The "Making Sense of Science" podcast features interviews with leading experts about health innovations and the ethical questions they raise. The podcast is hosted by Matt Fuchs, editor of Leaps.org, the award-winning science outlet.
My guest today is Nanea Reeves, the CEO of TRIPP, a wellness platform with some big differences from meditation apps you may have tried like Calm and Headspace. TRIPP's experiences happen in virtual reality, and its realms are designed based on scientific findings about states of mindfulness. Users report feelings of awe and wonder and even mystical experiences. Nanea brings over 15 years of leadership in digital distribution, apps and video game technologies. Before co-founding TRIPP, she had several other leadership roles in tech with successful companies like textPlus and Machinima. Read her full bio below in the links section.
Nanea Reeves, CEO of TRIPP.
TRIPP
Listen to the Episode
Listen on Apple | Listen on Spotify | Listen on Stitcher | Listen on Amazon | Listen on Google
This conversation coincided with National Brain Awareness Week. The topic is a little different from the Making Sense of Science podcast’s usual focus on breakthroughs in treating and preventing disease, but there’s a big overlap when it comes to breakthroughs in optimal health. Nanea’s work is at the leading edge of health, technology and the science of wellness.
With TRIPP, you might find yourself deep underwater, looking up at the sunlight shimmering on the ocean surface, or in the cosmos staring down at a planet glowing with an arresting diversity of colors. Using TRIPP for the past six months has been a window for me into the future of science-informed wellness and an overall fascinating experience, as was my conversation with Nanea.
Show notes:
Nanea and I discuss her close family members' substance addictions and her own struggle with mental illness as a teen, which led to her first meditation experiences, and much more:
- The common perception that technology is an obstacle for mental well-being, a narrative that overlooks how tech can also increase wellness when it’s designed right.
- Emerging ways of measuring meditation experiences by recording brain waves - and the shortcomings of the ‘measured self’ movement.
- Why TRIPP’s users multiplied during the stress and anxiety of the pandemic, and how TRIPP can can be used to enhance emotional states.
- Ways in which TRIPP’s visuals and targeted sound frequencies have been informed by innovative research from psychologists like Johns Hopkins’ Matthew Johnson.
- Ways to design apps and other technologies to better fulfill the true purpose of mindfulness meditation. (Hint: not simply relaxation.)
- And of course, because the topic is mental wellness and tech, I had to get Nanea's thoughts on Elon Musk, Neuralink and brain machine interfaces.
Here are links for learning more about TRIPP:
- TRIPP website: https://www.tripp.com/about/
- Nanea Reeves bio: https://www.tripp.com/team/nanea-reeves/
- Study of data collected by UK's Office for National Statistics on behavior during the pandemic, which suggests that TRIPP enhanced users' psychological and emotional mindsets: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-03...
- Research that's informed TRIPP: https://www.tripp.com/research/
- Washington Post Top Pick at CES: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/01/...
- TRIPP's new offering, PsyAssist, to provide support for ketamine-assisted therapy: https://www.mobihealthnews.com/news/tripp-acquires...
- Randomized pilot trial involving TRIPP: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/11/4/e0441...
This month, Leaps.org had a chance to speak with Holden Thorp, Editor-in-Chief of the Science family of journals. We talked about the best ways to communicate science to the public, mistakes by public health officials during the pandemic, the lab leak theory, and bipartisanship for funding science research.
Before becoming editor of the Science journals, Thorp spent six years as provost of Washington University in St. Louis, where he is Rita Levi-Montalcini Distinguished University Professor and holds appointments in both chemistry and medicine. He joined Washington University after spending three decades at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he served as the UNC's 10th chancellor from 2008 through 2013.
A North Carolina native, Thorp earned a doctorate in chemistry in 1989 at the California Institute of Technology and completed postdoctoral work at Yale University. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Read his full bio here.
This conversation was lightly edited by Leaps.org for style and format.
Matt Fuchs: You're a musician. It seems like many scientists are also musicians. Is there a link between the scientist brain and the musician brain?
