Air Date: 11/2/20

The Upgrade by Lifehacker

How to Take Care of Your Skin Microbiome, With Physician James
Hamblin
Alice ​Hello and welcome to the Upgrade, the podcast on the team at Lifehacker, where we
help you improve your life one week at a time. I'm Alice Bradley, editor in chief of
Lifehacker.

Jordan ​And I'm Jordan Calhoun. Lifehacker's deputy editor.

Alice ​And today we are learning how to better care for our skin.

Jordan ​And it's a little counterintuitive. As it turns out, the right answer might not be so
much soap.

Alice ​You might just be scrubbing off bacteria that might actually be helping your skin.

Jordan ​And here to help explain our skin microbiomes is journalist and physician James
Hamblin.

James Hamblin ​We have trillions of microbes living all over us, similar to how we have
them in our guts. And they're not causing problems. It is an ecosystem that is essentially
part of who we are.

Alice ​James is a board-certified physician, public health expert and a staff writer at The
Atlantic. James has written extensively on the topic of health, including in his first book, If
Our Bodies Could Talk: A Guide to Operating and Maintaining the Human Body.

Jordan ​James's most recent book is called Clean: The New Science of Skin, which
explores everything from the emerging science of the skin microbiome to the lies we're told
by the skincare companies.

Alice ​Jordan, as I'm sure, are Lifehacker video viewers have seen, you are always glowing
in hack or whack videos. What's your skincare routine?

Jordan ​Oh man, I am a sucker for all-natural skin products. Let me tell you. I spend
money on—well, not ridiculous amounts of money because I'm also cheap. So I balance
my my frugality with my need for things that just say all-natural on it. Do I actually read the
label? Do I know if they're all natural? Would I understand if it were really natural? No, I'm
a fool. But if it says it on the package, on the outside, like ninety nine point nine percent
pure or whatever, like I'll use like ivory soap and I'll use Neutrogena is like clear and
natural. Whatever version of their face wash. I use Burt's Bees like all-natural night cream
with royal jelly from bees or something like that. It's probably all chemicals and lies, but
that's what I use. And it sort of makes me feel like I'm at least not putting crazy chemicals
on my face. But I, I really don't know. I feel like if there's someone who would fall into the
lies of big skin companies, big skin, I feel like it would be me. I would be that sucker. So,
yeah, I don't know. Hopefully we're gonna learn a little bit more about that. What about
you? What do you do to maintain that that nice that beautiful glow?

Alice ​I have come around to the use of oils on my skin. I don't use soap. I use. I am. I am
all in on big oil.

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Jordan ​Wait, wait. What. What oils? Like like are these essential oils? I know nothing
about essential oils or anything.

Alice ​So no. I started doing the oil cleansing method a few years ago, which is just like
instead of using soap you use a mix of castor oil and another oil that that doesn't irritate
your skin. So like I tried olive oil, that didn't work. I ended up using...I can't remember what
the oil is. I had this mix for so long that I can remember what it is. It's jojoba. Jojoba.
Jojoba and castor oil. And you put it on your face, use a washcloth to kind of remove it and
then you kind of rinse the washcloth with hot water and you do it again until your face feels
relatively clean. And that's it.

Jordan ​Nice. I've seen that oil before in hair care products that I put in my locks. And
again, I am a fool. So when I see it, I'm just like, what is jojoba? OK. Jojoba oil. This
seemds fine.

Alice ​Jojoba?

Jordan ​This is fine. I'm going to put whatever whatever natural-sounding oil it tells me to.
I'll do it. I've done that with my hair before but never on my skin. This is interesting. I'm
looking forward to hearing what James has to say about this stuff.

Alice ​Yeah, I want to find out if it's right to get all oiled up.

Jordan ​Let's find out then.

Alice ​Welcome to the Upgrade.

James Hamblin ​Thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure.

Alice ​A pleasure to have you here. So in the opening of your book, you explain that you
stopped showering five years ago. I'm sure this is a topic you're now tired of talking about,
but you're going to have to explain it to us as well.

James Hamblin ​No, that's fine. It's a logical place to start. I hope that the book is about a
lot more than than me and my habits. But that was an entry point for my curiosity. At least I
kind of just gradually started doing less and less of everything. Shampoo. Wash my face,
body wash, deodorant. And then, you know, I got to the point I was doing almost nothing
and then for experimental purposes, went ahead and went to absolutely nothing for a
while. And and now I just don't use any products, but I use just water on me and I'm still
pretty minimalist about that. And yeah, the intro to the book is sort of about the forces that
drove me to that sort of experimentation, which I learn once I started writing about it, is not
exactly super rare. It's rare to go all the way. But a lot of people have eliminated one or
many of those products in their lives and feel like they're better off for it.

