TED Radio Hour - Listen Again: Work, Play, Rest - Part 3

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

Original broadcast date: February 19, 2022. Rest is so much more than just a good night's sleep. From human hibernation to ASMR to the science of dreams, we explore how to nourish our minds and bodies with different forms of rest. Guests include physiologist Craig Richard, psychologist Dylan Selterman, hibernation researcher Matteo Cerri, and journalist Celeste Headlee.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences. To bring about the future we want to see. Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.

You just don't know what you're going to find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading.

From TED and NPR. I'm Anoushe Zamoroti. And today, the third and final episode in our special series, Work, Play, Rest. We've been exploring the fundamental ways we spend our time and how they're changing, including ways for us to slow down. I remember walking in the door

and they would walk me over to that. chair where you lean back. This is physiologist Craig Richard. And they put your head, the back of your head, into the sink, and they turn on some warm water. Craig used to love going to the hairdresser. And they start running that water through your hair, and then they start running their fingers through your hair.

And that moment right there is just, I would want that to last a long time. They'd then walking me over to the chair, and they'd sit me down, But then they'd start teasing my hair a little bit and saying, well, what do you want to do? Do you want it shorter? Do you want it like this? And then they would start cutting it. I'd hear the snip, snip, snip of the scissors. And then all that would just put me in this deep state of relaxation. I would feel these brain tingles.

And I have a confession, because you're only hearing my voice right now and you're not seeing me. I am a bald man, but I don't miss my hair. What I miss is going to the hairdresser for that stimulation of ASMR that would happen. ASMR, you may have heard of it before. Those videos on YouTube of people whispering or making crinkling noises that millions of people watch to relax. Craig spent the last several years researching why some people love these sounds. ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, which is just a complicated word for a feeling that is deeply relaxing,

but it also has these signature brain tingles, which feel light and sparkly. The triggers for this relaxing feeling can be a sound, can be voices, can be light touch, can be movements. But what's common to all these triggers of ASMR is that they must be gentle, low volume if there sounds, and non-abrupt. And it's usually a moment of positive personal attention, which means that you're interacting with someone who is kind and caring. This could be between a hairdresser and a client, a health professional, and a patient, romantic partners, or even, even best friends.

So tell me, how on Earth, Craig, did you discover this world of research? And when did you find out that these sensations were actually something neurological going on? Yeah. I was listening to a podcast in my kitchen, and the episode was about this term that I'd never heard before, autonomous sensory meridian response. And I'm a physiologist, and this sound. it like physiology, but I'd never heard of it. So I was very skeptical.

And I was about to delete the episode until they gave the example of Bob Ross. They said people who experience ASMR tend to feel deeply relaxed and feel these brain tingles when they watch the TV show Bob Ross's Joy of Painting. And my eyes lit up. Hello, I'm Bob Ross. And I'd like to welcome you to the 29th Joy of Painting Series. For those who aren't familiar, Bob Ross has become kind of a kitsy icon.

But back in the 80s, he was this guy with big hair on public television who would paint a landscape in real time on camera. But there was something tantalizing about him. He had a gentle voice. He had a kind disposition. And he had a skill that he was teaching you. It fits the perfect scenario of what we refer to as an ASMR scenario. And we'll take this old brush and just making little X's, little crisscross strokes.

We'll just very quickly drop in just a little warm part in the sky here. It's a gentle person making gentle sounds, and somehow that's helpful to you or you perceive that moment as caring. And Bob Ross had the most caring, loving, gentle personality. What's so fantastic about this, is that anybody can put a little masterpiece on canvas with just a little bit of practice, a vision in your mind, and off you go. All right.

And when I watched him as a kid, I would just put a pillow on the floor, and I would end up falling asleep as his voice and the sounds of his paintbrush on the canvas just washed over me. When we think about feeling rested, we often think of getting a good night's sleep or taking a nap. But there are so many different ways we can rest. So today on the show, ideas about slowing down and why rest is crucial to our survival. We'll explore tips to avoid burnout. Our emotional health responds beautifully when we allow our bodies to rest.

