Why you need to get up and move—right now! (w/ Manoush Zomorodi)

How long have you been sitting today? If you’re still on the couch or the office chair, then this is your PSA to get up and move! In this episode, Manoush Zomorodi, host of NPR's TED Radio Hour, joins Chris to share the detrimental effects of sitting all day. They talk about the joy of adding more positive interruptions in your life, why going off-camera helps you improve your mind-body connection, and more! Featured guest Follow Manoush Zomorodi on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/manoushz/, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/manoush-zomorodi-33904bb, and at https://www.manoushz.com/Subscribe to Manoush Minutes on Substack https://manoush.substack.com/Buy her book Body Electric https://www.amazon.com/Body-Electric-Digital-Science-Well-Being/dp/1250411203 Connect with the team Follow Chris on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/chrisiduffy/?hl=en and at chrisduffycomedy.com https://chrisduffycomedy.com/Buy Chris’ book, Humor Me https://t.ted.com/ZGuYfcL Watch How to Be a Better Human videos on YouTube at TEDAudioCollective https://www.youtube.com/TEDAudioCollectiveFollow TED on X https://x.com/TEDTalks, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ted, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TED, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/ted-conferences/, and TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoksFor the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts https://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Chris Duffy?

  This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court. And that fight needs your support today. Donate at N R D C dot org slash human and your gift will be matched five times.

• 0:48Speaker 01

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• 1:33Speaker 01

  which flags issues in real time, and Navigator, which figures out why those issues are happening and what to do next. It's secure, scalable, and built to serve the customer. When AI works well, it shouldn't feel like AI. It should feel like you're being seen and heard and valued. Unhold your customers with Parloa. Learn more at parloa.com. That's P A R L O A dot com.

• 2:03Chris Duffy?

  This is How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy, and I am currently sitting at a desk. Some days, I realize that I have spent the entire day sitting at a desk. I've spent hours not moving anything other than my mouth and hands. I have a sense that that's probably not the healthiest. I mean, we've all heard how important it is to exercise, and to get in your steps, and yada, yada, yada. But what if you don't have a schedule that allows you to go to the gym every day? Or you have a job that requires you to sit in a cubicle for hours at a time, or you're just exhausted all the time? How do you actually make those changes then? Well, today's guest, Manoush Samarodi, has not only spent a lot of time thinking about the answers to those questions, and writing a whole book about

• 2:46Chris Duffy?

  it, which is called Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being. But Manoush has also helped to organize a research study, which was looking at this in a clinical and academic context. And what she and her co-collaborators found is not only important for our health, it is also very practical. Manoush is not some scold who is just telling you to get up out of your chair and onto a treadmill. Instead, she's a person with practical, useful, dare I say, even fun, ways to be healthier, feel better, and end the day with more energy. So to get us started, here is a clip from Manoush's TED Talk about why we often end up sitting for such a long stretch, even though we know we should be moving more.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Do you ever close your laptop at the end of a long day, and feel like you have just enough energy to crawl over to the couch, to scroll on your phone, or watch a show, or maybe both at the same time? Yeah. During the pandemic, that was all I wanted to do, and I couldn't understand why. I was safe. I was healthy. Why didn't I want to close my laptop and go dance around the living room? Where did all my energy go? I'm a journalist. My specialty for the last 10 years has been trying to understand how our tech habits change us as people. And so I decided I was going to find out why sitting in front

• 4:11Speaker 02

  of a screen makes us feel so exhausted. Because we have all heard about the mental effects, right? But what about our physical health?

• 4:22Speaker 02

  Well, as I quickly learned, looking at screens has not only reshaped our days, it is reshaping our bodies. According to researchers at Johns Hopkins, every day the average 19-year-old moves about as much as the average 60-year-old. Over the last 20 years, rates of type 2 diabetes in young people have doubled. Three in four American adults has a chronic illness. Many of those are preventable, at least one chronic illness. And the WHO says that this is a global problem. They predict that by the end of the decade, which is not that far away, this lifestyle will likely lead to 500 million new cases of preventable

• 5:03Speaker 02

  conditions like heart disease, obesity, and diabetes, costing governments $27 billion a year. Typing, swiping, scrolling, sitting. This is the rhythm of our modern life. But I don't know about you, I can't throw away my phone, right? Like, I can't go off the grid. So how can we stay connected without slowly destroying our health?

• 5:32Chris Duffy?

  I'll be honest with you, I am not there yet. I still need reminders. I am still sitting right now. But I think, I hope, I suspect that by the end of this episode, I may be in a different spot, and you might be too. So don't go anywhere. We will be right back after these quick ads.

• 6:01Chris Duffy?

