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Not only is my reading life better, but my life is better. Listen to What Should I Read Next every Tuesday and subscribe on your favorite podcast app? So I'm going to do something kind of dirty right now and I'm going to ask you how are you sitting right now? Oh my god, I'm so uncomfortable and I'm sitting at my husband's desk in the basement because my daughter's home sick. So I'm next to like his peloton.
And like basically in the man cave, I guess, really not feeling the feels down here desperate to go back to my little office, which is a few blocks away, but you know kid sick, all those things. So I came up with this idea because I was so embarrassed of how I am currently sitting, which I am sitting on one of these little stools that has like the the butt imprint that's trying to tell you, you know, where you're supposed to go. Do you know what I'm talking about?
No, it's not comfortable at all. And my computer is on what should be like a stand for a TV and like I'm sideways creeping in on my mic because I have to be close enough to my mic. I think anyone who tries to record podcasts in spaces that are not studios is familiar with like, yes, the weird maneuvering. Yes.
The weird maneuver your body that you have to do and usually when I'm recording, like at least one if not both of my legs falls completely asleep and you have to maneuver around to try to make it so that like you can make it go un-asleep but not have that pick up on the audio. It's just it's not good for me. I can tell like it hurts me. But you know what? I think we should sell this to the listeners that our our physical agitation is going to result in some extremely acute analysis.
And also that we are not like amazing sitters who are here to tell you exactly how you should sit. This is the Culture Study podcast and I'm Anne Helen Peterson and I'm Manouche Zamorote host of NPR's Ted Radio Hour author of the book Board Embrilliant, Mother to humans, one dog in Brooklyn. So we're talking about sitting today and before we talk a lot about the work that you have done on sitting, I just want I think there
are going to be some people who are like, how is sitting part of culture? And I kind of think of like sitting like the discourse around sitting like we have all these conversations about how how we sit how we shouldn't sit. Why it's bad that we sit but I would be curious to hear your thoughts here. Oh, 100%. I am obsessed with sitting obsessed with sitting and not sitting actually.
And I would say that sitting is very much culture because it is our default. Come on in and take a seat. Oh, let's hang out on the couch. Want to sit down? We're you know, it's just what we do when we go to school. We go to work. We travel anywhere. We freaking press down on our two buttocks and put them there. And I you know, for me, it was really over the pandemic that I was like, I can't do this anymore.
It's killing me. But it was like, well, so what's stopping you? What's stopping me is I have to be attached to my laptop. That is what is stopping me. And so I've been my recent quest. I go on many quests, try and understand how we can live better with our technology. That has been my recent quest to alleviate some of the real physical discomfort that all this sitting and screen time has made so many of us have.
So I would love to hear the story of you going to the lab at Columbia to have your vital science monitored. Can you tell us that? Totally. So I, so like I said, over the pandemic, I got a little obsessed with trying to understand how our technology was physically impacting us. Like I wanted to understand are we physically adapting to our technology? Like are my grandchildren going to have very long thumbs or something like that.
Well, the good news is no. Our DNA isn't changing. However, this whole sitting is the new smoking thing. It's not a terrible comparison. Obviously smoking will kill you much faster. But sitting for a long time is really not good for you.
And I read a really interesting study that was done in January 2023 by a bunch of researchers at Columbia University Medical Center that basically found that the best, most efficient way that they have found to disrupt some of the effects of sitting all day is by taking five minute gentle walking breaks every half hour.
So working out in the morning, if you're going to sit all day, sorry, it don't stop working out, but it's not going to mitigate the harmful effects of sitting, getting a standing desk turns out the jury's out on that one. If you're not moving, you're not getting your blood flowing. And so I was kind of like, well, that seems doable. Is it doable? I don't know, five minutes every half hour. What does that include? So I reached out to Kees Diaz, the head researcher at the exercise lab at Columbia.
So I was like, should we ask people if they can actually do this? And he was like, yes, yes, because what is the point of me doing all this research? If it only works in the lab, if people can't actually implement breaks into their day, then like we got to start over clearly, it shouldn't be the gold standard. No one can do it.
So as part of my investigation into this, he invited me to come to the lab and do two days. So one day I sat at a desk with my laptop and worked for eight hours straight, not totally. I was allowed to go to the bathroom. I had all kinds of monitors attached to me, you know, measuring my heart rate, my blood pressure. We also did glucose measurements. And I took, you know, like surveys up the wazoo about my concentration and all sorts of things.
