I felt different.

[A]

I did a thing, you know? Yeah. Like, so, so I had that. But here's, here's the kicker. When I was done, I didn't have to go back to his clinic. Bro, I, I was so freaking sharp by, by eight weeks, like, I felt like a different human. I'm glad I went back to get the testing done because it felt it, it confirmed what I thought had happened. But yeah, my, my brain changed. My brain healed.

[B]

So it's so, it's so bizarre to me how I miss this. But one of the most magical parts, I think the most amazing parts of human body is how it diverts resources to things that are in use. And it takes resources from things that aren't being used. And if every minute of every day I'm grabbing this phone, where do I need to go? What's the answer to this thing? What does it look like? And I love you told a story. It was so great. It's so hot outside. That's not enough. I need, I need to Know the quantitative number that identifies how hot. Instead of just letting it be hot, just let it be real hot or not super hot.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

And so. So it. God, I missed this. That. Like. Of course. That part of your brain atrophies. Memory.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Insight, intuition. Of course your brain doesn't use it.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Because we've outsourced it.

[A]

We've outsourced all of it.

[B]

All of it.

[A]

Literally all of it.

[B]

But I. I think the part I. I didn't recognize is that's humanity.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's us.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. That's who we were created to be.

[B]

That's it. And now I've. I've outsourced joy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I've outsourced justice.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I remember I used to tell my students, yo, when Martin was walking across the bridge, they said, they're gonna kill you. And he said, we walk.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You guys. Thumbs upping something is not the same thing. Right. Or how many times have I researched the article? I mean, the workout.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Instead of just going to exercise or I go for a walk, and it doesn't matter what I feel like.

[A]

It's.

[B]

What does this? Watch. Tell me.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Right.

[A]

All of it. Do. We've outsourced our humanity.

[B]

Everything. Everything. We've outsourced sex to pornography. We've outsourced discomfort.

[A]

Yes. Yes.

[B]

And it was this. And I knew this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But you saying. No, no, no, man. It took eight weeks in. The brain's like, oh, I get to. We get to use humanity.

[A]

Yes. And I spent eight weeks. And I no longer could outsource any of this anymore.

[B]

No, you have to.

[A]

So I literally had to, like, it was. I legitimately, like, detoxed. Right. Like, I. My body and my brain, like, wasn't used to actually living the way it was created to live. You talk about brain health and memory. And there was a study done. I feel like this was, like 2016, so this was almost a decade ago. That showed London cab drivers.

[B]

Yeah. Their brains are astounding.

[A]

The ones that use GPS versus the ones that don't. The ones that use GPS versus the ones that use landmarks. The ones that use GPS develop a gray, dense matter on their brain that the ones that were using landmarks didn't. So it's literally like we are atrophy. I mean, you're right. Like, when you don't use it, it's slowly.

[B]

Your brain's like, sweet. I'm gonna go work on something else.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it just lets it ride.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All right. So I've done some soul searching recently. And I've come to the realization that I actually love the Internet. Just kidding. It's the worst. I mean, it is amazing, but it's also the worst. And it doesn't matter if I don't like it. Everything in my life. In your life takes place on the Internet. Our work, our personal messages, our communications. We buy most of our things on the Internet now. It's where we live. And because so much of our lives take place on the Internet, now it's become normal to just give away our email addresses to random companies who then turn around and sell them to other companies. It's become normal to create all sorts of different accounts for banking and shopping and social media. It's become normal to even order our food and schedule our garbage pickup with our phones. Listen, whether you like it or not, your personal information is everywhere across the world wide web. And this is why I'm so thrilled to use and recommend Delete Me. With all of our online activity, who even knows where our data is and who has access to it? Chances are very high that data brokers buy everything about you and they watch every move you make on the Internet and they're selling it to bad guys. But my friends at Delete Me will find and remove your personal data from hundreds of scammy data broker websites and they'll send you detailed reports throughout the year showing you exactly what they've removed and from where. So while we really can't avoid the Internet, we can try to make our personal data personal again with Delete Me. Individual Delete Me plans start as low as nine bucks a month. So go to joinedeleteme.com DeLoney today and get 20% off. That's joindeleteme.com DeLoney all right, listen folks. You can't just think your way to being emotionally or mentally well. And you can't just think your way to having good relationships. We all have to also focus on our physical health. And that means regular exercise, weight training and movement. And I know it's cold and dreary outside, but our bodies still have to move. And with so much noise out there, it can be hard to know even how to get started. So if you're finally ready to start an exercise program or if you've been a lifelong lifter like me and you're ready just to shake things up, you've got to check out TrainWell. TrainWell is an app and personal trainer all in one. I use it. My wife, my co workers and their spouses, everybody's using TrainWell all the time and the results have been off the charts. Trainwell offers tailored workouts with step by step guidance from real people. That means it's not just an app and it's not just a personal trainer. It's the best of both worlds. I get personalized workouts on their app and I communicate with my trainer on a daily basis. And like I said, the results have been amazing. To get started, you just answer a few questions about your fitness journey. You hop on a chat with your expert trainer to discuss your goals and make a personalized plan. And then it's time for you to get to work. As you complete workouts, your trainer will keep tweaking them to help you get better. Train well takes away our excuses and makes it easy. So if you're ready to start taking control of your physical health and start exercising, I want you to get online, take the quiz to find your perfect trainer. Go to trainwell.net DeLoney today. And they've extended their special offer for my audience just $69 a month. When you lock in your plan this February, that's almost 50% off their regular monthly rate, plus 14 days of free training. Go to trainwell.net that's T R A I N W L L trainwell.net/deloney. I get the crack allure. Right. I get the, the heroin of the phone. I get that. But I always want to look at what's underneath that and tell me if I'm wrong because you've been working with people a long time and I don't mind being wrong here.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I feel like the meta message of the last 20 years has been. Maybe last quarter century has been. Everything out there is on a road to ruin and everything out there is bad. Everything out there is. Is you because of what happened to you, because of your lot in life, because of the cards you were dealt. Right. Are always going to be less than.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you sit over here in the corner, patch on the head. That's, that's, that's just what happened to you.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, we got from here. And the only thing I can think of is the, the meta message has been. And maybe it's from helicopter parents that we're learning now.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Where you're actually teaching the nervous system, kid, is we don't think you can totally. But the cultural message has been y'all can't.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Head to the sidelines and we got this Y. And when that happens, the only way to survive that is to numb it.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

And that's, that's the Only way I can think that made this stupid box.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I went to an insane. I bought tickets six months ago. Totally forgot. I finished an event and I got home and I was exhausted and I got this little thing like, hey, Tim. And I was like, it was a wild old school hardcore punk band. My 14 year old's sitting there and like, T shirt. I was like, you knew something crazy. He's like, what, dad? He has no idea. Yeah. That this world exists.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I was like, put on some clothes. Dress in all black. We're going.

