Something You Should Know - Can Music Be Medicine? & Human Skills We Are Losing to Technology

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

You may never have noticed it, but for many people – maybe you – a full moon can mess with your sleep and cause you to lose sleep. How does that happen? Listen as I explain. https://www.self.com/story/full-moon-sleep Over the last several years, research has uncovered some remarkable benefits of listening to music. Not just vague, “music makes you feel better” benefits – it now appears music can actually treat some illnesses. Neuroscientist Dan Levitin has been looking at this research for several years and joins me to share some exciting news about the powerful, positive health effects of listening to music you like. Dan is author of a book called I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine (https://amzn.to/46QoQcE). Many skills humans have possessed for ages are getting lost. For example, using a map or your sense of direction to find your way somewhere. With GPS people have lost this skill. Solitude. The idea of sitting alone with your thoughts is so uncomfortable, people just reach for their phone to keep them occupied. While technology makes these (and many other skills) no longer necessary, there is a price to pay. Here to explore and explain that is Graham Lee, author of the book, Human Being: Reclaim 12 Vital Skills We’re Losing to Technology (https://amzn.to/46MP53A)  You may have noticed your brain seems sharper at some times more than others. Listen as I explore why it is important to realize when that happens and what to do when it does. David Rock author of “Your Brain At Work” https://amzn.to/4g3Fk5F Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, how a full moon messes up a lot of people's sleep. Then, can listening to music be good for your health? Yes, in fact, it can treat some illnesses. Which ones? Well, colds, in fact it can treat some illnesses. Which ones? Well, colds, flu, infections of the immune system. We find that listening to relaxing music is as effective as taking a statin for lowering blood pressure. There's now evidence that listening to music that's pleasurable actually boosts your immune system.

Also, why it's important to know when your brain is working at its peak and what to do when it is. And technology has robbed us of some basic skills like reading a map. Many people can't because they use GPS. Suddenly, if you don't have GPS, you don't know where to go. And it's been proven that actually it can be degrading in our cognitive abilities if we don't naturally navigate in the ways that we used to. All this today on Something You Should Know.

This episode is brought to you by Melissa and Doug. Wooden puzzles and building toys for problem solving and arts and crafts for creative thinking. Melissa and Doug makes toys that help kids take on the world because the way they play today shapes who they become tomorrow melissa and doug the play is pretend the skills are real look for melissa and doug wherever you shop for toys something you should know fascinating intel the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome. A lot of good stuff today on this episode of Something You Should Know.

And we're going to start with the full moon. Did you know that, I didn't know this, that people tend to sleep less around the time of a full moon. Scientists aren't exactly sure why the moon might affect sleep. Maybe the light from the full moon affects the body's internal clock and its production of melatonin, which is a hormone that promotes sleep. Or maybe just the light from the moon makes it harder to fall asleep. Regardless of the reason, here's what researchers have found. A study of three different societies in Argentina and America found that people fell asleep later and slept less on nights with more moonlight, usually caused by a full moon.

Another study found that people woke up more during the night when the moon was full, reducing overall sleep by 25 minutes. Another study found that people had lower quality of sleep during a full moon. And one other study found that on average, people slept 20 minutes less, took 5 extra minutes to fall asleep, and had 30% less deep sleep during a full moon. And that is something you should know. You have most likely heard something about the healing power of music. And certainly music can be soothing, calming, pleasant, relaxing, de-stressing. But healing, as in helping with illness, that seems like it might be a bit of a stretch.

Well, Dan Levitin has delved deep into this topic. Dan is a neuroscientist and author of several popular books. He's been a guest here a few times before, and his latest book is called I Heard There Was a Secret Chord, Music as Medicine. Hi, Dan. Welcome back. It's so great to be back with you, Mike. So the idea of music and healing, music and health,

I mean, people have been talking about it, I guess, for a long time, but is there anything to it? Is there any real science that says that music can heal illness? The idea's been around for at least 20,000 years. You know, we had shamans and faith healers using music, but the part of it that's new is that we now have scientific evidence for it. I would say in the last 10 years, really a significant and rigorous body of evidence has emerged that shows that music really can help treat a variety of illnesses and health outcomes.

