Good Life Project - Adam Alter: Tech Addiction or Healthy Obsession?

Episode Date: May 1, 2017

How do you know if you're addicted to your phone? Or maybe your favorite game, app, text, snapchat, Instagram, Facebook or online shopping?Is it even possible to be truly addicted to these things? You know, like on the level of drugs? Or are we all just being a bit too alarmist?Where is the line between a healthy obsession that adds to your life and an addiction to tech that can own and potentially destroy you?Today's guest, NYU professor, Adam Alter, gives us a massive reality check. He breaks down the different between passions, obsessions and straight-up addictions, splits apart chemical and behavioral addictions and shows how technology is being specifically designed to get and keep us hooked.Alter also offers some powerful tools to better understand when technology is owning us, rather than the other way around, then show how to reclaim the power in the relationship.His new book, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked, is a powerful look at how we interact with technology and how it is being designed to create relentless behavioral addiction that can become nearly impossible to break.For more on Adam's "back story," be sure to check out our 2013 conversation on how hidden influences control your life.+++ Today's Sponsors +++Get paid online, on-time with Freshbooks! Today's show is supported by FreshBooks, cloud accounting software that makes it insanely easy for freelancers and professionals to get paid online, track expenses and do more of what you love. Get your 1-month free trial, no credit card required, at FreshBooks.com/goodlife (enter The Good Life Project in the “How Did You Hear About Us?” section). Get your greens in on the go! Nutrition is massively important for everything from energy and focus to disease-prevention and pain-reduction. Plants are critically important. Problem is, it's really hard to get enough daily green to make a difference, especially when you're on the road. So, we turn to ORGANIFI, it's an organic superfood green juice powder that you just add to water and get your greens on the go! Super-convenient, tastes great and as a Good Life Project listener, you can try out Organifi Green juice for 20% off - using code "goodlife" at check out at organifi.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Even if you are the most extroverted, boisterous, lovely person that everyone around you wants to be you all the time, you will have moments when you are lonely. And the thing is, in the past, those moments you worked through, you accepted it, you dealt with it, we were all lonely at some point in our lives and we got through. You don't need to do that anymore. What you do the minute you have that pang of loneliness, and again, this is everyone at some point in time, is you pick up a device and it makes you no longer lonely. Today's guest, Adam Alter, has been on the show in the past.

Back in the day when we were filming, you may have seen the episode and heard his awesome backstory. If you want to know a lot more about his journey, check out that episode. We'll drop a link in the show notes. Adam is a professor at NYU, and he studies human behavior, why we do what we do. And he's got a new book out called Irresistible, The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked. And we go deep into this, into the idea of addiction, substance versus behavioral, how our environment really influences everything. There's a lot of

really eye-opening wisdom and surprising wisdom about this. And then we move over to the world of technology and what it's doing to and for us. The conversation is different than conversations that we've shared in the past. And we also kind of go down the rabbit hole of virtual reality a bit. Also some really eyeopening awakenings for me, some big questions and conversations that I think are really important to start having both on an individual level and a societal level. Also, before Adam left the studio, I had him sign an autographed hardcover copy of this book, and I would love to give it to one lucky listener. How to make that happen? How to get a copy? Well, I'll share that at the end of this conversation, so be sure to stay tuned. Really excited to share this conversation with you.

I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. Sustainable innovation is not like other MBA programs. It's for true changemakers who want to think differently and solve the world's most pressing challenges. From healthcare and the environment to energy, government, and technology, it's your path to meaningful leadership in all sectors. For details, visit uvic.ca slash future MBA. That's uvic.ca slash future MBA. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.

Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. It's so good to be hanging out with you.

So for long-time viewers slash listeners, you may remember that a couple years back, back when we were filming, Adam and I hung out and we were talking about the way that your environment completely screws with your behavior. That's right. Which is a pretty eye-opening conversation. And we kind of went into more of your backstory also. So for those of you who want to know sort of more about Adam's journey, definitely check out. We'll link in the show notes to that first episode. We're going to deep dive into something a little bit different today as we're hanging out in the studio in New York. And this is a deep fascination of mine. And I think the world around us is

changing so quickly. But it's the idea of our ability to control our behavior, our ability to not do stuff we know is destructive and to do stuff we know is constructive. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think it's an extension of the first book. So the first one was about these nine different things that shape how we think, feel, and behave. And then I thought, what is the single most powerful thing right now for all of us? And the single most powerful thing I think for all of us is tech. It's invaded our lives very, very quickly like a weed. For good and bad, I should say that I think the world of a lot of tech and it's the way that I communicate with my family who are far

away and it's the way my 11-month-old son communicates with them. And so for that alone, it's miraculous. But it also has a lot of insidious effects. Yeah. And I think we're seeing a lot of conversation around that. And also, there's been a lot of fear around sort of like naming certain elements, certain ways of interacting. And I think a lot of people have been really almost tentative to have a conversation around technology because we know we're not stepping away from it. I want to take a step back in time, though, and work our way into that conversation because there's a really big conversation that you have about almost like the history of addiction um and how our understanding of it has changed over time by the way you have an early conversation in your in your new book about freud and i had always heard that i've never done any of the research about you know like him and his relationship to cocaine yeah you kind of go deep into that yeah it, it's really fascinating because he's known today in

experimental circles as not a particularly keen experimentalist. A lot of what he did was based on conjecture and theory. But that wasn't true about his flirtation with cocaine. He actually was really curious about it and he had a whole lot of pain-inducing injuries and issues throughout his life. And he decided to try to self-medicate by experimenting with cocaine. And at first, he thought it was an absolute wonder drug. He thought it only did good things and did no bad things. And he started to tell other people about it.

He wrote this epic piece called Uber Coca, which was basically his way of saying, this is the most wonderful thing ever. It's like an ode to Coke. An ode to Coke, yeah. And, of course, in time, it turned out to be insidious, and it started to undermine his well-being. And he had to have operations on his nose, and he had all sorts of negative side effects. But for a little while, it was miraculous, and it turned him basically into a younger man again after he'd aged quite a lot and he was not well. Yeah, but eventually.

