Your Phone Is Rewiring Your Brain: Blue Light, Flicker & EMFs Explained | Tristan Scott

In a world built on screens, we often forget that our bodies evolved under sun, shade, texture, and time, not LED glow and endless scrolls. My next guest is Tristan Scott. He spent years exploring how blue light, EMFs, and environment shape our biology, and now he's building a computer designed with our human design in mind. Today on Everyday Ancestral, we're going to dig into how technology Should align with our roots, not fight them. Let's get into why what we stare at matters just as much as what we put into our mouths. Tristan, thank you so much for being here. I have to share right off the bat, you enlightened me around something that I had never thought about. So being in the food industry, I've always been kind of aware of, oh, you know, there's many industries within ag, big ag and food. that are against our health. You know, they're designed just to sell a product that they're not trying to make us healthy. They're just trying to get our dollars. But I never thought about that around the screen on the iPhone or the tech that we're using. I didn't, I knew tech apps were doing that, but I didn't think about the fact that big tech was using screen, you know, glass and light to basically get us addicted to using the product. I thought the product inherently was just something, oh, here, we're going to design it. You're just going to use it because you need it. But I didn't think they were actually trying to get us addicted to it separate from apps. And you really enlightened me to that.

Yeah, it's an unfortunate reality. I would say it's an inconvenient truth. And whether things have been done nefariously or just an incident of engineering progress over time, to me, it doesn't even matter because at this point, we all know that the devices we are staring at all day, especially the hardware interfaces, are truly optimized to keep us on them as long as possible. And when you look at the business model of these companies, they're running an attention-based economy. Really, that's what we're in. So for them, they're incentivized directly, especially through the Meta advertising model now, to just stare at our screens as long as possible because then we can be the consumers that they so desire. And it's interesting because everyone thinks about the algorithm, about the software, about the apps, but the analogy we always give is the Las Vegas casino. When you walk into that casino, before you ever sit down at a poker table or a slot machine, Or the actual game, they have curated this environmental design that is really deliberate and almost impossible to not think about in terms of how it's perfectly curated so that you are really in an artificial environment and it's making it really stimulating for your body and then thus very hard to get out of the game. So what I'm talking about is There's no sunlight, there's no natural light. They have no clocks, so you don't know what time it is. You have no like bearings about you. There's bright flashing lights everywhere. I mean, the highest density of like highly saturated lights in a small area. There's alcohol for free. There's like girls walking around with not a lot of clothes. It's like the most dopaminergic environment possible. And then you sit down at the slot machine, which is 6 inches away from your face. And, you know, you start pulling the slots and playing the game. For us, it's the same as your phone, right? The form factor is so hard to put down, so easy to scroll. The light coming off of it is very blue dominant. It's very dopaminergic and stimulating. It's flickering. So it's kind of stressing your biology as well. And it's making you very prone to fall prey to social media, to notifications, to advertisement. And the other thing is similar to Las Vegas. Our phones, our devices, our computers are not really designed to be used outside. So the environment we're used to and ancestrally would be taking as input is removed from our lives. And thus the environmental stimulation is now predominantly coming from a handheld device or a computer, whereas for all of humanity, it was coming from the environment, the total environment around us. And that's why when you even take a computer or a phone outside, you're much less likely to engage with it in a kind of unhealthy manner, you could say, or you're much less likely to doom scroll. And it's the same with Vegas. If they put a slot machine in the middle of a national park, you think anyone's going to like pull that? No, they're going to want to like go look at the beautiful scenery and the mountains and do something that's physically active and kind of fulfilling. But it's only when we're in this dull indoor environment, cut off from the natural world, that the environmental design of the device kicks in. So it's multifaceted. And what we're trying to do is educate people and also solve that because unfortunately, For some people, and, you know, ancestral speak here is important, right? For your crowd, we're not going to go back to the Stone Age of having no tech. How do we create a relationship and devices that are much more synergistic? That's the whole premise.

Yeah. And we're going to definitely dive into that. You know, it's funny, your comment about how having the phone or having the tech outside and in nature, how we'd be less inclined to do it. I was thinking to myself, unless you're 13 or below, because Because my daughter, it doesn't seem to matter. Like, she's just like head down on that phone. It's like it almost has this power over her that extends beyond the outdoors. And I'm not sure exactly why, but maybe you can delve into a bit about how is our biology being challenged by these modern tech? Like, what are the kind of symptoms that we're seeing? I mean, besides the obvious one is like eyesight, right?

Yeah.

Eyesight is hugely being affected by having, holding a screen so close to your face.

