The Truth About Becoming Wealthy & The Hidden Damage of Our Digital Life

Most credit cards have that little 3- or 4-digit security code you constantly get asked for when shopping online. It can feel like a nuisance—but that tiny number plays a surprisingly important role in reducing fraud in a very simple and effective way. https://www.chase.com/personal/credit-cards/education/basics/why-do-some-sites-not-require-cvv We tend to think of financial advice as timeless: buy a house, invest for the long term, diversify your portfolio, put your money in index funds. But history tells a much messier story. There were periods when stocks performed terribly, when home ownership was a bad investment, and when other “sensible” advice turned out to be disastrously wrong. Joseph Moore, historian, investor, and author of How to Get Rich in American History: 300 Years of Financial Advice That Worked (& Didn’t) (https://amzn.to/4uDCdrv), explains how financial “wisdom” changes over time, why so much money advice is shaped by the era we happen to live in, and what history can teach us about building wealth today. We’ve all heard the warnings about sitting too much and spending too much time staring at screens. But modern life practically demands it. Hours at a desk, then more hours scrolling, streaming, emailing, and checking notifications. The problem is, researchers are beginning to discover that this screen-heavy lifestyle may quietly affect far more than we realize—from energy and sleep to mood, focus, and long-term health. Manoush Zomorodi, award-winning journalist, host of NPR’s TED Radio Hour, and author of Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being (https://amzn.to/3PraStx), shares what science is uncovering about the physical and mental toll of modern digital life—and why small, surprisingly simple changes may make a meaningful difference. Revenge can feel incredibly satisfying—at least in your imagination. But what happens after you actually get even with someone? Does revenge deliver the relief and closure people expect, or does it create something else entirely? https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/if-love-could-kill/202506/revenge-from-grievance-to-grief PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS AQUA TRU: Take the guesswork out of pure, great-tasting water. Head to ⁠⁠https://AquaTru.com⁠⁠ now and get 20% off your purifier using promo code SYSK. AquaTru even comes with a 30-day best-tasting water guarantee or your money back. RULA: This Mental Health Awareness Month, don’t just think about your mental health - actually take the step to take care of it. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Rula.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get started. QUINCE: Refresh your everyday with luxury you will actual use! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! SHOPIFY: It's time to turn those "what ifs" into CHA CHING with Shopify Today! Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:44Mike Carruthers?

  Today, on Something You Should Know, the surprising importance of that three-digit security code on your credit card. Then the truths and myths of financial advice, stocks, crypto, real estate.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's three myths about real estate that you can find over and over again. It always goes up, investing in it is passive, and this is how the really wealthy did it. No, it doesn't. No, it isn't. And no, they didn't.

• 2:12Mike Carruthers?

  Also revenge, getting even. Does it really feel as good as you think it will? And you've heard that sitting is the new smoking and that may not be far off.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  So it's estimated that the average American sits around 187 days a year, which is kind of crazy, more than half the year. And that the average 19-year-old now moves about the same amount as the average 60-year-old.

• 2:39Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on something you should know. Now here's something that might be worth a minute of your time. How would you like $1,000 to spend on shopping, especially with the holidays coming? Well, the people behind Shopify have a shopping site called shop.com. And to celebrate the new shop.com, they're giving away $1 million in Shop Cash, but not to one person. A thousand people will each win $1,000 in Shop Cash. And shop.com is actually a really clever idea. It brings lots of different stores together in one place.

• 3:22Mike Carruthers?

  So instead of bouncing around from website to website, you can search across stores, find what you're looking for and track your orders all in one place. Clothes, electronics, gifts, things for the house, all kinds of stuff. And whether you win or not, it's worth knowing, but with a thousand chances to win $1,000, I'd certainly take a look. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  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.

• 4:22Mike Carruthers?

  You know that three or four-digit security code on the back of your credit card? I bet you've wondered, like, well, how much protection against fraud can that provide? Well, the answer is quite a bit. You see, that security code is designed to be used in what the payment world calls a "card-not-present" transaction. Like buying something online, or buying it over the phone. And here's what makes the code so important. Unlike your credit card account number, that security code is not stored on the magnetic stripe or in the chip. And merchants are not allowed to store that code after the transaction.

• 5:03Mike Carruthers?

  So even if hackers steal your card data in, say, a breach, they usually don't get the security code, which makes it harder to use that card online. Now, it's not foolproof. Modern fraud now uses things like phishing and social engineering to get you to give up that number. But that tiny little number is still one of the simplest ways to prove you actually have the card in your possession. So you may think it doesn't do much, but it's working harder than you think. And that is something you should know. You've probably heard most of the standard financial advice. Buy a house. Invest for the long term.

• 5:48Mike Carruthers?

