IFYL2GO: Your Phone Isn't Rotting Your Brain; Your House Is a Side Hustle; The Ultimate Sleep Trick

In this episode we discuss:

"If he wanted to, he would": the science of male commitment.

The trick that flips your sleep switch.

Your dog's social life matters more than money.

Turn your house into cash.

And many more topics.

And for daily encouragement, sign up for the free Intelligence for Your Life newsletter.

For more information, and to sign up for our private coaching, visit tesh.com

Our Hosts:
John Tesh: Instagram: @johntesh_ifyl facebook.com/JohnTesh
Gib Gerard: Instagram: @GibGerard facebook.com/GibGerard X: @GibGerard

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to another episode of the podcast. I'm Gib Gerard here with another IFYL to go episode of the show. That's where we take the clips of me and John on the radio, and we mix and mash them. We pull out all the other stuff, and just give you the fun parts of listening to Intelligence for Life on the radio. In my opinion, and you can take it with you wherever you go. That's the to-go part. You put it in your pocket, listen to it on your own schedule. IFYL to go. That's coming up in a minute. Before we talk about that, though, make sure you, if you like Intelligence for Your Life, make sure you are signed up for our John Tesh Intelligence for Your Life newsletter link to where to sign up for that in the show notes. It comes out every day with small actionable tips that help you live your life a whole lot better. If you're interested in that and you should be, go ahead and click on that link, and we'll see you every weekday in your inbox. There you go. All right. Here, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, it's me and John Tesh. John Tesch, Gib Gerard, Gib, and folks at home or in your car. If you've ever worried your phone is rotting your brain, sure it is. Apparently, researchers at Baylor say we've had it backwards. So Baylor and the University of Texas, they both did a study together. They studied more than 400,000 adults over 50, and they didn't call me. And regular tech, regular technology users had a 50-8% lower risk of cognitive decline. This is nuts. Every password reset, every confusing app update, they say is a workout for your brain. Scientists call it a technological reserve. So it's not rotting our brain. Okay, so there's there's too many things going on here. One is the more we interact with technology and puzzles and things that require require our brains to work, the better, right? We know that. So so if you're doing the crossword app and you have to update your password and you're trying to do your banking on your phone and you do all that stuff, absolutely great. Where I think we're really losing is when we offload our thinking to our phones. We don't try to remember anything. We just search for it immediately as soon as the idea comes to our head. Instead of trying to remember, oh, who was the actor in that one movie I liked? You know, the the answer is Sean William Scott or whatever. You have to you have to think about it and then come up with the answer. That's so much better for you than offloading your thinking to a phone, but obviously the interaction and the potential for socialization that comes with a phone is good for us. It's just we got to make sure that we're using our technology in the right way. That's right. Well, look at this, Gib. It turns out we men are not commitment phobes. This is according to biological anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher, who studied this extensively, according to the Singles in America survey, number one, men are usually the ones who want to introduce their partner to their family and friends first. Okay, men are usually the first to say"I love you. Yep, true. Guilty. Yep. Men like public displays of affection more than women, especially me. I want to show people that I married a supermodel. Holding hand. I love those little holding hands. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, people walk up to me now with Connie. You know, even even after being married for 35 years, and they look at me and they look at her and they look back at me and they go, "You're so lucky. I just like shut up. Anyway, also men want to move in with a woman sooner than she does. This apparently has primitive primitive biological roots because we wanted to back in the day. We wanted to get a woman off the market. Yeah, act fast, claim her. So look, I this is this is just one of those things that for a lot of you out there is going to hurt some feelings. But the bottom line is, if he wanted to, he would. He's not afraid of committing, ladies. He's afraid of committing to you if it was if it was somebody look this is this is like the that brutal truth hour on like Judge Judy or whatever is that is that the guy guys are wired for that and if if you've been with the same guy and he's not he's not committing this this is your answer this is the thing you've needed to hear we're gonna get mail okay well let's we have the response. Yeah, it's gib@gib.com All right, this is this is a tip, Gib that we sleep sleep tip that we've given given before. We're going to do it a little differently this time, but we got so much reaction to it. Oh, give me that give me that sleep tip tip again. That and side hustles. Oh yeah, yeah, that gives us. If your brain fires up a second, your head hits the pillow. Here is a trick out of the sleep mat lab with Dr. Luke Bedoyn at Simon Fraser University. The good doc says instead of fighting your racing thoughts, you fill your head with random boring images. So you pick a word like piano, and then picture a pumpkin, a puppy, a peer, five seconds each. You picture them, then move on to the letter I. Right. So those scattered images mimic how your brain naturally drifts off. So it tricks your sleep switch into flipping early. Yeah, because look, here's here's what you're doing with

