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Many people don’t realize that the gut biome is responsible for far more than just our digestion.

There are trillions of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other microbes and they influence things like immunity, metabolism, sleep, circulation, and even our mental health.

And Dr. Joseph Petrosino knows a thing or two about our gut. “Almost every aspect of our daily existence has a microbial component involved with it in one way, shape, or form,” he says.

Dr. Petrosino is chair of Molecular Virology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, director of the Alkek Center for Metagenomics and Microbiome Research, and Baylor’s chief scientific innovation officer.

“Think about the gut microbiome as a garden,” he tells me. And in that garden you want diversity. Lots of nutrients doing different jobs. You fertilize it with leafy greens, proteins, and a range of foods that have been minimally processed. “I tell people to shop the perimeter of the grocery,” says Dr. Petrosino, “That feeds the beneficial bacteria and helps keep the harmful ones from taking over.” But you can wipe out your garden through poor diet, or too much alcohol. So weeds show up.

In our conversation, we talked about how to tend that inner garden (when should you take probiotics or fibre?), what modern life does to it (including overuse of antibiotics), and where the science is headed next (diagnostic toilets?).

You can watch it on YouTube, or as a paid subscriber, you have the option to read the transcript below.

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

Don’t like podcasts? Don’t worry, there’s only one more left in the series and we’ll be back to written form.

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Hunter Biden has been doing the podcast circuit with all the best people, like Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, and Tucker Carlson. At first, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. When he went on Candace’s podcast, I thought, maybe he wants to reach all sorts of audiences to include them in a conversation about addiction. Then he talked to Nick Fuentes, and I thought maybe he’s trying to reach people who would never listen to him otherwise. And then most recently he went on Tucker’s show and that’s when I knew he’s just full of #$#$#.

But here’s why. Or at least one of the reasons why. I have no desire to do a deep dive into the entirety of his conversation with Tucker.

Biden went on about how much he loved Candace and how she’s such a wonderful person. He pointed out that they had differences of opinion, but this didn’t take away from how good a person she is. He was practically gushing.

Well, I beg to differ.

This is a woman who has spent years spreading demonstrably false and deeply malici…

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I tend to look at my own over-reliance on technology as a failing. A crutch. An addiction.

Our devices, in many ways, make our lives easier. They empower our curiosity, help connect us, and allow us to build new things.

But they also make it more difficult to pay attention, be present, or tolerate boredom. We use our devices to escape all sorts of discomfort, including social awkwardness, instead of powering through.

But as my guest, , an attention activist, argues—compulsive tech use isn’t necessarily a failure of discipline. In fact, it may point to an underlying need.

Instead of being slaves to technology, Jay believes that we should foster a more intentional relationship with technology and that starts by better understanding why we are reaching for our devices in the first place. What are we missing? Play? Connection? Inspiration?

He argues that technology reflects the values and incentives we build into it—and that we can design technology to support connection, compassion, creativit…

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In 1974, a performance artist in Naples, Italy stood passively for six hours while the ‘audience’ could use a range of 72 objects on her in whichever way they wished. She would not resist, for these six hours she’d surrender her own agency to the crowd and take responsibility for anything that happened. She’d remain completely passive.

She left written instructions: “There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired.” And, “I am the object.”

The artist was Marina Abramović and the piece was called Rhythm 0.

But perhaps it is best viewed through the lens of a social experiment of sorts—decades before the MrBeast era.

Of the objects provided there was quite a range.

Some were benign: A rose. Honey. Bread. Apple. Comb. Lipstick. Cotton. Flowers. Mirror. Brush. Wine. Book. Perfume. Polaroid camera.

Others, less so. Whip. Pocket knife. Chains. Nails. Kitchen knife. Saw. Hammer. Axe. Razor blades. And finally, a gun and bullet.

At first, the audience was hesitant, gentle and playful. They offered her flowers, or wrote and drew on her body. They turned her position.

But eventually things escalated. Once participants realized that there would truly be no consequences for what they’d do to her, they became more aggressive. They cut her clothes until she was half-naked, violated her bodily boundaries, sliced her skin until she bled, and pointed a loaded gun at her head.

The person holding the gun tried to manipulate her fingers towards the trigger to see if she’d resist. It was aimed at her.

It was at that point that some spectators intervened and took the gun away.

Once the six hours passed, Abramović began to walk toward the crowd. Unable to face her, those who had been willing to touch, cut, strip, and injure her had literally fled the gallery.

