The very fact that you are reading this sentence, contemplating whether you want to listen to this podcast, means that you are living out a fantasy from a previous generation's cyberpunk novel.

However you made it here, however you got these words into your brain, you did so by diving through data streams first cooked up by delirious engineers downing late-night coffees, wandering deep within rows of data tape unspooling from jerky, spinning platters.

We've been dreaming of this life for a long time, since before the vacuum tubes and punchcards of the '40s, and now that we are here, some people are worried that the tech will, at best, make us lazy, and at worst make us stupid.

Is all this new technology improving our thinking or dampening it? Are all these new communication tools turning us into navel-gazing human/brand hybrids, or are we developing a new set of senses that allow us to benefit from never severing contact with the people most important to us?

That's the topic of this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, and to answer these questions we welcome this episode's guest, Clive Thompson, who is the author of Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better. As the title suggests, he disagrees with the naysayers, and his book is an impressive investigation into why they are probably (thankfully) wrong. Thompson is a journalist whose work can be found published in Wired, The Washington Post, and the New York Times Magazine. You can learn more about him at his website, CollisionDetection.Net.

After the interview, I discuss a news story about research into how the way you walk can encourage or discourage criminals to attack you.

In every episode, before I read a bit of self delusion news, I taste a cookie baked from a recipe sent in by a listener/reader. That listener/reader wins a signed copy of my new book, “You Are Now Less Dumb,” and I post the recipe on the YANSS Pinterest page. This episode’s winner is Joye Swan who submitted a recipe for chewy rosemary sugar cookies. Send your own recipes to david {at} youarenotsosmart.com.

013 - Technology - Clive Thompson

As the dying approach their death, up to 88% of them experience certain vivid, moving dreams — though "dreams" isn't even the best word for these experiences, as they can happen to people when they're both awake and asleep, and are described by them as being "more real than real."

My guest today has studied these visions and dreams for many years and thinks they have important insights into the nature of life and death. His name is Dr. Chrisopther Kerr, and he's a hospice physician and end-of-life researcher, as well as the author of Death Is But a Dream: Finding Hope and Meaning at Life's End. We begin our conversation with Dr. Kerr's efforts to study end-of-life experiences on an objective, scientific basis, and how his research into these visions and dreams doesn't attempt to find their spiritual or paranormal origin, but simply seeks to catalog the phenomenon from a clinical perspective. We then discuss how long before death people begin having these dreams, the content of the dreams, and who shows up in them. Dr. Kerr describes how pre-death visions and dreams are typically positive and comforting, and how even the rarer, disturbing variety can end up being transformative. And he shares what these dreams do not only for the dying, but for their caregivers as well.

#785: The Dreams That Precede Death

Running is a gloriously democratic and accessible sport. All you need is a pair of shoes and the will to start moving your legs. It's so seemingly simple, that you may never think to figure out how you might get better at it — you just follow what your peers may be doing (who may not know anything more than you do), or pick up tips that percolate through social media (which may not be accurate), or 100% wing it, just vaguely trying to get a little faster each time you run.

My guest says that, rather than taking a willy-nilly approach to your recreational running, you can greatly improve your performance by learning from the professionals who actually run for a living.

His name is Matt Fitzgerald and he's a sports writer, a running coach, and the co-author of Run Like a Pro (Even If You're Slow): Elite Tools and Tips for Runners at Every Level. Today on the show Matt translates the best practices of elite runners into tactics the amateur can incorporate into their training, beginning with why you need to follow a well-programmed running plan, how to find the sweet spot for your running volume — including why you actually should concentrate more on the amount of time you run rather than the miles — and the number of hours Matt recommends trying to work up to running each week if you'd like to really see what you can do as a runner. We then discuss the ratio of low intensity to high intensity workouts you should be doing, the surprisingly small emphasis pros put on running form, what the pros know about what works best for recovery, and the edge you can get through cross-training. We end our conversation with the difference in mindset that marks elite runners, including how they're probably better quitters than you are.

#787: Run Like a Pro Even If You're Slow

It's time for the Season 3 finale of The Boys as the fight between Homelander and Soldier Boy comes to a head on "The Instant White-Hot Death". After the previous episode's revelation, Homelander is ready to make some big changes at Vought -- and with his new-found family. Meanwhile, Hughie comes to a realization of his own, thanks to Butcher. And it all comes down to a pitched battle in Vought Tower. From the big deaths, to what this all means for The Boys Season 4, we're discussing it all right here on our The Boys podcast.

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The Boys S3E08: “The Instant White-Hot Wild”

Why do corrupt people end up in power?

By way of an answer, you probably think of that famous quote from Lord Acton, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." But my guest today, Brian Klaas, would say that's only one part of what leads to corrupt individuals and cultures, the other being that people who are already corrupt are more likely to seek power in the first place. Brian argues that if we ever hope to develop better systems, from our national governments to our office hierarchies, we have to work on both prongs of this dynamic, not only preventing people who gain power from going bad, but encouraging good people to seek power as well.

Brian is the author of Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us, and today on the show, he and I discuss how people who possess the so-called "dark triad" of traits are more attracted to positions of power, how the framing around those positions can either amplify or alter this self-selection effect, and what a tyrannical homeowners' association president and a psychopathic school janitor show us about these dynamics. We also discuss why power does indeed corrupt people and can in fact change their very brain chemistry. Brian explains the importance of accountability in keeping a system clean, and how you can serve in positions of power without becoming corrupted yourself.

