Webtorium Conversations - Why 

February 24th, 2024

I hope you've had a happy New Year which is almost over but I am pleased to share mine with you. 

In this editions of Webtorium Conversations  we will be starting with an overview of Webtorium by answering 3 questions, Why Webtorium, Why a podcast, and Why should you care?  

To kick this off, I want to introduce some statistics from an article I read recently titled: The World's biggest problems and why they are not what first comes to mind. This article resonated with me because the first world problem introduced was Global Health. I won't go into the specific global problems we are currently facing just yet, because I would like to introduce a statistic in the article that I loved. The article asks us, “Which would you choose from these two options?

1. Prevent one person from suffering next year.

2. Prevent 100 people from suffering (the same amount) 100 years from now.

They then go on to say, “Most people choose the second option. It’s a crude example, but it suggests that they value future generations.”

This is under a section titled Why focusing on future generations might be even more effective than tackling global health. While I read this article this past week…. Webtorium was started early 2023 believing exactly what is advocated for in the article. Children are not only the most fragile inhabitants of this earth, but they are the easiest to  influence, and knowing they are our future adults, may scare some people. It certainly scared me because although we believe that we know everything about health there are a plethora of contrasting views and opinions which these kids are being exposed to, many of which give them incomplete or often inaccurate  information. Children are not the only individuals we need to target for….. (missing some objective here), adolescents fall in the same arena. An important from the World Health Organization has stated “Adolescence is the period when many risky behaviors start having a major impact on their health as adults. Cultural and understanding of bodies and bodily processes can play a key role.” 

Now there are plenty of Instagram accounts that post weekly on health facts such as heart benefits from working out, or why you should eat your broccoli. My Instagram page started that way, and after a while, I realized that pushing information out into the wild doesn't shape young minds in a way that is ultimately impactful.

We need something bigger, we need to do more than spread awareness, we need a worldwide organization of people talking about health from all perspectives….which is the goal of Webtorium. 

It is why our mission is to advocate and educate on the cultural, historical, social, and biological determinants of health while supporting vulnerable populations and working towards systematic changes that promote health education.

The wording of this mission statement has been tweaked for the past year as Webtorium has grown, and our actions as a community have also changed. But one thing I take pride in is the intersection between society, culture, and biological standpoints of health which I want to emphasize in both our actions and this podcast. Culture has always been the most apparent aspect of health to me and is what originally pushed me into diving deeper into this whole mission. 

I have family in Pakistan and last year I celebrated my birthday overseas with them. The food there is very different from what people here eat, every day there is a curry with rice and bread for dinner, leftovers for lunch and eggs and sometimes more curry for breakfast. Another thing is the amount of meat I had the pleasure of eating while I was there. Every night it was some form of lamb, chicken, or beef, all cooked in a variety of different ways from (you guessed it) curry, to barbeques and so much more. At the time I generally ate in bliss, not worrying about the health implications of eating this way, until I saw a young mother feeding her child coke in a bottle. This sounds absurd but in reality, it is not unheard of, in fact, I'm sure I have relatives who have been raised on coke….the soda pop….. This started an interesting shift in perspective for me in the way people eat in different cultures. On my recent trip to France, I tried many different cuisines and one meal that stuck with me was the steak tartare which is not commonly seen in America because it is served raw. The history behind the meal and the science behind why it's safe to eat is intriguing and I would love to dive into that in another episode. But what we get from understanding these cultural differences makes us aware of health differences stemming from these different cultures. 

Furthermore, there is a historical standpoint we can take on health. It’s commonly known that ancient humans were classified as hunter/gatherers, but what does that mean, and how does that impact us today? The history of health is more than the origins of steak tartare and much more than the history of beauty standards. The history of health is more of a why. Why do we crave sweet foods? Well in the well-known novel Sapiens, they argue that it stems from the fact that we were at one point hunter-gatherers. Millennium ago there was no access to desserts such as ice cream or hostess ding-dongs to stop our sugar craving, but fruit. Ripe fruit was sweet and necessary for our bodies. We love sweet things, but with the invention of things such as ice cream and hostess twinkies and ding dongs our tolerance for sugar heightened, and a strawberry which once tasted like a delicacy was cast down to just a fruit. To test this theory try not to have any added sugar for the next 3 months, your dessert will be the once-revered strawberry. And in 3 months take a bite out of that once-loved ding-dong and it will not taste as appealing as it once did. Instead, fruits such as strawberries and blueberries will be the preferred desserts after taking on this almost primal challenge. 

Of course, as we saw above the historical question Why always leads us to another question, How? This is the question linking us to the Biology of things, what is commonly associated with health. OK, Why do we crave sweet things? Historically we needed the nutrients from ripe fruit which tasted sweet. Now How does our taste change so drastically making us barely able to tolerate the fruits our ancestors loved? Well, just like we have a spice tolerance, we have a sugar tolerance, and with the invention of things such as ice cream and ding dongs our sugar tolerance heightened. We could even Connect that with culture by saying places where sweets and deserts are a staple in the diet. We can see there is a lower consumption of fruits and vegetables in comparison to countries where sweet foods are not commonly eaten. 

