Something You Should Know - How Your Body Clock Really Controls Your Life & Exciting New Trends in Entrepreneurship

Episode Date: October 24, 2022

Girls cry more than boys – that seems apparent. But why? Is it social conditioning or something more? Listen as I reveal what one researcher has discovered about boys and girls and tears. Source: Michael Gurian, author of What Could He Be Thinking?-How A Man's Mind Really Works (https://amzn.to/3evpJkm). Your body clock controls when you wake up and go to sleep – or at least when you SHOULD wake up and go to sleep. But does your body clock – or circadian rhythm – adapt to you or must you adapt to it? What about people who work nights or stay up late? As it turns out, we need to listen to our body clock or suffer the consequences – some of which can be severe. Listen as my guest Russell Foster explains. He is professor of circadian neuroscience and director of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford and author of the book, Life Time: Your Body Clock and Its Essential Roles in Good Health and Sleep (https://amzn.to/3eEptzj). When you hear about venture capital and entrepreneurship, a lot of times those conversations revolve around Silicon Valley or New York or Boston. After all, that is where a lot of the money is. But there is a movement to get more investment dollars into the hands of entrepreneurs all over the country – not just in Silicon Valley. Leading this movement is Steve Case. He is probably best known as the founder of America Online (AOL) and is now an investor seeking to bring more investment dollars to businesses all over the U.S. Steve is author of the book Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream (https://amzn.to/3EFg6Kk) and he joins me with tales of interesting business success stories you would likely never hear about anywhere else.  When there is bad news, who is most likely to take it harder – men or women? Listen as I reveal the answer and why it appears to be so. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121010172113.htm PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! We really like The Jordan Harbinger Show! Check out https://jordanharbinger.com/start OR search for it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen!  Confidently take control of your online world with Avast One — it helps you stay safe from viruses, phishing attacks, ransomware, hacking attempts, and other cybercrimes! Learn more at https://Avast.com Cancel unnecessary subscriptions with Rocket Money today. Go to https://RocketMoney.com/something - Seriously, it could save you HUNDREDS of dollars per year! Shopify grows with your business anywhere. Thanks to their endless list of integrations and third-party apps - everything you need to customize your business to your needs is already in your hands. Sign up for a FREE trial at https://Shopify.com/sysk ! Did you know you could reduce the number of unwanted calls & emails with Online Privacy Protection from Discover? - And it's FREE! Just activate it in the Discover App. See terms & learn more at https://Discover.com/Online https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! 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, why girls cry more than boys. Then your biological clock. It controls so much of your life, like when you should wake up and go to sleep, which makes it hard on night shift workers. Steve Cates, CEO, The assumption was that if you're working on the night shift, you adapt to the demands of working at night. And studies have shown that 97% of night shift workers have never adapted to the demands of working at night. And that leads to a bunch

of problems. Also, who takes bad news better, men or women? And legendary investor Steve Case with great stories of startup entrepreneurs in surprising places. Another company we've backed called Somersault actually is in St. Louis, but it's a fashion company that you'd think would be in New York or maybe Los Angeles. No, it's in St. Louis, but most people don't know about it. Most people don't know about the cities that are on the rise as startup cities. All this today on Something You Should Know. At Wealthsimple, we're built for whatever you're building.

Built for Jane, who wants to break into the housing market. We're built for Ted, who's obsessed with what's happening in the global markets. And built for Celine, who just wants to retire and explore the world's flea markets. So take a moment and think about what you're building for. We've got the financial tools to help make it happen. Wealthsimple. Built for possibilities. Visit wealthsimple.com slash possibilities. 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 to Something You Should Know.

If you were to ask people why do you think that boys and men don't cry or seem to cry as much as women and girls? Most people probably would say it's social conditioning. And that's probably part of it. But according to researcher Michael Gurian, it's also biological. He says tears are controlled by your tear glands, and females have 60% larger tear glands than men.

So if you're a male and you have smaller tear glands, crying is not a strategy your brain is going to rely on to communicate how you feel. Interestingly, actually I found this really interesting, our society keeps trying to encourage boys and men to cry more, to let out their emotions. But there is no science anywhere to support the fact that if a male cries more, he is a better person or is more in touch with his emotions. There is no link, no link at all between tears and character. And that is something you should know. I'm sure you've heard that you have a body clock, that your body works naturally to get you up in

the morning and to go to bed at night. It's your circadian rhythm. It's the way humans are wired. Just as some other creatures are wired to be nocturnal and awake at night, humans are wired. Just as some other creatures are wired to be nocturnal and awake at night, humans are wired to be awake during the day. And that creates problems because a lot of us work nights or we're up late or we're out at night. And all of this impacts your health, physical and mental. How does that work? Well, meet Russell Foster. He's a professor of circadian neuroscience and director of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford. He's also author of a book called Lifetime, Your Body Clock and Its Essential Roles in Good Health and Sleep. Hi, Russell. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Great to join you, Mike.