So what does that look like? Because it can't be that, well, you don't need to take your medicine, you just need to listen to some music and you'll be all better. So it can't be that. So what does it look like to have music treat an illness? It's a bunch of different things all better. So it can't be that. So what does it look like to have music treat an illness? It's a bunch of different things, Mike. So I'll start with an easy one, which is Parkinson's disease. People with Parkinson's often at some point are unable to walk. They'll either freeze while they're walking or they won't be able to get started or once they get started it turns into a kind of a run and they can't slow down. Why would that happen? Well, we now understand that the disease causes degradation of circuits in the brain that are responsible for maintaining steady movement, a gait, a steady gait. And with that degradation, we can't self-regulate our walking. But if we play

someone with Parkinson's music at the tempo of their gait, then neurons can synchronize to that tempo and they can walk smoothly, even after the music has stopped playing, because they have the memory of the entrainment of it. Wow, that's pretty cool. I think that's pretty amazing. Now, you know, Parkinson's is a somewhat rare disease. So I started with that one because it's an easy one to visualize. But harder to visualize is that there's now evidence that listening to music that's pleasurable actually boosts your immune system.

Hard to visualize unless we get deep down into brain chemistry, but the pleasurable music kicks off a cascade of neurochemical responses in your brain that ultimately end up increasing the production of immunoglobulin A, IgA, which helps to fight off infections of the mucosal system, such as COVID, and it can boost natural killer cells and T cells, which travel to the site of an infection. And so when we talk about things like that, one of the issues or things that gets muddy for me is like how much better and how much music to make it that much better? Because is it one song and you're good to go? Or you've got to listen to music for 15 years every day for four hours and we'll see a little improvement or somewhere in between?

This is one of the things I like about talking with you because you've jumped ahead up a few levels. This is what we've been talking about in the field. I've been working with Francis Collins in the White House Science Office and with the National Institutes of Health on this for many years. And the question we're asking in other terms, to rephrase what you said, is what is the dose? If music is medicine, what is the dose of it? How much do I need and for how long? And we don't really know because it varies by person and it varies by ailment, just the way drugs do.

How many aspirins do you take? How long do you take an antibiotic? It varies. And so if we're going to talk about music as medicine, yeah, we need to nail that down. We're working on that part. But in the case of the Parkinson's, listening to music for just five or ten minutes it seems will promote walking ability for another ten minutes after the music stops talking about immune system my guess and and here I want to

make a distinction between what I'm speculating on and what the science says so we've amassed thousands of papers in the last few years in peer-reviewed journals and so we know that music promotes immune system function. We don't know how much but I would speculate that listening to music for maybe 20 or 30 minutes if you allow yourself to immerse yourself in it, that can show immediate results. So I want to get really specific, not go too deep into detail on each, but just like a shopping list of things we know that science says, things we know that music helps as far as health goes.

Well, colds, flu, infections of the immune system, it's good for arterial dilation. We find that listening to relaxing music is as effective as taking a statin for lowering blood pressure. Pain. Music is well known to produce opioids in the brain. So normally we treat pain, either chronic or acute pain, by giving you aspirin or opioids or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory. Music has been shown to be just as effective in many cases, particularly relaxing music, music that you like. And my lab was the first, my lab at McGill was the first to discover that it's the brain's own opioids, the brain's producing opioids in response to music

that help give this analgesic effect. So you had mentioned that, you know, listening to pleasurable music, I think was the term you used. But is there any indication that specific kinds of music do anything different than any other kind of music? You know, we heard the thing about, you know, play classical music to babies and they'll be smarter or whatever that was. But are there any indications that specific music, whether you like it or not, are good? That's a great question. And it's one of the most investigated questions. That whole Mozart makes you smarter thing has been thoroughly debunked. Was it debunked by very smart people who don't like Mozart?

It was debunked by very smart people who asked the question, why Mozart? Why not Beethoven? Why not Puccini? And in attempted replications of the study, it turned out the original study didn't have a suitable control group. They either played Mozart to people in a room that had nice bright light coming into it, or they had a bunch of people sitting in a room with natural light no windows and nothing to do and it turned out mozart didn't make you smarter but being stuck in a dank dark room made you dumber at least temporarily but i think there is this sort of

elitist view that classical music is somehow better for you and the answer seems to be decisively it's better for you if you like it but um rock and roll country new age music music of the sufis indian ragas chinese opera heavy metal hip-hop, jazz. It doesn't matter because our musical tastes are so subjective. It comes down to whether it's creating pleasurable feelings in you. And that's a matter of your own personal history. As my grandpa used to say, if we all like the same things, everybody would want to get with your grandma. And thank goodness for her that that's not true. Is there any evidence or any reason to believe that listening to music is good for you in the sense that a good diet is good for you, that exercise is good for you, that it's just overall