And then a week later, I came back and every half hour, a lab technician would tap me on the shoulder and put me on a treadmill that was set to two miles per hour. So not fast. Yeah. And I would walk and I did that all day and they took the exact same measurements and it was, you know, relatively controlled. I ate the exact same meals. I tried to wear the same clothes, just to really consistently say I have the same amount of work to do.
And the results were pretty fascinating. I cut my blood sugar in half. My blood pressure was down by five points. And this was the weirdest. I rated my work quality as better, despite the fact that I had been interrupted all the time. And I was definitely had a better mood at the end of the day. And I just had more energy when I left. I was like, all right, what should we do? Where's the time before I was like, oh my God, I just have to go home and lie down on the couch.
I mean, that's not familiar, right? Like after a day of being on Slack and whatever, you're like, I just want to watch Netflix, which is just more sitting, right? But maybe in like a slightly more like horizontal scenario. So and tell me about the body electric project. Yeah. So we ended up inviting. This was a series that I ended up doing with NPR, where as part of it, we did episodes looking at how different parts of your body are adapting to your technology, like your eyeballs, your posture.
But we also invited people to partner with us in Columbia Medical University to see if we can get these walking breaks into our lives. So we asked people who participated in 23,000 people signed up to do it. Wow, which is right. I know people are feeling this. We asked them to sign up to take a five minute break every two hours, every one hour or every half hour.
This was the first time and this was really exciting for me because I've done these interactive projects before, but this was the first time that we were collecting like real data, like we left the data to the experts. I did the storytelling. They did the data collection. And they are, you know, the hope is that this year, they will publish in the actual scientific journal peer reviewed the whole jam.
But meanwhile, the preliminary results were pretty fascinating. I didn't think anyone would be able to do this, but in it is hard. That is what they found. Many participants struggled, but half, whether you see the glasses half full or empty, half were able to take movement breaks every half hour. That was actually more than I expected. The breaks did not hurt job performance. People felt more engaged with their work.
And their mental health was better. On average, they reported feeling 25% less fatigued at the end of the day. That makes total sense to me. So much of this messes with my thinking about like, and a lot of other scientists and studies that we've seen about how long concentration can last.
So it's almost like your body gives, your body needs this break and your mind needs it too. So it actually works really well to have a break in there that allows you to reset your mind and reset your body in that way. Well, actually, that brings up a really good point, which is that we did not tell people what to do during their break. Like if you want to be on a Zoom call and walk, knock yourself out. If you want to walk around the neighborhood and look at the birds, go for it.
So I think that actually, and I'm sure this will be in the data that they're, you know, there's just mountains of it that they're digging through. But what did you do with your time? I think it's a great question because for some people, like maybe they're like, this works great for me. I just do it during my Zoom calls. And I think, I think, I think, I think I'm going to have to clean my house anymore. I use the five minutes to just go around and, you know, microtask.
My dogs would be like so appreciative of this. They'd be like, every half hour we get pets. Like that's amazing. Well, I do have to ask. I mean, I read your newsletter. You're pretty active. You have a lot of things going on in your life. So does this, would this fit for you? Or does this sound daunting? No, I think I do some version of it actually on most days. And a lot of that has to do with being able to work from home.
I think that when I worked in an office, I did very, very little of this. Right. And so much of that had to do with being on the 15th floor and having to badge in and out. And like, when you leave the office in New York, it's just either getting the hell out of here. No, but it's like you're in Union Square. And it's either freezing or so humid, right?
Like it never felt like an environment that I wanted to be out in, in some capacity. And now I oftentimes, especially when I'm writing or I'm reading, I'll take a, I can only concentrate for that long anyway. And then I'll be like, oh, I want to go look at my flowers. Right. Or I'm like, I'm going to go pet the dog or whatever. So I think in some ways that I already have some version of this in place, but I think more, more mindfulness about it would benefit me.
But I do think like, you know, you kind of gestured at this, but people have a lot of feelings about their sitting and what is allowed or where they're space for it in their jobs. So what were some of the feelings that you heard from people who are participating in this study? Well, let's go with the negative ones first. People saying that, you know, this just was disruptive to my colleagues, me getting up and going around or my boss would never go for this or, you know, I work in retail.