Holden Thorp: I think [the overlap is] relatively common. I'm still a gigging bass player. I play in the pits for lots of college musicals. I think that it takes a certain discipline and requires you to learn a lot of rules about how music works, and then you try to be creative within that. That's similar to scientific research. So it makes sense. Music is something I've been able to sustain my whole life. I wouldn't be the same person if I let it go. When you're playing, especially for a musical, where the music is challenging, you can't let your mind wander. It’s like meditation.
MF: I bet it helps to do something totally different from your editing responsibilities. Maybe lets the subconscious take care of tough problems at work.
HT: Right.
MF: There's probably never been a greater need for clear and persuasive science communicators. Do we need more cross specialty training? For example, journalism schools prioritizing science training, and science programs that require more time learning how to communicate effectively?
HT: I think we need both. One of the challenges we've had with COVID has been, especially at the beginning, a lot of reporters who didn’t normally cover scientific topics got put on COVID—and ended up creating things that had to be cleaned up later. This isn't the last science-oriented crisis we're going to have. We've already got climate change, and we'll have another health crisis for sure. So it’d be good for journalism to be a little better prepared next time.
"Scientists are human beings who have ego and bravado and every other human weakness."
But on the other side, maybe it's even more important that scientists learn how to communicate and how likely it is that their findings will be politicized, twisted and miscommunicated. Because one thing that surprised me is how shocked a lot of scientists have been. Every scientific issue that reaches into public policy becomes politicized: climate change, evolution, stem cells.
Once one side decided to be cautious about the pandemic, you could be certain the other side was going to decide not to do that. That's not the fault of science. That’s just life in a political world. That, I think, caught people off guard. They weren't prepared to shape and process their messages in a way that accounted for that—and for the way that social media has intensified all of this.
MF: Early in the pandemic, there was a lack of clarity about public health recommendations, as you’d expect with a virus we hadn’t seen before. Should public officials and scientists have more humility in similar situations in the future? Public officials need to be authoritative for their guidance to be followed, so how do they lead a crisis response while displaying humility about what we don't know?
HS: I think scientists are people who like to have the answer. It's very tempting and common for scientists to kind of oversell what we know right now, while not doing as much as we should to remind people that science is a self-correcting process. And when we fail to do that – after we’ve collected more data and need to change how we're interpreting it – the people who want to undermine us have a perfect weapon to use against us. It's challenging. But I agree that scientists are human beings who have ego and bravado and every other human weakness.
For example, we wanted to tell everybody that we thought the vaccines would provide sterilizing immunity against infection. Well, we don't have too many other respiratory viruses where that's the case. And so it was more likely that we were going to have what we ended up with, which is that the vaccines were excellent in preventing severe disease and death. It would have been great if they provided sterilizing immunity and abruptly ended the pandemic a year ago. But it was overly optimistic to think that was going to be the case in retrospect.
MF: Both in terms of how science is communicated and received by the public, do we need to reform institutions or start new ones to instill the truth-seeking values that are so important to appreciating science?
HS: There are a whole bunch of different factors. I think the biggest one is that the social media algorithms reward their owners financially when they figure out how to keep people in their silos. Users are more likely to click on things that they agree with—and that promote conflict with people that they disagree with. That has caused an acceleration in hostilities that attend some of these disagreements.
But I think the other problem is that we haven’t found a way to explain things to people when it’s not a crisis. So, for example, a strong indicator of whether someone who might otherwise be vaccine hesitant decided to get their vaccine is if they understood how vaccines worked before the pandemic started. Because if you're trying to tell somebody that they're wrong if they don't get a vaccine, at the same time you're trying to explain how it works, that's a lot of explaining to do in a short period of time.
Lack of open-mindedness is a problem, but another issue is that we need more understanding of these issues baked into the culture already. That's partly due the fact that there hasn't been more reform in K through 12 and college teaching. And that scientists are very comfortable talking to each other, and not very comfortable talking to people who don't know all of our jargon and have to be persuaded to spend time listening to and thinking about what we're trying to tell them.
"We're almost to the point where clinging to the lab leak idea is close to being a fringe idea that almost doesn't need to be included in stories."