healthy? Yes, I would say so. Now, there's a caveat, Mike, which is that about 10% of the population, we estimate, don't like music and they don't understand what all the fuss is about. But for the other 90% of us, as Nietzsche said, life without music would be a mistake. I think the most powerful evidence for it improving our life satisfaction comes from the recent work by Vinod Menon, a colleague of mine at Stanford, who discovered something called the default mode network in the brain. And this is one of the biggest discoveries of the last 30 years. And the best way to describe it is if you've ever been reading a book and suddenly you noticed your eyes have been following the page

but you haven't really registered what you've been reading or if you're trying to engage in some activity and your mind starts to wander that is the default mode of the brain mind wandering it's when you are not in control of your thoughts. It's something like a dreaming state or a daydreaming state. And we have to exert a force of will to pay attention to things. It requires more neural resources to do that than to let your mind wander. And mind wandering is a very healthy place to be. It's where a lot of problems get solved.

It's where your brain kind of hits a reset button. So after you've been working diligently for an hour or two, either at your job or concentrating on something, your brain is telling you you need a break. And rather than grabbing another cup of coffee, which is actually counterproductive, what we should do is just let our brains wander, maybe for 15 minutes. And there are a number of ways to get into that default mode. One is to walk in nature, another is to meditate, but music is one of the best ways. And that's the story.

We're talking about the healing power of music. My guest is neuroscientist Dan Levitin. He's author of a book called I Hear There Was a Secret Chord, Music as Medicine. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please, read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind.

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include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. So Dan, when you listen to music, I don't listen to music the same all the time. Sometimes I'm listening, listening. Other times it's just in the background playing and I'm not really paying attention. I hear it, but I'm not, listening. Other times it's just in the background playing and I'm not really paying attention. I hear it, but I'm not really listening. There are different levels of music listening. Does that affect the effects of music as medicine? Very much so. So I make a distinction

between music as background music, which is like sonic wallpaper, and intentional listening. So maybe it's like you're in an art gallery or museum, and there's wallpaper there, and there are paintings, and you, some of the paintings, you just sort of walk by, but one of them attracts your interest, and you stand there, and you stare at it for a while. You are immersed now in the experience of engaging with the painting in some fashion. You didn't engage with the other paintings. You didn't engage with the wallpaper. And the engagement is where the results come. Now, the fun thing about music is sometimes it'll be on in the background and you won't really be attending to it, but some song or piece will come on and it'll grab you. and suddenly you're dancing or you're

asking the people around you to be quiet because it's caught your attention. That kind of immersion is where the healthful qualities come in. Is there any reason to believe that music from a particular era of my life, maybe my teens or twenties, has particular significance as it relates to what we're talking about? The music of our teens holds a special place in our memories because of the way the brain develops. From the ages of, you know, zero to 14 or so, the primary mission of the brain is to take in as much new information as possible. And then starting at 14, the primary mission of the brain is to take in as much new information as possible. And then starting at 14, the primary mission of the brain shifts to pruning out unneeded and

unnecessary connections. And it doesn't mean you can't learn anything new, but the stuff that gets in there in those early years, that first decade and a half, holds a privileged position. And it's not a hard stop at age 14, but most people say that the music they heard between, say, 12 and 20 is the music that they remember best and they like best. And we find in Alzheimer's patients and other patients with dementia who have advanced cases where they no longer recognized a loved one, they don't know what day it is, they don't know where they are, they still remember the songs from that period of, say, 12 to 20, their teen years. They remember the lyrics, they can sing along as though it was yesterday. And that music, if we haven't overplayed it so that we become immune to it,

it can still spark real feelings of centeredness and warmth and reconnect us with ourselves, the thread of our lives. I want to ask you about music and your mental state. I imagine there's a connection there, but it's probably more involved than just, you know, sad songs make you sad and happy songs that you like make you happy. It really is, and it's so interesting. Usually when somebody's depressed, in some sense they're feeling misunderstood or aggrieved or hurt. and if you play somebody with depression a sad song

that's actually more powerful than playing them a happy song a happy song a depression depressive depressed person here's the happy song and they think well that's somebody else who doesn't understand me yeah I'm not feeling that way at all you put on the right sad song and within just a few notes, if you're depressed, you feel like, oh, that person who's performing or who wrote that song, they get me. That's how I feel. And I can't put it into words, but that song is speaking to me and to how I feel. And we begin to realize, oh, well, there's somebody sitting at the edge of the abyss with me. And they've been through this. And they came out the other side and turned it into a beautiful work of art. That's a powerful cure. What makes a sad song sad? Obviously, lyrics can make a sad song sad, but there's instrumental music that I hear, and somehow it just sounds sad, but there's nothing objectively sad about it.