  Diversify your portfolio. Put your money in index funds. And most of us assume those rules have always been true and always will be. But history tells a much messier story. There were long periods when stocks performed terribly or didn't move much at all. Times when owning a home was a bad investment. Times when spending money made a lot more sense than saving it. So how much of what we believe about building wealth today is timeless wisdom? And how much of it is just a product of the moment we happen to be living in? My guest says if you really want to understand money and build wealth, you have to look at how people have tried

• 6:33Mike Carruthers?

  and often failed to get rich throughout history. Joseph Moore is an historian, an investor, and author whose work has appeared in The New York Times, amongst other places. And he's author of a book called How to Get Rich in American History: 300 Years of Financial Advice That Worked and Didn't. Hey, Joseph, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  Well, thank you so much for having me.

• 6:59Mike Carruthers?

  So why look back at 300 years of financial advice? What was it that pushed you to do this?

• 7:07Speaker 01

  This just became kind of a personal desire, a personal obsession, to kind of pursue this to the end. Like, what were Americans always told to do with their money? And why do we always believe it? And as it turns out, a lot of what worked was always changing. We think that the past is stable and we're what's moving. But actually, what always worked was always changing. And we have to adapt with it. And that was not what I expected to find.

• 7:31Mike Carruthers?

  Well, there is this standard advice that we hear today about investing for the long term and diversifying. And there isn't a lot of pushback against today's standard advice because a lot of the people who are touting that advice, people like Warren Buffett, and, I mean, these people have made a ton of money. So how do you not listen to them when they've made so much money?

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, the fun thing about the rarely rich is that they rarely got rich the way they tell everyone to get rich. You know, what's the standard advice, right? You know, for 40 years, put 10% of your income into stocks. Okay, run that scenario every year from the American Revolution to yesterday, and it fails in just under half of the experiences. So as it turns out, like, invest in stocks for the long term has only started working fairly recently. So this is actually, they say it's old advice. It's actually very new advice because it used to not work. That doesn't mean it can't work going forward. But the way most wealthy people got wealthy was by doing something different than that.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Most of them took very strategic, highly leveraged, risky...

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Not gambles, but they took risk on one or two or three big payouts. And as it turns out, that's where most of their wealth comes from. This idea, one of the things you hear a lot is diversification, right? Diversification is how you get rich. No, diversification is for staying rich. So don't mistake what the rich have with what the rich did to have it. What most of the wealthy did, and Buffett's a good example, like how he actually got wealthy is by taking some highly strategic risks in the market that paid out in oversized ways. And he did that with leverage. His average leverage is $1.7 of debt to every dollar of equity, which is not at all what he would tell you to do. And to be fair, you and I aren't Warren Buffett, right? So there's some logic to that.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  But the way people actually got wealthy in the past is not what most of the financial industry tells us to do today.

• 9:38Mike Carruthers?

  One of the big things I've heard all my life is every wealthy person, or almost every wealthy person today, has quite a bit of money in real estate. That real estate is the way because they're not making any more. You hear all the cliches and it always goes up. And what does the history tell us?

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's three myths about real estate that you can find over and over again. It always goes up. Investing in it is passive. And this is how the really wealthy did it. No, it doesn't. No, it isn't. And no, they didn't. Let's start with, let's start with real estate always goes up. There were investors in the 1700s who bought what all of what is today West Virginia. And they died with no profits. To this day, there are portions of what they bought that no human being has ever inhabited. Homes in most American cities, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Houston, I could go on, cost the same adjusted for inflation in the 1990s as they had in the 1890s. And they're bigger, nicer, better insulated.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  So to a certain extent, they've gotten cheaper.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  The myth that real estate always goes up is a product of two things. One, there are boom towns where it does go up. Chicago in certain periods, San Francisco in the gold rush, et cetera. But in our, not our entire lifetime, but if you're, if you're, you know, unless you're about 70 years old, you've never really lived through a period where real estate didn't go up because starting in the 1990s, real estate everywhere started to go up. And then after 2008, when we undersupplied the market, it's gone up dramatically. But that's actually not historically normal. It's actually historically weird. But when you live in a historically weird time, you assume this is what it always did, which leads to the next thing. It's not passive. I've owned a lot of real estate.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  And one of the things you will learn, if you want to make real money in real estate, you're going to be active, not passive. The passive returns on real estate range in American history. And we actually have the stats going all the way back for hundreds of years, all the way back to Europe in the 1500s. Like academics have studied this extensively. The historic return on, on real estate is four, five or six percent, depending on the era. So like, if you want passive returns, then you can get passive returns. But if you want outsized returns, it's going to be active. You're going to make it more valuable.

• 12:04Mike Carruthers?

