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Kat Johnson: Hi, this is Audible Editor Kat Johnson, and I'm talking today with award-winning journalist and NPR's TED Radio Hour host Manoush Zomorodi about her new book, Body Electric, an investigation into how technology is changing our bodies and the surprising ways we can fight back. Welcome, Manoush.
Manoush Zomorodi: Kat, thank you so much for having me.
It's such a pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much for being here. I am intimately familiar with the conundrum that's laid out in your book [laughs]. I struggled with what to call it—I think it's a conundrum. It's a paradox, it's a dilemma, but basically, a hard day's work nowadays means so many of us are just sitting down, glued to our screens, hour after hour, which somehow leaves us exhausted. And then you have these back-to-back Zoom meetings, and we're often so tired that we come home to sit in front of a TV or hang out on our phones for hours more. It feels like a paradox, but it isn't. How did we get here, and what is it about the sedentary life that is so toxic to our bodies?
That was the exact question I had, which was I'd be sitting there on my butt for hours and feel bone tired, which made zero sense to me. I hadn't even been moving. Why did I feel so physically drained? This really came to a head for me during the pandemic when everything went online—our socializing, our relaxing, our work. It also didn't make sense, because I was healthy, I was safe, and yet this sort of fatigue overwhelmed me to the point where, as you described, I felt like all I could do was slither from my desk chair over to the couch at the end of the day and scroll some more.
So, I wanted to understand physically what was going on in my body, because I also felt like we had heard so much about the mental health impacts of social media and spending too much time on screens, and everybody was complaining about the inability to focus or concentrate. But to me, I was like, "But what about biologically? What is going on in our bodies?"
I sort of ended up going on this long journey that started out by hearing a headline, actually, while I was walking the dog. It was a news broadcast about this study that had been done. It came out in 2023 by a guy named Keith Diaz. Keith is a physiologist at Columbia University Medical Center. Basically, Keith's job, poor guy, is to figure out the minimum amount of movement that the human body needs in order not to die early, essentially. He had found in his lab that the best sort of formula was to move gently for five minutes every half hour if you're in a long sedentary stretch of time. It didn't matter if you worked out in the morning, you still face these health consequences. It didn't matter if you had a standing desk, you needed to get up and move for five minutes, every half hour. And when I heard that, Kat, I was like, "That's it? Like, is it really that simple?"
But then I called him and I was like, "This sounds amazing." And he's like, "Yeah, I don't think people can actually do it, though. That's a lot of interruptions." So we conspired to figure out, could people actually take these movement breaks? And if they couldn't, how often worked for them, and did they see any other benefits? And if they did figure out how to take them, how did they do it? But the first thing was I actually went to his lab and joined his study to see what it was like to begin with.
Right. I love how simple it is. I love that he was actually looking for the minimum because he knows that's the most people can do. And I love how research-backed it is. In study after study after study, even he was surprised. This is crazy that even a standing desk or working out is not as effective as just doing this, or it's not even really effective at counteracting the sedentary lifestyle if you don't do this.
That's right. He told me, "I had been taught when I was getting my PhD that exercise was medicine." So, he really couldn't believe when studies started coming out a decade ago that said even if someone worked out in the morning or went for a long jog at night, that did not counter the effect of the sitting and staring at a screen for long periods of time. That really did surprise him.
Yeah, that's wild. In itself, it's a little bit of a paradox because it's so simple, it's so effective, but also, I'll admit, when I heard this was the solution, I was like, "Oh, is there any other way? Like, do I have to move that frequently?” But you do. So, tell me, for you, when you joined this study, what were some of the benefits that you felt, or how did it work for you?
Well, first of all, I'd never been that closely surveilled in my life. I wore a glucose monitor, heart rate monitor, oxygen monitor. What else did they measure? I took surveys every half hour to measure my mood, fatigue, and ability to concentrate. I spent one day, like a normal day, in his lab working on my laptop while they measured all of these things. Then I did another day where I got up and stood and walked on a treadmill for two miles per hour, for five minutes every half hour. And two miles per hour, like, we're not talking burpees or sprinting here. Two miles per hour is kind of just a stroll. And the effects when they reported back were quite, actually, extraordinary. My blood sugar dropped by nearly 50 percent. My blood pressure went down by five points. My mood stayed way even the whole day, whereas the day I sat consistently, it just slowly went down, that feeling of anxiety and depressed at the end of the day. I didn't have that on the days I took the breaks. I also was able to concentrate.