It's just music, but it's a sad song. To begin with, it's cultural. So what we find sad is not universally sad, and we've now had intrepid musicologists and cognitive scientists go to faraway corners of the world and play them Mozart and play them other kinds of things. And we brought their music back. And the emotions are cultural. We grew up, for example, in our culture, experiencing minor chords is sad. The klezmer tradition doesn't. In klezmer music, minor chords are happy, but they've been associated with sad movie scenes or sad stories. And it's not just minor chords, it's the intervals, the scales, the tempo for sad songs tends to be

slower. The notes tend to move in a stepwise fashion, which might be a metaphor for taking small, slow steps, as you might if you were unhappy, versus running, which you might only do if you're happy or frightened. So it's embedded in our culture, and we grew up with these associations. And composers play on that. They write sad music with an intentionality that it will be sad, but the beauty of music that gets to its healing power is that unlike language, where I might use the word sad and it means one thing to you,

a sad song can evoke a whole variety of emotions sadness loss triumph hope jealousy rage a bittersweet feeling. Music, because it has ambiguity that language doesn't have, words tend to mean just one or two things. Music can mean anything to us in the moment, and we can project ourselves onto the song and allow it to evoke in us things we can't put into words. You had mentioned, I think, did you say 10% of people don't like music? Yeah. That surprises me. I mean, that's as many people as there are left-handed people. That's a huge number of people that just don't like it.

Like, do they dislike it or they just have, they're just ambivalent about it? I'd say within the 10%, there are people who don't like it. 10%, there are people who don't like it, people who don't get it, who don't understand it, who don't understand why we spend so much money and time on it. It really falls out as a necessary condition of Darwinian theory, which is that

we have to have genetic variation. Without descent with modification, as Darwin put it, we could all succumb to the same virus. And so the genome is constantly mutating and with that you get a bunch of mutations that carry no observable effects but others that you know might make somebody not like chocolate or you know there are people who don't like sex and there are people who don't like music it just that's the way it is so is there a prescription in all of this or is it simply music is good for you, play a lot of music you like and that's better than not? I mean, or is there some prescription you can give? I think there are some prescriptions and the prescriptions are not precise

yet. We're working on it. So with something like Parkinson's, depression, relaxation, I think, yeah, we can write a prescription. Listen to these songs for 20 minutes and you'll feel better and do it for 20 minutes every day. For productivity, setting aside disease. For productivity, take a break from work every hour and a half or so. Listen to music you like for 15 minutes. Allow your mind to wander. And some music is better for that than others. But I can't say hip hop is bad.

It's good for people who love hip hop and who find that hip hop can lead to a transcendent experience. 17% of people in a survey I conducted said that they can reach a transcendent experience listening to hip-hop. And I more commonly would have thought of that coming from Miles Davis or Bill Evans or Mozart or Joni Mitchell, but to each his own. I would say, yes, to summarize, I would say it's

best worked out for things like Parkinson's, relaxation and depression, but and productivity at work. So if listening to music you like is good for you, is listening to music you don't like bad for you? When we do surveys, one of the things that people cite as a major annoyance of urban life is unwanted music piped into public places like elevators and train stations and such. That does lead to a physiological neurochemical reaction. Our brain secretes cortisol, the stress hormone, the same thing that would be secreted if a tiger approached you. So, yeah, music you don't like is bad. Well, as you say, most people like music. But my sense is people think it's fairly benign, that it's nice.

That's it. It's nice. But it doesn't affect you in the ways you're talking about. So this is really important to hear. I've been talking to Dan Levitin. He is a neuroscientist and author of the book, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord, Music is Medicine. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Dan.

Always a pleasure. This is very kind of you to have me back. And thank you. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals, be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast.

