How Boredom Works

Are there benefits to boredom? Or is it all negative? Why do we get bored? What can we do to break free from boredom? The answers to those questions and more are coming your way today. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

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• 2:41Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:50Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. And I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too. And we are going to do the opposite of making you bored with this episode on boredom.

• 3:02Speaker 04

  That's right. Before we get going, though, we want to recommend a podcast to our listeners from our always friend and former colleague.

• 3:12Josh Clark?

  Forever friend.

• 3:13Speaker 04

  Forever, yeah, he's our FF. But former colleague, we used to work with Mangesh Haddad Kador at HowStuffWorks. And I'm not lying when, I think we'll all agree, because Jerry's listening, too, that Mangesh is one of the sweetest, sweethearts, kindest, most intelligent, nicest dudes of all time. And that's reason enough to listen to anything that he does.

• 3:38Josh Clark?

  He's a high-quality person.

• 3:39Speaker 04

  He's the best. Mangesh is great. So he has a show out called How to Live Forever, which is not like, here's how you live forever. It's more like trying to understand this sort of movement that's going around of people that want to try and extend life into hundreds of years or forever, which is super up Stuff You Should Know listeners' alley, I think.

• 3:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 4:00Speaker 04

  And it's a great show. He wants to recommend, in particular, if you want to just give it a shot, he said the third and the fifth episodes are really standouts.

• 4:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 4:08Speaker 04

  And I listened to episode five because it sounded super interesting. And it is, buddy, because in episode five, Mangesh kind of goes investigator to track down this startup that's trying to create brain-dead clones for billionaires, so that when you get to be 90 years old, you can do a body replacement and transfer, like, this is real Futurama kind of stuff.

• 4:37Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 4:37Speaker 04

  To transfer the head of a billionaire to a younger body. And this is actually happening. Peter Thiel is a funder of this thing, so is Arpa H., and it's just kind of crazy stuff. So that's episode five. But the podcast is How to Live Forever, and it's awesome.

• 4:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And Mangesh is super interesting and entertaining. And if you're like, not quite convinced of this Mangesh guy, put this in your pipe and smoke it. He, along with another colleague of ours, Will Pearson, co-founded Mental Floss back in the day when he was in college.

• 5:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, man.

• 5:10Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 5:11Speaker 04

  That's all you need to know. Yeah, Mangesh is the best, so check out How to Live Forever. I'm going to get all corporate here and say wherever you get your podcasts.

• 5:18Josh Clark?

  Ooh, is it guaranteed human?

• 5:21Speaker 04

  I think so.

• 5:22Josh Clark?

  Okay, great. Okay, Chuck, so we're talking about boredom. I found it exceedingly hard to concentrate while I was studying this. Did you?

• 5:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was, I hated to say it, but it was kind of boring.

• 5:35Josh Clark?

  I actually liked it.

• 5:37Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 5:38Josh Clark?

  Yes, I did. At first, I was like, this is kind of boring. It's very dry. But if you put it all together, it actually, boredom did become a little more interesting to me than it had been before. Let me just say it like that. How about that?

• 5:51Speaker 04

  Well, that's good.

• 5:52Josh Clark?

  But it's like when we researched sushi, or yawning, or whatever. I wanted sushi, I couldn't stop yawning.

• 5:58Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 5:59Josh Clark?

  Like, reading about boredom actually makes you, like, it's hard to concentrate, which is one of the traits of boredom. I just thought that was very interesting.

• 6:08Speaker 04

  For sure. If you want to talk about just how boredom is sort of defined, it is the experience of wanting to engage in something that is satisfying to you, but not being able to, and being left in a state, in this case, it's called an adaptive state.

• 6:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 6:28Speaker 04

  Where you don't have an optimal energy level, it may be, there may be some discomfort.

• 6:38Speaker 04

  This is a big part of boredom, is it urges new action, because as we'll see, just being bored can lead to you doing really dumb things just so something is happening.

• 6:50Josh Clark?

  If you put all that together, man, it really just sounds like you need a Snickers.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  Right.

• 6:56Josh Clark?

  You know?

• 6:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, maybe so. Because boredom definitely urges you to pursue something different than what's going on. That's sort of the whole point behind it.

• 7:06Josh Clark?

  Yes. Now, whether, what you pursue is up to you, and it can be negative, it can be positive, it can be really bad for you, it can actually be great. And this is like, it's really well-studied. I think one of the things I appreciated about it is the philosophers, starting in the 19th century, with Schopenhauer and then Nietzsche, like, they really thought a lot about boredom and what boredom was. And they created a great basis for it, that science then took over. And science has done a really good job of investigating it and explaining it, too. And I love topics like that, because we cover so much stuff. Like, I like it when it's like, no one understands this, and here's this theory, and here's that theory. I like topics like that.

• 7:52Josh Clark?

  But I also like topics where it's all like, oh, all the components are here, and we can put them together, and now I understand it.

• 7:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure. I agree, too. If there's boredom happening, that means there's obviously nothing new or stimulating happening. There may be a time distortion, like, things are really dragging on, and it might feel meaningless. And you mentioned Schopenhauer. He put forth that boredom and pain are like the twin poles of life, and you just kind of swing between those.

• 8:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Yeah. And Nietzsche came along, and he was like, I agree. He said, yes, and I think boredom can actually lead to creativity. I don't think it's all bad. And he went on to say, which I think is going a little far, that God created humans because God was bored.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 8:40Josh Clark?