So let's start by you explaining what this body clock is that we have. You can think of it as sort of an internal biological representation of a day. And the exciting thing over the past, I suppose, 20, 30 years is we got a real understanding of what actually is a biological clock. And a whole bunch of genes are identified, and the fact that they can be turned on, make a bunch of proteins, those proteins can form a complex, and then go into the nucleus of the cell and turn those genes off. Those proteins are then degraded, and then you have a whole cycle of protein production and degradation. And that's, in essence, what the clock is. And it's all within a cell.

We thought we sort of kind of understood the organization because there's a structure in the brain called the suprachiasmatic nuclei. And that was identified as, as it were, the master clock in the brain. And we thought that what happened is that this master clock would force 24-hour rhythms or near 24-hour rhythms in hormone release, in behavior, you name it, on the rest of the body. And then it was discovered that every cell in the body has the capability of generating a circadian rhythm. It has its own clock. And so what you've got is this incredible sort of network of time coordinated by a master clock in the brain. But actually, at the delivery end, in the organs of the liver, the muscles, the gut, they're actually driving the physiological and behavioral changes. So we have, in fact, a circadian system, a circadian network in time. And so what's the purpose of it?

It's a really important question. And basically, why we have a clock is that we sit on a planet that revolves once every 24 hours. And this produces profound differences in our environment. So we of course have a light dark cycle, we have temperature, we have cold, we have availability of food and all the rest of it. And these are profound changes. And what the clock can do is allow us to anticipate this predictable change, 24-hour change in the environment, and fine-tune our biology in

advance of the changed conditions. So before we actually wake up, body temperature is rising, metabolic rate is rising, oxygen efficiency is all rising, so that we can deal with the demands of being active. And then at the other end of the day, as we settle down towards sleep, lots of important things are going on whilst we sleep, but we're not active. And therefore, our oxygen usage goes down, our activity levels go down, and these are decreasing in anticipation of sleep. So what you've got a clock for is to anticipate these really profound and predictable changes in the environment. There's also another explanation, which is in addition to aligning our biology to the external world, what a clock can do is also align our internal biology so that the muscles, the nervous system, the gut

are all working at the correct time relative to each other. And that's another often forgotten, really important role of our circadian system. So does everybody's clock start out the same more or less and then maybe it adapts or we adapt to it perhaps and some people maybe are more morning people or some people are night late night people that or is the clock set and the clock is set? So we have sort of a bunch of genes which of course we inherit from our parents. And subtle changes in those genes can tend to make us a morning person or an evening person or somewhere in between. So there's a genetic element to whether we want to get up early or get up late. There's a second element, which is as we age, the hormonal changes associated with puberty also seem to interact with the circadian

system. So from the age of 10, we tend to want to get up later and later and later. And this peaks in our late teens, early 20s. And women tend to peak a little bit earlier than men, and men are peaking later, and they tend to, on average, have longer body clocks. They like to go to bed later and get up later. But after the late teens, early twenties, we move slowly to a more morning chronotype, morningness versus eveningness. So by the time we're in our late fifties, early sixties, we're getting up and going to bed at about the time we got up and went to bed when we were 10, 11 years of age. There's also a third really important influence on our sleep-wake, our circadian timing, and that's when we see light. So dusk light delays the clock, whereas morning light advances the clock, makes us get up earlier and go to bed earlier.

And so when we're all agricultural workers, we got symmetrical exposure to morning light and dusk light, so we stayed on cue. But we did a study a few years ago on university students showing that those who wanted to go to bed the latest, the more owl-like chronotypes, were the ones that were missing out on the morning light, which would advance the latest, the more owl-like chronotypes were the ones that were missing out on the morning light, which would advance the clock, make them get up earlier, and got lots of evening, late evening and late afternoon light, which would want to make those individuals get up later. So you've got three things interacting.