Eventually. As everybody discovers. It catches up. It's not sustainable, which also led to a really interesting conversation about the origins of – it's funny because you did a little bit of like urban myth busting. Yeah. Because I'd always heard as a kid, you know, like Coca-Cola actually started

because there was actually Coke in Coca-Cola. Yeah, well, you know uh there was a lot of weird stuff in coke when it first came out coca-cola when it first came out and uh i think the origin story of coke's really interesting that it was it was basically used as a medicinal tincture to help a guy who had been injured in the civil war and he should have made a ton of money from that but he sold it very very early so he's this very figure, but the people he sold it to were geniuses and they made obviously for their time, a huge amount of money. Yeah. And now Warren Buffett, who I think owns a huge chunk of that company. It's funny because you always see pictures of him. Anytime he's photographed or

he's got like a can of Coca-Cola. Yeah, right. It's like, hey, I'm a product user. Let's talk about addiction and sort of on a more interesting level. One of the things that I found really fascinating is your exploration of what happened to service people when they were in Vietnam and how it really shifted our understanding when they came back of how addiction works. Yeah. So, you know, people have thought for a long time and back into history that addiction was something that was about certain kinds of people, for example, that perhaps if you had less self-control than other people, or you had what we call an addictive personality, that you were prone to addiction. So what happened during Vietnam was a lot of the

servicemen went over to Vietnam and they were healthy young men. They weren't the likely suspects for drug addiction because they hadn't had any exposure to it in their past. Generally, a lot of them were either well off or had a lot of advantages in life. Anyway, they went over there, and they were bored. What happens when you're bored is you try to find ways to pass the time. We think of war as being this constant flurry of activity, but for many of them, it wasn't like that.

What happened was heroin production in that region of the world started to ramp up around that time and it became much purer. And so the people around that part of the world, the golden triangle that's known as that region, started to try and push their product on these servicemen. And a lot of them took it up because they were bored. So they tried it out and it was relatively cheap for them. They could afford it. And a huge number of them developed a heroin up because they were bored. So they tried it out, and it was relatively cheap for them. They could afford it. And a huge number of them developed a heroin addiction while they were over there,

and it became a big problem. This is when President Nixon went on TV and said, we have a war on drugs to deal with here. And he sent congressmen. He sent one Republican and one Democrat to Vietnam so they could suss out what was going on and work out whether this was a serious concern. And these guys freaked out because the minute they landed in Vietnam, a couple of women came over to them and said, we've got something for you. And they were basically handed vials of cocaine, which is what happened when you landed there because they knew if you

took a little bit of it, you'd, sorry, heroin. When you took a little bit of it, you'd be interested and you'd just keep coming back for more. So they'd hand it out free. So about 100,000 servicemen were addicted. And they were worried that when they came back into the country, there'd be this huge public health crisis. But a really interesting thing happened. These guys came back and the normal relapse rate for heroin is 95%. That's how bad a drug it is, how dangerous. Meaning only 5% actually break the addiction. The first time, yeah. So 95% of people, even once they break it, will go back to it at some point. But of these servicemen, of these 100,000, only 5% relapsed.

So the difference between a 95% relapse rate and a 5% relapse rate, it's such a massive difference that people thought that there was something weird going on, that whoever was counting the numbers was trying to curry political favor or sugarcoat it or do something like that but it turns out it was totally legitimate and what they learned about addiction from that is that is that location is key so one of the reasons why heroin is so addictive and why it's so hard to break is because the people who are weaning themselves off the drug go back to the places they inhabited when they were taking the drug and so all the cues all the sights the sounds the people remind them of what it was like to be on heroin, and they go back. If you are in Vietnam, it's sort of lush, tropical, there's forest, you're with a band of guys, you go home, it's a totally different setting. You're back with your family, you have a lot of social support, you are not in a lush tropical rainforest, You are not in Vietnam anymore. You're

not at war. Everything about the context is different. Turns out so much of what makes it hard to break an addiction is context. It's not about the individual. It's not even about the drug. It's about social support and context. Yeah, which kind of flies in the face of so much of, I think, what we still hear about addiction to this day, which is its chemical dependency. There's an endocrine, neurological, there's an internal biological dependency. It's funny, a while back I was having a conversation with somebody who told me that substance addiction, that the physiological addiction leaves your system within something like 72 to within a week. It's very quick.

And what remains after that is largely behavioral and environmental. Absolutely. It's all about memory. It's about how it felt to be on the drug. So I mean, the best way to think about this is, I don't know how many millions of people go into hospital and have surgeries and are then treated with very, very pure, very powerful opiates, better than anything you could get on the street. And yet so few of them develop addictions. Now, if this were all about chemistry, then everyone who comes out of hospital should have to then wean off the drug. And that's just not how it is. Most people don't have that issue. Some do, but most go home, they're cared for, they're supported, and they get past it. And you're right, it's just a matter of a couple of days and then the body is off the drug. And once you've weaned off it, there's no reason why you absolutely have to be

hooked to it. Yeah. And now I imagine there are going to be a number of people listening to this conversation who have been addicted to various substances for an extended period of time and are sitting here shaking their heads. They're not nodding their heads and they're probably saying, you don't know, you haven't lived this. That's not the way I experience it. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it's obviously very complicated, but of all the research I've seen, the most compelling piece of evidence for me of all the drug research I've seen is this idea that if you can escape the context, truly escape it, and pair that with great social support, you will find that you are able to get past almost any addiction. That's what the evidence

suggests. Now, some people obviously struggle. It's obviously difficult for them. But if you can escape the context, it seems that that's very effective. A lot of people struggle to do that, though. It's hard to do. And in fact, with respected technology, which we'll talk about, it's impossible because you can't really fully escape it. With heroin, to some extent, you can. With alcohol, it's tricky. Depends what sort of work you do. Depends what the people around you do. You're not going to create a whole new social network of friends. If all your friends are still doing what they used to do, it becomes very, very hard. But that's why they tell people who are recovering from alcohol addiction,

don't go into a bar because once you're in the context, it's going to be very hard to stop the moving train. Yeah. So which is different than I think what maybe why I think we were told not to go back into a bar, which is that we're around the actual substance itself rather than the bigger social construct. Yeah. Obviously, both are very important. You want to be, you can't be addicted to something that's far away from you. So, that's key. But if you do go into the bar, even if there's no alcohol in the bar, your body will crave it. You could go into a bar that's dry and you'll still want alcohol immediately. You don't need to be in the presence of the actual bottles and you'll have that effect. Yeah. I guess that's the power of what you're talking about is cues.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting. I had a chunk of years back, I actually had shoulder surgery, complete reconstruction. And I came out of the surgery and I was handed a script for like 130 Percocet pills. Wow. And I said to the doctor, I was like, I don't do drugs. I don't like to take anything. I'm not going to do this. I'll be fine.

