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There’s something we don’t talk about very much. It happens to all of us, but most of us would like to avoid it.

I’m talking about aging.

We’re living longer. That’s a good thing, right? And yet, the caregiver pool is shrinking or feeling burnt out and overwhelmed. And many people prefer to avoid talking about it.

That’s why I spoke with Chia-Lin Simmons, CEO of LogicMark, one of the leaders in medical alert, health communication, and personal safety technology. Simmons is a tech veteran who has worked at Google, Audible (during its sale to Amazon), Samsung, and with various startups in Silicon Valley.

When she joined LogicMark in 2021, the company was still rooted in the classic “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” medical-alert model. She wanted to rebuild it for the new world we find ourselves in. One of connected homes, longitudinal data, AI, and people who still want to retain the human aspects.

But what does that actually look like?

We discuss the future of aging and the role that technologies, including AI, are playing and can play. What are the technological gaps that older adults might need to overcome? How do we make sure robots aren’t replacing real human interactions? Which tasks should be allocated to machines and which are better suited for humans?

Human time is limited, perhaps it is best spent in areas that require real connection and creativity while technology handles repetitive tasks and monitoring of things like medication adherence, activity patterns, early signs of decline and so on.

There’s much debate about the role of AI, but one of the things it excels in is spotting patterns across massive data and making predictions based on probabilities. But it’s not a substitute for human vulnerability or the voice you hear when you reach out in the midst of a health crisis.

In this conversation we also explore the idea of having a digital twins, people’s relationships with safety devices, and the emotional load of caregiving.

Ultimately, at the center of everything is the tension between using technological tools to expanding human capacity vs outsourcing the very bits that make us human.

I hope you enjoy it!

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There’s a sci-fi movie I’ve been meaning to see for a while and this weekend I finally ended up watching it. I’ll avoid naming it outright because I don’t want to risk spoiling it for anyone who hasn’t seen it. But, suffice it to say, I had really enjoyed it.

During one pivotal scene, tears began to form in my eyes because a character I had grown deeply attached to looked like it might meet its demise. I gasped at the screen: “no.” In my mind I was already mourning. It seemed inevitable. In a ‘serious’ work, someone has to die.

I couldn’t even fathom a completely happy ending because I’ve grown so accustomed to things taking a darker turn, especially in movies.

That’s the traditional formula. You get the audience to care about a character—or several of them—but in the end you must sacrifice someone for the story to have emotional weight. That’s how compelling storytelling hits you in the ‘feels,’ or so it goes.

This was unexpected.

A genuine happy ending. No one we’ve grown to care about …

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Many people imagine that journalism has fallen from some golden age of objectivity into today’s landscape of partisan media outlets, influencer commentators, and algorithmic outrage.

But that’s not quite its origin story.

As I wrote in my Skeptic column, journalism did not begin as a neutral profession dedicated to informing the public. It began as a political tool.

The earliest newspapers were openly partisan enterprises. Publishers often had explicit ideological allegiances and, in many cases, direct ties to political parties. Their purpose wasn’t to relay facts (or even turn a profit). It was to persuade, mobilize, and shape public opinion. Journalists at the time were active participants in political battles, not detached observers. This wasn’t a secret. It was the standard.

Then, the focus turned to a more commercial endeavor, and thus the late nineteenth century became the age of yellow journalism. Newspapers began to compete aggressively for readers through scandal, emotion, exaggeration, and spectacle. Anything to get your attention and to persuade you to part with a few coins. Inexpensive newspapers sought to gain bigger audiences so that they could sell advertising rather than rely on wealthy political patrons.

It wasn’t until journalism schools had appeared that the standard began to change. Journalism became a more professional endeavour. In fact, previously, contributors were often printers, politicians, lawyers, philosophers, businessmen, and clergy. But in the early twentieth century we saw the development of editorial standards, ethical codes, and professional association. Reporters were taught verification, sourcing, fairness, and the separation of news from opinion.

Objectivity was obviously never fully achieved, but it was an aspirational norm which journalistic practices would help maintain.

These professional norms distinguished journalism from political activism or pure entertainment.

But today, we see a certain regression back to its origins. Many media outlets indeed act as political tools, and with the incentive structure being what it is, we are also seeing an increase in infotainment. The attention economy rewards sensationalist slop, which is cheaper, easier, and quicker to produce. It is rewarded far more than thoughtful, investigative articles that require more resources to create. Opinion-based pieces often outperform those that require reporting. Identity, certainty, and outrage are favored over nuance, depth, and accuracy.

That creates an incentive gap.