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is you're actively engaging your brain, but you're engaging your brain in things that are fundamentally boring and aren't that you don't have an emotional reaction to. So you're not thinking about your. Ex Lisa who dumped you, and you can't real you can't figure out why. You're not thinking about your financial issues. You're not thinking about any of that stuff. You're thinking about pianos and peppercorns and pumpkins and puppies and and and as you do that again, it it keeps your brain from ruminating on the stuff that feels like you're pressing on an emotional bruise that keeps you awake and lets you drift off. This is the this is the fundamental principle behind counting sheep. It's the same concept. It's just a slightly more advanced version. Do this visualization technique. Pick a letter and name things like you're in kindergarten that start with that letter. So, Gib, we've we've we've talked a lot about these sleep tips where you should you shouldn't you shouldn't count sleep. You should use random images, you know, and you'll fall asleep. I was watching. Do you remember Mitch Hedberg, our favorite, our favorite comedian? Yes, love him. Unbelievable. He's no longer with us. I got an ant farm. They didn't grow anything. Yeah, but we. Yeah, yeah. The reason I love escalators is because when it breaks, it becomes stairs. Anyway, he's he's really really funny. He's like Stephen. What was that guy's name? Stephen Wright. Stephen Wright. Back then, anyway, since we're talking about about sleep, he talks about how he's he he had a hard time sleeping, and and he was he was working with a a sleep specialist, right? And the guy told him to to think of random thoughts. He goes, he goes, that's great. Only last night I was just about to fall asleep, and I and and I and I I started to started to think about building a go kart with with with my ex landlord. It's so true, right? Because you come up with these random things. Oh yeah, and then you have you have these random images in your head, and then that wakes you up. Like, why am I thinking about Deirdre, my ex landlord? I should be just drifting off to sleep. 100% But the the the image of right the random image of building a building a go kart with the ex landlord. That's the kind of stuff that keeps me awake, folks. That's just so you. The ex girlfriend and yeah, I was skydiving with Linda Florentina. Yeah, I wake up every morning and and and Connie, of course, my wife, tells me all these weird dreams she has, and I'm I'm always being like slaughtered or something in her dreams. I wonder what that means. It means she's worried about you. Sure does, sure does. All right, Gib. Here's some pet intelligence: pets slash health. If you've got a dog, the one thing they need most is free. The Dog Aging Project at Arizona State, they studied more than 20-1000 dogs, and dogs with a busy social life, regular time with other dogs and other people, were dramatically healthier than isolated dogs. In fact, a dog's social connections were five times more powerful for its health than the family's finances. Wow! Companionship beat money five to one. The social connections five times more powerful than than the family's finance. Well, you think like if the if it's if you're like the Queen's what are they Yorkshire what does she have the what kind of terriers oh so oh he's oh so if the dog has rich parents yeah oh yeah yeah those dogs are getting the best medical treatment you know they're getting MRIs all that stuff but but you know if but what matters more is their social connection which which is true of people, by the way. You know, we we need those social connections. That matters a lot for our health outcomes. Yeah, the problem with Leroy the dog is that he he does he likes humans more than he likes dogs. I mean, but that's a version. He he goes up to dogs. He barks at him, but he goes up to him. He's having his conversations. Yeah, yeah. He enjoys that time. He likes our family the most, though. That's fair. Amen. We're going to talk about sleep again because it's connected to everything, and we all obsess over getting eight hours of sleep. But it turns out when we sleep matters more. A Gib a Landmark study in the journal Sleep tracked nearly 61,000 people. These studies are huge, and a steady bedtime and wake up time predicted how long they'd lived better than how many hours they slept. The most consistent sleepers had up to a 50% lower risk of dying from any cause. An erratic schedule throws your organs' internal clocks out of sync. So look, we have we've interviewed how many different you know sleep experts for the different shows and stuff. And Dr. Bruce, one of our favorites, the Sleep Doctor, he says if you want to fix everything, you got to do. You got to just wake up at the same time every day. Right, right. And he says that'll fix the going to bed at the same time every day. So if you get that consistently, it helps with everything. It's one of the reasons why. That's one of our on our coaching calls. We have five pillars that we've developed, and one of them is wake up at the same time every day and make your bed. It is just it doesn't cost you anything, and it is a key indicator and a key anchor habit for overall health in your life. So we know we need to get a certain amount of sleep. We know that we know that we should be doing that. The best way to do that is not to let yourself sleep in and get your and let your sleep schedule get all over the place. Wake up at the same time every day and then go to sleep when you get tired because your body will naturally align with that. Amen. So when we have polled our our audience, which is by the way largely women 40 plus, one of the big worries of people today in that age group is is a fear of falling. Oh yeah, and now and I don't I don't I don't blame anybody. I it scares me too. It's yes. Six foot six inches tall, long way down. You have big shoes too. You trip over a lot of stuff. Thanks a lot. The secret to falling apparently is in our ears. The Johns Hopkins trial published in the Lancet followed 1000 older adults with untreated hearing loss. Turns out the ones who got hearing aids had nearly 30% fewer falls over the years because your brain uses sound like sonar to map where your body is in space. Oh my gosh! Well, think about if you ever hear something like flutter by your ear, how disorienting that is. When any of your senses that you're accustomed to using are interrupted, so age declining hearing, that kind of stuff, your