Why living online is leaving us exhausted — and what actually helps (with Manoush Zomorodi and Elise Hu) | from TED Talks Daily

[00:00:00] Hey everyone, Sherrell Dorsey here. This year on TED Tech, we've dug deep into ideas that are changing our world. But over the next few weeks, I want to turn the focus into how technology is changing ourselves. To do this, I'm enlisting the help of my colleagues from the TED podcast world. Journalist and TED Radio Hour host Manoush Zomorodi took over the TED Talks Daily feed earlier this year.

[00:00:27] She produced a special series examining how our digital habits and changing technologies are rewiring our minds and our bodies. Over the next few weeks, you'll be hearing from Manoush and the speakers she curated at this year's TED conference.

[00:00:44] Today, you'll hear the first episode of the series where TED Talks Daily host Elise Hu and Manoush discuss the ideas shaping what it means to be human right now as technology reshapes everything around us. I'd love to know what you think about the series and our show in general, so feel free to leave us a review or a Spotify comment. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.

[00:01:12] You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. This week, we're doing something special. We're handing over the feed for the week to one of my favorite colleagues and my friend, Manoush Zomorodi. Many of you know Manoush as the host of NPR's TED Radio Hour. She's also a TED speaker and the author of two books, Bored and Brilliant, and her new one, Body Electric.

[00:01:36] She has spent her career exploring what technology is quietly doing to us and our bodies and our minds. She was a guest curator for TED 2026, working directly with speakers to develop their talks. And this week, she's taking over my feed to share those talks and the stories behind them. The week's series is called Your Body on Tech, How You Can Live a Healthier Life in Our High Tech Era. And it's built around what I think is one of the big questions of this moment.

[00:02:04] What does it mean to stay human and stay in touch with our bodies and brains in a world of rapid technological and digital change? Manoush has assembled seven extraordinary thinkers to explore this urgent topic from every angle. From the virologist who helped lead a vaccine release in a record 66 days, to the artist who makes you feel climate data in your bones. From the psychologist upending everything we thought we knew about teenagers and phones, to the father who found wonder inside the worst moments imaginable.

[00:02:34] It's a week of talks and conversations that can change how you think about your body, your mind, your relationship with technology, and what it means to be alive. But before I hand the mic over to Manoush for the week, I can't pass up the chance to ask her some big questions about these big ideas, because she's been thinking about this topic a lot. Before the industrial age, no one used to say, I need to get into nature more. No one said that because we all lived in nature, right?

[00:03:04] It's like, duh, you don't need the words for it. And I think that that's where we are now with a lot of our technology. We don't see the sort of negative space that's been left behind. So we need to name it. We need to be intentional about it. Our conversation covered a lot of ground. The science of our bodies, the design of our world, and the cultural shifts she thinks we need. Here we are at this point where technology sort of gives us so much, but we don't see the sort of negative space that's been left behind. So we need to name it.

[00:03:34] We need to be intentional about it. By the end, Manoush distills it all down to something rather simple and joyful by way of a 1970s psychology experiment with rats. My conversation with Manoush is coming up right after a short break. And now our TED conversation of the day. Manoush, it's so good to get a chance to talk to you again.

[00:04:03] Elise, always a pleasure. Always, always. And it's a special treat because you're about to take over for a week. I know. Thank you for panning over the baton. I'm delighted. I'm delighted. And I'm glad we're getting a chance to sit down and think about these ideas together. So my first question is how to think about how we can remain human inside systems that are changing faster than we are. That's an enormous question, Elise.

[00:04:31] And it's going to take us the whole week, I think, to unpack the various facets and angles on this very subject. I can tell you, for me, this quest started, gosh, 15 years ago when I was a tech reporter, but noticed really how having a smartphone, God, that sounds so sweet and antiquated, how that was changing things that I did. Sort of, I started thinking, like, this is changing how I parent. This is changing how I learn.