News organizations face collapsing advertising revenue. Social media platforms reward emotional engagement over careful reporting. Independent creators often succeed by cultivating audiences that say the things that they like to hear vs anchoring in fact-based reporting. And even with traditional outlets, subscribers tend to support them based on political alignment.

And that’s the thing with a subscriber-based model. Financial survival depends on subscribers who expect a particular worldview to be reinforced, which can shape editorial decisions.

We are also seeing—particularly as institutional trust has eroded—many readers and viewers shift towards individuals rather than newspapers. Whether podcasters, influencers, YouTubers, or fellow Substackers, they seemed to have gain much influence in recent years.

In a number of cases, we’ve seen journalists build their audiences in traditional spaces, and then move to their own platforms, where they far outearn their previous salaries. But again, their work tends to be openly ideological and personality driven, rather than objective reporting.

Ultimately, we are back where we started. Journalism is about influencing people rather than informing them.

The question is: how do we create economic conditions where neither ideology nor sensationalism are the key drivers?

Ideological capture exists across the political spectrum, but the structural problem is even more significant in my view.

If speed is rewarded more than verification. Engagement more than accuracy. And slop over thoughtful, research-intensive pieces…how can good journalism ever thrive in the marketplace of ideas?

If quality content costs far more to produce but brings in less income, how can professional standards survive? Not if every incentive pushes in the opposite direction.

The future of journalism isn’t just dependant on finding good journalists, it means figuring out how to redesign the systems within which they operate.

And if I had the solution, I’d be shouting it from the hilltops. But, alas, I’m not even sure if there is one. Are you?

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My memory used to be good. Genuinely good. As a kid I could replay whole animated films in my head, frame by frame. I memorized texts without trying. And then, somewhere along the way, that ability just left. I don’t fully know why. Perhaps you can relate.

But, suffice it to say, memory has been on my mind.

That’s why I was looking forward to my conversation with Dr. Anthony Metivier, who has spent years building memory techniques and teaching them to other people—partly, it turns out, because his own memory is bad too. That surprised me. He wasn’t a guy with some rare natural gift to remember things. He struggled with his own memory.

Which, should make us hopeful. Because memory, as it turns out, can be improved. Significantly. It’s a matter of skill, not just innate talent.

We also discussed deeper questions about technology’s impacts on our cognitive abilities, the internet as humanity’s external memory, what happens when it vanishes, and the balance between preserving the past and letting it fade. What should we remember? What should we forget? And do we have the ‘right’ to be forgotten?
From ancient memory techniques and memory palaces to the challenges of digital overload, we discuss why we forget, how memories change each time we recall them, and whether technology is strengthening or weakening our minds.

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There was some sort of spat over the weekend between Dar Sleeper, vice president of product and design at 1X, and WIRED. Sleeper had provided WIRED with an exclusive on 1X’s $20,000 humanoid robot and he felt “betrayed” by the magazine’s coverage, alleging that WIRED turned it into a story about “sexualizing robotics.”

I read the story. It expressed some skepticism, especially surrounding privacy issues. In certain situations, 1X allows a human ‘specialist’ to take over the robot remotely. The reporter also argued that one of 1X’s advertising had displayed sexual undertones. Perhaps that was entirely unintentional by 1X and the reporter read into it too much. Perhaps not. Perception can be subjective.

But setting all of this aside, I think the broader public reaction to humanoid robots and having them in their own homes raises some genuinely interesting questions.

Some people compare owning a humanoid robot to slavery. I don't think that analogy holds. A robot is no more a slave than a…

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I've been scheming about new perks for my paid subscribers, and the verdict is in: people want to talk to each other about interesting things. Who knew.

So here’s the pitch: build a community, have great conversations, and throw a bunch of random minds into a room (virtual, for now) and see what happens.

Assuming there’s sufficient enthusiasm, I’m looking at launching The Random Minds Roundtable, a monthly (to start with) discussion series where we'll tackle the kind of topics I cover here—except this time you don’t just read silently.

First session is open to everyone who applies. After that, most (but not all) sessions will be prioritized for paid subscribers and invited guests.

Spots will be limited, and I’ll be curating each group to keep the conversation and mix interesting—so if you’d like to be considered, please apply via this form. Your answers will also help me gauge interest and shape the series.

You can join via video or audio (if you’re feeling shy, or want to stay anonymous).

Sign up!

The big idea: connect with other curious people, swap ideas, get talked out of your own opinions a little, and dig into the stuff that actually shapes how we live and think. If enough of you show up, I’ll run these more often and rope in special guests. Eventually we might even do this in the real world! It’s our little way of fighting back against the growing loneliness epidemic.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear what topics you’d want to tackle, plus any other thoughts you might have.