[A]

Yeah, that's amazing.

[B]

And I said, you're gonna hear some language I don't approve of.

[A]

Right, right, right.

[B]

But I want you to know the high school. Yeah, Me, high school dad.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And he walked in in two or three minutes and he just like, he goes, dad, these are your people. And I was like, you're correct, son.

[A]

That's awesome.

[B]

But there was a sliver of a night when there was an alternative reality.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, let's go do a thing.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And we laughed.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

My son. We got out of the car and the show had already started. And you could hear the band from outside this little club. And he was like, where are we?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we had wonder and laughter. Crazy, dad. This is nuts. And I look over halfway through and he's like trying to play along. He listens to country music.

[A]

Yeah, I know, totally.

[B]

And dude, the allure is to go home and look at this thing.

[A]

Yes. Yes.

[B]

And so tell me, am I wrong?

[A]

No, you're not wrong. You're. You're not wrong. And not only are you not wrong, but the, this black box, whatever, whatever we're calling it, right? This thing. You talked about, wonder, you talked about the, the allure. You were able to savor this moment with yourself. Like all of these things. Like, I want us to, but everybody.

[B]

Everybody at the show, we're like this. Through the screen.

[A]

Through the screen. Absolutely.

[B]

These are legends.

[A]

Absolutely right. And you've seen that. You've seen the videos or the photos of. There's this one famous photo that shows the juxtaposition between Michael Jordan hitting a game, winning shot in like 1992 versus somebody hitting a game when he shot in like 2022. Every single person in the Michael Jordan is just standing there with their mouths hanging open and their hands out like this. And then in the 2022, whatever, every single person has their phone up. And I, I'm just telling you that, that we have lost the, the ability. And listen, I, I don't Want this to be all doom and gloom, but I do want to understand. You have to understand, like, you are legitimately losing decades of your life. Like, if somebody is listening to this, that's 30. Okay, I'm 50. So, like, yeah, I may be losing 12 years. You're losing 30 years. 30 years of your life. And not only. I don't want you to even think about losing 30 years of your life. I want you to think about, like, what are you losing? Not, not just the life, but like, like these moments with your son. Right? Like walking out when I would walk outside and it was this hot and I, I didn't. I would laugh because I was like, I don't know if it's 97 degrees, 100% humidity, or if it's 98 degrees with zero. I. I don't care. It's just hot. And I know it's too hot to do what I wanted to do. So I'm just gonna, you know, like, all of these uniquely human experiences that we were created to do, I got to do again. So the good news is, like, I fell back in love with all of these things that we no longer do, that we were created to do as humans. Right? Wondering, noticing, savoring, beholding, getting lost and finding our way. Just all of the community, the table, all these things that are gone now. I got to live it again. And so the good news, here's the good news is I'm now addicted to those things.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And I'm no longer addicted to my screen. And it's crazy. It didn't take me setting up all these rules. It didn't take me like, okay, I'm gonna make my phone lock at 10pm and no, it. Last night, for example, yesterday. I'll just use a current day example. I am putting out my Christmas decorations in my front yard. And the last few years I've time lapse filmed myself because I'm gonna make a YouTube video. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. And I was like, no, I'm not gonna do that. I'm just gonna, just gonna savor doing this without having to think about a video and all these things that I'm doing. I don't know, maybe 25 neighbors. No. So, so this was at the point of this recording, Election Day. So Election Day here in America. And I'm, I'm putting up a 25 foot Rudolph in my front yard. The amount of people that just stopped and said, thank you. I really needed this. Today of all days, I needed to see a Rudolph I needed to see Santa. Like, thank you. And like, these are things, savoring these moments, having these inner face to face, human to human interactions that normally we wouldn't have, but now, like, I'm addicted to those things. Those are the things I'm addicted to. Like, I want more of that. So I pick up my phone less.

[B]

And to get nerdy for two seconds, I often tell people, like, if you don't, if you don't have a tribe, if you don't have people.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You don't have close friends, your body would be failing you if it let you sleep all night.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Because you're all you got. Right. That's. That's, that's wired. That's how we're built.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right. The peace you gave to your nervous system by making eye contact and waving and saying hello to 25 different people gave peace to your body.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In a really anxious moment.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it went.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And we've taken that from ourselves.

[A]

We've taken it. It's gone. These screens. I mean, I'll just say it's not real community.

[B]

It's not.

[A]

It's not. And there's people that are listening to this. That. And I get this pushback a little bit sometimes where people are like, well, I don't live in a. I live in a tiny town. I don't have, you know, a lot of friends. I don't have. And so my phone helps me make friends. It helps me. And I'm like, I'm not saying that. That you can't make a friend on your phone. That you can't. But it's just not. It's. It's not what it was supposed to be.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And I tasted what it's supposed to be again. Oh, I don't ever want to taste the other thing again. Like, like, it. It's. It's not real.

[B]

Well, so the magic that you propose here is. Gosh, I just put this together just now. So I wrote a book about anxiety.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the whole thing was. I think anxiety is usually. Right.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So instead of trying to fix this, create this life. And your body will turn the alarms off.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Similarly, instead of creating a bunch of rules.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Only four minutes a day. Use this super planner with 40 ribbons in it. Dude. What if you created a life?

[A]

Yes.