You've got your genetics, you've got how old you are, and you've got whether you see light at dawn and dusk. And then I guess you could add into that all the other things from social media, whether you're staying up half the night, you know, looking at your smartphone or doing gaming, which will, in a sense, override those biological drivers of when we want to go to sleep. So when you are staying up all night, maybe you're a shift worker and you work the graveyard shift, are you fighting your clock or does your clock adapt to that shift? No, that's a really important point, Mike. And the assumption was that if you're working on the night shift, you adapt to the demands of working at night. And studies have shown that 97% of night shift workers,

long term night shift workers, have never adapted to the demands of working at night. And so what's happening is your entire biology is saying you should be asleep when you're forcing yourself to work. And that leads to a bunch of problems. One of the ways we can stay awake whilst trying to work at night and override this endogenous biology is by activating the stress system. And long-term activation of the stress system is associated with a whole bunch of problems, such as infection, alert immunity, the hormone cortisol, the stress hormone cortisol, we know that that suppresses the immune system and that predisposes individuals to infection and indeed higher rates of cancer. What's so interesting is that the World Health Organization has, you know, on the basis of the

data, has said that night shift work is a probable carcinogen because all the studies showing increased cancer rates in night shift workers. You also get increased metabolic abnormalities, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, and indeed mental health issues, such as depression and psychosis. So long-term disruption of our, you know, trying to work while our bodies are trying to make us go to sleep can lead to some serious health issues. That's the long-term stuff. Short-term, we see, and the sorts of things that we've all experienced, because we've done a few all-nighters, for example, would be fluctuations in mood. The tired brain, brain interestingly forgets its positive experiences but remembers its negative ones. And so our entire worldview, if you're tired, is

biased towards negative and that's the basis of what we're making our decisions. Irritability, anxiety, risk-taking and impulsivity. We do stupid and unreflective things. We tend to show lower levels of empathy. You know, we don't pick up the social signals from friends, family, and indeed work colleagues. And that can lead, of course, to problems, poor memory, impaired decision making, poor communication skills, and a general reduced social connectivity. And those sorts of problems can kick in after relatively short periods of time, you know, a few days. A few days?

Yeah, oh yes. I mean, you get noticeable differences in what your memory, ability to consolidate memory, after just one day. It's quite remarkable. We're talking about your body clock, what it does, how it works. And we're talking with Russell Foster. He is author of the book, Your Body Clock, and its essential role in good health and sleep. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey, no, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello about hello handsome who knew you could give yourself the

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and I've heard this stories about how working nights or working overnights can cause certain health problems. And I've always thought that part of the problem is that when you work nights and you try to sleep during the day, it's hard to sleep during the day because the doorbell rings, the phone rings, the lawnmowers are going. There's a lot of disturbances that make it difficult to sleep during the day. So that messes up your sleep, which messes up your health. Yeah, you're right. There are additional disturbances. So when you finish the night shift, you're overwhelmingly tired. And so you've built up a huge sleep pressure. The problem is

the body clock has not shifted to the demands of working at night. It thinks it's daytime. So whilst this massive sleep pressure is inducing some sleep, the clock is saying, hang on, it's daytime, you should be up. So the quality and the depth of the sleep that you get whilst trying to sleep during the day is never as good. And of course, you're much more vulnerable to being disturbed because of noises or light coming in through the windows or indeed, you know, cars outside. So yeah, it's a real problem. And I guess we have to answer the question, well, why don't night shifters adapt? You know, if you're flying across multiple time zones, you will adapt to the multiple, you know, to the new time zone. And again, we have to come

back to light. And what's happening is that in the workplace, whether it be the factory or the office at night, you're working under relatively dim artificial light. And then on the journey home, you're experiencing bright natural light or later in the day or indeed on the journey back into work. And what happens is that the clock always defers to the brighter light signal as being daytime and therefore can never shift the clock. There are a few examples where the clock has been shifted. There's some experiments were done which exposed night shift workers to bright light in the workplace, you know, 2000 lux or so,

and lux is a measure of brightness, and then hid them from natural light during the day. And just like getting over jet lag, they adapted to the demands of working at night, because they'd been shifted by the light-dark cycle. The problem is, that's just not a practical solution for most people. Well, it's always interested me and kind of gives credence to what you're saying is when people work days and they're done with work, they typically don't come home and go right to bed. But when people work nights, they come home and they go right to bed because they've been like they've been fighting this all night long.

And finally, they get home and they just crash. Yeah, absolutely. And the sleep pressure is absolutely overwhelming. But the trouble is, it can't fully kick in because the clock is saying, no, it's daytime, you should be awake. This idea, this theory that the light determines when we should get up and when we go to bed, or should go to bed, then shouldn't we change the time we get up and go to bed based on the seasons? Because, you know, the day is longer in the summer, shorter in the winter. So shouldn't that alter our bedtime and wake up time?