MF: You mentioned silos. There have been some interesting attempts in recent years to do “both sides journalism,” where websites like AllSides put different views on high profile issues side-by-side. Some people believe that's how the news should be reported. Should we let people see and decide for themselves which side is the most convincing?
HS: It depends if we're talking about science. On scientific issues, when they start, there's legitimate disagreement about among scientists. But eventually, things go back and forth, and people compete with each other and work their way to the answer. At some point, we reach more of a consensus.
For example, on climate change, I think it's gotten to the point now where it's irresponsible, if you're writing a story about climate change, to run a quote from somebody somewhere who's still—probably because of their political views—clinging to the idea that anthropogenic global warming is somehow not damaging the planet.
On things that aren't decided yet, that makes sense to run both. It's more a question of judgment of the journalists. I don't think the solution to it is put stark versions of each side, side-by-side and let people choose. The whole point of journalism is to inform people. If there's a consensus on something, that's part of what you're supposed to be informing them about.
MF: What about reporting on perspectives about the lab leak theory at various times during the pandemic?
HS: We’re the outlet that ran the letter that really restarted the whole debate. A bunch of well-known scientists said we should consider the lab leak theory more carefully. And in the aftermath of that, a bunch of those scientists who signed that letter concluded that the lab leak was very, very unlikely. Interestingly, publishing that letter actually drove us to more of a consensus. I would say now, we're almost to the point where clinging to the lab leak idea is close to being a fringe idea that almost doesn't need to be included in stories. But I would say there's been a lot of evolution on that over the last year since we ran that letter.
MF: Let's talk about bipartisanship in Congress. Research funding for the National Institutes of Health was championed for years by influential Republicans who supported science to advance health breakthroughs. Is that changing? Maybe especially with Sen. Roy Blunt retiring? Has bipartisanship on science funding been eroded by political battles during COVID?
HS: I'm optimistic that that won't be the case. Republican Congresses have usually been good for science funding. And that's because (former Sen.) Arlen Specter and Roy Blunt are two of the political figures who have pushed for science funding over the last couple decades. With Blunt retiring, we don't know who's going to step in for him. That's an interesting question. I hope there will be Republican champions for science funding.
MF: Is there too much conservatism baked into how we research new therapies and bring them to people who are sick, bench-to-bedside? I'm thinking of the criticisms that NIH or the FDA are overly bureaucratic. Are you hopeful about ARPA-H, President Biden’s proposed new agency for health innovation?
HS: I think the challenge hasn't been cracked by the federal government. Maybe DARPA has done this outside of health science, but within health science, the federal government has had limited success at funding things that can be applied quickly, while having overwhelming success at funding basic research that eventually becomes important in applications. Can they do it the other way around? They’ll need people running ARPA-H who are application first. It’s ambitious. The way it was done in Operation Warp Speed is all the money was just given to the companies. If the hypothesis on ARPA-H is for the federal government to actually do what Moderna and BioNTech did for the vaccine, themselves, that's a radical idea. It's going to require thinking very differently than the way they think about dispersing grants for basic research.
MF: You’ve written a number of bold op-eds as editor of the Science journals. Are there any op-eds you're especially proud of as voicing a view that was important but not necessarily popular?
HS: I was one of the first people to come out hard against President Trump['s handling of] the pandemic. Lots of my brothers and sisters came along afterwards. To the extent that I was able to catalyze that, I'm proud of doing it. In the last few weeks, I published a paper objecting to the splitting of the OSTP director from the science advisor and, especially, not awarding the top part of the job to Alondra Nelson, who is a distinguished scientist at black female. And instead, giving part of it to Francis Collins. He’s certainly the most important science policy figure of my lifetime, but somebody who’s been doing this now for decades. I just think we have to push as hard as we can to get a cadre of young people leading us in Washington who represent the future of the country. I think the Biden administration leaned on a lot of figures from the past. I’m pushing them hard to try to stop it.
MF: I want to circle back to the erosion of the public’s trust in experts. Most experts are specialists, and specialists operate in silos that don’t capture the complexity of scientific knowledge. Are some pushbacks to experts and concerns about the perils of specialization valid?