[B]

It was rich again.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And it's awkward and will be boring at first. And you'll have to face some demons. Like.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You mentioned this. More like silence.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You'll have to make peace with, like, whatever Demons you got.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

But what if you created a life that. Oh, man, made this thing obsolete?

[A]

Yes. No, it really is. And. And it's easy to make. To honestly, I mean, I say easy. It's not complicated to make that life again. You don't have to move to monastery. I did it for you. You don't have to go to Amish farm. I did it for you. But I have laid out probably 17 to 20 things in my book that I think give people handlebars on what they can do to live this, to. To get back to being truly human again without, you know, our phones. I. I was joking this morning to the staff how, you know, we. We trust Yelp now more than we, you know, it's taken our ability away to, like, go to a restaurant that we actually just want to go try.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's like, well, I checked Yelp, and there's a one star review. I'm. I'm never going there.

[B]

I'm not going there again.

[A]

Some dude named Bob with taste buds that aren't like yours made that decision for you. Like, you. You didn't. And so, like, for me, I just think I have created through. Through writing this book. I've given people handlebars on, like, how to. How to wonder again. Like, let. Let wonder happen. You know, I. I think when I was. I think I'm a little older than you, but, like, when I was in high school, I'd go to, like, the CD store to go. To go.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Listen to, like. And so I'd go to the CD store. Not on my phone. I'd go. And I'd walk up and down the aisles and. And I'd. Back in the day, like, you'd have to, like, take the demo cd, put it in CD player, put the headphones on, and I'll never forget walking down the aisle once and seeing the most beautiful woman cut out that I've ever seen. Like, like, by this new cd. And I was like, who was that with her golden locks? You know, I was like, 17, 18. And I walked up closer, and it said Mariah Carey. And I was like, who's this Mariah Carey goddess? And, like, I put the CD on and I listened to it. I was like, who is this?

[B]

Yeah, she's an angel.

[A]

Like, she.

[B]

Listen to her voice.

[A]

And I didn't know who was to let. Then I took the CD to the. To the person at the front, and I was like, hey, like, do you know who this is? No, we just got it in so they. They couldn't Tell me. So then I bought the cd, I went home and I just listened to it for weeks. Discovery. And I'm just listening and I'm like, I don't know who this is. And then on mtv, like three weeks later, there was like a three minute interview with her. And I got three more minutes. But that's so uniquely human, Discovery. I mean, just figuring things out, like all, all of that is gone now. And I got to do it again with the monks and with the Amish. I got to literally live the purest existence. When I got back, my daughter said, because they got to live with me for three weeks without a phone at the end, I. Because so I had a Sony camera with me. I was kind of self documenting the whole thing. I asked my daughter, I said, so, like, how's it been? And I'll never Forget, she was 17 at the time. She said, this is the purest version of you I've ever experienced.

[B]

God Almighty. That's it. And when parents ask, hey, my kids are so anxious. My kids won't sleep. My kids won't. My answer is always. They absorb the tension in your home.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

That's the air they breathe.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And to think about that comment, that gives me goosebumps.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

To think that, that my son would say, no, I get, I get to. I got to meet my dad.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Not the quantified version of you. And the always optimized. How many calories are we cutting it?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I just got to meet my dad.

[A]

Yeah, dude, that's it.

[B]

And to think on a punk rock floor.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

My son was like, oh, I got to meet my dad.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And thinking my 8 year old daughter still doesn't really know her dad.

[A]

Right, right, right.

[B]

And we try to solve it in all these other bananas ways. You. You talked about something that got me choked up. And I, I immediately pulled my phone out and I texted my wife. Here's some changes that are happening right now. Talk about dinner time.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So we know. We know the stats. Right. And this is unpopular stats. I don't care. Families that eat together.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

The kids have lower mental health challenges, the family has lower conflict, and the kids do better academically over time.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

That's what, that's what the.

[A]

The data's.

[B]

The data sets.

[A]

Right. It's. It's there. Is it data or data? You're the.

[B]

You're the. They're both okay. Right? Depends on how pretentious you want to be.

[A]

I want to sound like John. I don't have a lot of friends, so so. So I'm at the monastery. Every meal is. Breakfast and dinner are in silence. Lunch, you can talk. Okay, so that's weird. If you've ever eaten with somebody and all you can do is hear yourself chew. It's those. And swallow. It's like the str.

[B]

I. I immediately, like, it's strange. I set myself on fire.

[A]

So, like, meals already were weird with the sho.

[B]

And slurping.

[A]

Then I. Then I got to the. I got to the Amish. And, bro, like, I just remember that first morning I show up at Willis's farmhouse, and after I.

[B]

They.

[A]

I was sleeping in a tiny house on their farm, and I. So I walked over to the main house, and he's like, all right, Kathy's got breakfast for us. So I was like, oh, sweet. And it was gigantic spread. Like, I mean, you know, farm breakfast. But we sat there for, like, an hour, eating and talking, and I'm like, bro, don't we have to farm? And there's something, you know, and then lunch was, like, an hour and a half, and then dinner was, like, two hours. And there was, like, I don't know, 20 people at dinner. You know, other neighbors that had come over and this happened day after day after day. No meal was longer or was shorter than an hour. And most dinners were longer than two. And I just was like, willis, why.

[B]

Did you get antsy?

[A]

Oh, bro, I was like, let's go. Because I finished my break, my bacon and eggs in seven minutes.

[B]

I get antsy. You. You. You telling me that?

[A]

Listen, listen. I finished my bacon, eggs in seven minutes. We sat there another 52, 53 minutes. And I was like, willis, I'm done with my meal. He's like, no, you've just eaten. You haven't had a meal. And I was like, wait, hold on.

[B]

Did I need to sit on that? Yeah, you've just eaten.

[A]

You've just eaten. You haven't had a meal.

[B]

We don't have me.

[A]

We don't have meals.

[B]

We don't have.