Alice ​There's definitely the no 'poo. I hate that term, but like that sort of idea, like people
go off of shampoo and say that their hair is like transformed as a result.

James Hamblin ​I mean, we're on video so you can judge for yourself. I mean, it.

Alice ​It looks good!

Jordan ​It looks luxurious.

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James Hamblin ​Hah, it's fine. You know, I think when people have really elaborate rituals,
like you absolutely can make yourself look and feel and smell better. And if you love doing
that, then, you know, I say more power to you. But what I learned through the course of
this self experimentation and talking to people and writing the book is that, you know,
there's just a lot more that you can go without if you choose to. And you may not look as
good as if you spend a ton of time and money on it. But, you know, you can reach a sort of
moderate equilibrium where it's like, good, fine, good enough. And it kind of involves
pushing back against ideas about what's medically necessary. Or what's actually a healthy
practice versus what's was just elective. What do we do for fun and what do we do less of
if we chose to?

Alice ​So what was that process like, kind of weaning yourself off of all these products? Did
you go through any difficult phases or was it...?

James Hamblin ​Yeah.

Alice ​Seamless?

James Hamblin ​[00:06:46]​No, no, it's not seamless. Not seamless for me. Not seamless
for anybody I spoke to. It's like training for a marathon, I think is the way to think about it.
You don't go out, you know, if you don't run and you go out and try to run 26 miles, you are
going to say that's that's simply impossible. A physical human body cannot do that. But if
you gradually do a you know, do a little bit more and a little bit more before you know it,
you know, that suddenly becomes much more reasonable as a prospect. ​[26.9s] ​And you
will go through phases where you smell bad or you feel gross and oily. And so, you know,
you can slow down. It kind of...People shorten their showers, people shorten their their
baths. They do. They do it less frequently. They use less product. They use cooler water.
All these things sort of you know, if you want to do that over the course of five years, you'll
barely notice the change. If you want to do it over the course of a week, you're going to
feel like a total mess long time. So it kind of depends what your goal is. But but yeah. And I
would carry some deodorant with me everywhere I go, you know, in case basically I never
want to offend anyone, you know, and I never want to look really unprofessional or
disrespectful, but I certainly didn't look like my best.

Jordan ​And a lot of this has to do with the skin microbiome. Can you tell us what that is?

James Hamblin ​[00:08:07]​Yeah, that was what kind of piqued my interest in thinking this
might be possible, is this still-emerging science of the skin microbiome, which is very
similar to the gut microbiome. You know, that we have trillions of microbes living all over
us. Similar to how we have them in our guts and they're not causing problems there. You
know, if the coronavirus is among them, yes, it's definitely causing problems and you want
to get it off. But most of them are their normal. It is an ecosystem that is essentially part of
who we are. And so the best you can do is hope to optimize it so that, you know, it's
working in your favor. You are never sterile. ​[43.9s] ​You're never without these microbes.
And that's the question that, you know, is kind of changing the face of dermatology and
skincare industry right now is kind of what do you mean, make the microbiome better?
What are you suppose to do with this fact? But ​[00:09:07]​what we do know is that it's not
the correct approach to just try to kill them all the time, get rid of them all the time. And that
is the idea, is that doing that is what gets you in the cycle of where you do that one
morning and then by the next morning, if you don't do it again, you're populated by some
really funky microbes that make you smell bad. And you look oily. And we did not evolve to

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become like repulsive to other human beings if we didn't every 24 hours go through some
elaborate cleaning ritual. ​[28.8s] ​Right. So it seems like what we're doing is a bunch of real
short term fixes instead of thinking about how do you in the longer term, create a healthier
biome that is working for you, which is not to say that you would never smell bad or, you
know, like that your skin would never break out or you wouldn't have ever have eczema
flares, but you might overall have fewer.

Alice ​Have we always known about the skin microbiome? Is that a relatively recent
discovery for lack of a better term? I mean, I know the the gut microbiome has been sort of
like recently become more well known and people talk about it more, and I haven't heard
much about the skin microbiome.