I will have to admit that, at first, taking the breaks was kind of irritating. I'd feel like, "Oh, I'm going to answer another email," and the person in the lab would tap me on the shoulder and lead me over to the treadmill. But once I got used to the interruptions, I started factoring them into my work. I would use the interruptions to really plan out what was I going to say in an email when I got back to my desk. Instead of just dashing off and probably forgetting to answer half the questions someone had, I would read the email, I'd go for a walk, think through my answer, come back. Maybe I didn't get as much done, but what I got done was more efficient and better. So, it actually, I think, saved me time.
At the time, Keith was not surprised. He's like, "This is exactly what we saw in the lab." So, we were like, "Well, let's see if we can get people to do this." So, my team at NPR and his team at Columbia ended up joining forces and asking, "We're going to do a global clinical trial to see if taking these movement breaks are feasible, and to try to measure the effects." We wouldn't be able to measure glucose or blood pressure for people, because it would be all over the world, but we thought at least we could see what was feasible and what the effects were. We had over 23,000 people sign up, which was extraordinary.
That's incredible.
It really was. He was shocked, but actually, this time, I was not surprised, because I've done these sort of interactive projects before. I think a lot of people feel frustrated and “This is how I have to live in order to stay connected to my family, to my co-workers? Like, is this my life? There's no alternative?” And when you say, "Well, we don't know. We think we may have found something that could make it just a little bit better. Are you willing to try?" Clearly, people are like, "Yes, sign me up. I want to help figure this out."
So, they could be in one of three groups. They could sign up to do five minutes of movement every half hour, every hour, or every two hours. And we didn't specify, "Oh, and make sure you get off your screen," because we wanted to see, did people choose to get off their screen? Maybe they integrated it into their work while on a screen. We wanted to just see how people responded. So, people did it for two weeks, and I was really surprised. Of the people who committed, 82 percent managed to stick with it for the full two weeks. They saw on average a reduction of fatigue by 25 percent. They actually saw their productivity rise. I expected people to be like, "Well, I didn't get my work done." No, they did get their work done. They felt what I had felt, which was that they returned to their desk feeling focused and more prepared to do the work that they needed to do.
“This is a cultural shift that needs to happen for the good of our mental health and our physical health.”
So, in the podcast, we covered the high level of what we saw. But for the book, I wanted to understand how did demographics matter. If you were a student in college or college professor, if you were an information worker or knowledge worker who is stuck on their screen, versus if you're retired or you're an older adult. Different lifestyles are going to need to integrate movement different ways into your life. Also, I wanted to understand other things that are going on in our bodies, which is, of course, eyesight and our hearing and posture, and our ability to rest at the end of the day, because, boy, do we know Americans have a sleep problem. So, really, the book is about, top to tail, what is happening to your body, and then by life phase, wherever you are, these are the ways that the people in your demographic figured out how to integrate movement into their lives, and here are the effects that they saw.
I love that. I love how simple it is. Simple protocols really work for me. I've been able to do intermittent fasting, stay sober from alcohol, because I can just follow black-and-white rules very easily. But I have to admit, for me, I think the biggest barrier, I'm just picking and choosing because I know there's a few, but I think maybe for a lot of people, it's this social norm element, like “I'm going to look weird if I pop up in the middle of a meeting, or even if I'm just leaving my desk and walking around, or if I'm at dinner with somebody and I have to get up.” Like, how did you overcome it, or how have you seen other people overcome this?