How what we dream at night impacts us during the day. Yeah, we are definitely very active, at least mentally, when we sleep. And why scientists are pursuing a radical new form of rest, human hibernation. His suspension, you are retiring from the game of life for a little bit of time. But first, let's get back to Craig Richard and how he learned about the now popular relaxation technique, ASMR. Here he is on the TED stage. Now, I'm a physiologist. I'm a researcher. I'm a data nerd. I was so excited to read about the science of ASMR.

In 2013, there wasn't a single peer-reviewed research study. What I did find were plenty of forums discussing this blissful sensation. And they all reported the same response that I felt. They were deeply relaxed. They felt comforted. They felt calmed. And they had these light, sparkly brain tingles. And I also noticed that every scenario they described

was always when they were receiving positive personal attention from a kind and caring individual. So, Craig, I mean, nowadays, these videos are all over YouTube. People are known as ASMR artists, and they create these scenarios that might involve sounds or whispering like a bookkeeper writing and moving around papers. A great record. for your business.

Or an eye exam. Hi, I'm Dr. J.B. It's nice to see you. So for people who experience ASMR and watch these videos, why is it so enjoyable for them? Is it just watching someone talking to you, calming you down? Is it the sounds?

Is it a combination of those? It's the combination. It's the context to tell you, this is a safe and helpful moment. So don't run away. And it creates this positive, personal interaction between you and someone in a video, which of course can't be a real interaction. But our brain still process it, at least perhaps subconsciously,

as if that person is right there with us. I recently published a brain scan study with Bryson Locti and other researchers from Dartmouth College. And we saw that the brain regions that are, are activated while people are watching ASMR videos like these are the same brain regions that are activated when people are receiving positive personal attention from a kind and caring person in the real world. Now there's plenty of unanswered questions still. Like what might be the brain chemicals that are causing this amazing sensation? One likely candidate is the neurohormone oxytocin. and you might have heard of this as the love hormone.

It's already well known that your oxytocin levels in your brain increase when anyone gives you positive personal attention in a kind and caring way. For as many people who love ASMR, there are also some people who hate it, right? I mean, I've listened to some of them where I'm like, just speak up. Stop with the whispering already. I can't hear you. And I'm guessing that there are some people listening to us and thinking like, This is just plain weird. What on earth are you both talking about? How do you explain it to people who are just thinking this is bizarro niche internet silliness?

Well, in a way, it is all that for some people. I mean, it is, but it's also very powerful and it's effective for a lot of people who have ASMR responses. So usually a lot of the skepticism comes from people who don't experience it. But we do have to be careful because that in a way was how people responded to migraines. When migraines were first reported, just because you can't see it, and you don't experience that extreme pain in your head, doesn't mean it's not real for someone else. So right now, yes, it's weird, but there's more and more science coming out. There's more and more studies that are confirming.

It is helping people to decrease their stress. It is helping people to fall asleep. And it may be helpful for people who have clinical disorders, such as anxiety and insomnia. It's interesting to hear you say that. I mean, it's been a heck of a few years. There's been a lot to be stressed out about. People are looking for ways to put their minds and their bodies at rest, and they are struggling. to find it.

Has it always been thus, or are we at a particularly tough moment where we need to use every single tool that's available to us? And if they sound a little weird, you know what, that's okay. I guess if we're thinking of our bodies like a computer, if you're always running your computer with lots of programs and is doing a lot of activities, it will overheat and it will shut down. We do need to find things to help us lower our stress. And this is what is driving the popularity of ASMR. These aren't curious videos. They're effective videos for a lot of individuals. It's not going to work for everyone, but it's another tool in the toolbox. Whether it's

AISMR videos, it's mindfulness, it's meditation, it's medication. It's good to have this large selection of things that can help calm our brains down. That's Craig Richard. He's a professor at Shenandoah University and hosts the podcast, Sleep Whispers. You can hear his full talk at TED.com. Today on the show, part three of our series, Work, Play, Rest. I'm Manus Shumeroody, and you're listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.

