Ep.235 Reclaiming Your Humaneness and Attention in a Big Tech World
What if the most radical act of sovereignty left isn't political at all, but simply reclaiming your own attention?
Mark Groves joins me for a conversation about what happens when we hand our nervous systems over to devices built by the world's best psychological experts to keep us hooked. We talk about why he walked away from social media entirely for six months, what he learned about the biology of addiction and attention, and why boredom might be the most powerful antidote to a fractured mind. We also get into the growing cultural gap between Canada and America, the mental gymnastics of mainstream media on the affordability crisis, and why grassroots action beats doomscrolling every time.
This is a conversation about what it actually means to be sovereign in a world engineered to keep us reactive, distracted, and disconnected from ourselves and each other.
00:00 – Idaho's freedom-focused community
01:09 – Why Idaho has become a hub for freedom-minded Americans
03:56 – Canada vs. America: individualism vs. collectivism
07:53 – CBC's spin on Canada's affordability crisis
10:09 – How COVID exposed the media's alliance with Big Pharma
13:06 – Why you can never fully detach once you know the truth
15:18 – Apathy is the opposite of love 19:18 – How normal grievances got rebranded as right wing 20:00 – The death of nuance and long form conversation
21:47 – Aaron Pete's Nuanced and real good faith dialogue
27:21 – Social contagion: TikTok Tourette's and the dancing plague
32:15 – Why rage gets funneled into the wrong places
34:11 – Karla's decision to run for local council
39:56 – Why Mark left social media for six months
42:26 – Social media's abusive relationship dynamic
47:14 – Naming your consent gives you your power back
50:03 – Karla's Tucker Carlson moment and why she stepped back
54:19 – The medicine we need is slowness
58:00 – The privilege of choosing what you consume
59:57 – The ratio that predicts relationships, and media diets
1:10:15 – Practical steps to break phone addiction
1:12:53 – The fourteen day study that reversed ten years of attention loss
Find Mark Groves: I
nstagram https://www.instagram.com/itsmarkgroves
Substack https://markgroves.substack.com
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