{"id":47280,"date":"2026-11-13T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-14T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=47280"},"modified":"2026-11-09T18:35:37","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T01:35:37","slug":"book-freak-229-the-social-construction-of-reality-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/book-freak-229-the-social-construction-of-reality-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Freak #229: The Social Construction of Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
June Cohen and Gary Wolf. Photo: Mark Frauenfelder<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the early 1990s, I was an editor at Wired<\/em>. It was an exciting time because the internet was new to most people. My colleagues were young, creative, curious, and smart, but two of them stood out: Gary Wolf and June Cohen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Wired, Gary wrote some of the magazine’s best long-form features, including the incredible saga of Ted Nelson\u2019s Xanadu hypertext system<\/a>, which I mentioned in The Magnet. At Hotwired, June developed many of the templates and best practices for the early web that still shape the web today. She later co-founded TED Talks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On November 4, June and Gary came to Village Well Books & Coffee in Culver City to talk about their new books. Gary\u2019s is The Quantified Self: Learning to Observe<\/a><\/em>. June\u2019s is The Great Remembering: Powerful Ancient Practices \u2014 and the New Science Bringing Them Back<\/a><\/em>. The books have fascinating things in common, and that\u2019s what Gary and June talked about that evening. They also took questions from the audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Below is a cleaned-up transcript of their talk, along with the audience questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

JUNE:<\/strong> Could you define the quantified self for people here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GARY:<\/strong> The quantified self originated in a community that came together to share how they were learning about themselves through their own data. Self-tracking, self-measurement: what do you do, how do you do it, and what do you learn? Over time, it became a knowledge-sharing community. Quantified self practice, which we also call personal science, brings a scientific mindset to everyday life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why so much science?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

GARY:<\/strong> Ancient practices don\u2019t necessarily need science. They didn\u2019t originate with science. Why is there so much science in this book?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUNE:<\/strong> First of all: It\u2019s funny to be talking to you about the past, because my whole life I\u2019ve been a girl in the future. I put TED Talks online when YouTube was three months old. But I stopped believing that technology could solve the world\u2019s problems, and I started wondering what the ancients could teach us about how to live today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second\u2026 I didn\u2019t set out to write a science book. I set out to write a book on ancient wisdom. It was probably a year in, and I was like, \u201cOh, I think I\u2019m writing a science book.\u201d So many of the practices I was looking at are validated by new science. They weren\u2019t superstitions or even traditions. They were very specific solutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scientists in Finland were the first to prove, only about 12 years ago, the profound health benefits of the sauna and the cold plunge. Before that, it was actually thought that the sauna was really dangerous for your heart. In fact, it\u2019s great for heart health, your lungs, and preventing dementia. Scientists in Japan, around 15 years ago, were the first to prove the physiological benefits of forest bathing, or time in nature. If you spend just 20 minutes in the green space of a park, not even wilderness, you will lower your cortisol, your inflammation, your blood pressure. You\u2019ll improve your mood and your sleep. If you increase it to an hour, you\u2019ll increase your working memory by 20 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Science is how we skeptical Westerners believe what we know in our bodies. I grew up in a house surrounded by trees that my dad planted with his own hands. When I read the forest bathing studies, I was like, I know in my bones that that\u2019s true. And now science tells me it\u2019s true. I can prescribe it to myself now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Science belongs to all of us<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

JUNE:<\/strong> How are you talking about science in your book, Gary?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GARY:<\/strong> In your everyday life you\u2019re not submitting your ideas to peer review, nor are you waiting 5 or 10 or 15 years for them to become consensus knowledge. So I use science as a synonym for empirical practice: observing, reasoning, and explaining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Science is a skilled practice. There are concert pianists; there are people who make money playing sports. You have professional scientists with tremendous skills. But if nobody did music unless you were a professional concert musician, there would be no cultural foundation. People use empirical practice to troubleshoot all kinds of things, like when they\u2019re putting their hand on a child\u2019s forehead. But when it comes to our health, we ofust stay in trial-and-error mode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the things that\u2019s really troubling about trial and error is that you do something, and it works, and it makes you super happy. Then, after a while, it stops working. Now you have a question. Did it not really work? Or did it work for a while and then stop because something else changed? That\u2019s where a scientific mindset can really help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why cold water feels so good<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