James Hamblin ​Yeah, it is. Both of those microbiomes came into common scientific
parlance with the DNA sequencing technology that came about about 10 years ago. And,
you know, we thought we knew that there were microbes all over us which weren't, you
know, causing infections, but we didn't know the scope of it. So just like in the gut, we
knew there were microbes inside of us. We didn't know that there, you know, that we are
more microbe than human in terms of number of cells. And we did not know that there
were so many microbes all over us all the time. And so it's really a matter of scope and
scale that has changed things. We've been really quick to embrace the gut microbiome,
and that is by far the majority of where microbes are. And that has changed people's
thinking about things like probiotics and antibiotic overuse, which just in the last 10 years,
if you ask people to kind of think about taking supplements or drinking kombucha or
thinking about foods that would help them foster bacteria in their guts, you know, that that
seemed like kind of really out there nonsense. And it's really mainstream now. And the
skin microbiome has been slower to be capitalized upon. But there is a big movement in
the industry. But the kind of indie skincare industry and mainstream Procter & Gamble,
Johnson & Johnson companies to start marketing around that, at least there was right up
until the pandemic. So I don't know how that'll change things. But the idea of products that,
if not exactly probiotic, are supposed to be helping you have a healthy skin microbiome is
at least really interesting in terms of the implications for how we think about what it means
to be clean. And it really, you know, it's the marketing and advertising that will drive that
concept into mainstream consciousness.

Jordan ​You talk about mites on the skin. And whenever people hear that, that probably
makes their skin crawl, they want to go take a shower like that. Just I picture tardigrades.
That's what I have in my head when I think of microscopic things crawling. What do
those...What do they do? What do these mites do?

James Hamblin ​Yeah, that's the really interesting thing is we don't quite know. We do
know that when you swab the faces of humans, we have, we all, have mite DNA on our
skin. So we thought it was maybe that's more rare thing where occasionally people would
have some life living in their pores, in their skin. But once you can look for the evidence of
them, you know, they're all around, which which means that's basically as close as you
can get to, you know, normal when 100 percent of people have something, even though,
yeah, like you say, the initial instinct, there's this visceral reaction to get these off of me. I
would immediately buy a product that would promise to rid me of them. So the best
hypotheses are maybe that they are, you know, kind of helping feed on dead skin cells that
they are feeding on the oils. You know, we don't exactly know. But there's good reason to
think that just like we don't know what most of the microbes on our skin are doing, but at
least that you might think. OK, well, I don't want to try to get them off is the important, the
important idea. And it also doesn't mean you want more of them. You want like that any

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kind of, you know, microscopic thing is going to be desirable. So, yeah, I wish I could tell
you. I hope we can hope we know more about this soon.

Alice ​Jordan, leave the mites alone.

Jordan ​I want them off of me.

Alice ​You're an ecosystem. Embrace it. So, James, you talked about how once you
stopped showering, you felt like, I'm paraphrasing, you had a better relationship with your
skin, like your skin was kind of talking to you. Can you talk a little bit about that?

James Hamblin ​Yeah. You become more attuned to the ways that your skin, your body
odor change with regard to lifestyle. So I think most people have had the experience of
being really stressed out, not sleeping well, not eating, and they break out or they feel like
their skin doesn't look that good or they're, you know, just not themselves. And they can
see it. And people say, you know, you look tired. We can sense this. And other people,
even if it is relatively subtle, like short term changes and the cultural approach that is
usually topical, whether it's makeup or just taking a shower or washing yourself, like trying
to adorn yourself in other ways. And a lot of times it's necessary because we can't like
where we feel that we can't actually take more time to address the causes of that. But
when you were without those options, you know, you notice it more subtly and more
quickly that you're just kind of not looking or feeling your best. And, you know, it's it's very
problematic to kind of suggest that that's the appropriate response. But that, at least is a
little bit more of a barometer and reminder that in an ideal world, you know, ​[00:15:05]​your
skin is not some separate thing. It is an organ that is our best, our best barometer. Our
best gauge of our acute status that we can see, sort of like drawing, drawing blood and
getting other metrics, you know, like we just don't, we aren't normally so attuned to it
because there is so much artificial in our day to day self-hygiene regimens. ​[23.4s]

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Jordan ​You mention Johnson and Johnson and Proctor and Gamble. I would love to hear
more about what popular marketing myths we've all just sort of accepted and have come
to believe about skincare products and their necessity. What are some sort of common
things that have inundated the culture and how we perceive proper skin care and how are
they right or wrong?