And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy,

it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Technology is great in so many ways, but there's always a price to pay. Things we used to do that now machines do required a certain level of human skill, and now it doesn't. Quick example, using a map to find your way somewhere. A lot of people today really don't

know how to use a map because we have GPS. Technology in some sense makes us lazy. It does the work for us. And so what are the consequences of that? Should we be concerned? Let's take a look with my guest, Graham Lee. He is author of a book called Human Being, Reclaim 12 Vital Skills We're Losing to Technology. Hi, Graham. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for having me. So I'd like to jump right in and discuss one of the skills that you talk about, which is navigation, the ability to find our way from point A to point B. We're losing that ability because we don't need it in the sense that we have GPS on our phones and our cars. So we don't need it. So we don't use it.

But since we don't need it, so what? Because we don't need it, so what? Because we don't need it. I guess that could be said with practically any ability or skill, that if a computer can begin to do it for you, then so what? But the question becomes, well, if you're not doing it yourself, what are you losing? And navigation is a great example of it because the way we navigate naturally relies on our memory, our ability to closely attend to the world around us and get a sense of place and belonging in particular. key mental attributes and abilities that we develop very closely and very ably when we navigate and try and find a way through places that we travel through.

When we stop doing that, it can impinge, first of all, when you're not connected to a device. Suddenly if you don't have GPS, you don't know where to go. So obviously that's one loss. The way this can roll out to other aspects of your life where your memory abilities can be impacted, and it's been proven that actually it can be degrading in our cognitive abilities in many ways if we don't naturally navigate in the ways that we used to. But that's also a good example of people probably understand what you just said, and it makes all the sense in the ways that we used to. But that's also a good example of people probably understand what you just said, and it makes all the sense in the world. But what are you going to do? I mean, I'm not going to go to the airport and not use GPS

because what if there's an accident? What if the traffic's tied up? So I'm going to do it. And so it seems like there may be a price to pay, but I don't see anybody going back to the old way. I mean, absolutely. There's certain journeys where I would use GPS and I'd switch on Google Maps or whatever it might be. But there's many other journeys where you just don't need it.

There can be a habit where you repetitively put in the same, punch in the same zip code or address just because there haven't been the the attention or the effort to to memorize a route but if you step back and do that less you just you give yourself time to actually attend and learn and one one method is the um is the one trip pony rule so when you're going somewhere new set the the GPS on your route there, but don't on the way back. And if you know that's coming up, actually you're more alert. And it's quite interesting how you will be attending to street signs and following and looking for clues, knowing that you're going to have to rely on that when you head home. And the other is when you're out on walks and heading around the city, enjoy just getting lost a little and trying to connect things together and finding new parts of town.

It's something that can be really enjoyable and something that increasingly you take a lot from. I want to talk about writing because for me anyway, and from what I see, because of being online so much, it seems like people are writing more than ever. Texts, emails. I certainly am writing more than I used to 20 years ago. So what's the problem? So with writing specifically, I actually looked at the physicality of writing and what i look into is some of the most latest research that have has uncovered that when we write by hand that physicality draws a lot more of ourself into it so it becomes we can recall more it's we can be more creative when you're sketching notes

on a page even doodling there's a way to sort of free up your thinking. So it's not linear and sort of just going, you know, ever left to write down the page. There's more of a freedom to connect and draw different ideas out. So I look at that more actually in writing, how handwriting has been lost as an ability and how increasingly we're pulled into just typing it to screen. But the actual physical movement of that is so sparse, even if you just compare it to writing on a piece of paper. My brother's wife actually pointed out to me who just had her second child that a lot of mothers if they've after childbirth actually sometimes can't fully handwrite it takes time to to regain strength in the abdominal muscles we

rely a lot and fluid motion across our across our body to to do it and that there's a physical intelligence that can that can flow into to our written. Let's talk about conversation. That's another skill you say we're losing to technology, and certainly one that I see that I find really disturbing in that people have, rather than have a face-to-face conversation or even a phone conversation over very serious things, that they'll do it by text. And I think, God, really?