It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Anoush Zamoroti. On the show today, ideas about rest. Because after you've spent a day working hard, sometimes all you want to do is close your eyes and turn off your brain. But, of course, it's not quite that simple. Well, you hit the nail on the head. We are definitely very active, at least men. mentally when we sleep. Parts of our body get a rest, but our minds are doing a lot of work. This is Dylan Selterman. He's a psychologist and associate professor at Johns Hopkins.

And he's something of an expert on dreams and what they mean in our lives. You'd be surprised how often I hear the teeth falling out of the mouth dream. I get that a lot from people. Oh, I have that one. Yep. I've had a lot of like Star Wars dreams where I'm in, Another universe holding a lightsaber, and I know it's very dorky. About a decade ago, when Dylan was working on his dissertation, he collected people's stories about their dreams, over 800 of them, to try and understand how those dreams affected them when they were awake.

So we recruited a sample of young adults and asked them to keep a log of their dreams for two weeks. and we found that about 20 to 25% of the time people were dreaming about romantic encounters. Most of those dreams had to do with their significant others, but people did dream about other partners. They dreamt about their exes, they dreamt about new partners they may have met. And we found that when people have those dreams, it is associated with their behavior and their feelings. with their romantic partners the next day. I dreamt I was at a carnival with my girlfriend.

She kept beating me at the whack-a-mole game, even though I thought I was winning by a lot. In the end, she won a big teddy bear as a prize, which is apparently what she wanted, so I was happy. We were watching Saw 2. I was so scared of the movie. I kept ducking my head into his shoulders and squeaking when the gory parts appeared.

He laughed and comforted me. I remember being called constantly by my girlfriend and checking up on me. It got to the point where we got into a fight because I told her she didn't trust me. And I ended up getting beyond drunk and hooking up with some random girl. A girl left a message on my boyfriend's Facebook page.

I find out he called her, they were talking, and he told her that he loves her. How could he do this to me? He just says, I don't know. And I keep yelling and crying until finally waking myself out of the dream. Oh, Dylan, all we want to know is, what does it mean? What does it all mean? Well, I wouldn't go as far as to say that every single thing that happens in everyone's dream has a meaning.

But I think when it comes to especially the dreams that are very social, that they have a lot of important messages for us. Here's Dylan Salterman on the TED stage. If you have this type of dream and you wake up and your partner is sleeping in the best, right next to you, what might you say? What might you do in that situation? What we're seeing in these dreams is a lot of the same kinds of behaviors that people would exhibit with their romantic partners in their waking lives. There's kissing, there's affectionate behavior, there's comforting. That being said, not all dreams are sunshine and roses. When people have these types of dreams with arguments or conflict or betrayal or jealousy, they have more conflict with their partners

the next day. And that's controlling for the previous day is conflict. So it's not part of some day-to-day mechanism. There's something unique about the dream. When people have an infidelity dream, they're cheating on their partner, they're hooking up with someone else, they feel significantly less love and closeness the next day. Why? Why do dreams have this association? Why do they have this effect? The short answer is we still don't know. Dreams are one of the big unsolved mysteries of science. There are several competing theories that might explain what's going on here. Patrick McNamara proposed a theory that dreams evolved in order to facilitate social attachment

bonds, especially between parents and children and romantic partners. But what about all those conflict dreams? That would kind of suggest the opposite, that it's almost hurting the attachment bonds. And there's another theory that might address this, which is more along the lines that dreams evolved in order to help us solve problems, in order to see difficult issues from a new perspective and maybe come to conclusions or have solutions that we wouldn't otherwise be able to see

to adapt to emotionally difficult situations. I am so curious, tell me more about how these dreams, I mean, especially the negative ones, affected people's moods the next day, even their behavior. I mean, anyone can, have a dream about someone who's not their significant other. But if the relationship is strong, then they might wake up and say, well, I definitely don't want to do that in real life. So I'm going