  It's a little, it's like, how are you going to prove that? And he said, I'm a philosopher, I don't have to prove a [bleep] thing.

• 8:48Speaker 04

  Emily has always, and I've since gotten on board when you have a kid, I'm bored, I'm bored. You hear that a lot. And she, from the very beginning with Ruby, was like, well, you know what's on the other side of boredom? Creativity. And Ruby's tired of hearing that, but that's a good way to handle it with kids. And they say to like, you know, don't hand them something to do. Like, you're bored. Oh, here, do this and do this. And like, try and solve their problem. You're like, solve it yourself. Go find something to do. And if all goes well, and generally it does, at least with my daughter, all of a sudden, she's, you know, drawing something or writing something.

• 9:24Josh Clark?

  That's neat.

• 9:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:25Josh Clark?

  Or you're like, where did she get that pony?

• 9:27Speaker 04

  Right.

• 9:28Josh Clark?

  All of a sudden.

• 9:30Speaker 04

  I know. How creative.

• 9:33Josh Clark?

  So, one thing that the philosophers did have in common, Chuck, was that they considered boredom important. And I think today, most people, including me, I did not think of boredom as particularly important. But if you look at it a certain way, say like, have science now does, it's extremely important in that if you think about us never getting bored, we would just sit around either blissed out all day, or sitting around doing nothing. Right? Like boredom actually prompts you to action. And they believe now that essentially it's because your brain is constantly seeking new novel stimuli.

• 10:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:13Josh Clark?

  That when it's not granted that, when it doesn't have the opportunity to do that anymore, and we'll see in a second, there's different reasons why that can happen, it just basically shuts down to a certain extent. And that's not just it. If it just kind of shut down, you would just be daydreaming. There's also a negative arousal state to where you just feel restless, agitated, you can't concentrate.

• 10:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:40Josh Clark?

  And that, those two things combined make boredom kind of unpleasant and spur you to action to go do something that will give your brain the novel stimuli it gets to search for. Likes to search for signal among noise, and then engage with the signal, is how I saw it put. And that, when it can't do that, that's where boredom comes.

• 11:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, I thought that was really interesting, because I was today years old when I found out that the brain is constantly predicting sensory inputs.

• 11:10Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  I always just kind of thought the brain was processing information as it receives it. But the brain is predicting, like actively predicting sensory inputs. And the brain loves it when those predictions are validated. But what it really loves is when it's in an environment where it makes a prediction that is slightly different than what it predicted in reality.

• 11:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we would call that learning, in other words, right? And that's where the brain gets a little dose of dopamine. Because we've talked about dopamine before, it's a reinforcing reward chemical, right? It's not like, oh, I ate the Snickers and there's dopamine. That's a misstatement of what dopamine is. Dopamine is what our brain gets when we get it, our brain gets it slightly wrong, so that it learns. It says, this is important. Here's what the correct answer was. And now your brain just learned. And that's what it seems to like the most, like you said.

• 12:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure. And boredom could also, or at least what it could represent, is a faulty prediction where the brain has an unrealistic award or reward that they think is coming. So in that case, it varies from like, the prediction, but not in a good way. So like, there's a hypothesis that if you're prone to boredom, that your brain isn't predicting well. It's like, bad at predicting what's happening.

• 12:33Josh Clark?

  Right. There's other situations that they've identified where you can get bored, or where boredom sets in. One is obviously where you're just not getting enough stimulation. Like, an example I thought of is, let's say you're quality control for the Shots Brewery production line, and your job is to look for a glove on a bottle. And it's only happened one time, and it's never happened since. And you're really getting bored by this point, because you know that nothing new is coming along. So your brain is like, I'm bored. Right?

• 13:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:06Josh Clark?

  Which as we'll see, is a terrible state for you to be in as a worker for years and years on end. And then the other one is the opposite. Like, you're getting so much information that you don't understand, that you get bored, because your brain can't find signal in the noise. And a good example I saw, that is like, a really dense lecture on a topic that you are totally unfamiliar with.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:31Josh Clark?

  You know?

• 13:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure. I fall into that trap a lot, I feel like.

• 13:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think most people do.

• 13:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. And you can become really restless if you're trying to become mentally engaged. And then if you fail to, that a real listlessness can follow. I mentioned the time thing. It can really feel like time has slowed down, and that there's no value in what's going on, and your concentration is off. We did talk about, like, you don't necessarily yawn when you're bored, but you can yawn when you're bored. Like, you can change your, like, physical state. You could slouch a lot more. It's, you know, sometimes this may be a signal to other people that we're with of like, you know, this party's lame. Let's get out of here. Yeah.

• 14:15Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah, because I remember in our yawning episode, that they, one of the theories was that it was a signal to others that danger was nearby when we yawned when we're anxious.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, that's right. Danger.

• 14:28Josh Clark?

  So there's been studies about what it's like to be bored. All of us know what boredom is like. But I think if you just took me aside, and, you know, five days ago, said, like, okay, what is boredom? Like, explain it, describe it.

• 14:42Speaker 04

  You'd say this?

• 14:45Josh Clark?