  So that kind of circles around the question that people often, I don't know if they struggle with it, but they, they think about it. Is it better to own or rent? Because when you own, you're, you're a landowner, you're a homeowner. You're responsible for the taxes and the, and the upkeep and all of that. And, and, and is that a good investment? Because people say that's the, your biggest investment. That's your best investment. Is it?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Well, this has been debated for centuries, by the way. Like I can go back and find people arguing about rent versus buy, at least in the early to mid 20th century. And you can find kind of hints of a similar debate earlier than that. Renting is not throwing your money away. Renting gives you optionality, which people don't always think about. So if you, if you are especially young and coming up in your career and you're getting really good at what you do, the best opportunity that may come your way may involve a trip to the other side of the country. And you're going to want to be able to say yes to that. And so renting does give you the ability to up and leave when you need to. And also if your dog messes up the carpet, you know, you're only out the security deposit.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  But as an investment class, real estate can be very powerful for the average person. It's actually not great for building the biggest fortunes, but it's probably the strongest builder of midsize and small fortunes in American history. There's this nostalgia that we have, and you see this a lot in political discourse. I'm not going to pick sides here, but it's on both sides of we've turned the American home into an investment rather than to a home. Well, no, no, no. All American homes were investments for most of history. For one thing, most of those homes were farms. They were by definition income producing. So Americans saw homeownership, land ownership as their ticket out of poverty and into what we would call the middle class. So I actually think it's a pretty good investment class.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  But I've actually told some young people, you may do better to rent your own home, but invest in someone else's. Because the real payouts for real estate are you're shorting the dollar. That's essentially what you're doing is saying, I'm going to buy an asset and I'm going to bet that the US dollar is going to lose two to three to 4% of its value every year, and that asset is going to go up. Meanwhile, it's not only a short on the dollar, it's a leveraged short on the dollar. Because you can buy it five, 10, 15 cents down for every dollar you're borrowing. And the Great American Mortgage, the 30-year amateurized mortgage, is probably the most amazing financial product in the history of the country. And it's a financial invention other countries envy and wish they could get.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  So Americans are able to borrow, you know, say if you put a 20% down payment, you're borrowing 80 cents to your 20 cents. And if the thing goes up, then you're leveraged against the short on the dollar, which I know we're getting kind of technical there. But if I went to the stock market and said, I'd like you to lend me that kind of money, they'd call me crazy. I mean, you'd have to go to the Chicago Board of Trade to get that kind of leverage. And even then, you'd have to already kind of be rich for them to let you borrow that kind of money to invest in. So as an investment, it can be powerful. It can build wealth over time. But as a strategy for where you live, renting is often the better choice.

• 15:23Mike Carruthers?

  There's also this idea that there are, money isn't just dollars and cents. There's a psychological part to it as well. Because, for example, I get what you say about renting, but I hate renting because you just, you know, you can get thrown out, you know, the landlord could raise your rent. If you own it, you control it. But there's that security of owning that nobody can come and, you know, throw you out or raise your rent or whatever.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think a lot of this is also regional. We forget how big the United States is as a country, right? Like, if you're, if you live most of your life in one metropolitan area, and some of this can be, can vary wildly. So for people in California, it's a very different experience than, say, Austin, Texas right now. Like, it's, it's cheaper to rent in Austin, Texas than it's ever been because they just build and build and build and build there, right? And so there's a lot of people who bought who have seen the kind of price they paid go down. But the psychological benefit, if you're going to be in one place and you know you're staying, then that flips the math, right? So if you're young and upwardly mobile, keep the mobile part often. But if you're moving into middle age and you've decided like, this is the school district,

• 16:35Speaker 01

  this is the town, this is the community I want to be part of, well, then that flips the, the moral math because you're trying to be part of something. You're trying to be part of the community. Again, like, the 30-year amortized mortgage is the single greatest financial invention in American history. Take advantage of it. And it's, that's when you can find roots and put those down and have the psychological payout as well as the financial payout.

• 16:58Mike Carruthers?

  So next, I want to talk about stocks and bonds and get your historical take on that because it's become, you know, the go-to investment. So let's discuss that next.

• 17:38Speaker 04

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• 18:06Mike Carruthers?

  I'm speaking with Joseph Moore. He is author of the book, "How to Get Rich in American History: 300 Years of Financial Advice That Worked and Didn't." So Joseph, if you go to any financial advisor in the United States and sit down and say, "Okay, I have my money and I want an investment plan. I want to know what to do with my money." I'm sure they're going to suggest that some of that money, if not much of that money, be placed in stocks and bonds, because you've got to be in the market. Is that a good investment?

