Researchers are trying to figure out who gets bored — and why — and what it means for ourselves and the economy. But maybe there’s an upside to boredom?
Hey, there, it's Stephen Dubner.
It's been about a year since the pandemic took over our lives.
For many of us, that has meant a year of broken routines, missed opportunities, and, let's face it, boredom.
So this week, we have decided to play for you an episode from our archive that unpacks the science of boredom.
It features an early appearance from someone who may now be familiar to you, Angela Duckworth, co host of our spin off podcast no stupid questions.
This episode is called am I boring you?
And it begins right now.
About 100 years ago, around the time of the First World War, there was a growing concern in Britain about working conditions and factories, factories, mines and elsewhere.
Here's how the historian Anthony Wall described working conditions during the victorian era.
For industrial workers, the working day meant early starts, long hours, and often physically demanding labor in conditions that would have challenged even the strongest constitutions to start work at 06:00 a.m.
perhaps after walking through sleet or rain, and to continue at it all day in overheated, drafty, or ill ventilated workrooms meant, for many, a slow process of physical decline or a life lived continuously on the brink of exhaustion.
This exhaustion was worrisome for the workers, of course, but also for their employers and for Britain, because exhaustion presumably meant lower productivity, and nobody wanted that.
So Britain forms the industrial Fatigue Research Board.
That is so british.
Yeah, right.
It's soon after the war, and even in its name you can see the focus is really on fatigue.
They're trying to figure out the limitations of assembly line production workers kind of early on.
They think fatigue is the main limitation.
That's Amanda Markey.
We'll meet her more formally in a bit.