to make an extra effort to be connected to my partner and pay attention to their needs. On the other hand, if the relationship's not going well, maybe that would prompt people to think, I need to move on from this person. A few of my participants, a handful of them, told me that they broke up with their significant others because of the dreams that they were having during the study. Wow. It wasn't an incredibly large number, but it was enough that a few of them went out of their way to tell me that during the debriefing process. So this theory that negative dreams might be preparing you to solve problems, to be clear,

it's not just relationship problems, right? if, you know, a quarter of the time we dream about our partners, the other three quarters of the time, we could be dreaming about any number of stressful scenarios. I'm so glad you brought that up. So let's back up a little bit to March of 2020 because I remember seeing a lot of people post online that they were having very vivid and intense dreams during those initial lockdowns. And I was having them too. And I think part of the reason for that is our dreams and our minds to some extent are working over time to try to make sense of this crazy new world that we found ourselves in where everything was turned upside down. I had a dream where I touched a surface and then touched my face. And in the dream, I was really distressed because I thought that I had infected myself. So I woke up the next day and I was much more vigilant about washing my face.

my hands before touching my face. So I think that people were having those types of dreams to prepare themselves for the new world we found ourselves. Yeah. And I'm thinking especially about the general research on cognitive reframing and that kind of emotional work that we put into our general mental health. We take experiences that might be negative and try to extract something positive from them. So that same logic can be applied to our dreams. Just because you have negative emotion in dreams does not mean that we should try to stop those types of dreams from happening. What do you mean by that? How could that be positive when I think that I've like when I first had a newborn,

I used to have the dream that I'd forgotten where I put my baby? That was a terrifying one. Yeah. Another dream that I have that I've heard many people have is of a tsunami wave. these things that we all seem to dream that are very upsetting. Right. Well, a possibility is that our minds are thinking about possible things that could happen.

And in the dream, it could be more symbolic. It could be more abstract. So maybe the tsunami is just one of many types of problems that we could face. And we are just going over what might happen and how to prepare for it. So if it's a natural disaster, if it's COVID, if it's another problem that we're facing in our lives, who are the people we can depend on, what are the resources we need, how would I prepare for this disaster, and then using that after you wake up to live a healthier life.

And we do see this kind of thing happening in people's dreams, what some therapists call dream work. If someone is having a recurring nightmare to put yourself, back into the dream, so to speak, while you're awake. But instead of replaying it exactly, imagine it differently. Imagine that you respond with strength and resilience instead of fear. What would that look like behaviorally? So when it comes to those types of things, I like reframing exercises for dreams, and I like them for waking life as well.

Here's some research by Rosalind Cartwright that shows when, You look at women who are suffering from depression after going through a divorce. They are actually less depressed. They're more mentally healthy in the future at a follow-up if they dream about their ex-partner, if they dream about their former spouse. This might seem counterintuitive. You might be thinking, well, how can you get over someone if you're dreaming about them? Rosalind Cartwright calls these dreams that work,

that those people who incorporated the thing that stressed them out into their dream were better off, even if the dream content was negative. Dreams have this incredible power to help us heal. As Bob Stickgold said, when you sleep, your brain is figuring it out and holding on to relevant information and throwing out the rest. You know, on the one hand, Dylan,

I am grateful to my brain for preparing me for whatever problems might be looming. But on the other hand, I just want to wake up feeling rested and from all the anecdotes that you've provided and the research that you've shared, that is just not what's happening. Our dreams are not allowing our minds to truly rest, or that's what it feels like. Am I wrong in thinking that that's what we should be yearning for?

Well, it could also be the case that we just need to redefine what we call rest. Maybe rest is something that is more active than passive. I think about this in terms of physical exercise whenever I'm doing a workout and the person leading the workout says, remember to do active recovery, stretch, hydrate, and make sure you're doing the things that are essentially helping that rest and recovery process. But it's never sitting back and doing nothing and lounging on the couch. It's a much more active process than that. And I think with dreams, you could think about it the same way. It is an active rest. It's a way to help us feel refreshed and also get things done.