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Well, show me the incentive and I'll show you the behavior, right? That's not original to me. I cannot remember who I'm quoting. I'm definitely quoting someone. And the incentives on Wall Street are to get you to invest in Wall Street, because that's where all of the fees come from. So you would be hard pressed to go to a financial advisor and say, "I'm thinking about putting 30% in Wall Street and stocks and index funds, and 30% in real estate and 30% in something else." And they will tell you that's not wise. And to some extent, the reason they'll tell you that's not wise is because that's not how they get paid. But also, the market itself is constantly changing. You know, you hear a lot of times, "This time is different," or "This time is never different." Well, this time is always different, because the market is always different.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  So the stocks that you buy today have nothing in common with the stocks your grandfather bought. So when your grandfather bought a stock, he was buying a share of future profits at today's prices. Because from the Washington administration until Michael Jackson's Thriller album...

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Dividends were 92, 96% of all the profits investors made. Prices didn't go up. In fact, the Dow Jones was lower when I was a boy than when my dad was a boy. So the idea of stocks going up in their price was unusual. You got dividends and you invested those, reinvested those dividends or you lived on them. Today, since then, price appreciation is well over 70% of all of the gains in the market. And one in five, only one in five stocks even give a dividend. In fact, 96% of stocks don't beat treasury bills. So everything is in the price appreciation of the index in the most concentrated stocks. Well, that means you're not buying what your grandpa bought.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  You are buying a share of future buyers at today's prices. You are assuming, one day, 20 and 30 years hence, someone else will want this at a higher price than I paid for it, which is not at all what your grandfather was betting on. So the market itself changes dramatically over time. And most of the people who get rewarded for investing your money either haven't thought about it or simply don't care because that's not their job. Their job is to get your money moved to the market and keep this, keep this river flowing downstream. Now, I'm not saying it won't work. I'm just saying it's different.

• 21:04Mike Carruthers?

  Well, but if you are investing for the future and what you're saying is the future will be different than the present, you then, what are you investing in? You have no idea what you're investing in.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Yes, that's correct. And I think a little bit of humility goes a long way. You know, understanding that when people tell you it has to go up because it always went up, it's only done that. So the stock market, this idea of stocks for the long run, which we hear all the time. Of course, Jeremy Siegel's famous book made this argument. There's actually an earlier version of that argument in the 19 teens. And as it turns out, academics went back and pieced all that together and they found there were a lot of stocks that did not make it into that data set, some of which went to zero. And when you do the whole data set, what you find is that bonds beat stocks for most of the 1800s and they were tied with stocks until World War II.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Which means that stocks for the long run is only as old as our last two presidents. Now, that's not nothing, but I'm a historian, so in my line of work, that's a rounding error. So the idea that stocks always went up is actually a new idea. But we have been told it's a very old truth. It's not. It's entirely new. And so what does that mean for the average, everyday person? Well, you're probably gonna be okay for a while doing what everyone else is doing, but understand you're gonna get what everyone else is getting. But don't presume or pretend that because this has worked for the last six decades or so, that it's gonna keep moving that way for the next six.

• 22:38Mike Carruthers?

  Can you give me an example of one of these financial changes that affect us all to give them a sense of what you're talking about?

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Here's an example of something that has changed in our own lifetimes and that is changing right in front of us. And yet we act as if everything is staying the same, and that's the index fund revolution. If you go to any competent advisor, they're gonna tell you a lot of what you need to do is put it into index funds. And by the way, that's fine. I buy index funds. But what index funds were supposed to be when they were invented in the 70s and 80s was a chance to buy the index itself for low cost. Because we forget, in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, no one could buy an index. So if you look back at the index and use that to create your historical chart, you forget, no one owned it. Because to own it, you would have to buy 100 shares of every company in the index, which was a million dollars back then. It's like 12 million today.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  No one owned the index unless they were already wildly wealthy. So now, the everyday person could own the index. And it was supposed to be the ant on the back of an elephant. You're getting a free ride from this massive market that's doing all the hard work of price discovery, and all you get to do is just ride pretty much for free through that marketplace. It's a great idea. But the problem is, it's no longer an ant on the elephant. It's now an ant army that has swarmed the entire elephant and is biting it because it only has one order from the ant queen: Buy. At what price? Any price. Doesn't matter. Just keep buying. And the more these buy orders flood into the market from index funds, the more it's starting to cause the elephant to run uphill. And we know this, we have the quantification on this.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  We know that for every $1 coming in, three, four, even $5 at times of value is being pushed up the market, the upmarket valuation. And so the more we're all told to buy index funds, the more we're kind of charging the stock market up no matter what. If you look at all the craziness we've lived through, the, the, the, the, the should have been crashes and corrections that suddenly bounce right back to where they were and go higher. And everyone wonders, why does it keep bouncing back? When is it going to correct? Well, the index fund revolution is part of the reason it's not correcting because we're all continuously pouring in buy orders, whether it goes down or not. And so that's, that's the kind of change that happens in slow time right in front of you. And you have to recognize that it's there.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  For the time being, you'll probably be fine buying index funds, but there's going to come a time when those buy orders go away and they start to reverse in the other direction. And that will be very interesting, fast time to live through.