Yeah. What are, what are the downstream effects? And just to, you know, a point for your daughter is children are far more biologically sensitive and they're far more likely to get sucked in because of that. It's really a tragedy and why we've launched Daylight Kids and why, you know, I think iPad kids and kids on screens is actually the biggest problem to solve in society because It's a very dangerous trajectory that we're on. But overall, for anyone, what is tech actually doing to us? Well, for starters, it's really disruptive to our circadian rhythm and our light environment at the very top. Like, that to me is the most upstream thing because as humans, we evolved outside. And what do we have outside or in nature? What are the light patterns that exist? It's extremely bright days and extremely dark nights. That simple. And there's epidemiological research now that basically showcases those who have the darkest nights and the brightest days versus those who have the lowest end of the spectrum in terms of like the dullest days and the brightest nights, the opposite. You know, it's like a 50 to 100% change in all-cause mortality risk, like 90,000 participants. There's some cool research out there, but it's really simple is that we're cyclical creatures. We're based in this 24-hour time span. And the light is really upstream from every biological process, from hormone production, from sleep, from digestion, from nutrient uptake, from cell restoration repair. It's like The day is to go out and do and hunt and gather and, you know, get stimulation so you can survive as humans and be productive. And then, the night is for restoration to recover from that action that took place during the day. But now, what do we have? Because of technology, we have moved to an indoor-based species. We spend the vast majority, 90-plus percent of our time indoors. And that started with TVs and, you know, factories and schools and offices. But now with devices, it's even further proliferated to a kind of point of no turning back. And for kids now, their childhood is not outdoor play-based anymore. It's more screen indoor-based. So what that means is we're getting not the amount of light stimulation during the day, and that at nighttime we have way too bright of an environment. So our circadian rhythm's disrupted. Our body clocks are desynchronized. So, every cellular process is downstream from timing, right? Imagine you have like any factory, it's making cars, for example. If the timing of that flow of that kind of highly complex system to come together into, you know, a final assembly is disrupted or it's desynchronized, it's not going to be a very strong process, a finely tuned process, and the outputs then are going to be compromised. So, It's the same with humans. We have insanely complex biology and trillions of reactions going on and cellular signaling constantly. So if the timing is disrupted, if your body doesn't know where you are, what time it is, what time of year it is, it's not going to adapt properly for you to kind of thrive in that environment. And it's really that simple. So what do we see? We see kind of chronic disease across the board. chronic fatigue, which is not normal. It's very common, but it's not normal. Disrupted sleep, low-quality sleep, even though we get like duration of hours, the quality of sleep has probably never been worse. And that's just, that's the battle we're losing every day. So, we used to be able to get away with a whole lot more, but now, because of this light environment and our circadian desynchronization, We have really a losing battle every single day and we're not as resilient. So I think that that's like top, topmost, I would say.

Yeah, for sure. You know, I have to wonder too, I think about this whenever I'm out late at night and I say late at night, I'm talking like 8:30, 9:00. I'm not talking too late, but when it should be dark out, except it's not because of the light pollution. You know, from, from the houses or from the city. And I, I have to wonder, what is the toll that's happening on our, our spirituality, even on our existence, when you don't see the stars every night? That, you know, we all know when we go camping and you see the stars for what they are, what they always are, there is a humbling, right? There is this feeling of like, oh my gosh, like I am just a, a, a, one cog in this huge universe, you know, and that, that there's something bigger than me and there's a beauty that's beyond just the feelings we have every day. You know, it almost, it almost challenges you to think bigger than yourself because you see how glorious the world around us is. And yet we get none of that these days. Like if you live in a city, you get, you live, my kids rarely see the stars for what they are.

To me, you know, going down this kind of discussion, I really think the ultimate side effect of technology is it completely disconnects us from reality, like what is real, what actually matters. And then even further downstream from that is it desensitizes us so that we are actually being dehumanized because we can no longer feel the environmental kind of inputs. And we're, you know, we're zombies because we get all of our stimulation and fulfillment from this artificial world that's in front of us all the time, and we can access it all the time, and we no longer experience, yeah, the stars in the sky, the vast open views, the mountains, the kind of just natural world. That does ground us in reality and makes us realize that we are part of something far greater than ourselves. And the difference is so vast. It's really sad to think about that. But to me, that's kind of where we headed. And that's where you see this like WALL-E future unfolding in front of us. And everyone knows it. A lot of people in this space are waking up to it, but it's a real challenge because A lot of us live in cities. A lot of us base— almost all of us have to use technology all day long. And the difference is so stark. Like, you know, I know I was trying to take this podcast outside and now I've come inside just from me doing that. The difference in light intensity from a day where it's kind of like partly cloudy to now I'm inside, I probably went from like 20,000 to 40,000 lux. To in here, maybe it's like 500 to 1,000. So, we're talking like 50 to 100 times difference in light intensity. On a bright sunny day, it could be like up to 1,000 times difference in light intensity. And, that's energy, that's stimulus for our body, and it's a signal of where we're at and it's driving our physiology forward. So, it's not some minor shift. When you're out and about at night in the light pollution, Like a dark night, a full moon. We just had like one of the brightest full moons, right? That's like half a lux, maybe quarter lux at most. Whereas you have lights on in your house or even like kind of the neighborhood streetlights. And imagine in a city, you know, that's maybe tens, tens, 50 lux. We're talking hundreds of times difference. And that's really disrupting our biology. And And confusing us. So, it's not understated at all, the drastic difference. And people always like to say, oh, well, like, you know, my grandpa used to like smoke and drink whiskey every day, but he lived to like 100. And I think the reason why that used to be the case is because people could get away with kind of some environmental toxins or maybe not super dialed-in lifestyle habits. because their environment was different. Only in the past 20, 30 years have we really changed our environment to be so tech-centric, especially in the last 10 years, and so drastically disconnected from reality.