[A]

We don't have music, and they have meals, and. And I was like, why. Why is this taking so long? He's like, carlos, we don't have Facebook. We don't have Instagram. We don't have Twitter. The only way we can visit and know what's happening in our community is over a meal. So every meal is an hour to two hours long. When I was doing research for the book after I got home, this was the kicker. The average American meal in 1923 was 90 minutes long. That average length for A meal in America was 90 minutes long. 1923. 2023. It's 12 minutes. 12 minutes. That's eating, that's not mealing. And we wonder what again? Why we can't have conversations with each other. Why? Here's the thing. The Amish are the Amish for a reason. I am not Amish for a reason. So therefore, just knowing that we have a very large spectrum of beliefs, myself versus the Amish, I don't believe everything the Amish believe, or else I'd be Amish.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So as we're having these two hour meals, we are talking about the most hot topic geopolitical. You don't. I mean, we were talking about all the stuff with the Amish we disagreed on so much, Willis and I. But bro, you cannot hate somebody for 90 minutes over a steak.

[B]

It's too tiring.

[A]

And so like, we talk about something, we disagree and then we end up somewhere. We agree, we disagree and it's. Next thing you know, I've got this cadence of disagreeing over something but agreeing over what we love in the food and the relationship. And we've just lost that in America. We've lost the ability to do that. And so again, that's another uniquely human experience that is gone because we're either scrolling on our phone during a meal or they're just too fast.

[B]

And I think what I'm rejecting in real time right now.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I have to think through this over a couple of months, but what we have done is not progress.

[A]

No.

[B]

Well, we've de. Evolved.

[A]

Yeah. And you know, I can see you're an efficient guy. Do you like efficiency?

[B]

I, I, I, I'm at, I'm at constant war, which means I don't have peace.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Because I'm late everywhere.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Because I love saving.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

And yet I've plugged myself into these systems that don't savor.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that don't. So a thing that happened when I moved here. Yep. Took this job.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

And actually was a point of contention for a while here until we finally broke it down. Like we had a meeting with some folks.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I said the single rudest thing in my, like in my fiber of being.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Is when somebody's in a conversation is to cut that off.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You, you let the, you let the conversation end.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And they were saying. And they were right. The single rudest thing you can do is tell somebody, I will be there at three. And they show up at 2:55 and you roll in at 3:40 yeah. That's disrespectful, dishonest.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I was convicting.

[A]

Yeah. And two things can be right.

[B]

They're both right.

[A]

Yeah, they're both right.

[B]

And so it wasn't the. It was a matter of, oh, I had tried to plug myself into a system.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Without being honest about what the cost was going to be.

[A]

Right. Right.

[B]

And I was trying to hang on to these things while still trying to extract the benefits of this thing.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And so I've been on the. I'd say I've been on 36, 45 months, three or four years of optimization train.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Every minute, everything. Is it planned? Is it this? How fast can you get there if you're not growing your diet? Like, if you're not wasted? Like that whole thing.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And it was a couple years ago when I was speaking, meeting with a. Buddies, a medical researcher, and we're talking about growth.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And he's like, that is cancer.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

Cancer is growth that just keeps growing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If the growth isn't for a thing.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true.

[B]

Then you're can't. Then it's cancer.

[A]

Oh, that's good.

[B]

And I was, I was like, wow, gosh. Okay. I need to exhale on that. Yeah. But, yeah, so efficiency has become. I don't know. It's not real.

[A]

Well, yeah, it's not. And. And it's. You know, we've. We've so.

[B]

It's a hack.

[A]

Yeah. We. We've so like, fallen in love with efficiency. And, you know, I. I just. When I was with the monks and the Amish, I just was like, you know, yes, they're efficient with what they have, but, like, that's not the goal. Like, the goal's not to be right. You know, I. I feel like their, Their goal is just to live this peaceful life and to like, you know, Willis, I'll never forget, we're. We're on the. On the back of the tractor and we're being pulled by these gig. Four gigantic, like, Clydesdale horses. Right. Plowing the field. And we're just sitting there and I'll never forget, I turned to him and he's like, you know, Carlos, every day I'm out here on this horse plowing this field. Birds are flying around me. I think I'm just so blessed. This is. There's a lot more efficient ways he could be plowing that field. There's a lot more efficient ways that the Amish could be doing a lot of things, but they've made a decision to maybe not be so efficient so they can be a little bit more human and. Which is why I asked you that question. I asked myself that question all the time. It's like, am I trying to like, hack my life away into like this thing or am I just gonna live it? You can live your life or your life will live you. And I just feel like so many of us, our lives are living us instead of us living our lives. And I don't know, man, I. I just think that, you know, watching the Amish live the way that they lived, with such purpose and such community, well, it changed me forever.

[B]

This show is sponsored by Better Help. You've probably heard people talk about the different kinds of flags in friendships and romantic relationships. Red flags and green flags and beige flags. Listen, sure, it can be helpful to look for relationship patterns or unsafe behaviors. But to me, all these flag labels can distract from what's really important. When you're trying to find a lasting relationship, what's really important are your values and your potential partner's values and whether both of you are willing to wake up every day and choose to honor each other's values. But when you grow up in challenging environments, or given how we are bombarded with everyone else's values all day, every day, it can be tough to even know what are my values, what is important to me in a relationship, and how will I show up to honor myself and love my future partner? Forget all the different flags on someone else instead. How can you learn what you value? Therapy can be a great way to figure out what you value, learn what you're looking for in your relationships, and then decide your boundaries and your non negotiables. If you're thinking about starting therapy, try BetterHelp. BetterHelp is a hundred percent online therapy that works with your schedule schedule. To get started, you just fill out a short online survey to get matched with a licensed therapist. And if it's not a right fit, you can switch therapists at any time for no extra cost. So whether you're dating, you're married, you're building friendships, or just working on yourself, try BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com Deloney to get 10 off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P.com Deloney Walk us through. Give me a couple ideas. What do you yeah, how do you you if this is resonating, you know, you know, you know.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And okay, your job's on a laptop. Fine. Yep, your job is in front of two big screens because you're a data person or. Yes, whatever. Or your job's like ours. It's on a phone.

[A]

Yeah, no, absolutely. Okay, I. I did a. I did a talk based on my book to a bunch of video game developers.

[B]

Okay, Right.

[A]

So.

[B]

So that's their planet.