[00:04:59] This is changing, actually, I think, the things I believe. This is changing. So watching myself and the way I used my brain, the way I used my body change led to some big interactive podcast projects that I did. One was about exploring the role of boredom in our lives and what happens when we don't get bored because we're on our phones all the time. And then fast forward to the latest one, which is called Body Electric, which is about what happens to our bodies when we are sitting and looking at screens all day.

[00:05:28] And could that actually be some of the reasons why we feel like we can't focus or we're exhausted and drained all the time? So I just think we use our technology all day long in so many different ways. And the way it's designed is generally on a screen, which we conform to the tech as opposed to the tech conforming to us. And it doesn't always have to be that way. And that's what I think we're going to get into this week is we're going to look at some

[00:05:55] of the pros and cons of technology, the best ways we can use it, the ways that maybe we don't want to use it and can leave it behind. And I think some of the really huge philosophical questions that come up that we are going to be forced to confront, which is what do we want humanity to look like, even if we can change it with technology? You strike me as somebody who has been thinking about these just anyway, like naturally as you were growing up and in maybe dinner table conversations.

[00:06:25] I recall you sharing previously that your parents were both psychiatrists, right? So did they spend their careers kind of thinking about the relationship between the mind and the body? You would think they would. But my parents are retired psychiatrists. Their specialty was actually in geriatric psychology. So they looked a lot at Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. And so I think my obsession with longevity and living well and all the amazing scientific

[00:06:52] breakthroughs when it comes to these neurological disorders as we grow older and how we're really trying to get to the root of some of those. I think it definitely comes from that. But they are not American. And so the touchy, feely, personal, lived experience humanity stuff, not so much. That did not come up at the dinner table. But my theory is that my siblings and I sort of over-indexed on the being curious about

[00:07:21] just regular people because our parents were more sort of cerebral and scientific. And so we combine sort of some interest in that, not quite as much, and more of the sort of, you know, how can we understand the people around us better? Yeah. It's funny that my assumption, given when I heard what your parents did for a living, my assumption was like, oh, yeah, you came by this honestly. But it sounds like you actually... No. I mean, it was honest. I'm not lying my way to get here.

[00:07:50] But it was not like they were like, you know, this is something you should consider. Right, right. Lifelong inquiry. No, not at all. I think my parents are kind of like, wait, what do you do again? You knew you were a journalist, but now you do these research projects and like, what is that all about? Well, that's a great way to get into your research project that led to Body Electric. So for those listening who haven't heard it or read the book, can you give us a brief

[00:08:17] background into the context of this work and its main findings? Yeah. I'm going to take you back to 2023. We were all just sort of emerging from the pandemic and our lives had, of course, moved onto screens for everything, for work, for play, to talk to family, to socialize. And, you know, I don't know that I expected it to go back to being the way it was before the pandemic, but I don't think I quite could have anticipated how much of our lives remained

[00:08:47] fully on a screen. Yeah. And all I knew was that at the end of a day on my laptop, I was exhausted. I was so drained that the way I could think of it is like I would slide out of my chair, like onto the floor and sort of crawl over to the couch to scroll on my phone or watch some Netflix or do both at the same time, embarrassingly enough. And, you know, I think we had heard and I had reported on for over a decade at that

[00:09:15] point, the mental health effects of too much screen time or social media. But to me, this felt so physical and it made me realize, like, I had a lot of gaps in my knowledge. What was happening to me biologically when I sat and looked at a screen all day? And it didn't feel good. Was it bad? I wasn't sure. I mean, I'd heard, you know, sitting is the new smoking again a decade ago. But this felt just so draining. And also everybody says like, oh, I feel like I have ADHD.

[00:09:43] Like, well, maybe they do, but maybe they don't. Like, we can't all have it. Like, why can't we focus? Why can't we pay attention? Why do we feel like so foggy? So I was thinking about that when I heard on the radio about a physiologist at Columbia University Medical Center, a guy named Keith Diaz, who had been trying to figure out, this is so sad, the minimum amount of movement that the human body needed in order to not die a premature death due to sedentary habits.