  This episode is brought to you by Planet Visionaries, a podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. What connects a hidden laboratory in the Amazon, giant pandas in China's mountain forests, research relating to the ocean, and communities living alongside wildlife in India? That's what you'll hear on season six of Planet Visionaries. Stories from the explorers, scientists, and conservation leaders whose work addresses research, biodiversity, and conservation issues in specific locations.

• 6:33Chris Duffy?

  Planet Visionaries, hosted by environmental advocate and professional climber Alex Honnold, brings you real stories of discovery, determination, and research and initiatives relating to environmental change. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.

• 6:54Speaker 02

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• 7:36Speaker 02

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• 7:52Chris Duffy?

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• 8:37Chris Duffy?

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• 8:52Chris Duffy?

  And we are back with Manoush Zomorodi, talking about why it is so important to move our bodies more and how we can actually, genuinely, really do it.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Manoush Zomorodi. I'm host of NPR's TED Radio Hour. I'm also the author of Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being.

• 9:12Chris Duffy?

  OK, so, Manoush, why is it called Body Electric? And what is the Body Electric experiment that you had some people do?

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Well, OK, so Body Electric is a couple of things. It's, I sing the Body Electric Walt Whitman. It's a poem. It's also like a song from Fame, which I found very inspiring. I'm switching from my reading glasses to my screen glasses now because that's how I roll. And the reason I called it that is because I, well, on multiple levels. One is electricity is what powers the body and the brain. It's like all those circuitry that keeps us going. It's why we're not like a pile of flesh and bones. But also, I think a lot about the electricity that comes from our devices that should, that powers our lives but often drains us and how much I want to feel as though I've gotten a like zap

• 10:04Speaker 02

  and I can do anything. I want to have, be the Body Electric. So that was the title that we gave a study that I did a couple of years ago. So I was feeling like crap, Chris. I couldn't understand like why. At the end of a long day on all my devices, I was so frickin' tired. Like, it didn't make any sense to me. I hadn't moved, so like, why was I so tired? So I really wanted to find the answer to that. And kind of at that moment, I came across the research of a guy named Keith Diaz, who's a physiologist at Columbia University Medical Center. And so Keith's mission in life is to figure out the minimum amount of movement that the human body needs so that all our sedentary screen time doesn't send us to an early grave.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  And Keith had found the answer. He had found that five minutes of gentle movement every half hour Did amazing things. It had outsized benefits. It slashed people's blood sugar. It lowered their blood pressure. It made them able to focus. It brought back their positivity. It was like this magic solution. So I called him and I was like, well, why aren't we all doing this? And he's like, well, do you think people actually can? Because I don't think people can actually do this. And so I'm like going back to my lab and starting all over again because I don't think people can even move this much. I was like, but come on, it can't be that hard. So I actually went to his lab and joined his study.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  And the results that I felt made me convinced that we had to at least try. So our teams at NPR and Columbia joined forces. And we did a global clinical trial with over 20,000 people enrolled to try to get these movement breaks into their lives, to disrupt their sedentary, screen-filled days and see what happened. And we called it Body Electric. And Keith actually described it. He's like, it was like breaking out of the matrix. I was like, it kind of was like breaking out of the matrix. Like, people felt like they could find their focus again. They, they had more energy at the end of the day, like to come home and play with their kids as opposed to feeling like, oh, my God, all they wanted to do was lie down on the couch.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  They actually increased their productivity despite all of the interruptions, which was a big surprise. 80% of them who decided to commit to doing it were able to stick with it. And 82% actually really liked taking the movement breaks. And most importantly, I think, we saw up to 28% less fatigue. So people were less tired. They felt electrified.

• 12:39Chris Duffy?

  You know, the, the like self-help wellness, nonfiction book space?

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 12:44Chris Duffy?

  Has these ideas that are really counterintuitive, right? Like, what you need to do is elevate one arm for 13 minutes just as the sun rises and that will fix everything in your life. And you're like, wow, I never thought about that. But it's, it's appealing because it's really like easy, right? Like, I just do this one. I raise my elbow up right as the sun rises. And all of a sudden, my problems are fixed. And your book is so the opposite, right? It's, it's instead of it being something that is like unusual and confusing, but really easy. It's something that is really simple. But really hard to do.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:16Chris Duffy?

  How do we actually do the simple thing, right? I always think about this as like a flossing problem. Right? It's like obvious that you should floss, but few people actually floss as much as they should, me included.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  First of all, my fantasy is that I could do one mega flossing session.

• 13:29Chris Duffy?

  Yes.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  And then be done with it for the rest of my life. Wouldn't that be amazing?

• 13:31Chris Duffy?