[A]

Their planet is like not only video games, like on a console, but like VR. Right? So like, these people are not. They're immersed. So here's the no phone guy coming in to talk to video, and it's like, listen, it's. It's more about falling back in love.

[B]

It's not about the phone.

[A]

It's not about the phones.

[B]

Love it. Okay.

[A]

I'm telling you, it's not about the phones when you start falling back. So you're accountant on your screen or whatever. You know, a simple thing. If you're gonna watch a movie with your family, the only screen you're allowed to watch is the. Is the movie screen.

[B]

Gosh, yes.

[A]

Here we go. So. So now what. What have you done? You've. You've cut. You've severed another screen out of your. And so now, because most people watch TV and movies now with a screen in their hands. So, dude, I have.

[B]

Because I'm so sophisticated, I have social media on another phone because I'm more pure. Oh, yeah, I have both of them up last night. Watch the election results. I'm texting on multiple text threads.

[A]

And then you're.

[B]

And then I'm scrolling.

[A]

Yeah, so. So there we go. So that's simple. Watch a movie. Just watch the movie. Be with your family. Talk about the movie. Laugh, just watch it. You're not. You're not there. Second thing, this is probably the most. Has been the most powerful thing for me. You talk about being present now again, I know not everybody can do this. I was talking to a bunch of nurses, like, in hospice care a few weeks ago, and one of the single greatest things that I've done is I place my phone on permanent do not disturb. Disturb my phone only. The only phone calls I allow, the only buzzing that ever happens on my phone. My phone will never buzz unless my wife, kids, or my mom calls me. Calls me, not text me. Yeah, they know if they text me, I'm not going to know until I look at my phone. So that doesn't mean that I'm not getting notifications. They're still on my screen when I did. When I decide to look at my phone. But for a year and a half, my phone has been on permanent do not disturb. So which I'm sure Whitney, my assistant or my manager or my wife. I'm sure it drives some people crazy because, oh, my phone isn't in charge of me anymore. It never buzzes. I was, I was with the monks. Day 10. Sitting in Father Francis's office, pouring my heart out. He's like, yes, young man. All these books around. He's in his big, big robe and his phone, I'll never forget, goes while I'm like. And he's like, excuse me, young man. And he picks up his phone and he's like, okay, I'm sorry, hold on. He puts it back down. And I was like, like, did this monk. Did this monk just do like. And he's like, I guess I need to read your book, you know? But I spent two months and never had one ding or buzz on my body to take me away from being present with the person in front of me. When I got home, I was like, I have to continue this. This has to be so, like, I will never be with somebody. And my brain go away from the conversations we're in, even though they don't. They didn't hear the buzz in my pocket. My. My brain goes to my phone for one second and then back to the conversation I've left into an alternate universe. And so that's one thing I've done. Whatever it looks like for you to turn do not disturb on.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That's been a game changer for me. So now I'm in charge of when I'm picking my phone up again. You know, I talked about this morning to the staff buying an alarm clock. You know, like the Harvard study showed that the last 30 minutes were awake before we fall asleep, and the first 30 minutes we wake up, we're consuming more content than like my great grandparents generation consumed in a month.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So. And again, we're wondering why we're so anxious. So just buying an alarm clock, plugging your phone in in another room, read a book before you go to bed. And so you're just save yourself an hour. Right.

[B]

So can. This is the unpopular conversation.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I'm trying to think of the right way to say it. I. I'm just going to.

[A]

Yeah, I'm.

[B]

I'm going to be disrespectful.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

If you live in a community, it's a rural community and you don't have tons of people around.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely.

[B]

The neuroscience still applies.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If you have a really busy job.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The truth is. The truth is the truth.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If the thought of. So here's the thing. That happened here. Right. I'll use myself as the. I. I never got home before 7:00, maybe 6:30. If I was like, my wife be like, hey. When I was working higher ed, I was always another article to read, another budget to do, another student crisis to. To write. And I was here and my boss Dave was doing a late night media hit. He pops in, everybody's gone. I'm here at 6:30 because first in last. Yeah, right.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And he says, what are you doing here? I was like, I'm finishing up these articles. I was reading mental health articles because he hired me to be a mental health guy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And he said, go home. All right, dude. Like, yeah, I'm finishing up. I'll be gone. He comes into the little complex and he gets real close and he said. I said, go home. And he said it in a kind of a paternal way. I was like, oh, I'm a grown man. Like. And I looked at him and he said this. If you are no good there, you'll be no good here. And then he said, you will not use the name Ramsey as an excuse to not be a present husband and father. Go home.

[A]

Wow. Geez.

[B]

I went home.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So the next day I was like, I'm gonna not do my work. I'm just gonna go home when everybody goes home. Carlos. I got home at like 5:30, 5:15. And I realized I did not know how to be a dad and a husband. From 5:00 to 7:00, there was a rhythm of my family that I was completely unaware of.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And I injected my chaos into that.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

I was like, hey, son, what are you, like, what are you working on? He's like, dad, I'm doing homework. My daughter, I'm like, hey. And she's like, ah. Like. And my wife was like, hey, Everybody's just quiet when we get home. They've had crazy days. And so if you're thinking about, yes, what am I gonna do? Just put my phone away?

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

And I'm gonna have to face that marriage. I'll have to face three kids that. Yeah, I know they love me, but we don't like each other or I don't even know how to interact with them.

[A]

Yes. This is so good.

[B]

You have to go there. I guess that's what I'm asking you to do is.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You got to head into that.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

Because that's where the healing is. Because that's where your life's on the other side of that.

[A]

Absolutely, man.

[B]

Is that fair?

[A]

That's very fair.

[B]

If you don't like what you see in the mirror, you got to go have a conversation with your doctor.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Or with. Like what? Like we're avoiding reality. And I think there's a reckoning with reality.

[A]

Well, and that reckoning is what people are scared of.

[B]

It's terrifying.

[A]

And so. But I want to let everybody know that on the other side of that reckoning is so much freedom and peace. I know, it's. It's so much. And I was the same way when I got home. And I know screams with my family like, we're just going to talk to each other. And my kids were like, dad, will you stop talking to me? You know, like, I just was like, hey, how's that? You know, and they weren't used to me.