Not an option for me. Right. So absolutely. There are structural impediments to this. There were some teachers who were like, I can't, you know, I only get 40 minutes with these kids. How am I going to interrupt and what am I going to do? Like go for a walk in the middle of it. So for sure we heard from people who said that.
And we, you know, tried to point out that yes, this is a culture shift that has to happen. And we have to play the long game in terms of understanding that we are in the midst of a very slow, but pretty steady health crisis that's going on here. And the world health organization estimates that if we stay as sedentary as we are now nearly 500 million people are going to develop heart disease obesity diabetes this decade.
It's going to cost governments billions and billions of dollars. It's going to cost you bosses who are listening a lot more money when it comes to health premiums. You know, is it money? That's the only reason obviously not. But there are long term ways. And if we can show in the short term that your employees will be more actually more efficient happier, less tired, do better work.
Then my hope would be that there would be more reasons for people to do it on the plus side people get weird and creative. And like there were some people who were like I just have like a freaking five minute dance party every hour. And it made me so happy. I just listen to music. I don't listen to enough or teachers who implemented walking around the room and like a conversation walking conversation.
And then you know kids get into it and they got really upset. It's time for our break. Other people saw teachers said that they saw better concentration actually by having more breaks, especially like, you know, teachers like who are teaching at three hour college course. And you get that one break in the middle. Yeah. So now they would one person started having these every half hour and they said just people just stayed with her way better and they love and they would come to people.
So another person decided that her least favorite tasks. This was actually a pediatrician who said that she'd never heard of any of this. And that actually during the day she's really busy. She's checking, you know, her patients walking back and forth, but it's at night when she has to update all the insurance forms and all the case work on her laptop that she gets depressed and like so it has no energy to do something after those four hours that she has to put in.
And she's like, I'm going to do this and it's like said it's really helping her. Another person built a chair that dumps her onto the ground. Every hour. So clearly an architecture student design student. So, you know, you got it. I think the, but to me, the main message is like asking yourself like, what do I feel when I do this? What do I feel when I don't do this? How can I help myself in that today and for my long term health as well?
Okay, but I think one question that a lot of people listening are going to have is what about people who can't not sit like maybe they're disabled or they have intense caregiving requirements that keep them seated or they're a long haul truck driver like whatever the reason. Constant sitting isn't totally a choice. So, did you hear from anyone in those categories or what does the research tell us about other measures that people can take to mitigate all of this sitting?
Yes, absolutely. If people cannot get up and walk around, there are lots of other things you can do like chair exercises. The main thing is to get your blood moving and your muscles moving so that can be rotations in your chair, that can be leg lifts in your chair, that can be stretching in your chair, the ideas just get your heart rate up, get moving, feel the muscles pumping like they need to be doing not just staying static.
Look, if you drive for a living and we did hear from people like that, safety comes first, but taking regular breaks at the truck stop, not just pulling over and getting something to drink, but taking a walk around the parking lot. So, yeah, there are definitely things you can do. Okay, so we got some really great questions from culture study listeners about sitting and specifically trying to sit less.
So, this question from Monica is going to set the stage for us. What's the deal with all this stand up for one minute or take 250 steps once each hour business? Is there science behind that or is it arbitrary? Like the 10,000 steps per day recommendation. Okay, so I want to say we've already talked about the science, right? But I understand the skepticism, especially when we all learned that the 10,000 steps per day was bunk, right? That was actually a made up benchmark used to sell pedometers.
So, how do we deal with some of that skepticism? Like how do we communicate this? Here's the thing, it's like yes, the five minutes every half hour, this is like the, they've shown it in the lab, it is published research. Here's why I think this project did so well is because it was prescriptive. It was a dose. It was saying like if you're sitting for these long, these periods of time, this is the dosage that we recommend.
And I think that that's what we're looking for these days, right? Like everyone just wants to be told like, okay fine, fine, fine, yes, just tell me what to do. And people, there are some people who took that to the extremes, like people were like, okay, I've pulled over onto the side of the road to get my five minutes. And it's like, okay, you know, just use your, your autonomy and have a little common sense and don't get yourself killed on the side of the road.