I think you're putting your finger on the bigger problem, which is I don't think we can blame individuals. We know that 19-year-olds today move about as much as 60-year-olds. I don't want people to think, "Oh, those 19-year-olds are so lazy." No, they're not. Their world is built around sitting and looking at a screen, whether that's a laptop in class, going home to do homework on another computer, texting with their friends, playing a Switch game or whatever. This is what life looks like. I think what we found was talking about it was one of the easiest things that you could do, like, "Hey, guys, did you know that there are going to be nearly 500 million more people by the end of the decade who have preventable chronic illnesses? I don't want to be one.” Or “Hey, guys, I've been feeling kind of burned out. I read this thing and I'm going to try getting more movement into my day because actually, there was a study that showed that it can help."
Just talking about this pervasive feeling that we all have, and depending on your age—younger people, it's about not feeling as anxious or wanting to be able to focus again—understanding the biology of that. For older people, make it be a conversation about chronic illness, or wanting to make sure that you don't have to go on diabetes medication, because actually Keith found that the effects that he had with these movement breaks had the same preventive measures as putting someone on medication for diabetes. I think that's the first thing, is saying, "We have a problem here. We feel like crap, and as we get older, that crappy feeling compounds into chronic illness."
There's kind of a silly but wonderful way to feel better, which is simply to have our meeting while we walk. Let's turn off cameras on Zoom so that everyone can walk while we have a meeting, or let's reset the norms. Our meetings go for 55 minutes instead of 60 minutes an hour. Obviously, if you are in a position of power, if you're a boss or a team leader, this is in your hands. You can set the norm. We had one boss who said, "When we're having internal meetings, it is always okay to stand up and move if you need to." Marching in place, shuffling side to side, going for a walk while you have a conversation, all of it counts. It doesn't have to be like some crazy sprint around the conference room, it's just moving your body. That's it.
I loved the idea in the book, there was one study where there was one group who was told about the benefits of the movement that they were doing, and one group that didn't know, and the group that knew actually had more physical benefits from the movement that they did. So, it's like maybe just even by knowing that you're doing something good for yourself, you're reaping more benefits, too.
You're talking about the chambermaid study. It was a famous study done a few years ago where they had two groups of housekeepers, and one of them, as you say, was told all the housekeeping that you're doing, changing the sheets, scrubbing the bathtub, that is actually exercise, and it's actually good for you. The people who were told that saw marked health benefits, like blood pressure dropping. So, this idea that being aware, being in touch with your body, understanding that you don't have to feel this way, is it easy? No. But I think that's what we're up against here. This is a cultural shift that needs to happen for the good of our mental health and our physical health.
Yeah, absolutely. Something that I think about a lot here at Audible is working more audiobooks into my day. I love a good audiobook, of course, and I wish I had more time to listen while I work. I'm an editor and a writer, and I just can't listen while I'm working. I love this idea that maybe in my five-minute breaks, I could sneak in more listening, but I have to ask, is that negating some of the benefits of just unplugging your mind and getting that content-free time?
It depends what your goal is. First of all, I'll just say that any movement is good movement. Breaking up long periods of sedentary screen time is the goal. So, if you get up for one minute and you're on a screen, who cares? It's better than not getting up for any minutes. I would say a lot of people found that taking movement breaks was a great excuse to get off their screen and to get sort of some peace and quiet, to not feel as overstimulated, I think, as many people are.
But understanding what you need, we can back it up a little bit. One of the things I talk about in the book is this idea of interoception. This is a sense that is kind of relatively new that is being studied by neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists. It is the signals that your body, internally, is sending you. So, those can be ones you're not conscious of, like you suddenly notice that you took off your sweater because it was really hot, and you didn't even notice. Or it can be like, "Oh, my heart is racing. I am feeling anxious." One of the things they're starting to understand is, why don't we listen to what our bodies are telling us? Well, because what's on a screen is often far more intriguing and holding our attention. I cannot tell you how many times I've gotten up from a couple of hours at my desk, and I'm like, "Oh, wow. I really have to pee. How did I not notice that?" I'm totally out of touch with my body, completely. That has happened to me so many times.
One of the things they suggest is taking time when you have zero sensory input to sort of rest if you're feeling frazzled. So, in that case, a five-minute quiet walk might be exactly what you need. But if that's not going to work for you, and you're really thinking about more the physical health effects, then maybe listening to a Zoom call or listening to an audiobook, that's great, too. Or maybe you mix it up.