#792: How Power Corrupts

You hear a lot about metabolism. You probably know it has something to do with weight loss. And even if you don't go in for those supposed hacks around speeding up your metabolism, you likely figure you can at least increase it by exercising more.

This isn't actually the case, and my guest will sort through this and other misconceptions around metabolism on today's show. His name is Dr. Herman Pontzer and he's a professor of evolutionary anthropology and the author of Burn: New Research Blows the Lid Off How We Really Burn Calories, Lose Weight, and Stay Healthy. We begin our conversation with an overview of how metabolism powers everything your body does from thinking to moving to simply existing, and how it uses the food you eat as the energy needed to fuel these processes. We then get into Herman's field research which shows that increasing your physical activity doesn't actually increase the number of calories you burn, but why it's still hugely important to exercise anyway. He also unpacks whether certain kinds of foods are better for your metabolism, offers his recommendations on how to use diet to lose weight, and answers the common question as to whether it's true that your metabolism goes down as you age.

Resources Related to the Podcast

AoM Podcast #691: What You Can (Really) Learn About Exercise from Your Human Ancestors
AoM Podcast #552: How to Optimize Your Metabolism
AoM Podcast #475: How to Lose Weight, and Keep It Off Forever
AoM Podcast #636: Why You Overeat and What to Do About It
NYT article on what happened to the metabolisms of Biggest Loser contestants after the show
AoM Article: An Argument for Making Exercise (Not Diet) the Foundation of Weight Management

Connect With Herman Pontzer

Herman on Twitter
Herman's faculty page and lab at Duke

#793: The New Science of Metabolism and Weight Loss

In the quiet moments of our lives, we can all sense that our hearts long for something, though we often don’t know what that something is. We seek an answer in our phones, and while they can provide some sense of extension and fulfillment — a feeling of magic — the use of technology also comes with significant costs in individual development and interpersonal connection that we typically don’t fully understand and consider.

My guest today will unpack what it is we really yearn for, how technology, when misused, can direct us away from the path to fulfilling those yearnings, and how we can find true human flourishing in a world in which so much works against it. His name is Andy Crouch and he’s the author of The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World. Today on the show we talk about the tradeoffs you make when you seek magic without mastery, and how we can understand our desires better once we understand ourselves as heart, soul, mind, and strength complexes who want to be loved and known. We discuss the difference between interactions that are personal versus personalized, as well as the difference between devices and instruments, and how to use your phone as the latter instead of the former. We end our conversation with why Andy thinks we need to redesign the architecture of our relational lives and create something he calls “households.”

#796: The Life We’re Looking For

“We were young citizen-soldiers, terribly naive and gullible about what we would be confronted with in the air war over Europe and the profound effect it would have upon every fiber of our being for the rest of our lives. We were all afraid, but it was beyond our power to quit. We volunteered for the service and, once trained and overseas, felt we had no choice but to fulfill the mission assigned. My hope is that this book honors the men with whom I served by telling the truth about what it took to climb into the cold blue and fight for our lives over and over again.”

So writes the 100-year-old World War II veteran John “Lucky” Luckadoo in the new book he co-authored with Kevin Maurer: Damn Lucky: One Man’s Courage During the Bloodiest Military Campaign in Aviation History. Kevin is my guest today, and will share Lucky’s story, and with it, the story of WWII’s famous B-17 bomber.

During the war, airmen in the 100th Bomb Group could finish their combat service and return home after flying 25 missions. Yet with a 1 in 10 chance of becoming a casualty, few were able to reach this milestone. Lucky was one of the, well, lucky few who did, and Kevin traces how he got there, from trying to join the Royal Canadian Air Force as a teenager, to learning to fly the B-17 on the job, to his harrowing daylight bombing missions over Germany, to the life he made for himself after the war. Along the way, Kevin describes the brutal conditions inside a B-17 and the bomber’s role in winning the war.

#798: The Harrowing Life of a World War II B-17 Pilot

When it comes to improving our lives and reaching our goals, we often think of changing our personal habits and routines. We think about ourselves, but don’t look outside ourselves. But my guest would say that if we really want to change and make progress, we also need to surround ourselves with positive, strengthening people, and in particular, five types of “allies of glory” who can truly help us be our best.

His name is Antonio Neves and he’s an author, speaker, podcaster, and success coach. Today on the show, Antonio and I discuss the importance of relationships in moving us forward in our personal and career goals, the difference between allies who facilitate that progress and the thieves who hinder it, and how to minimize the influence that the latter have on us. We then get into the five kinds of allies Antonio says we need in our lives, and he unpacks what each of these allies offers. We end our conversation with Antonio’s advice for how to find these allies and expand your social and professional networks.

Resources Related to the Podcast

Antonio’s previous appearance on the podcast: #676 — Stop Living on Autopilot and Take Responsibility for Your Life
Sunday Firesides: Relationships Over Willpower
AoM Article: How to Cut Toxic People Out of Your Life
AoM Podcast #559: How to Handle Difficult Conversations
AoM Podcast #403: A Better Way to Network
AoM Article: The Cabinet of Invisible Counselors

Connect With Antonio Neves

Antonio’s Website

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#787: Run Like a Pro Even If You're Slow

The Art of Manliness

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