[B]

That's it.

[A]

Being that present. And I'm telling you, it. Presence and solitude. It, it, it feels like a reckoning because it is going to be a reckoning for all of you know, and, and the CPA that's on their laptop eight hours a day. You know, all I know, you nurses that are on call 24 7, you have to have your phone on. You can't put it on. Do not serve. There's. There's caveats right there. There's way. But I promise you, every single person listening to this knows the one thing they can do to do the next right thing, to get a little bit of that, of that freedom back in their life. When it comes to these screens and you, you all have an opportunity to do it, what's it going to be? What's the one choice you're going? I. I tell people, do one hour on a Saturday with no screen. Just start there. That. That alone gives some people heart palpitations.

[B]

And when you start doing this, admit to yourself I got a problem.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. It's okay.

[B]

It's like when I'm like, I'm not gonna eat candy for two weeks and 30 minutes in. I'm like, I know.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

I got a problem. You know what I mean? I got a problem. It just is. It just is.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Own it. And, and just trust me when I tell you, trust me, trust me, because I may be the only person that you're. You know, if you're listening to this, I'll say that you know me now. I'm the only person you know that's actually done this for two months. I'm telling you on the other side of that reckoning. I love that you call it a reckoning on the Other side is you're gonna fall back in love with wondering and savoring and being truly human.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That you're just. You're. You're gonna be able. This is how I like to explain it. I moved to Nashville. This is what it's gonna feel like. Like, I, I. I put up a photo this morning of stars that I. It doesn't really work on God, dude.

[B]

That was like.

[A]

Yeah. And so, like, like, that. That. That doesn't really work on. On, like, a podcast. But let me. Let me explain it this way. This is what it felt like when I finally got unaddicted to my phone. I moved to Nashville 2010, and my wife told me about three weeks in that I'm wheezing every night. Night. She's like, hey, you're like, you sound like Darth Vader when you're sleeping. And I was like, what do you mean? She's just like. Like, I can hear you breathing, like, heavy. Like, maybe you have asthma. And I was like, babe, I don't have asthma. I've never had asthma my whole life. I'm 40 years old. She's like, you should go to an allergist. So I went to a doctor, and he did an allergy test on me. I said, my wife says, I'm wheezing. I don't hear myself wheezing. I feel fine. I'm working out every day. I'm running. He said, well, let me do an allergy test. So he tested my. All the allergies. He's like, dude, you're allergic to Nashville. Like, everything. Every tree, every piece of grass. He's like, let me do a breathing test on you. So he had me blow into this tube, and he goes, man, you're only using 60% of your lung capacity. I said, what? I feel fine. He goes, you feel fine because you're used to it. You're used to not breathing, but let me give you something. Then he pulled out this inhaler. I've never used an inhaler in my life. Life. He's like, shake it up. I want you to take a hit. And the second breath you take, your lungs are going to go from 60% to 100. I said, okay, whatever. I did it. The next breath I took, bro, after months of living in Nashville, I took a breath at 100% after only taking a breath at 60. And I almost started to weep.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because I didn't know I was suffocating.

[B]

That's what I feel right now, and.

[A]

This is what I'm Telling people is when you do this, you may be thinking, I don't need to do this. I'm fine. I'm telling you, when you take that breath after your inhaler, you're going to realize this is what it's like to breathe. And I haven't been breathing.

[B]

Yeah. So there's another side to it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's this. And I always just want to. I always want to be honest when I. When I tell people, like, hey, you're heading on a journey. It's always day three.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You're like, I know it sucks.

[B]

Right. Or your new workout program. It's like, I'm so sore, I can't move. Move. I was having lunch with a couple of fancy, fancy, fancy panthers who just got.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Bank accounts.

[A]

Not with me.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was not the cheeseburger, Carlos. And one of the guys at the table didn't know understand what I was doing. And I'm new to this whole thing, and I don't really understand what I'm doing either. And they're like, so what? You know, like, looking at you like you're stupid. Like, they're gonna squint their way to figuring you out. Like, now what are you doing? I'm like, well, I travel around and speak. And he goes, I'd never hire you to come talk to my company.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I was like, why? I've been talking companies of fr. So you don't know anything about marketing? Sales.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I was like, I wouldn't talk to you about marketing.

[A]

Right, right, right.

[B]

And he said, what do you. With squint? Like, what do you talk about?

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And, you know, I just. Throwing spaghetti at a wall.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I said, I bet your kids don't like being in the room with you.

[A]

Oh, jeez.

[B]

And it went, oh, wow. I said, or. Or you walk in and your kids either pick up their phones or they just get up and head to the room. And you say, that's just them being teenagers. And you know it's not.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it was one. He leaned back and he smiled real big in that way that only super rich people know they got had. And he's smiling. He goes, you got my attention. Right? Here's the. Here's the reality.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Reckonings. There's peace on the other side of a reckoning, but reckonings are hell.

[A]

Reckon he's a reckoning.

[B]

And there will be a whole bunch of people that put their phones down and they realize their marriage has been dead for 10 years.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

They Realize their kids are not okay.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That. Realize their health is precarious.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Or they hate their job and they don't have a path.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right. And so I think there's a, There's a. I, I don't want to, I don't want to use religious language, but there's a holiness too. There's a refinement to. The only path towards a real life is through the middle of that fire.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Not avoiding it or walking around it.

[A]

Dude.

[B]

And so if you can put your phone down and look at your spouse and say, look, we got a choice.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

We can walk away. This is me and my wife. We can be done.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Or we've chosen our way into this.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

We can choose an amazing something else and it's gonna suck, but we can choose that too.

[A]

Absolutely, man.

[B]

That. I guess I, I feel a sense of re. Empowerment. There's something about putting your phone down meaning. No. Do you get to, you get to choose what happens next?

[A]

Yes. Well, and, and that, you know, again, not to revolve around religious language, but, bro, I had to come to a reckoning when I didn't have my phone and I'm with these monks and all of a sudden, like, I feel like God's silent and I feel like I'm like, what. What is this fairy tale I believe in? Next thing you know, like, everything fell apart.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And. And I'm like, I couldn't Google it to put it back together.