And it's hard to really assess like, well, which of the levers or which of these modalities are hurting us or hindering us because Of course, we're also aging. And so we, we tend to make excuses and say, oh, well, well, well, I'm 50 now. And so that's why I'm feeling this way. But it could be, to your point, it could be actually, no, it's because I've been, everything else is affecting me twice as much because I'm in an environment that no longer is really conducive towards just wellbeing. Now you, you're an electric engineer, so who basically shifted into health and marketing, specifically with Daylight Computer. So, what personal or professional trigger led you to connect tech, health, and ancestral design?

Yeah, I had one too many concussions in college. I played soccer in college, had a few, and then had one that sent me over the edge in December of 2017. And, I basically had post-concussive syndrome and symptoms for over a year, like couldn't exercise, Headaches every day, super sensitive to noise, light, sound, and got no help from, you know, traditional neurologists. So, kind of went down a self-healing rabbit hole like many of us have and uncovered the whole like lifestyle, diet, kind of holistic health movement, you could say. And, you know, I started doing things like blocking blue light, grounding, turning my phone on airplane mode very, very early on. But I got really into the food system as well. Regenerative ag, you know, I wrote a book called Bitcoin and Beef 4 years ago, so I was really passionate about that. And, you know, I, that stuff's tremendously important and I love it. And I buy local here. I know all my food suppliers in Wyoming and it's great, but I wanted to kind of keep going. And I realized in the, in this space again, like what is the next echelon of things that matter? And the light piece and the EMF, the electromagnetic piece, as an electrical engineer, I realized there was a huge gap in people discussing this topic, people educating on this topic. And as I was going through my own journey, I realized that the more time I spent outside on average, the better I felt. But then I was kind of hitting a plateau when I had to get— I was on social media, building a personal brand, talking about these things. And I was on my phone, I was on the internet more and more, and I kind of started plateauing a bit in my health journey. Like some headaches and stuff started coming back and I just like didn't know why, but it's because I couldn't buy a grass-fed regenerative ribeye iPhone. Like that doesn't exist, you know, or a MacBook or anything. And since COVID we look at these boxes all day long and it's the vast majority of our waking day. And I'm Fortunate to work remotely, but it means this is what I do all day. So how do we solve that? And I knew as an engineer that it was solvable. It was, you could change the light spectrum of a product. You could, if you really wanted to, lower the EMF emission, you could make it work outside. But I didn't realize that. I didn't ever think that because I'd worked in semiconductor industry And it's basically big companies take all, like they have all the say and it's real high barrier to entry. So when I got connected to Anjin at Daylight, and he's already been working on this for a few years, it was kind of like, oh, this is what I'm meant to do. Like I knew right away that this is so important because really nobody is working on this and we can be as deliberate as we want. But if we're not changing what we're doing in terms of tech consumption, it doesn't matter how healthy the rest of our lifestyle is. We will still be fighting an uphill battle and probably losing that battle. Yeah.

And it's fascinating. So I got to see the Daylight, I guess iPad or what would you call it? The pad?

It's a tablet, but we call it a tablet.

Yeah. So Daylight Tablet, in person, you really described as the first blue light-free computer, really. What is the difference that this Daylight Tablet is doing that's different from the other tech? And particularly maybe talk about that flicker, because I think that people don't realize that their screen is flickering until you try to film it. When you film your screen, then you see it flickering. But in our day-to-day lives, we don't. Think about the stress that's causing. And I was really taken when I got to put that tablet in front of me. I immediately felt my eye strain just kind of like relax.