I'll pop a couple Advil or something. And he looked at me and smiled. He's like, just fill it. Just a guess. Right. He's like, just fill it. He's like, just fill it. Just a guess. Right. He's like, just fill it. He's like, you don't have to take it, just fill it. And we filled it. And 24 hours later, the anesthesia wears off and I'm screaming in pain. And I'm like, okay, so let me just take it for a short window of time. I ended up basically being on Percocet during all my waking hours for the better part of a month that followed.

Wow. I was semi-freaking out the whole time. Yeah. Because I was in a ton of pain. I had to be able to function on a day-to-day basis. And every day more that I took this thing, I was like, is this going to be something that I can stop? And not having had any genuine experience with any sort of, quote, schedule one drug before. I didn't know how I'd respond. And the thing that was in my head was some people have a – there's something about your genetics

which predispose you to long-term and deep chemical addiction. Yes, no? Yeah, sort of. So there are genetic markers that are associated with what we call the addictive personality. Largely, that's about being kind of exploratory. It's about trying to investigate the world in a different way from other people. It's about being risk-seeking, risk-taking. That's the main marker of what this addictive personality, so-called addictive personality is. I keep saying so-called because I don't fully endorse the idea. I think you can be risk-seeking and do lots of things.

That doesn't make you a person who's likely to become an addict necessarily. But if your tolerance for risk is very high, you will try things that other people won't try. You are obviously cautious about it, which is already a good start for you. You want to be cautious about these things. You want to at least recognize that there are concerns so that when it's time to wean yourself off, it's something that you do carefully. But it is a concern, obviously. Yeah. The idea of addiction is, I guess, the meta lens is it's complicated. Yeah. And which explains why there's been so much work and so many potential approaches. But it looks like there's also this really interesting shift now, and you use the word so-called. My sense is that most people are comfortable with

the idea of substance addiction. When we move into this term called behavioral addiction, it's like all bets are off. Well, first, in your mind, what's the difference? What is addiction? What makes it an addiction versus compulsion or an obsession? Yeah. Well, our definition has changed a lot across time. And addiction basically is the compulsive returning to something, whether it's a substance or a behavior or an experience that makes you feel really good and soothes some psychological issue in the short term, but that has very bad long-term consequences for you. So that's the broad definition. Even cigarettes, when they were legal in the 50s and 60s, a lot of people argued you can't be addicted to nicotine. And the argument was that because it

was legal, you couldn't be addicted to it, which we now think is totally ridiculous, right? I mean, nicotine is a very addictive substance, one of the most addictive substances. So our definition has evolved. And I think the first behavior that broadened the definition beyond just substances was gambling behavior. Gambling is kind of a weaponized experience where you are up against some very, very smart people who are designing the experience that they believe will be the hardest to resist. So all the features of gambling, especially modern gambling, where you have video screens, with the sights, the sounds, the rates at which you win, all of this is very carefully titrated and it's designed to be

maximally hard to resist. It's irresistible. Now, the thing about the last 20 years or so is that this is about way more than just gambling. Now it's become about screens more broadly. So we're now addicted to things like our smartphones, checking email, the workplace. We can't let go of the workplace because it comes with us in the form of smartphones. We binge watch shows because the way we consume shows has changed so dramatically with the introduction of various streaming platforms. And with post-play, one show ends, the next episode begins immediately. All of these sorts of changes, all driven by technology, make it very, very hard to

resist these experiences. And so they are all vehicles for addiction. Now, in theory, anything can be addictive. You can be addicted to the experience of playing the drums. You can be addicted to the experience of reading a book. You can be addicted to anything if it fulfills all the aspects of the definition I described. So pleasurable in the short term, soothes some psychological issue, and is bad for you in the long term. All of those things can do that if they sort of replace social connection, if they replace your ability to work with the need to keep doing that thing

over and over again. It's just that some vehicles are better vehicles than others. So it just so happens that now about half of the world's population is addicted to a screen-related behavior. That's because screens are just so good at doing that. They're better than anything we've ever really encountered before. They are the heroine of our age. Yeah, and there's so much design that goes into reinforcing that behavior too. There's, I think, the negative, like really understanding that it's not just the fact that you want to do it all the time.

It's not just the fact that it makes you feel good, but it's the fact that it has this negative side effect that is sort of like the tipping point there. You talk about, and I've seen these two phrases also sort of in positive psychology literature increasingly these days, harmonious versus obsessive passion. Tell me how this weaves into this conversation. Yeah, it's a very useful distinction. So a harmonious passion is something that you like doing and you do a lot, but that is totally consistent with your life goals. It makes you feel good. You're able to stop. You're able to do other things. It doesn't get in the way of you living your life. An obsessive passion is a passion that becomes something greater. It actually ends up getting in the way of your goals. It's something

you enjoy, but then it becomes something that you just can't stop doing. So where a harmonious passion is approach related, you approach this thing and you want to do it. Obsessive passions are sort of avoidance related. Like if you don't do it, you'll feel really bad, which is the way a lot of people describe addictions. They really, really want to do the thing. They have no choice. They really want to do it, but they don't enjoy it at all. If you want to do something and you like it, it's much more likely to be healthy for you. But if you ask people who are addicted to heroin or addicted to email or using their smartphones or video games, there's this weird disconnect. So they'll say, I can't stop doing this thing. Clearly, I want it or my body wants it,

but I hate it. I really am ambivalent. I hate this thing. I want to do it. I don't like it. So there's a difference between wanting and liking. And there are a lot of researchers now who look at this distinction. Wanting is a is a very very big robust part of your brain like the drive to consume something or to do something liking is very flimsy and so even as you stop liking something if you're addicted to it you'll go on wanting it and that's where you get this really negative set of responses yeah and it just kind of sits in your mind and it's like an itch that you eventually just gets it here and itching until you eventually have to scratch it. I mean, it's interesting too to me because I grew up in a world where I was surrounded by a lot of artists, actually.