• 25:15Mike Carruthers?

  That's fascinating. I never would have ever thought of that, but as you lay it out like that, it makes perfect sense. If everybody's buying index funds, everybody's buying. And so that's going to affect the price of all those stocks.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Yes. I mean, that's, it's what's, we're literally, literally living through that right now. Now, it's like the only reason, I'm not trying to make it like the magic key that solves everything, but it is a part of the equation and is, and it's becoming a bigger part of the equation every single month.

• 25:44Mike Carruthers?

  The investment that we hear about today so much that completely confuses people is crypto, Bitcoin. And, and I don't get it. I still don't understand it. Is it a thing or is it not a thing?

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Well, if it's, if I think you mean a bubble, it's perfectly valid as a bubble and people have made and lost money in bubbles before. But crypto is not the future, it is the past. We have had self-issued currency in America before. At the dawn of the Civil War, there were roughly 10,000 self-issued currencies, not by the government, by people, by local banks, by businesses. Which means the advice you got about money in the 1800s was very different than the advice you get today. Young people were told, whatever you do with money, do not save it. Spend it as fast as you can. Now, think about this. If you went to work and you got paid in Dogecoin, and I went to work and I got paid in Fartcoin, which by the way is a real thing, the very first thing we're going to do with that paycheck

• 26:43Speaker 01

  is spend it as fast as possible because we know it could go up, but it could also go down. It could go to zero, and it regularly went to zero then. When we, when we look at the past, we find people doing money very differently because they were basically using and living with what we have today in crypto. Self-issued currencies with no government oversight, or limited government oversight. And they didn't like it. And so they finally got to the greenback and the US dollar coming out of the Civil War. People flocked to that dollar because they're like, I can save this thing. I can use this thing. I can trust it to not go to zero tomorrow. And that's when American financial advice flipped from spend as fast as you can to save as much as you can. And so we, I, I tell people, the one lesson from crypto is that every self-issued currency

• 27:28Speaker 01

  in American history eventually always went to zero. So if, as a bubble, if you want to invest in a bubble and try to get out before everyone else does, that's great. You do, you do you. But the lesson of the past is pretty clear. This thing, this thing will eventually go to zero.

• 27:44Mike Carruthers?

  So with your historical perspective on the whole world of finance, give me some suggestions on what to do with my money?

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Number one, solve somebody else's problems. We think personal financial advice is always about you and your problems. Should you drink a latte? Should you buy crypto? That's about you and your problems. You might stay, it will keep you from getting broke, but it won't help you get rich. Like, if you want to go ahead, you actually have to solve someone else's problems. So that's where most of the real money is made. Secondly, is you do need to take some risks. I think we're probably in the least risky age in American history, and yet we're more risk averse than we ever have been. Third, you need to move more, especially if you're younger. Most of the great opportunities in American history came from, you know, those who went or those who won. And you have to go where the opportunity is. You live in the largest free market zone in the world. There is an opportunity for you somewhere.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Marry well, that works in every era. And by the way, that's not just marrying into money. That's marrying into the kind of character that helps a family build wealth over time. And then finally, believe that you can, because optimism is wildly over rewarded in the American economy.

• 28:54Mike Carruthers?

  Wow. Well, it feels like you've just taken us on a roller coaster ride through American financial history, and it's really fascinating. I've been speaking with Joseph Moore. He's a historian and investor and author of the book, How to Get Rich in American History. 300 Years of Financial Advice That Worked and Didn't. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Joseph, thanks for the ride.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Thanks, Mike. Have a great day.

• 29:22Speaker 05

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• 29:50Speaker 04

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• 30:22Mike Carruthers?

  We've all heard the warnings about sitting too much and spending too much time on screens. But let's be honest, most of us are doing exactly that. Hours at a desk, then hours on a couch, scrolling, streaming, checking, one more thing. So how bad is it really? Because this isn't just about feeling a little stiff or tired. Research is starting to show that this screen-heavy, sedentary way of living may be quietly affecting everything: your energy, your focus, your sleep, and even your long-term health. And here's the surprising part: fixing it may not require a complete lifestyle overhaul.

• 31:03Mike Carruthers?

  My guest says small changes, even just a few minutes at a time, can make a big difference. Manoush Samarodi is an award-winning journalist and host of NPR's TED Radio Hour. She has spent years investigating how our digital lives are reshaping our bodies and brains, including a large-scale study she did with Columbia University. Her book is Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being. Manoush, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  Mike, thank you so much for having me.