[B]

That's right. Because it wasn't about answers. It wasn't about the chapter in the verse. It was about this. Oh, gosh, I'm sitting here with a, With a sweater full of yarn.

[A]

I telling you, bro, it was. I, I had, I had numerous reckonings you can read about in the book, but definitely a lot of reckoning and a lot of freedom on the other side.

[B]

I can choose to continue to live at 60 lung capacity. And that life is hard.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I can choose to say, okay, I'm going to figure this thing out. I'm getting a band of people and we're going to figure it out.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's gonna be real hard.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I don't think there's an easy option anymore.

[A]

There's nothing an easy option. But just like that note, screen time notification came across my screen. There's an aha moment waiting for every single person. If what. The only thing I'm asking people to do is do the math. So just do your math and do your math. See how many years you're losing of Your life legitimately, I should have called my book. Get half your life back.

[B]

Yeah. Because.

[A]

Because if you even just cut it in half, I can legitimately see on this microphone, beyond a shadow of a doubt, you will get half of your life that you were losing back. And if that's not motivating enough, like, to think, like, gosh, I could actually live 10 more years. Well, maybe not in length, but in life, in depth. In depth.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, like, like it is. Yeah. So, you know, if you're a developer, if you're like, chew on it, let it, let this be hard. Like it is hard. Like, like this isn't.

[B]

And if you don't think, if you don't think you're worth. Yeah, for God's sake, go talk to somebody.

[A]

Yes, absolutely.

[B]

Because you're not a burden and you're worth, you're worth having that kind of depth. And if that terrifies you.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's the healing.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

You're worth the work, right?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

What are some things besides an alarm clock and a newspaper?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Rattle off some things that are going to sound like we are rolling back the clock a little bit. But I think it's the new progress.

[A]

Yeah. I'm going to challenge you.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I rarely, if ever now drink my coffee out of it to go cup. If I go to a Starbucks, I need to let everyone know they have ceramic mugs. I was in Italy and I went to a gas station on a road trip, middle of nowhere. And I went in to get a to go coffee and they looked at me like I was crazy. I was like, can I get a. The espresso to go? And he's like, to go. And. And I looked down this middle of nowhere country gas station and there's three, one old man, one kind of maybe 30 year old woman and someone else leaning against the counter with their little ceramic mugs sipping their espresso. And I thought to myself, if I don't have three and a half minutes to drink my coffee before it gets lukewarm out of a ceramic mug, then I'm moving too fast. So literally every single coffee shop I go to, I ask for a ceramic mug. And I never get it to go. So that there's one thing that I do savoring is something that I think we need to redevelop our skill set. We can get used to. You're in this world, you get used to good things. Right. Like, like we. You can. Something was great and then you have it all the time. It's like it doesn't feel so great anymore. One of the things I. I now do is when I look at my life and I see something that I'm. I've gotten used to how good it is. I walk away from it for a second and I come back to it. Why? Well, if you walk into a bakery and it smells amazing. Oh, it smells so good. And you get that croissant and you start drinking your coffee and you eat the croissant. Well, five minutes later, you can't smell the croissant anymore. But someone else walks in and they go, oh, my gosh, it smells amazing. And you're like, I don't smell it anymore. What do you have to do? You have to walk out of the bakery. You have to come back in to experience it again. So I. I try to do that all the time. I try to, like, walk away and then come back in so I can recognize that I've gotten used to the goodness.

[B]

Can we double click on that real quick?

[A]

Yeah, sure, sure.

[B]

Maybe the purpose of meals is not to go to Yelp and have a perfect meal every time.

[A]

No.

[B]

Maybe a big part of meals is going. That was terrible. Yeah, that wasn't great. Yeah, that was. I'm not going to eat there again.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Or how many of us have. Have. I remember seeing Paul Blart. I laughed, and then I ran across a review and it was like, one. One tomato or something.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

And I remember feeling stupid.

[A]

Yeah, totally.

[B]

No. Nope.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

I get to think that movie was funny. I get to think Tommy Boy's funny.

[A]

Yep, you get to. It's okay.

[B]

It's okay.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And so maybe the perfect isn't the perfect date and the perfect sex and the perfect. Maybe life is this.

[A]

Oh, yes.

[B]

And that's the depth. That's the richness.

[A]

Get lost. How. How about this? Don't put Chick Fil A in your freaking GPS because you know how to get there. And the only reason you're putting it in there is, what if there's traffic and I can get a faster way. No, just drive to Chick Fil A. Stop putting everything in your. So many people tell me now. They're like, yeah, it's so weird. Like. Like if I'm driving to church or driving the office, sometimes I'll put my office in my gps even though I drive every day. Because I'm like, what if there's traffic? And I'm like, what if there's traffic? Maybe you're just supposed to sit and be still for a while.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know Something else that I do if I'm ever. I don't do this when I'm. When I'm flying, but when I'm driving now, I no longer listen to podcasts in the car. I only listen to podcasts if I'm on a trip. If I'm flying now, you're going to have to figure this out for yourself. But solitude. We're the first generation of people walking the earth that have the opportunity to completely get rid of solitude. This has never happened in the history of humanity. If anyone was traveling alone from point A to point B up until 19, when the car radio was invented, they had solitude. We no longer have solitude. And so start making a decision. You're going to go on a walk without your AirPods. You're going to go on a walk without your phone. You're going to drive from Point A des boy for 30 minutes. Minutes without any content consumption. So, like, even those little things, I think can help you recapture this lost art of being human. That's literally. The subtitle is how seven screen free weeks with monks and Amish farmers helped me recover the lost art of being human.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because it's an art that, that I. I feel like we all know. And some people are listening to this. Honestly, if you're 20 years old, you've never known life.

[B]

You don't know this.

[A]

You don't even know this.

[B]

It sounds like we're talking about living on the moon.

[A]

Yes. And I'm. I'm telling you, give it a shot.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Try it. And you're going to be like, you're going to have that hit in the inhaler.