[00:10:13] So he'd kind of found the answer, which was that they needed to move their body five minutes for every half hour of those long periods of sitting. Yeah. Because what he saw in the lab was extraordinary, Elise, like outsized benefits. Their blood sugar would drop like precipitously. Their blood pressure would drop precipitously. Their mood would improve. So I called him up and I was like, why aren't we all doing this?

[00:10:40] And he's like, because nobody likes interruptions because we're taught from the minute we go to kindergarten that sitting and looking straight ahead is what efficiency and a good worker looks like. Because, you know, we have software that tracks where their cursor is on the page and how many keystrokes they're doing an hour. We do not reward getting up and moving and taking breaks. So I said to Keith, I was like, well, what if we ask people?

[00:11:08] What if we see if they can actually integrate these movement breaks into their lives and just find out if they can, like, how do they do it? What's the feasibility? So we ended up partnering NPR and Columbia on a global clinical trial with over 20,000 people who signed up. And they could sign up to take breaks either every half hour of long sedentary stretches, every hour or every two hours.

[00:11:33] And I was not surprised that people were willing to do it. I've done these big interactive public science projects before. And, you know, people are amazing. But Keith was shocked because clearly they weren't ready for 20,000. We crashed the servers in Columbia. Oops. But at the end, I'll just give you the sort of brief version. We found that 80 percent of those who decided, like, committed to taking the breaks were able to stick with it.

[00:12:00] 80 percent actually liked having all these breaks. We heard that people had up to 28 percent reduction of fatigue in their day-to-day lives. We heard stories of people's knees and backs not hurting, that they didn't hate their job anymore, that they loved using the breaks because they came back to their desks and felt refreshed. And actually, we saw that productivity rose despite all of these interruptions.

[00:12:27] So people felt that they got more done and they rated the quality of their work as better. And so to me, I was like, so easy. The human body just needs to move. And then not only is it good for your, you know, not getting a chronic health condition like diabetes and obesity and all those other things, which are, by the way, huge, slow-moving pandemics in a world that's gotten more sedentary.

[00:12:52] But also, like, mentally, we think of, like, the body and the brain as being separate, but they're not. We are one organism. Those two things have to work in tandem with each other. So instead of, you know, getting kids off screens, okay, sure, yes. But also, how about getting more movement into their school day? Because we know it's good for learning, for comprehension, for feeling good about yourself as well.

[00:13:17] So anyway, our findings are being published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, which is hugely exciting. And I wrote a whole book about how people manage to integrate these interruptions into their workday. And a lot of it looks at the cognitive benefits as well, how the brain works, why movement makes such a difference in our ability to focus.

[00:13:38] And then I also go through, you know, ideas about sleep and rest and your eyesight and screens and listening and hearing because we are wearing headphones all day long. Right. So, yeah, it's been a journey. It's been a delightful, I would say, optimistic journey, which is how I sort of came to think about the TED session that I wanted to do.

[00:13:58] And you mentioned that you have engaged the listening public in big projects or experiments before, which connects to your previous book, Bored and Brilliant from 2017. I'd love for you to talk through the through line between your previous book and this one and how it all flows into this TED week that you're about to lead. Yeah. So the first time around, this was 2014.

[00:14:22] And I, again, started with my own little issue, which was I felt like I wasn't coming up with great ideas. I was missing it. And I started to sort of try to pinpoint why. And I started to think there was a time when maybe you would take public transportation or wait in line for coffee or just sit outside on your stoop and you wouldn't also check the headlines or text your friend or check your email.

[00:14:50] So my question was, all those little moments in my day that I now filled with my phone and productivity, what was I missing out on when I didn't used to do that, when I used to just let my mind wander, when I was bored, basically? And so, again, ask listeners, would they be curious about doing a week of getting bored with me, essentially? And I explained to them, you know, again, 20,000 people sign up, coincidentally. We explained to them sort of the neuroscience.

[00:15:20] At the time, mind wandering was actually a big topic in cognitive and neuroscience. And so we understood now that mind wandering actually uses a particular network in the brain that is known for when people do their most original thinking, their most creative thinking, problem solving, and something called autobiographical planning. This is where you tell yourself the narrative of your life. And basically main character energy is what we call it now, right? Like, who are you? Who do you want to be?