• 31:41Mike Carruthers?

  So even though everybody's heard those warnings that we're spending too much time in front of screens, that we're not moving enough, we're too sedentary, the warning is a little vague in the sense that I'm not sure what the consequences to all of that are and how much is too much. And also, the bigger question is, with the way life is today, I don't know how you not do that. How do you not spend time in front of screens, which means you're sitting there watching, which makes you sedentary? I don't know how to not do that.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we've heard the saying, like, "Sitting is the new smoking," for years now. And so, we work out in the morning, and maybe we have a standing desk. But I don't think we've realized that... Not only are we sitting more, we have built a world around screens, which means that in order to socialize, in order to do our work, in order to relax, we are using screens and that is leading us to sit even more. So it's estimated that the average American sits around 187 days a year, which is kind of crazy, more than half the year,

• 32:52Speaker 02

  and that the average 19-year-old now moves about the same amount as the average 60-year-old. And we're seeing the cost. We're seeing that chronic health issues are on the rise. Many of those are preventable. Type 2 diabetes in young people has doubled over the last 20 years. But not only that, I think, you know, we hear everyone feels like crap, basically, Mike, to use a technical term. We're tired, we're exhausted, we're overloaded. And I think that we've been paying a lot of attention to the mental health effects of all this screen time, but we haven't been really diving into the physical health impact of all this time sitting and looking at screens.

• 33:36Mike Carruthers?

  Well, aren't those statistics so eye-opening? Because the fact that a 19-year-old moves as much as a 60-year-old either says 60-year-olds are moving a lot, or 19-year-olds are moving much. And that's just, that's stunning, because that's not how we were, that's not what we were built to do.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  No, that's exactly right. And that's not to shame 19-year-olds. I mean, I have one of them, and I see, like, he's in class, he's on his laptop, he's doing his homework, he's on his laptop, he's trying to stay in touch with friends, he's on his phone, he wants to chill out, he's watching Netflix. Our worlds are built, and our schedules are built around these things. And so, as a result, we've sort of crowded out some of the things that we really didn't have to think about, like, decades ago. Like, go outside, play, look into the distance, breathe more, spend time being bored, move your legs. Like, it sounds absurd, you need to think and move more? But that's what happens when we create a world

• 34:41Speaker 02

  where we have so much that has to be done through a piece of glass.

• 34:46Mike Carruthers?

  It's just so weird when you think about it. It's just so weird.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  It's weird, totally.

• 34:53Mike Carruthers?

  But I, but I sense people know this. Like, I'm sure your son knows this. I mean, this is what you talk about and write about. But, but as you say, the, the world is the way it is. So, so then what do we do about this? How do you stay connected and do the right thing by your friends and also move more than a 60-year-old?

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think that was the question I had, because it really gets my goat when people are like, well, just get off your screens, or like, just don't put your phone away. And it's like, I have older parents, I have teenagers, I have a job, I want to exist in the world, and part of that is staying connected. And it's not all bad, right? So how do we begin to not, to not sacrifice our health to our devices? And that was the big question I had. I was, I was sick and tired of feeling sick and tired when I came across, actually, a study in 2023 that sort of blew my socks off. So, I heard this study, it was by a physiologist at Columbia University Medical School. His name is Keith Diaz. And

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Keith's whole mission in life has been to figure out what is the minimum amount of movement that the human body needs, so that all this sitting and staring at screens doesn't lead them to an early grave, essentially. And in his lab, he had come up with quite a simple, an extraordinary formula. Essentially, five minutes of gentle movement for every half hour of sitting during prolonged periods made, made a huge outsized difference. It reduced blood pressure, reduced blood sugar, it made people able to concentrate, it reduced their fatigue. And when I say gentle movement, I mean, like, Mike, we're not talking like

• 36:44Speaker 02

  burpees, or sprints, or anything like that. Two miles per hour on a treadmill, a stroll. And so, when I heard that, I mean, Keith has other... Amazing things. This one is shocking. If for people who were mostly sedentary, when they replaced half an hour of sitting with gentle movement, they reduced a risk of early death by 18%. So just kind of shocking. So when I heard this, I was like, oh, my God, is it really? Is it that easy? Like, you just got to get up and move every five minutes, every half hour? And I reached out to Keith and he was like, yeah, come up and give it a shot. So I went up and I joined his lab experiment and I did it for myself.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  One day I sat at a desk for eight hours, working on my laptop, while they measured my blood glucose, they measured my blood pressure, my heart rate, I took regular surveys about my mood. And then the next day I did the exact same thing, except I walked for five minutes, two miles per hour, on a treadmill that was in the corner of the room. And the results were shocking. My blood sugar was cut in half. My blood pressure dropped by five points. My fatigue was gone the second day. I was able to concentrate and I was just more positive. And I had energy when I got home in the evening. I didn't feel like slithering over to the couch to like,

• 38:11Speaker 02

  look at my phone and watch Netflix allegedly at the same time. It was really amazing.