  Oh, yeah, or even for the year. Like you just give me like a January 2nd, I floss for 12 hours.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  Exactly. And then boom, check it off my list. Okay, so that is actually very similar to, I think, how we have started treating movement and exercise in our lives, right? Like, we go to the gym three times a week and we check it off our list. But unfortunately, the human body needs constant stimulation. So checking it off your list, if you work out in the morning, even if you like go to town at CrossFit, if you sit and work on a screen for the rest of the day, it doesn't matter. Okay, so you're, maybe you're like, well, I have a standing desk. Unfortunately, that also doesn't matter. The human body needs constant stimulation.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Those leg muscles need stimulation in order to suck blood sugar and fats out of our bloodstream and to push oxygen up to our brain. And so this idea of like constantly interrupting yourself sounds like counterintuitive, because from the moment we enter kindergarten, we are told to sit our butts in a chair and that that's what productivity looks like, right? That this is what working hard is. It's getting into flow. It's grinding through, push through. And now we even have like software surveillance technology to make sure that people never leave their documents and like that their keystrokes continue to move. Like, that is what we've decided like working hard is.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  But actually, it is detrimental to our ability to focus. And I think we have all sensed that, right? I mean, you can't go anywhere now without someone being like, oh, my God, we all have ADHD. So we don't all have ADHD, but we do have symptoms similar to ADHD. And in part, what I learned was that When you focus, right? If you focus for a long time, you're doing a lot of cognitive switching and you're burning through glucose, like switch, switch, switch. You're using glucose, glucose, glucose. And you need oxygen to get the fires going, to burn the glucose. But if you run out of oxygen, CO2 starts to build up in your brain. If you keep going, you keep going, you push through against your cognitive limits.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  And when you have CO2 buildup in your brain, that's when that foggy feeling comes in, the feeling like you can't focus, that you're mentally tired. So there is a whole biological system that needs movement breaks in order for it to run smoothly, just like you need to reboot your computer once in a while, you gotta reboot your brain and your body. And somebody said to me the other day, they're like, oh, well, did you know that nobody talked about going into nature until the middle of the 1800s? Because nature was just like everywhere, so you would never say, I'm going into nature because that's where you lived. Or like, you know, the fish, like, oh, how's the water? Like, what's water?

• 16:21Chris Duffy?

  Yeah.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I think that's kind of like where we are with movement, that we have to talk about movement, not just like, you know, exercise, but just moving our bodies because we have created a world that is so built around screens and sitting.

• 16:36Chris Duffy?

  You know, one of the things that I was really struck by, a quote in your book, on page 109, you say, "Feeling stressed out and exhausted isn't in your head. Scientists, including the researcher Peter Strick, have shown clear biological links between how we position our bodies, move, think, and feel. Hunched shoulders and a compressed torso can force shallow upper chest breathing. In addition to contributing to pain and soreness, over time, that can increase stress levels and fatigue." It's not like you're saying, oh, the only thing that is stressing us out in our lives is the way we sit, the way we stand, the fact that we don't move. But that, a lot of how we feel is actually being influenced by these kind of physical design choices of how we spend our day and where we spend our day.

• 17:19Chris Duffy?

  And that's, for me at least, something that I think of as, that's my water, right? Like, well, I just sit in a chair. That's where the chair is, right? Like, what else would I do?

• 17:27Speaker 02

  I don't know that we've necessarily... Necessarily factored that into our conversation about the mental health aspects of spending time, like too much time online is like bad for you, or social media is, you know, making our kids more depressed and anxious. But also, our kids are moving less. Like, the average 19 year old moves about as much as the average 60 year old right now. But like, that's not because they're lazy, or because like, they're like, I don't want to, you know, move my body. No, like, what do they do? They go to class and they're on a laptop and they come back. And like, I'm talking about my own 19 year old, actually. I have one at home. Well, he's not home, he's at college. But, you know, he's on his laptop in his room, studying, he's checking his phone for things, they're watching, you know, Netflix, they're,

• 18:10Speaker 02

  it's like, life revolves around screens. It takes intention and sometimes like a little rebellion to get movement into your life, especially if you're a kid who's not like, athletic or sporty. I was not particularly those things.

• 18:25Chris Duffy?

  Neither, no, for sure.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, theater kids.

• 18:28Chris Duffy?

  Yeah, well, how do you think you end up behind a microphone right now, talking? That's why we're here.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  Totally, totally. But I think, to me, this is like, what a relief. Like, I'm not talking about like, that you have to join a gym, or like, you know, if you didn't make it to the travel team as a teenager, like, that's fine. Like, just move your body and you can get some of the benefits. I want to stop thinking about it as like, all or nothing. Like, you're either boot camp, CrossFit, or yoga guru, or you're a sloth. No, there has to be this in between.

• 19:01Chris Duffy?

  Wherever it is that you sit on the boot camp to sloth spectrum, we are going to have a lot more practical tips for you in just a moment. But first, a quick ad break.

• 19:20Chris Duffy?