Yes. In fact, there are very clear evidence showing that as the seasons expand and contract, the length of sleep would change. Now, today, we're somewhat buffered from the seasonal changes because, of course, we have indoor light. But in the pre-industrial era, I mean, during the winter times, the period of sleep extended, and then it contracted during the summer. So, yes, we do adapt to the changing day length over the seasons. And we see differences in how long we sleep. But many of us cannot. We have to get up at the same time and go to bed at the same, roughly the same time.

There's no adapting going on. We have our schedule and the season doesn't make any difference. That's right. And we're so detached from most seasonal variables anyway. So yeah, we just have to suck it up and get on with it. What's quite interesting is that some beautiful studies by Roger Eker has shown that historically, the sleep at night wasn't a single consolidated episode of, as we're often told, it should be eight hours. There's lots of discussion of, I had a wonderful first sleep, or I had a lovely

second sleep. And sleep seemed to have occurred in a series of episodes. And this is called biphasic sleep, waking up once or twice at night, or polyphasic sleep, which is waking up and then going back to sleep again several times during the night. And most of us are unaware that this seems to be the default and natural state of human sleep, as in all mammals. And so one of the great problems is that people will wake up in the middle of the night, think, oh my goodness, you know, I'm never going to get back to sleep, start to be anxious, and then, you know, just get up, start doing emails, drinking coffee. Whereas if they would stay calm, maybe stay in bed, but if they're not immediately falling back to sleep, then move to a quiet place where the lights

are dim, do something relaxing, they'll feel tired again, and then return to sleep. And, you know, one of the points of writing Lifetime was really to try and get bust some of those myths that you must have eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. That's not true. So sleep can be, you can wake up and go back to sleep many times across the night. And of course, sleep duration, the length of time we sleep varies enormously between individuals and as we age. The healthy range, as defined by the National Sleep Foundation, it can be from six hours to 10 or 11 hours, depending upon how old you are. So, you know, sleep is like shoe size. One size does not fit all. And the key thing is to try and work out what works best for our particular needs and demands at our particular stage of life. We've been talking as if this is like two things.

It's daytime and nighttime. But what about people like my wife does this? She has to work really early. So she gets up at four. It's pitch black. Does she then suffer some of what you're talking about? Because she's not getting up with the light. And a lot of people, you know, work really early.

Farmers, certain shift workers get up way before the sun comes up. That's right. And that is a problem. I don't know how your wife copes with it. But if you're not getting that morning light and then you're commuting off to work and then you're sitting in an office building or inside for the rest of the day, you light and get that evening light and of course the evening light will shift their clock to a later time making it even more difficult for them to get up early in the morning and so what I think many of us would advise is that you know once you've got up if you've got to get

up at four o'clock in the morning then have your breakfast in front of a light box or some some other bright light source to try and balance, you know, your light exposure to get that morning light. In the Scandinavian countries, for example, you know, it's even worse where for two months of the year in Tromso, for example, it's complete darkness. And many of the families there, they actually have a light box room. So the whole family, when they've got up, goes into this room, sits in front of a light box, and they get artificial morning light, which sets the clock and helps them function, you know, to adapt to the varied demands of rest and activity. And of course, importantly, keep those varied 24-hour clocks in the organ systems of the body appropriately aligned. So you had talked about earlier about working nights, short-term versus long-term. Where's the line between short-term and long-term?

Yeah, I think that's a really good question. We don't precisely know. I mean, we do know that after 20 years, you're really sort of likely to have high risks of cancer, metabolic abnormalities type 2. But some people will be more vulnerable than others, and it may kick in much, much earlier. You can certainly get those signs, certainly for metabolic abnormalities after a relatively short period of time, just a few years. There was a study though that published a few years ago which showed that long-term night shift workers can reduce the risks of cancer and diabetes too if they

maintain a rigorously healthy lifestyle. So they're eating you know really healthy food so low fat low sugar and they're doing, you know, really healthy food, so low fat, low sugar, and they're doing lots and lots of exercise. The study was really fascinating because, you know, it looked at people over time and, you know, really high rates of diabetes too with a poor lifestyle. But with a healthy lifestyle, you know, 20 years of night shift work was still a significant problem, but it was much lower than those who didn't lead a healthy lifestyle. So it's not as though we can't do something about it. We can. When we talk about night shift, I mean, I tend to think of overnights, but what about people that work like four to midnight? Does this same apply? It'll depend. It's a good point. It depends