• 38:17Mike Carruthers?

  Wow. Well, that seems doable, right? I mean, how hard was that?

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Well, that's what I thought. I was like, this seems easy. And Keith was like, but is it like, can people do this? Can they interrupt their lives, like to take these five minute breaks? Like, this is not acceptable, right? Like, how do we measure if somebody's working hard? Bums on seats, eyes on the screen, locked in, right? We are not used to people taking breaks, much less getting up and like moving around for no reason at all. So that became the big question that the two of us had. The science is there, but can people actually do it? So we combined forces. My team at NPR and his team at Columbia created a global clinical trial. And we had 20

• 39:05Speaker 02

  20,000 people sign up to try to take movement breaks either every half hour, every hour, or every two hours and report back because we really wanted to measure not only the effects that they saw, but feasibility. What did they have to do to make it possible for them to move more? And so, yeah, so it was a massive public science investigation. It was pretty fascinating what ended up happening. What do you think, Mike? Just out of curiosity, are you like, "I could totally do this," or are you like, "Hmm, actually, that would be hard?"

• 39:39Mike Carruthers?

  Here's my problem with doing it, and I think most people can relate to this, if they do spend a lot of time on screens or in doing projects in front of screens, that when you take a break, you disengage from what you're doing and you go do what you're going to do, it takes a long time to get back to where you were and you feel like you've wasted the time because it wasn't just the time of the break that you lost, it was the disengaging and re-engaging time that you lost that feels like a loss.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  I totally hear you because there's been so much research that says, you know, interruptions, when we switch tasks, it's really hard for us to regain focus. Absolutely. And that was one of my fears as well. So that's what I was curious to find out. Like, how did people deal with that? So, okay, so we had these 20,000 people sign up. Of the people who committed, who started taking movement breaks, 80% of them were able to stick with them for two solid weeks. I mean, look, this is a self-reported study, right? And these were people who clearly were motivated to try. But still, they, we found there was a dose-response relationship, meaning that the people who took the most breaks had the

• 40:55Speaker 02

  biggest effects. On average, there was a 25% reduction in fatigue. And to your point about not getting things done, we did not measure any productivity downfall. If anything, people's productivity actually rose slightly. So what we heard from people was that they would get back to their desks and they were able to focus again, that they didn't get that sort of foggy feeling in their head, that they were more positive, more job satisfaction, and actually, they were more efficient in the end. So, we also heard from people who...

• 41:34Speaker 02

  We weren't able, obviously, to measure the glucose and the blood pressure and all those things, but there were other people who worked with their doctors during this period. We heard from people who lost some weight, they lowered their blood pressure, they were able to manage their blood sugar, and generally, on the whole, people felt, A, it was doable, and 82% of them actually liked taking the breaks. They actually enjoyed them.

• 41:58Mike Carruthers?

  All right, so now I've got some questions. What's a break? What do they do during the break?

• 42:05Speaker 02

  So, a break, as I said, is nothing big. It can be a walk, if that works for you. It could be a lap around the block with your dog. It could be collecting all the dishes in your house that people have left around and bringing them down to the dishwasher. It could be a dance party. It could be marching in place. I like, my personal favorite is the shuffling side to side during a Zoom call. If walking is not an option for people, you could, they've, there have been studies that show just working your arms, pumping your arms, arm rolls, shoulder rolls, all of that counts as well. So, it was kind of whatever. If you want to walk and talk on a phone call, that counts as a movement break.

• 42:46Mike Carruthers?

  Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Your favorite shuffling side to side on a Zoom call, how is taking a Zoom call a break?

• 42:57Speaker 02

  Well, we didn't stipulate. We didn't say you had to get off your screen. We just said, add movement to your life, because we also wanted to see whether people did go off their screens or not. And what we did find, as you might suspect, Mike, is that people liked using it as screen breaks as well. But when they couldn't, they integrated movement into their lives, and that helped too.

• 43:22Mike Carruthers?

  And the prescription is, how many breaks per, what's the prescription?

• 43:28Speaker 02

  So the prescription is if you can, for long periods of sitting, get up and move for every five minutes, for every half hour. But we saw benefits for people at every hour and every two hours. And actually, it's been shown that even moving for one minute, an hour, will reduce your blood pressure, although that did not have the same effect for blood sugar. But the point is, I think any movement is good movement, and we need to interrupt these long periods of sitting and being locked on screens for very basic ancient biological reasons, which I sort of dig into to try and understand

• 44:10Speaker 02

  what exactly is going in our body that leads us to feel, you know, wired and tired, and then eventually can lead to chronic health illnesses. And it's kind of fascinating what these habits are doing to us. Because you think, well, I'll work out in the morning, or I'll use my standing desk, and that'll take care of it. And unfortunately, that is not the case.

