How to Create Real Wealth & The Ways Technology Ruins Relationships

Speaker 1 Today, on something you should know, a strange reason why you sometimes feel cold, even when you're not. Then, understanding what real wealth is and how to achieve it.

Speaker 2 It is the idea of understanding your definition of enough, that your expectations are actually your greatest financial liability.

Speaker 2 Because if you allow them to grow faster than your assets, you will never feel rich.

Speaker 1 Also, why a stuffy nose isn't really what you think it is. And while the internet and all its tools can be great, the technology can also tear us apart.

Speaker 3 We've come to believe that the internet is our all-purpose tool. It's good for everything.
And I think that's a mistake.

Speaker 3 That actually, when it comes to interpersonal communication, gathering information and making sense of complex issues, the internet is actually a really bad tool.

Speaker 1 All this today on something you should know.

Speaker 1 I've learned from experience that hiring isn't easy, even when you know exactly who you're looking for. Running a business doesn't automatically make you good at hiring people.

Speaker 1 It's a skill and it takes time, sometimes too much time. That's why I like Indeed.
It makes the whole process faster and easier. and the results are better.

Speaker 1 When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Instead of struggling to get your job post noticed, Indeed sponsored jobs helps you stand out.

Speaker 1 Your listing jumps right to the top of the page for the people you actually want to reach. And that saves you days, maybe weeks of waiting.
And the numbers back it up.

Speaker 1 According to Indeed Data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs. What I like most is there are no monthly subscriptions, no long-term contracts.

Speaker 1 You only pay for results. And while I've been talking, 23 hires were made on Indeed worldwide.
It's that fast.

Speaker 1 There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed.

Speaker 1 And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash something.

Speaker 1 Just go to Indeed.com slash something

Speaker 1 right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash something.

Speaker 1 Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed, is all you need.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Hi, and welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 1 In the winter, it's common to feel cold. When the weather is cold, you likely feel cold.
But here's something weird.

Speaker 1 If you watch somebody else who is clearly cold, it's more likely to make you feel cold.

Speaker 1 Researchers in England showed subjects videos of people who were cold and noticed that the body temperature of the people watching dropped. So how can being cold be contagious?

Speaker 1 Well, it seems that it's because we're social creatures and much of human success results from our ability to work together in complex communities.

Speaker 1 This would be hard to do if we were not able to rapidly empathize with each other and predict one another's thoughts, feelings, and motivations.

Speaker 1 Interestingly, they also showed subjects videos of people who were visibly hot. But it did not cause the people watching to increase their body temperature.
And that is something you should know.

Speaker 1 Stop for a moment and think of someone who is wealthy. And most likely you thought of someone who has a lot of money.
Money is how most of us measure wealth.

Speaker 1 But as you're about to discover, there are actually five types of wealth. And it's important to cultivate all five, not just financial wealth.

Speaker 1 although that is one of them, but all five types are crucial to leading a satisfying life. And joining me to explain all this is Sahil Bloom.

Speaker 1 He is a successful entrepreneur and the managing partner of SRB Ventures, an early stage investment fund. He has a bi-weekly newsletter called the Curiosity Chronicle that has a big following.

Speaker 1 Sahill spent three years doing research and conducting thousands of interviews with people around the world on the topic of personal wealth.

Speaker 1 He's author of a book called The Five Types of Wealth, a transformative guide to design your dream life.

Speaker 1 Hi, Sahil. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 So explain why we're talking about this, because as I said, for most of us, wealth means money. So why do we need to dive deeper into these other types of wealth?

Speaker 1 So frame this picture for me.

Speaker 2 I think it's best framed through a quote, which is one of my favorite quotes from the management theorist Peter Drucker, who said, what gets measured gets managed.

Speaker 2 And I've always loved that quote because what it implies is that the things that you measure end up being the things that you focus on, the things that you optimize around.

Speaker 2 And money has been the sole way that we measure our lives. It has been our focus and the way that we establish our worth as individuals and as people and as professionals.

Speaker 2 But unfortunately, money is just one piece of a more complete picture that contributes to a healthy, happy, fulfilling, wealthy life.

Speaker 1 So, what are the five types of wealth?

Speaker 2 The five types of wealth are time wealth, which is the idea of the freedom to choose how you spend your time, who you spend it with, where you spend it, and when you trade it for other things.

Speaker 2 Social wealth, which is the idea of your human connection, your relationships, the people with whom you are going to go on these journeys with.

Speaker 2 Mental wealth, which is your purpose, your pursuit of growth, and your ability to create space to wrestle with bigger questions in your life.

Speaker 2 Physical wealth, which is all about your health and vitality,

Speaker 2 your ability to control the controllables, as it were, in your own life, in your pursuit of health. And then finally, financial wealth, which we all know.

Speaker 2 But in the context of financial wealth in particular, it is the idea of understanding your definition of enough, the idea that your expectations are actually your greatest financial liability, because if you allow them to accelerate and grow faster than your assets, you will never feel rich.

Speaker 1 And what does that mean to feel rich? Seems like if you feel rich, whatever your definition of feel rich is, then you're rich.

Speaker 2 I think of rich as really about living your version of enough, which is funny to say, but there's a famous story that I love that really brings this to light.