[B]

And it's the. I remember being under a tree in the field when I heard this, and it freaked me out. Yeah, dude, it was a bird.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Bird wings make noise.

[A]

Make noise.

[B]

So depending how big the bird is. Loud noise. I'd never heard it.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And it made me wonder, what else am I missing?

[A]

What else?

[B]

And so, yeah, occasionally going to walk without your.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, and write down you.

[A]

You.

[B]

I'm not gonna spoil it here. You got to get the book. But I'm gonna start keeping this. Gonna sound cheesy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

For all you beef, kid. I'm gonna start keeping a wonder journal.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Stuff that I just rediscovered or discovered. I didn't know. Yes. I didn't know you could hear birds flap their wings.

[A]

Exactly. I love to know that. Yeah.

[B]

I didn't know there was this many different colors of flowers.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

I didn't know that. I'm Start keeping a wonder. I didn't know this meal could taste that good or that bad. Right. I didn't know it could be that bad.

[A]

You know, I mean. And I mean, gosh, what even I talked about earlier today. Slowing down to what I call God speed. Three miles an hour. Like, what in your life can you slow down? You know, when. When. When co happened and everyone's shut down and we're stuck at home. What? Everyone's walking. Suddenly, my neighborhood. My neighborhood looked like Central Park. And my family and I would walk around the neighborhood and. So funny. I'd lived there for seven years. And I was like. The first walk, I was like, what's that? It smells like a rose garden. And I looked in my neighbor's backyard that I've never seen before because I drive by at 30 miles an hour, but I'm walking and I literally smelled something I never smelled before. And I realized they've got an entire rose garden. And oh, my gosh, they've got bees back there. I was noticing things I never would have because I slowed down. I'm telling you, we're missing so much. Last thing, I was at the Atlanta airport, and I decided after I wrote this book to count out of a hundred people coming up the escalator, how many people were looking at their phone and how many people weren't. Want to take a guess as to how many out of a hundred people were looking at their phone?

[B]

Is it ninety?

[A]

A hundred.

[B]

Holy smokes.

[A]

A hundred. And I just thought to myself, we're literally living our life looking straight down, gaze up and glance down. It shifts things.

[B]

I started a practice in airports. I'm in there so much. And this sounds ridiculous. And it's hard for me even to explain it to non therapists. Therapist. There's a thing in therapy where if you're meeting a client and you feel yourself kind of falling asleep, getting bored. Like you're struggling to stay connected.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Is to imagine this sounds cheesy. A Almost Care Bear style. Like, my chest is connecting. Like there's a. There's a beam from my heart to yours.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I'm gonna. Consciously. And it was. It became this. This. It started as a cheesy, like, kind of roll my eyes. And then it became magic. It. Which is walking down the. The. Just the regular airport and looking at somebody and saying, I love that guy. I love that woman. And you start to see people's faces.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you see their exhaustion. You see their joy. They see their nervousness.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But it was just a Simple practice of. I love that guy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I love that woman. I love that guy. But it became this. I will. I will do a thing so that I see the people that I'm walking by.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And it makes me slow down.

[A]

And you can't do that if you're not looking up.

[B]

And you can't do that with earbuds shoved in. And my whole. All of my house is paid for people listening to me. So I get what I'm asking.

[A]

Same, same.

[B]

And I think there's a time and a place, but. But I think there's something about plugging back in.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely.

[B]

Dude, this is one of those moments where my. My family's life, my life, my marriage will be different today because of your time.

[A]

Time.

[B]

And the work that you put in. So thank you for that. It. It. I don't say that lightly.

[A]

Thank you. I appreciate you. Unfortunately for you, now you got a new friend, so we live in the same.

[B]

We will have. We'll have cheeseburger time.

[A]

Yeah. And we'll go. We'll go to a punk rock show. I got black skinny jeans.

[B]

I will. I will hold you. I don't wear skinny dogs.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

No, no, no, no. It's the one time I can pull out my secret cargo shorts. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah, the cargo shorts.

[B]

The one pair my wife didn't get rid of.

[A]

Teach me how to do that. I was listening to nwa so, like, you know.

[B]

Yes. Hey, appreciate you, brother.

[A]

Dude, thanks for having me.

[B]

Good folks. The modern world exposes us to things that our bodies had no idea even existed up until just a few decades ago. And I don't mean endless streams of cat videos or AI influencers. I'm talking about screens in our homes and offices, fluorescent light lights, emfs. These things can affect our mood, our sleep, our anxiety, and more. And that's why I'm so excited to partner with Bond Charge, a world leader in red light therapy and EMF blocking gear. I use Bond Charge products all the time, literally every single day. And I love them. And here's why you'll love them, too. Studies show red light therapy can help boost your mood, reduce stress, and help with sleep. It can help your recovery from aches and pains, transform your skin, and help with cellulite and stretch marks. My red light therapy panels, the infrared sauna blanket, the EMF mat, and more have become a cornerstone of my health and wellness routine. I use them all the time. And Bon Charge has a ton of other amazing products like blue light glasses, EMF protection products, infrared sauna blankets, 100 blackout sleep masks and more. Go to boncharge.com DeLoney and use coupon code DeLoney to say 15. That's B O N C-H-A-R-G-E boncharge.com DeLoney and Use coupon code DeLoney to say 15. Go right now. All right, we're back. I hope you enjoyed that conversation and I hope you have already thrown your phone into the river. But before you do that, you can click on the link below to get all of his books and to find out more about Carlos, where he might be at on tour and everything like that. The books is a worthy read. It's a fascinating read and it's good. So go check it out and just make a commitment to yourself. I'm gonna turn my phone off more. I'm gonna be present with my family and kids more. And if you find yourself present with your family and kids and it's awkward, it's electric, you don't know what to do next. That's right. Get some questions for humans. Go for a walk. Go dig a hole. Go play in the mud. Go throw stuff at each other. I don't know. Play Candyland. Forgot. I don't care what you do, make a commitment to live life on the other side of the screen. Love you guys. Stay in school. Don't do drugs. We'll see you soon. Bye.