on their chronotype. So if you're a late person, then working from four o'clock in the afternoon until midnight won't be a problem. Whereas, of course, if you're a morning person, that will be bad. And I think one other thing that employers could do is to chronotype the workers. So, for example, it's easy to do and you could work out whether you're a morning or evening person. And the thing you So for example, it's easy to do and you could work out whether you're a morning or evening person. And the thing you want to avoid, of course, is putting a morning person on a 4pm to midnight shift. That's where the late types would probably do okay and you wouldn't get some of the severer problems accumulating. And in the same way, if you're a morning type,

then having a shift from 4am to later in the day wouldn't be so bad for you. But for a night person like myself, that would be a real problem. Well, I think most people know that there is this circadian rhythm, this body clock. But I don't think people have any idea how or well they do now from listening to you. But people don't have an idea of how important it is and how much control it has over your life and your health. So I think it's really interesting and important to understand it. Russell Foster has been my guest. He's a professor of circadian neuroscience, director of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford.

And the name of his book is Lifetime, Your Body Clock and Its Essential Role in Good Health and Sleep. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. It was good to have you here, Russell. It's been really great, Mike. I've really enjoyed talking to you. 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. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft

AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Often when you hear a conversation about entrepreneurship or innovation or investments, it's often centered around Silicon Valley, tech companies.

And I guess that's the sexy part of entrepreneurship. Silicon Valley is where you hear stories of startups that create billionaires overnight. And it is true that a huge percentage of available investment dollars are in three states. California, New York, and Massachusetts. More specifically, three cities. San Francisco, the whole Silicon Valley area, Boston, Massachusetts, and New York City. But why just those three places? There must be good business ideas and good entrepreneurs in other places. And in fact,

there are. One person who is out to find them, fund them, and help grow those businesses outside those three major metropolitan areas is Steve Case. Steve is a businessman, investor, and philanthropist who is best known as the former CEO and chairman of America Online. He's now CEO of a company called Revolution, which is an investment firm that backs entrepreneurs at every stage of their development. And his latest book is called Rise of the Rest, How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream. Hey, Steve, welcome to Something You Should Know. Great to be with you, Mike. So you've been on this mission, this entrepreneurial mission, for quite a while now, and you wrote the book. So explain what it is.

It's really about trying to back entrepreneurs all across the country so they can start and scale companies all across the country. And we can create jobs all across the country, and we can create jobs all across the country. New companies are the biggest job creators, yet most of the venture capital that backs entrepreneurs, backs startups, is invested in a few places. 75% of venture capital goes to just three states, California, New York, and Massachusetts. So the rise and rest is about trying to level the playing field so everybody everywhere who has an idea and wants to start a company has more of an ability to do it, including access to capital. And we started this effort over a decade ago with launching a White House initiative called Startup America, which I'd shared. And then we started doing bus tours eight years ago.

Then we launched a venture fund five years ago. book around Rise and Rest recently because I really, after spending this decade traveling the country and seeing firsthand what was happening in different cities and what different companies were doing in terms of reimagining industries and important aspects of our lives, I thought the story needed to be told. So you make the point that a lot of startups are in those three cities that I mentioned at the top, New York, San Francisco, and Boston, Massachusetts. And so is it the startups are there? Is it kind of like, is it kind of like why bank robbers rob banks? Because that's where the money is. Entrepreneurs and startups start in those three cities because

that's where the startup money is. There is some of that. There really are startups everywhere. But a lot of people who are in different parts of the country, including the middle of the country, often feel like they're being left out of sort of the startup world, the innovation economy, because so much money is invested in places like Silicon Valley. And so that actually leads some people to leave where they are, to go to the coast to pursue their dreams. And what we're trying to do is change that trajectory so that people who have ideas really can stay where they are and start where they are and build where they are. But that does require making sure that the money that's necessary to back these companies to get them going is distributed a little bit more evenly.

So when I think of venture capital and entrepreneurship and Silicon Valley and Boston and New York, I think of tech companies. But as you're spreading out across the country to fund and grow businesses that are not in those areas, are you still looking for more techie kind of companies or is it changing the nature of the companies you're investing in? Well, I think we're in an era now where kind of every company is a tech company. We're kind of moving away from thinking of tech as the tech sector, its own little industry, because every company, every product, every service has some tech aspect. It may be more of a pure tech play. It may be like AI, robotics, things like that. But more often, it's sort of a tech-enabled. An example is a company that we

backed in the Washington, D.C. area called Sweetgreen. It basically is a fast, casual restaurant concept that's grown rapidly. Actually, it's now a public company with 6,000 employees, a $2 billion valuation. They use a lot of technology to manage the supply chain because they work with local farmers and to manage the relationship with customers. More than 60% of their orders actually come on smartphones. So it's not a typical restaurant. There are many other examples in the healthcare space, for example, where particularly during the pandemic, you saw the whole acceleration of telemedicine. It's still healthcare. It's still a doctor who's trying to understand what issues you're dealing with and what to prescribe.