Speaker 2 Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller, two very famous American authors, were at the home of this billionaire in the Hamptons.

Speaker 2 And Vonnegut says to Heller, Joe, how does it feel that just yesterday, the owner of this home made more money than your most famous book, Catch 22,

Speaker 2 made in its entire lifetime?

Speaker 2 And Heller replies and says, yes, but I've got something that he'll never have. And Vonnegut says, what's that? And Heller says, the knowledge that I've got enough.

Speaker 2 So really, that is at the heart of all of this. It's the idea that you need to define what your version of your enough life looks like.
What does enough truly mean to you?

Speaker 2 Because when you get to that version of your life, when you've achieved the things that you view as enough, you will no longer find yourself on that incessant treadmill, that hedonic treadmill, the Sisyphian quest of continuing to push the boulder up the hill that so many people find themselves on.

Speaker 1 So how do you determine that? How do you come to that conclusion that enough is enough, that this is enough, when we're bombarded with messages that you, oh, you should want more.

Speaker 1 Oh, you should get a bigger house. You should get a better car.
You should do more?

Speaker 2 You will never feel successful until you create your own definition of success. That is just a reality.

Speaker 2 As long as you allow yourself to default into the definition of success or the definition of wealth or the definition of

Speaker 2 richness that the world and that culture and that society hands you, you will never feel successful because we live in a consumerist world where you'll just be bombarded by exactly what you said, which is more and more information on the next thing that you need to truly achieve the lasting happiness that's just on the horizon.

Speaker 2 It's just that mirage that you keep getting to.

Speaker 2 And unfortunately, most people allow themselves to accept that default definition.

Speaker 2 We accept those things blindly that are handed to us and we don't take the time to stop and ask ourselves the question of what do we truly want in life and how can we take actions to build around that.

Speaker 2 And part of this also just comes down to clearly defining the actual life that is around

Speaker 2 that definition of enough. It's not about the number.
The thing that people do is they say, oh, it's once I make a million dollars, then I'm going to be happy, then everything's going to be good.

Speaker 2 And then they get to a million, and then they say it's 3 million. And then they get to 3, and it's 10.
There's actually studies around this.

Speaker 2 Michael Norton, a famous professor at Harvard Business School, did a study where he went and talked to high-net worth individuals worth anywhere from a million on through 100 million plus.

Speaker 2 And he asked them, how happy are you on a scale of one to 10? And then he asked, how much more money would you need to be at a 10?

Speaker 2 And across the board, whether they were worth a million or 100 million plus, everyone said two to three times as much money.

Speaker 2 So because we attach it to a number, it becomes this very easy thing to naturally inflate.

Speaker 2 When you attach it to an actual life, to an actual vision of the lifestyle that you are going to be living, what it does is it makes it a much more conscious and rational upward movement rather than a subconscious, irrational one.

Speaker 1 Do you find that people who seem to have one of the five types of wealth pretty well well handled have the others well handled? Or if they have one handled, then the others don't do so well?

Speaker 1 Or what do you see?

Speaker 2 Usually what happens is that people focus on financial wealth at the expense of the other ones. That

Speaker 2 they have this early in life sort of patterning or conditioning that convinces them that

Speaker 2 incremental unit of money is going to equal an incremental unit of happiness. And that patterning actually gets cemented

Speaker 2 quite legitimately early in your life. You know, early on the curve, money is a great driver of happiness because it reduces fundamental burdens and stresses.
We can start to afford things.

Speaker 2 We can take care of the people around us. We can have two vacations a year.
Those things really do drive it.

Speaker 2 Beyond that, what you find is that the incremental unit of money does not drive that same incremental unit of happiness.

Speaker 2 But because of the patterning that we've now reached, we continue to think it will.

Speaker 2 And as you continue to more and more narrowly pursue money as the means to your happy end, you start to see these other areas deteriorate.

Speaker 2 You see that people start to sacrifice their relationships or that they start to sacrifice their physical health or they start to sacrifice their mental clarity.

Speaker 2 All of these other areas start to deteriorate along that pursuit.

Speaker 2 Part of that is because we don't think to invest in these other areas in the same same way that we think to invest in financial wealth.

Speaker 2 When it comes to financial wealth, we know that investing $100 today will compound into our future.

Speaker 2 We know that investing $100 today is better than investing zero today because of that compounding, that anything above zero compounds. But we don't think of that.

Speaker 2 We don't actually have that mindset around these other areas when in fact, an investment in your relationships, I would argue, is the single best investment that you can make.

Speaker 2 Investments pay dividends just like financial investments throughout the entirety of your life.

Speaker 2 So, that simple mental reframe to tell people that investments in these other areas are just as powerful and just as important is a really simple and oddly effective way of getting people to understand this.

Speaker 1 So, explain to me, because I don't think people think of investing in these things, what investments in the other four look like.

Speaker 1 Examples would help.

Speaker 2 Absolutely. So,

Speaker 2 time wealth, we can start there.

Speaker 2 An investment in time wealth, the first step would be simply developing an awareness of the finite, impermanent nature of your time, understanding that time is your most precious asset.

Speaker 2 I say that that is an investment in time wealth because that awareness is what allows you to then use your time more effectively.

Speaker 2 If you don't develop an awareness of just how valuable your time is, you will never treat it accordingly.

