So much sitting, looking at screens. Can we combat our sedentary lives? | Body Electric

TED Health

TED

Health & Fitness, Fitness, Shoshana Ungerleider, Medicine, How To Be Healthier, Ted Shoshana, Ted Talks Health

4.2 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 11 January 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is an episode we think you might enjoy of Body Electric. TED Radio Hour host Manoush Zomorodi investigates the relationship between our technology and our bodies and asks: How are we physically adapting to meet the demands of the Information Age? Why do so many of us feel utterly drained after a day spent attached to our devices?

This episode explores how economic eras have shaped the human body in the past with author Vybarr Cregan-Reid. Additionally, hear from Columbia University researcher and exercise physiologist Keith Diaz on how moving our bodies (and staying off our screens) helps us feel our best.

Click here to find out more about the project: npr.org/bodyelectric

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey there. Something happened just a few seconds ago that was extraordinary. You
0:09.0	tapped or clicked a button to play this podcast.
0:14.0	You ever think about what powered your brain and body to make your finger do that?
0:19.0	Well, it's the same thing that's powering the device you're listening to right now.
0:25.0	Electricity.
0:27.0	They don't work exactly the same way, but our bodies and batteries have a lot in common, including a story that starts with a frog.
0:40.0	No, not that kind of story. This frog was dead.
0:44.0	In the late 1780s, all kinds of animals, including frogs,
0:50.0	were being dissected in the lab of an Italian doctor named Luigi Galvani to study their anatomy.
0:58.5	One day something wacky happened.
1:01.6	When one of my assistance by chance lightly applied the point of a
1:07.2	scalpel to the inner cruel nerves of the frog,
1:13.0	suddenly all the muscles of the limbs were seen
1:17.0	so to contract that they appeared to have fallen into
1:22.0	violent tonic convulsions.
1:25.0	This is Smithsonian curator Lila Vekerti, reading Galvani's account of the dead frog kicking. Galvani believed he had made a major discovery.
1:37.3	His hypothesis can be put in a two-word phrase, animal electricity.
1:44.8	He thought that the frog, that all animals store electricity
1:49.1	in their cells, like a battery.
1:52.1	He wrote up a report with lots of beautiful diagrams,
1:55.2	printed just 10 copies and sent them off to scientist friends.
1:59.8	So now we are looking at the title page of this publication from 1791, which was printed in Bologna.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from TED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of TED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.