That's exactly right. Yeah. So kind of started talking about like, what, why is modern tech so bad for us? Well, it's not designed to work outside. So it keeps us indoors in this artificial environment that's full of other bad lighting, higher density of EMFs, crappier air, et cetera. It disrupts our sleep at night because we're looking at these bright blue dominant screens. So, for the most part, screens are, they have a high proportion of blue light, which is a high-energy visible wavelength. And it is the master signaler to our circadian rhythm. So, light is the master kind of determinant of our circadian rhythm, of our body clocks. Blue light is like the top of the list from there. And that is why blue light in the morning, if you go outside for a walk, which is highly advisable to do every morning, that is what lights up your brain, releases cortisol, which is good in the morning, stimulates you, gives you dopamine from the environment dispersed so that you can go and seize the day and like have energy. That's what blue light is great for. And you're getting it all day long. Like I'm, Being bathed in blue light when I'm outside. But the sunlight has a balanced spectrum. It's only a small percentage of visible light, and it's actually predominantly infrared light, over 50% from an energy perspective. And infrared red light therapy, people have heard of. The reason why it's therapeutic is because infrared, near-infrared especially, is a low-energy wavelength. It penetrates our cellular tissue deeply, and it's really beneficial for our mitochondria and redox homeostasis. So, it basically cleans up a lot of the high-energy wavelengths such as blue light, violet light, and ultraviolet light's impact on our cells. And that's a balanced system. It's in harmony. So, that is completely missing from artificial lighting. It's no LEDs really have infrared light. Fluorescents don't have infrared light. They have these very narrow bands and they're always very blue dominant. And now that we've shifted to more energy efficiency, they're even more blue dominant. So, our screens that we're looking at all day long are the same exact way. And then, the delivery of that light is another problem. So, and also again, the reason why it's very blue-based is because that's what's so intriguing and engaging for us. So, you know, the companies want to make the highest saturation, most stimulating color spectrum. And that's why every model of iPhone now it's like brighter and brighter and brighter and even more saturated. But then the delivery of that light, you mentioned flicker. This is one that people really don't know about because we literally can't see it. It's an invisible way that they control the brightness of screens powered by LEDs. So engineers figured out that you can turn an LED down in brightness if you push less current through it. However, that's very energy efficient and eventually can compromise the color consistency. So, what they do instead is instead of lowering the current through the LED, they cycle it on and off. So, it's actually the same brightness always, but they turn it on and off at a rate that determines the brightness. So, they do that at a rate that you can't visually see, but your brain and your nervous system and your eyes can certainly feel. And, it depends on the device. But OLED screens, which is your phones, smartphones, any iPhone past the iPhone 11, has a frequency where it's turning on and off to control that brightness, usually 300 to 500 times per second, which is really, really bad because it's just above the visual perception of around like 100 times per second, but it's low enough to where our nervous system really feels it. So, if you get eye strain, You know, that calming feeling you mentioned, if you get headaches, as someone who looked or had too many concussions, when I looked at my iPhone 13, which I only had for like 1 year, and then I switched back, I would get a headache like after 20, 30 minutes. And I never knew why until I learned about this. And it's really frustrating because it's completely unnecessary. And what we do at Daylight is we use direct current. So there, there is no pulsed on and off light control. Now, MacBooks, like I'm staring at right now, they use a frequency because they're not OLED screens that is really high, like 15,000 times a second. So that is like so fast that we can't even perceive it at a nervous system, brain, and eye level, which it's, it's much better than a phone. So, those are kind of core reasons. Also, in general, EMFs, which I talk about a lot, radio frequencies, magnetic fields, and kind of the output of radiation emission from devices and phones, especially problematic because they're pretty much on our body 24/7, 365. And, that's just another stressor. You can debate all the studies till the cows come home, But, they pretty much all say the ones that weren't funded by industry, the telecom industry, that at least this is another biological stressor. And, the way I think about it as an engineer is all of this is especially the radio frequencies and the EMFs, it's kind of just noise. It's all noise. And, an engineering term we use is signal-to-noise ratio. And what you want, you want the right signals. You want sunlight, you want the ribeye, you want the ground, you want the Earth's natural magnetic field. You want the dark nights. That's the real signal. That's the real source that drives the ancestral signal.

It's the one that we, our biology was designed for.

Exactly. But now we have so much noise, physical noise, sound noise, vibrational noise, electromagnetic noise. That lowers that ratio so much. We have mostly noise now. So what that does is causes cellular confusion, chaos, mitochondrial dysfunction, and biological chaos really is inflammation. So how could we possibly be optimal when we have predominantly noise as input signals and the real pure signal, the ancestral signal you just said, is diluted. And that's to me the biggest issue. So with technology, it's like taking all of those reasons and how do we solve them? So for daylight, we have a paper-like display that's reflective, similar to a Kindle. So you can take it outside. There's no light coming from it at all. It's reflecting like a piece of paper. means you can use it outside, get sun, get on the ground, and get that brightness. But then at nighttime or low-light conditions, it has a custom backlight that is amber in tone so that you can still actually see it. Unlike, you know, red LEDs or red blue light blockers, which aren't really full solutions and debatably dangerous. It's more like a candle, a campfire spectrum, But it has 100% no blue light in that amber mode, and it has no flicker because we got rid of that. So, it really makes the computing screen experience warmer, calmer, less stimulating, less activating to our nervous system. And that's the whole goal. How do we return this to be just a tool that's net neutral, maybe even one day net positive? Because right now, Everyone is so overactivated, sympathetic dominant, fight or flight nonstop. And because of that, they can't heal. They can't repair. They can't digest properly. They can't sleep properly. Like all of the functions when your nervous system's super activated get compromised. And your body's really great at compensating, but eventually there will be a tipping point. And you see a lot of these folks Eventually you have a health problem and then it's like you can't get better. And it's because of the environment.