Speaker 2 And so the question that I love to ask people to start this investment cycle is, would you trade lives with Warren Buffett? He's worth $130 billion.

Speaker 2 He has access to anyone in the world. He flies around on private jets and has mansions all over the place.
He reads and learns for a living.

Speaker 2 It sounds pretty good, but you would not trade lives with him simply because he's 95 years old. There is no way you would agree to trade the amount of time you have left for $130 billion.

Speaker 2 So you acknowledge and understand that your time has quite literally incalculable value. And understanding that, developing that awareness is the first investment you can make in your time wealth.

Speaker 2 Now you have an unlock, you have a mindset shift to recognize that your time is truly your most valuable asset.

Speaker 1 Before you go on to investments in the other types of wealth, let me just remind people: we're talking to Sawhill Bloom.

Speaker 1 He is author of a book called The Five Types of Wealth, a Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life.

Speaker 1 It's time for Black Friday, Dell Technologies biggest sale of the year. That's right.
You'll find huge savings on select Dell PCs like the Dell 16 Plus with Intel Core Ultra processors.

Speaker 1 And with built-in advanced AI features, it's the PC that helps you do more faster.

Speaker 1 From smarter multitasking to extended battery life, these PCs get the busy work done so you can focus on what matters most to you.

Speaker 1 Plus, earn Dell rewards and enjoy many other benefits like free shipping, expert support, price match guarantee, and flexible financing options.

Speaker 1 They also have the biggest deals on accessories that pair perfectly with your Dell PC, improving the way you work, play, and connect.

Speaker 1 Whether you just started holiday shopping or you're just finishing up, These PCs and accessories make perfect gifts for everyone on your list. Shop now at dell.com slash deals and don't miss out.

Speaker 1 That's dell.com slash deals.

Speaker 1 I want to tell you about a great new podcast I think you'll like. I'm loving it.
So what happens when our passions become obsessions?

Speaker 1 Well, on David Green is obsessed, one of America's most familiar voices and longtime co-host of NPR's Morning Edition, seeks out obsessives of all kinds while unpacking his his own fixations.

Speaker 1 You'll hear David talk to comedian Tig Nataro about her complex passion for plant-based food. Actor David Arquette on his love of Bozo the Clown.
Paula Poundstone on her house full of cats.

Speaker 1 Celebrity chef and author Michael Simon discusses why he just can't quit the Cleveland Browns, even though they often make him miserable, and so much more.

Speaker 1 It's pop psychology disguised as conversations with the world's most fascinating people.

Speaker 1 You can listen to David Green is obsessed wherever you get podcasts.

Speaker 1 So Sahil, you talked about investments in time wealth. Let's talk about the other wealths.
Let's start say with social wealth.

Speaker 2 Social wealth, the idea of investing is as simple as sending a text to a friend that you haven't talked to in a while or getting together for a cup of coffee with that person that you've been wanting to see but have been neglecting.

Speaker 2 It could be a 15-minute truly present moment with your partner or spouse.

Speaker 2 Social wealth investments are as simple as recognizing that being present in a single moment is something that is going to compound positively into your future.

Speaker 2 And it's an important concept to internalize, just that these investments don't have to be dramatic actions. They can be very, very simple and anyone can do them.

Speaker 2 We all have time to send that text to the friend or make that phone call when we think about them.

Speaker 2 Mental wealth and an investment that you could make in mental wealth, I would argue, is as simple as taking three to five minutes to do a very, very simple journaling exercise in the evening to create a bit of clarity and help yourself with winding down and going to sleep at night.

Speaker 2 You could do what I call my 111 method. The idea is you take a piece of paper and at the end of your day, right before bed, you write down one win from the day.

Speaker 2 That's something that you felt good about, something that went well. One point of stress, tension, or anxiety, something that you want to get off your brain and onto the paper.

Speaker 2 And then one point of gratitude, something that you felt grateful for during the day. It takes three to five minutes, and it truly does provide a calming sensation in the evening before going to bed.

Speaker 2 And it forces the highly ambitious go-getter to actually acknowledge the things that are going well in their life, which for very ambitious people is something that tends to be difficult to do.

Speaker 2 And then finally, in the world of physical wealth, an investment you could make is to take yourself for a 30-minute walk without technology.

Speaker 2 If you just go out and get a little bit of movement in that you previously weren't going to do, that will stack a positive win in your life that compounds into the future.

Speaker 1 Well, I love that example about Warren Buffett because as you say, I mean, clearly he has all the wealth in the world, and yet he's 95, so people probably wouldn't want to change places with him.

Speaker 1 And it just shows you the value of time. And yet when we look at our own lives, we perhaps don't value our time as much as we should.

Speaker 2 There was this investor named Graham Duncan who

Speaker 2 several years ago raised this idea of the time billionaire. And when I spoke to him recently,

Speaker 2 I asked how he came up with that concept.

Speaker 2 And what he said was that he interviews hundreds of young people to join his firm and that he noticed that all of them have this common goal of wanting to become billionaires.

Speaker 2 They all want to become dollar billionaires. And what he noticed was that they are all billionaires in one very important way, which is they are time billionaires.
They are literally rich with time.

Speaker 2 But until you start relating to yourself that way, you don't understand just how much that is your most valuable asset that you have.