For me, the more I understood about what was going on in my body when I sat, the more I wanted to get up. As Keith described it to me, my friendly physiologist researcher pal, when we sit, we have to think of our being bent at our torso, and our knees kind of like garden hoses. And if you kink a garden hose—when you're sitting, you're kinking those garden hoses—what happens? The water starts to get backed up, pressure starts to build, and that's the same thing in your legs. The blood starts to pool. And without the blood flowing, the leg muscles can't do some very important jobs. One is sucking the glucose out of your blood. So, that is why your blood sugar begins to rise.
“This is not new. This is not just screens. Every time a new innovation is invented and disseminated into our lives, our bodies respond.”
Another thing that they do is they push oxygen up to your brain. So, if you don't have enough oxygen in your brain, CO2 begins to build up. What happens then? That's when you feel foggy. You can't concentrate. You lose focus and start spinning your wheels. So, the more I knew, “I'm feeling sleepy. Oh, that's because my legs are kinked like garden hoses, and I'm not oxygenating and I'm probably raising my blood sugar." And boy, let me tell you, Kat, that is a great reason to stand up and move.
Yeah, absolutely. I love this idea of interoception. It sounds like an Oliver Sacks-type concept where you would hear about somebody who doesn't have any interoception and what might ensue.
Yes, that's a really good point, actually. You just gave me another idea for something to look into. Is that possible? I mean, it is possible also to have too much interoception. The early research into interoception actually had to do with anxiety disorders and eating disorders, that somehow the brain was reading the signals that the body was giving them in an off way, either feeling too full or unable to sort of connect in some ways.
So, actually, one of the antidotes that researchers have been looking into is rest. Do you know those water pods where you float? They're looking into whether those float pods are a way of resetting your interoception, sort of blocking out the world so that truly your brain and body can connect, and have the conversation that they need to have, and you can better understand what your body is telling you it needs. That might be to eat, to rest, to cool down, to move, to get off a screen. There are lots of messages being sent. Sometimes, those messages are too loud for some people, people with anxiety disorders, and sometimes we don't hear them at all. So, understanding how your body communicates is, I think, part of getting back in touch with your health, whether that is mental health or physical health.
That's so interesting. I've read that the whole concept of body noise can even be cultural. Like, in France, they talk about having heavy legs, where here we're like, “I don't know what it feels like to have heavy legs.”
Oh, I love that.
Even just becoming aware of this concept I think could be so, so powerful.
Yeah, I was just reading about a new concept called AI brain fry. I was like, "Well, that sounds very American.” And makes total sense. In one of the chapters, I talk about Shoshana Zuboff. She wrote an amazing book about the surveillance economy. But back in the '70s, when they first started bringing computers into first newspapers and then banks, she was sent to observe people, the first sort of clerks who were using—mostly women—who were using computers, to see how they were physically responding to using computers. They were confused because they thought, "Well, with all these computers, we're going to make fewer mistakes." But, actually, the clerks kept making mistakes, just different mistakes. And when she talked to them, like, "How do you feel?" They said, "I feel like I'm floating” or “I feel like I'm foggy and I can't connect."
I mean, here we are talking about the same thing when we're talking about social media, when we're talking about Zoom calls after Zoom calls, and then add some ChatGPT or some Claude or some Perplexity or Gemini, pick your flavor, and it's just more information coming that affects us physically. This is not new. This is not just screens. Every time a new innovation is invented and disseminated into our lives, our bodies respond. I think this is just the latest, potentially most intense way that we're responding.
Shoshana Zuboff is a great example. I wanted to ask you about some of the experts that you spoke to for the book, because so many of them are authors of beloved audiobooks that we love here. James Nestor of Breath, Matthew Walker of Why We Sleep, Uché Blackstock of Legacy. We love that book. Priya Parker of The Art of Gathering. I may have missed a bunch.
Oh, but that was a good hit list.
Those are the ones that really stuck out to me as books that I love. Can you talk about selecting the sources here and anyone whose contributions really surprised you?