  I probably wouldn't have been able to. So people have studied to try to figure out subjectively what boredom's like. You ticked off a lot of it. But it seems like the studies that really kind of got to the root of it, went to the furthest extreme, and induced the deepest possible boredom that you can through sensory deprivation. And what they found is that the brain just goes haywire when it's bored to those extreme levels.

• 15:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, they did, you know, they've done studies like this, you know, for decades. But there was one in the 50s at McGill University in Montreal, shout out Montreal, where they paid people 20 bucks a day to stay in these little rooms. You had to wear like sensory deprivation goggles and headphones and gloves, and cardboard tubes on the arms. I didn't quite get that. I guess they just wanted you to be fully sort of, I don't know, locked down?

• 15:36Josh Clark?

  No sense of touch, maybe?

• 15:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, I guess so. And I think it was over the period of a few days. It never went longer than a week.

• 15:44Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 15:45Speaker 04

  But it was not good. You know, people couldn't think, like, fix on anything, like any thought, for any length of time at all. And their word pattern recognition got all over the place. Their arithmetic skills were terrible. They started like hallucinating, and they became more susceptible to supernatural beliefs.

• 16:04Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 16:05Speaker 04

  So obviously, something like solitary confinement in prison, which I think, did we do a whole episode on solitary, or just?

• 16:11Josh Clark?

  Yes, we did. And we concluded it's not only inhumane, it's inhuman.

• 16:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, completely. Because it physically alters the brain. Like, it shrinks your hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that, you know, we talk about a lot, but it's involved in emotion control, spatial orientation, memory, that kind of thing. So you're basically just, you're shrinking that part of your brain when you throw someone in solitary.

• 16:35Josh Clark?

  Right. You want to take a break and come back and talk about how boredom can be useful?

• 16:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 16:57Josh Clark?

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• 18:03Josh Clark?

  Sure.

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• 18:14Josh Clark?

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• 20:14Josh Clark?

  All right, Chuck. So we've basically talked about how boredom is not pleasant. And that kind of prompted a lot of researchers to be like, well, then why are we experiencing boredom? If we experience boredom, and it seems like a lot of different animals experience boredom too, as we'll see, there has to be some sort of evolutionary benefit from it for it's sticking around for clearly tens or hundreds of millions of years, right?

• 20:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:40Josh Clark?

  And what they finally landed on was the same thing that Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Henry David Thoreau and a bunch of other philosophers pointed to, which was, it prompts you to go out and do other stuff. And it doesn't necessarily prompt you to go out and do the safest thing. It turns out that it prompts you to go do anything else, even stuff that is outside of your comfort zone. If it's an alternative to whatever you're doing now and you're bored, you're much likelier to go try it than when you're not bored. And that's what a bunch of researchers turned up.

• 21:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, you think about the scenario of a bunch of kids bored in the summertime. And they're like, hey, let's go jump off the roof of the house right now and see what happens.

• 21:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 21:26Speaker 04

  You know, that kind of thing. There was a study in the, I guess it's a scientific paper, Emotion or a magazine?

• 21:35Josh Clark?

  A journal, yeah.

• 21:36Speaker 04

  Journal, quarterly, maybe? I don't know.

• 21:40Josh Clark?

  A rag?

• 21:41Speaker 04

  Of white paper by doctors Heather Lynch and Shane Bench, Lynch and Bench.

• 21:46Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 21:46Speaker 04

  Where they subjected the participants to stimuli that would make them bored, either neutral board, positive board, or negative board. And across all the studies, they, people reporting high boredom were more likely to choose something unfamiliar, which included negative experiences. And people bored by positive conditions sought out negative experiences. And if you were bored by negative content, you sought out positive experiences. So almost like you're seeking out the opposite of whatever you're experiencing in your boredom.

• 22:21Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Yeah. They kept showing them like picture after picture after picture. And even if it was positive, they're like, do you want to switch to the negative pictures? It's like cockroaches and stacks of dirty dishes. And the people were like, yes, please hurry up.

• 22:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:35Josh Clark?

  That's, so yeah, that's a pretty good study pointing out that, you know, it will leave our comfort zone. At least we'll go look at pictures of dirty dishes if we're bored, right? And then other studies have kind of followed this up. There was one in 2014 that attached something that could deliver an electric shock around participants' ankles and then just left them to be bored in a room alone for 15 minutes and see if anybody would press the button that gave themselves a shock. Knowing that if they press this button, that's what was going to happen. It wasn't like a surprise. And people did, a lot of people did, as a matter of fact. They got so bored, they're like, I guess I'll just give myself electric shocks.

• 23:17Speaker 04

  I could see myself totally doing that, by the way.

• 23:19Josh Clark?

  I think it depends on the shock. I would at least try it once, probably eventually.

• 23:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, my deal. I would try it once and be like, well, I gotta see what the button does. There's like, no way, I'm just gonna sit here and not know.

• 23:29Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 23:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:30Josh Clark?

  The one guy apparently pressed the button 190 times in that, in that study.

• 23:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think they should do some follow-up studies with that guy.

• 23:39Josh Clark?

  And just that guy.

• 23:40Speaker 04

  Something's going on there.

• 23:42Josh Clark?

  Exactly. So circling it back around to evolution, what they basically put all this together is that, you know, just sitting around like a campfire or something, if we got bored, or Tuk Tuk got bored, that might prompt them to be like, I'm gonna go see what's over here. I'm gonna go, you know, see what's down this river. And then maybe Tuk Tuk encountered a new animal that Tuk Tuk had never seen before. And Tuk Tuk was kind of forced to create a new weapon to hunt that animal. Or even better, even better, Tuk Tuk made friends with that animal. And all of a sudden, both of their brains just enlarge because of the empathy and love that developed between the two.