Speaker 2 Because when you're you're young, especially, time is quite literally the only asset that you have.

Speaker 2 You don't have the networks, you don't have the money, you don't have the resources, the experience, the wisdom, any of those things.

Speaker 2 And so you actually need to take your time and trade it for those things so that you can live well in those other areas as you progress in your life.

Speaker 2 But starting to relate to yourself in that way is a really powerful thing for how you live. And frankly, you are a time billionaire up through, you know, on a technical basis,

Speaker 2 50 plus. I think a billion seconds is about 30 years, if I'm correct.
And, you know, so at 20, you maybe have two billion seconds-ish left, depending on life expectancy.

Speaker 2 And at 50, you have maybe a billion seconds left. So we are all time billionaires.
We're doing quite well in that one regard.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But people think, well, if you have a lot of time,

Speaker 1 Or especially if you look at time as you have a lot of free time, that that's somehow bad. You're lazy.
You don't have anything to do.

Speaker 1 That that kind of time is not an asset.

Speaker 2 Time has become this funny thing, particularly in Western culture, where being busy is like this interesting, almost pseudo-dystopian status flex.

Speaker 2 You go to a cocktail party and people ask how you're doing and you say, I'm busy.

Speaker 2 And you say it with this intense pride as if being more stressed and more strained is something to be proud of because it's an indication for a lot of people that they must be important.

Speaker 2 You're saying it because it means that you are working on a lot of things, like you must be doing well.

Speaker 2 And, you know, oftentimes in a more toxic workplace culture too, being busy is a protection mechanism because it shows to your superiors and the people around you that you are working on things, that you are doing a whole bunch of stuff.

Speaker 2 And unfortunately, that busyness treadmill, treadmill, if you will, is actually not conducive to making a whole lot of progress.

Speaker 2 Because what you find is that you are working on a whole lot of the things that are sort of the one-for-one

Speaker 2 trades that are not actually moving you forward. You sort of become like a rocking horse, if you will.
You're moving a whole lot, but you're not really getting anywhere.

Speaker 1 Talk about social wealth.

Speaker 1 Because that's one kind of wealth that I think people tend to overlook, that friends and social connections can be like the first thing to go when there's something else to do.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I mean, I recently saw a statistic that was terrifying, which was that teenagers in the United States are spending 70% less time in person with their friends than they were two decades ago. 70%.

Speaker 2 I mean, a shocking, shocking statistic. And when you overlay that with the robust body of scientific research that supports the fact that relationships are the key to living a healthy, happy life.

Speaker 2 It's even more terrifying.

Speaker 2 The Harvard Study of Adult Development was this incredible study done over the course of 85 plus years.

Speaker 2 They tracked the lives of 1,300 original participants plus their 700 plus descendants, and they found that the single greatest predictor of physical health at age 80 was relationship satisfaction at age 50.

Speaker 2 It wasn't blood pressure, it wasn't cholesterol, it wasn't smoking or drinking habits, it was how they felt about their relationships that determined their long-term health outcomes.

Speaker 1 And don't you think people have a sense of this, that we know we should be putting more effort into our social relationships and all that, but somehow it just gets pushed aside.

Speaker 2 I think it is stuff that we all know in the back of our minds, but that has never been brought to the front.

Speaker 2 That's at least how I've thought about it historically. It's like you already have these answers within you, but you just haven't asked the right questions yet to reveal them in your own life.

Speaker 2 And that is really what I want to do.

Speaker 2 It's I want to encourage people to ask these questions, identify what truly matters to you, and then start taking tiny actions to build your life around those things.

Speaker 2 And I say tiny actions, I really mean it. It doesn't take a lot to start building your social wealth.
It is as simple as sending the one text to the friend that you haven't caught up with in a while.

Speaker 2 It's being the catalyst to get that group of friends together for the annual trip so that it doesn't just fall by the wayside. I mean, I think about that one all the time.

Speaker 2 How often do you get together with your group of friends from your college years? It was very easy in the years during college.

Speaker 2 It was very easy in the years right after when people were getting married and there were bachelor or bachelorette parties, but it starts to become harder and harder.

Speaker 2 And unless one person is the catalyst for bringing that group together, it just stops happening. And you start to lose that social wealth because of the natural decay during your life.

Speaker 2 But you can be that catalyst. You can take that one tiny action today that again, compounds positively into the future.

Speaker 1 Do you think, well, you would know, when you ask people to sit down and figure out what's important to them in these five areas, do people have the answer?

Speaker 1 Do they know if they think about it or do they have to really struggle with that?

Speaker 2 People know.

Speaker 2 What you find is there are two types of priorities in life. There are the priorities people say they have, and then there are the priorities that people's actions show they have.

Speaker 2 And for most of us, there is a large gap between those two. So you sit people down and you ask them for the priorities and they say all the right things.
They say these five types of wealth.

Speaker 2 They'll talk about the fact that their relationships and the people and their freedom and their health and all of these things they'll talk about as being priorities.

Speaker 2 And then when you ask what they do during a week or you go look at their calendar, there is a big, big gap in what their actions are actually showing their priorities are.

Speaker 2 And so the whole idea here is to start closing that gap, to take the priorities that your ideal self has in mind and start aligning your actions with building toward that set of priorities.