Yeah, well, digital, I'd say, has stripped out a lot of the richness and variety of face-to-face physical conversation. And there's a spectrum through which this can happen. So you've got text, SMS text, moving to WhatsApp messages with emojis, moving to email, and eventually progressing to video calls. But I mean, even with a video call, it's quite clear that a huge amount of detail and intricacy goes missing. So straight away, there's a loss in terms of understanding what someone's fully trying to get across. When you meet with someone, the actual physical gestures

they're using to explain their thoughts and also to almost, people gesture to almost handle their thoughts. It helps uh articulate more clearly what they're trying to get across that is self-evident and they're right in front of you facial expressions if you can compare them to emojis which are obviously a very simple cartoon version um our our facial expressions we supposedly have about 10 000 different facial expressions that we draw upon very quickly and fluidly. But we have almost micro expressions, whether they're terms micro expressions,

which in a split second just spark across our face. And as someone in conversation, you can spot these. And they give you early warning of someone feeling ungrounded on a topic or unsettled, unhappy. And people will steer and navigate their conversation to draw a common ground and there's more opportunity for empathy. So there's naturally a difference between physical conversation and the different types of communication we have online. The more you do that, the more you meet in person, the more you can become aware of your own gestures and facial expressions and aware of other people's and begin to gain a little bit more control of your communication abilities. And it's a steady skill that you can gain over time, but equally lose. Well, one of the things that I've noticed that I find troubling is how many people will now have very serious conversations in text form rather than even the phone would be better.

Face-to-face would be even better. But there's so much room for misinterpretation, misunderstanding in a serious, very weight you know, weighty conversation. And I don't see why people do it, but I know people who will only have conversations like that. I mean, I think there, there, there definitely is, there can be an inclination to avoid difficult encounters. I think we all have that. So you can see how that can lead someone down the line to send a text and get drawn into a text conversation or over email, even in the knowledge that they instinctively know it's probably not the best route. And secondly, the more we don't meet face to face the more uncomfortable we become so there

there's a shyness and a an inability and an awkwardness that can develop which sends us increasingly down these easier paths but unfortunately then more and more gets lost and as you say there's more potential for misunderstanding and yeah negative results to come from it one of the best examples is jumping on sending texts or emails when you're angry you know really it's probably the worst medium for for something like that but it's there it's quick it's easy and very easily happens we recently did a segment in a very recent episode about solitude, about spending time alone. One thing we didn't talk about, but we could talk about with you because it's one of the skills you think we've lost or we are losing is the ability to be with ourselves,

to be alone. And I see this all the time. How can you not when you see someone who for just moments is left alone, they whip out their phone and they start, you know, whatever they do, scrolling, Facebook, whatever they're doing. But it seems very hard today for people to just sit and be with themselves. If you consider before the days of any form of, media, whether it's TV easy whenever you feel that sort of initial uncomfortable feeling of boredom or there's a gap in your schedule a gap in your time there's very much an inclination to reach for your phone or or switch the tv on or go to your laptop but actually those are the moments that if you stay with it, that can actually be very forming for you as a person. And yeah, you touched on just being, that notion of stopping and just existing a little and beginning to spot your internal state, the way that thoughts form in your mind. And over time, the more you do that, there can be an increasing ability to

take control of your thoughts a bit more, become increasingly your own person and be less swayed by external drivers, such as the various motivations and temptations that we find online. So how does the digital world affect your dreaming? I haven't heard this before, so I'm anxious to hear what you have to say about that. Yeah, this probably was the most interesting of all the topics that I've researched. And to, I suppose, put it simply, an analogy I draw is if you consider, first of all, watching a TV drama episode or a film and how when you get sucked into that, how little effort you actually have to make. It's a very pleasurable experience and it's a great way of relaxing at the end of the day.

But actually, your attention is being totally steered by that experience. You're swept away and that's it can be a lovely feeling but there's an argument that's very much like like a dream but the difference is is being externally controlled someone clearly or a lot of people spend a lot of time crafting and deliberately controlling that experience for you then if you compare that to our natural dreams and when i when talk about dreams, you have your deep dreams that you have when you're sleeping. But also there's the idleness, those idle moments when you have solitude where you daydream. And daydreaming has been found to perform many of the same functions as REM sleep, where you get caught up in various scenarios and you replay things in your mind or you think

through challenges you're facing. And by doing it, you come to answers and you come to conclusions. And it very much is personality forming. It gives you a grounding and an essence of who you are. Right. And if your mind is constantly occupied with the creation of others, because you're watching a movie or you're watching a video or you're watching TikTok or whatever, your mind isn't able to do that, isn't able to quiet down and think the way you just described. And how much time are we spending online? How much time are we not quiet in our own head? If you look at the actual stats of how much people are at screens, even though you'd expect it to be high, it's bewilderingly high. I mean, typical adults still, even with all the screen time we now have at mobile phones and at our work, computers, laptops, tablets, tablets people typically i think it's three to