GARY:<\/strong> I was interviewing a man on the very northern coast of Poland, on the Baltic, in January, when there was snow on the beach. He said, ” Okay, now we\u2019re gonna go swimming.\u201d I thought, ” Today is my day; I\u2019m going to die. He said, \u201cYou had a very big chance of dying on the road behind that farm equipment, but going into this water, you\u2019re not going to die.\u201d So I went in, and I experienced the most intense euphoria. It\u2019s in the top ten most euphoric experiences I\u2019ve ever had in my life. Could you explain why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUNE:<\/strong> We think of the sauna and the cold plunge as pampering. But to the ancients it was a revolutionary, life-saving technology. It appeared for at least 10,000 years across five continents in exactly the same form: the Finnish sauna, the Russian banya, the Japanese mushiburo<\/em>, and the Native American sweat lodge. And always paired with cold water. High heat kills microbes. Cold kills inflammation. It also fills you with a flood of good feelings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the pandemic especially, everyone was cold plunging and saying it was great for their depression, their anxiety, their trauma. And there was no science. None. Science had only been asking: \u201cCan cold water kill you, and how fast?\u201d Not, \u201cCan cold water cure your depression?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I lay out in the book about ten things that happen when you get into cold water that help your mental health. If you have ruminating thoughts, cold water immediately pulls the plug on them. Try it in a cold shower. Then you have this flood of adrenaline. Colors seem brighter, and sounds are louder. You feel super alive. Then you have a rush of endorphins, your body\u2019s own pain reliever. But endorphins don\u2019t only relieve physical pain. They relieve mental pain. They calm your fear center and give you a sense of elation. It\u2019s why endorphins cause the runner\u2019s high. And you\u2019ve also done something really challenging, so you have that emotional triumph.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went to Europe for the wild saunas, perched on riverbanks, in Oslo harbor, and on Brighton beach. Going from a sauna on a river\u2019s edge, with the smell of the cedar and the prickly heat, into a river where it\u2019s cold and loud and it hurts. I hate the cold. But then you get out, and you\u2019ve never felt more alive. That\u2019s one of the top two experiences of my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Small discoveries<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

JUNE:<\/strong> Tell us a few stories of how people do personal science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GARY:<\/strong> There\u2019s a story in the book about a computer scientist who\u2019s tracking his diet. He changes a few things, and he loses weight slowly, nicely, effectively over a couple of years. Then, for unexplained reasons, his weight starts to come back. He has calendar entries showing where he\u2019s working: part-time in Pennsylvania and part-time in California. He finds out that he gains weight entirely when he\u2019s in California. California is supposed to be healthier than Pennsylvania, but in this case it was not. Then he finds out he gains all the weight when he spends weeks at a certain desk in the building. He hasn\u2019t changed his habits, but he\u2019s around different snacks at the snack station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another one I love is a soccer coach who is also a high school counselor and ends up concussed. One symptom is irritability, and you can’t be irritable if you\u2019re a high school counselor. She goes to psychotherapy, and they get into what\u2019s making her angry, but she knows that\u2019s probably not the answer, because it only happened after her concussion. She kept very good but relatively simple notes about when she felt the most irritated. They were almost all in the late afternoon, in the winter in the Southwest. Where she works, there are big windows, and very harsh light came in starting around three o\u2019clock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nobody\u2019s going to win a Nobel Prize for discovering \u201cI\u2019m especially irritable around these open windows at three o\u2019clock in the Southwest.\u201d But it\u2019s extremely important, because you could go down a completely different path and spend a long time on it without making any progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t resist one little anecdote. A psychology professor, Allen Neuringer, kept track of his research ideas on index cards. He noted on the back whether he was sitting down or walking around when he had the idea. He put them in a drawer and waited months. Then he pulled them out, only looked at the front, and put them in two piles: still a good idea, no longer a good idea. You have better ideas when you wander around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning to observe<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

GARY:<\/strong> The book\u2019s subtitle is \u201cLearning to Observe.\u201d There are an infinite number of things you could observe, so the skill is deciding what to observe. Headaches seem really obvious. You feel them. But how long do they last? If I had one for a while and then noticed it again, is that one headache or two? One solution is for people to track how many aspirins they take.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A lot of people in quantified self had scientific and technical skills, and sometimes their skills actually got in their way. They\u2019d say, \u201cI have a digestion problem; I\u2019m going to track everything I eat.\u201d It\u2019s a big ask. After a couple of weeks of trying to track every single thing you put in your mouth, you\u2019re very likely to give up. So focus on what you can track that\u2019s relevant, varies a little, and is noticeable and measurable. If you can keep track of that, you\u2019re really on your way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUNE:<\/strong> It reminds me of a saying I\u2019ve heard from a Chinese medicine doctor I go to: 80 percent is perfection. If you try to do everything, you\u2019ll exhaust yourself and burn out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the audience<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Q: I\u2019ve heard just putting your face in cold water is helpful. Is that the same as a cold plunge?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUNE:<\/strong> There\u2019s something really interesting and weird about putting your face in water. It\u2019s actually the exact opposite response. When you go into cold water, your body is asking, \u201cHow do I not die?\u201d But when you put just your face in cold water, it\u2019s called the mammalian diver response. When our distant ancestors would dive into the water, their bodies would calm so they could preserve their air. So when I do a cold plunge, I don\u2019t dunk my head. But if you then dunk your face, it gives you this double action: awakening the body while calming it at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: What habits do you do differently?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