• 24:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, that could go either way. You know, I've talked a bit about watching the survival TV show Alone. And a common theme among all participants on that show is like, you're out here by yourself and like, it gets boring. And sometimes that has led to them making decisions that, that leads to like the end of their stay there. Cause they did what Tuk Tuk did. They're like, hey, I'm bored. I want to go across that stream that I thought it was probably a really bad idea to cross. And, and turns out that was correct. And all of a sudden, they're getting helicoptered out.

• 24:56Josh Clark?

  Yes. But it can also work out too, in that you go make a friend with an animal on the other side of that stream.

• 25:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, or kill it and eat it.

• 25:06Josh Clark?

  So I think also one of the more prevalent interpretations among laypeople like us, meaning people who like to just lay around.

• 25:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:16Josh Clark?

  Is that dumb people are more prone to be bored. And apparently this is the idea of Henry David Thoreau. He was like, if you're, if you're smart, you can always find something to occupy yourself. And I was like, shut up, Thoreau.

• 25:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:29Josh Clark?

  We know that you're so smart and cool. We get it. You don't have to put everybody else down. Studies have not borne out Thoreau's idea. It finds that intelligent people and people of lower intelligence are not, neither one's more likely to, to become bored more easily. But there are personality traits that create, like trait boredom. There's trait and there's state, just like optimism. There's trait boredom and there's state boredom. And trait boredom seems to be kind of identified with two different types of people.

• 26:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a psychologist named John Eastwood that said, if you're, if you're an impulsive person and if you're always like looking for that new thrill and that, you know, generally kind of understimulated by the world around you, then that totally makes sense that you would be prone to boredom. This one, I don't know, I can't make sense of, but if you're highly sensitive to pain and fearful of the world around you, maybe you're unsatisfied by the idea, like the safety net of not leaving your comfort zone. So you might be more prone to boredom, but I guess maybe more willing to live with it?

• 26:39Josh Clark?

  Yes. Your anxiety or your fears overcome your aversion, your natural aversion to boredom as a human, because, and so you're just not feeding your brain any new stuff anymore. So you become bored. It's very sad reasoning for, for being prone to boredom.

• 26:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. In school, you know, you were talking about intelligence. In school, boredom is a big, you know, can be a big challenge for any student. But there are eight precursors for boredom in school, which is you're under-challenged. Like maybe you're in a, like a remedial class and you're a little more advanced. Over-challenged and go the other way too, where if you're like, I just don't get this stuff. So you just slip into boredom, like you were talking about earlier. Monotony in classrooms, if you don't like your teacher. If you think there's a lack of meaning in going to school or a lack of involvement. And then the other one is just the, you know, man, I could be doing whatever. I could be outside throwing the frisbee right now instead of being in this dumb class.

• 27:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And if you're an adolescent, you're essentially born to be bored. Like your boredom levels peak between the ages of 10 and 17. Apparently where you and I are in life right now is where boredom levels dip the most.

• 27:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, I feel that.

• 27:58Josh Clark?

  I can too. It's not like I'm always doing something meaningful or important. I just don't feel bored ever. That's all.

• 28:05Speaker 04

  I don't either.

• 28:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, even when I'm not doing anything, I'm never bored.

• 28:09Speaker 04

  Same, man. I don't, I don't feel boredom anymore. It's kind of great.

• 28:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's, it's great.

• 28:14Speaker 04

  I wonder if it's just getting to a certain point in your life where you're maybe just satisfied with where you are, or maybe drinking the small things more? I don't know.

• 28:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. I think that's definitely part of it. And apparently it starts to go back up as you get older, which I'm not looking forward to.

• 28:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, let's avoid that. Let's agree to avoid that.

• 28:35Josh Clark?

  Yes. All right. Agreed. Pinky swear.

• 28:37Speaker 04

  Pinky swear.

• 28:38Josh Clark?

  But nothing compares to your, your levels of boredom from 10 to 17. Part of it is that your brain is still developing. So you said impulse control needing stimulation is one, or one group of people who get bored more easily. Well, adolescents by nature are like that because their brain is still developing. And then also they have much less agency or control over their lives. And control or lack of control is positively correlated with boredom.

• 29:09Speaker 04

  Oh, sure.

• 29:10Josh Clark?

  So, yes. So if you're like, I want to go buy a Mad Magazine at this awesome used comic book store.

• 29:19Josh Clark?

  But I can't because I can't drive and it's all the way on the other side of town. You're probably going to really resent the situation that you're in right there. And nothing is going to make you, like, you're not going to say, oh, I'll just go play duck hunt then and be happy. You're just upset about that. And that can, can create like a sense of boredom in and of itself.

• 29:41Speaker 04

  Buddy, do you remember the feeling you got when you got that driver's license?

• 29:50Josh Clark?

  No, not really. I don't.

• 29:51Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 29:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 29:53Speaker 04

  Man, that is, and it might just be me then. That was one of the single most like important sort of things that happened in my life up to, you know, my twenties or thirties even.

• 30:06Josh Clark?

  Wow, that's awesome.