But now you're using technology to augment that and to provide a greater level of convenience. So as we make this shift from tech as a sector to tech kind of underlying, enabling a lot of different things in a lot of different industries, that does open up more opportunities for these other rising cities. So as you attempt to level the playing field and bring some of these venture capital investment dollars to businesses all across the country, therefore geography doesn't matter where they are, doesn't matter. But does it still matter in the sense of like,

if you're going to be in the insurance business, you probably want to be in Hartford or if you want to be in, you know, there are some potentially strategic reasons for businesses to be in certain locations, even if they're not in Silicon Valley, New York City or Boston, Massachusetts. There's definitely some geographic advantages to certain cities around certain industries. And you mentioned insurance in Hartford, also insurance is strong in Columbus, Ohio. So it makes sense that companies that are doing new things in the insurance sector, what we call insure tech, are located in those cities. And increasingly, that's the case. Some very successful companies are scaling in the insurance area, for example, in Columbus. But historically,

the entrepreneur is thinking of those ideas, even if they were in Columbus, would feel like they had to move to California because that's where most of the money was. That was most of the opportunity. Now they can stay where they are and build where they are. So that's definitely shifted. There's another class of companies, though, that really could start anywhere. And we're seeing examples of that all over the country. In Detroit, I was just there recently, we backed a company called StockX, which is sort of a stock exchange for things. It just launched five, six years ago. Now they have over 1,500 employees, significant valuation. Another company in Detroit called Shinola, which is a watch company and other kind of goods, also has over 1,000 employees. So these

companies, those companies like that could be kind of anywhere. They choose to be in those cases in Detroit. Another company we back called Somersault actually is in St. Louis, but it's a fashion company focused on women's fashion, particularly initially on swimsuits. Now they've expanded into other areas. It's a company now with $100 million of sales that you'd think would be in New York, which is a fashion capital, or maybe Los Angeles. No, it's in St. Louis. So these companies are starting to emerge and starting to scale, starting to have great success. But most people don't know about it. Most people don't know about the companies. Most people don't know about the cities that are on the rise as startup cities, which is why I wrote the book. It really,

I found it fascinating traveling around, meeting these entrepreneurs, visiting these cities to see firsthand what's happening. And I just realized that, you know, I go back and talk to people about it and talk about what's happening in Richmond or Chattanooga or Indianapolis or Chicago or Atlanta. You could name a couple of dozen cities. Nobody has a clue what's going on there. And it's important that they do understand that. It's important that entrepreneurs who have ideas feel like they can start anywhere. It's important for investors to expand their aperture and back entrepreneurs

everywhere. What's a stock exchange of things mean? Well, it's a really interesting company. When I first pitched to me, I had the same question. It was that Dan Gilbert, who is a successful entrepreneur in Detroit, started Quicken Loans, which has really been an amazing success and also done a lot to rebuild and renew Detroit, including investing heavily in the downtown Detroit area. The idea is there's been platforms for a long time like eBay where people buy and sell things, but sometimes you really need it authenticated. You need to make sure it really is the real item. It's not a fake, for example. And so the market they started, the sector they started actually was sneakers. And there's a fake, for example. And so the market they started, the sector they started

actually was sneakers. And there's a whole, you know, sneaker aftermarket where people, you know, kind of buy and sell sneakers. And it's become quite a significant business. So what happens is people who have Air Jordan or whatever it might be and want to sell it, put it on the StockX platform. People who want to buy it can have the assurance that it really is authentic because the seller sends it to Detroit and they have a whole team of now over a thousand people that use technology to verify that it is not a counterfeit before sending it on to the buyer. So it really was an interesting idea. They've now expanded that into other products and even hired the former executive vice president of the New York Stock Exchange to now run StockX, this new kind of exchange. And that's just one of

hundreds of ideas we've had the opportunity to learn about. And we are now invested in 200 companies in 100 different cities. There's just amazing innovation happening all over the country and nobody knows about it. And hopefully this book will help tell their stories. Yeah. Well, I like that idea, that StockX idea because, you know, eBay for a long time has had that authentication problem of, are you buying a real thing or counterfeit thing or, you know, is this collectible authentic? And so it's a really great idea. Right. And I think maybe 10 or 15 years ago, if you had that idea and you happen to be in Detroit,

you'd say, well, you know, I guess it's, I think it's a good idea, but I'm not really going to try to start a company because I don't really have the people I can access, the investment capital I can access. So I'll just not do anything about it. Or some people might say, actually, I guess I'll move to San Francisco because I want to start this company. I guess that's where I need to be. What's happened over this past decade is that there's acceleration of cities like Detroit, and there are dozens of others that are rising up. And most people, when they hear about StockX, would assume it's in Silicon Valley. No, it's in Detroit. Arguably the most important healthcare technology company in a country, certainly one of them that does a lot of electronic medical records for most of the hospitals in the country is a company called Epic.