She was naked, bleeding, and crying.

No longer just an object but a human, they couldn’t face her.

It was a heartbreaking lesson about human nature. She said: “The experience I learned was that…if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed.”

When you remove consequences, there will be people who will do the worst.

“I really feel I was a mirror to the public, so however the public felt, it was projected on me.”

But there’s another lesson here—perhaps a more significant one. It is about what happens when others remain silent.

Most of the people who were there didn’t necessarily participate in the acts of cruelty. Most of them simply watched in silence.

It was only when the situation escalated significantly that some people ended up intervening. But it was limited.

After someone cut her neck, another spectator put on band-aid over the wound. When the gun was aimed at Abramović, several spectators physically confronted the person and took the gun away.

That intervention possibly saved her life.

But the silent played a role. As some became increasingly aggressive, their silence allowed them to continue. It was, in a way, perceived as permission. And a lack of social consequences.

Once people began to act, they were able to prevent further harm to her.

But the silence, one could argue, was part of the abuse. And why were they silent? Was it a desire to fit into the group? Conformity? Vicarious abuse and morbid curiosity? Fear of judgement? Not feeling responsible for the actions of others? A belief that someone else would intervene if things were really that bad? Support?

We don’t know.

But these are the same forces that can keep people silent when they witness all kinds of wrongdoing. We don't necessarily need to approve of something to allow it to continue as long as enough people stand there and do nothing.

To me, it is a more interesting question than why people hurt her in the first place. Some people will always have it in them to hurt other human beings when presented with the opportunity. That’s the unsettling reality of human nature. But whether they are able to do so and how far they can go depends enormously on the environments around them.

When people are silent. When they don’t intervene in the damaging actions of others. That’s when such wickedness is able to thrive. When everyone watches a disturbing thing happen, it gives it permission to continue. Silence isn’t neutral because of what it allows to happen.

But when someone steps in, it often encourages others to do the same as well. They see that someone else sees that something is wrong and is willing to do something about it.

Just as silence is contagious, so can courage be.

In my book, No Apologies: How to Find and Free Your Voice in the Age of Outrage, I deal with a lot of the same themes about the pressure to conform, our fear of social consequences, and the tendencies we have to see what everyone else is doing before deciding to speak up. It also deals with the tragic consequences of remaining silent in certain situation.

Often, the opinions we believe to be unpopular are shared by a lot more people than we think. And, sometimes, the truly unpopular opinions are the morally correct ones.

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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 tech…

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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, exag…

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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 l…

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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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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 being 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 with extremism, isolationism, and antisemitism.

Enter “Dark Woke”

But yet another variation has emerged: Dark Woke.

Although this phenomenon isn’t some formal ideology, it has been predominantly embraced—informally—as a communication style by progressive commentators and figures in a highly polarized environment. It’s a more cynical, combative style that rejects traditional liberal politeness in favor of aggression and meme-driven confrontation towards those that they view as their political opponents.

But even that is a sequel of sorts, often compared to the “dirtbag left”—a phrase coined in 2016 by writer and Chapo Trap House co-host Amber A’Lee Frost to describe a strain of socialist politics that treated politeness as a tactical liability rather than a virtue. Vulgarity, Frost argued, is “the language of the people,” and the left should be willing to use it. This style of political discourse consists of irreverent and crass humor, anti-establishment rhetoric, frequently used to skewer establishment Democrats/centrists and even aspects of activist culture, not less harshly than conservatives.

However, while the dirtbag left was more explicitly rooted in economic populism and class analysis, “dark woke” is perhaps better viewed in the context of being a direct response to the Trumpian politically incorrect style employed by MAGA.

Indeed, the hashtag #darkwoke started circulating on X around Donald Trump's second inauguration, with left-leaning accounts sharing memes that gleefully imagined Trump supporters' comeuppance.

Soon Democratic candidates were encouraged to use a more combative, profanity-comfortable rhetoric to win back voters drawn to Trump's bombastic style.

Democratic communications consultant and former digital director for the Wisconsin Democratic Party, Bhavik Lathia, told the New York Times: "Republicans have essentially put Democrats in a respectability prison."

She continued: “There is an extreme imbalance in strategy that allows Republicans to say stuff that really grabs voters’ attention, where we’re stuck saying boring pablum. I see this as a strategic shift within Democratic messaging — I’m a big fan of ‘dark woke.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s launched a meme warfare campaign, engaging in Trump-style trolling.