You bring up so many good points and I have, it's like, I always think of like ADHD and I usually think about it from a food perspective of like, oh, get off the Frankenfoods and you can help to eradicate some of that ADHD. But in many ways, what you're talking about, this, this, this tech noise or this kind of light noise that's happening, Is probably to your point contributing even more to it than we realize. I do want to bring it, like, let's go into some of the solutions. Now, obviously the Daylight tablet is a great solution, but before we even go there, let's talk about just solutions people can take right away. Just the minute they finish this podcast, they can start incorporating. And one of them that you just brought up, because you and I even talked about this, like the Daylight tablet is a production device, but it's not something you're going to choose to watch your show on, you know, your TV, you know, like when you are looking for entertainment, you're not necessarily going to watch it there because there's no color, you know, and we're very used to that. So if someone were to be purchasing a TV, a color TV, you mentioned the OLED not being a very healthy one. Is there one that's healthier than the current? Like what should people be looking for in terms of that screen, you know, name?

Yeah, that's a good, that's a good question. It depends on the screens. I would say to me, for everything across the board, like Your phone is the most problematic device in our lives. It's, and it's not even close, like 2nd through 25th place added up, your phone's still worse. Why? Because we use it more than anything. It's always on our body. So, it's zero distance. We hold it like the most, one of the most important things to realize about electromagnetic waves, which is blue light, any light, radio frequencies, Wi-Fi, is the distance to the exposure matters tremendously. And, when you double the distance from you and the source, it actually quadruples the reduction in the fields. This is called inverse square law. So, your phones you're holding far closer to your eyes, to your body, and then you're putting it in your pocket. It's always on you. And, the form factor itself is so easy to scroll on, to get sucked in on, And that the size, the being smaller is really terrible for our eyes and it's reducing our field of vision drastically. You mentioned earlier about eyesight. Yeah. Myopia is actually the most prevalent health issue in the entire world. In East Asia, they have rates of like 90% for kids under 20. It's insane.

Wow.

In the US, it's climbing and screen time is directly correlated in developing children, higher screen time, higher rates of myopia. And this started again with going indoors, but now it's like if everything you're looking at is 6 inches from your face, of course, you're going to have terrible eyesight. And some people discount how big of a deal this is. Like, well, you just get contacts and glasses. Well, not to be like a doomsday person, but like if this was an ancestral environment or something happens where you can't get your contacts, your glasses break, like you're literally a useless human. Like you can't do anything. Like if you can't see, like, what are you going to do? Like, it's, it's insane. And it's really scary that this has become so normalized, but that's a telltale sign of the environment really being a mismatch to our biology.

So one thing I hear you saying then is like, first of all, if you're, you know, specifically around this question around entertainment purposes, like what should we be using is one, don't use your phone to be watching Yes. Your entertainment on, do it on a bigger screen and be further away. So that's one thing right away.

Use your phone as little as you possibly can. I think it's easier now because there's so many apps. I mean, if you have a MacBook and an iPhone, you can pretty much text, FaceTime, audio call people. If you use WhatsApp, other Signal, you can message people on so many different apps. So for me, I have a MacBook and I have a Daylite and If our Daylight had a front-facing camera, I would use it for 80% of my day because I mostly take meetings. But I use the MacBook, use the Daylight first thing in the morning and last thing at night and for some breaks during the day outside. But for entertainment, yeah, I would— the TVs are really not as bad compared to your phone because they're feet away. Typically, you can use use them in a community-based setting. So, the real problem, especially for kids, is like the tablets they're holding right in front of their face. It's an individual device. TVs can be a collective thing for the whole family. And then MacBooks, like, you know, watching a video on your MacBook or your laptop versus your phone, huge difference in terms of the overall screen size. The flicker is not as bad. And yeah, if you want to consume entertainment. You still can do that technically on daylight. It's just black and white, which kids actually don't really care about. But for normal screens, what I do anytime during the day or at nighttime is shift the color spectrum. So, you can go into the settings and actually reduce the amount of blue light coming from the screen. And so, the night mode that people are familiar with on iPhones, pretty much every device now. They're helpful. They do reduce the amount of blue light exposure, but they do not get rid of all of it. So, I almost think like night mode during the day is good because it like brings the blue light down a little, but then to get rid of it even more, like after dark or during dark after sunset, is you have to go into the settings, accessibility, color filters. You can set up like triple-click shortcuts on your phone or have it ready on your settings in your laptop. You can wear blue light blockers. I don't really ever wear those at home because I've changed the lighting environment. Like I have an incandescent bulb here to get near infrared and I have a bunch of kind of blue light-free LEDs. So, it's really designing that kind of environment. But, if you're watching something on your MacBook, inherently there's still imperfections there, but it's way, way better in my opinion.