And art can be a harmonious passion. It can be deeply rich and rewarding. It can also be this place that you vanish into and you start to ignore your health. You start to ignore your health. You start to ignore your relationships. You go down this dark hole where everything else that's good in your life vanishes because you just want to do more and more of it. And so it circles back to your earlier idea that anything really can become this thing. But the deeper curiosity with something like that for me is this. I've seen some of these behaviors develop almost as coping mechanisms for some sort of trauma that allows people to function on a daily basis, even though on a sustained basis, it's masking something. Absolutely. But when you look at somebody

who goes and paints obsessively for 12 hours a day because there was some deep trauma in their youth, and that's how they're okay. Yeah. Yeah, no, it gets very complicated. I think you just have to keep returning to the definition. So if all this thing is doing is good for you, then it's not an addiction. It's got to have a different term. It can be an obsession. You can be obsessed with something without it necessarily becoming an addiction. But I would suggest that if you're doing something for 12 hours a day and it's soothing you, soothing some trauma, it's probably hard for you to stop and you'll have withdrawal symptoms if you stop and you'll start to tolerate it. You'll need more and more of it. I imagine the number of hours a day that

people do this and the intensity with which they do it would increase over time, it starts to look like an addiction, especially when it gets in the way of other things. So if you are doing this 12 hours a day and you're only awake for, say, 16 hours, that doesn't leave a lot of time to interact with other people. It doesn't leave a lot of time to do work, to earn a living, things like that. So at that point, I think it's the negative consequences in the long-term rise, and you do have what approximates an addiction. Yeah. When you look at the universe of stimuli that can lead to addictive behavior, is there like a hedonic adaptation to that? Is there a habituation to almost any stimulus eventually? Yeah. It's also one of the features that people

talk about that tells you that you're becoming addicted to something. So the classic behavioral version of this is anyone who's ever used a wearable tech where the watch is telling you, for example, that you've walked 10,000 steps a day. And then the next day you need to do 12,000. 10 just doesn't cut it anymore. And for almost anyone who uses these devices, that number will rise. The number that you pick the first day will not satisfy you for long, and eventually it'll escalate. And what you're seeing now is you're seeing a lot of people with major stress injuries because they keep pushing through because they need to hit that number. That is the hallmark of this kind of tolerance. So in the drug world,

that would mean using more of a drug. In the behavioral world, that means doing the behavior even more and more and more. So in the end, you're spending like hours a day walking. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are.

So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him.

Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple

Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. So let's talk about this thing, behavioral addiction. Yeah addiction yeah deconstruct it a bit for me so behavioral addiction is you know it matches the definition that i described earlier but it's basically any behavior that you do compulsively so you return to it over and over again it feels good in the short term so it couldothe a psychological itch or ill or something that doesn't feel good, but it's bad in the long run.

It hurts you in some way, and it can hurt you in lots of different ways. It can hurt your social life, which I think is true of a lot of these behavioral addictions. Basically, it can damage relationships with loved ones. It can make it hard to form strong social bonds with other people. It can destroy your ability to earn money or to function in the commercial world, which basically means, for example, if you have, say, a shopping addiction, you spend all your money. You have a gambling addiction, you spend all your money. So there are a lot of addictions that have that effect. It can be physiological. So the example that I just gave, walking too many steps, I mean, most people don't exercise enough. So these things start out being a good influence

on our lives, but it's a slippery slope. If you walk too far and you have an injury, that's a problem. A lot of people also develop eating disorders. As a result, they sort of parallel the use of these devices. So that's obviously a bad physiological consequence. So, you know, there is no one kind of effect that's bad. But if you notice any of these effects arising from your use of some device, if your partner says to you, hey, you've been using that a really long time almost every day maybe we should think about working out a way around it then you know you're starting to approach an addiction

yeah which really brings technology into the fore on a number of different levels you know this is funny this is a world that i don't really exist in but the world of gaming especially like the massive online gaming where you you've got millions of people playing and connected and talking with each other. Tell me about this world because it's so big and so pervasive these days. Yeah, it's a perfect storm, I think. It's a little bit like gambling because there are a lot of people who are researching games and when they produce games, the thing that they measure is raw number of hours spent engaged with the game. They want you to buy the game, but if you stop playing it in 10 minutes, then they're not going to make much money from you going forward. So it's important that you're addicted to it, that you keep playing,

either because there are purchases in the game later on and they need you to still be playing, or because there might be a new version released, they want you to buy that. And what happens in a lot of the games that are maximally addictive is there's a strong social component. So the game World of Warcraft is probably the most addictive behavioral experience on the planet. So there are about 100 million people who've ever played that game, and about half of them have had addictions to the game at some point. So 50 million. About 50 million people have had an addiction to World of Warcraft at one time or another, which is staggering. And the thing that makes the game so addictive, there are a number of things, but one thing I think that's especially

powerful is the social component of the game. What you do is you form guilds with other people who are playing the game, and you're on a mission. You're effectively in a war together, and you're doing something, and you're banding together. And the thing is, these people happen to be all over the world a lot of the time. So no matter which time zone you're in, there will be people when you're asleep playing and you'll feel like you have to keep up with your guild. So what ends up happening first for a lot of people is they stop sleeping or they sleep much less because they're playing at all hours of the night so that their friends in Denmark and Japan and wherever else who are having fun playing missions aren't alone.