Like clearly there are times that it's appropriate and times there are not. So I guess to you, listen, or I would say like there is science behind some of it. And actually, I don't think the 10,000 steps thing is bunk. It was pulled out of the air to self-addominers and they have found scientifically at what point your health maxes out.
Like in terms of like for a woman, I think it's like, I don't even know six and a half thousand or something they figured out like at that point, like you don't get as much benefit. But you know what, I've done my own self study. And I only feel really like sleep well if I get 11 to 12,000. I have, I've been tracking my steps for years and I have noticed what has happened and I, I'm trying to like, I, I sound like such a like Tim Ferris, bro optimizer, please tell Charlie I referenced him.
And I, you know, there's a little bit of bro in me that loves the self-optimizing and I, I think for me, like killing it in the gym makes me tired the rest of the day. But having walking throughout my day for five to six miles is optimum for me. And I think each of us, like if you're, if you're gonna, if you're that personickity, like there are other people who don't need to be so regimented, more power to you. But if you do want a dosage, you need to experiment and see what works for you.
Totally, you know, it's funny. I think that so much of modern exercise is super weird. Like sometimes, you know, like Peloton is a bike that literally goes nowhere. And they like joke about that. They're like, you're doing amazing on this bike that goes nowhere. Or even something like lifting weights, right? Or a crossfit where you are simulating all of these activities that are actually things that we used to do outside as part of our, like as manual labor, right?
Yes. The way that we've come to regiment our lives is that we have to pack all of the exercise and all of the activity into a segment of time. So that then the rest of the day can be like productivity mindset where we are only doing work all of the time instead of maybe thinking about ways in which those things can be integrated, right?
And I think like I absolutely acknowledge all the ways in which working from home is like an incredible privilege and it's only afforded people in certain types of jobs. At the same time, one of the things that I think is revelatory about it is trying to figure out, okay, what works for me in terms of moving my body in ways that make me feel good, right?
Whether it's doing something like five minutes or also I want to do my run in the middle of the day and that doesn't actually affect my work if anything it makes me a better worker in the afternoon when usually I have a real slump of energy. And I think that thinking about these things and the fact that like the way we have organized work is not stable, right?
Like it is never how we thought about working in 2020 before the pandemic and our assumptions about how work had to be done, you know, we busted those and we busted them at various points. We used to have every single job used to have smoke breaks. Totally totally. Yes, I love this example totally and we used to be like, oh no, he's out on a smoke break. That's cool.
What if they were out on a walk break, you know, great. Well, and this is also, you know, I was explaining actually to a six year old the other day about how, like, you know, I think a lot of there's a lot of messaging about how smoking is bad, right? And they internalized that is like sometimes, oh, if someone smokes their bad and I was like, no, you know, like my grandparents smoked your grandparents smoked everyone's grandparents smoked a lot of people smoke now, like they're not bad people.
It's addictive. There was different understanding of what it does to your body, all these sorts of things. And I think like, you know, maybe this is where the comparison that like sitting is the new smoking is slightly useful in terms of what if we start to change our thinking about something that is very accepted as just like the way things are as a status quo. I love that. And yes, and the smoking thing also gave you permission to not have to talk to people back in the day.
And I think that's why people like to look at their phones because they're like, I just need a minute and I not, I don't want it to be awkward that I actually want to excuse myself from the situation. Obviously, we've taken that to a total extreme, but I do think like I see my kids and I, you know, who can blame them? Yes, they're exhausted. They want to play a video game on their phone.
And I'm like, my sister calls it. They're like doing a bonkit and I call it my like gin and tonic. It's like, you know, it's their thing to wind down and like in moderation. I don't care without me and gin and tonic once in a while after you get home. That's fine. I don't know about the bonkit. They're a little young for that.
But like I get the sentiment, right? Like there's a taking yourself out of a situation to relax. And it turns out the best way to do that is to go for a pretty not not like meandering stroll, but a pretty, you know, calm walk is a really good way to check all the boxes. Hey, everyone. It's Ann just popping in here to say thank you for listening and to ask you to consider becoming a paid subscriber.
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So I just wanted to read you one that we really appreciated. John wrote us in all caps to say, this is the cultural criticism I need in my everyday life. And yesterday, after listening to three apps in a row on my drive from Portland, I spent an hour at dinner with friends demanding they take positions on Bradley Cooper and Celeb Philanthropy and waxing poetic about our queen taffy and her profile subjects.