There's so many, you know, there's such a push now towards LED lights for the home, right? They're almost in a sense forcing you to it because I, it's getting harder and harder to even find incandescent lights, right?

Yes.

At least I noticed that at Home Depot when I've been there before. Do you think that some of these LED lights though that they are selling, you can change the color of the light. So is even that helpful to your point? Like, like at night, if you were to then change those lights to being red instead of the white or blue, do you think that that would even be supportive?

Absolutely. Like lighting is, is a, is a massive topic and there's like good, better, best everywhere. I would say in general, if you can shift at nighttime, During the day, you want it to be as bright as possible, but because you don't have any infrared, if you're sitting inside, like glass, most glass filters out infrared light because it's energy efficient. Everything that's energy efficient, as you might guess, is kind of bullshit because what they don't realize is the efficiency, or sorry, the energy that is kind of inefficient is actually infrared light, which is extremely important to our biology and compromises, you know, 50-plus percent of sunlight comprises. So, the only way to get infrared back is to work outside, have a window open, or put it back into your indoor environment with incandescents. So, incandescents are basically like a fire in a glass bottle. It's tungsten on fire from electricity that's been contained. And that's why it's brilliant. That's why it's really hot is because of all that infrared light, but that's, it's important and it's warm. It's inviting. It's low stimulation. It's low flicker. So incandescents are harder to find, but they're also not perfect during the day because they're like a campfire spectrum as opposed to like full-on during the day. But if you combine incandescents with kind of LEDs or with windows, you can get a much better full spectrum solution during the day. At nighttime, you want as dim, as warm as possible. That's the key. So, the problem with red LEDs and blue light blocking glasses that are red is we cannot see red light very well at all. That's why when you shift your phone or your MacBook to full red mode, you're like looking at it, you're like, I can't even see the words on there. So, what do you have to end up doing? You have to end up increasing the brightness. And, melatonin disruption comes from the intensity of the light and the color spectrum.

Yeah.

Blue light disrupts melatonin around 3 to 4 times greater than orange-red wavelengths, 2 times greater than green wavelengths. But if you have a light intensity that's 5x greater, you're kind of washing away all of that gains. So, that's why our daylight backlight is amber. That's why a campfire is amber. It's like full spectrum. So, you have like a tiny bit of green, more yellow, more orange, more red, more infrared. So, yes, I actually have like an amber LED right next to me as well. And that color shift from cold LED to warm is a huge win. If you then can turn the brightness down at night, that's also a win. But my favorite is like super low power, like 25, 40-watt, 2,000 Kelvin incandescents or beeswax candles if, you know, you're super old school.

You're really bringing a light, like I never really thought about the brightness factor. So, I You know, I always hear about color, but not so much the brightness of it. And you're making, you're really reminding me that when we are in front of a fire, for example, and there's no other light, just, just the light or the glow from the fire, the calmness that comes over my body, the, the, the sleep, like I, 'cause usually this is at night, obviously. And so it's like I start to get more and more tired.

Yeah.

And it's funny, I've been talking about food in that way of like, when we choose foods, we want to choose foods that make us feel safe. But you're really highlighting to me that light can make us feel safe as well. And that's precisely what like a nice fire does. You know, if you feel safe, you feel warm. There's, there's nothing, it's not too bright. There's nothing shocking to your system about it. It's the right spectrum of light, you know, to a degree. So I really enjoy this conversation. I want to ask you though, what does rewilded tech look like to you?