[00:15:50] All of these amazing things that your brain just needs time to do. So that was really, really – it was almost saying, like, when you're doing nothing, you are doing so much of something.

[00:16:01] And as that relates to now, I think it's this combination of, you know, technology makes it possible for us to take these creative ideas, this amazing thinking that we humans can do and, you know, just rapidly accelerate it, make it happen, change the world. But we still need to come back to these fundamental things that the human body needs, which is time. You cannot rush the human brain or the human body.

[00:16:31] It needs time. It needs oxygenation. We need to feel the feels. You need to slow down. And that is just the antithesis of the way innovation changes our lives. You know, every time we include a new technology in our lives from, like, escalators to drive-through restaurants to, well, now AI, we take something away that our body actually needs, I think. We make it easier for us to sit and be inert.

[00:17:00] And we're getting a lot out of it cognitively. But we're also depleting ourselves in a lot of way, too. And I prefer – you know, I've been thinking about this a lot. Like, I don't think we need to shame people about their screen time. Like, I just am not into it. I feel like it's not productive. Let's just say, you know, screen time, yes, moderation. But also let's think about what you should add to your life instead of what we're telling you to take away, right? Instead of get off TikTok.

[00:17:25] Let's say, like, did you take an evening stroll with your bestie from down the street to check on the weird dog that always sits outside on his stoop? You know, just, like, be in the world, be in life, be in nature. It sounds so basic. But I think that that is where we have gone to, where we've extracted sort of simple human things from our lives. And we have to be intentional about bringing them back. There's a question you ask in your book around technology and young people.

[00:17:51] And it's how do we add back what technology has crowded out while also teaching them, as in young people, to coexist with their devices? What could this mean in practice? Yeah, in practice, I like to think of, you know, make yourself a movement mantra. Between classes, instead of sitting and scrolling on Instagram to relax, think about what your body and brain needs. It needs oxygenation so that you can pay attention to the next class so that you can think through what you just learned in the last class.

[00:18:20] So maybe you'll take those five minutes and just do a lap around the quad. And not because, like, oh, God, I have to do this. I get to get out of the classroom. I get to take a walk around the quad. I'm going to think about what I just learned in that class. I'm going to be refreshed and ready and my brain will be oxygenated. And, hey, I might be more happy, too.

[00:18:40] So finding these little ways to coach yourself to be in your body, in your brain, listening to what you need instead of what you necessarily usually do. You cite a Pew study finding that Americans 60 and older spend more than four hours a day in front of screens, which is actually more than any other age group. You and I have talked about how I'm worried about my parents' screen time. Yes.

[00:19:05] There's also a 2022 UK study that found that watching more than four hours of TV a day raised dementia risk by 24%. But you also found that interactive screen use, things like browsing or emailing, engaging with content, that can actually be protective against dementia. So explain this for us. Is it that screens aren't the problem but how we're using the screens? That's exactly right.

[00:19:35] That's exactly right. So, first of all, boring but true, all things in moderation, right? I think one of the reasons we hear from so many older people who spend a lot of time on their screens is because it is a gateway to the world, right? Like, it is how you stay in touch with your friends. A lot of people take online courses. There's a lot of good TV shows out there, right?

[00:19:57] So one of the things that is sort of surprising is that actually if you choose to watch less TV but do more things that require you to interact with the screen, up to a certain point, that is actually good for your brain. You're creating new neurosynapses. You're making choices. You're pressing yourself to learn something new that's keeping your brain active. So that's great. At a certain point, too much screen time, I think it's something like four hours you max out or six hours that, like, enough is enough.

[00:20:26] You need to get off your screen. But I also hear from people saying, how can I be more social in my life and also move more? And one of the things we learned in the Body Electric study was that people who had a buddy, they just did better. It's not surprising, right? So find your neighbor who is willing to meet you after dinner every night for a walk up the block and back.

