Brains Byte Back

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Indoor air quality has a huge impact on our health and well-being, yet it is often overlooked. According to the WHO, roughly 3.8 million people a year die from indoor air pollution. This is a staggeringly high number, but the good news is modern tech can help us end this hidden pandemic of poor air quality.

In today’s episode, we speak with John Bohlmann, Founder & CEO of HawkenAQ, a company that tracks and scores the air quality of commercial buildings in real-time.

Bohlmann shares how the company established its service back in 2019 initially as a company that focused on energy-saving technology for buildings but then moved on to the mission of improving air quality after seeing how overlooked it was by the tech and construction industries. He also shares the story behind the name HawkenAQ.

Bohlmann also discusses the current state of air purification technology and talks about bipolar ionization, which uses ultraviolet purification to kill viruses in the air.

We also discuss how good air quality positively affects our health and the drawbacks of poor air quality on our health.

Additionally, Bohlmann shares what steps can be taken to improve air quality if a building identifies poor air quality inside, and he goes into detail about what we mean when we say poor air quality.

And finally, Bohlmann shares details about what is next on the horizon for HawkenAQ as it returns back to its roots of helping buildings become more energy efficient.

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Back when we first launched Brains Byte Back in 2019, in one of our earliest episodes, we interview a Certified Sexual Addiction Counselor and a Professor of Gender and Sexuality studies and asked them the question “Is porn addiction real or a myth?”.

To this day it has been one of our most popular episodes ever, so we decided to revisit the topic and speak with Joshua Shea, a recovering pornography addict who is also a coach, author, and speaker who shares his story and educates others about pornography addiction.

In this episode, Shea shares with us his own story of pornography addiction, detailing how it began, why it developed in the first place, and how he overcame it.

He also opens up about his own perspective on the state of porn addiction in the world today and shares the signs of porn addiction that might indicate if someone has a problem.

He also covers why non-addicts should care about porn addiction and advice for partners who discover their loved one is a porn addict.

Additionally, he goes into detail about what a person can do after learning their partner has an addiction. And finally, he shares his thoughts on what we need to do to protect future generations of kids from developing unhealthy or addictive behaviors relating to porn.

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When you get into a slump, it can be hard to pull yourself out. This is something the pandemic made very real for many of us. In fact, according to a survey by Public Health England (PHE), more than 40% of adults in England gained weight during the pandemic, reports the BBC.

Having experienced this firsthand during the pandemic, this served as the motivation that three friends needed to create the YCombinator startup Alfie, the first program for men that combines doctor-prescribed medication, 1:1 health coaching, and community-based competition to help men achieve their weight loss goals.

In today’s episode, we speak with Alexander Singh, a former Healthcare Consultant turned CEO and co-founder of Alfie, who shares how the interesting story behind why he and his co-founders picked the name Alfie for the company’s name.

He also shares how Alfie works and how it separates itself from other companies that provide weight loss programs.

Singh also goes into detail about what a metabolic review is and why it is important. He also explains how much the service costs along with some specific case studies demonstrating how Alfie’s service has had an impact.

He also shares how competition is used to achieve weight loss. In fact, according to Singh, when a competitive element is added, men show a 120% activity increase, which the company makes use of by implementing bi-weekly challenges such as step counts and workout competitions.

And finally, Singh shares his advice for listeners looking to further their startup journey and apply to take part in the Y Combinator program.

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In our modern society, businesses across the globe are taking a stand for ethics and beliefs they believe in, or at least that their customers believe in.

Sometimes businesses are built around the idea of an ethical principle, such as the famous outdoor clothing brand Patagonia. Or sometimes a company will make headlines for taking a solid stance on a controversial issue, to demonstrate their support for a certain side, such as Nike.

Now more than ever, business and ethics are two subjects that have never been closer.

To discuss the modern overlap between the two, we are joined by Nathalie Nahai, the author of Business Unusual and Webs of Influence: The Psychology of Online Persuasion.

Nahai shares some basic lessons and ideas that underpin the psychological dynamics behind evolving decision-making processes we go through when making purchases. She also explains how she helps people ethically apply behavioral science principles to enhance their platforms, product design, and customer experience.

Additionally, she shares why she created TheValuesMap.com, a website designed to help users identify, develop, and communicate the psychological values their business represents, alongside what it strives to achieve for its employees, customers, and the wider world.