Speaker 1 Well, this is such a different way of looking at wealth and really a more comprehensive way of looking at wealth, all kinds of wealth. that all add up to a happy life.
And I appreciate you sharing it.

Speaker 1 Sawhill Bloom has been my my guest. He is an entrepreneur and managing partner of SRB Ventures, which is an early stage investment fund.

Speaker 1 He's author of a book called The Five Types of Wealth, a Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes.
Sawhill, thank you.

Speaker 1 I really enjoy the conversation.

Speaker 2 All right. Thank you, Mike.
Take care.

Speaker 1 With the weather getting colder and the holidays upon us, I just want my wardrobe to be easy.

Speaker 1 Things Things that look sharp, feel great, and last season after season, which is exactly what I get from Quince. I reach for my Quince cashmere sweaters constantly.

Speaker 1 They're 100% Mongolian cashmere, and somehow they're just 50 bucks. Soft, warm, and the kind of everyday luxury that doesn't feel overdone.

Speaker 1 And their denim is another favorite, great fit, easy to wear, and it holds up beautifully.

Speaker 1 And if you're looking for a holiday gift to give without the big big price tag guilt, Quince is perfect for that. Those cashmere sweaters I just mentioned, they make great gifts.

Speaker 1 And their wool coats, you got to check them out. They're stylish and durable and their quality is top of the line.
It's amazing how many people have found Quince and love it.

Speaker 1 What I love is how Quince works directly with ethical factories and top artisans cutting out the middlemen. So you get premium quality at half the cost of other high-end brands.

Speaker 1 It's luxury without the markup, which means you can give something nice this season or keep it for yourself. Give and get timeless holiday staples that last this season with Quince.

Speaker 1 Go to quince.com/slash SYSK for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too.
That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com/slash SYSK. Free shipping and 365-day returns.

Speaker 1 Quince.com/slash S-Y-S-K.

Speaker 1 You know, my mornings used to be a scramble. Coffee, breakfast, trying to remember what supplements to take.
It was a lot to juggle.

Speaker 1 And now I start every day with a single scoop of AG1, and it's made my mornings so much easier and better. In one mix, here's what I get.

Speaker 1 I get nutrients from real whole foods plus prebiotics, probiotics, and enzymes that support support my digestion and gut health. After just a few weeks, I mean, I can tell it's working.

Speaker 1 My energy feels steady all day. I don't have to think about juggling five different pills or powders.
And what I love is that AG1 isn't just another supplement.

Speaker 1 It's a daily micro-habit that supports whole body health in one scoop. It's simple, it's consistent, and it fits easily into my routine.
One scoop, shake, drink, done.

Speaker 1 And I know I've done something good for myself before the day even starts. It's become a small ritual that sets the tone for the entire day.
AG1 helps me stay one scoop ahead.

Speaker 1 Head to drinkag1.com/slash something to get a free welcome kit with an AG1 flavor sampler and a bottle of vitamin D3 plus K2 when you first subscribe.

Speaker 1 That's drinkag1.com/slash something.

Speaker 1 Isn't it strange that we have all this digital technology, the internet, social media, all these things at our fingertips that seemingly can bring us closer together?

Speaker 1 Yet, in some ways, it can be argued that these same technologies can also drive us apart. Here to make that case for you is my guest, Nicholas Carr.

Speaker 1 He writes for The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, and he was a Pulitzer Prize-winning finalist for a book he wrote called The Shallows, which he was here discussing a few years ago.

Speaker 1 His latest book is called Super Bloom, How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart. Hey, Nicholas, welcome back.

Speaker 3 Thanks, Mike. It's good to be here.

Speaker 1 So you claim, if I understand you correctly, you claim that the internet and all these tools of digital communication are really incompatible with the way humans are meant to communicate and that it is worsening, not strengthening, relationships.

Speaker 1 So if that's true, explain what you mean.

Speaker 3 When we're overwhelmed by messages from many different people, many different sources, some people who we know, some people who we don't, we have to start speeding up our interpretation of what we're receiving.

Speaker 3 And as a result, we become much more superficial. in the way we converse with other people, the way we assess other people,

Speaker 3 the relationships we form with other people.

Speaker 3 And that triggers, you know, sometimes you can make friends and have a good conversation online, but it tends to trigger that kind of overwhelming amount of information tends to trigger quite negative qualities in our psyche.

Speaker 3 So things like animosity, aggression, a sense of mistrust of people.

Speaker 1 So here's the thing, though. What you're saying isn't entirely news to people.

Speaker 1 We've all heard there are podcasts, there are books and seminars, and there's plenty of information out there about the dangers of digital technology, the dangers of social media.

Speaker 1 We've talked about it here many times.

Speaker 1 People already know this.

Speaker 3 But even though most of us recognize these problems, we haven't changed our behavior.

Speaker 3 The intense flow of information and stimulation may be bad for us, and I think it is, particularly when we look at social relations, but we love it.

Speaker 3 Human beings, like other animals, have this very deep and very powerful seeking instinct. We want to know everything that's going on in our environment, everything that's going on around us.

Speaker 3 And you can understand this in evolutionary terms because, you know, if you knew that there was a predator out there, or if you knew that there was some supply of food over there, that helped you survive.