• 30:07Speaker 04

  That freedom, when I finally got that car key and was able to go and leave the house by myself to go do something and go somewhere that I wanted to go.

• 30:16Josh Clark?

  That's cool, man.

• 30:17Speaker 04

  It was incredible. I remember the feeling of just being like, now I can leave.

• 30:25Speaker 04

  No, I mean, no shade toward my family or anything. I've talked before about not having the greatest like situation with my parents and all. So, yeah, I wanted to get out of there, but just the freedom to go to my friend's house or whatever, or go to the Turtle's Record Store or whatever.

• 30:39Josh Clark?

  No, I remember those.

• 30:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was incredible.

• 30:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, no, totally. You prize freedom.

• 30:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:44Josh Clark?

  That makes sense.

• 30:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure. We should probably talk about digital media, though, because

• 30:50Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 30:50Speaker 04

  if you look at like boredom generationally, it's a different ball of twine these days.

• 30:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so I think most people think when you get bored, you pull out your smartphone and you go on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok, I guess is how you pronounce it.

• 31:07Josh Clark?

  And like now you're not bored any longer. And there are theories, starting with our good friend, Arthur Schopenhauer, that you're still bored. What you have done is actually lowered your cognitive levels.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:25Josh Clark?

  So that you're not bored anymore. You're not going and doing something meaningful or fulfilling to stave off boredom. You've just undertaken a deeply maladaptive response to boredom, which is, I'm going to stop thinking so much. And that's what you're doing when you go scroll on social media.

• 31:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, I guess it's a temporary salve kind of thing. But like chronic exposure to that, to like your smartphone, is basically pushing up the standard of what you find engaging enough to keep you from being bored. Does that make sense?

• 32:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And that's, so that's a little different from what I'm saying. That totally makes sense to me. The one I'm talking about is this idea that what you're engaging is existential escape. And there's a whole school of thought that boredom represents a threat to meaning. It shows you what you're doing right now is not meaningful. What you're doing is meaningless. Maybe your entire life is meaningless. Maybe everyone's life is meaningless. So you're, you're, you're threatened by that. Boredom is, it generates those thoughts in you. So when you go pick up your phone and start scrolling, you are escaping this, the, those existential thoughts.

• 32:41Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 32:42Josh Clark?

  By not thinking about that kind of stuff.

• 32:44Speaker 04

  Right.

• 32:44Josh Clark?

  And when people spend hours and hours every day on their phone and everybody has it in their pocket, we have now this quick and easy way to just stop thinking and stop going and doing something else.

• 32:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:58Josh Clark?

  Is more meaningful to you personally, not necessarily to society, but something that's more meaningful to you. And so we get trapped in this, this state of living to a lesser degree than we would if there weren't social media apps on smartphones. Seriously, it's as cut and dried as that.

• 33:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure. I'm getting a dumb phone.

• 33:20Josh Clark?

  Are you?

• 33:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, I gotta figure it out, because I just started sort of looking into it. But I want to be able to have both with the same phone number.

• 33:30Josh Clark?

  Oh, neat.

• 33:31Speaker 04

  Because in certain situations, I'm gonna, I'm gonna still want my iPhone, like when I'm traveling or whatever. A lot of situations where I'm gonna want it.

• 33:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 33:38Speaker 04

  But I want to get one, and I just have, and maybe if someone knows how to do this, that would be great if they could write in. But I want to get one that works with the same phone number on the same carrier. I'm happy to pay for the extra, whatever it costs to manage that account or whatever. But yeah, in a lot of, most situations, I would try to have the dumb phone on me.

• 34:00Josh Clark?

  I'm just like talking out of turn here, but it seems like spoofing your SIM would be the answer to that. And I don't know how you would do that, but that would be my guess.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  I don't know what spoofing a SIM means.

• 34:14Josh Clark?

  Your SIM card is what gives your phone its individual characteristics, like its phone number and all that stuff?

• 34:19Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 34:20Josh Clark?

  So if you can figure out how to duplicate that or spoof it.

• 34:23Speaker 04

  I gotcha.

• 34:24Josh Clark?

  In TikTok terms.

• 34:25Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 34:25Josh Clark?

  You could conceivably have two phones with the same number getting the same info at the same time.

• 34:31Speaker 04

  It, you know, I don't know why Apple doesn't put out a dumb phone that's like, here's another thing we can sell you.

• 34:38Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 34:39Speaker 04

  That works perfectly with your phone number and everything. Like, I figure, I think they would sell a ton of those. Because people would be like, yeah, I want two phones. When I'm out with my friends, I want my dumb phone so I can just stay present. And when I, whatever, I want my smartphone.

• 34:53Josh Clark?

  I think that, I think you just kind of answered it, that there's people who would say, because generally people in charge don't want you to be present.

• 35:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, maybe so.

• 35:04Josh Clark?

  That's, that's, yeah, it's my guess.

• 35:07Speaker 04

  I just saw where social media companies are being sued for $220 billion by a handful of states.

• 35:13Josh Clark?

  Good.

• 35:14Speaker 04

  For getting children addicted to social media.

• 35:17Josh Clark?

  Which they 100% did.

• 35:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:20Josh Clark?

  I'm really curious how that pans out. Because it's, it's, I mean, it's a slam dunk case. It's just, those guys are so powerful.

• 35:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:28Josh Clark?

  I mean, they make the tobacco companies look like, you know, a local auto body shop.

