(upbeat music) - Welcome to "The Minor Consult," where I speak with leaders shaping our world in diverse ways. Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by Arianna Huffington. Arianna is a global entrepreneur and internationally recognized business leader. She founded The Huffington Post, now known as HuffPost, and she's authored numerous books, exploring politics, society, history, and health.
Now Arianna is the CEO of Thrive Global, a behavioral change company that she founded, focused on improving health and productivity. Recently, Thrive Global partnered with the OpenAI Startup Fund to form a new company called Thrive AI Health. Its goal is to leverage AI to provide personalized health coaching. Arianna, thank you for being here today, - Lloyd, it's so great to be with you.
- Arianna, you and I have had the opportunity to discuss the importance of health and wellbeing on several different occasions over the past several years. And for our listeners, what made you decide to pivot from The Huffington Post and start a company focused on wellness? - So Lloyd, it really started with my own personal wake-up call when I collapsed from exhaustion, burnout, stress, and hit my head on my desk, broke my cheekbone.
And that was the beginning of my recognizing that burnout wasn't just my personal problem, but a global epidemic. So I started covering these issues on The Huffington Post. I wrote two books on the subject, "Thrive" and "The Sleep Revolution." And then by 2016, I decided that I didn't just want to raise awareness, which I could have continued doing through a media company. I wanted to help people change behaviors. And as you know, changing behaviors is hard, but it's doable.
And for that, I needed to really delve into the science of behavior change and launch a new company that was a behavior change technology company. And that's why I launched Thrive. And it's been an amazing journey. And it's also a journey that has now led us to working with the pharma companies, self-insured employers. And recognizing that these five key behaviors that Thrive works on, sleep, food, exercise, stress management, and connection, are not just for prevention.
They're also for optimizing the management of disease. And that's important to stress. Because when people talk about prevention, they think of it as something warm and fuzzy. And really, what the great need of healthcare is, is dealing with sickness. I mean, you've often talked, Lloyd, about the fact that we have a great sickcare system, but not a healthcare system. But it's also important to recognize that when people are sick, behaviors matter a lot.
So that's what we are focusing on now, and I feel there are a lot of tailwinds in the zeitgeist. - So Arianna, in the office, there's a common belief that you have to sacrifice your health to be productive. But Thrive Global's philosophy is that you can have both, and, in fact, that wellbeing is linked to productivity. How did you shape Thrive Global around this idea? And what's your response to the pushback of this concept in the workplace culture?
- Well, you know, Lloyd, we've been living under the collective delusion that burnout is the price we pay for great performance, especially in Silicon Valley. You know, I was on the board of Uber, and we saw firsthand that delusion in action. And the science is unequivocal that when people are burnt out, when they're depleted, they don't operate at their best. They don't make the best decisions. They are less empathetic. They're less effective as leaders.
We're now in the middle of this huge transition. And you can see that transition when you look at what people brag about. When I was at the beginnings of my career, and for many years after, people would brag, "I'll sleep when I'm dead. You snooze, you lose." And now you have people bragging about how much sleep they got. Comparing, you know, their Oura Ring results and seeing, how much deep sleep did you get? How much REM sleep did you get? What was your HRV? Did you get a crown?
So we are in the middle of the shift. Obviously, there are many people who are still holding onto the idea that burnout is necessary for success. But a lot of people are moving ahead, and I think the culture is shifting. - That's great. So it's been nine years, nearly nine years, since Thrive Global was founded, you founded it, and it's certainly blossomed during that period of time and continues to thrive and grow and expand on its impact.
You've attracted high-profile investors, partnered with Fortune 500 businesses, and expanded your footprint globally. What's been your approach to growing Thrive Global? And maybe that could segue into Thrive Global and Thrive AI Health. - So Lloyd, I'm a huge believer in partnerships. I believe that while you can build everything on your own, timing is everything. And partnerships allow you to move faster and achieve more, more quickly. And that's been our philosophy.
We've partnered with companies. We've partnered, as you mentioned, at the beginning with the OpenAI Startup Fund to launch a company dedicated to building an AI health coach, which is a partnership I'm really excited about because, as you know, AI is now in every part of healthcare. But the emphasis has been on improving diagnostics, accelerating the rate of drug development. What the AI health coach is about is bringing expert-level coaching to millions of people who don't have access to it.
Because as you know, a lot of people with resources are already looking at these daily behaviors. They're already optimizing what they eat and how they exercise and how they sleep and how they deal with their stress. But the vast majority of people in this country are not. - Yes. - And as you know, we have 130 million people with chronic diseases. We have 30% of adolescents who are pre-diabetic.