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• 20:03Speaker 01

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• 20:48Speaker 01

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• 21:18Chris Duffy?

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• 21:55Chris Duffy?

  And we are back. So a couple of the things that you say about kids are tech use is impacting kids' mental health, but also their movement, rest and self-awareness. You also say that simply telling kids to get off their screens is not a long-term solution. And then this is the one that I thought was the most important and you don't hear from a lot of people is young people do not need lectures. They need tools. So let's talk about what some of those tools that young people and probably the rest of us as well can actually use to increase our health and start moving more like you're talking about.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  I think that we, and I hear this from a lot of people, have taken on board this idea that this generation is screwed. They have been damaged irreparably by their screen use and that social media has destroyed their resilience and ability to cope. And I'm just sort of tired of that because I've gotten to know a lot of young people and they are pretty cool and they're doing amazing things. And oh, wait, like the world is on fire. So they do have a lot of reasons to be stressed and also a lot of adults around them are stressed. Candace Audger, who's a teens and screens researcher who I brought to TED to give a

• 23:14Speaker 02

  TED Talk, you know, she pointed out to me the number one thing that affects a teenager's mental health and wellbeing is how well their parents are doing, the grownups in their lives are doing. Her whole thing is like, let's not just look at the phones and say, oh my gosh, this is the problem for kids. Let's look at the kids and figure out what is it that they need. Now, I don't want to minimize mental health issues that a lot of teenagers certainly have, and we're more aware of those things than ever and what's treatment there is and what can be done from them, for them. But as she pointed out, the kids that are struggling are the ones who are most likely to go online and struggle with social media.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  Like the problems don't necessarily start because they're online. It's often because they've, they've been struggling with those things to begin with. So my framing is, Let's stop saying like, get off your phone. That's enough screen time and start to just be more positive and talk about the things that they're doing instead. Let's like, instead of the negative, let's talk about like, what the other options are. Like, have you, did you go for a walk today? Have you gotten enough stroll time in? Because these movement breaks that we're talking about, to clarify, they are five minutes walking at two miles per hour. That was found in the lab that had the biggest benefit if you did that regularly.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  I think what we see is also this conversation needs to bring in something called interoception. So I had never heard of this before, but interoception is the body's way of sensing and then telling you what it needs, right? So that could be like, things you don't even hear, like, breathe again, breathe again, breathe again, like, yeah, okay, don't need to hear that one. But like, ooh, it's getting hot in here, take off your sweater, or, um, right? Kind of the Nellie of interoception. Yes, the Nellie, exactly. Or, you know, I need a snack, or whatever else, right? So actually, I was talking to a friend whose son has autism and he needs help with his interoceptive abilities. He doesn't even hear when he needs to go to the bathroom, or he will totally forget

• 25:24Speaker 02

  to eat if he doesn't. So kids with autism, that is often brought up, that their interoception is off. But there is some new thinking that perhaps spending time in front of screens also messes with our interoception. There was a study done at the University of Barron in Switzerland in 2023, where they tried to figure out like, how, how screens mess with our interoception. This is, you know, relatively new research, but they found that obviously, if you moved for 10 minutes, your interoception turned back on as compared to if you were staring at a screen for half an hour. Because what happens when we stare at a screen? We get so sucked into it that we, I'll speak for myself, forget to go to the bathroom,

• 26:06Speaker 02

  find out that your left foot has fallen asleep because you've been sitting in the same position, and, oh, also, you haven't been blinking properly. That's the biggest thing, yeah. So your eyes are killing you, right? And your shoulders. Are like this. So this interceptive ability to think like, not like, oh, my God, I've been on my screen for so long. I'm a terrible person, but like, oh, hang on, have I given my body what it needs? Yikes, it's been an hour. I need to shake it off, walk up, take some deep breaths, get some water, you know, look outside, right? Instead of feeling like bad people because we've been on our screens, let's just ask ourselves, have we been giving ourselves what we need biologically? How do we feel inside? Did screen time make us feel worse? Or actually, are we perfectly

• 26:51Speaker 02

  fine? And it's not that big a deal. Instead of this guilt that we are laying on kids.

• 26:57Chris Duffy?

  But I think that so much of your book is about like, the positive interruption, the idea of we think of interruptions and interrupting our work and our flow as only bad things. And so much of your book is about positively interrupting yourself. So like stopping yourself from going 12 hours with your shoulders tight and hunched and up by your ears.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  That's really good, actually. I really like that. The positive interruption.

• 27:19Chris Duffy?