• 35:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm with you. And hats off to Australia, because they mandated countrywide, no social media for any children under 16.

• 35:43Josh Clark?

  Yep. They did that a while back, didn't they?

• 35:45Speaker 04

  Uh, I don't know how recently, but they're sort of leading the way. And a lot of other countries are like, hey, maybe that's not such a bad idea. And certainly, you know, we're gonna do that in our family. And I don't even think 16, man. I would love to see Ruby get through all of high school without any exposure to social media.

• 35:59Josh Clark?

  That would be something.

• 36:00Speaker 04

  Really great.

• 36:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I think it's very sad, and I think it's going to be something that we, it's just going to get more and more clear as

• 36:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:08Josh Clark?

  time goes on, like just how harmful that was and is.

• 36:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. And especially as it gets more and more fake and deep faked and AI, to the point where people are sitting around staring at something that isn't even real, ever.

• 36:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I, I tend to hope, though, Chuck, that it's been ground in so hard and in such a compressed amount of time over the course of just several years, that people are just going to have a natural backlash against it. And maybe like, the cool thing will be to spend all your time outside doing stuff, you know?

• 36:43Speaker 04

  I hope so, man. I would love to see it swing. And things a lot of times do swing back hard the other way. I would love to see that of like, people like smashing their smartphones and be like, no, man, it was, things were better before. Let's go back to that.

• 36:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 36:56Speaker 04

  That'd be great. Uh, maybe we'll take a break and talk about animals and benefits of boredom. Does that sound good?

• 37:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 37:04Speaker 04

  All right, we'll be right back.

• 37:22Josh Clark?

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• 37:32Speaker 04

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• 37:45Josh Clark?

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• 38:00Speaker 04

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• 38:25Speaker 04

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• 38:32Josh Clark?

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• 38:46Speaker 04

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• 38:51Josh Clark?

  And of course, Bombas has socks. Not just any socks, socks for every type of weather, every type of occasion, because fall can be fickle. And Bombas makes socks that can handle it all. And the best part about Bombas, for every item you purchase, they donate an essential clothing item to someone facing housing insecurity. One purchased equals one donated, with over 200 million donations and counting.

• 39:13Speaker 04

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• 39:32Josh Clark?

  You know, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us, it brings us together, and it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next, unless something starts to feel off. Because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated.

• 39:47Speaker 04

  That's right. From the very first bite, food kicks off a chain reaction, signals moving between the gut, the brain, and the immune system, the constant back and forth we can't see and often don't fully understand. So we want to introduce to you Eating Interrupted, a new podcast from iHeart Ruby Studio. It's hosted by longtime journalist and Crohn's patient Cynthia McFadden. Eating Interrupted explores everything from food allergies and intolerance, and why they seem to be on the rise, to how digestion changes as we age, and what it's really like to live with a chronic GI condition.

• 40:16Josh Clark?

  Through personal stories and expert insight, listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect, and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 40:46Speaker 04

  All right, everyone, we're back after our little rant. I hope it was taken in the right way.

• 40:52Josh Clark?

  Tim Cook is like, those guys really hurt my feelings.

• 40:56Speaker 04

  Tim Cook would be, I hope he gives me credit when they invent a dumb phone that they can sell you for like $700.

• 41:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, at least.

• 41:05Speaker 04

  You can text and get the map to places and, uh, and call people and that'll be $700.

• 41:11Josh Clark?

  Right, we're, you're paying not to go into cognitive decline. I think that's really what the price reflects.

• 41:16Speaker 04

  Uh, all right. So I promised to talk about animals getting bored, uh, animals that aren't us, that is. And they have done research to, and basically kind of said like, yeah, animals for sure get bored. Um, I think we, I mean, people that are, you know, dogging, at least dog owners have seen their own dogs get bored and get like, get destructive because they're not stimulated enough. And I think that's kind of the same thing. But they've studied, uh, mink, uh, like the animal, the mink that, um, they house them in non-enriching environments. It was terrible. And then they said they definitely experienced boredom-like states, uh, because they found that they would, these mink would approach anything novel shown to them, even if it was like a predator, like what they thought was a predator,

• 42:00Speaker 04

  like a predator's shadow and the noises of a predator. The mink was like, well, I'll go check it out. I don't care. Anything but this cage.

• 42:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Isn't that interesting though? It increased curiosity in them, like because they were bored. So that kind of goes to, to support that evolutionary idea too.

• 42:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 42:16Josh Clark?

  There's another one that studied rats where basically they switched up foraging material and the flavor of the pellets under the foraging material for some rats and then others, they just gave them the same ones over and over again. And the ones that got the same ones over and over again exhibited behavior like trying to find the exit out of their cage and other really sad stuff. So what's heartening about this is animal welfare. People are pointing to this and saying like, um, if you have a, a pet or an animal that you keep, you have a greater responsibility to it than just keeping it alive and giving it food and water, maybe taking it for a walk. Animals get bored, which means you have to, you're responsible for stimulating something that gets bored if you've taken responsibility for it in any way.

• 42:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, my one dog Gibson is a, a hound dog and he is, um, very stimulated by smelling stuff, obviously. So they say when you take your dog for a walk to let them smell, like if you're, if you're constantly just pulling your dog, you know, because you're trying to get your steps in, they get more worn out from a 20 minute sniff walk than an hour, like hardcore exercise walk. And my walks with Gibson, like they're 45 to 50 minutes long and I bet half of that is standing around while he smells stuff.