James Hamblin ​That's a more difficult question than it would seem. But ​[00:17:32]​there's
a sort of an idea of necessity, of virtue of morality to using certain products due to general
cleanliness, which actually stems from real classism and wealth disparities that developed

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around the basic access to soap and water, soap and running water that developed after
the industrial revolution. ​[23.1s] ​Then the people who are selling soap found ways to
create need to further segment that product. When you have a soap like Dr. Bronner's,
which says right on the label, this is an 18 in one, you can use it for your body, for your
hair, for your hands, for a dog, for your laundry, for your dishes, for brushing your teeth.
[00:18:16]​Soap is fundamentally a very similar compound. We can tweak these products
by adding certain fragrances and colors and different concentrations. So you might have a
slight preference here. But the idea that you need a different product for all these things
and actually that everyone in your family needs a different product and then you need
many different soaps and detergents for different parts of your body. I think that's the
fundamental idea. ​[22.7s] ​And, you know, if you have a preference, great. If you don't, you
know, like this really makes a difference to you between these different kinds of soaps.
[00:18:46]​But I think a lot of people think like the idea of using shampoo to clean your
clothes or something is just mindblowing when in fact, they're almost identical products.
[13.0s]

Alice ​I feel really smart now because I use shampoo to clean my clothes kind of a lot...

James Hamblin ​It might not be the most economical thing, but, you know, soaps and
detergents are at a chemical level, just very... Really, really, um, like ​[00:19:17]​it's a basic
compound that we've been sold in like a million different forms and it's sold in pharmacies
in ways that imbue it with the idea that it's medicinal and that you need to get some very
specific kind for a very specific use when in fact we can be a lot more flexible and probably
save a lot of money and worry in the process. ​[20.4s]

Alice ​Although I have used Dr. Bronner's on my hair while camping and it was not a
pleasant experience and really like it's—

James Hamblin ​I know.

Alice ​It's a harsh, harsh thing.

James Hamblin ​It's intense, but you know what?

Alice ​Yeah.

James Hamblin ​It's like that's a matter of concentration, right. That you can do anything.
We're just not used to having soaps that are that pure. I mean, that's a pure soap. And
when you get it. It's a it's a brilliant move, honestly, to sell shampoos which are basically
watered down or that are they need to be less harsh because they're mixed with
emollients, things that are basically working against the soap. So I do it further to the point
that maybe we just need to wash our hair less. And we really actually we started with Dove
and with other products to actually make soaps less pure purposefully. And that was you
know, it's kind of like the equivalent of selling like light beer. Or, watered down Gatorade or
something like.

Alice ​Right.

James Hamblin ​Maybe you could have just had less Gatorade or I have one beer instead
of three like beers. I don't know, like but it's great, it's great for the seller and doesn't quite
make so much sense for the consumer.

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Alice ​So given your sort of skepticism about the products, the kind of corporate aspect of
all of us, I'm wondering what your opinion is of these kind of Johnson and Johnson, all
these companies trying to kind of capitalize on the idea of the skin microbiome now? And
I've seen products like that with probiotics in them and stuff like that. Are those...Sounds
like a marketing gimmick.

James Hamblin ​Yeah, that's that's what's so interesting about it, right, is because there is
real interesting science. You know, the microbiome is real. It clearly affects our health and
the day to day functioning of our skin. And yet we don't know really what to do about it. We
don't think it's not easy to change in terms of getting a new type of bacteria to stay and
stick around. It'll stay for a little while and we don't know how universal different
approaches will be. So like, what's good for my microbiome may not be good for yours or
might not. You know, what helps my skin might not help yours. That's kind of universal
experience in skin care world is like something some people love the product that other
people say is complete nonsense. So. They're definitely selling products that promise to
help or optimize the skin microbiome is definitely putting the cart before the horse. And I
hope one day that such things will be proven to work. There are companies that are going
through clinical trials to actually see if they can help acne and eczema. And I think that's
kind of the appropriate best approach. I wouldn't invest in anything now. But, you know, I
initially had this hope that it was going to upend a lot of conceptions about cleanliness.
And we could all kind of just chill a little bit on our daily cleaning rituals, you know, save
some water and some time and some plastic bottles and some money. And instead, I see
these companies moving in the same direction as they did with shampoo and conditioner,
body wash and moisturizer, which is to continue to sell you just two products that are kind
of working against each other. And so we'll have antibacterial soaps and probiotic sprays.
And it's just like maybe the answer was to just use less of the antibacterial soap.

Alice ​I don't have to shower all the time because I am elderly, but I have a teenager at
home who is a teenager and I don't want to say anything about him. But he has to
shower—

Jordan ​Air out his business, Alice. Air it out.