People probably would think they were in Silicon Valley or maybe they were in Boston. No, they're in Madison, Wisconsin. So there are many examples of this that really are startling and surprising. But is StockX in Detroit because there's some strategic reason for being in Detroit or they're just in Detroit because that's where the guys were? For them, it was mostly because they were there, but they also recognized Detroit had a high level of unemployment. It's well known that the auto industry has struggled over the last several decades and the unemployment was high. So they believe there are a lot of people who had worked in those auto plants that could be retrained to do what StockX needs around authentication. So that was the logic to be there. But there are, building what you're

saying, there are some cities that really do significantly advantage the entrepreneurs. And an example, there actually is an entrepreneur named Carter Malloy who was in San Francisco, actually working for a hedge fund in San Francisco. And he came up with the idea for a company called Acre Trader that essentially is a platform to invest in farmland. So farmers that want to sell an interest in their farm instead of selling the whole farm, but they need some capital to perhaps invest in technology or other things for their farm, can sell an interest in their farm to investors who want to invest in farmland as another way to perhaps diversify their investment portfolio. He said, well, if I'm going to be successful building that platform,

this AcreTrader, I should be where the farmers are because I need to convince them to trust me to be on my platform. So he moved from San Francisco to Northwest Arkansas, to Fayetteville, and that company has really scaled quite significantly. Another company that we invested in in Atlanta is a company called Hermias that's developing Mach 5 engines and planes. So you can get from Atlanta to Europe in 90 minutes. And guess what? One of their first customers, the Air Force, because they like to move things quickly. And that company is benefiting from the fact that Atlanta is an aerospace hub. And also Georgia Tech is one of

the largest universities in the country that has a particular focus on aerospace. So it makes more sense for Hermias to be in Atlanta than to be in Silicon Valley. One last one that I really love is a company called App Harvest. This is an entrepreneur, Jonathan Webb, who basically said, I'm going to figure out a way to provide a more sustainable approach to agriculture and also figure out a way to create jobs in Appalachia, coal country, eastern Kentucky, where they've had a tough road for the last several decades as the coal industry has been in decline. So he starts this company called App Harvest, ends up now raising several hundred million dollars, has over 500 employees in eastern Kentucky, and now has the largest indoor greenhouse in the country. And the reason it works in part is because eastern Kentucky, where they're located, 70% of the U.S. population is within a 24-hour drive. And they also, from a sustainability standpoint, use 90% less water. And so suddenly, this is a company that's on the rise, creating jobs and hope and opportunity in a place that has really struggled for several decades. That's an

entrepreneur who had an idea, said, I'm going to go build a company, and was able to convince investors to back that company so it could scale, be successful in the markets it's targeting, employ a lot of people. And that's what we need to see happening in more parts of the country. We can't just have our innovation economy in a few places and have most of the country really ignored and kind of left out of that. We have to make sure we have a more inclusive innovation economy. Since so much of the money is in three places and therefore a lot of the businesses go to those three places or start in those three places, how do you

and these companies connect? How did you find them or they find you? Well, we've been working on this for a decade and we did a number of bus tours over the years. We're driving between cities and spending a lot of time in each city, really learning firsthand what's happening in those cities. And the process built really quite an extensive network, including most of the mayors and governors and CEOs of companies and university presidents and a whole lot of entrepreneurs. And we've also, over the last particularly five years, built up a strong network of regional venture capitalists. While most of the capital is in places like Silicon Valley, there are now more small regional venture funds. In fact, over the last decade, 1,400 new venture funds have started in these Rise of the Rest Cities. So we work closely with them. We've co-invested now with over 300 of those venture firms,

and they source some of the opportunities that we then look at and the ones we co-invest with them on. And we then connect those entrepreneurs to our broader Rise of the Rest network. So they're able to tap into a broader base of talent, a broader base of capital, get introductions to important companies, get their story told more visibly. The company I mentioned, for example, App Harvest, 60 Minutes, followed us on one of our tours a few years ago and did a story on Rise of the Rest and showcased what was happening with App Harvest. So we're trying to use our ability to create attention to tell the stories of these entrepreneurs, to connect with other entrepreneurs, to connect with other investors. Is your approach getting attention in the investment world? Are other venture

capitalists, other investment firms looking at you and going, hey, maybe we should do that? Or are you going your way and they're sticking with the old way? Well, I'd say when we first started going back a decade ago, I think, you know, a lot of people were skeptical. It kind of seemed like a kind of a do-gooder mission, you know, but people were skeptical that we really would be able to find entrepreneurs building significant companies and generate kind of top tier investment returns. Some of the progress that we and others made,