Looking forward to seeing (or hearing) you at our first session!

Got questions or comments? Leave them here.

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Let’s talk about clickbait.

I’d like to tell you I’m above it. That I can spot the trick from a mile away and scroll past, while lesser mortals click. But I cannot. Every day, we lose eight minutes of our life to clickbait. That’s nearly six months of our life. Actually, I just made that number up.

But regardless of the actual amount of minutes wasted, they are regrettable. And whenever I fall for it, I judge myself for it. I suspect we all do.

We know better, and yet we can’t help it.

That’s because the reason that we’re so easily caught up by it isn’t necessarily that we are stupid, careless or gullible. It’s because we are curious and human. In fact, that’s the core mechanism that the, um, ‘fine purveyors of clickbait’ rely on.

There’s a gap between what we know and what we don’t know, and the brain has a cognitive itch to close it. Behavioral economist George Loewenstein’s research on ‘information gap theory’ in his 1994 paper, The Psychology of Curiosity, found that curiosity is triggered specifically by an awareness of missing information, not by the information itself. “You won’t believe what happened next” creates the gap without giving you anything to satisfy it, so the only way to close the loop is to click. It’s uncomfortable not to know WHAT REALLY HAPPENED NEXT.

We are also wired for loss aversion. Missing out is seen as a threat, even if we realize the answers are not likely to bring us much satisfaction. Which five mistakes ARE we making? What’s that one thing that everyone gets wrong? What is your doctor not telling you?

We can’t help but want to know what’s missing.

According to Kahneman and Tversky’s Prospect Theory losses feel roughly twice as powerful as equivalent gains. This includes informational loss: not knowing something feels like a deficit we’re particularly motivated to fix.

Evolutionary scientists would also suggest that we have an innate negativity bias since for much of human history the cost of not responding to potential threats was high. It’s better to pay attention to a false alarm than be caught up in a dangerous environment. Today, our nervous system continues to pay attention to anomalies—even if they come in the form of listicles that purport to tell you the “SHOCKING truth about…your dog.”

Clickbait headlines are designed to be processed quickly and emotionally, not analytically. A large study of New York Times articles found that emotionally charged content was more likely to go viral. According to the study content that “evokes high-arousal positive (awe) or negative (anger or anxiety) emotions is more viral. Content that evokes low-arousal, or deactivating, emotions (e.g., sadness) is less viral.”

Because it bypasses the cognitive processes that slow down our intake of information, our response is more automatic, reactionary, and emotional.

The skeptical part of our brains isn’t being welcomed in.

Headline writers, advertisers are particularly good at figuring out what triggers people to click. When I worked for an ad agency, I was told that people were more likely to click on odd numbers (eg. “7 ways to improve your life”). Apparently, their asymmetry grabs our attention more than even ones.

But recognizing the techniques will not necessarily inoculate you against them due to a psychological framework behavioral economists refer to as dual-process cognition. According to this theory, we operate in two modes:

System 1: The intuitive system. It’s automated, instant, emotionally responsive, and requires little effort.

System 2: The analytical system. It requires analysis, conscious mental efforts, reasoning, and operates more slowly, objectively, logically, and deliberately.

We rely on both systems in our daily lives—and both can be useful. System 1 allows us to respond to situations quickly and without constantly overloading our cognitive functions. It relies on mental shortcuts and it’s often effective. But certain situations require System 2, particularly when accuracy is particularly important.

If someone comes at you with a knife, you want to go with System 1 processing. When you’re trying to make a key decision for your business or life, you’ll probably want to go with System 2.

Clickbait is designed to trigger System 1 only.

So if recognition alone isn’t enough, what will help you bypass clickbait and System 1 activation?

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I’ll be honest: I’ve never been a good sleeper. For most of my life I was a committed night owl, deeply resistant to anything resembling a consistent bedtime. But I’ve been working on changing my habits lately. Because as any MD will tell you, basic as it is, sleep is one of the most important things for your health. And yet so many of us struggle with it.

That’s why I decided to talk to Mikael Kågebäck, Chief Technology & Product Officer at Sleep Cycle, a company that uses AI and signal processing to help people sleep better.

We talked about what sound can tell us about our health, why sleep regularity matters more than most of us realize, sleep patterns around the world, whether obsessively tracking your biometrics might actually be making things worse (yes, for some of us), and what it means that a handful of tech companies are now sitting on some of the most detailed population health data in the world.