• 43:29Josh Clark?

  I am so glad you said that, dude, because that is absolutely true. And I, you see a lot of people who are just like, come on. And that's, yeah, it doesn't like you're, that's how your dog like enjoys life is by sniffing other stuff.

• 43:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's great. And it's a good lesson, uh, for me, like as a person, like I-

• 43:49Josh Clark?

  I thought you were learning to sniff things too.

• 43:51Speaker 04

  No, no, no, just to slow down. Like yesterday, another weird example is I got, um, I went, sometimes I'll go out to play golf by myself if no one's around and get in like a little, you know, if they don't pair me with anyone, it's kind of great because I can, you know, drop as many balls to take the shot over again and really like just sort of treat it as practice.

• 44:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 44:09Speaker 04

  But I went out to do that the other day and they paired me with these two old fellers that were probably mid eighties to nineties.

• 44:17Josh Clark?

  Oh, wow.

• 44:17Speaker 04

  And boy, these guys were slow, slow, slow. And I was like, you know what, Chuck? This isn't that day. You're just gonna be there with them. You're gonna help look for their balls. You're gonna carry the clubs to them when they drop them and you're gonna slow it down. And it was a really lovely, relaxing experience. I didn't, I didn't get bored. I tried to like revel in the slowness of it all, you know?

• 44:42Josh Clark?

  They kept dropping their clubs?

• 44:43Speaker 04

  No, like, you know, you carry a pitching wedge and a putter to the green and you drop your pitching wedge to putt. I would always go like-

• 44:50Josh Clark?

  That's not what I thought you meant.

• 44:52Speaker 04

  I would always go caddy their club for them or get their ball or whatever, you know, try to help these guys out.

• 44:57Josh Clark?

  I got you now.

• 44:58Speaker 04

  They didn't like me very much though. It was still fun.

• 45:01Josh Clark?

  So, um, yeah, I think that's great advice too, just to slow down and stay present and mindful.

• 45:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. And all that I think comes around to the boredom thing. It's like, there are many ways to keep yourself from being bored. And one might be to just try and look at the circumstance and in a different way.

• 45:17Josh Clark?

  For sure. Um, also I think it's important to, to bear in mind that you, like what's meaningful to you or what's boring to you is boring or meaningful to somebody else.

• 45:30Speaker 04

  Right.

• 45:30Josh Clark?

  So it's not like you'll get all sorts of advice, like go out and read a book, go and ride a bike. Um, that might not necessarily be meaningful to you. There's something else that's going to be meaningful to you. And that's advice that's typically given to deal with boredom, which is identify things that you care about and then go do those things. Just have them on hand, you know? You don't have to do them all the time. You don't have to become the best at them. You don't have to drive yourself. You don't have to share your experience with anybody else.

• 46:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:01Josh Clark?

  But just identify some things like this is, this is meaningful to me. So that if you do find yourself bored, you don't necessarily just pull out your phone, you go, hmm, maybe I'll go to, um, you know, rescue guppies out of elementary school aquariums.

• 46:16Speaker 04

  Right.

• 46:17Josh Clark?

  Whatever, whatever it is.

• 46:20Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, it definitely can lead to creativity. Uh, there's a psychologist named Sandy Man that says that, uh, you know, embrace that boredom. Um, there was a study that she did where she had people copying numbers from a telephone directory and she found that, uh, they were more creative after, like she gave them a task, like, hey, try and think while you're doing this, try and think of new uses for plastic cups. And once they were subjected to the tedium of just copying numbers, it allowed their, you know, they embraced that boredom and their mind wandered to all these creative things they could do with, uh, the cups.

• 46:53Josh Clark?

  And beer pong was born.

• 46:55Speaker 04

  Exactly. Uh, and that there's something called the default mode network, um, where if you're, you know, not doing anything, that gives your brain space to go in that default mode where your brain isn't engaged in a specific thing, but it can like get creative.

• 47:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we've talked about that a lot over the last few years. And I know it's a big deal with ADHD, that it's really hard to get out of your default mode network.

• 47:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 47:22Josh Clark?

  And so no surprise, um, boredom can be a, a part of ADHD too.

• 47:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, and you know, we're talking about some, some of the positives. It can also be a negative thing, uh, because we talked about risk-taking and risky behavior just to do something different. Uh, they definitely tied boredom to like, you know, gambling, substance abuse and stuff like that. Uh, like the, the promise and of a, of a stimulation that you're seeking because your board can sometimes be like a really bad thing.

• 47:52Josh Clark?

  Agreed. Um, you can turn to, we've been picking on smartphones and sorry to everybody who's like, you guys are too preachy these days. That was definitely very preachy, but it is a pretty good example. It's not the only one. People take up drugs, literally take up drugs because they're bored with life. Uh, they start drinking sometimes. Uh, studies show, um, that people who are bored consistently go to, um, lower quality or low nutrition snacks over, you know, something better for them when they have the option. Like it, you can just, you go in a place where you're going to find some sort of stimulation.

• 48:32Josh Clark?

  And yeah, that's, so there are a lot of risk behaviors associated with boredom that you're going to do something because that you gotta get rid of that arousal state that's unpleasant, which is boredom, but it's not necessarily going to be going and volunteering at the cancer ward at your local hospital. It might be, oh, I'll go see what crack's all about.