We have really unsustainable healthcare costs, which are not going to become sustainable if people don't change behaviors. So that's really what we are focusing on now. And I find certain stories really alarming and inspiring at the same time to do differently and better. The latest story I was reading in the New York Times is from a nurse who was describing her rounds in West Virginia, going from home to home, visiting her patients who are all under 65. They were not Medicare patients.
And she describes story after story. I'll just give you one. She visits a patient who is diabetic and has heart disease, and she describes her breakfast. She has just finished two Pepsis and something called peppermint combos, which are kind of chips with dyes and 43 ingredients. And you look at that and you think, "This woman will never get well." - Right. Right. - And also, you know, her movements, we don't even call it exercise, are from the couch to the bathroom.
- Yes. - We need to change this, because as you know, our behaviors, our lifestyle choices are more important than our genes. And yet, they have not been treated with a scientific rigor that we need to treat them with in order to elevate them and make them kind of a companion of drugs, a companion of good medical care. It's not either/or. - That makes so much sense. Could you walk us through an example?
The story that you mentioned to us, there's so many things, so many opportunities there and challenges, but you raise the issue of diet, for example, and healthy eating. The issue of exercise or even, as you've emphasized, I mean, exercise is great, but first, start moving as a precursor. And oftentimes, just increasing movement is enough to dramatically change health trajectory.
Could you walk through some of the steps that you're pursuing through Thrive AI Health and, you know, some of the real-world examples of how, you know, an AI health coach can help in the story that you mentioned to us and so many others? - Absolutely. So the key, Lloyd, is to start with what Thrive calls microsteps. - Yes. - Because as you know, even if doctors mention nutrition or movement or sleep to their patients, they're more likely to use, like, generic recommendations.
Like, go on a Mediterranean diet, or walk 10,000 steps. And the truth of the matter is, most people don't know what a Mediterranean diet is. - Sure. Sure. - So we break it all down. We break it down into tiny steps, and we start with swaps even. You can't tell people, "Go from two Pepsis a day to water." - Yes. - But, you know, there are healthier sodas that have less sugar. So you start somewhere. My point is that if you want people to sustain healthier habits, you need to start small.
So you build that muscle of success. And we've worked on that behavior change methodology for over eight years now. So the AI coach is trained not on the whole of the web, but on Thrive's behavior change methodology, our thousands of microsteps, and great content that is engaging. Just to give you an example, we have produced a recipe book, but we asked famous chefs, like Ina Garten, Jose Andres, to donate recipes that had five ingredients or less and nothing expensive.
- Good. - So you can look at that recipe, and it's something you can do. It's something that's not expensive. And having people learn to cook... Oh, here. I have to show it to you. I'll send it to you, Lloyd. - Oh, thank you, thank you. That's wonderful. - And that way you get people engaged in their own health and wellbeing. - That's really exciting and so impactful. You know, what are some of the obstacles that you're navigating?
A general problem in behavior change has been adherence, or what starts out as being engaging and has people's interest, then people lose interest. They move on to other things, or it just becomes cumbersome. So how do you create an AI experience that inspires people to adopt behaviors, to stick with the behaviors, and to really see the benefits in terms of their health from adopting new habits?
- Actually, seeing the benefits from these healthier habits is one of the ways to keep people adherent. - Yes. - And that's why if you start small, we call our microsteps too small to fail, and you begin to see results, you are likely to stay adherent, including with your medications. Because as you know, Lloyd, adherence is one of the big problems with even the most lifesaving medicines.
- Absolutely. Yes. - And when we work with users who are on medications, because we are working with their daily behaviors, and we are in their lives and know their routines, and the coach is going to know all that, they're much more likely to be adherent. - Right. - You know, Kevin Volpp and David Asch who are behavioral change economists, who are on scientific advisory board, they call of this concept of a polypill.
A behavioral polypill, where your behaviors are augmenting the value of the medicine. Because even the most lifesaving medicine doesn't work if you don't take it. - Exactly. - And one of the other ways that will work, supplementing and augmenting the benefit of medicines, is by helping people mitigate and navigate side effects. - Right. - Including, you know, with GLP-1s. We've created wraparound services for GLP-1s that we've brought to Eli Lilly and LillyDirect.
And we are also bringing to different companies self-insured employees we work with. Because a lot of people who go on GLP-1s, they don't have, like, a training manual of how to eat. - Sure. Sure. - So very often, they just continue to eat junk, but less junk. - (laughs) Right, right. - And that really leads to terrible side effects. The same if they don't drink enough water, or if they don't exercise. They're more likely to lose muscle mass.
So all these things, you know, need to be very clearly explained. And you need a coach. And obviously, most people can't afford to have a personal coach. So that's where the AI coach comes in to help you be more successful on whatever medication you are on, including GLP-1s. - Arianna, on a broader scale, you've written about your belief that AI can help us become better people. Why do you think this is? And how do you think this could happen?