  Yeah, I do think it would sell far fewer copies, but I would like to just like posit that as one of the overall messages is that if we can use these interruptions, if we can actually harness them and build them in, that's how we actually do this. That's how we get to that five minutes every 30 minutes.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  And I think some of the instructions that I include in order to highlight that without it being on the cover is like making a plan, right? Deciding that you are going to be open to interruptions throughout your day instead of being like totally irritated when somebody calls you out of the blue. You could be like, great, can we turn off cameras so I can put my earbuds in and I can walk while I talk to you? Like, that's simple. Or like, somebody comes by your desk, if you work in an office, and you're like, great, can we just walk and talk? Like, just turning them into movement opportunities. What I find so fascinating is the, it sounds so

• 28:16Speaker 02

  minimal, and yet, the benefits are so profound. I mean, we have people who are saying that just those interruptions, which we've been told are annoying and break flow. And look, sometimes they do. If you are in like, in it, like, Don't inter- like, go for it, you know? God bless. Everybody loves a good flow. But I think sometimes we think we're killing it at work and actually we're spinning our wheels. Like, how many times have you come back to like a page and you're like, wow, I wrote a lot of BS on that page.

• 28:50Chris Duffy?

  I would say 100% of the times.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:52Chris Duffy?

  Yeah.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  Whereas if we take a break and actually think about, oh, you know what? The answer to that problem, I could actually start this a completely different way, right? Like, you just give yourself a minute to process. Like, the other thing people are like, whoa, taking a break after a meeting, that's so profound. I'm like, really, is it? They're like, oh, yeah, because I thought about what we talked about. I made a plan as to how I'm actually going to implement it. And I know how to follow up because I think a lot of people are going to meetings and they're having the exact same meeting that they had last week because everybody's rushing from meeting to meeting. Nobody's actually moving the goalposts forward.

• 29:33Chris Duffy?

  One that I was thinking that is interesting to me because it's something where I'm not very good at doing these. But I was thinking, I, like, if I finish sending an email that I've been, that's my big email that I need to send. Sometimes I will reward myself as like a little treat and I will go on TikTok or Instagram. I'm like, oh, my little treat is I get to watch a fun video. This made me think it would probably, not like I want to take that away entirely because even though I know it's not the hell of it, it's fun.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 29:59Chris Duffy?

  But like, maybe sometimes my little treat after I finish an email or do a task before I switch into the next one is like, I should get up and like jump, right? Like, literally just get up, jump, or get up and walk to the kitchen and walk back or whatever. Just like, do some sort of, I'm out of my chair as the treat rather than I'm in the chair looking at a different, smaller screen.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  In the study, we purposefully did not tell people, like, get off your screens because we wanted to see how they, what they decided to do, right? And it was really interesting because for some people, it was like, oh, permission to get off my screen. Yes, please. So that was totally delightful to them. Other people were like, I liked that I could, you know, I have to be on all these calls. But you gave me permission to say, like, either A, my head's going to be bobbing up and down in this Zoom call, deal with it. Or to say, like, we turn our screens off and people would do it and walk. So I'm a fan of the Zoom and shuffle. Which is literally, we can do it right now.

• 30:57Chris Duffy?

  Okay.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Uh, where you just stand up and you literally go back side to side. I've been known to do that.

• 31:03Chris Duffy?

  Uh huh.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  I think bosses, it's on you to set the like cultural norms. You can say like, if you are just listening, feel free to turn off your cameras and move if you want to. Or like, we can all be moving and that's if it's distracting, just, you know, you don't have to look at everybody. A lot of bosses also set other rules. Like if we're in a meeting together, you can move whenever you want. But if we're with clients, actually, I'd rather not move.

• 31:30Chris Duffy?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't shuffle with the clients.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Exactly. Other bosses like said, like, I'm trying this experiment. Please give it a, you know, if you want to join me, you can. And of course, found that people were like, tell you, I'll do walking meetings with you instead of sitting. I mean, we did find that people at first, at least, set timers for themselves. Like, so in our study, you could choose to move for five minutes, every half hour, every hour, or every two hours. And hands down, setting a timer was the way people started. But what was really interesting was that by the end of the study, two weeks, many people found that they did not need to use timers anymore. Their interceptive ability just kind of came back online and their bodies started to be like,

• 32:16Speaker 02

  hello, I need you to get up, please get up now. So they started to notice when they felt uncomfortable, when their shoulders were tight, when their back didn't feel quite right.

• 32:25Chris Duffy?

  That also feels so much more doable to me, right? To, to think like, I'm going to do this for two weeks. And at the end of two weeks, I won't need to like, have a timer going off forever for the rest of my life.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  Totally. And I actually believe that because it has turned me into a squirmy eight-year-old boy. I, like at Ted, I could not sit through the sessions. Like I had to get up and move and I would notice, mine is 45 minutes. That's my sweet spot. Forty-five minutes and I have, like, something happens. I start squirming. I'm like the little kid who needs to go around, run around in the playground and then I'm fine. Which makes sense because actually we know that movement helps kids. With learning because you're oxygenating the brain. It is preparing for you to learn, to process information, to take it in and then actually remember it.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  So, you know, sitting at a conference, listening to people explain their life's mission to you, like back to back to back to back, that's a lot of information. So no wonder we need to actually get some movement, some oxygenation. Like, it makes total sense. Other things people did, you can change the settings on Google Calendars, for example, so that a half hour meetings are actually 25 minute meetings or 55 minute meetings instead of an hour and really use that five minutes to just walk around, get some water till you come to the next time. So like teeny little hacks.