blurry vision, it is disorienting for your brain because it it requires all of that input. We also know that our balance is largely in our inner ear. So if you're not getting the feedback and you're not getting the vibrations in that in that fluid, you're not going to actually be able to balance the way that you normally do. It makes a lot of sense that putting your hearing aids in and being fully aware of your environment is going to keep you from falling. While we may not have echolocation like a bat, we do get a sense of the room that we're in based on the sounds, and all these people walking around with headphones on all the time. You're taking away the reason why you're tripping all the time. Have you also noticed that nobody's watching when they're in the crosswalks these days? Oh my gosh, not at all, not at all. And then they look up and see you, like oh. So Gib, of course, everybody's worried that artificial intelligence is taking all our jobs, but now people are getting paid to teach it. So 20 to 20-$5 an hour on sites like DataAnotation Tech. Every day, people get paid to read two chatbot answers and pick the better one, or flag responses that sound rude or robotic. We're basically training AI where you can get paid to do that. The only qualifications are good grammar and common sense. There's also usertesting.com about $10 to click around a website for 20 minutes while saying your thoughts out loud, and they especially want testers over 50. Just so you know, the legitimate sites are always free to join. Anybody charging a fee is running a scam. I mean, I have so many mixed feelings about this. Look, this stuff is coming for you anyway. You might as well get paid in the meantime. Might as well train it. You might as well be the one that trains it. But at the same time, I I just this feels so dark. This feels so dystopian that we're gonna pay you like 10 bucks an hour to go and just talk into a box, and eventually that box is gonna talk for you. And the rest it feels weird. I know. How do you feel about it? Ah, it makes me nervous. Yeah, but but a lot of a lot of folks are looking for for side hustles. Yeah, so you might as well do it. Yeah, yeah. I think if I was in college, oh yeah, I would want to make $25 an hour to teach AI. Exactly. Hey, they're just they're using our radio show for it anyway. Might as well. Anyway, if you if you want the list, no matter how I feel about it, or Gib, if you want the list, just go. Well, actually, email me john@tesh.com It's john@tesh.com All right, Gib, get ready because it's time to throw some clay. The latest, the latest hobby that's surging in popularity is pottery. So get ready for your Christmas gift. I'm gonna get you a bowl. I can't wait for my vase. People are turning to pottery making as a screen free activity that helps them build community and connection, and working with their hands, throwing pottery, see, see, as it's called, is a calming and therapeutic, while also challenging thing. It takes logic and creativity, but you don't necessarily need to be artistic to make something. This is why it works for me. As far as the mental health benefits of pottery, scientists say having a hands-on hobby, from woodworking to playing drums to ceramics means you're more relaxed than most. And hello, birthdays and Christmas presents. I mean, look, it is. We've talked about this before. That even the even the just painting the pottery, like you do with the color me mine, you know, there's a great first date opportunity. I forgot. I forgot. Do you have to know how to paint, or is it like numbers and stuff? They can do both. They do both ways. Okay. One is there's a free form, and then they have like molds, and you just kind of paint on it. Okay, I'm. They have they have multiple versions of it. But the bottom line is, guys, is that the opportunity to be creative is something that our brains actively need. This is a great hobby. I have noticed that people aren't making ashtrays anymore. When I was a kid, I've noticed whenever we did ceramics, it was an ashtray, and now and now it's it's a it's a dish for your keys, or it's or it's a vase. So whatever the thing that you're gonna do is, go out there, have a good time doing it. And yes, a creative hands-on hobby. We've talked about this multiple times. How important it is. I've noticed. All right, we're all looking for extra income these days, and folks, your house is already a side hustle. We're going to prove it. Think Airbnb without the without the guests. Okay, for example, on Neighbor.com, on Neighbor.com, people pay 150 to$500 a month just to store boxes in your empty garage. Whoa, this is amazing. Okay, on Swimply, pool owners charge about 40-$5 an hour for private swim time, and on and make them take a shower, please. And on sniff spots, I've seen this work. Dog owners pay around $10 an hour to let their dogs play in your fenced backyard and poop in it. Wow! Top hosts make $3,000 a month. Wow, that's incredible! So look up your zip code on those sites and see what the neighbors are charging, and then make sure you email me joatesh.com I'll send them out to you. Okay, I the Swimply, I get it. I absolutely understand, and I and so many people have pools that they don't use because they they just don't use it. Because once you have a pool, you go swimming a couple weekends a year, and then the next thing you know, you're done. It's a great way. I just would feel a little weirded out by people swimming in my pool, and then I'd have to, you know, shock it and add all the chemicals after they leave, all that stuff. But sniff spot, this idea of letting the dogs use my backyard, especially living in a city and having even just a moderately sized backyard, I feel like this is great. Just see like six or seven people walking their dogs in your backyard. Why not pay me for the privilege? Pay me for the privilege. You sit. I put out chairs. I'll even put out refreshments. You sit there. It's a dog park, but I'm reaping all the benefits. I love it. The storing boxes in the garage is. I really do want like 400 pounds of illegal drugs in my garage. Human head. I don't need that. That's it for the show today. Thank you guys so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate, comment, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. It helps us out a lot when you do that. We also try to respond to every mention of the show, every DM about the show. You can tell us what you think about it because ultimately, we do the show for you guys. So thank you so much for listening.