- So, you know, Lloyd, when we talk about AI, we talk a lot about, how can we make AI more human? - Yes. - How can we make AI reflect our human values? But I'm really very interested in, how can we get AI to help us become more human? Because we're at bit of a crossroads where people are more polarized than ever, angrier than ever, anxious, depressed. So how can we have AI help us connect with the better angels of our nature? And it really starts with how you see human nature.
I mean, I see all of us as being a mixture of good and bad, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it, that the line between good and evil goes through each man's heart. It's not that these are, like, all the good people and these are all the bad people. So how can we reinforce what is best in us?
So I believe that the AI coach, because it's going to be onboarded with incredible data about each one of us, because of this power of hyperpersonalization and incredible memory, you know, as you know, it'll soon be able to have, like, trillions of data points. You know, if you go to the Greek philosopher admonition "know thyself," you know, well, the AI coach is going to know us much better than we know ourselves, because we don't remember everything about ourselves.
- Sure. - So it'll be onboarded not just on our biometric data, lab data, medical data, but also our preferences, like what foods we like, what helps us go to sleep, how we like to exercise. But also, it's going to be onboarded on things you love that connect you with a deeper part of yourself. You play the cello. Music is very important to you. So the coach will know that. So if you're in a moment of stress, it'll feed you some cello music.
You know, it'll feed you something that resonates with you, specifically. Even people who consider themselves atheists, they may have a piece of poetry they love, or a hymn from their childhood, or a sacred text that can help connect us with something deeper in ourselves. So we see the coach obviously primarily helping people become healthier, but also helping people become more connected with their essence.
So that's why we call among ourselves the coach, not just a health coach, but the GPS for our soul. - That's wonderful. You know, Arianna, you're a recognized and accomplished leader. You've founded two successful international companies. What are some of the key lessons you've learned about leadership? And were there any eye-opening mistakes that provided an epiphany? - Oh, lots of them. (laughs) (Lloyd laughs) You know, just a very practical mistake.
I think the biggest mistakes I have made as a leader are hiring mistakes. You know, hiring the wrong person, especially in a senior position, is so draining. You lose so much time. - Yes. - And I discovered, as I analyzed my wrong hiring decisions, that every hiring mistake I made, I made when I was exhausted. - Hmm. Yes. - You know when you're exhausted and you are interviewing for a job, and all you really want to do is cross this thing off your to-do list?
- Yes. Yes. - You don't want to go interview somebody else. (Lloyd laughs) So I kind of overruled the red flags that a more intuitive and wiser part of myself was aware of. So that's just one thing. But the bigger thing, the most important thing for me as a leader is, how can you be in the eye of the hurricane?
At any time, but especially right now when we live in times of radical uncertainty and many, many challenges, how can you, I, all of us, as leaders, stay centered and unflappable in the middle of whatever is happening? - Yes. Yes. - And my favorite leadership manual that I actually have on my nightstand and I read at least a page or two every night, even though I've read it multiple times from beginning to end, is Marcus Aurelius's book "Meditations."
And there reason for that is that Marcus Aurelius was the emperor of Rome for 19 years. He faced everything. You know, challenges, invasions, betrayals. And he always managed to stay in the eye of the hurricane and write about it.
And I love that because sometimes when I tell my CEO friends, you know, "Make sure you take time to recharge and renew yourself, because when you are depleted and exhausted, it's much easier to be overreactive and overanxious about everything," and they say to me, "Arianna, I don't have time for that," my is answer is, "Well, you know, Marcus Aurelius was busy, too." (Lloyd laughs) He found time for that.
So for me, that's the biggest, biggest quality of leadership because then we can navigate anything and handle anything. And sometimes leaders think they have to emulate the frenetic pace of our times. And I think that's the worst thing we can do. - Sure. Sure. On a related note, what do you think are the most essential values for a company to thrive?
- So I think the most essential values are to bring all these microsteps to help leaders and every employee be most connected with their essence and what makes them most effective to bring them into the flow of work. How can we make it easy? Because we need to eliminate the friction and we need to minimize how many healthy behaviors depend on our willpower. - Yes. - So let me give you one example, Lloyd. - Sure. - Reducing stress in our everyday lives is key. Eliminating stress is impossible.
Like, there is no life, no job that does not include stress. But we can eliminate cumulative stress by interrupting the stress cycles. And there is a lot of neuroscience that shows us that in 60 to 90 seconds of conscious breathing, of focusing on what makes us grateful and brings joy into our lives, we can interrupt the stress cycle.
And that's kind of probably my favorite feature on the Thrive platform, and, of course, it's going to be on the Thrive AI coach, which is 60-second resets, we call them. So the platform and the coach will come with hundreds of preloaded resets to focus on your breathing, images and music, to basically move us to a different modality. But my favorite is when you create your own personal resets.