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So our next question is from Aaron who has received some warnings about how much she personally sits. I am a 36 year old woman with the dust job and I've been having some lumbar spine issues. I was recommended a standing desk by my PT recently. An orthopedist recently told me I need to fix my posture and interior pelvic tilt in order for my injury to be less of and I quote, a ticking time bomb.
I've been practicing and focusing on a neutral pelvis for a few days now and it's hard. Is this really natural? Why does it feel so unnatural? Have people really been standing with the neutral pelvis, tight core, tucked butt since forever? And will I ever really fix this after over a decade of sitting in front of a computer?
All right, so I would be curious. You referenced this earlier that the jury is still out on standing desk. So can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I'm a little worried for your listener about the standing desk. Because if this person is not working with someone to find their optimal posture and are standing in a bad posture for a long period of time, my understanding and sense is that actually could cause all their problems.
Down the line. So putting that out there. I should also say that I am dabbling in getting certified for Pilates. And so I think a lot about the pelvic tilt, the neutral. And all those things a ton and I have like this person, I feel like I want to hug you because I totally get exactly what you're talking about. And my new thing and I haven't told anybody this. The only person knows the people who are like, oh, mom's doing her weird thing. I'm doing.
So I'm doing. Sematic exercises, somatic course. I don't know if you know much about it. Yeah, not a ton, but I know I know what it is. But can you explain to listeners? Yeah, so there's some people who think, you know, it's about how you move your body relates to emotions, you feel that is not the somatic stuff that I'm looking into.
I think that I have learned ingrained in me bad habits of the way I sit and move in ways that are hurting my back. And what I'm trying to do is retrain my brain to understand what is, as this person said, neutral, what is the correct.
Because not something I think it had to do with having a baby who nearly busted my abdominal muscles and I never got back to normal. And so I'm trying. It's basically very I'm lying on the floor listening to a very calm woman telling me to breathe into my belly and then very slowly roll onto my sacrum.
So that's like the bones right above your tailbone and very slowly move back and that's it. So trying for my brain to understand that it has control over how I hold my pelvis and I'm only on week two here. And so the journey, I'm enjoying the journey and I hope that the destination is, you know, relieved some of my pain and I look, I see myself in pictures and I'm like, oh my God, you look like a freaking turtle with your neck,
I'm going to shut it out and you're rounded shoulders and like something is, maybe that is where the emotional thing comes in. I don't know, but I'm holding myself in ways that hurt and I want to unlearn that. So not a professional, but very much a fan.
And the way that I realize that I'm holding tension in my body and some of that's from sitting in like the like, you know, laptop, neck and all that sort of thing. But if I do a meditation, like a Peloton meditation, which I love and the way that they like have you do the body scan and release your body.
I always feel like I didn't even know that I was holding that so tense until someone told me to breathe into it. Yeah, I think the other thing that I sometimes think we fall into this trap of thinking like before we had computers. You know, our bodies were built for the labor that we did and that is, like bodies have been busted for a really long time and they got busted by industrialization and what we expected of bodies to do in factories.
And then before that, like, I think about if you were doing manual labor, like people's bodies got hurt a lot. They were really bad shape. We didn't have PT. We didn't have occupational therapy. You know, we didn't have understandings of how the body should work. We had some intuition. But like, there was a lot of pain and a lot of struggle. And we are working on a much more refined level about what we know and how we can treat these things.
But I think sometimes it's easy to think, oh, well, if I just didn't sit at a computer, my body would be fine. And that's not the case. Yeah, no. And I think what you're saying is like in, you know, the industrial age and factories and working on farms, what we were talking about is acute pain and injury. Right? Like, oh, he lost a frickin finger. But what we're talking about now is like decades in the making, which is really hard for our on demand society to do.
And so I think that's the only way to get into society to even engage with. And honestly, I didn't until I had a big birthday. And I started to feel my mortality and to. And I danced my ass off on my birthday. I could barely walk the next day. And I was like, what's happening?
It's this idea that yet we all know that like, yes, well, except for the last couple of years, generally, people are living longer. If you are privileged enough to live in certain ways and have health care and all those things. But like, I don't want to live longer badly. I actually want to be able to do stuff. So it's started to come home for me. But I understand why if you're 25 years old, you're like, what are you even talking about?