I want to make it clear, it's not just what we're doing. There's a lot of other people who are also working on trying to promote regional entrepreneurship, support more entrepreneurs in more places. As they started seeing some progress and seeing some companies that suddenly were pretty successful, were pretty valuable, generating really compelling returns for investors, people were a little more open to considering options, opportunities to invest in other cities. And so we were seeing

kind of the momentum build pretty much every year over the last decade. And definitely the pandemic was a tipping point. It was people really started opening their eyes to the fact that they could invest in other places. Some people who were in Silicon Valley or New York City decided to move to other parts of the country. And initially, I think they thought they would do that just for a little while, but many have decided to stay there permanently. And while some have continued to work remotely for the companies they were working for before, some have also decided to associate with some local company, some local startup that they can be part of building.

So is the money that you're investing in companies around the country, is this new money or is this being siphoned off from those investment firms that would be otherwise investing in those three big cities? Well, different people are doing different things. Most of the venture capital that is on those venture firms in the coast is still being invested largely in those places. So some investors sitting in Silicon Valley are still largely investing in entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. But in the last couple of years, more have started looking at other opportunities. So I think you'll see over time, I mentioned that 75% of venture capital goes to three states. It will be less than 75% 10 years from now, I think quite a bit less.

So I think you'll see somewhat of a leveling of playing field, which is not to say that Silicon Valley won't still be the leader of the pack. It will be the leader of the pack. It's got a lot of things to be proud of. But I think it will be less dominant in the next phase of innovation than it has been over the last 10 or 20 years. And I think that's good for these communities and it's good for the country. Well, since I love entrepreneurial success stories, just how about one more, one more from your list? One I'm particularly attracted by or really moved by is a company in Chicago called Tempus. And the founder, Eric Lefkoski, his wife, six, seven years ago,

was diagnosed with breast cancer. And they, you know, got opinions from a bunch of different hospitals. And, you know, everybody they talked to gave them a different opinion. You know, you should do this instead of that. Now, they were kind of scared by that. And they concluded it really was a data problem that needed, you know needed more precise analysis of exactly what was going on in this situation with his wife so that a doctor could be more precise about what the intervention should be. What should be surgery? Should it be therapy? What have it? And so he started this company, which now has more than a thousand employees, has raised nearly a billion dollars, and is really revolutionizing healthcare with an initial focus on cancer, but now starting to look at other things as well. I don't think that company would have started if Eric's wife hadn't had breast cancer. He just was so disappointed in the system, so troubled by the healthcare system,

decided to do something about it. And he did it in Chicago, which again, when people think of healthcare and technology, most would assume that company is in Silicon Valley or maybe in Boston. No, it is in Chicago and it's growing really quite rapidly. Well, I like this topic because it's one of those topics that people don't think to think about. We just kind of take it for granted that a lot of the investment dollars, a lot of the venture capital, a lot of the innovation is happening in Silicon Valley, in New York, in Boston. And why? Why not even out that playing field? And that's what you're doing, and it's pretty interesting to hear about it. I've been talking with Steve Case. He is a businessman, investor, and philanthropist,

best known as the former CEO of America Online. And the name of his book is Rise of the Rest, How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places are Building the New American Dream. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Steve. You know, you were actually one of our very first guests back when we first started this podcast in 2016. And so it's a pleasure to have you back. Thanks for being here. Thank you very much. Great talking to you. I have some bad news if you're a woman, and that is that bad news takes a bigger toll on you. A study found that most women have a much stronger response to bad news than men do.

Researchers had men and women read some bad news about accidents and murders and things, and then measured their responses and hormone levels. The women seemed to take the news much harder. They paid more attention and remembered disturbing details for longer. The author of the study explained that women are wired to be more primed for danger and more sensitive to their own survival and that of their children. So they tend to take in the bad news and associate it with their own lives. Men, not so much. And that is something you should know. I've been getting a lot of nice emails from people who affirm the fact that they are spreading the word about this podcast and

telling their friends. And if you have a spare moment to do the same, it really helps support this podcast. 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 VB 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.