Alice ​Just is...Just is just a filthy...No. He's a teenager he's got like hormones just going
crazy. And he has to shower, like every day. Is it possible he's overdoing it? Like, is that
part of the kind of reactivity of his body as it is that it is this specific to teenagers? What's
what's going on?

James Hamblin ​Yeah. I don't want to overstep. It's certainly possible I can say—

Alice ​Let me get him on the phone.

James Hamblin ​I can say for my own self, you know, I went through the typical teenage
phase. I had bad acne. I was a swimmer. So I was immersed in chlorine, which was drying
out my skin like three hours a day. And then I was washing my face, like, really
aggressively three times a day. And this was not doing it. You know, this was not helping
it. And I think it is pretty clear that we have not made progress on the front of, you know,
speaking specifically to teenage acne, that this is not a problem we have solved. And so I
think there's good reason to think that is counterintuitive as it might be, to think like maybe
we need to if we could get a different microbial ecosystem and actually add something to
the teenage biome that we might make it more palatable to ourselves. But like we do,
there clearly are hormonal changes that increase sebum during that time, which change

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your microbiome, which seem to often incline like...Your microbes are feeding on that oil.
Your microbial populations are changing and then they're producing odors that we find
offensive. It seems obvious and necessary to wash all that off. But the more aggressively
you do it, the quicker it comes back and what comes back is something even less
desirable. So I don't I don't know exactly the answer, but I'm hopeful that we can have
more sustainable things where you don't have to be quite so aggressive as a youth.

Jordan ​How should we look at the relationship between cleanliness and health? You
know, like I imagine that when people think of not showering for a long period of time, they
imagine themselves, you know, the same way if you didn't wash your hands, you would
have germs on your hands. You would ingest those germs. It would make you sick. Like
not showering is, you know, one or two degrees removed from poor health. What's the
relationship and reality between cleanliness and someone's internal health?

James Hamblin ​That's where you really get into marketing ideas, right? So we knew that.
We know the handwashing is tied to health. That's a hygiene practice as opposed to an
elective cosmetic or cleanliness habit, which is tied more to social ritual, social
expectations, personal preferences, which is not to say those aren't important, but they
don't lead to transmission of disease. So we tend to have, you know, if you are carrying
around not to get too graphic, but blood, feces, vomit, or if you have indications of those
things or be actively coughing or spewing things out. We have we tend to have visceral
reaction to say, like, get that person away from me. I don't want to become infected by
them. That feels gross. It feels wrong. And so any you know practices that minimize
spread of disease are not to be questioned. ​[00:26:19]​When you talk about washing, you
know, washing your arms, about applying deodorant, about whitening your teeth, like you
were really talking about signifiers of social status, class and personal preference, and
they're not tied to health. ​[15.0s] ​There is something I get into more in the book, and I
guess just at least allude to here is that ​[00:26:40]​the hygiene hypothesis, that because we
think it is necessary to say wash your hair. If you get the oils off your hair, that you might
somehow be a healthier person. That's this really interesting idea that's very tied up in
complex, problematic lessons from history and marketing. But that when we think just
doing more is better, we have in some cases overdone it and let ourselves become
isolated in our immune systems to become hyper reactive. And, you know, our lifestyles
have played a part in the overwhelming rates of allergies and autoimmune conditions that
we're that we're seeing now because we are living mostly indoors, removed from
biodiversity. ​[43.4s] ​And on top of that, feel that it's necessary to kind of if there's any dirt
on us anywhere to immediately eradicate ourselves off of it, of it because of bizarre ideas
about what it means to be healthy.

Jordan ​Is there a specific marketing campaign that you can point to that like, you know,
over the years completely ruined us? Just like wrecked our perception of a specific
skincare feature or function to sell products that, you know, people might be familiar with
or unfamiliar with?