Kågebäck started out as a software developer, then worked as a software architect, before going back to school to do a PhD in machine learning, with a focus on language and NLP. He has spent the last several years at the intersection of AI and sleep science, helping build Sleep Cycle from a smart alarm app into something quite interesting for public health. The app not only tracks sleep, but also managed to predict flu waves two weeks before the CDC did. And it may soon be able to screen for sleep apnea from your phone’s microphone alone. All of this by simply listening to you breathe.

It’s a conversation that starts with sleep and ends up somewhere much bigger.

PS. If you want to try it, Sleep Cycle is free until August 31.

Want to listen only? Find us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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• Share my posts and Substack with people who might enjoy it. Liking and commenting also helps more people discover my essays!

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• Pick up a copy of my book, No Apologies: How to Find and Free your Voice in the Age of Outrage

Recently, I managed to lose all of my credit cards.

Yes, all of them.

Suddenly, I found myself cut off from the modern world’s greatest luxuries: public transit, alcohol, and Starbucks*. Also, you know, food.

(*Just kidding. I hate Starbucks.)

I couldn’t even pay for parking and had to resort to the old-and-reliable method of praying that the parking meter person doesn’t come by. It’s not like I had a choice.

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You’ve heard of “woke,” “right wing woke,” and “woke reich,” but there’s yet another kind of woke in town, “dark woke.”

All of these labels share the same DNA. They're reactionary in nature. Each one is a backlash to a backlash.

The original “woke” was a reaction to social injustice, like racism, inequality, and discrimination. It was initially about alert to these things, but over time the meaning broadened to mean all sorts of different things—positive and negative, depending on who you ask and what mood they happen to be in.

The “Right Wing Woke” (which I had previously written about here) flipped things around. It took the grievances and victimhood that the right had spent years mocking on the left and rebuilt it in their own likeness: virtue signaling, moral absolutism, social enforcement mechanisms, cancel campaigns, and tribal loyalty tests—just aimed in the other direction.

“Woke reich” narrowed the target further, used mainly to describe a slice of the right accused of flirting …

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As you get older, making friends often gets harder. For some of us, it was never exactly easy to begin with.

When you're young, you're still building your social orbit. New people are constantly drifting in and out of your life through school, work, hobbies, and sheer proximity. But over time, most people's orbits shrink and stabilize. They've found their core group. Their social calendars are full, their responsibilities multiply, and while they may happily collect acquaintances, genuinely close new friendships become increasingly rare.

At the same time, loneliness and social isolation have been on the rise. More people work from home now, which means fewer casual opportunities to meet others. Meanwhile, "third places"—the cafés, parks, libraries, community centers, and other informal gathering spaces that exist outside of home and work—have been disappearing. We have more ways to communicate than ever before, yet fewer places to simply bump into one another.

To fill that gap, many peop…

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When is the last time that you’ve been bored? This is a question I’d like you to ask yourself. Is it rare? Frequent? What do you do when you encounter this feeling? Do you sit with it or try to escape it? How does it make you feel? What happens if you sit with it long enough?

The reality is that in modern society, boredom has become almost an extinct species. Something we hear about, but rarely see. And that’s because we’re engineering it out of existence. The process is nearly complete.

Boredom is an uncomfortable feeling. But that’s also the point.

As I’ve described it in my recent piece for MS NOW (formerly known as MSNBC), “Boredom is a transitional state that frequently precedes curiosity, imagination and original thought.” It is a cognitive state when you encounter a certain uncomfortable friction: whatever you’re currently doing, thinking, or experiencing isn’t sufficiently satisfying.

“Boredom is not a bug in human cognition. It’s a complex neurological feature that can fuel intr…

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I love doing interviews. Who wouldn’t? You get to satisfy your curiosity about any number of subjects by being able to ask those who have dedicated their lives to studying or practicing them. It’s better than any textbook. And, in the preparation process, I tend to learn a lot as well.

My interviews used to be mostly of the written variety, which I’ve found to be a different experience to those that on-camera. It’s far more easy-going, conversational, and no one is watching their words THAT carefully after the initial getting-to-know-you jitters.

I could even make a total fool of myself as long as it helped my subject feel more comfortable. Silliness helps with that.

Eventually though, I started doing work as an off-camera interviewer who was interviewing people on-camera. There’s lighting, a camera person, sound guy…the dynamic is completely different. And you never hear my voice, let alone any banter. The task is different too: Within a limited timeframe, I have to secure a lot of use…

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Still, for many, lab-grown meat represents something rather promising: a way to enjoy familiar and even beloved foods while reducing animal cruelty and lessening the environmental impact of traditional meat production. It might even be healthier for us.

So when the opportunity recently arose at Web Summit to speak with Dr. Uma Valeti — cardiologist, co-founder, and CEO of UPSIDE Foods — I was eager to have the conversation.