• 33:48Chris Duffy?

  A question that I had and that I think a lot of people have is the question of like accessibility, right? Like for different jobs, but also if you're, if you have an injury or you are limited in your mobility.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Or walking is not an option.

• 34:01Chris Duffy?

  Yeah, walking isn't an option or, you know, even walking for five minutes every 30 minutes is actually like, that's going to be quite a challenge, not because just of the structural parts of your life, but because of your physical health or your situation. So when that comes up, how do you, how do you respond to that?

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Okay, so if walking is not an option, using your arms is absolutely, has been shown in studies to have a similar effect. So just making sure that you're stimulating the muscles, getting your circulation going. Like, the gold standard is five minutes per every half hour during long periods of sitting. If I had serious health issues, I think I would want to go for the gold, sort of, as it were. But if you haven't been moving at all, start with one minute every two hours. The good news is that every single movement break counts. 16 breaks a day, that's a lot. People didn't make it to that. They made it to four to five breaks on average.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  And they saw that better positivity, mood, fatigue, ability to concentrate. Did they necessarily get the full benefits of glucose reduction or blood pressure? No, but it's going to help towards it. Right? I think the key thing here is like, we're not going for perfection or ultra optimization. We're going for the rest of your life. And that means showing yourself some grace, doing what you can on days that are crazy and packed, and accepting that like, even if that day sucked, whatever, start again tomorrow. It's fine.

• 35:37Chris Duffy?

  When I think about interoception, which I think is such a cool concept that we can all relate to, and to the idea of building your own interoception and practicing that of like, listening to what you actually need, and when do you need it? One idea that comes to mind for me is that often, around like, 8, 8:30 PM.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 35:55Chris Duffy?

  Especially if I had a really like, big day, and I have young kids, so I wake up really early sometimes.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:59Chris Duffy?

  I will find like, wow, I am so tired. I'll have this like, awareness in my body. I'm so tired. I could go to sleep right now. But then I think, it's 8:30. I should do something else, right? And then I like, look at my phone, or I eat some sort of snack, or I watch a show.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  You had a hard day.

• 36:20Chris Duffy?

  Totally. And so I, I find a way to distract myself from the interoception. I say like, rather than acknowledge that my body is saying, hey, we could use some sleep right now. I do something else. And then, weirdly, right, it gets to like, 10:30, and I go, oh no, I am not gonna be able to get enough sleep. And I'm also not that tired all of a sudden, so now I have trouble going to sleep. So the thing that I'm, I'm realizing in myself is that like, ignoring the interoception versus listening to it is part of the issue of like, how we actually get in tune with our own bodies. It's actually to just pay attention to the, the message that is already coming through.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  One of the stories I tell in the book is when I got this neuroscientist, God bless her, to put me in an FMRI to try and see what was happening in my brain with information overload. This was a study of one, but you know, other studies have found something similar, which is that like, so she scanned my brain first thing in the morning before like I had, you know, scrolled on my phone and answered emails and whatever, Instagram, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the craziness that happens in a day. And I played this game. I didn't really know what she was measuring, but what she was measuring was my ability to process information, to make good decisions. And then I had my day of being on my phone and nuts, nuts, nuts, all the rest of it, as it usually is, switching, switching, switching.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  And then she, I played the same game back in the FMRI. And what she saw kind of explains what you are saying is like, oh, my weak personality. It's really not. It's actually your brain. So during the day, like the first thing, when you're bright and fresh and you've got all this oxygen and glucose in the morning, you are using the part of your brain that's good at decision making. It stops, it thinks, it rationalizes, okay. Whereas after you've done all that switching all day long, you switch over and start using the area of your brain called the striatum. And the striatum is the habit part of your brain. So it's the one that's like, oh, I'll just scroll right now because that's relaxing. But you

• 38:23Speaker 02

  know, it's not all bad that we switch over. Like you ever do that where you drive home and you're like, wait a minute, how the hell did I just get here? That's your striatum, right? Like it knows, it can do things for you. So it's not always bad that we switch over to the habit thing. But we need to be aware that part of the problem of exhausting our brain and our, our body by the end of the day is that we will default to the easiest thing to do that sort of feels good. Right? It's just gonna happen.

• 38:49Chris Duffy?