Speaker 3 So we're wired to constantly seek out information.

Speaker 3 Now we have a medium and a device, the smartphone, where there's no end to new information. So there's no end to stuff that

Speaker 3 stimulates us and triggers this seeking instinct. So

Speaker 3 we have this conflict within ourselves

Speaker 3 where we crave the stimulation that comes through the technology, even though it's undermining our ability to think deeply, to form deep relationships, and to really understand one another at more than a superficial and very often very biased level.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, now you've made the case that we have a problem and we need to change our behavior, but change it to what? What are we supposed to do?

Speaker 3 I have to say

Speaker 3 that I am not hopeful that as a society, we are going to change our behavior. I think we have very much adapted to this new communication medium.

Speaker 3 And we have, in some ways, we've reshaped all of society around the assumption that everybody is always online, everybody is always reachable,

Speaker 3 everybody is always monitoring all these message flows. But I do think that at an individual level, we can

Speaker 3 come to a realization that there is a conflict between the technology and our nature and begin to think differently about how we use the technology.

Speaker 3 I'm not suggesting that people throw away their phones or disconnect from the internet, but I guess the best way I can put it is

Speaker 3 that

Speaker 3 we should use the best tool for the job.

Speaker 3 And what we've come to believe, mistakenly, is when it comes to communicating with other people, gathering information, making sense of the world, We've come to believe that the internet is our all-purpose tool.

Speaker 3 It's good for everything, and that's how we use it.

Speaker 3 And I think that's a mistake, that actually, when it comes to interpersonal communication, talking to people, gathering information and making sense of complex issues, the internet is actually a really bad tool.

Speaker 3 And so that means for those kind of things, particularly conversing with other people and building relationships,

Speaker 3 if we really want to escape the problems, we have to back away from the internet for those purposes and think about different tools or no tools at all to use in building relationships, getting to know other people, and understanding the world.

Speaker 1 So give me some examples of that.

Speaker 3 One thing I discuss

Speaker 3 is how social media and messaging platforms have changed the way we converse, the way we talk to each other.

Speaker 3 It used to be if you wanted to talk to someone who was far away, you wrote them a letter. And that meant sitting down, thinking carefully about what you wanted to say, writing it out,

Speaker 3 using complete sentences, and then mailing it off, and they got it, and there was this delay.

Speaker 3 Then email came along, and we kind of got used to email and messages coming into our

Speaker 3 email mailboxes all the time. And so we began to compress the way we talked to each other.
And we lost

Speaker 3 some of the courtesies and some of the niceties of letter writing. And then texting took over.

Speaker 3 And now, most of how we communicate with other people is through these very short, very abrupt, very sloppy messages. And we've kind of gotten used to it.

Speaker 3 So we don't even notice the fact that, oh, we're sending out and receiving messages, including to family members and close friends, that are filled with typos, that have weird, autocorrect things, that have poor punctuation, that often don't make much sense.

Speaker 3 One thing you can do is to say, look, I need to make more of an effort

Speaker 3 in talking to people and conversing with people to talk to them in person, to actually use the phone function, and maybe even actually sit down once in a while and write them a letter.

Speaker 3 Because all of those tools, I would argue,

Speaker 3 are actually better

Speaker 3 for talking. to one another and for conversing.
And we've abandoned them for what I think is a very silly reason, that they're not as efficient as texting.

Speaker 3 But is efficiency really the measure we want to use for communicating with other people?

Speaker 3 I believe if you think about it, you realize that actually efficiency is absolutely the wrong criterion. for most of our interpersonal communication.

Speaker 3 And yet the technology has encouraged us to kind of take this industrial view of even intimate conversations, that they need to be fast and they need to be blunt, and we need to go through high-speed networks to conduct them.

Speaker 1 I've always thought it was interesting. I know people who use

Speaker 1 texting

Speaker 1 as a way to exchange information and conversation with people that I would never do, that it's far too important, it's far too intimate, it's far too potentially misunderstood.

Speaker 1 And it seems that, although I understand what you said, that people do it because it's blunt, it's quick, it's efficient. I also think it's kind of a chicken way out in a lot of ways, too.

Speaker 1 It's easier to text somebody. It's easier to break up with somebody on a text than to actually go see them and say, look, we can't see each other anymore.

Speaker 3 Beyond the fact that it's efficient and quick and easy,

Speaker 3 it certainly seems that another of the reasons we default to texting or emailing rather than calling someone or getting together with them in person is because

Speaker 3 the distance involved in

Speaker 3 this kind of mediated communication where you send a message and then the person gets it and reads it and then sends another message back. It kind of,

Speaker 3 in our mind, it reduces the social risk of conversation.

Speaker 3 You have distance from the person. You're not exposing yourself through your gestures and your facial expressions.
So there is kind of,

Speaker 3 one aspect of this is we kind of use, when we use the technology as a communication medium, we're often hiding behind the technology

Speaker 3 in trying to take some of the risk and sensitivity out of conversations, particularly conversations that are difficult ones.

Speaker 3 So, you know, you can understand that at a human level, why we do it. The unfortunate thing is it usually backfires because

Speaker 3 it just makes difficult conversations much more likely to go wrong.

Speaker 1 I wonder when people do that, if they consciously do that for that reason, to put that distance between them, or are they thinking more of, well, this is just a fast way to dispose of this?