If you get anything from this talk, I want you to take this home, that dreams are worth your time. They're an important piece of your life and worth paying attention to. That dreams represent this great untapped reservoir of information and insights that you can gain about yourself, about your relationships, about your work, about your physical health. So start tonight. Keep a dream journal. Put a pad of paper and a pen next to your bed and when you wake up, write down whatever it was that was in your head while you were asleep. You might be surprised at what you find. Your dreams might be trying to tell you something really important. Thank you. That's Dylan Selterman. He's an associate teaching professor at Johns Hopkins University. You can see

his full talk at ted.npr.org. On the show today, rest. And one of the truest, deepest forms of rest comes to some animals every winter. When we talk about hibernation, what we really mean is to do what squirrels or bears or hamster, bats. Does all these animals do in winter when they don't have enough resources, enough food or water? Mateo Cherry is a professor at the University of Bologna, where he studied. hibernation. They change what they need from the environment by entering this very, very special state.

So it's a bit more like a standby on a TV screen or on a computer. And to put their body on standby, Mateo says that animals first have to find the right spot. So what you're looking for is a place where you could be safe from predators, potentially invisible to the rest of the environment. where you can just wait, a place where you can be cozy and safe.

Then the body, heart, lungs, brain slow down to a creep. And there's a word for it. Yes, we call that torpor. So torpor is the technical word that refers to a low metabolic state. And sometimes I say to my students, it's like a metabolic austerity. You don't spend anything more than what is strictly needed to exist. You could think of hibernation or torpor more correctly as the natural state that may be the closer to death

without actually going over. Okay, so those are the basics of hibernation. But here's the thing about Mateo. I'm actually working on try to replicate or simulate hibernation for human use. Yeah, human hibernation. Mateo was studying whether it would be possible to put people into this extreme state of torpor.

I would say there is a clear path to try to reach this goal. Okay, Mateo, I understand why animals would hibernate. But you think that there are reasons why humans would want to hibernate. That's absolutely what we're thinking. It's a basket full of resources for medicine, for space travel, and it could really exploit a different state of the body, a different physiology that we are starting out to unraveling and understanding in a deeper detail

and could lead to potentially disruptive application. I know disruptive is a hype word and maybe it's counterproductive to say it, but I really think it would be disruptive. Well, yeah, it definitely sounds disruptive. But okay, so let's start with space travel. You are working with the European Space Agency on this problem, figuring out how astronauts could travel years, even decades, into deep space, which would be really hard on the human body. Yeah, having a trip the last, let's say, a decade in space, you have to imagine yourself you are in a very confined space, night and day, every time, every minutes, every hour. So that is pretty stressful.

And then there are other problem. Your strength, your structure of your body. So muscle will become weak because of the lack of gravity. And as well for your bone, if they will not be able to keep you standing against the gravity of another planet, how are you going to stand or walk? Then there is the problem of radiation. So the amount of radiation you will get for this kind of trip, there's just too much. unless we find some way to reduce this damage or protect ourselves from the damage.

Okay, so that's a lot of problems. But you think hibernation could do that, could work as protection. That's absolutely right. First thing, obviously, you don't need that much food and water and resources when you're hibernated and you don't produce much biological waste as well, so all of that is cleaner.

Your muscle and your bone will probably preserve much of their structure and their strength. And finally, hibernation gives cell an interesting defense against radiation. It doesn't reduce, apparently, the damage radiation due to tissues, but he helped tissue repair those damage in a much better way than if we were not hibernated. Wow, that is fascinating. But I don't think that many of us have plans to travel to Mars anytime soon. I will say, though, you are making me fantasize about going into hibernation for my next long haul flight. Is that possible? Could we maybe one day put ourselves into a state of hibernation and wake up in a different time zone, feeling pretty good?

That would be great. That would be fantastic. I hate long flight. I have a friend is like a trader in the stock market. He was asking me, could we go into Turpur when the market goes down? and wake up when the market goes up. So it will all depend on how easy and risky technology would be. But why put a limit to our hope?