• 48:53Speaker 04

  Man, you're so preachy.

• 48:56Josh Clark?

  Some people do find, I, we get that from time to time.

• 49:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, but you're sitting there encouraging people to like engage with the world and to go volunteer for cancer and not to do crack. Like get off your high horse.

• 49:09Josh Clark?

  I think that some people don't like being told what to do no matter what it is.

• 49:14Speaker 04

  I know. Yeah.

• 49:16Josh Clark?

  And I get that. I don't, I, I feel like also I think it's our age too. We're just lucky that we're not like the kind who like tell everybody how stupid they are too, you know?

• 49:27Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, I hope people know it's always take it or leave it. Like, you know,

• 49:33Speaker 04

  you don't have to be the way we're saying to be, but I, I love the advice of engaging with the world or volunteering for, you know, sick children in a hospital rather than doing crack. I'm, I'll stand, I'll die on that hill.

• 49:44Josh Clark?

  And I think also though, Chuck, it's really important that we pointed out that, you know, there's, there's not some ideal thing you should go be, go do.

• 49:54Speaker 04

  No.

• 49:54Josh Clark?

  That it's all based on what you find meaningful. And that's the point. Not what we're saying you should go do, but what you think you should go do. The point is to just do something that's going to help you in the long run more than, you know, turning to pot.

• 50:08Speaker 04

  Right. Uh, procrastination is another thing. I know we've, um, talked about that before, but it is definitely a response to boredom. Uh, proneness to boredom increases someone's tendency to procrastinate generally, uh, which is interesting because it's, uh, you know, doing that thing would solve the boredom problem that like the thing you're putting off a lot of times.

• 50:31Josh Clark?

  I think they're equating it with like looking at your smartphone. You're not actually doing anything. You're just lowering your brain standards for input.

• 50:40Speaker 04

  Oh, I guess that makes sense then.

• 50:42Josh Clark?

  And we talked about some, some stuff with managing boredom, like, um, you know, identifying ahead of time, things that you could go do. Like you said, don't just try to solve it immediately for kids. Let them kind of figure it out on their own. Um, I also saw there was a study where, um, researchers presented kids with a big bag of toys and they found that the kids played with each one a little bit and then just, just stopped eventually.

• 51:05Speaker 04

  Right.

• 51:06Josh Clark?

  And that if they gave kids just like one toy, the kid engaged with that one toy much longer. So that's part of it too, I guess, is, um, robbing children of any sort of choice in life, I think is the, the lesson there.

• 51:19Speaker 04

  I really, what really hit home was when you like to do something meaningful for you. I really liked that you said that because that could be- Going to, you know, working in your garden or whatever. It could be drawing something. It could be writing something, could be taking a walk. It could be anything. It doesn't have to be some like grand, meaningful gesture to other people.

• 51:39Josh Clark?

  Right. That's what I was trying to say, that there's not some level that your, your activities have to rise to, to be considered meaningful. If they're meaningful for you, bam. And do not say that looking at Instagram is meaningful for you. You're lying. You're lying to yourself. You're lying to Chuck. You're lying to me. You're lying to everybody.

• 51:59Speaker 04

  I agree with that.

• 52:01Josh Clark?

  Uh, I think that's it for boredom for now, huh?

• 52:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:04Josh Clark?

  That was a good one. I liked this one.

• 52:06Speaker 04

  I did too.

• 52:06Josh Clark?

  Uh, and I think since this is the end of boredom, it's time then for a listener menu.

• 52:12Speaker 04

  That's right. This is short and sweet. Uh, hey guys, long time listener, first time writer. This is about the irony episode, uh, from Nick. I once had a debate about the song ironic that you guys talked about from Alanis Morissette.

• 52:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 52:23Speaker 04

  With an English teacher I worked with. Uh, I argued that it is a purely ironic song because it's called ironic and contains no irony and irony is flipping expectations to a certain degree on a meta level. I really think the song is pure irony. Never really thought about that.

• 52:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 52:41Speaker 04

  Yeah. Uh, thanks for the great content, guys. I used to have playlists for my AP students to listen to for introducing subjects and for review, and they enjoyed it and it helped lay the foundation for their studies. And that is Nick.

• 52:52Josh Clark?

  Thanks a lot, Nick. That was just an all around great email. It's not very often that our minds are just completely blown, but I'm pretty sure you just did it for both of us.

• 53:01Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 53:03Josh Clark?

  If you want to be like Nick and blow our minds, please do. You can send it an email to [email protected].

• 53:14Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 53:30Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 54:01Speaker 04

  Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs and quick hellos are what keep relationships strong, even when life gets busy. Some of the most life-giving conversations start with just a phone call. That's why AT&T guarantees a network you can rely on so you can focus on the moments and people that matter most. That's the AT&T guarantee. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Just visit att.com/guarantee for details.

• 54:35Josh Clark?

  If car shopping feels like a whole thing, buying your car online on AutoTrader makes it way easier. Really, shop tons of cars online, compare prices, check financing and trade-in options from wherever you are. Start online, test drive at the dealer, and finish wherever works for you. Your info stays with you, so there's no starting over. Plus, you're working with local dealers with real people there to help. Buy your car online on AutoTrader. Really.

• 55:02Speaker 05

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.