James Hamblin ​You know, if anything, what's fascinating about it is that there were so, so
many. And the industry competed with itself by saying that the other products were ruining
you or we're toxic to your skin. They, you know, I guess kind of like the concept of body
odor is that is a marketing term in itself. And I think that's kind of an important one. I'm
forgetting who is credited with coining the term. But it became an idea that kind of prior to
the marketing and products around smell around odor and then marketing specifically of
deodorant products, which is really only in the last in the second half of the 20th century,
there was an idea, you know, people smell. Like we have we smell in certain ways. We

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don't, ​[00:28:41]​we're not meant to smell like cool ocean mist, breeze or lilac or whatever. I
mean, you can if you want to. But it started with this idea of body odor. Okay. There's this
one actual sort of medical problem that people have and they need this product in order to
get rid of it. And I think it's gotten to a point where in most places, if you can smell a person
all it's considered offensive or considered that they're unhygienic or that there must be
something wrong with that. And we've gotten much more sensitive to that, such that we
kind of have taken olfactory senses out of most human relationships. We all just kind of go
around smelling like nothing or smelling like fake scents that we've applied to ourselves.
[43.4s] ​And except for maybe intimate relationships, we don't really have that sense
associated with other human reactions. And I could go on and on. But there's reason to
believe that it's, you know, the subtle cues and the ways in which we communicate. You
know, we notice when we're talking over Zoom, it's just not the same. You just don't quite
get a feel of ​[00:29:43]​someone. And it's not to say where you like going around smelling
each other, you know, like dogs, but that there is a lot of subtlety in all of our gestures and
all of our facial expressions in the chemistry that we give off from our skin. And that's one
thing that's missing in modern life. ​[15.9s]

Alice ​I definitely have had the experience of, like dating somebody, and it's like they just,
didn't have body odor, but they just didn't smell right. Like there was just something I was
like you. No, you're just not. No, go go away now. I mean, just like a weird thing.

James Hamblin ​Right. But it's not it's not this binary that I have. Right. That you either
smell like rotten onions and garbage or you do—or you smell like nothing because you put
on your deodorant. And we are missing some things by all that gray area in between like.
Oh yeah. I know that person's smell.

Alice ​Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think there's like that...There is that—

James Hamblin ​Yeah.

Alice ​Yeah. The kind of pheromones or you have that kind of reaction you get to
somebody when you're like they're there. It just seems. Yeah.

James Hamblin ​Yeah. We're constantly giving off all kinds of chemical signals and we
don't know. Just like the biome. We don't know exactly what to make of them, but they
were serving some sort of purpose in our interpersonal lives prior to the last century.

Alice ​Are there any other ways we can protect our skin microbiome beyond to sort of, you
know, cutting down on washing? Is there anything? I mean, we can add or eat or...?

James Hamblin ​That was my logical conclusion to it is I don't know. I don't, like, I don't
think the answer is give me more products. I think the answer is gonna be cutting down on
products, at least that if products aren't bringing you, you know, real pleasure to you is,
you know, like lots people love their skincare routines. They really enjoy smelling like a
certain product. And I say, that's great, you know, but if if you're on the fence, or were
doing something just because you thought it was necessary or thought it was healthy. You
know, try going without it. And maybe that might be a benefit. You know, ​[00:31:43]​I think
the recurring message in the book is that skin health and appearances, we need to think
about it more from the inside out. So eating well, sleeping well, taking care of yourself in
other ways, de-stressing, having healthy social relationships. These things are easier said
than done, but that if there were one like the one optimal way to think about improving your

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skin is to think about concretely everything. And it all goes together. So it's yet another
reminder those things are important to us. ​[29.0s]

Alice ​Well, thank you so much, James. This was great.

Jordan ​That's really, really interesting stuff. Thanks for being with us.

James Hamblin ​Thank you.

Ad ​Hey, Brian, did you know the world sucks right now? Yeah, I kind of noticed that
because, yeah, every day I wake up, I'm like, is this really real life? I would say, yes, it
sucks. Yeah. There's a lot of sucky things in the world right now, and we're starting a new
podcast that's gonna fix it. So I guess we should introduce ourselves. My name is Brian
Kahn. I'm the managing editor at Earther. And I'm Alex Cranz, the senior consumer tech
editor at Gizmodo. And we're here to tell you about a new podcast we're doing. Gizmodo
focused on everything, fixing it, making it better, making the world suck a little less. It's
called System Reboot. We're covering a lot of important stuff that we think is really worth
hearing and learning about. I mean, we've seen a lot of systemic failures across the
country and around the world. You know, a pandemic has really helped them, but they've
been there all along and we thought there has to be a better way to do things. There has
to be. From the disastrous food supply chain, as we witnessed really early on in the
pandemic to the absolutely shoddy Internet that we also saw early on and are seeing a lot
more of right now as somebody returns to school. We're going to be diving into the
systems that are failing us across the board. And more importantly than examining the
things that are failing, we're actually going to talk about what we can do to fix them. That's
the whole System Reboot idea. Yeah. Positivity, man. Yeah. It's kind of novel. We're going
to try this out and see how it goes. But you what we're gonna be doing is talking to experts
who've spent a lifetime researching these issues and coming up with solutions. So if you
don't want to believe that the world is going to end in 2020 and you want to hold onto just a
little bit of hope, please check us out and join us in our quest to fix what's broken.

Jordan ​Now it's time for upgrade of the week where we talk about that one thing that's
making a big difference in our lives. Alice, what's your upgrade this week?

Alice ​You know, Jordan, I don't have an upgrade this week. And I think we need to talk
about the big old elephant in the room, which is the election. We are taping this exactly a
week before election night. It is as people listen to this about, you know, the day before the
election. And I am panicking about what I'm going to do election night, how I'm going to get
through. I need ideas.

Jordan ​Valid concern.

Alice ​Jordan, it's all up to you.

Jordan ​Valid concern. Well I will tell you... I will tell you and our tens of thousands of
listeners what I'm doing on election night, which is getting the fuck out of here. And by
getting the fuck out of here, I mean, New York specifically, I will not be in my apartment. I
will not be in the city. I am going to try. If things work out as planned, my election night and
like, the weekend through election night will be spent in upstate New York, sort of
disconnected to the extent possible. One sort of well, actually is will this relate to election
night and sort of a techie upgrade, have you heard of the app Freedom?

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Alice ​Mhmm.

Jordan ​Yes. OK. We might have talked about this before on The Upgrade, but I'll probably
be using Freedom to just make sure that I'm disconnected from the Internet and from
Twitter and everything else for a good stretch leading up to the election. I think one of my
biggest and probably everyone's biggest sources of anxiety is that lead up to the point of,
you know, having some type of understanding of what the outcome is going to be. And one
that's completely useless because that anxiety leading up to it isn't going to change
anything. Like refreshing my Twitter feed every two seconds isn't going to give me
anything besides, you know, more people saying this is the terrible outcome that could
happen. And these are all the awful things that could result from the election. So that's one
thing. The other thing is we're not going to have probably a definitive answer this year, the
same way that we've had in elections past. So if we're looking at this where election
results are really going to be solidified until the end of November, then treating election
night on November 3rd as if it's a normal election is sort of an exercise of futility and
anxiety. So between those two ideas bouncing around in my head, I'm just gonna get
away for a while and try to forget that election night is happening. I'll check in every now
and then because I am a masochist, so I have to know a little bit, but I probably won't be
as connected as normal. And that's gonna be my way of alleviating a lot of the stress that I
would otherwise have if I were in New York and in my own apartment and refreshing
Twitter the way that I would be normally.

Alice ​That sounds healthy. For people who don't know. So Freedom is an app that turns
off your social media sites.

Jordan ​Yes.

Alice ​Off of your computer.

Jordan ​Yeah.

Alice ​And also your phone? Can you use it on your phone?

Jordan ​I believe you can use it on your phone also, I haven't tried using it on my phone,
but yeah, basically it can disconnect your phone or your device from the Internet for a
certain period of time. It's really useful for people when they're trying to get a certain
amount of work done or if they're trying to do some writing or whatever. If you need to do
some heads-down work for two hours, you can set the Freedom timer for two hours and
have it cut you off from the outside world for that amount of time. You could still use
Microsoft Word. You could still use, you know, things that aren't Web-based, but it'll keep
you from just instinctually opening new tabs and instinctually checking Twitter or
instinctually checking Instagram or whatever it is that you're sort of Internet habit is. Your
Internet will be disconnected for that and you won't be able to turn it back on until that time
period is up. So that's gonna be my plan. And if anyone wants to try out freedom, there's a
lot of apps like it. Freedom and different alternatives that can just keep you from doing
those sort of Internet habit glitches that so many different sites and apps have trained our
brains to do. So if you need sort of a forced removal from those things, there's obviously
an app for that.

Alice ​Wow. I yeah. I can't imagine being able to log off that night, even though I know
there's not gonna be results. I'm just gonna be, it's gonna be, it's gonna be rough. Rough.

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Jordan ​It's gonna be rough. How are you gonna handle it, Alice? What's your...?

Alice ​I don't knowm I mean...

Jordan ​What's your election night strategy slash upgrade?

Alice ​My plan. I'm starting to form is a series of long walks.

Jordan ​I like this.

Alice ​I'm looking into some things like edibles. I think it's time. I think it's time. Obviously,
like a glass of wine is gonna help. Two glass of wine historically for me has not helped. So
it's just gonna. It could go real bad, get real sloppy. So I'm not going to do that. I am just
real. I mean, I'm already like at the point now where I gotta tell you my anxiety is just ridic.
I'm like...

Jordan ​Are you staying in the city?

Alice ​Oh, yeah. Staying in the city. I mean, my son is, you know, at school. Whatever.

Jordan ​Right.

Alice ​We are going to be here.

Jordan ​Where do you go walking then? Like I, I recall election night, 2016 and the rainy
mood of this city and just that like it would not be the escape that you would want it to be, I
imagine going out for a walk unless you had a place that or a route that felt, you know,
more remote and detached from the city. Like, that's that's part of my goal. And getting out
of the city is just like not I think everything around me that's familiar would remind me of
what's going on in the world. And I'm trying to separate myself from that. I think edibles
might help doing that for you.

Yeah. I mean, maybe I just go for Michael Pollan and take some LSD.

I never did notice my day. Maybe this is the time. I don't know.

Find it after work so I could at least I can get deep into that, you know, primeval forest in
the center of the forest and maybe escape from reality there.

Or I just exhaust myself with, like, miles long walking throughout the day. That's not going
to work. I have really yet to hit upon it the perfect plan. But I got to come up with
something. I am looking at a site called. Hang on a second. Hang on. I will find it. Hope it's
on my phone so I can't look at it. It's about how to stop a coup. So it's like a hologram
plans. I'm doing a call tonight that helped you, like, kind of, you know, organize and talk
through what you're going to do if there is a coup. So that feels a little more productive. I
am taking a lot of CBD oil. I'm just spending a lot of money. So that's helping somewhat.
Got my old pal Klonopin also in the in the works. In the shadows.

OK. So it sounds like you've got a whole, like, Batman tool belt of medicinal majestical
supports.

I don't know if this is the right way to go about it, but I got to do something.

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There's there's a right or wrong way. There's just are various ways of handling the situation
as best we can. Let me ask you, are you going to be in frequent communication with
friends in times like this, or is this something where you basically cut yourself off and it's
just, you know, no, I'm I'm I'm a texter.

I mean, I'm it's I do not text all my friends. And I'm actually thinking as we're talking, this
might be a good it might be a good plan to put together a slack channel for all of us to
convene. Yeah. Yeah. Twitter consecrates won't be there. Yeah.

Well, no, I'll hopefully if you see me on there. But Jordan, you're not supposed to be here.
Go back to the woods.

Go back. I'll be in the forest. Yeah. I think.

I think for when it if I am online, I would like all of my political content to be concentrated to
specific places. So obviously Twitter is going to be all political. And if there is like channel
that was all political. Great. That would keep it from bleeding into all of the other areas of
my life. What I don't want and what's I mean inevitably going to happen. I think it's pretty
unavoidable. But what I don't want is for every facet of my life to be inundated with what's
going on in politics, like there has to be some type of reprieve from that type of stuff. If I'm
playing video games and people are talking about the election when I'm playing Gossip's
Oshima, like, I don't want that right. I don't want it to be in every part of my life, even my
escapism. So. Right. That's that's right. That's that's that's a worry. I don't know if there's
any way to avoid it, but maybe having designated slack channels and sort of designated
group chats and places to go where you're going to vent about that stuff or people that
you're going to that you plan on speaking with. Maybe that will help so that when you need
to step away and you need to have a sense of, you know, this is gonna be reality,
hopefully, or an escape separate from the political world, you can find a little oasis
psychologically.

Yeah, but having I think having an outlet that's not overly toxic is the key for me anyway,
because I need yeah. I'm going to need to check in with somebody. But Twitter is just a
cesspool. I can't I just and I know I'm going to look at it.

Twitter is always a cesspool here. Yep. Yep. I'm going to try to keep myself away for you,
at least at least some of the lead up to it. All right.

And we'll see how it goes. We'll see how it goes. Listeners, one week later, if there is not a
episode, you know that it didn't go well for us. I'm still wandering the woods. Maybe. Who
knows?

Suddenly the sound quality will be much, much worse.

In the meantime, most of you have already voted are ready in places that are already
offered early voting or you sent in your mail in ballots. If you haven't yet, make sure that
you vote tomorrow. Make sure you vote on November 3rd and we'll see you on the other
side of this election.

And that's our show, the upgrade is produced by McKayla Heck, mixed by Brad Fisher.

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Please write us on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen, and you can leave us a review,
too. We love hearing from you guys and we also love reading five stars and reading what
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