Yeah, this is really our mission statement. We call it the 3rd timeline. So the 1st timeline is ancestral living. It is hunter-gatherer. It is up until the Industrial Revolution or some time period. What was great about it? We were highly connected to our environment. We basically lived outside. We were kind of in it, in the natural world all the time. What was the downside? Well, people died from the plague and had terrible sanitary conditions and childbirth and all that stuff. And yeah, there was a lot of other conflicts going on in humanity that were quite a challenge. So that's the first timeline. The second timeline is what we're in right now. It's kind of this like, industrialized technocratic relationship with our world that is now turning into an artificial WALL-E future if we don't change things. So what's the benefit of this second timeline? Well, we have technology, so we have the world's knowledge at our fingertips. We can learn, we can do whatever we want, whenever we want. We have access to that. And, you know, there's a lot of innovations, knowledge that kind of have progressed. Everyone's sanitary and baseline taken care of. And, you know, people can debate whether that's a result of, you know, fiat money and all this and corruption. But at the end of the day, people aren't just like dying all the time from, you know, infectious diseases or childbirth. So there's been some good. The bad is, of course, the WALL-E kind of desensitized NPC reality that we're in. So how do we take the good of both of those and then make a third timeline? That's what our mission is all about. How do we make technology, humanity, and nature in harmony, live happily ever after, actually synergistic? And I do think, I think it's 100% possible. I mean, I lived mostly off-grid the last 3 months, hiking, hunting in the mountains and wilderness of Wyoming. And I had Starlink, I had solar panels, I had my daylight and my MacBook, my phone. And it was awesome because I was out in the middle of nowhere, but I was working. And our kind of premise is if we can keep iterating on technology to be grounded in reality, like the best innovations are actually taking what exists in nature and just copying it. Like, what's the one, like B-2 bomber, the like stealth mode bomber? They literally just looked at like the wings of a falcon or something and like tried to copy that. Like all the answers already exist in nature. A reflective screen works with nature, not against it. There's a reason why you can't see your laptop outside. It's because it's competing with the sun. Good luck competing with the sun in anything or nature in anything. You're going to lose. So, how do we work with nature and copy the way it does things? Light. All we need to do is copy the sun. What if we had indoor lighting environment that every hour it's shifting in angle, it's shifting in spectrum, and it's just like the sun, but it's in our home. We can do the same with the display on your screens. You know, EMFs are a bit more complicated, but we can make them at least to be more kind of synergistic and only on when they need to be and maybe pointing away from your body. And maybe there's specific frequencies and harmonics that are actually net positive for our biology. There's so much we don't know. But I think at the end of the day, if we make technology first off, return to just be like a tool that doesn't overstimulate us, doesn't addict us to it. That's the step we really need. And, that's like net neutral. But then, how do we even make it like net positive and get infrared light into the spectrum and make the EMF super mitigated and then get people to spend more time outside and create offices and environments that are grounded in nature? Like, we don't even think of ourselves as a as a tech product company. It's really the thing I started with, and that's environmental design. What if everyone in each town started thinking about building a center or an office space that is immersed in nature, that has trees, that has full spectrum sunlight coming through the roof and figures out how to even do that in wintertime when it's cold? All of that's not that challenging to solve. You just need people who want to do that and who will pay for that and invest into that. And that takes awareness and education. So I think we're in the early stages. Anything is solvable. So that's the easy part. The challenging part is execution, right? That's what's fun.

Well, I love, man, I love talking to you about this. Like, I, and I love that you're, this is your mission that you're doing it because we need people Who, like you said, who are willing to take this on? Because it is a challenge. Because you're up against big tech and they, you know, and you're also fighting the fight of like the hardware, which is some of the hardest part. The apps, the software is the easiest part because you just have to make it appealing enough for people to be willing to try. The hardware, that's a whole other issue. And I know you guys are taking it one step at a time, but if we were to fast forward 10 years, How has Daylight Computer shaped our relationship to tech? Because I know when I saw you, you were suggesting some things that you guys were thinking about and talking about doing in the future that really excited me. One of them being like making it so that your phone automatically went into airplane mode when it wasn't in use and it wasn't something you had to do, right? But where do we see if we were to fast forward 10 years and you guys continued on this path? How does How do you see our lives changing?

Yeah. And that feature is going to come out like next month. So that's like, that's easy stuff. 10-year stuff is like, I want to reinvent wireless technology. Like, what does that look like? What if we don't have to be assaulted by Wi-Fi omnidirectionally and we can have something really targeted because I'm hardwiring my internet. No one's going to do that. It's way too inconvenient. So how do we solve that? How do we put this kind of intelligence into environmental design? Like I said, with the full-on lighting solutions that match your zip code, match your time of day, match the time of year, that cyclicality and bringing that back into our lives, that's the key. It's really going to be full-on environmental design. So yes, we'll have a phone, we'll have monitors. Who even knows what a phone looks like in 10 years? It might be a little box that you just like carry on your belt and it's an AI assistant. Everything is audible. Guess who has to scare— if we're talking to tech all day, we don't have to stare at the screen as much. We're actually very bullish on AI from that perspective. So how do we basically provide a shielded interface With the digital world. That's our job at Daylight. Because if you get raw internet, social media, AI, you have a really strong chance of being consumed by that, or it making you be less of yourself because it's so powerful that you can't handle it. You straight up cannot handle it. You get access to AI, All of a sudden, you don't know how to think for yourself anymore. You get access to social media. All of a sudden, that's where all your fulfillment comes from. That is a problem. But if we can shield you, filter it for you in this conduit so that you can access it, get the most out of it, use it as a tool, use it to augment your life, but then be able to walk away from it, that's really the goal. So I don't know exactly what that looks like, but we're really excited to kind of provide that. ability for people and then return the environment to be much more centered in nature. And yeah, there's a whole lot.