HS: You're on the right track there. What we need is more respect for the generalist. We can't help the fact that you have to be very specialized to do a lot of stuff. But what we need is more partnership between specialists and people who can cross fields, especially into communication and social sciences. That handoff is just not really there right now. It's hard to get a hardcore scientist to respect people who are interested in science, education and science communication, and to treat them as equals. The last two years showed that they're at least as important, if not more so.
MF: I’m grateful that you’re leading the way in this area, Holden. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and your work.
The rise of remote work is a win-win for people with disabilities and employers
Disability advocates see remote work as a silver lining of the pandemic, a win-win for adults with disabilities and the business world alike.
Any corporate leader would jump at the opportunity to increase their talent pool of potential employees by 15 percent, with all these new hires belonging to an underrepresented minority. That’s especially true given tight labor markets and CEO desires to increase headcount. Yet, too few leaders realize that people with disabilities are the largest minority group in this country, numbering 50 million.
Some executives may dread the extra investments in accommodating people’s disabilities. Yet, providing full-time remote work could suffice, according to a new study by the Economic Innovation Group think tank. The authors found that the employment rate for people with disabilities did not simply reach the pre-pandemic level by mid-2022, but far surpassed it, to the highest rate in over a decade. “Remote work and a strong labor market are helping [individuals with disabilities] find work,” said Adam Ozimek, who led the research and is chief economist at the Economic Innovation Group.
Disability advocates see this development as a silver lining of the pandemic, a win-win for adults with disabilities and the business world alike. For decades before the pandemic, employers had refused requests from workers with disabilities to work remotely, according to Thomas Foley, executive director of the National Disability Institute. During the pandemic, "we all realized that...many of us could work remotely,” Foley says. “[T]hat was disproportionately positive for people with disabilities."
Charles-Edouard Catherine, director of corporate and government relations for the National Organization on Disability, said that remote-work options had been advocated for many years to accommodate disabilities. “It’s a little frustrating that for decades corporate America was saying it’s too complicated, we’ll lose productivity, and now suddenly it’s like, sure, let’s do it.”
The pandemic opened doors for people with disabilities
Early in the pandemic, employment rates dropped for everyone, including people with disabilities, according to Ozimek’s research. However, these rates recovered quickly. In the second quarter of 2022, people with disabilities aged 25 to 54, the prime working age, are 3.5 percent more likely to be employed, compared to before the pandemic.
What about people without disabilites? They are still 1.1 percent less likely to be employed.
These numbers suggest that remote work has enabled a substantial number of people with disabilities to find and retain employment.
“We have a last-in, first-out labor market, and [people with disabilities] are often among the last in and the first out,” Ozimek says. However, this dynamic has changed, with adults with disabilities seeing employment rates recover much faster. Now, the question is whether the new trend will endure, Ozimek adds. “And my conclusion is that not only is it a permanent thing, but it’s going to improve.”
Gene Boes, president and chief executive of the Northwest Center, a Seattle organization that helps people with disabilities become more independent, confirms this finding. “The new world we live in has opened the door a little bit more…because there’s just more demand for labor.”
Long COVID disabilities put a premium on remote work
Remote work can help mitigate the impact of long COVID. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that about 19 percent of those who had COVID developed long COVID. Recent Census Bureau data indicates that 16 million working age Americans suffer from it, with economic costs estimated at $3.7 trillion.
Certainly, many of these so-called long-haulers experience relatively mild symptoms - such as loss of smell - which, while troublesome, are not disabling. But other symptoms are serious enough to be disabilities.
According to a recent study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, about a quarter of those with long COVID changed their employment status or working hours. That means long COVID was serious enough to interfere with work for 4 million people. For many, the issue was serious enough to qualify them as disabled.
Indeed, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found in a just-released study that the number of individuals with disabilities in the U.S. grew by 1.7 million. That growth stemmed mainly from long COVID conditions such as fatigue and brain fog, meaning difficulties with concentration or memory, with 1.3 million people reporting an increase in brain fog since mid-2020.
Many had to drop out of the labor force due to long COVID. Yet, about 900,000 people who are newly disabled have managed to continue working. Without remote work, they might have lost these jobs.