Instead of the high road: persuasion, compromise, "finding common ground," under “dark woke” the goal is to out-dominate the other side. Outrage gets met with bigger outrage. Insults get answered with sharper insults—and memes. The political correctness the left once policed gets thrown out the window too. If certainty, anger, intensity, resentment, and cruelty are what’s winning on one side, deploy the same toolkit on the other side.

“The idea is to subvert the qualities that people think made wokeness cringe—the virtue policing, the polite ‘when they go low, we go high’ posturing—and go Joker Mode to Make Democrats Cool Again,” writes GQ’s Kieran Press-Reynolds.

When your audience has been desensitized to the point that they respond to shock value over nuance, where else can you go?

The central thinking is this: If your opponents have spent a decade getting rewarded for cruelty, refusing to be cruel back just means losing politely.

As with many movements, it is justified since it’s for the greater moral good.

The Strategy: Out-Cruel the Opposition

Is it an effective political tool? Probably. Stepping outside of political correctness was part of Donald Trump’s appeal with many of his voters. Crass is seen as authentic. So is trading insults, not holding back. The “dark woke” are simply embracing that for their own ends.

Perhaps it’s also appealing to those observing because it gives them a sense of empowerment: “Aha! He really told him off.” They live vicariously through the insults they might be thinking but are perhaps unable to deliver directly. That’s energizing for supporters.

“The other side did it, so now they get a taste of their own medicine,” is a sentiment I’ve often heard echoed on the right spectrum. Now the same is being spoken by the left. Ultimately, this is less ideological than psychological. It’s about power, ridicule, anger, and revenge.

Attention vs. Action

But while outrage is good at getting attention, it won’t get people to act: naming the villain will.

A 2021 PNAS study analyzing over 2.7 million social media posts found that the strongest predictor of how far a post traveled wasn’t emotional language, but rather naming and attacking a political out-group. Another recent study tracked over a million posts linked to nearly 25,000 Change.org petitions and found that posts expressing moral outrage tended to go more viral, but didn’t make a particular difference to whether anyone actually signed the petition being promoted.

The findings stated that in “expressions of agency, group identity, and prosociality were associated with more signatures but no more virality.”

The Cost

But when you name your enemy and target them as such, dehumanization cannot be avoided. It is difficult to strike as hard as “dark woke” seeks to without flatten them into a caricature first. It’s a necessary coping mechanism for those intent on delivering blows.

But, of course, all of this simply leads to escalation and greater polarization, which—after it reaches a certain point—it might be impossible to come back from. We can end up in a state of permanent hostility.

Research consistently shows that as people become more ideologically divided, not only do they become more distant and dislike each other more, we are more likely to “participate in extreme forms of outgroup derogation.”

The Feedback Loop

Throughout history, reactionary movements have often absorbed the traits and tools of their adversaries, creating a sort of self-perpetuating loop: defeat your opponent by becoming more like them. If they don't resemble their opponents in ideology, they often come to resemble them in behavior. Even movements of counterculture eventually curdle into their own brand of conformity. Anti-establishment movements build their own establishments.

And, as they say, if you fight fire with fire, eventually everyone gets burned.

Means, Ends, and Tradeoffs

Proponents of the “dark woke” approach view responding to aggressive tactics with polite discourse as a failure. The Michelle Obama sentiment of “when the go low, we go high” is seen as ceding ground, a naive approach. If someone is pointing a gun at you, the thinking goes, you don't talk, you point one back. And be willing to shoot first.

But do the goals matter less than the methods by which they are achieved? If you abandon the moral high ground to win, what exactly have you won besides the power itself? If you adopt your opponent’s rules, methods, and cruelty, what’s left to distinguish you from them—besides which letter follows your name on the ballot?

The two sides don't want the same things, and that's an important distinction. They are not interchangeable. But these questions aren't about which goals deserve to win. They're about what you become once you reach for corrosive methods to get there.

Is it possible to win without doing any of this? It’s hard to know. Although for years, in many countries, parties have won and lost elections without…going low. It seems possible, even if the current climate has shifted.

But ultimately “dark woke” rests on a quieter assumption about the people it’s trying to mobilize: that winning matters to them more than how the game gets played. That might be true. It’s also exactly the bet the other side already made.

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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

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.