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Welcome to the 117th volume of WizeWorld: a collection of stories and sounds to round out your month, pique your curiosity, and widen your wizdom.
This month is all about how tech alters our lives—from the downside of lab-made sweeteners, to the beauty we can find in a circuit board or a cable.
We’ll be looking at:
- Wearables that make blood sugar tracking more accessible
- An interview with snowboarder Irie Smith
- The beauty of the technology we use every day
- Lil Yachty’s new album Let’s Start Here
- The results of the latest four day work week trial
Learn
Another day, another alarming report on the risks of artificial sweeteners. A new study shows that erythritol–a sweetener often sold on its own but also used to bulk up stevia or monk fruit–could be linked to blood clotting, stroke, heart attack and death. As always, we recommend using small and sustainable amounts of the real stuff and avoiding the imposters. That’s why we use just a few grams of sugar in every can of Wize to make a refreshing drink that won’t compromise your health.
Connect
Skateboarding since she could walk and snowboarding since she was four, Irie Smith didn’t necessarily need to discover her love of either sport—it was always there. What sets Irie apart from other longtime athletes is that she doesn’t have much interest in competition. Instead, she’s set her sights on becoming a mountain guide and instructor, along with a passionate advocate for low and zero-waste living. And her favorite way to refuel on the slopes, trails and half-pipes is a delicious Wize Mango Iced Tea.
See
Often the computers, tablets, phones, watches and more that we use are made of cold, grey, uninteresting plastic and wiring. So we don’t think much about the colorful internal lives of our technological necessities. That’s where the book Open Circuits comes in. Written by Wendell Oskay and Eric Schlaepfer, it highlights photographs of 130 forms of technology cut or sliced to show its unique (and even beautiful) inner workings.
Listen
We don’t often recommend a whole album, but we made an exception for Lil Yachty’s latest release, Let’s Start Here. Brooklyn Vegan describes the work as a psychedelic, rock-inspired album that serves as a major departure from his past work with a host of guest songwriters, producers and more from the world of pop, punk, rock and other genres. The result is like nothing you’ve heard before.
Get inspired
The results of a new study on four day work weeks offer hope for those looking for better work-life balance. A study led by Cambridge University in the United Kingdom showed that shorter work weeks meant happier, more productive employees who took fewer sick days and even generated more revenue than their five day counterparts. Of the 61 companies that took part, 56 are looking to make the change permanent.
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