In my day job, I'm a radio host, host of NPR's Ted Radio Hour, and what I get to do is talk to some of the smartest people. But what I think I uniquely do is maybe put them together in ways that people haven't expected. So, for me, talk to all of these incredible, smart people who do all this incredible research, and you start to see, “Oh, actually, you wouldn't think to pair James Nestor, who writes about breath, with someone who I interviewed about interoception. But actually, they both are talking about that, and here's a sort of way to connect them.” Oh, gosh. Who is surprising? They're all surprising. Well, Matthew Walker, one of the foremost sleep experts, and I think his book is called Why We Sleep, right?
Why We Sleep, yeah, it’s a classic.
If you look back at that book, and you hear him give interviews in subsequent years, you'll notice that blue light is not the culprit. We were sold this sort of “blue light is the devil and that's why you can't sleep,” that story. And actually, as he and many other sleep researchers are starting to point out, that is not really what is happening with our technology and our sleep. The blue light that's emitted is just not that strong. It's not strong enough to really make a difference. Now, that's not the case for kids. Kids' eyes are very different. But for adults, and probably for teens, it's really not that big a deal.
“For me, it was that getting back in touch with my body, seeing that it could have such a profound effect within two weeks.”
What they think now is it's what they call the displacement theory. So, instead of looking at a screen, and that keeps you up and you can't sleep, you're probably using your screen instead of sleeping. Whether that's because you have it pinging you in the middle of the night and you're waking up, or you can't help it, you want to watch just one more Breaking Bad. Or you're playing games, and just a little bit more, one more, one more round. Or for a lot of teens, you're using a screen to calm yourself down before bed, to distract yourself. That's not all bad, right? The problem is when you can't put it away, or you can't put it down, and, oh, you meant to go to bed at 10:30 and now it's midnight. And you also maybe were reading things that were upsetting to you, plus maybe you didn't calm your nervous system down for a few hours, right? It's never one thing. It would be so nice if it was just one thing.
But as it is with health and science, it's complicated, and it is different for each one of us. We can give a formula of what will work, but really, I think my biggest hope with the book is that you take all this information from all these different researchers and then think about yourself. “How does this apply to me, my lifestyle, the choices I can make, the choices maybe I can't. What seems to bug me more?” But other things you might read and think, "Oh, that's not me at all." That goes for your kids, your parents, your spouse, your friends. I think we love averages, right? Everything is based on averages in science, but really, the spectrum is really large with all of these.
Some people have seen incredible effects. I can tell you about one, a woman named Dana who had major health issues, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, was pre-diabetic. Nothing was working for her. She was taking a long walk every morning at her doctor's suggestion. She was like, "I don't understand why I'm so tired.” She works from home. So, she went to her doctor and she said, "I want to do this, I want to join this clinical trial." He was like, "Well, there's nothing harmful in this, so why not? " It kickstarted something for her. Within weeks, her cholesterol went down, her blood pressure went down, but it also made her sort of just, again, more connected with herself. She started thinking about her sleep. She started trying different, healthier eating habits. She got outside way more than she used to, not just once in the morning. I texted with her the other day, actually, Kat, and she has now become a wellness trainer at her company where she's in HR.
She just said, “For me, it was that getting back in touch with my body, seeing that it could have such a profound effect within two weeks.” She lost weight. She felt like she could focus again. She was happier. It wasn't this like, “Oh, I have to go to bootcamp. It just was about moving her body, feeling like she was back in the world physically. I think a lot of us are missing that with our lives full of screens, that sense of, I hate to say it, but like, touch grass, right? It's a little bit of that. Then there might be other people who are like, "I don't know, this doesn't ... I do this anyway." And God bless, that's awesome. But I know a lot of people are really struggling with this. I count myself in that group.
The fact that people can feel the benefits quite early on I think is really, really helpful. And that's an incredible story. I wanted to ask you, because I love the way you started the book by saying, "I was scared to write this book," because you knew that sitting down to write was like kryptonite, potentially, for movement. I wanted to know specifically, did you employ the Body Electric protocol for narrating the book?
Yes, we absolutely did. I had the greatest audio engineer and director at Macmillan, and the three of us decided that we would not be hypocrites. I don't know if the video has gone out, but we did take some videos of us taking walking breaks around the Macmillan offices. Honestly, we had been scheduled to record the book in five days. We did it in three and a half.