I love it, man. You guys are asking the good questions. And like I said, we need people that are passionate about these topics and have the background and the resources to do it. So I'm super Super just grateful for, for you that you found this path and that you're choosing it and that you're, you're doing the work to help other people. Because part of the issue for all of us is we got to, we all first have to see the problem. We have to recognize it's a problem to then be open to the solution. And I think what you're doing right now is you're showing not only, hey, here's a solution, but we also, you're also educating people on what the problem is. And so I really am grateful for you to that. We have a new kind of final question that you're going to get to debut. I have asked it to someone in the past, but we enjoyed that process so much that now we're going to make it every episode is going to end with this question. So you get to be the first person to end with this question. So if you could wave a magic wand and bring back one ancestral practice, What would it be?

Campfire every night, sitting under the stars. 100%.

I like that.

And that's like, there's, I wanted, I'm like dying to do that like tonight because even when I live, I live in a 2,000-person town in Wyoming and I feel kind of weird right now because I did spend the majority of the last 3 months every night in the wilderness. And when you look upon that sky, when you have a campfire to wind down, when it's like really dark and there's like unknowns out there, there's, you know, where I go, there's predators, there's bears. It makes it all feel very real, you know, your mortality. grounds you in that, like, you better be doing something meaningful with this time here. So, and that used to be, you know, a lot of those days were spent by myself. I did have a friend with me, but that used to be time for us to come together and share those moments as a community. So I would love to bring that back, like, as a regular practice for people, even if it's in your backyard. And how do we get the light pollution down? to where we can actually see the sky and enjoy that because that's the wind-down routine that we all deserve and we all like should be practicing. But instead, it's usually spent staring at a screen, not really connecting with what's real at all.

It's one that I miss as well. That's why I brought it up. Like, I miss seeing the stars. I don't make enough time to take my kids camping, so I'm not exposing them to it. Enough. And, uh, it's, it's something I want to choose differently moving forward. So thank you for modeling the possibilities of connecting, rewilding ourselves with technology and technology with ourselves. So I really appreciate your time, Tristan. So people have got it. You got to check out this Daylight Computers, everyone. Um, it's going to, I'm not, I'm going to warn you, it's going to be jarring at first. It's going to be like, what? I'm supposed to do my work. You know, with a screen that's not stimulating me the way that I'm used to. But it just like going from drinking, you know, soda pop all the time to then drinking water, there's a transition time and we have to allow for that. It, but that doesn't mean it's not viable or important. It is. You just gotta remember there is gonna be a transition time. But how can people learn more, potentially purchase, like how can people check out Daylight Computer?

Yeah, yeah. Good point. It's boring enough by design, but our main website is dailycomputer.com. We also have a kids website with a kids-curated software that is kids.dailycomputer.com. That is really trying to solve like iPad kids and we are trying to get into schools. So if you're an educator, if you're connected with school district, don't hesitate to reach out to me. My email is just tristan@dailycomputer.com. And yeah, we're really hungry, we think, for the next generation to get them back into the real world, have real childhoods, and not be so screen-based. But whenever that's needed, of course, they're going to have to learn the digital world. How can they do it in a way that's not so disruptive? So that's our premise. And yeah, that's where you can find us.

And as a parent, as a father, I do want to just share this with everyone. Before we get off, if you are thinking of getting your kid a first tablet, okay, so this is for parents that haven't even purchased one yet, because I know that sometimes after you've purchased one, you feel like, oh, I don't want to spend another, you know, $800,000, whatever it is. But if you have not purchased one and you're thinking of doing it, choose this tablet first. I promise you, I've experienced it and I cannot emphasize this enough. Your child will have a healthier relationship with tech and with their own body if this is their first tablet. So if you're on that, you know, because I, if this comes out before the holidays and people are thinking about, oh, this is the year I'm going to get my kid that tablet, go over to Daylight Computers and get this one first. I, I truly, truly believe what you're doing is important. And I have personally felt the difference and I, and I can't wait to potentially get my kids exposed to it so that they can feel the difference. 'Cause it's feeling the difference that will result in health, healthier life, will result in a, in a more connected lifestyle. And, and we just have to be willing to go there. And the easiest entry point is the first tablet you purchase for your child. So please check out Daylight Computers, everyone.

Thank you, James. I appreciate that.

Thank you everyone for Participating and joining us on the Everyday Ancestral episode. Share it. Let us know what you think. And most of all, uh, leave a comment so that we better connect with you. 'Cause you know, we talk about connection, we talk about community, and there's no better way than to experience community from, with people from afar than getting to see and read their comments. So please share a comment, share, um, Share a heart, share a thumbs up, anything to let us know that you're enjoying what you are watching or listening to, and we'll see you next time. Stay curious. Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes, links, and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's E A T P. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.