For example, a software engineer at one of my client companies has struggled with brain fog related to long COVID. With remote work, this employee can work during the hours when she feels most mentally alert and focused, even if that means short bursts of productivity throughout the day. With flexible scheduling, she can take rests, meditate, or engage in activities that help her regain focus and energy. Without the need to commute to the office, she can save energy and time and reduce stress, which is crucial when dealing with brain fog.
In fact, the author of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York study notes that long COVID can be considered a disability under the Americans with Disability Act, depending on the specifics of the condition. That means the law can require private employers with fifteen or more staff, as well as government agencies, to make reasonable accommodations for those with long COVID. Richard Deitz, the author of this study, writes in the paper that “telework and flexible scheduling are two accommodations that can be particularly beneficial for workers dealing with fatigue and brain fog.”
The current drive to return to the office, led by many C-suite executives, may need to be reconsidered in light of legal and HR considerations. Arlene S. Kanter, director of the disability law and policy program at the Syracuse University College of Law, said that the question should depend on whether people with disabilities can perform their work well at home, as they did during Covid outbreaks. “[T]hen people with disabilities, as a matter of accommodation, shouldn’t be denied that right,” Kanter said.
Diversity benefits
But companies shouldn’t need to worry about legal regulations. It simply makes dollars and sense to expand their talent pool by 15% of an underrepresented minority. After all, extensive research shows that improving diversity boosts both decision-making and financial performance.
Companies that are offering more flexible work options have already gained significant benefits in terms of diverse hires. In its efforts to adapt to the post-pandemic environment, Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, decided to offer permanent fully remote work options to its entire workforce. And according to Meta chief diversity officer Maxine Williams, the candidates who accepted job offers for remote positions were “substantially more likely” to come from diverse communities: people with disabilities, Black, Hispanic, Alaskan Native, Native American, veterans, and women. The numbers bear out these claims: people with disabilities increased from 4.7 to 6.2 percent of Meta’s employees.
Having consulted for 21 companies to help them transition to hybrid work arrangements, I can confirm that Meta’s numbers aren’t a fluke. The more my clients proved willing to offer remote work, the more staff with disabilities they recruited - and retained. That includes employees with mobility challenges. But it also includes employees with less visible disabilities, such as people with long COVID and immunocompromised people who feel reluctant to put themselves at risk of getting COVID by coming into the office.
Unfortunately, many leaders fail to see the benefits of remote work for underrepresented groups, such as those with disabilities. Some even say the opposite is true, with JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon claiming that returning to the office will aid diversity.
What explains this poor executive decision making? Part of the answer comes from a mental blindspot called the in-group bias. Our minds tend to favor and pay attention to the concerns of those in the group of people who seem to look and think like us. Dimon and other executives without disabilities don’t perceive people with disabilities to be part of their in-group. They thus are blind to the concerns of those with disabilities, which leads to misperceptions such as Dimon’s that returning to the office will aid diversity.
In-group bias is one of many dangerous judgment errors known as cognitive biases. They impact decision making in all life areas, ranging from the future of work to relationships.
Another relevant cognitive bias is the empathy gap. This term refers to our difficulty empathizing with those outside of our in-group. The lack of empathy combines with the blindness from the in-group bias, causing executives to ignore the feelings of employees with disabilities and prospective hires.
Omission bias also plays a role. This dangerous judgment error causes us to perceive failure to act as less problematic than acting. Consequently, executives perceive a failure to support the needs of those with disabilities as a minor matter.
Conclusion
The failure to empower people with disabilities through remote work options will prove costly to the bottom lines of companies. Not only are limiting their talent pool by 15 percent, they’re harming their ability to recruit and retain diverse candidates. And as their lawyers and HR departments will tell them, by violating the ADA, they are putting themselves in legal jeopardy.
By contrast, companies like Meta - and my clients - that offer remote work opportunities are seizing a competitive advantage by recruiting these underrepresented candidates. They’re lowering costs of labor while increasing diversity. The future belongs to the savvy companies that offer the flexibility that people with disabilities need.