They don't leave them alone. It's like you're at war. Obviously, you've got to be a band of brothers. You get together and you make sure that everyone's supporting everyone else. So that's the first big consequence. I think the other big thing about World of Warcraft is you adopt an avatar. And if you, this avatar can be your representative. And no matter what, any issues you've ever had, if you are lonely in the real world, or if you have self-esteem concerns, or it doesn't really matter what concerns you have. If you've been bullied, you can basically

deal with those concerns in this virtual world that you're playing in with your avatar. If you're a smaller person, you've been bullied, you can choose a big avatar. And you basically compensate for all those issues in the game, and it becomes very hard to resist. Yeah. I mean, which is really interesting also i mean the social context i think is fascinating because as one of my one of my theories that's sort of been growing over the years is really that we are in the throes of a global belonging crisis that many of the industries and enterprises and sort of like the bastions of belonging from a generation ago are either going away or they're not providing, they're not solving for belonging the way that they used to a generation or two ago.

But we have this physiological and psychological need to have to belong. So we have to find it somewhere or else we suffer. That causes a lot of angst and anxiety. So it makes sense that if that's happening to you, and especially at a young age, you can find this at the press of a button. And you can find it in a way where at any given moment, 24 hours a day, it's there for you. It makes sense that that would become something where people are like, wow, this is, especially if you're not finding it elsewhere in sort of, quote, real life. Yeah.

Well, belonging is a universal need. As you said, there is no human who doesn't want to belong. Actually, for humans, the worst thing that can happen is that you're ostracized or ignored. It's worse than being given negative feedback, which is evidence of just how much we need other people to pay attention to us. The issue is that even if you are the most extroverted, boisterous, lovely person that everyone around you wants to be you all the time, you will have moments when you are lonely. And the thing is, boisterous, lovely person that everyone around you wants to be you all the time, you will have moments when you are lonely. And the thing is, in the past, those moments you worked through, you accepted it, you dealt with it, we were all lonely at some point in our lives, and we got through. You don't need to do that anymore. What you do the minute you have that

pang of loneliness, and again, this is everyone at some point in time, is you pick up a device, and it makes you no longer lonely. And you learn that very fast. It's very powerful. The idea that I was lonely a minute ago. Now this device makes me forget everything. It doesn't matter what it is. It can be a game. It can be your phone that connects you to the internet.

It doesn't really matter what it is, but it's a distraction and it provides something that soothes that need. Yeah. And I wonder also that intermittent loneliness actually, it's there for, I mean, biologically, it hasn't gone away. No. So I wonder when I see something like that, where if it's still here, it's got to be serving some need. Yeah. Well, I think what it's doing is it's, it encourages you to be a better social being. I think it teaches you, if there are moments of

loneliness, you recognize that you don't have perhaps as much connection as you would like at all moments in time, even if you're very well connected most of the time. So what it does is it encourages you, it motivates you to be a connected person. It probably makes you a better communal being, which in any society is important. Maybe it makes you a little bit more laid back with respect to the foibles that other people have. Maybe it makes you more attentive to other people. But you don't have to do any of that if there's a thing that soothes you instantly. You never get that feedback that says, hey, just remember you're in a world where you want other people to be around you.

You want to affiliate with them. So you need to be the right kind of person to facilitate that. If you never have those pangs, you don't have that motivation. It withers a little bit. And I think it makes us all a little bit more distant. And there's already so much evidence of that. Yeah, I completely agree with that. And the other thing you brought up is also the idea of you can essentially create the avatar that solves everything that you perceive to be ailing you in the real world when you step into this digital world. And I wonder what happens.

So right now it exists largely through a two-dimensional screen or like a three-dimensional screen but as we move into the next evolution which is vr virtual reality will that then become i mean if it's already if you know say world of warcraft type of environments gaming is is so immersive and you know that half of the people who play it at some point have an addiction. Once we ramp the experience or level of virtual reality where you're literally physically in a world, will people become so addicted that they literally just opt out of reality?

I think it's incredibly frightening. I think this for me is the biggest issue in the book, in my thinking today. It's something I want to keep exploring. So the estimates in the industry are that within between, say, two and five years, all of us will have virtual reality goggles, personal goggles, the way we have a personal phone. And I think that's terrifying. And I think it's terrifying for the reasons you outlined, that if a phone can make you disengage from other people, imagine what virtual reality goggles will do. So stepping back a second, there's research showing that if you and I are sitting face to face as we're doing now, if there's a phone upside down on the table next to us,

the connection we form will be diminished just for the presence of that phone, even if it's not being used. Because it reminds you that there's something else out there that's possibly more attractive than whatever's going on now. It doesn't matter what kind of conversation you're having, that phone is a portal to other worlds. Well, except for this, because this is so... I realize as I said that, this couldn't be more engaging, let's be honest. I got my phone on the table. So that's what the research shows. But imagine that instead of this rectangular device, it is a portal to other worlds. And the virtual world will always be perfect. You choose the way you want that world to be. You will look the way you want to look.

You'll interact with exactly who you want to interact with. If you want to be on a beach in Greece right now, it's waiting for you. We don't have that yet, but soon we all will. And then how will the real world compete with that virtual world? That's perfect. Yeah. And we are clearly going there. We are. That train's already left the station. The question is, how do we deal with it? Yeah, exactly. It was interesting. I caught a TV show a couple of weeks back and I was sitting there watching with my daughter. And the theme of the show was that as people reach the very latest terms of their lives, they can opt into this basically having their consciousness downloaded

to a little thing that gets plugged into a matrix and then live indefinitely in this beautiful little coastal town where they can do whatever they want to do yeah and the question becomes okay so i think a lot of people would say okay if i'm 90 if i'm i've lived a great life and i'm you know like very sick and this is the end is either the end or the end is i can download this consciousness and actually live indefinitely in this beautiful life where everything I have, they'll be like, I could see how I would opt into that. But what if you're 25 and you have the opportunity to opt into that now? That's terrifying. It is. That's what people talk about when they talk about euthanasia, the biggest concern. So

euthanasia, the way it should be, it should be offered to people who are incredibly unwell, who have no prospects of getting better, who are in great amounts of pain. And at that point in life, many people argue they should have the option to terminate their lives. The biggest concern, as far as legislation goes, is that other people might want that too. That might also seem like a better option for people who aren't at the end of their lives, who aren't ill. But imagine instead of euthanasia, instead of ending your life, you can just go to a perfect world that isn't real, but feels really real and feels fantastic.