[00:20:51] I love that there's so much more scholarship now on how social health is health. Totally. That being connected is wellness. Yes, that's exactly right. We're talking over Zoom now. But if you and I were sitting in person, I would notice little expressions on your face a lot more clearly. I would notice your body language. You and I could have a moment where we're just going to look at each other and know exactly what we're thinking.

[00:21:17] So, like, this idea of being out in the world, it's more and more and more important, especially as we get older. What is your vision? What's your affirmative vision for a world or a built environment or social norms that are necessary in order to make that possible? Yeah, look, I know it's hard, right? But I think there's a mindset shift that has to happen, this idea that interruptions are bad. I am not an all-or-nothing person.

[00:21:43] If I am in flow, if I am, like, writing something and I am feeling it, but I know I've been sitting for too long, I will let myself stay in flow. I will give myself, fine, skip a movement break. Who cares? It's totally fine. What this is about is reconnecting with our bodies and ourselves so that we don't have to rely on timers and we don't have to hold ourselves, you know, accountable to some sort of externalization or optimization or a ring that pings us.

[00:22:11] It just is the ability to ask, what do I need right now for my well-being, for my health, my mental, my physical health? And maybe it's a movement break or maybe it's just going to talk to a friend or maybe it's having, you know, a healthy snack. Some of that is very simple. But I think then also structurally, those are the questions you're asking, right? Like, we want to maximize productivity, output, and efficiency.

[00:22:36] And I think it's paradoxical to say that actually taking breaks will improve the outcomes of businesses. People can't quite believe it. But that requires a trust, right? It requires a trust that someone will take a break for 5, 10 minutes, not for two hours. So that's about, you know, rethinking the culture in a lot of places. Other places, it's merely resetting Google Calendar so that every 60-minute meeting is now 55 minutes.

[00:23:03] And you give people five minutes to, like, get a glass of water, use the bathroom, go for a walk up and down the driveway, and then come back. And, hey, guess what? They may even remember what's happening in all those meetings on Zoom that you've been having. And actually, think about how they're going to execute all the ideas that you've discussed. Everybody loves a simple answer. You know, give me a meme. Give me a slogan. And I think, unfortunately, humans are very complicated. And the message is nuanced depending on who you are and your situation.

[00:23:33] But I think we're ready for some nuance. And what do you think we get in return? Because what I want to get at is what is the bigger argument that you're making? The one five-minute walk or spending time with a friend and just being bored without a distraction, what is that a doorway into for us? What do we get out of it? To me, it's joy. It's that simple.

[00:23:54] Because when you feel good in your body, if you enjoy being in your own company, if you feel the sun on your shoulders, it's these moments of really just feeling alive. I think it's that fundamental and simple. Also, yes, maybe you won't need to be on diabetes medication. So that's nice, too.

[00:24:17] And maybe it's easier to do your homework because you understand that, you know, trying to do two things at once is actually impossible. So I think it's about making the most of just being a human on this planet. And it strikes me that the sweet spot for how we relate with our devices and how we relate with the technology in our lives is going to be different for everyone.

[00:24:41] And it's also sort of generational, you know, because when I was growing up in the 90s, there was a time before we were just glued to devices or the internet. There was a pre-internet time even, like before 1994, right? And so those of us who are now kind of raising kids and thinking about kids in screen time have a different reference point than our kids who never knew of a different way, right?

[00:25:07] That has led to a lot of the, I think, tech pessimism that we've been seeing as well. And so in your book, you wrote, you're not anti-tech, you're fascinated by it and then cautiously hopeful. Where have you drawn the line or decided to strike a balance for yourself on how we live with tech without feeling wrecked by it? So I've been thinking about the first part of what you said, which is this idea that there are those of us who remember before times, right?

[00:25:35] If I had, you know, in the 80s said to someone like, have you gotten any movement today? They would have been like, wait, what are you talking about? Have I had gotten movement? You know what I mean? And so here we are at this point where technology sort of gives us so much, but we don't see the sort of negative space that's been left behind. So we need to name it. We need to be intentional about it. Did you get some thinking time today? Did you get some movement in your life today? We need to use language. If you need to schedule it, schedule it.