Wow. You're a pro.
Yeah, but I had done an audiobook before, and I hadn't been able to move my face and felt like all I could do was sleep for the weekend. I felt perfectly fine after this. So, we walked the walk and we talked the walk.
Your first book was 2017's Bored and Brilliant. It sounds like that one went a little differently than this one, but what would you say was the difference in general between narrating audiobooks versus doing podcasts and radio that you've been doing for so long?
Oh, it is very different. Well, we recorded the introduction, and then I sort of got into my stride. It's different to read something that has been written for text. I think I write in a conversational way, but it's still different than how I write for podcast or broadcast. And then at the end, we finished recording the book and the director was like, "Do you want to read anything again?" I was like, "Yeah, I want to read the introduction all over again, because now I feel like my head is in the game, my voice is in the game, I know how to pace it differently." So, we went back and did it over again. I can keep my voice at the mic in the right place, but, like, it's a different skill. I also miss the sort of back-and-forth, but I was like, "Oh yeah, this passage was really good. I remember that study. That was crazy." I enjoyed rereading it. It was really fun.
You make it very accessible, very fun. So, well done, and I can't believe you did it in three and a half days. That's with movement breaks.
Because of movement breaks.
Because of the movement breaks. Finally, I just want to say, I really appreciate the simplicity and relative accessibility of this protocol. At a time when I feel like the wellness space is so commercialized, from biohacking to the longevity movement and everything about self-care, it just feels like there's always something to buy. I feel like if you do have the ability and the accessibility to get up and move, that this is in a lot of people's reach. Is that something that you thought about, and where do you think this fits in with the wellness today?
I hate gear. I don't like going to classes. I really appreciate that this is free, that it is accessible to anyone, because even if walking is not an option for you, there have been studies that have shown if you are moving your arms, and your upper bodies, and getting your blood flowing, that can make a big difference, too. I think also for me, I live in a neighborhood where if your kid isn't amazing at soccer, then they don't make the team. And by the time they're eight years old, they're not playing sports anymore. Or if you're not killing it in your spandex, maybe you don't feel comfortable going to a fancy class or something like that. I don't think this is about athleticism or sports or anything like that. I think this is about being human, and being in a meat bag, right? [laughs]
“Just being more positive and more in the world and more in our bodies—if we can feel just the teeniest bit better for free, then we should do it.”
Like, this world, this is not about killing yourself at bootcamp so you can fit into skinny jeans. This is just about being in your body, reconnecting with yourself and this bag of flesh that carries you around all day long. And what else is in there? Your brain, and your brain uses a lot of energy, and when you don't use your body, it is affected as well. I just think the messaging has been either injecting peptides or, as you mentioned, this wellness world where if you're not killing yourself, then you're not doing yourself any good, and that's just incorrect.
I also think there's been a lot of fearmongering about screens, and that it's ruining generations. And maybe if we stopped saying to kids, "Get off your screen, that's enough screen time," and we turned it into something positive, like, “Did you get a stroll in today? Did you get outside? Do you want to go for a walk? We can practice your vocab words while we walk around the block.” Or “There's this crazy bird in that field. Let's go find it.” Or just being more positive and more in the world and more in our bodies—if we can feel just the teeniest bit better for free, then we should do it.
That's great. I started by saying, “I love this for myself because it's black-and-white, it's simple, it's easy to follow.” But it’s also not. It's very flexible, and I love that you bring it in for different ages and different types of lifestyles.
That's great. I think for some people, that'll be enough. Other people will want to know why, and I hope I get into the biology enough for them, and also the design of our technology and how it impacts that biology.
Absolutely, yes. I'm not that science-oriented, but there's a ton of science in the book that we did not cover. So, plenty of people will really appreciate that.
Hopefully not too much, yeah. Goldilocks amount.
Just the right amount.
I had a blast reading the book and I really hope people have a blast listening to it—and maybe moving while they do so.
Yeah, absolutely. This was such a pleasure and thank you so much. Listeners, Body Electric, written and read by Manoush Zomorodi, is available on Audible now.