This overlapping view of health involving culture, history, and biology has multiple benefits, in understanding Global Health in both the past and present. Now by understanding the past and present of global health in this holistic manner, we will be successfully raising awareness not by pushing facts out into the wild, but by educating the youth in our world on the where, whys, and hows of health, equipping the next generation to be rightfully educated in the field of Health. 

But can we get to the point where the Hows and Whys of health are valued? We are currently in a global health crisis. Modern attempts at raising awareness are scarcely effective…In fourth grade kids learn about the food pyramid and are sent out into the world with that elementary knowledge, then are faced with the world at their fingertips in phones as we see things that ultimately only stimulate disordered eating whether it be excessive dieting, working out, or a highly optimistic body positivity movement. Today, even with all the studies and health information, we are in a Global health crisis. 

This is because of 2 reasons; 1) Kids are not directly given the information needed to better their understanding of health and 2) Even with information, not all kids are given this information. Kids today have health education to varying degrees and the majority of kids all over the world are not allowed to learn about health to the degree others can. 

We need to take a step to become the change we want to see. And for this Webtorium has compiled a list of three initiatives that act as steps to successfully raise health awareness. To share, to participate, and to give. To Share and Give are relatively straightforward, along with a group of ambassadors who will be traveling to schools to launch a Health Buddy Program to educate young children. To Share we will be donating a children's book on health to kids globally. But right now you are listening to my participation. The Podcast.   

Why A Podcast

You're probably asking yourself, why a podcast? No kids listen to podcasts, podcasts are boring and there is no point. I would tell you that there was a time at which I agreed with you and thought podcasts sucked, but to tell you the truth, I love podcasts. Not only can you learn so much from a podcast, you get to simply absorb the information while you work on your own thing. And this is generally what I expect from these podcasts. This is my participation in pushing health information out into the world, although, unlike the informative Instagram posts, these are more along the lines of Shower thoughts. 

Today we have access to more knowledge than we know what to do with. We have historical data, scientific data, and ancient literature, we have zoos at our fingertips and you can google cadavers without ever having to touch one yourself. And above all what I find crazy is the amount of discovered science and articles out there that we have access to. And even though we have all this information readily available to us, we don't do much about it. 

Now if the world were perfect, everyone would be able to read a couple of scientific abstracts then at one moment everything would click and two of them would magically coexist and bring forth a discovery or technology. 

And I know the world isn’t perfect, but that is what I still try to do. Of course, the problem is that it takes more than a couple of papers to get my ideas going, and even more to find two that perfectly co-exist. The near-impossible part would be how to get them to result in a discovery or invention. 

What Is:

For example, I read a lot of science fiction. The summer before eighth grade I read a book called Uglies. The general premise was that all the kids were taken away and considered ugly until at the age of 16 they got a total makeover and became pretty, but there was a twist discovered by one rebellious girl who goes on an adventure. 

It was a good book, though the rest of the series was arguably better, nevertheless, there was one thing that got me to put down the book and start reading the scientific papers; Hoverboards. Hoverboards are very cool and I won't bother you with my trying to make blueprints for one, but I did find one mechanism I wanted to work on; Electromagnetism. There were many failed engine models I tried to create but the general gist was to use a thing called an eddy current to push the board up.  

Now I had two ideas but there was an apparent gap on how exactly to do this. Would it work, is it dangerous, where in the ground would we find a magnetic force, etc? Now this seems a little out of whack but this is generally how the podcasts will end up working. 

The goal is to take 2 pieces of information and have them coexist. Over here, we connect the Why and the how, the where and the why. This is a breeding ground for the intersection between culture, history, and biology

Now why should you care? Well, from these podcasts even if one person listens to this, they will be better equipped to better understand the mission of Webtorium. 

We are not another non-profit to raise awareness around a thing. We are an organization, We are advocates, we are educators, and we will end the global health crisis. 

If I've done my job, by the time our current kids are adults, the world will be a different place. We might not be rerooting society as a whole, but if just 1,000 are impacted by Webtorium, we have taken the first steps to end this crisis. 

I'm going to repeat this one last time because if there is one thing to get from this conversation, this is it. Right now we are in a Global health crisis. With your help, we’ll be taking steps out of it. That's why you should care. 

And that's why I'm closing off today with a challenge. By the end of the new year, join our mission. Join Webtorium, start a chapter at your school, and enlist in the buddy program. If you're already an ambassador, put genuine effort into making progress. 

In one year, we can take leaps towards Health consciousness. All it takes is your involvement.

To join us email Hiwebtoium@gmail.com, spelt H I W E B T O R I U M @gmail.com for more information.