[00:26:04] You know, it's important to give it the space that it needs because it's so easy for it to get crowded out by all the other things that you can be doing that are very alluring. And most of those are on screens. In terms of finding this path, I love that you use the word path because I've actually been thinking about it as Goldilocks mode. It's like not too much, not too little. It's moderation.

[00:26:28] So I don't have all the answers, but I think that we're at a moment in society where people are like, I can't be a Luddite. I don't want to brick my phone and go offline all the time. I have kids. I have elderly parents. I have a job. I like some of the – a lot of the things that I get from being online. So I think we need to start to figure out middle ground. Who are we? What is it that we want and that we're not willing to accept?

[00:26:54] But also how do we begin to make our voices heard, to ask for the things that we want? Every time I go online now, I'm trying to think about it. Like what is my middle way here? I'm going to use ChatGPT because actually I find it really interesting. But at what point do I start to notice that I'm believing too much of what I'm reading, that it's telling me, or that I have been on there for too long and like I've prompted my way into a hole and time to step away?

[00:27:21] Or that I'm relying on it to come up with an idea that actually at the end of the day, it's going to be a struggle for me, but my idea will be good. I just need to give myself the time and space to do it. So I feel like I'm constantly negotiating. And if there's some way to begin to codify that, to bring this framework to more people, that's what I think I'd like to do next. What do you make of Gen Z and the whole touch grass? Oh, I love them. So, okay.

[00:27:51] I was using ChatGPT the other day and my 16-year-old daughter came downstairs and saw what I was doing and laid into me. She was like, you know that with every prompt, you are destroying the planet. You're melting an iceberg. I know. Think about that. She really shamed me. And I think she's right, you know?

[00:28:14] I want to believe the technologists that I hear who say like, no, no, no, this technology is going to figure out the answer to our energy global warming crisis. So you don't have to worry about that. I'd love to think that. But I don't think necessarily not using any of it is the answer either. But I have so much immense respect for Gen Z in that they've seen what has happened to the generations above them. And they're like, no, you know, the pandemic did a number on them as well.

[00:28:44] So they're having to figure it out. They know what they missed in some ways. And they're mad about it. And they're taking it back, which is salute them. I know. I'm interested to see what happens with this generation as they come into roles of leadership. There's a lot of debate around regulation and calls for regulation. And some of it has really led to a lot of infighting.

[00:29:08] Is there anything specific you think that we or listeners should be looking at or even kind of getting curious about that is happening either in other countries or here in the U.S. where we are? One of the speakers we're going to hear from during my takeover week is Candace Odgers, who is a child psychologist who studies teens and screens at UC Irvine. And one of the things she says is counterintuitive.

[00:29:36] She is not for bans on phones in schools. She is not for bans on under 16-year-olds on social media. And part of the reason is because she says we think that getting kids off screens is going to be a silver bullet, that it's going to solve all our problems. We've decided that screens are the villains. And if we get rid of them, boom, we're going to fix it.

[00:30:01] And as we've seen now in Australia with kids supposedly supposed to be off social media, 16 and under, that is just not happening because kids are really smart and they figure their ways around. But also, as she goes through in her talk, there are so many other reasons why kids are struggling and that we can't blame on screens.

[00:30:22] We have to look at, you know, the whole person, which sounds kind of cheesy, but she makes, I think, a very compelling case that technology is just one part of the issues. Do we need regulation? Hell yes. These places need to be safer for everyone, not just kids. But let's not, you know, throw the baby out with the bathwater in the process. And let's not let the tech companies off the hook that if they get regulated, see, we've done our part. There's more to it than that. We need to look at systems for kids.

[00:30:51] And, I mean, I'm not from Scandinavia, but maybe look at a little bit more social services that can be given to the most vulnerable in our population. You're listening to my conversation with Manoush Zomorodi, author, journalist, and the guest host for a week of episodes all centered around our bodies and technology. We'll be right back after a short break. Stick around.

[00:31:19] You spoke earlier about not wanting to blame individuals or shame anyone. I'm thinking about the culture of productivity that we're in. If it's a failure of design and not willpower, then how are we getting productivity wrong? And what would it look like to get it right or get it better? Oh, God, that's like the biggest question ever. I think different things work for different people.