four hours a day still consume tv viewing and then there's everything else you know the stats become very high and fundamentally we're spending most of our waking moments at a screen and if you're at a screen you're not daydreaming so that absolutely is a change so that's that's a major one um then in terms of the actual impact of our dreams when we when we sleep i think there's two parts one i think it's very fair to say although i'm not sure everyone would be aware of it um that our digital experiences will fill our dreams that absolutely will be the case i don't think it's a strange notion to consider that a tv episode you've watched could make its way into your dreams as much as an experience you've had

meeting a friend in a cafe but then equally when we wake up and just arise from our dreams or you're in the middle of a dream and it's sort of a lovely sort of soft feeling as you come to. That has been found to be some of our most creative moments where little thoughts will drop in and answer to a problem you've been wrestling with. Maybe it's a work issue that you had the day before. Often those times are when ideas just emerge. But sadly, what we often do is we reach straight away for our phones. So those moments, those intermittent moments, liminal moments between sleep and our awakeness get cut short because we reach and check out what's been going on online or what messages we're missing. Right. Because if you're spending that much time with electronics, even if it's not inherently bad in and of itself, if you're online, what are you not doing?

What else could you be doing that you're not doing because you're stuck in front of a screen? Well, and you say, and one of the other skills you say we're missing is the skill of motion, because when we are stuck in a screen, there isn't a lot of motion going on. Yes. So motion for me, actually, I would say is the most critical. And funnily enough, when I talk about it, people suddenly get it.

But it's the idea that really, when you're at a screen, for all intents and purposes, you practically stop moving. And whether that's a laptop, watching TV, a mobile phone, ironically, so although they're mobile, what they tend to do is make us increasingly stationary in lots of different locations whenever we pull one out. all of those moments, the hours that we're on a screen on average, I think it's like 12, 13 hours a day is very typical for people. We're stationary. And to consider what that means for our health and just the way that we're existing and being in the world in comparison to how our evolutionary past has primed us to be is very different. And if you really consider the human body, it's designed as an expert machine to move us quickly and for long periods of time on two

feet. So when we begin to not do that and sit down for very long periods of time and be driven around in a car or public transport, something absolutely goes missing and it affects our physical health um there was a study done by the university of cambridge in 2012 that actually cast over 100 000 people in europe and it found that uh sedentariness and lack of exercise was the main chief driver of bad health, more than smoking, alcohol or a bad diet. So it really is the worst thing you can do for your health. Yet all of us are doing it. The technology we use daily draws us naturally into those habits it's it's unavoidable primarily because when you're at a screen it directs and pulls your attention to a level that really it's hard to have the the the the option of

of moving around and doing the things that normally we would take for granted and probably the only the only uh uh opposite to that would actually be audio we In some ways, I do think that's why podcasts and audio books are increasingly becoming popular because people can get away. They can listen when they're on the move and do other things and actually can retain some of that physicality. But overall, it's something that does get lost. So hopefully that helps explain it a little. Well, it's something I don't think people think much about this, you know, the price of technology that when technology does for us what we used to do ourselves, there is a price to pay. And it's worth thinking about it and talking about it. Graham Lee has been my guest.

The name of his book is Human Being Reclaimed 12 Vital Skills We're Losing to Technology. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. It was great to have you on. Thank you, Graham. Thanks for offering me to join. Really appreciate it. Your brain works best after it's rested. For most people, that means after a good night's sleep.

So you most likely do your best work and your best thinking in the morning. But that peak brain performance only lasts a couple hours. After that, your brain will not perform as well until it gets more rest. But here's the thing. You see, most of us waste a lot of that valuable morning brain time doing things like checking email, checking phone messages, instead of tackling the tough stuff. Brain researcher David Rock says you'll be more efficient and do better work if you get right to the important tasks first thing in the morning.

Leave the email and voicemail and other more mundane things until later. And that is something you should know. You know, people ask me, I love your podcast. How can we support it? And really the best way to support this podcast is, well, there's two things you could do. Do business with our sponsors because that really helps. And also to share the podcast. Share it with people you know so they too become listeners and it helps grow our audience. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook,

where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church

for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan.

Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone.

So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll of course have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type.

With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.