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Houston Matters

The Importance of Being Bored

Earlier this week, WNYC, the NPR station in New York, started an initiative to detach you from your phone. The idea came about a while ago. You might have even have heard it on NPR. The thought process behind it is that when people are bored or left sitting alone somewhere, nowadays they pull out […]

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Earlier this week, WNYC, the NPR station in New York, started an initiative to detach you from your phone. The idea came about a while ago. You might have even have heard it on NPR.

The thought process behind it is that when people are bored or left sitting alone somewhere, nowadays they pull out their phone and don’t leave their minds to wander. Which got the folks at New Tech City, the show that discusses technology at WNYC, thinking if you don’t have any free time to let your mind wander and be creative then what ideas are you losing out on? What great thoughts never enter our heads because we don’t allow our minds to be still for a moment?

We explore the important role being bored plays for our minds with Dr. Eugene Boisaubin, a medical ethicist with the McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics at the UTHealth Science Center at Houston.

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(Image Courtesy:Â John Hersey/WNYC)

Michael Hagerty

Michael Hagerty

Senior Producer, Houston Matters

Michael Hagerty is the senior producer for Houston Matters. He's spent more than 20 years in public radio and television and dabbled in minor league baseball, spending four seasons as the public address announcer for the Reno Aces, the Triple-A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

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