[00:31:46] One of the beauties of technology is that it can be so personalized to who we are and what we need. Unfortunately, a lot of the incentives of these tech companies is that it's personalized to get the companies what they need, which is more time spent on these devices or platforms to show us more ads, to make more money. Ad platforms, right? Totally. Yeah, exactly. So do I have the productivity answer or hack? No.

[00:32:14] But I think we need to be more cautious as we go forward, particularly in the AI economy. And as some predict, this is going to change what we value in society. If jobs and capitalism and going up the corporate ladder and making more and more money is not how corporations run anymore because much of it is done by AI and automated, then we're going to have to consider, you know, what do we value?

[00:32:43] My hope is that we will go back to doing the human jobs and that productivity and maximizing won't be the thing that we go for anymore. Obviously, no one knows the answer, though. Okay. All right, Manoush, this is a fun moment for us because we are both TED podcast hosts. But after this conversation, you are going to take over for the next seven episodes. You mentioned Candice already. But before I hand over the reins, what are we in for this week? Okay, so we're going to take you on a journey, listener, this week.

[00:33:13] What is so great about doing these episodes is that I got to have conversations with all of the speakers and really delve into some of the things that we could just not fit into their talks. And also, we have the benefit of 2020 hindsight in that we know the questions that came up after their talks and address some of them.

[00:33:34] So we're going to start with the body with my research partner, Keith Diaz from Columbia University Medical Center, so that you can understand exactly what is happening in your body when you spend a lot of your time staring and looking at a screen. I really appreciate the way he's able to take very complex biological functions and break them down. I do need to warn you that he will use some visualization that you will never be able to unsee about what is happening to your body.

[00:34:02] His talk will stick with you. And then we're going to make our way to Candace. As I mentioned, she's at Teens and Screens and, again, has sort of an interesting take on what the right way is to parent in this digital age. I think it's a message that not many people have heard enough. Then we've got Kismikia Corbett. She's an extraordinary vaccine researcher at Harvard University.

[00:34:28] She led the team that founded the COVID vaccine breakthrough in record time. And she actually is regretful about the rollout of that vaccine. So her talk is about this idea like they made this incredible vaccine. Why were there so many people who didn't take it? How do we rebuild trust in science and between the people who are making the medical breakthroughs with the people who ultimately have to put those breakthroughs into their bodies in order to stay healthy?

[00:34:58] So she is very vulnerable in this talk and I think really takes you behind the scenes of how a researcher's brain works and her realization that that's not always helpful for public health and that they need to change the way they approach the public. After that, Michael Snyder. I love this guy. He – I've been following his work for years. He is the guy on wearables. He's at Stanford University.

[00:35:23] The man has been tracking everything his body and brain has done for the last several decades. He has also done incredible research on mounds and mounds of data that's been collected on people so that we understand why most people start to feel like they're getting older around the age of 44, 45. Oh, yeah. The aging cliff. Oh, my God. I thought it was just me. No. It's Michael Snyder. Yeah. Yeah. So after that, we go to Dhruv Kular.

[00:35:53] He's a physician and also writes for The New Yorker talking about – I think a lot of times we don't think of medication as an innovation or a technology, but GLP-1s absolutely are. And they are having a complete transformation of how we think about things like addiction and explaining how the brain works in ways that we did not know prior to all these people taking these GLP-1s for weight loss.

[00:36:18] So he sort of is a nice mix of ancient philosophy and really high-tech treatments and what that means for us in terms of what we value and our morals and how we want to treat our bodies. And then we've got Yi-Yoon Kang who is an artist who takes things that are invisible, that are shaping our lives like global warming, like the algorithms in AI that we have no idea how they work. And she makes them felt.

[00:36:46] You know, it's this sense of like, oh, I open my laptop and there's magic. Yi-Yoon has no time for that. She's like, no, I want you to feel and try to understand and be inside these algorithms because I think she wants you to think more thoughtfully and be more discerning if you can connect with these things in a way that you're not just like, I don't know, I pay my 20 bucks every month and something happens. I love her for that.