Speaker 3 I think it's both. I mean, I think in some cases,

Speaker 3 and you can see this in kind of some of the the deep studies that have been done about how kids or teenagers in particular particular communicate.

Speaker 3 What we know now, and this kind of blows my mind, is that a strong majority of teenagers prefer to converse with their friends,

Speaker 3 their closest friends even, through texting or through email or through social media than face to face. They'd rather sit at home and

Speaker 3 communicate through the machine, through the phone, rather than go out and get together and hang out together. And one of the reasons is because they do feel safer

Speaker 3 when communicating with this kind of buffer,

Speaker 3 this

Speaker 3 technological buffer between them. And I think that's true for adults as well, but I think

Speaker 3 because there's been a lot more research done into how kids use these communication tools,

Speaker 3 it kind of comes through clearly there. So there's

Speaker 3 both that desire to reduce social risk and also the sense that I have to communicate so much and I have to follow so many messages and respond to so many messages that I just don't have time

Speaker 3 to concentrate on one conversation for very much time. So texting in particular gives me a way to very quickly

Speaker 3 respond and read other people's messages. And it allows me to kind of stay afloat on this constant flood of messages and information.

Speaker 1 People who are old enough to remember the days of, you know, the kitchen wall phone often remember it fondly that

Speaker 1 with that phone on the wall, if it didn't ring, you didn't go over and check to see if anybody was there with new information.

Speaker 1 If it didn't ring, you just went about your life. But with today's cell phones, with smartphones, it's constantly sending you information and there are limitless things you can do.

Speaker 1 That's creating a lot of anxiety in people.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it comes out

Speaker 3 in not only a sense of anxiety and

Speaker 3 sometimes even depression, but it can come out in aggression

Speaker 3 because when you're making snap judgments about

Speaker 3 information you're receiving, messages you're receiving from other people,

Speaker 3 you also have to make snap judgments about the people themselves.

Speaker 3 And one thing I discovered in doing the research is that when we gather lots of information about other people, even though we don't realize it, we start to place more emphasis on evidence of their dissimilarities with us than on their similarities.

Speaker 3 So if you, you know, if you have a casual acquaintance, a friend of a friend who you've only met a couple of times, and you happen to see that that person, you know, posted something on Facebook or Instagram or whatever and said, oh, I saw this movie yesterday and I really, really loved it.

Speaker 3 I think it's the greatest thing. And you had seen the movie two days ago and you thought it was horrible, you'll suddenly say, oh, gee, maybe this guy's a dope or

Speaker 3 whatever. And then after that,

Speaker 3 when you receive more information about the person or from the person, you'll emphasize you'll give much more emphasis on other evidence that they're dissimilar to you.

Speaker 3 And what we know from psychology, and this is very clear, is that we tend to like people who we feel are more similar to us and dislike people who are dissimilar.

Speaker 3 The phrase is dissimilarity cascades from the psychological literature,

Speaker 3 that there's a danger in just gathering lots and lots of information from people because it tends to tear you apart rather than bring you together.

Speaker 3 And so if you think about social media in particular, you know,

Speaker 3 it's a machine for dissimilarity cascades because it encourages everyone to expose a lot about themselves all the time.

Speaker 3 You know, when we're, when you're talking face to face, you kind of are conscious, you, you want to kind of not talk too much.

Speaker 3 You don't want to say too much about yourself because you know, you know, people will judge you as a, as a blowhard or anything. But online, because you're rewarded with likes and

Speaker 3 views and everything, we're very much rewarded for constantly talking about ourselves, sending out pictures of ourselves. And we might think that that will gain other people's,

Speaker 3 will gain other people's affection or at least empathy or understanding. Actually, it often, more often than not, has the opposite effect.

Speaker 1 People, as you say, you know, we do like this stuff. You know, people wake up in the morning, the first thing they do is check their phone.

Speaker 1 And if you ask people, well, what if you stopped doing that? What if you, what if you didn't do that so much? What if you did something else instead?

Speaker 1 You know, people, I think, would say, well, you know, it never occurred to me that you could actually stop.

Speaker 1 It's like jumping off a moving train.

Speaker 1 You just can't do that, but you can do that.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 1 why don't people do that? And what would happen if they did?

Speaker 3 Well, one thing we know, both from how people describe their experience and also if you've ever done it yourself, if, for instance, you've lost your phone or it stopped working and you're cut off, the first thing people feel is panic because we're so used to being in touch with everything all the time.

Speaker 3 And as I say, we have this deep-seated seeking interest, seeking instinct that urges us to want to know everything that's going on around us.

Speaker 3 So when you lose that connection, the first thing that happens is panic.

Speaker 3 But after a couple of days, two or three days,

Speaker 3 the panic shifts to a sense of relief. You suddenly realize, oh, gosh, I was paying so much attention to trivial stuff.

Speaker 3 I was constantly distracted and constantly interrupted. I can actually think deeply again.
I can kind of get my thoughts in order.

Speaker 3 I can, if I have a conversation with someone, I can concentrate on the conversation rather than kind of the conversation competing with what I know is new on my phone.

Speaker 3 So it's so so once you kind of get over that initial panic, I think people realize what they've, what they've lost in being kind of beholden to the technology.