  One of the big messages that I took away for myself from Body Electric was that I might think like, I have these habits that let me, you know, stay up too late and not move enough, but I'll make up for it by, you know, three times a week. Like you said, I'll like, or even let's be honest, not three times a week, one time a week, I'll go and do like a three hours of exercise. I'll, I'll go do some big swimming or I'll go for a hike or something. Exactly. I'll be like, this is my time. And then I'll go that made up for it. Or Especially with sleep, I'll think like, okay, my kid is gonna wake up at five and I'm gonna have to be out till 11 and that is not gonna leave me enough sleep. But I will get a nap on the weekend. And you know, you talk really compellingly about the research that shows that it's it's

• 39:34Chris Duffy?

  definitely not clear that we can make up for lost sleep. And it's certainly not obvious that getting a little extra sleep on the weekend makes up for cutting yourself short all through the week. So that habit versus the like cheating myself is not actually, that's a much more destructive habit than I had thought of.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, having little kids is really, really hard, Chris. So I totally get that feeling. You're like, I didn't have any time to myself today. I'm not gonna go to sleep. I'm gonna look at Pinterest. You know what I mean? Or whatever. Like, I totally get that. And I think part of it is moderation is not terribly sexy. We don't know how to be moderate in this world. I feel like we're all like grinding it out for 16 hours with my eight AI agents, running five companies, you know, or the opposite, which is brain rotting or bed rotting. I think is what my daughter calls it, right? 15, 16 year olds bed rotting. I'm just gonna rot in bed, like doing absolutely nothing to the point that your body is disintegrating.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  Like, okay, can we just get back in the middle here, folks? Like a little bit like, we are animals and our animals have evolved to need very basic things, no matter what we do to them. And when it comes to sleep, unfortunately, you cannot like bank sleep. You can't like run a deficit for the week and then like make up for it on the weekend. I think we have to come back to just checking in with ourselves, to moderation, to also finding the joy that comes with that. Like, I maybe I'm not sweating buckets and having a dopamine high.

• 41:12Speaker 02

  But I feel pretty good on a daily basis when I keep up this like habit and that's, I'll take it, you know?

• 41:19Chris Duffy?

  From the outside, I'm like, what you're doing is working. It seems clear that it's working. You're a professionally and personally accomplished.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  I only had to build an entire career on figuring that out.

• 41:29Chris Duffy?

  Yeah.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  But I will say, like, you know, I wrote a book nearly 10 years ago now about the importance of boredom. And this is because I am a person who used to run towards extremes, like type A, let's go, right? And I would, I burned out like 20 years ago. Like, I just couldn't keep it up. And as you get older, it gets harder. And also, the lows are pretty low. And so this has been like, for me, I need to understand the why behind it. So, understanding the science, the biology, and then experimenting with it, not blindly being like, well, some guru says I have to do this. But no, like getting communities of people to try out

• 42:09Speaker 02

  different habits and seeing like the benefits of it and the effects. Like, it's a daily struggle. I do love to push through because it feels so good. But I also know what it feels like to be on the other side when you're paying the price and you're so tired. And as I get older, I just, I can't do it anymore. So like, I mean, with this whole book rollout, I don't know how you did it. But I'm thinking like, I'm like, rest is a strategy. Pace yourself. You get to talk to people about your book.

• 42:39Chris Duffy?

  But the other thing it made me think about for my own life is when I was teaching in the classroom, I had a really structured day. And so I had very little control over, for example, like when I went to the bathroom, because it was like,

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:50Chris Duffy?

  this is this period. Then there's a transition.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:53Chris Duffy?

  Then you're on lunch duty. Then you're on snack duty.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:55Chris Duffy?

  Then there's another thing. And so it's like, you can go to the bathroom in these very structured times.

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:59Chris Duffy?

  You're on your feet. You are engaging with students. You are teaching. You're doing these things. And then I switched to comedy and to being a writer. And it's like incredibly unstructured.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:11Chris Duffy?

  And incredibly flexible. And you might think that that would be easier to like, get things done or to be. More physically active. And I found that it was actually the opposite.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:21Chris Duffy?

  Having all the freedom in the world made it really hard to actually do anything in my day. And it made it really hard to actually, you know, move or exercise or any of that.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can totally see that. And I see that in how, as an adult, I've created my own life. That is pretty structured, actually, just because it cuts out the decision making, right? Like, not having to decide, like, it's two o'clock, where am I supposed to be? Like, I am a person who very much likes to sit down on Sunday and figure out what the week looks like. Because I just think it's, it lets you relax and be more present if you're not like, wait, am I supposed to be somewhere? Should I be doing something? What? Wait, did I forget something? Like, because that's how I was before, and I, I can't stand it. So for me, being my type A person, planning it out. So I've just tried to sort of construct a life that includes movement and moments.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  And I feel very lucky to have been able to do that. And I know not everybody can do that, but it is something to strive for. Yeah, works for me.