I'm good. Yeah, absolutely. You never, I had this thing recently where I'm like, why? Every time that I go to a new hotel and Arabian B, a friends house, like I wake up in my back hurts, like that never I never had to happen when I was younger. I think it's the same back. It's the same best. Okay, so our next question gets into more of the practicalities of movement during the work day. So this is from Miriam.
In a recent New York Times work advice column, someone asked Roxanne Gay about whether it was appropriate to walk on a desk treadmill with your camera on during a call. And Gay sort of said, I mean, norms have changed. And I found it so interesting because I still feel like it's, quote, not appropriate to be bouncing around in a call as you walk on the treadmill. I'd love to know more about these norms. Where do we stand with this as a society? I'm going to answer. Totally remember that.
And I'm going to answer with some of your own words, which you put in an op-ed in the LA Times. You said, our institutions need to encourage anyone who wants to change their relationship with their chair and devices. So, yeah, what do you think about norms? Like, is it okay to take a call on a treadmill desk?
Well, I mean, we know that the own arm sales force takes all his calls, I believe, correct me from wrong, on either the stairmaster or the other one that, you know, the one that looks like you're running in place, but you're not. The elliptical. The elliptical. Yes. Well, so he's one of the richest people in the world that owns the company. So obviously he can do whatever he wants.
But again, I think that's exactly what we need to do. And I so love that Roxanne Gay endorses, which is that if you're bopping back and forth on a Zoom, my hope is that we get to a point where people are like, yeah, I'll be that too. And we all kind of do it. It just has to be normal, right? Like it used, like you said before, it used to be normal that we stand outside and have sticks of tobacco that we would light and then it heal and breathe out onto everybody else.
Have you ever have you used a treadmill desk? What are your thoughts on the treadmill desk? I have tried it out like not for a whole day. I think it's their they're very specific. Like you can't just use a treadmill and do it. Like they are built to go incredibly slowly. Yes. And cost a lot of freaking money. So I have not invested. Am I curious? Yes. You have tried. I have also like you. I have tried and I I found it very awkward to try to type in particular. Here's what I think I like.
I think this is a conversation to about norms of having camera on, right? And you know, there was a conversation on my previous podcast work appropriate. I'm trying to remember the specifics, but it was basically like, is it fair for some people on my team to take a call or to, you know, sign on to a Zoom meeting from their car world of driving.
And some people believed that, oh, you need to have full attention at all times, right? And that means that you have to have all your documents in front of you. And then some people said, no, it doesn't matter. Like we're just we're shooting the shit. We're having a conversation about something like it just doesn't matter if they have their video.
They're video honor off like this is making flexibility possible in their lives, right? And my thinking is that there are probably some calls that maybe you shouldn't be bobbing up and down just slightly because it's just kind of distracting. So if it's a call that you really, really, really need that face to face interaction to read each other's cues, those sorts of things.
Then maybe that shouldn't be on the Zoom call. But otherwise he can turn off his camera or he could take it while walking outside. I think the like walk in talk has gotten a lot more popular. I personally love a phone call. I love a phone call. I tell everyone to call me on the phone.
Instead of doing what we usually do. And that allows me to go outside and talk or even just stand outside and pace around while my dogs play at my feet. So I think that like this is much more a conversation about figuring out what sort of calls. Demand what sort of presence agreed with all the things that you just said that like not every call is equal for sure. But also that we need to talk about this stuff like set expectations like is it just the check in every morning my team has a check in.
And we were all cameras off because we're in different time zones and people have just decided they can't deal. We also know that it's sensory overload for you on Zoom to see people. So that first morning meeting, it's cameras off. But I have a once a week meeting with you know two people I need them to be bought into what we're doing. So it is sit down have your notes be ready to go. And I know instinctively I'm also in a position of having been around for a while that I can set the tone.
But but I think that's really on managers to talk about these things. What do you guys think what should be our sort of you know cultural norms that we have for our meetings. Obviously things that are nagging at us and we're sort of looking to each other for clues about what's okay and what's not. But let's just talk about them. Yeah, I think that that like that reaction to like being like oh maybe maybe I don't feel comfortable with this.