Founded in 2015, UPSIDE Foods created its first cultivated meatball in 2016, followed by cultivated chicken in 2017, both grown directly from animal cells with no slaughter required. Earlier this year, the company’s lab was also featured in a video by none other than MrBeast.

What follows is a video of our conversation.

This is very off-topic for this Substack, but as much as I might discuss big themes in culture, politics, psychology, and technology—ordinary life is just as important. As are the small systems we build for ourselves.

So I thought I’d share a protein-rich snack I’ve been making lately. I struggle quite a bit with getting enough protein, especially since I don’t eat meat. But I’ve been making this in a cake pan in my air fryer for months now, and it’s become one of my favourite high-protein treats.

What is it? Cottage cheese bread.

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In these modern times, we live in a state of constant interruption. We are endlessly distracted by our phones, notifications, and the endless doom-scrolling that goes on all day long. Our minds have been rewired so heavily that we struggle avoiding our secondary screens even as we’re busy watching a movie. Over dinner, we reach for our phone in the middle of conversation. Like a crutch. Invented to serve us, instead, our devices have taken over us. Our attention, it often feels, is no longer entirely our own.

Focus is no longer something we can take for granted. For many, it’s a daily struggle. But the good news is that our attention isn’t permanently gone—it’s just being pulled in too many directions at once. With the right strategies, it can be rebuilt and improved.

To better understand how, I asked a range of people for practical, real-world tips on how we can manage distractions and reclaim our focus in everyday life:

1. Lauren Henkin is the founder/CEO of The Humane Space, a wellness …

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Now that I’ve gotten your attention, a disclaimer: There are indeed some great podcasts. Thoughtful, rigorous, genuine. There are some excellent independent content creators too. Even so-called citizen journalists who do better work than many legacy outlets.

On Substack, I’ve found people who write essays that are thoughtful, informed, intelligent—and even deeply funny.

But then there are the others. You know those of whom I speak.

The confident merchants of misinformation, half-truths, and algorithm-friendly outrage. And, they do rather well too.

The good, the bad, and the ugly all have access to the same “publish” button. Careful analysis, genuine insight, and outright nonsense all compete in the same feed. And studies show that false stories reach people significantly faster than true stories do—being 70% more likely to be shared and travelling at six times the speed.

The system often rewards what is emotionally-charged, not what is true.

I understand how distrustful many have grown towards traditional media. Its flaws are numerous. However, it has an inherent structure that lends itself to greater accuracy and less overall charlatanism.

There’s a process in place to reduce error. Ethical guidelines. Editors. Fact-checkers. Legal teams. There’s friction. Sometimes it’s a frustrating friction, and it doesn’t guarantee error-free reporting, but there are multiple internal checkpoints before something goes out. And a number of people on that chain to hold accountable if they get something wrong, as well as institutional long-term reputation to consider. Plus legal exposure.

None of this makes it perfect. Far from it. But it does help.

At the same time, as legacy outlets struggle economically, those editorial layers are being reduced.

And meanwhile, independent creators like podcasters, writers, and video essayists have managed to build audiences without all the filters, pressures, and restrictions. Some of these creators are far more rigorous and transparent than institutional media. Some are, frankly, better journalists in practice than certain journalists.

But that rigor is optional. It depends entirely on the individual.

Anyone has the power to publish and it’s up to the reader to discern.

So what we’re left with is a mixed media ecosystem: highly professionalized institutions on one side, highly individualized media production on the other, and everything in between competing for your attention.

And audiences don’t always distinguish between them.

Emotionally charged, sensationalist content doesn’t just compete with more thoughtful work, it often outperforms it and requires fewer resources to produce. This is because human attention is reactive. Outrage-inducing falsehoods often overshadow well-researched, thoughtful, accurate writing—spreading quicker and more vastly.

All this leaves me wondering: where are we headed?

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My first Substack post was published June 2021—about five years ago. I guess that makes me somewhat of an early adopter. As I continue writing consistently many years later, I ask myself: Why?

It’s a fair question.

When I first started here, it wasn’t out of some grand plan. It was because my old blog had encountered some technical difficulties and much of my work had vanished overnight. Substack was, at least initially, just a place to recover what I could and start again.

Back then, I wrote random little essays about fairly uncontroversial things. Almost no one read them. And I do mean almost no one. Maybe ten people, if I’m being generous. I really was, for all intents and purposes, writing for myself.

And yet, somehow, within that tiny audience, I ended up with at least one famous reader. I still don’t know how he came across it, but there was something a bit thrilling about seeing someone whose work I admired quoting my own words back to me. It taught me how you never know who’s read…

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