2025-05-15
27 分钟Every day when I wake up, I check my phone and go through my notifications.
There's news alerts, text messages, social media posts.
And so it begins.
When I get to the office, it's emails, Zoom meetings, more emails, Slack messages.
Even more emails.
And that's all before we even get to the infinite number of browser tabs open across my laptop and desktop.
In many ways, the digital ecosystem we've built for ourselves is a miraculous thing.
We've never had such easy access to knowledge and to social connection.
But there's also this nagging feeling that this constant,
unending flow of information is overwhelming.
Recently, I've been wondering what the cognitive impact of all this stimulation might be,
and how well human brains are actually equipped for this kind of onslaught.
We have a brain that really hasn't changed at all
since that of our distant ancestors three million years ago.
Our guest today is Richard Saitowick, a neurologist who spent his career studying the human brain.
In the 1980s, he pioneered modern efforts to study synesthesia,
a neurological phenomenon in which people's senses blur.
They can taste shapes or smell colours.
His latest book tries to untangle how the digital era is affecting minds that haven't really evolved for this new information environment.
We eat a delicious meal and no matter how wonderful it is,