And finally, she discusses some of the most exciting stories and guests she has come across while hosting The Hive Podcast and the Tech Weekly podcast for The Guardian.

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You may have heard of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers, commonly known as Rajneeshees or sannyasins, from the incredibly popular Netflix documentary “Wild, Wild Country.”

Well in today’s episode we speak with a former follower of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh cult to get a better understanding of how this society functioned, what it was like to live in normal society as a member of the cult, and what it was like on the famous Oregon ranch.

With our guest, Annie (who has asked to remain anonymous but showed her mala that she wore during her time as a Rajneshee to prove her affiliation with the cult), we find out how she first find out about Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and the Rajneeshees, and what inspired her to join their cult, where she goes into great detail about how she found them when she was 16 at an Alcoholics Anonymous event.

She also shares why life as a Rajneeshee was difficult off the ranch in normal society, as society often treated them with a mixture of suspicion, curiosity, and fear. In fact, she was fired from all of her jobs due to her membership in the cult, but she also explains how she saw this as a positive, “a trial by fire” as she claims.

Annie also goes into detail about what it was like visiting the ranch in 1983, when, she believes, much of the footage used in the documentary was filmed. She talks about the important role meditation played in being a Rajneeshee and what a normal day was like on the ranch.

She also shares her thoughts on how accurate the documentary was, how close she came to meeting Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and finally, how she left the cult in the end.

Overall, Annie explains why she doesn’t see the following as a religion or cult, but instead as a community and how this community had such an overall, lasting positive experience in her life.

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It may come as no surprise that many are still feeling the psychological impact of the pandemic. And, as mental health becomes less stigmatized, a new wave of apps and companies, such as BetterHelp and Talkspace, have flooded this space, offering more affordable and convenient mental health services.

However, while this new wave of attention on mental health is good for society, the interest from VCs looking to turn this attention into profit could in fact be disastrous for the industry.

To discuss this new “Uberfication of Therapy” we are joined by William Schroeder, Co-Owner and Counselor at Just Mind, a boutique mental health clinic based in Austin, Texas.

Schroeder explains how these large tech companies promise mental health specialists the ability to turn on an app and be given as many clients as they can take with the promise of good earnings. However, much like Uber, these big payday promises have fallen flat. Especially when these companies gain market share, they reduce the worker’s wages or introduce subscription costs that claw back the profits of the individual.

Schroeder also shares what he believes needs to be done in order to provide better, more affordable mental health services to the wider population. In response to this question, Schroeder explains the rollout of 988, an emergency number that will release crisis teams all across the country, so when people are in a mental health crisis, whatever it might be, they can call this number.

He also goes into detail about how student loan forgiveness could stand to be a method for attracting more workers to the mental health field. And finally, Schroeder explains how apps can be a useful tool in the battle for better mental health services.

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From time to time, in one way or another, most of us can relate to having an inability to focus, being easily distracted, being poorly organized, and sometimes being impulsive. For those that suffer from ADHD, this can be an average day.

This can be problematic in day-to-day life and a person with ADHD has a higher risk of injury, depression, unemployment, imprisonment, and those with ADHD have a higher divorce rate than the average population.

On average 5-7% of children have ADHD (which is a disorder, not a disease) but this percentage decreases among adults, and historically ADHD has been very hard to accurately identify and diagnose, and can often be mislabelled and misattributed.

Fortunately, thanks to modern technology, the development of more accurate diagnoses are underway, and in today’s episode we will be speaking with Carl Reuterskiöld, CEO of Qbtech, a company giving healthcare professionals objective data to inform decisions about ruling in or ruling out ADHD.

To kick off the show, Reuterskiöld goes over exactly what ADHD is and how it can be identified. Reuterskiöld then explains how they can create an objective, unbias view for analyzing ADHD behavior in a patient using a camera and data. He also covers why the efficacy of treatments is hard to measure when diagnoses are based on subjective analysis.

He also shares how Qbtech began, how he joined the company, and how the work of Qbtech stands out from work previously produced in the space of ADHD research.

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Changing our behavior can be difficult but necessary if we want to see a change in our lives. This is true for every type of change we want to see in our lives, from our health to our finances, and for the latter, this human-centered tech designer, specializing in cognitive science, believes AI can help us change our behavior to make smarter financial decisions, save more, and retire earlier.