Speaker 3 The problem is, of course, is as soon as they get the phone back or it starts working again or they replace it, they immediately go back to those bad habits.

Speaker 3 There's a very kind of melancholy phrase in psychology and social psychology called miswanting.

Speaker 3 And it means that people often desire the very things that end up making them unhappy or make them feel unsatisfied. And

Speaker 3 I think our craving for connection and information and constant communication is a very good example of miswanting.

Speaker 1 Anybody who has had that experience, though, maybe on vacation or you go away somewhere where there's no cell reception and no Wi-Fi,

Speaker 1 Like you say, it's panicky maybe for a little while, but boy, it's happened to me and I love it. I mean, it feels great, but it's hard to not get back on the train when you get home.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And,

Speaker 3 you know, a lot of it has to do with that fact that the phone does everything for us. So, so all,

Speaker 3 you know, it's our camera, it's our photo album, it's our radio, it's our TV, it's our mail system.

Speaker 3 It's kind of

Speaker 3 all our relationships, all our information of interest is compressed into this tiny little device.

Speaker 3 So it's very, very hard to separate yourself from it because you really feel like you're kind of amputating some fundamental part of your nervous system.

Speaker 3 So it, yeah, so we tend to,

Speaker 3 even if you feel this relief,

Speaker 3 when you're at a distance from the technology, as soon as it's at hand again, you tend to fall back into

Speaker 3 your patterns of kind of compulsive information gathering.

Speaker 1 So what's the lesson here? What's the big so what? What is, okay,

Speaker 1 so now that we know this, what?

Speaker 3 And, you know, it's something my father used to tell me when I was a kid, that you need, you should use the right tool for the job.

Speaker 3 And what we have to get over is this idea that because the phone is there, the smartphone or the computer is always there, it's efficient, we can do lots of different things with it.

Speaker 3 We have to get over the belief that we should do everything with it. And we need to realize that the technology is really good for some things and it's really bad for other things.

Speaker 3 And if we can just be more thoughtful

Speaker 3 about how we use the technology,

Speaker 3 I think we can end up

Speaker 3 using it in a much better way, you know, getting the benefits from it, because there's also lots of benefits, but not falling into the trap of thinking, oh,

Speaker 3 the best way to live my life and the best way to build and sustain relationships is through this little screen that I hold in front of myself.

Speaker 3 I'm absolutely convinced that that's a big mistake.

Speaker 3 But I have to say, I'm also absolutely convinced that breaking that habit is extraordinarily difficult now that we're so thoroughly adapted to and dependent on the technology.

Speaker 1 Well, this is something I think everybody who uses the internet, which is everybody, thinks about. And listening to your research into this topic gives people, it's more fuel for the fire that

Speaker 1 something's going to need to change. I've been speaking with Nicholas Carr.
The name of his book is Super Bloom, How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart.

Speaker 1 And if you'd like to read it, there is a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Nicholas, thanks for coming on today.

Speaker 3 Thanks, Mike. I really enjoyed it.
Enjoyed the conversation.

Speaker 1 Particularly in the winter months, it seems, a lot of people experience nasal congestion, a stuffy nose. In fact, nasal congestion is one of the most common medical conditions in the country.

Speaker 1 It affects millions of people and costs billions and billions of dollars every year to treat. But here's the thing.

Speaker 1 Nasal congestion is hard to treat because it's more of a sensation than an actual physical obstruction of airflow.

Speaker 1 In other words, it feels like you can't breathe, but air is actually flowing through your nose.

Speaker 1 Research shows that the feeling of nasal congestion has more to do with the temperature and the humidity of the air you breathe.

Speaker 1 Turns out that breathing cold, dry air helps reduce the sensation of congestion. This is because of sensors in your nose.

Speaker 1 Cooler Cooler air leads to a greater feeling of airflow and a less sensation of obstruction. And that is something you should know.

Speaker 1 You know, our business, the podcast business, is a highly competitive business. There are literally millions and millions of podcasts.

Speaker 1 So we're always trying to get people's attention and have them come listen to our podcast. And you can help by just telling a person or two that you know, that you listen, and suggest that they do.

Speaker 1 You can even send them the link and suggest they listen so they too will hopefully become a regular listener. I'd appreciate that.
I'm Mike Carruthers.

Speaker 1 Thanks for listening today to something you should know.

Speaker 4 This is an Etsy holiday ad, but you won't hear any sleigh bells or classic carols. Instead, you'll hear something original.
The sound of an Etsy holiday, which sounds like this.

Speaker 4 Now that's special. Want to hear it again? Get original and affordable gifts from small shops on Etsy.
For gifts that say, I get you, shop Etsy. Tap the banner to shop now.

Speaker 1 The Infinite Monkey Cage returns imminently. I am Robin Ince, and I'm sat next to Brian Cox, who has so much to tell you about what's on the new series.
Primarily eels.

Speaker 2 And what else?

Speaker 1 It was fascinating, the eels. But we're not just doing eels, are we? We're doing a bit.

Speaker 1 Brain-computer interfaces, timekeeping, fusion, monkey business, cloud signs of the North Pole, and eels. Did I mention the eels? Is this ever since you bought that timeshare underneath the Sagaso C?

Speaker 1 Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.