It's going to be really hard for us as a species to resist that over time, especially as it becomes more sophisticated, as the fidelity increases. I mean, you know, you get to the point, it does sound like science fiction now, but that world could feel just as real as this world and just way better. Why wouldn't you go there? If humans are rational to any extent, and I'm not sure they are, but if they are to any extent, that seems like the right thing to do. Yeah. Scary.

It's really scary. And there's probably some sort of ethicist, ethical debate that says, but what's wrong with that? I think coming from the place that we come from and sort of valuing face-to-face human interaction, being in the real world, dealing with struggles and pain and suffering, just saying life is suffering, it's going to happen. But if you could opt out of that, is that necessarily wrong? Or is that just us placing a moral judgment on people who are struggling and, you know, like, and don't want to, quote, do the work, you know, to figure out how to be okay in the real world rather than just creating their own universe, which makes them instantly okay. It's a fascinating idea. It's really tough and it's fascinating. And I actually went down a wormhole.

I was writing the book and I got onto a section on virtual reality, which isn't mature enough for me to be able to write about it in a deeply informed way because there's just not enough going on yet. The platforms aren't well-developed enough. But if you theorize, I went down a philosophical wormhole and I wrote thousands of words on this. I ended up taking it out of the book, but you're right. I mean, if that is the best world for all of us, and we're about maximizing wellbeing in the world, if that's what matters the most to us, is it the worst thing? Now, obviously, given the way we prize genuine connection in the world, that feels like it's

inferior because it's virtual. But if it feels in every respect like it's real, and if everyone feels that, and we're all happy because we all feel connected, whether that connection is real or not, that's a serious consideration. Maybe it's something we should look into. I don't feel that way. I don't feel that way. I should be very clear. I think we need major controls on how virtual reality tech propagates, the sorts of things that are sent out into the world, the programs that are created. I think there should be a series of ethics that designers of all this stuff have to adhere to. I think it should be legislated. I think it's a

really big concern, partly because they're so good at it. I'm approached sometimes by people who create these experiences. And the question they ask is, you're a behavioral scientist. I want the thing that I'm doing to be as hard to stop doing as possible. How do I do that? And I don't think that's okay. That shouldn't be the only question you ask about experiences because you're creating a vehicle for addiction in the same way that you're doing that with heroin production or any other drug. Yeah. So let's circle this into more of the data experience for a lot of us now, which is literally our smartphones. Yeah. And there's been a lot written about this, but I think your take is interesting.

And from the meta level, there are so many ways to sort of become addicted to different elements. And I think the big thing that we start with is nobody's putting their phones down. And especially generationally, like I'm 51, so this is new to me, but it's become fully integrated into my life. Yeah. My kid, you know, is coming out at a time where she knew the very early part of her life without that technology, but it's become so much a part of her as much as we want to resist it. Yeah.

And the next generation, like a world where it's not attached to you in some way is just won't even be known or be the most bizarre thing on the planet. It may be implanted. It may not even be a device. It may be just a part of who you are. We may all have these things implanted. Who knows? Yeah. So how do you regulate interaction with that when there's also a lot of good? I mean, we're not Luddites. The fact that we're sitting here and the fact that you guys out there are listening to this is all about technology. And I love what technology enables. It enables so much good in the world. And at the same time, it's a slippery slope.

It's very slippery. I think the best analogy for me is environmentalism and the idea that we have to regulate the way we engage with the environment. We have to use it sustainably. You can't just pillage the environment because there's going to be nothing left. And I think that idea is probably true about how we engage with tech. It's miraculous and wonderful. But if we don't have a sustainable relationship with tech, it's not the environment that's

going to waste away. It's our own social worlds that are going to waste away. And that, to me, is the biggest concern. You mentioned your daughter. And I have an 11-month-old son. He is obviously born as a native into this world, and I fear for him a little bit, and I'm very cautious about how he engages with screens because there's some evidence that kids develop certain competencies when they're very young.

There are certain critical periods. So the way that you interact with other people is formed when you're pretty young. So what that's meant for the whole of human history is that as a kid, your instincts are sometimes wrong. That's just how we are. We're selfish. Kids by nature will sort of grab everything from your hand if they want it. You need to be trained out of that. And some adults do, by the way. And some adults. And some adults, absolutely. But most people are trained out of that because they do it. They are either nasty at some point or they take something from someone else. And you need to watch someone's face scrunch up as they start crying because you've upset

them. That feedback is absolutely critical because if you're a normal person, that will feel bad and you'll think, I don't want to make other people sad. I don't want to do that again. I want to form strong, positive connections. If you spend the first 10 years of your life only interacting with people through screens, you never, ever really get that high fidelity feedback. And it means that you miss that critical window.

You may never ever have those competencies. So the big concern is that the first iPhone came out 10 years ago in 2007, the first iPad seven years ago in 2010. The kids who were born into those worlds are now seven and ten respectively. We don't know what they'll look like as teenagers or as adults or as older adults. And there's some suggestion that they may look different from any generation that came before as a generation, which is something we need to pay attention to. We need to think about how we can encourage kids who are born today to spend time doing what sometimes is more difficult, which is being face-to-face rather than resorting to this world where you're just doing everything with the mathematical precision of sending like four exclamation points to say, I'm this much happy with what you just told me, or my LOL is capitalized instead of in small text

in lowercase because I think that was hysterical. We need the uncertainty of the real world and the kind of messiness of those interactions to form us into people who can interact in the messy real world. Yeah. And also to cultivate empathy, which is one of the big things, which is at risk with technology. Yeah. You can't empathize if you don't see the effects of what you're doing on the world. If I send someone a horrible text message and they're crying, but I don't see that they're shielded by this distance between our phones, I will never learn to empathize. I will never stop doing that thing. Louis CK has this bit about it. He talks about exactly this issue. He talks about how he's worried about how his kids are sending texts that are kind of nasty sometimes because they'll never ever have the feedback they need to get

to learn that that's just not okay. Yeah. Except he makes it funny. Right. He is the master. He is. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era or yoga era,