• 44:29Mike Carruthers?

  Well, what does that do? What if you did this, compared people who took breaks every so often, as you're suggesting, versus somebody who works all day and then goes to the gym for an hour and a half?

• 44:44Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, study after study has shown that even if you work out in the morning, or you go for a long evening, if you sit for the majority of the day, the harms are not offset. That's not to say that you shouldn't work out. Obviously, it's good for bone health, muscle health, cardiovascular health, all those things. But it does not offset what happens in your body when you are sitting for hours and hours. And so, as I learned, you have to think of, like, when you sit, you're putting a kink in your body, at your knees and at your waistline, right? And you need to think of that, Keith explained this to me, like a garden hose. You know how when you kink a garden hose, things start to kind of get backed up, and the pressure builds?

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Well, same thing happens to us. Blood starts pooling in our legs, our muscles stop contracting, and leg muscles are key. To clearing out glucose and fat and lowering blood pressure. And if they don't, over years, over, over months and years, that is when these chronic conditions start to creep in. Not to mention the fact that when you are sitting, you are bent over like a shrimp or a cashew, and that compresses your diaphragm. You start to take shallow breaths, and shallow breaths means that you get less oxygen into your bloodstream and going up to your brain. And when you don't have enough oxygen going to your brain, that is when you start to feel tired and foggy and you lose your focus.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  And then this is where screens come into the picture, which I find fascinating is there's a relatively new field of research called, into a sense called interoception. So interoception is the body's way of signaling to you what it needs. And that can be subconscious, like, you know, you, you need to sweat to cool down, or it can be very conscious, which is, my eyes hurt. Can, can you look into the distance? My, I need to move because I'm starting to have my back ache. And I think what we're finding is, and there's starting to be new studies looking into this,

• 46:55Speaker 02

  is that you, your body could be begging for a break, but what do you do? You're swiping, you're typing, you don't listen to what your body is telling you it needs. And no wonder we feel exhausted and anxious. We are not hearing the signs because we're hearing the notifications and the pings far more than we're hearing our biological needs.

• 47:18Mike Carruthers?

  It, it all makes sense. It's all, it all makes perfect sense. I just, I sense that people go, yeah, I really should do that, but they don't. They just, because it's so easy not to. It's so easy, because you, this requires very intentional effort.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  I think that's right. I think what we need is a cultural shift. But you know, I am optimistic because we are seeing a conversation that as a, as a tech journalist, we have not seen ever yet, people calling on tech companies to do something about the content that's on their platforms. We have people constantly talking about how distressed they are about the relationship they have with their phone. There is a, there is something needs to change, right? And I don't think it can be hugely drastic necessarily, but my hope is that something as simple, and as you say, kind of not that surprising, like just do it. We actually know

• 48:19Speaker 02

  it makes a big difference and it's not that big a deal. It's free. It means like just go down your driveway and go get the mail and walk back and it's going to make a huge difference to how you feel and to your health. Like if we can just do one little tiny thing, wouldn't it be nice to be able to feel just a little bit better during these weird, weird times?

• 48:39Mike Carruthers?

  Well, you've certainly laid out your case well here and it's up to people to see the urgency in what you're saying because it clearly takes a toll by not taking those breaks. Manoush Zomorodi has been my guest. She is the host of NPR's TED Radio Hour and author of the book Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being. And there's a link to her book in the show notes. Manoush, thanks. Appreciate you being here.

• 49:12Mike Carruthers?

  Have you ever noticed how getting revenge sounds satisfying, right up until the moment you actually do it? Psychologists have studied revenge for years and one surprising finding is that revenge often makes people feel worse, not better. In one famous study, people who got the chance to punish someone who had wronged them, kept thinking about the person afterwards more than people who never got revenge at all. Why? Because revenge doesn't always create closure. It can keep the offense mentally alive. Researchers say we tend to predict revenge will feel relieving or empowering.

• 49:54Mike Carruthers?

  But once we act on it, many people end up replaying the event in their mind instead of moving past it. Which means revenge may not end the conflict. It may actually keep the conflict going. So the old saying about revenge being sweet. Psychology suggests it may be more addictive than satisfying. And that is something you should know. So here's a thought, a request. Use your brilliant writing skills to write us a review on whatever platform you listen on. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Castbox, wherever you can leave a review. Leave us one and we like that and we read them too. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 50:39Speaker 05

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together. And they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour. Hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists. Exclusive experiences and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify. Book just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 51:07Speaker 06

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