• 44:22Chris Duffy?

  I want to just read one paragraph from the conclusion of your book. Because I think we've talked a lot about the practical and the day to day. And I think that is really important. That's a big part of movement. But you also have changed the way that I think about it in kind of a broader sense, a bigger philosophical sense. And so I just want to read this because I thought this was really beautifully put. "Beyond the science and statistics lies a subtler, more personal cost. The slow disconnection from our physical selves. When we stop noticing how our bodies feel, we lose access to small daily joys, feeling strong, steady, present. And we model that disconnection for the next generation. Our sense of self, not just our health, is at stake."

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, like I said, 10 years ago, I wrote a book called Bored and Brilliant. And it was about the sense I had that my devices had taken all the cracks in my day and filled them. Like, times when I used to be staring at people's shoes on the subway or just like looking at the clouds while I was waiting to get my coffee. I now could check the headlines. I could text someone. I could answer an email and I really missed those cracks in the day and I wanted to understand what was happening in those cracks in the day. And I learned more about what happens when we get bored and we allow our minds to wander. And one of the things we do when we allow our minds to wander is something called autobiographical planning.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  So this is literally picturing what you want your life to be, looking back at what you've experienced, telling yourself a narrative of who you are, and then figuring out who you want to become and thinking through the steps to get there. And what I also realized was I did my best mind wandering, I got really bored, during long walks where I didn't listen to anything despite being a podcaster. As I went forward and researched more recently the effect of screens and sitting still on our physical health, the more I realized how much scientists are really feeling like it's not the mind and the body. We are one

• 46:30Speaker 02

  whole thing. And there's a reason why movement can make us feel things. You mentioned Peter Strick earlier. He's a researcher at University of Pittsburgh. And he wanted to understand why yoga makes people feel so calm. And it turns out there are pathways like from our adrenal glands and our abdominal muscles up to the brain that are going back and forth and back and forth. There is so much we don't know. So I really started to feel like my sense of self is not just dependent on like ideas I have or self-image or who I present

• 47:07Speaker 02

  to the world, but it's quite literally how I feel in my body, that sense of calm or excitement or

• 47:19Speaker 02

  Anxiousness or franticness, like that affects how I present myself to the world. Those things are one and of the same. And when I have screens in my life, I get a lot of great things out of them, but I also sometimes can overdo it. And so finding that moment where I get the most out of it, that I can connect with people, that I get good information, that it gives me an opportunity to, you know, do my work, do it well and express myself, like, that's great. And I want to feel that more than ever. But that also means setting boundaries and setting limits because let's face it, the tech companies aren't going to do it for us. And I think it's something we have to teach ourselves and our kids and model for the

• 48:04Speaker 02

  people we live with and work with. And, you know, it's a rough world out there these days, Chris. So if each of us just feels a little bit better in ourselves, it can only be good for everyone else around us.

• 48:16Chris Duffy?

  I couldn't agree more. Well, Manoush, it's been such a pleasure talking to you. I would love to keep talking, but I have to get up and take a five minute walk.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  It is kind of time, isn't it? We've done our job here.

• 48:25Chris Duffy?

  Thank you so much. The Body Electric is such a fantastic book and you are such a fantastic person. Thank you for being on the show.

• 48:32Speaker 02

  Chris, thank you for having me. It was a delight to be invited.

• 48:38Chris Duffy?

  That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to our guest, Manoush Zomorodi. You can, should and must get her new book, Body Electric, and listen to her hosting NPR's TED Radio Hour. She's a fantastic host and a fantastic writer. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and my new book, Humor Me: How Laughing More Can Make You Present, Creative, Connected and Happy, is out now, too. You can find out more about my live show dates and other projects at ChrisDuffyComedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is put together by a constantly in motion team of extremely electric individuals. On the TED side, currently hiking through mountains while also meeting on Zoom, we've got Daniela Balarezo, Banban Chang, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Boha, Nimi Lamy, Lot Tansaka Sungmanivong, Antonio Le and Joseph DeBryan.

• 49:21Chris Duffy?

  Ryan Lash put this video together and then leapt straight up into the air. And Mateus Salas, who checks our facts, wants you to know that what I said about Ryan is Not entirely accurate. On the PRX side, they are feeling healthy, energized, and ready for their regularly scheduled movement break. Morgan Flannery, Nora Gill, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks to you for listening. Now, go wiggle and waggle and move your body. Please, send this episode to someone who you think would enjoy it or who you would like to move with. We will be back next week with even more How to Be a Better Human. Until then, take care.

• 50:00Chris Duffy?

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• 50:46Chris Duffy?

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