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Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot flight risk when you try and deconstruct these things also it's you know i think we're at this really interesting window where we're getting clearer about the problem we're getting clearer about the effect we're a lot less clear about what to do about all of this. Yeah, it's interesting. So you know this, when you launch a book into the world and people start reading it, you're never really 100% sure what they'll pick up on. And that's what people pick up on. And I think that's consistent with the way I think about this issue, that if you think about

any issue, the first thing is you don't even recognize that it's there. The second thing, this is like Sigmund Freud with cocaine. He had no idea there was even a problem. The second thing is you realize that this is an issue, but it's early on enough that you're not sure exactly how big an issue and you're not exactly sure how to deal with it. And then it matures as a problem and then we recognize it's a major issue

and we start to work out how to deal with it. I think we are, you know, this is an incredibly long, steep hill that we're climbing. We're really right at the bottom of that. We're going to look back on Facebook as a relic, as a curiosity in a few years. A lot of young kids already do think it's a curiosity. Yeah. If you're like 13 to 15, a lot of people are like, face what? Exactly. Exactly. That's what your grandparents use. So I think we are early on enough that it's good now that we're recognizing this as a problem. That was my main hope with the book, that people would say

this is an issue, but now we all need to work out the best way to solve it. Now, you've got a lot of options. There's a whole series of toolboxes that you can turn to. There's medicine. Maybe everyone should be treated with medicine. I don't think that at all. That's what you do with most substance addiction issues. There's a lot of it is medically treated or at least treated by psychiatrists. That I don't think applies here. Estimates suggest 50% of us have some addiction, some behavioral addiction. I don't think 50% of us should be in medical care for that. But the other toolbox is changing norms, changing our culture. Having enough people recognize this as a serious

issue that we all start to think, maybe we should get the government involved, or maybe we should change the way our culture operates, our society operates, our communities work together. Maybe we shouldn't have kids being invited over and they both sit there, two of them side by side, teenagers sitting on devices, not interacting with each other. Maybe that's not okay in the same way that something that we consider obviously each other. Maybe that's not okay in the same way that something that we consider obviously bad manners in polite company is not okay. That's the sort of stuff that will slowly change, I hope. Yeah. And then it's again, it's really complex because if you take something and say, okay, we've reached a point where we now we understand

the behavior cycles, the cues, the triggers, the reinforcements that need to be present for maximal addiction if we're building an app or a platform or technology. It's pretty well known at this point, and you go into some of this, that if we get into the game of legislating this, who makes the decision about where the line is, what game is the platform the app the technology that's using this knowledge for evil versus for good or is you know an app good good good good good good good up until this point and then bad it's really yeah i mean so in china they've they've started to float and korea as well actually they've started to float and Korea as well, actually, they've started to float things called Cinderella laws. And the idea is that after midnight, kids are not allowed

a game. They can't play games because there's a major, major epidemic in East Asia where kids will play games all through the night. They won't sleep and they won't be able to function at school. And there are crazy, crazy camps where thousands of kids go. They're left by their parents for four or five months to detox from these games. So they have a major issue and they've tried to legislate. I think that's really scary. And there's a good reason why you tell people, I think the government should be involved. Most people are like, oh, that feels icky.

Which government, which party is going to legislate? Are they going to be political issues? Of course there are. I don't think there is a good solution yet. And that's why I'd like the norms to change at the grassroots level. I think that's what needs to happen, that we need to recognize that the norms that we have in operation now, while these forms of tech are in their infancy, are not appropriate and things need to change. It's not okay. We already know. I mean, this has changed a lot, I think. You go to a restaurant, you used to see, I think, when the iPhone first came out, you'd

see more people sitting around on their phones during a meal instead of being face-to-face in the moment. I think that's less okay now. When you see that, you think, that seems kind of rude. That's evidence of a changing norm, and we need more of those. Yeah, no, I completely agree. I mean, it's interesting, too. I think there is some self-correction going on and I see it happening even in younger generations. So, you know, again, I'll reflect on my daughter. The primary mode of sort of communication these days for somebody who's in their teens is there's a lot of texting, there's a lot of Instagram and there's a metric ton of Snapchat.

Yeah. of Snapchat. But what's really interesting is if you ask a kid that age, do you view Snapchat as social media? A lot of them will say no, because they don't use it to broadcast. They use it to very selectively send stuff to friends and know that it vanishes and know that somebody snaps a picture of it, they'll get notified. So they know if somebody's trying. So I think a lot of that concern has gone away. But what I've seen is that the usage is totally different than what an adult would do using Snapchat. So, you know, like as a dude my age, if I got on Snapchat, I would probably use it like Facebook, which is, you know, like my happy shiny life. Yeah, right. This is like the great pictures, the nice stuff.

The way that the sort of native Snapchat generation is using Snapchat is they're putting the dorkiness, the humanity, the empathy back into the interactions because they know it's private and it goes away. So I look at like, it's all just these really, you know, like funny, weird, goofy faces. It's not the shiny, happy lives that we all broadcast across like the bigger social media. They're going back to the stuff that they would do if they were hanging out in a room together, but they're just using technology to be in a room together. Yeah. That's really interesting. I hadn't thought about that, but I guess

you can contrast it against Instagram, which is the shiny, happy lives. And that's, that's interesting. Maybe, maybe, you. Maybe we will over time learn to better coexist with these technologies and we'll turn them into what we used to have in the offline world. I think that's one thing that's really interesting to me about the changing demographics of Facebook users. So obviously the first users were Ivy League kids and then it opened up to other schools and then it opened up to older adults. And at first it was weird for young kids that their parents were on Facebook, but now it's actually one of the biggest demographics is older adults. And the nice thing about older adults is

a lot of them use it to get in touch with people who they haven't seen in a long time. So Facebook is an online experience. It's a social network online. But the main thing is that it just allows them a way to rekindle something they're missing from the offline world. It's just a vehicle to an offline experience. So even as they're messaging or writing on someone's wall, someone they haven't seen in 30 years, that whole experience is tethered to the real world. And I think that's one thing that maybe could change. And maybe that's what's going on in Snapchat, that it is an online experience, but as you're using it, you don't feel like you're

