• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

Mark Cuban says he has the solution to growing income inequality, and it's to reward every employee—from CEO to janitor—with company stock

2

OpenAI says its AI models secretly broke out of a secure test environment and hacked into AI company Hugging Face in order to cheat on an evaluation

3

Mathematicians grapple with a ‘very rapid and very unsettling change’ as AI cracks yet another century-old problem

1

Mark Cuban says he has the solution to growing income inequality, and it's to reward every employee—from CEO to janitor—with company stock

2

OpenAI says its AI models secretly broke out of a secure test environment and hacked into AI company Hugging Face in order to cheat on an evaluation

3

Mathematicians grapple with a ‘very rapid and very unsettling change’ as AI cracks yet another century-old problem
HealthBrainstorm Health

Brainstorm Health: Thrive Global Samsung App, Gilead Cancer Gene Therapy, Life After Death

By
Sy Mukherjee
Sy Mukherjee
and
Clifton Leaf
Clifton Leaf
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Sy Mukherjee
Sy Mukherjee
and
Clifton Leaf
Clifton Leaf
Down Arrow Button Icon
October 19, 2017, 1:06 PM ET
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Good morning, Dailies. There is nothing radical about most digital media or technology—at least in the sense that it doesn’t make us do things we wouldn’t ordinarily do. It just helps us do them better.

Facebook didn’t invent making friends. It just does a good job—or, rather a comprehensive one—of letting friends (and bare acquaintances) keep track of one another’s lives, thoughts, and high school crushes. Twitter didn’t invent news or gossip or puppy videos. It just spreads them faster. Airbnb didn’t invent sleepovers. It just helps us have them at strangers’ homes instead.

And Thrive Global, the wellness-crusading company that new media czarina Arianna Huffington founded nearly a year ago, didn’t invent downtime. But a new app the startup has created makes that precious commodity much easier to secure.

The app, with the eponymous name of “Thrive,” was designed for all Samsung devices and will be available for download, starting in December, exclusively through the Samsung Galaxy Store—an announcement Huffington made onstage today in front of a sold-out crowd attending the Samsung Developer Conference at San Francisco’s Moscone Center.

So what does this app do? It helps you turn off your phone. Now, if that sounds minor, just ask yourself this: “When was the last time you did it?”

The Thrive app has several “modes” to help you disconnect in different ways. Switch into “Thrive Mode,” for instance, and your phone will thoughtfully lock you out for whatever amount of time you choose—squelching notifications, text messages and phone calls, except from the loved ones you preselect to be on your “VIP list.”

If you want, you can end your nirvana session early—that is, unless you opt for “Super Thrive Mode.” Here, there’s no going back. Essential for true work addicts who don’t trust themselves to turn off, even for a few minutes. There’s a scheduler, too, where you can set up regular daily or weekly bouts of quiet time. (The whole thing is rather elegantly designed, I might add, in a soothing moon glow sort of way.)

Among Thrive’s scariest modes, though, is its “App Control” setting, which reveals how much time you actually spend on Instagram, Twitter, or “Clash of Clans.” And, yes, Thrive lets you set time limits here as well—or block some games or social media drugs altogether.

Huffington has been on a holy war to end our aching emotional, physical, and spiritual burnout. “And one of the big accelerators of burnout is our addiction to our cellphones,” Huffington told me in a recent interview at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C. “We need to address that. Because the truth is your day, my day, most people’s day never ends. You have to declare an artificial end of the day and the symbol of that is turning off your phone.”

And given how addicting our personal, always accessible technoceuticals are, that ain’t easy.

Tristan Harris, the former Google “Design Ethicist” who once worked as a magician, wrote a compelling essay last year on “How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind…” He argues that our phones, social media, and games use a psychological lure called intermittent variable rewards. He writes:

“If you want to maximize addictiveness, all tech designers need to do is link a user’s action (like pulling a lever) with a variable reward. You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward (a match, a prize!) or nothing. Addictiveness is maximized when the rate of reward is most variable.”

“That’s why we need to set boundaries,” says Huffington. “The Thrive app is designed to help us monitor our addiction.”

We can do that by descending into silos, perhaps. Internally, in fact, Huffington and her team called the app “silo” for a while, she says, but the word has negative implications.

