1KHO 894: The Sun is the Great Healer of Healers | Linda Geddes, Chasing the Sun

**Ginny Yurich** (0:00)
There are so many things we think about when we think about our kids' future. What will they become? Who will they marry? Where will they live? What will our family look like 10, 20, 30 years from now? And somewhere along the way, we realize that planning for their future also means planning for the possibility that life doesn't go exactly the way we hope. That's why we have life insurance. Not because we live afraid of what might happen. Actually, it's the opposite. It gives us peace of mind, knowing that if something happened to one of us, the other wouldn't suddenly be trying to figure out how to support five kids while also dealing with unimaginable loss. If you've been putting this off, Ethos makes getting life insurance remarkably simple. It's 100% online. You can get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes, and potentially get same-day coverage. There's no medical exam, just a few simple health questions. You can get up to $3 million in coverage with some policies as low as $30 a month. You spend your whole life taking care of your family. This is one more way to take care of their future. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get a free quote at ethos.com/1000hours. That's ethos.com/1000hours.
Application times may vary, rates may vary.
I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside and honored, honored, honored to have British science journalist and author, Linda Geddes here. She has written some phenomenal books. She's written one called Bumpology about parents to be and the one that we're going to be talking about mainly today has been around for a little bit, less than a decade, but been around since before COVID called Chasing the Sun, How the Science of Sunlight Shapes Our Bodies and Minds. It's an incredible read. It's going to be applicable forever.
Linda, welcome.

**Linda Geddes** (1:34)
Thank you.

**Ginny Yurich** (1:36)
Can you talk about as a science journalist how you narrow down? I always say, I think journalists write the best books. There's always a lot of story woven in with information. They're always page turners. So every time I read a book and I'm like, oh, I really like that, then it turns out it's written by a journalist. So can you talk though about nearing down your focus as a science journalist? How did you decide that you want to trade a book about Sunlight?

**Linda Geddes** (2:00)
I would say it all started, probably about nearly two decades ago in the late 2000s. I was working as a staff reporter and editor on New Scientist magazine. I kept coming across more and more stories about this emerging field of research, which is circadian rhythms. Now, for people who aren't familiar with circadian rhythms, these are body clocks. The most obvious example is that we feel sleepy at night and awake in the morning. But we have body clocks throughout our organs and tissues, and they're all working in synchrony with one another. So, your immune cells, your release of hormones, your mood, the neurotransmitters in your brain, all of these things are under the control of these tiny molecular clocks in every cell of your body.
So, 15 years ago, there was more and more research being published about what these things control and the impact of shift work on human health and growing links between shift working and possible increased risk of cancer. I just thought this is really fascinating.
The more I started digging into circadian rhythms, the more I started realizing, there was also a lot of research coming out about the effects of light at night. The more I started looking into it, the more I realized that actually it's not just light affecting circadian rhythms. Light also has impacts on our alertness, independence of these circadian rhythms. It also, there's the whole vitamin D connection. The more I picked away at this, the more I went, you know, like we grew up as, we grew up, we evolved as, you know, organisms on this planet, which has a 24-hour cycle of light and dark. And today we live a very, very different life where, you know, we spend most of our daytime in the biological equivalent of darkness, even though it seems kind of nice and bright indoors, it's actually way, way, way dimmer than it is outdoors. And then we're spending our evenings exposed to bright artificial light. And so we've lost that pattern. And I just wondered, I thought, this is a really fascinating subject. Let's dig further.
Sorry, I've lost. I can't hear you. Are you muted? Yeah.

**Ginny Yurich** (4:33)
I have muted myself. Sometimes if I talk, when you talk it like cuts it out. So I was like, I'm going to make sure I have my part muted. And then I was like, I'll make sure I unmute. And then I didn't do it.