[00:37:09] And then finally, we wrap up with James Robinson, who's actually a personal friend who lost his son to a genetic illness. And he explains the sort of journey that he went on with understanding what medical science and technology could and could not do for his kid.

[00:37:27] And why he actually wouldn't change a thing, that there is something, you know, in a world where we're trying to optimize embryos and optimize our lives so that we can, well, some in Silicon Valley want to live forever. It's a pretty existential talk. It's about, you know, the finite nature so far of humanity and how our mortality, it actually brings us the joy that we experience on a daily basis. It's really moving.

[00:37:56] If there are takeaways that connect a lot of the ideas of these speakers that you worked with, what would you boil them down to? These are all people who think in a macro way, right? They are looking at how the smallest innovation, like putting a needle in your arm with a vaccine, can change the trajectory of entire populations.

[00:38:23] How compiling tiny little data points, if you add them all up, maybe we can get rid of diabetes. Like, so they are macro thinkers. But I also think there is a deep sense of wanting to connect and understanding the responsibility they have to people, right?

[00:38:47] You know, it doesn't matter if you can think these big thoughts and come up with these big innovations if no one believes you, if no one has access to it because they can't afford it, or if they're not allowed to because their boss says they can't move from their desk for hours at a time. So I think these are people who see systems. They see culture. They see society. They see health care.

[00:39:13] But they also see that their work is to find a way to make it for people to just live a little bit better and a little bit healthier and maybe even just a little bit more joyfully. Love that. Well, before we let you go, I'd like to ask you the question we ask at the end of a lot of our interviews, which is just to reflect on a gratitude that you have. What are you grateful for in this as we kind of begin the summer and the days get longer? Sure.

[00:39:42] I love summer. I've been thinking a lot about the rat park experiment. Tell us about this. Okay. So there's this like seminal psychological study that was done in the 70s. I mean, the science is, you know, a little fuzzy. But the point of it was this, that like they offered rats morphine, either the rats who were in the cages, in the labs, or then they built this like rat paradise, like a total rat paradise. And in the rat paradise, guess what?

[00:40:09] They didn't want the morphine because they were busy. They were busy like going down slides and meeting other rats and having a good time, right? And then the rats in the cages, they were like hooked on their morphine water bottles. So I think of summer as my rat park. I can be outside. I can play, you know, with my little niece and nephew who are so fun and exhausting.

[00:40:36] And I love ice cream so much. And it's all these like, you know, I want to be a happy rat this summer. I want to scurry around. Yes, get off my devices. But not because I feel shamed about it or anything like that, but because it's beautiful outside and because there's so many just visceral pleasures to be had. So I'm ready to soak it up.

[00:40:58] And we are so ready to soak up the learning from all of these speakers you were about to take over the feed with. Manoush, thank you so much for sitting down with me and talking to us about your ideas, your insights, your books, plural, and what's ahead for TED Talks Daily listeners. Thank you for trusting me to hand over the reins for the week. Listeners, please come on this ride with me. It's going to be epic. We're going to have a great time. We'll laugh. We'll cry. I promise it's going to be a lot of fun.

[00:41:30] That was Manoush Zomorodi in conversation with me, Elise Hu, and she's just getting started. Starting tomorrow, Manoush takes over the TED Talks Daily feed for a full week of talks and conversations with the speakers she curated for TED 2026. Each episode pairs one of their TED Talks with Manoush's own interview going deeper into the ideas behind the talks. Trust me, you won't want to miss a single one. Body Electric, Manoush's new book, is out now wherever books are sold.

[00:42:00] And that's it for today. If you're curious about TED's curation guidelines, visit TED.com slash curation guidelines. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was produced by Lucy Little, edited by Alejandra Salazar, fact-checked by Lucy Little, and engineered by Xander Adams. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Emma Taubner, and Tonsika Sangmarnivam. I'm Elise Hu.

[00:42:27] I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet. Thanks for listening. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea.