Speaker 1: This is Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast
Speaker 1: more what You Hear weekday afternoons on the Drive.
Speaker 2: Carlos Whittaker is bringing hope to humans all over the world,
Speaker 2: and he's pretty good at it. He's an author, a podcaster,
Speaker 2: a global speaker, and he's written such books as How
Speaker 2: to Human and The Moment Maker and Get Your Hopes Up.
Speaker 2: His newest creation is called Reconnected. How seven screen free
Speaker 2: weeks with monks and Amish farmers helped me recover the
Speaker 2: lost art of being human. Carlos Whittaker, I just got
Speaker 2: to tell you we need this now, and we've needed
Speaker 2: it for a long time.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and I've needed it for a long time, which
Speaker 3: is why I did it.
Speaker 2: I have done this exercise on a small scale, and
Speaker 2: I try to as often as I can. And I
Speaker 2: always thought it had to do with the fact that
Speaker 2: I work in news and as such, I have to
Speaker 2: know what's going on in the world all the time,
Speaker 2: and so when I get time off, I really do
Speaker 2: try to put that damn phone down and not pick
Speaker 2: it up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I get it. Listen, and everybody needs to
Speaker 3: do it, because what everybody knows is it's just not
Speaker 3: our friends in the news that are actually looking at
Speaker 3: their devices all the time. The normal human being is
Speaker 3: still not that you're not normal, No, no, no, it's guilty
Speaker 3: is charged, but they're still on their phones. I was
Speaker 3: averaging seven hours and twenty three minutes a day looking
Speaker 3: at my phone. The average American averages six to seven
Speaker 3: hours a day. Lee, Can I tell you that is
Speaker 3: forty nine hours a week two entire cycles of the sun.
Speaker 3: Were looking at our phone three months a year. It
Speaker 3: adds up to and for me, if I live to
Speaker 3: be eighty five years old, that means I'll end up
Speaker 3: looking at my phone for ten years, ten years of
Speaker 3: my life. And when I saw that notification slide across
Speaker 3: my screen, that's when I just said to do something radical.
Speaker 2: The notification about the time, how much time you've spent?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, you know, because we all get it on Sundays, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the notification comes to side, you have averaged this much
Speaker 3: time staring at your screen. And you know, I think
Speaker 3: that if the notification said you will lose ten years
Speaker 3: of your life if you continue this way, I think
Speaker 3: it would change our habits. But that's not what it says.
Speaker 2: Well, I did find that I was happier, and I
Speaker 2: did find that I slept better. I found I was
Speaker 2: less consumed with what was not necessarily going on in
Speaker 2: the world, but but what other people were doing, and
Speaker 2: saying I was less consumed with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, no, you are, and honestly, like I believe,
Speaker 3: you know, if you just look at the history of humanity,
Speaker 3: and again this may be a strong statement to say,
Speaker 3: but I just don't think we were created with the
Speaker 3: capacity to consume the amount of content we consume, to
Speaker 3: know the amount of stuff that we know. You know,
Speaker 3: you see the rise of mental health challenges in America.
Speaker 3: You see all of these things, and it's no I
Speaker 3: think accident that when you look at that data, it
Speaker 3: lines up to when the smartphone was it became prevalent
Speaker 3: in our society. And so I just think, obviously, not
Speaker 3: everybody has to spend seven weeks like I did and
Speaker 3: don't look at a screen. You don't have to move
Speaker 3: into an homage.
Speaker 2: Farm or mansiri.
Speaker 3: I did that for you, and let me help you,
Speaker 3: let me help guide you with some of the lessons
Speaker 3: that I learned.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about the initial motivation. You saw the
Speaker 2: screen thing, and you said to yourself, Holy potatoes, I've
Speaker 2: got to do something about this. But what got you?
Speaker 2: What focused you on? I'm gonna go hook up with
Speaker 2: some monks, I mean totally yeah.
Speaker 3: That makes sense, you know. My I just started thinking, well,
Speaker 3: I could go to like a cabin for two months
Speaker 3: and I would probably lose my mind or end up
Speaker 3: like Tom Hanks on whatever that movie was, talking to
Speaker 3: a volleyball. So so let me, let me try to
Speaker 3: find some maybe subcultures in America that maybe look at
Speaker 3: phones less. And so I just thought, well, monks probably
Speaker 3: just walk around and pray all day. I'll go hang
Speaker 3: out with them. The homish. I think their technology freeish,
Speaker 3: so let me go hang out with them. So that's
Speaker 3: really how I chose them. And let me tell you
Speaker 3: the monks it was seven that let's see, we prayed
Speaker 3: seven times a day, but it was twenty three hours
Speaker 3: a day of silence and so like that was very
Speaker 3: shocking to my system. I literally was like detoxing off
Speaker 3: of the drug of this phone for the first few days.
Speaker 3: But then, oh my gosh, lee that fourth day, third
Speaker 3: or fourth day, it legitimately felt like an elephant stepped
Speaker 3: off my chest and I didn't even know that I
Speaker 3: wasn't breathing, and it was so good and it was
Speaker 3: so pure and so yeah, so that's how I ended
Speaker 3: up with the monks. But I'll go ahead and tell
Speaker 3: you monks have phone problems too, like like like like
Speaker 3: they've got smartphones. I was. I remember spilling my heart
Speaker 3: to Father Francis one day in his studied, like day ten,
Speaker 3: and I'm like crying about something and his phone goes,
Speaker 3: excuse me, young man, And I'm like, did this monk
Speaker 3: just totally leave this conversation to answer his phone? So
Speaker 3: and he starts laughing, Oh, Carlos, I need to read
Speaker 3: your book too, and so you know, you know this
Speaker 3: isn't just a problem that we have. It like everybody
Speaker 3: on planet Earth that I think is feeling this pain point,
Speaker 3: which is why I wrote the book.
Speaker 2: It's called how seven free weeks I'm sorry, seven screen
Speaker 2: free weeks with monks and Amish farmers helped me recover
Speaker 2: the lost art of being humid reconnected. Carlos Whittaker is
Speaker 2: the podcaster and author, and he is the one who
Speaker 2: has brought it to us. Now, the part about the Amish,
Speaker 2: I think people would be I don't know, pleasantly, maybe
Speaker 2: not so pleasantly surprised. At least the Amish in Prior, Oklahoma,
Speaker 2: where I frequent, they do have cell phones, they just
Speaker 2: can't use them on certain days, in certain times of day. Yep.
Speaker 3: So I learned when I got there really quickly.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Willis is the farmer I lived with, and we were
Speaker 3: out there plowing and he's like, oh, you know what,
Speaker 3: I need to call my brother to find out what
Speaker 3: the weather's going to be. And I was like what,
Speaker 3: And he pulled out is his cell phone? And now
Speaker 3: the thing is he his order this order of Amish.
Speaker 3: If you own a business, you can have a flip phone.
Speaker 3: So it wasn't a smartphone. It was a flip phone.
Speaker 3: So you know, you know, I begin to ask, you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of questions to the Amos. Well, wait a second,
Speaker 3: why do you why can't you use phones? Well this
Speaker 3: and that? Why do you have a generator to you know,
Speaker 3: to power this? And well? This is what I love
Speaker 3: about the Homos, and I think that we all need
Speaker 3: to ask this question ourselves. Whenever new technology is introduced,
Speaker 3: they ask themselves, is this technology going to bring us
Speaker 3: closer together? Or is this technology going to tear us
Speaker 3: farther apart. That is the premise for every decision that
Speaker 3: they make. That's why they'll never have cars, because if
Speaker 3: Miss Sally's barn burns down and all her amised neighbors
Speaker 3: are five hundred miles away, they're not going to be
Speaker 3: able to be there for each other rebuilder barn. So though,
Speaker 3: that's the decision making process that they use, and so
Speaker 3: I begin to implement that in my life. Is this
Speaker 3: gonna bring me closer to my community or tear me
Speaker 3: farther apart?
Speaker 2: That's a good that's a good chapter in this book,
Speaker 2: I imagine, because that that we need to ask ourselves
Speaker 2: that more and more and more constantly. Carlos Whitaker reconnected
Speaker 2: how seven screen free weeks with monks and Amish farmers
Speaker 2: helped me recover the lost start of being humid. Do
Speaker 2: we need to just limit our exposure to these devices
Speaker 2: that's not just phones, it's anything that's digital or the connections.
Speaker 2: Do we need to limit that or is will it
Speaker 2: spell our demise eventually?
Speaker 3: So, so I think that that's a that's a very
Speaker 3: important question to ask. This is what what I found out.
Speaker 3: I found out that I actually did not. When I
Speaker 3: got back, I didn't like put, like you know, screen
Speaker 3: time alarms on my phone and set up all these rules.
Speaker 3: What what I found out and you're gonna find out
Speaker 3: when you read the book, is when I started to
Speaker 3: fall in love with what's on the other side of
Speaker 3: the phone. When I start to fall in love with
Speaker 3: noticing again, wondering again, getting lost and finding my way again, noticing, savoring,
Speaker 3: a solitude, all of these things that are uniquely human
Speaker 3: that we have uniquely lost. When I finally tasted those
Speaker 3: things again, I just picked my phone up less. My
Speaker 3: phone time is gone from seven and a half hours
Speaker 3: a day to three hours a day. I haven't made
Speaker 3: a single rule, but I fell back in love with
Speaker 3: living life, and so I just think that's the thing.
Speaker 3: Once we taste it again, you're not going to want
Speaker 3: to pick this thing up because it is so good
Speaker 3: on the other side of the screen.
Speaker 2: Reconnected how seven screen free weeks with monks and Amish
Speaker 2: farmers helped me recover the lost art of being human.
Speaker 2: Carlos Whittaker, this is pushing my buttons. I think it'll
Speaker 2: push a lot of buttons if you read it and
Speaker 2: then start implementing some of the practices. Thank you for
Speaker 2: joining us, Thanks
Speaker 1: Leaving, Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the
Speaker 1: Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive
Speaker 1: Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia presentation