When we come back, we get a little more grounded, how hibernation could be used more immediately in medical treatments. On the show today, rest. I'm Anush Zamoroti, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Anoush Zamorodi. And we were just talking to hibernation expert Mateo Cherry. Mateo says there are a few intriguing stories that make researchers believe humans can hibernate or be put into a state of torpor.

Including a story published in 1800 about an entire village in Russia that would sleep through the winter. There is a Russian term for this winter sleep. It's called Lodchka. I don't know if I pronounce it correctly. And apparently those peasants and villagers were gathering together in this large house in the center of the town to sleep the winter off together, just sleeping there waiting for spring to come.

I mean, whether it's true or not, that is a beautiful story. It's like a fairy tale. But there is a famous story from the neurologist Oliver Sacks about a man that he, He called Uncle Toby, right? Yes, definitely. Oliver Sachs, he was visiting a family for, no, on site, for some other question.

And you notice this person, like he said, like icy frozen, still alive, though, with a temperature, body temperature of 69 Fahrenheit, so about 20 Celsius. Yikes, cold. Yes. And ask what happened to him. And they say, well, this is Uncle Toby. And seven years ago, it just stopped. He lives with us. We take care of him.

We feed them. We shave them. We dress them. But it just stands there. So he suspected hypothyroidism as a possible cause of this strange behavior. And proposed to treat them with thyroid hormone at the time was available. And the family agree. And Uncle Toby actually, he woke up.

So he gave him the drug and he wake up. And he doesn't remember the seven years that were passed. But then, and that would be a good ending story. But the story actually is not sad in his end because Uncle Toby had a cancer, a small cell lung cancer. And the cancer woke up with him and then killed them in a few months. So does that mean that when Uncle Toby was in this sort of stupor that maybe not only did he go to sleep, but maybe the cancer went to sleep during that time?

Yes, that is exactly the point. The idea is that the cancer and Uncle Toby had found a way to live both. So a provocative hypothesis would be that the cancer actually produced something that unlocked the ability of the brain to enter torpor. And then therefore the body enter torpor and therefore the cancer stopped growing because that's what happened in torpor. The cancer usually stopped growing. and they both stay that way. And once we awake on Kaltobi, we also wake the cancer and their story ends. So when we hear that story, does it tell us something about the way that putting humans into hibernation or torpor might be used when it comes to treating something as aggressive and active as mutations in cells, cancer?

It could be. It could be used for this kind of clinical condition. Even more pressing would be for someone waiting for an organ transplant. There are about 50 people pretty much every day between Europe and the United States died because of lack of organ. So if you could suspend them, slow in their metabolism down, then you increase their chances to potentially find an organ. But in the case of Ankle Stobby story, the important part for us is that that seems to be a way in which the brain can be made induce cybernation. It can be reactivating this old state even in humans. And so it would be feasible.

That's what we hope for. I mean, do you imagine wings of hospitals filled with patients who are resting in a state of torpor waiting for their cancer treatment? or waiting for an organ transplant? Is that something that might happen? Yes, yes, that's what I envision. So how would we do this, whether it is for space travel or for medicine or any number of purposes, like how would you put people into this state of hibernation?

So far, the greatest results were to induce into a state that very much resemble hibernation animals that are not able to enter hibernation or torpor. And we call I co-operator, in this state, synthetic torpor. So you induced this in animals in the lab? Yes. And we were able to do it by silencing the activity of a little group of neurons in the very old part of our brain. In the past 10 years, there have been an amazing discovery in the field.

We have now a better idea of the brain network that control torpor. We have uncovered other hotspot that could be targeted for inducing. in torpor. So a lot of exciting thing happened really in the last 10 years. So can we talk about waking up? What, what it, I had the pleasure of having a routine procedure earlier this week where I was put under general anesthesia. And it is just the weirdest thing coming out of it. You're like, wait, where was I for the last half hour? What would waking up from this state of torpor or hibernation be like? It's the most dangerous part, I would say, of hibernation.