fully immersed in that online world as you would for, say, virtual reality. You're thinking about that real person who's on the other side of the screen, who you have a real relationship with outside your existence on Snapchat or whatever it may be. That's one of the negative things I think about a lot of these platforms is your relationship is entirely digital. And that's when it becomes weird and impoverished and strange the way you interact. So as long as there's something grounded in the real world, that's key. It's actually one of the suggestions for kids. When you expose kids to screens, what you're supposed to do is tether that interaction with the screen to the real world. So if my kid's learning about the color red on a Sesame Street episode, we should go and sort the laundry together. And I

should say, here's the color red, make everything about both the online and offline world. So they coexist. Yeah. And if they interact with each other also, I think it humanizes the technology to a certain extent. We build a lot of programming with what we do on the sort of educational side of Good Life Project. And we will use technology to facilitate ongoing conversation. But what we try and do is always bring in, we create hybrid experiences. So the technology facilitates the conversation, builds the interaction over time on a daily basis. And in addition to that, we pretty much always bring in face-to-face on the ground experience. Yeah. So that somebody shows up at the end of the summer. We'll have 400 people taking over a kid's sleepaway camp and living communally for four days. And that profoundly changes the nature of anything that happens technologically from that moment forward, even if they only see each other once

a year. And we found that that can kind of be like a really powerful normalizer. Totally agree. I think that's so smart. And I think that's exactly what needs to happen is that tech should remain the vehicle it always was for real communication. It shouldn't be the only communication. It shouldn't be the only way you're in touch with people, if at all possible. Some people you don't have the option. But I think about sitting on FaceTime or Skype with my parents who are in Australia. They're a long way away. When I'm talking to them, I'm referring back constantly to a lifetime of real interactions. This is a way of rekindling those interactions. It's not a way of making this online relationship its own genuine thing. It's just a way of sort of making this online relationship its own genuine thing.

It's just a way for me to rekindle what was in the past, the memories I have of being with them face to face. And I think that's really nice. And for that to happen, you need to have some offline context to draw on. Yeah. I think we feel it physically in our bodies too. I'm curious whether there's research around this. It's funny that as you were saying that, I had this flashback as a kid, I was a gymnast. So I spent a huge amount of my youth practicing. And I found later in life that if I turn on a television or watch on a screen on my computer, more likely, you know, the Olympics, or if I see somebody doing gymnastics, I'll notice that my body is actually tensing. Like all of the muscles that I would have been using are, it's like I'm getting this mirrored workout just watching somebody do this because it's

connecting back to that physical experience from now decades ago. Yeah, that's fascinating. I used to play soccer as a kid and I transitioned to being a referee. And I remember the first maybe 10 games I refereed, I almost kicked the ball. I felt like I knew exactly. My memories were there. My muscle memory was there. You just have to restrain yourself. You get into those patterns and then they're rekindled when you're reminded of that context. I think that's right. One of the big questions is, in the context of tech, is that nourishing? Do you get something from that or is it just hard to be not exposed to the full experience? I did some research a while back where we were really curious

about what happens if someone you love is far away. Do you get something from thinking about them a lot, imagining that they're nearby, or is that just a tease and it's worse than not imagining them nearby at all? And we didn't ever get really firm results, but I always got the sense that this idea of inhabiting a simulated world where they were nearby gave you something, but also took something away. It removed you from the here and now. And so you felt the pang was stronger afterwards, but in the moment you felt really comforted for having them there. So I don't know that there's a strong conclusion, but it's an interesting question. Yeah. And I think as we start to come full circle, the real message is we're in a moment. It's like you said, there's this cycle

where you're like, step one, what problem? Yeah, exactly. Step two, Houston, we've got a problem. And now I think we're just, like you said, at the bottom of this hill where we're starting to realize, okay, we're feeling it now. But if we start to project out just a little bit and think about what the impact may be, it's like, whoa. And I do agree. I think this is a lot of the call to action in your work also is let's think about this a lot more intentionally and spend more energy trying to figure out how do we want to be intentional with technology and also with the bigger parts of our lives that have the potential to have us become addicted to behaviors, to interactions

that in some way are net negative for us. Yeah, I think that's right. I think we have to change things on an individual level. And I talk about a lot of those things we can do. But as we've talked about, I think it's got to be a bigger thing than just individuals doing things to protect themselves. There has to be a positive networking effect where the community changes, whatever that community is, changes the way it sees this kind of tech. We are, as you say, at the infancy of recognizing this as an issue. It's good that we're there. I

think we need to obviously keep talking about it and we're going to get further on and hopefully come up with some serious solutions. Yeah. And, and I think there's some really nice primes in, uh, in your recent book also to really sort of start and give directionality to that and ideas. So coming full circle, I'm pretty sure I didn't go back and check. I should have done this actually, but I'm pretty sure I asked you this question. Was it four years ago now? Um, but you're in a very different position in your life right now. So the question we always wrap with is, what does it mean to you to live a good life? When last I asked you this, you were on the verge of getting married, not yet a dad. So I'm curious, if I offer that question

again, how would you answer it? Well, I think this book has made me really focused on all the consequences of tech, on the social consequences of tech. And I just feel incredibly grateful that I have a wonderful wife, a wonderful son, going to have a daughter in a few months. And so this sort of creation of a world for me as a transplant to America, to feel that I have what are becoming roots in a new place, that for me is the good life. I've always wanted that. And when I first moved here 13 years ago, I felt pretty far from all those roots. And I think the good life for me is forming my own roots here in a completely different part of the world, despite the fact that we have all this tech that's trying to get in the way. But that is it for me. It's the creation of obviously a rich network of family and friends. Thank you.

Thanks. So remember when I introduced Adam, I also mentioned that he signed a copy of his book, Irresistible, before he split. And I would love to give that away to one listener. The way that you can be eligible for this giveaway is if you share this episode online, wherever it feels right to you, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, whatever's the place that you like to hang out, share the information, share the conversation, and make sure that you attach the hashtag GLPirresistible. And we will search this episode airs on a Monday. We will do a search on the Wednesday that follows and randomly select one person who has shared

and included that hashtag and then we'll message you. Find out where you are and we will ship this signed copy out to you. As always, thanks so much for tuning in. Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of

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