GARY:<\/strong> I have this very easy background record-keeping. It\u2019s just sitting there for when I need it later. People ask me what the value of wearable devices is, because they don\u2019t actually tell you that much. To really learn something, you have to decide what you want to observe and ask your own questions. But they\u2019re really nice for background data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUNE:<\/strong> What I\u2019ve learned about endorphins has completely changed my life. We get double endorphins when we do things together. They tested rowers alone on a rowing machine, and when the whole team got on rowing machines, it doubled their endorphins. That\u2019s why I can\u2019t do yoga on my living room floor, but I love going to yoga class. They could have called it the choir singer\u2019s high, because we get endorphins anytime we synchronize: when we sing together, line dance together, belly laugh together. So anytime I\u2019m stuck or feeling despair, I ask, \u201cWhat\u2019s the human thing I need to do? Do I need to run? Do I need to sing? Do I need to call a friend?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: What do you think is lost when these practices become consumer tech products?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

GARY:<\/strong> I think a lot. What really makes personal science work is being able to articulate your own question. Did you take 10,000 steps a day? That\u2019s a perfectly nice answer to have if you care a lot about taking 10,000 steps a day. But it doesn\u2019t exhaust the possibilities of self-discovery. I’ve given talks to really well-informed audiences and had people say their approach to self-discovery is going to be: take a nap and wait for the next model. I just don\u2019t see it. I think this is almost a tragic mistake being made right now. We need to hold on to our questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: How do you both think about the placebo effect?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUNE:<\/strong> It\u2019s sometimes framed as the villain in science. But it\u2019s actually one of the most powerful tools we have for healing: the human body deciding it\u2019s going to heal. If a patient in the hospital thinks pain reliever is coming in through an IV, their body will actually start to release their own endorphins. There\u2019s a great book, a textbook literally called Placebo Effects<\/a><\/em>, by Fabrizio Benedetti. I could read it all day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GARY:<\/strong> I put the placebo effect in the bucket of all those things that make us doubt our observations. And the way you handle it is you do some more observations. If you try something and it works, you\u2019re very happy about that. You\u2019re not really going to worry about the placebo effect until it stops working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Tell us about how the quantified self community started.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

GARY:<\/strong> My editor, Kevin Kelly, and I pulled together some people we knew were using their own personal data to reflect on themselves. They were all in a room at Kevin\u2019s studio in Pacifica, and somebody walked in, and Kevin said, “Okay, you came in last; you go first.” Instead of introducing himself in a normal way, he opened his computer and showed a detailed time diary of everything he\u2019d done in the last year, in 15-minute increments. And we were just like, what? At one point, there were over 100 independently organized meetings in 30 cities worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: What\u2019s your dream impact from your book?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JUNE:<\/strong> For centuries, we’ve modeled ourselves after machines. We\u2019re supposed to be productive, efficient, and logical. But humans aren\u2019t machines. Our human operating system is fleshy, emotional, and illogical, and we\u2019ve kind of forgotten how to operate it. But the beauty is it\u2019s easy to remember, and it\u2019s joyful. When we sing, dance, laugh, feast together, we literally bond with each other. I really hope we remember that we don\u2019t have to agree on everything. We can go out, sing, dance, and laugh together, and trust each other more the next day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

GARY:<\/strong> We\u2019re in a moment where machines seem really powerful, but I think they\u2019re not as powerful as they seem. I\u2019ve been reading a philosopher named Miranda Fricker, who wrote a book called Epistemic Injustice<\/a><\/em>. She says being recognized as somebody capable of making knowledge and of reasoning underlies our other human rights. There\u2019s a lot of joy in it. It\u2019s very fun to think together about something. I don\u2019t think we should give that up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

The books:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n