And there is really little that we know about how those animals wakes up. The Arctic ground squirrel. His brain is a minus 1 Celsius. How is this brain able to bring the body back to normal? And that's still quite unknown. But what we see is definitely, especially for the brain, is the most plastic state I've ever seen as a neurophysiology. So synapsid get form and reform is a neurostorm of molecules of active brain molecules. So it could be something about like dreaming or it could provide you sensation of dream life.

state, my guess. Maybe it's even pleasurable. We don't know or maybe not. But after you wake up, I would say you would also be very, very sleepy. You need to sleep after hibernation. The reason why still mystery, like the entire time you spent in Turpore was sleep deprivation. So you need to rest after your big rest. Oh yeah. It's hard to tell that hibernation is Rest is suspension. You are retiring from the game of life for a little bit of time. That's neurophysiologist and hibernation researcher Mateo Cherry. If you speak Italian, you can watch his TED Talk at TED.com. We've heard some unusual ideas about rest on this episode, but ASMR is not for everyone.

dreams are hard to control, and human hibernation is not going to happen for a very long time. So we wanted to wrap up our episode with a story from a friend of the show, a reminder that so many of us seem to need, that taking time to relax and reset every day can make the difference between being resilient and burning out. I got sick, like really sick. And I was like, this is it. Something's got to change. This is Celeste Headley. I am a longtime journalist with NPR and PBS and others.

In 2015, Celeste gave a TED Talk called 10 Ways to Have a Conversation. So I have 10 basic rules. I'm going to walk you through all of them. And it went viral. Really viral. And master it, you're already to enjoy better conversations. When the talk first came out, Celeste was delighted at all the attention her ideas got. But she soon realized.

that she didn't know how to handle all the opportunities that came along with all that attention. I was still hosting a daily news show Monday through Friday, and I was still a single mother. And I started trying to fit all of those speaking engagements and other things into my existing schedule. And then I got a book deal. And I decided to fit that into my schedule and not take any time off to write the book either. And it just snowballed. I mean, Celeste, to some people, this sounds like a Cinderella story. Like single mom becomes public radio host, gives TED Talk, becomes big thought leader celebrity. Yes, it is all those great things that you just said. And yes, it's an incredible privilege on my part. And I understand how many the odds I'm beating. Like, I'm a single mother woman of color at that point in my 40s. But the more incredible the offers, because became the harder and more impossible it was to say no.

So she didn't say no. So I would get up at 6 a.m., go in, do the radio show, straight from the radio show, to the airport, fly to whatever city I was going to. Sometimes I had a pre-recorded interview, which meant I needed to rush to my hotel and set up my little travel studio really quickly so I could record from the hotel room. And then I would get up the next morning. Either I do the keynote that night, depending or get up the next morning, deliver the keynote, rush back to the airport, get on a plane, and then be on the radio again the following day so that I could only miss one day of work. It's a lot.

It was insane. Okay, so you kept going for a few years. And that's when you got really sick. And you decided you wanted to figure out why you felt so bad when you were doing work that you loved, but couldn't keep going. Yeah, I began to start doing research into why I was so overworked, how to fix my schedule and fix what was going wrong in my own life. And once I started doing that research and I started talking to my friends and saying this is what I'm researching, trying to figure this out for myself, they were like, oh my God, when you find out what you tell me? And I realized this wasn't my problem. It was our problem.

When you say our problem, like what is the problem and whose is it? What do you mean? I mean humanity. The problem is this addiction to hard work, to long hours of work, to a belief in just the inherently virtuous qualities of hard work and productivity, hustle culture, that at this point has become toxic. It's actually been toxic for a very long time. The toxicity has just raised to the point. where it's not survivable anymore. Celeste, you ended up turning that research into a book called Do Nothing,

how to break away from overworking, overdoing, and underliving. But I wonder, you know, is the problem that you're describing an American problem? Because, you know, I have some friends, not American friends, who are like, you Americans, you don't know how to go on vacation. But also, as the child of immigrants, I certainly see that a very strong work ethic exists for all kinds of people often because they have no choice. So really what we're living in right now is this concatenation of circumstances, right? There's several forces that joined together to become this overpowering wave.

