My New Favorite Movie: “Don’t Look Up”

Photo: Netflix

Awards season, as they call it in Hollywood, has only just begun, but I’m going to go ahead and cast my vote for the best film of the year: Don’t Look Up, written and directed by Adam McKay. It’s at once the funniest movie of the year and the most serious. If you haven’t seen it yet — and I would encourage you to — there are spoilers to follow.

 

Don’t Look Up’s premise is simple: a massive, existentially destructive comet is hurtling toward earth. It’s a metaphor for climate change, but also for other challenges like our growing income inequalities. You could add to these challenges all the ways technology has hijacked our attention and transformed how we take in reality — both a crisis in itself and one of the primary reasons we can’t solve the other crises.

 

The film shows how easy it is for people, including scientists, politicians and journalists, to be seduced by money and power — the dominant currencies in our current definition of success. Soon after the comet is discovered to contain trillions of dollars in rare earth minerals, President Janie Orlean, played with hysterical venality by Meryl Streep, announces, “What the world thought was an impending and terrifying danger turns out to be an astonishing opportunity!”

 

There’s the relentless pull of toxic positivity, which only serves to further blind us to the ugly realities of the collective problems we’re facing. At one point, when pushed not to be such a downer on a cable news show, astronomer Dr. Randall Mindy, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, explodes: “Not everything needs to sound so goddamn clever or charming or likable all the time! Sometimes, we just need to be able to say things to one another. We need to hear things.”

  

And that brings me to the biggest obstacle to meeting our challenges. The film brilliantly shows how the noise of our technology-fueled media landscape keeps us distracted and diverted. Our addiction to our screens and our always-on culture has us perpetually drowning in the shallows, obsessed with the superficial and unable to marshal our personal or collective attention to go deep on solving our big problems. 

 

At one point, Peter Isherwell, CEO of the tech giant BASH, tells Dr. Mindy that “BASH has over 40 million data points on every decision you’ve made since 1994.” It’s a great example of the difference between data and wisdom. Lack of data is hardly the reason we can’t take the required actions on climate change. As McKay told The New York Times, “We have the science… there are a lot of things we can do if we have the action, will and awareness.” And for that we need to be able to tap into our wisdom.

 

As the moment of the comet’s impact approaches, the admonition “don’t look up” becomes a viral rallying cry by President Orlean. “You know why they want you to look up?” she tells the crowd. “Because they want you to be afraid!” In fact, when we refuse to look up from our screens, we’re much more susceptible to being controlled by fear, to being divided, to having our valuable attention mined just as Isherwell and President Orlean want to mine the comet for valuable minerals. By taking our eyes off our screens, we can not only look up and take in the reality of what’s happening, but look in, to tap into our wisdom to do something about it.

 

Satire has always been one of the best weapons for challenging the status quo and getting people to see reality in a new way. And McKay follows squarely in the tradition of great satirists like Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain — savage wit in the service of passionate conviction. As Twain wrote, exposure to good satire makes citizens less likely to be “shriveled into sheep.” Or, in 2022, shriveled into screen-addled zombies.

 

Humor also has the unique ability to cut through social-media fueled misinformation and communicate essential truths, a power that McKay was very much aware of. “From my experience in doing comedy for years,” McKay told Chris Hayes, “what I’ve noticed is when… 500 people are together, and they’re laughing, there’s a high bar of truth. It’s very hard to get people to laugh when something is false.”

 

Don’t Look Up comes after two years of a forced pause in which we’ve had more time to think about what we value. And what I love most about the movie is that it bears witness not just to the truth of the urgency of climate change, but to the truth of what’s most valuable in our everyday lives, and what we’re missing by not looking up, and not looking in.

 

Gathered at Dr. Mindy’s home in Michigan for one last family dinner as the comet enters the atmosphere, the film’s protagonists join hands and say what they’re grateful for, which is largely: each other and the loved ones in their lives. And then Yule, played by Timothée Chalamet, leads the group in a prayer: “Dearest Father and Almighty Creator, we ask for your grace despite our pride, your forgiveness despite our doubt, and, most of all, your love to soothe our fears in these dark times. May we face your divine will with courage and open hearts of acceptance.”

 

It’s a lovely moment, played perfectly straight, pulling us firmly back to earth as the comet begins to destroy it. And then Dr. Mindy utters what McKay calls “the line of the movie”: “The thing is, we really did have everything, didn’t we?”

 

And of course, we still do — and if we force ourselves to look up, and look in, we can continue to have everything, or at least everything that matters. As McKay and climate scientist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson write in The Guardian, unlike the characters in the movie, we’re the authors of our own story: “But not every story is guaranteed a happy ending, even though that’s mostly what we see in movies. So we can’t just sit back and watch. We are not an audience. Like it or not, we are in this story.”

 

Read More on Thrive: My New Favorite Movie: “Don’t Look Up”

Why Are We Still Failing to Use a Powerful Tool Against COVID? Small Lifestyle Changes Can Have a Big Impact

While we’ve heard a lot about vaccines, masks and social distancing in the last two years, there’s been very little messaging on the huge impact that lifestyle factors like sleep, nutrition and movement can have on how vulnerable we are to the virus.