I have to create one for you, Lloyd, you know, with the people in your life who bring you joy, quotes that are meaningful to you. I love the quote you use, the French quote from your commencement at Stanford about wherever you are planted, bloom with grace. I love that. Music that you love. And then, I promise you, in 60 seconds, you can suddenly be connected with what you love about your life at the very moment when you may not love your life very much. - I think that's so important.
And taking that theme a bit further, you know, in a previous fireside chat, Arianna, that you and I had a few years ago, we talked about how to manage the mental health challenges associated with the pandemic. Since that time, our country has continued to see a deepening of our mental health crisis, with many people reporting barriers to care. What do you think is driving this increase in the mental health crisis?
And what are some approaches, including AI, that you think could help us most as individuals and as communities? - So, you know, Lloyd, in partnership with Stanford, we created a thriving mind curriculum, which has been incredibly effective and which used some of the best brain science work that Stanford has done, to actually help employees in dozens of multinational companies. And it's been unbelievably effective, and I'm very grateful to you and your teams for that.
What we're now seeing is that maybe it's time for us to stop separating mental health from physical health. - Exactly. - Because there's so much scientific data that shows us that these behaviors that I mentioned, of how you sleep and what you eat and how you move, are very central to also our depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions. - Yes. - And, you know, I think the Mayo Clinic was just given a big grant to study that. To study the impact of our metabolic health.
on our mental health. So that's something that I'm really excited about. You know, we know, it's so easy to see, that when you're sleep deprived, you are more likely to be depressed. - Arianna, this has been such a wonderful conversation, and I wanna end with two questions that I ask all my guests. First, what do you think are the most important qualities for a leader today? - Well, definitely what I mentioned. You know, being able to be in the eye of the hurricane, to model this behavior.
Because people look to leaders for how to be themselves, for cultural permission, to take care of themselves, to renew themselves. And also, I think, we are in a very good place now compared to where we were even a few years ago, where leaders realized that having people in their organization who may be brilliant or amazing, but they're really people who are not empathetic, who are not able to be good team collaborators, is really, in the end, costing the business.
You know, one way I like to say that is no brilliant jerks allowed. (Lloyd laughs) You know, you may be brilliant, but if you are toxic, it's going to affect everyone around you. - Exactly. And finally, what gives you hope for the future? - Well, first of all, Lloyd, you know, I'm a congenital optimist, and I love that you are, too. - It's great. Yes. - You know, I'm Greek, so I think it's in our DNA.
(Lloyd and Arianna laughs) And I believe that right now, you know, there are so many breakdowns. And we can focus on the breakdowns, but there also are a lot of breakthroughs. And one of the things I'm really most excited about is that people are focusing again on life's spiritual dimension. That has always been very important to me. And I wrote a book, actually. Don't worry if you haven't heard about it. I think it sold three copies. (laughs) I wrote it in 1994, called "The Fourth Instinct."
And the theme of the book was that most biologists and psychologists talk about three instincts to explain human behavior: survival, sex, and power/status. But if you look at human behavior through history, these three instincts do not explain it. They do not explain altruistic behavior. They do not explain so many people putting their own lives at risk to save Jews during the Second World War. They do not explain incredible acts of heroism and giving.
And they do not explain mystical experiences. They do not explain what we all feel when we listen to a piece of music, or we give birth, or, you know, these great moments of life. So I believe right now we've paid such a heavy price, because in throwing away religion, we throw out the baby with the bathwater.
- Sure. - And if you look at what's happening in our culture, if you look at the incredible political polarization, I think people have replaced politics with religion, or religion with politics. - Politics. Right. - So, you know, if you think of it, if somebody doesn't share your religious belief, you tend to think of them as heretics. And heretics should be burned at the stake. And we see that with politics. If somebody doesn't share your belief, you want them canceled.
So we need to look at all that. And we have some amazing numbers now from the latest Pew research poll of how many people call themselves spiritual and not religious. And for me, the key is to integrate that spiritual dimension in our lives. It doesn't have to be any particular organized religion. It's just, in some way or another, reconnecting with that deeper part of ourselves. - Well, Arianna, this has been a magnificent conversation.
As always, always learn a lot from our discussions, and I know that our listeners do and will as well. And thank you for listening to "The Minor Consult" with me, Stanford School of Medicine dean Lloyd Minor. I hope you enjoyed today's discussion with Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO of Thrive Global. Please send your questions by email to TheMinorConsult@TheMinorConsult.com, and check out our website, theminorconsult.com, for updates, episodes, and more.
To get the latest episodes of "The Minor Consult," subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Thank you so much for joining me today. I look forward to our next episode. Until then, stay safe, stay well, and be kind. (upbeat music)