The Physical Cost of Our Digital Lives

**Manoush Zomorodi** (0:00)
This dichotomy of either you're a Luddite, and you're off screens and flip phones only, or you're a token maxer, and you're all fricking in. Hi, I live in the middle, and I want the amazing things that tech can give me. And I also want to be a healthy, well-adjusted human who enjoys the world.
Can we not figure out this sort of middle zone? I've been thinking about it. Tell me if this resonates with you.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:28)
As Goldilocks mode?

**Manoush Zomorodi** (0:30)
Not too much, not too little. It's kind of just right.

**Laurie Segall** (0:33)
I love that.
I'm Laurie Segall, and you're listening to Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens. I'm so happy to be here with you. I'm a long-time fan, just full disclosure.

**Manoush Zomorodi** (0:49)
Well, I am too, and I brought you something.

**Laurie Segall** (0:51)
Oh, yes. Is that okay if I give it to you now?

**Manoush Zomorodi** (0:53)
I have a little gift.

**Laurie Segall** (0:55)
Oh, my goodness.

**Manoush Zomorodi** (0:56)
It's extremely high-tech.

**Laurie Segall** (0:57)
You brought an offering of some sort.

**Manoush Zomorodi** (0:59)
I did. I brought you a kazoo. And really annoying offering, some might say. I love it so much.

**Laurie Segall** (1:05)
And there's a reason why, right?

**Manoush Zomorodi** (1:08)
There is a reason why I brought you a kazoo. Not to just annoy the crap out of your family, friends, and coworkers, but because it increases your airflow.

**Laurie Segall** (1:19)
I love that. I love that.

**Manoush Zomorodi** (1:20)
Because I'm guessing you do spend a lot of time on your laptop.

**Laurie Segall** (1:24)
Oh, do I? And before we did this interview, I was asked to kind of monitor how much I was sitting. Oh.
And I think the headline was too much. Like, I started counting the hours yesterday.

**Manoush Zomorodi** (1:35)
Yeah.

**Laurie Segall** (1:35)
And I don't say like minutes. We're talking hours. Like, it must have been like nine, ten. And I'm like, you know, I promise I'm not just watching like bad reality television. I was working. Yeah. Like, it was an extraordinary amount of time sitting, which is a good way to introduce the topic of today's conversation. You know, we've talked so much about what tech has done to our minds. Yeah. But honestly, I don't think I've ever really talked about what it does to our bodies. I know, right? So thank God for you. This is the topic that you are bringing to the table. What got you interested in this?

**Manoush Zomorodi** (2:12)
It was feeling like crap got me interested in this.
I think it was, you know, during the pandemic, everything obviously went online and it was kind of amazing, right? Like we adapted so quickly to being on WhatsApp with our parents and Zoom and, you know, lying on the couch and watching Netflix when we couldn't go outside.
And I think we all felt pretty crappy and that made sense. It was a pandemic after all. But 2023 was the moment where we were coming out of that. And I noticed, like, just because we were allowed to go outside didn't mean that things had shifted back into real quote unquote life. My life was totally still. Zoom, zoom, zoom. My job went remote. It was just this constant sort of screen time. And combined with that, I just sort of noticed, like, I would close my laptop at the end of the day and still have just enough energy to sort of crawl over to the couch to scroll. Like, that was it.

**Laurie Segall** (3:11)
I just really understand that and relate to that.

**Manoush Zomorodi** (3:14)
Yeah. Well, everybody did. Everybody I talked to was like, I'm drained. I'm exhausted.
And like you said, we have heard like, oh, you know, too much screen time is fracturing our attention. It's making people anxious, depressed. But to me, this felt so physical. And so it made me realize the gaps in my basic biology knowledge and how little I knew about how the body would respond to a constant, not just barrage of screens, but all the sitting. Like, I had heard sitting is the new smoking, like, a decade ago. But I was kind of like, okay, and yeah, what?

**Laurie Segall** (3:54)
Like, I'm supposed to... And so what? I think this is what we were saying even before the cameras are rolling. It's like, so often now we just hear these platitudes that we're looking at on social media, and they're getting lots of views, and everyone's like, so outraged, like, shocking. But we're like, so what? And what? Now what? I think that's like the part that I kind of struggle with. And I think your book really kind of gets into the now what, and how do we shift culture. Before we get into it, I just want to look at your background, which is fun. You're a long time tech journalist.