Why do I feel uncomfortable with this? Why does this feel abnormal? Should it feel abnormal? How can we figure out how to work the flexibility and the needs that people have into their daily life like that? That to me is really interesting. So our last question I love it. It's philosophical is right in my belly. This is from Carrie and Melody's gonna read it.
I want to talk about walking pads and the fact that every 20 something girl my age has been influenced on TikTok to buy one to use while working from home. It's walking without any of the joy of being outside and looking at the world around you. And it feels like forced double productivity. You have to both walk 20,000 steps in a day and do a full time job.
It definitely feels like yet another step in the wrong direction of our obsession with fitness and quote unquote health that is completely bifurcated from any enjoyment, play or practical task. Walking on a walking pad during work is efficient and is quite different from hiking, walking contemplatively and even going on a neighborhood job while listening to music. All right. So I feel Carrie is awesome.
Like I just give you the whole idea of double productivity is a great phrase here that like, oh well at least I'm getting in my 20 steps a day. But I'm also not taking a second away from what is understood as working hard. Right. Even though I always argue that taking a walk and hanging out in your brain is actually really really productive in terms of like allowing ideas to germinate and to figure stuff out. 100% I wrote a book about that. There is science. Yes.
Yes. And so I think that some of the reticence maybe, you know, there's this idea that like, oh yeah, let's get into meditation because it makes us better work robots. So how can we like dearticulate some of this thinking of like, oh, I need to be better to my body. I need to sit less so that I can work longer. Right. So that my body doesn't break down so I can work.
Yeah. I mean, again, it does feel like every generation has the people who are like optimized and the other people are like, oh my god, let me just lie down for me. I think we need to look at the rising rates of depression anxiety loneliness, all of those things. People are not enjoying themselves in this world as much as maybe they could. And there's a lot of reasons for that.
But based on the reporting that I did for body electric, there is a lot to be said, not just for the sitting, but for the screen time and its effect on our physical and mental well being and those things very much connect. So to carry this point that the walking pad is annoying her 100% agree with her. However, maybe there's not a person who loves the walking pad and maybe they live somewhere where the weather is really terrible for it.
They don't want to go out when it's dark because they don't feel safe. Like whatever works for you, I can only endorse and maybe it's a mix, right? Like walk outside when you plan on when the weather is good. Walk on your walking pad when you're in a meeting that you don't really care about. Have a dance party with your dog because dogs think you're so weird and I love the look on their faces when you dance with them.
Am I supposed to dance with you? Is this what we're doing? Is this what we're doing? Oh, it's this thing that you okay? Okay, they're kind of like I'm with you. I can't quite do what you're doing, but yes. So to me, it's just like get movement into your like and I will not cast shade on anyone. However, they're trying to figure it out for themselves. Like move your body. It's good for your brain. It's good for your muscles.
It's good for your mental health. It's good for your physical health. I hate to tell you this. I don't want to be a productivity freak, but it will make you better at whatever work you do as well. And it will make you more creative and better problems, Oliver, too. I think of it as the mind, the body tech connection. Yeah. And we're just we're figuring it out as we go.
I think this is a great place to wrap up for today's ask and anything segment. Maneucia is sticking around to answer a tough question about what to do when it feels like your friend doesn't have time for you. This is just for our pay subscribers. So if this sounds like a conversation you need to hear head over to culturestudy pod dot subs.com and subscribe to get the full episode.
Alright, so if people want to hear more from you, you want to find all of this work. Where, where can we direct them? Yes. Okay. So two podcasts. One is NPR's Ted Radywehr. That's the regular gig there every week talking to crazy smart people. It's very fun. But if you want to hear more about body electric, that is its own has its own feed now. So just, you know, wherever you like, listen to podcasts, look for body electric.
And I'm trying to get into Instagram. It's not really my jam, but I kind of hang out there so you can come say hi to me. I'm at Maneucia Z. Stupid Elon ruin Twitter for me. So I know I know I spent sometimes I think about like how many hours that I spent, you know, building friendships and connections on that site. I really loved it. I feel like I was one of it. Like, yes, Twitter had its problems, but I miss what it did offer a lot. 100% same.
Okay. Thank you so much for joining me today. This has been a total pleasure and delight. Oh, thank you so much for having me and it was really, really fun. I love your work. Yes. An honor to be part of it. I'm going to stop sitting. I'm going to go stand. Yeah. Okay. More than we've had two 25 minutes. So.
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