 

Let’s look at sleep. Not only does getting enough sleep boost our immune system on a continuous basis, sleep also plays a big role in how much protection we get from vaccines. For example, one study found that those who had slept only four hours in the four nights before receiving the flu vaccine had less than half of the critical antibodies of those who weren’t sleep deprived.

 

Movement is also a powerful tool. A recent study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that, compared to COVID patients who exercised 11 to 149 minutes each week, “consistently inactive” patients were 120% more likely to be hospitalized, 110% more likely to be put in the ICU and 132% more likely to die. 

 

Weight is another significant risk factor. A study by researchers from the University of North Carolina found that individuals with obesity were 46% more likely to get COVID, 113% more likely to be hospitalized and carried a 48% higher risk of death. Yes, weight loss is difficult, and that’s why Thrive’s behavior change system is all about Microsteps. As study lead author Barry Popkin put it, “any weight loss is a positive at nearly any weight level.”

 

Yes, we still absolutely need people to get vaccinated and boosted. But we also need to go upstream and focus on the modifiable factors that we know put us at higher risk not just of COVID, but a whole host of chronic illnesses. Preparing for the next pandemic, or the next variant, shouldn’t just be about ramping up our supply of ventilators and expediting the process for approving new vaccines and treatments. A vital part of shoring up our public health system is shoring up our personal health system — the small choices we make every day that make a big difference.

 

Read More on Thrive: Why Are We Still Failing to Use a Powerful Tool Against COVID?

The New Frontier in Healthy Eating: Cognitive Nutrition

Our food choices don’t just impact our physical health. As a growing body of research shows, they also affect our cognitive health. The science is clear: we can eat our way to better brain health. That’s the core of Thrive’s new Nourish Your Body and Mind cognitive nutrition program, led by our cognitive nutrition director Tess Bredesen and already resonating with Thrive’s enterprise customers. It’s filled with the latest science and with Microsteps we can take to sharpen our focus, reduce anxiety and reconnect with the joy of food. At some point in our lives, most of us have tried to eat better. But when we shift our mindset, we can see nutrition as much more than a never-ending test of our willpower. Instead, we can see it as a daily opportunity to enhance our focus, energy, creativity, mood and joy — all the things we want more of in our lives. You can read more about it here. And if you'd like to bring Nourish Your Body and Mind to your organization, connect with our team here.

Before You Go

Book of the Month

Speaking with Spirit: 52 Prayers to Guide, Inspire, and Uplift You, by Agapi Stassinopoulos. If that name sounds familiar, it should — Agapi is my sister. She’s always been my inspiration (though since she’s my younger sister, there must have been a short time when I was on my own, but luckily I can’t remember it!). In the years since we grew up together in a small one-bedroom apartment in Athens, she’s become an inspiration to so many others as a bestselling author and speaker. And I’m so happy to see that continue with her newest book. Speaking with Spirit is an essential guidebook for tapping into the power of our inner strength and wisdom. And it couldn’t come at a better time. “In a time of tremendous fear, constant uncertainty, and unthinkable loss, people in every corner of the world are turning to prayer,” Agapi writes. “This longing to connect with something larger than ourselves is always in us but is often buried. In times of crisis, it rises to the surface.” As Agapi notes, the word “God” can be loaded, and of course it means something different to each person. For her, God isn’t a being but a “state of being” always available to us. The book is organized around themes and challenges we all face in our everyday lives — relationships, fears, dealing with perfectionism, unlocking creativity and connecting with our purpose. And interspersed throughout are personal stories — including many that were new to me! As Agapi writes, “Whatever moves your soul, inspires your awe, and awakens your spirit can be prayer. It doesn’t matter how you pray, only that you do.” You can read an excerpt here, see a video of Agapi in conversation with writer and humanitarian activist Zainab Salbi here, and purchase the book here. 

Driven to Distraction — or Worse

Even though fewer cars have been on the road during the pandemic, traffic deaths have surged. Why? One reason is distracted driving. That’s why I’ve partnered with Jay Winsten of the Harvard School of Public Health on the school’s new Project Look Out to raise awareness about mindful driving. The first step of mindful driving is to put the phone down and keep our eyes on the road — and off our screens. Mindfulness is always a better choice than multitasking, but especially when we’re going 60 mph. You can read more about the project — and get Microsteps that will get you on the road to being a more mindful driver — in this piece I wrote with Jay.

Fixing the Fundamental Flaw in Work-Life Integration

The Great Resignation has led to a Great Re-evaluation about the place of work in our lives. We’re realizing how backward our thinking about work-life has been. Yes, work is important. It can give us purpose and meaning. But it shouldn’t take the place of life. In fact, the time has come to do away with the idea of “work-life” altogether. That’s why, as I argue here — along with Jen Fisher, Chief Well-being Officer at Deloitte — now is the time for “life-work” integration. And to reflect that, we’re renaming our Work-Life Integration Hub (in collaboration with Deloitte and edited by Jen) the Life-Work Integration Hub. It’s a way of going back and fixing a fundamental flaw in the code — leading with work and giving any time left over to our lives — that led to an increasingly unstable operating system, along with more and more crashes. Life-work integration is about embedding well-being into the workflow itself. It’s about well-being as a set of guiding principles that we can design our day around. Life-work integration is a framework on which we can build a way of living and working that allows us to truly thrive.

Best,