Yes, it was the Protestant work ethic. So you had religious leaders espousing the idea that God wants you to work hard, that you earn your way into heaven through your hard labor and that idle hands of the devil's playground. Yes, that was absolutely there. But on the other hand, you also had a couple world wars in which the government was telling everyone that hard work is patriotism. That you work long hours because that's how you support the troops. That's how you do your part.

And there's this commercial component of it as well in the U.S. especially, but other nations. Consumer spending drives our economies. But there's one further thing that is driving this. That's the myth of the self-made man. It's the bootstraps theory. Just this belief in the virtue of doing it yourself and that you earn your place in society. When time is money, nobody can afford to waste it.

And it wasn't until the industrial age when we started getting paid based on time rather than task accomplished. This word burnout, we see it everywhere. People use it all the time right now. Are we battling back for our rights? right to rest? I actually think the younger generations are beginning to take up this battle, which makes me

very happy. I mean, burnout in and of itself, it's probably used too much. But I say it at the same time that I don't think it's used enough. Like, I don't think our policymakers and our corporate leaders are using burnout enough. They don't understand the severity of the problem. The World Health Organization already said that we were headed for an epidemic. of burnout before the pandemic. So what do you do?

Because let's not let the fact that you said yes to this interview about rest, that you are actually here doing it. I mean, no, the book is called Do Nothing, but I'm not saying don't do anything. The thing of it is that when you start actually respecting your body's own rhythms and giving it the rest that you need, the irony is you actually become more protective. You get things done in a shorter amount of time. Why? Because your brain is rested and healthy. Your body is rested and healthy.

But you write that when you started your own business, you had to learn not to be a terrible boss to yourself. And that now you had to learn to do this. You had to build in lots of breaks into your schedule so you wouldn't drive yourself into the ground. Yeah. And, you know, it's also true that some of my ability to craft my schedule is based on privilege, right? I have been in a situation where I've been holding down six or seven different jobs. in order to make ends meet. And that was a tough, tough time. But the truth of it is, is that you can find five or ten minutes. And not doing that is going to make everything so much harder. It's really

easy to get just kind of tunneled down in your stress and your crisis and you're in fighter flight mode and you're like, I don't have time for anything right now. But if you can just walk around the block, When you come back, your body recovers. It's beautiful. Take a breath. You know, I do a check-in a couple times a day where I just close my eyes and I imagine I'm in a standing MRI machine and I just scan through my body.

Not to change anything. Just to note, how are you feeling? Where's the tension in your body? What feels good? What feels bad? How are you doing? And so you start to become actually aware of yourself. And that's how you know you're resting is because you feel rested.

Truly rested. That's journalist Celeste Headley. You can see her talk and hundreds more. Just go to ted.com or check out the TED app. Thank you so much for listening to the final episode in our three-part series, Work, Play, Rest. If you miss the first two shows, just go back. in your feed and take a listen. Because it feels like we're constantly looking for balance between these three fundamental ways we spend our time. But what I've taken from this series is that

self-help strategies only do so much. Sometimes the antidote to burnout or languishing is learning about wild scientific research or new kinds of activism or the process of making joyful music. It's that interdisciplinary mix that can make us believe we humans still have it in us to care for each other, maybe even fix the things that are broken. This episode was produced by Katie Montalien, Rachel Faulkner, James Delahousie, and Diba Motisham. It was edited by Sanaz Meskampur, Rachel Faulkner, and James Delahousie. Our TED Radio production staff also includes Matthew Cloutier, Fiona Gehrin, and Sylvie Douglas. Our audience, audio engineer is Brian Jarbo, and our intern is Margaret Serino.

Our theme music was written by Romteen Arablewe. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms, Anna Feelein, Michelle Quint, Sammy Case, and Danielle Balorezzo. I'm Anoush Zamorodi, and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.