In today’s episode, we speak with Uday Akkaraju, Founder and CEO at BOND.AI, a leader in AI-driven financial insight technology, to discuss how their technology works and how it stands to help us find more financial freedom in our lives.

Akkaraju shares how he was living in Silicon Valley, spending everything he got on the weekend, living paycheck to paycheck until he was struck by a financial emergency. He tried getting help from banks and financial institutions but was rejected everywhere he went.

Because of this, he realized he had to create a solution to his problem, so he started looking at his behavior and transaction patterns. He explains that he initially looked at his situation in two different ways.

Firstly, how to get out of this bad financial situation as soon as possible. And secondly, how can he change his behavior to avoid this again. He set out to find a solution using his background in human center design and cognitive psychology.

He found that other apps that offered financial guidance services were disjointed, so he decided to create a better design that took a more holistic approach. After 18 months, he had raised enough capital and confidence in his product to launch BOND.AI.

Akkaraju explains what the Empathy Engine he created for BOND.AI is, and how it works. He also explains that in order to see change, the focus has to be on habits and behaviors, because whatever financial tools you have or whatever advisor you have is only valuable if you apply these insights to your behavior, and behavioral change can be incredibly difficult to do successfully.

Akkaraju gives an example to highlight its use, explaining that if the Empathy Engine can see that the individual has been traveling a lot, it can ask what their favorite airline is. With this answer, the Empathy Engine can use this as a data point to decide what financial avenues would benefit them the most. And thus, gives them insights they may not have thought, thanks to these data points.

We also talk about how data can be used to implement UBI, why Akkaraju decided to leave Silicon Valley to move to Arkansas, and why it has been such a beneficial move for the business.

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When it comes to political research and building your own political opinion before voting, it can be easy to find opinions, but hard to find unbiased data, research, and information. This was the issue that inspired Kelly Riordan to create Wewilldecide.com, a site that provided users with all congressional voting and activity.

In our episode today, Riordan explains how she made the change from an apathetic voter that didn’t always bother to vote, to becoming a responsible, well-informed voter.

She explains that when she started and sat down to decide who she wanted to vote for, she found that there was very little objective, unbiased information on the people she would be voting for.

So using her love for organization, research, and data, she decided to create Wewilldecide to produce a place for voters to go to see clear data, with stats and scores just like you would expect to see with March Madness or a fantasy football league. She explains why Wewilldecide isn’t a place for opinions, and instead only wants numbers.

She shares how the site remains impartial while dealing with complex political topics, and why she will not allow advertising on the site due to the potential political bias that ads may contain.

Instead of advertising, the site offers a $3 a month subscription in order to keep it running, with the aim of removing this once the site becomes big enough.

Riordan highlights why Ireland is “near and dear” to her heart and why she would love to set her sights on Wewilldecide making its way into Europe through Ireland and other democratic countries. Alongside her long-term future intentions of producing a sister site that can show users what values companies support in order to help users “vote with their dollars”.

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Mental health and addiction have been longstanding issues across societies around the world. However, in our modern society, as stigma subsides around these issues, conversations and solutions have arisen.

In today’s episode, we speak with Adrien Châtillon, CEO & Founder of Actipulse Neuroscience, a neuro-tech company specialized in the research and engineering of Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation technologies for the treatment of psychiatric and neurological disorders, to get a better understanding of how their company’s technology stands to advance mental health and addiction treatment.

To kick off the show, Châtillon shares the backstory of the two previous startups he founded before Actipulse. The first, a Slack for students, and the second, a French movie startup.

He also discusses the company’s goal to bring this technology from a hospital setting to an at-home setting, to make it more affordable, and how they plan to do this.

Châtillon also highlights how their technology works and how it can help treat depression, smoking addiction and anxiety. Alongside how they intend to use it to slow down Parkison’s and Alzheimer's.

Additionally, he talks about a recent study conducted by the company that saw 9 out of 10 subjects with smoking addiction stop smoking after treatment using its technology.

Châtillon explains how they are targeting the dopamine mechanisms in the brain, and an upcoming second trial, which is currently underway, to help tackle opioid addiction.

Finally, on the topic of addiction, Châtillon shares whether or not this technology might stand to tackle behavioral addictions such as gambling.

And before we wrap up the show, Châtillon shares what it has been like to go through the Y Combinator program and advice for other startups and entrepreneurs that want to be selected for the program.