“We had lots of back-and-forths on whether the app should be the same name as the company,” Marc Mathieu, the chief marketing officer of Samsung Electronics, tells me in an interview. “But what Arianna has developed is not just a trick—it’s a philosophy, it’s a point of view, it’s a platform.” And “Thrive” is what that philosophy-pov-platform is. (For more on that, see “Dream Catcher,” the story I wrote on the day of Thrive Global’s launch last November.)

Indeed, as I think of it, there is something “radical” about Thrive. That’s because it does, in my view, have the power to get us to do something we wouldn’t ordinarily do—and that’s brag about resting.

As Huffington says, so many of us in the modern age seem to compete to see who can keep their engines revved the hottest, longest, and most intensely.

That’s why my favorite setting in the Thrive app is what the programmers modestly call “Bi-directional Communication.” That option tells anyone and everyone who texts or calls you that you’re busy unplugging.

It’s a subtle message, yes. But with those few words repeated millions of times, Huffington hopes to foment a revolution. God bless her.

Clifton Leaf, Editor in Chief, FORTUNE
@CliftonLeaf
clifton.leaf@fortune.com

DIGITAL HEALTH

FDA approves second cancer gene therapy of the year. Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a pioneering cancer treatment from Novartis that reads like the stuff of science fiction. The therapy involves re-engineering certain immune cells so that they target and destroy blood cancers. Just a few months later, a second such therapy has been approved—Yescarta, developed by Kite Pharma (which was snapped up earlier this year by biotech giant Gilead). The treatment only has to be administered once and comes with a list price of $373,000—a more than $100,000 discount to the list price of Novartis' Kymriah, the first treatment approved in this space. (Reuters)

INDICATIONS

City of Los Angeles probing drug maker Avanir over nursing home marketing. Los Angeles is investigating Avanir Pharmaceuticals following reports of the company's marketing practices to nursing homes for a drug that the patients may not actually need. (CNN)

THE BIG PICTURE

Life after death. Well, here's one for the Halloween season. Some prominent researchers say that human are actually quite aware—self-aware, that is—of their deaths. The mind continues to function beyond physical death. And not just in the "random impulses" sense—people may actually mentally comprehend they're dead after it's all over. (The Independent)

REQUIRED READING

The Future 50, by Fortune Staff

This CEO Is Leading a New Wave of Female Entrepreneurs, by Susie Gharib

Alphabet Leads $1 Billion Investment in Lyft, by Kirsten Korosec

GM's New CEO Is Cutting Some of Management's Favorite Perks, by Keshia Hannam

Produced by Sy Mukherjee
@the_sy_guy
sayak.mukherjee@fortune.com

Find past coverage. Sign up for other Fortune newsletters.
About the Authors
By Sy Mukherjee
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
By Clifton Leaf
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Latest in Health

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • TikTok icon
  • YouTube icon

Latest in Health

An Ebola healthcare worker is assisted putting on protective equipment in a treatment center.
HealthEbola
Nearly 1,000 people dead from Ebola outbreak in Congo amid health worker strike
By The Associated Press, Prosper Heri Ngorora and Constant Same BagalwaJuly 22, 2026
52 minutes ago
The American Heart Association has a new number for daily coffee—and a warning if you go over it
Successlifestyle
The American Heart Association has a new number for daily coffee—and a warning if you go over it
By Orianna Rosa RoyleJuly 22, 2026
11 hours ago
The Best Fiber Supplements of 2026: Tested and Reviewed
HealthDietary Supplements
The Best Fiber Supplements of 2026: Tested and Reviewed
By Christina SnyderJuly 21, 2026
22 hours ago
A family crisis inspired Bill Ackman to spend $260 million to create a massive brain research institute in Manhattan
InnovationBill Ackman
A family crisis inspired Bill Ackman to spend $260 million to create a massive brain research institute in Manhattan
By Jeff John RobertsJuly 21, 2026
23 hours ago
traffic
HealthAutos
Rich countries have cut road deaths by more than 30% in 30 years—but about 90% of fatal crashes now happen in poorer nations
By Mike Stobbe and The Associated PressJuly 21, 2026
1 day ago
Three women chop their way into the record books at Lumberjack World Championships
North AmericaWisconsin
Three women chop their way into the record books at Lumberjack World Championships
By The Associated Press and Ellen SchmidtJuly 20, 2026
2 days ago

Most Popular

Mark Cuban says he has the solution to growing income inequality, and it's to reward every employee—from CEO to janitor—with company stock
Success
Mark Cuban says he has the solution to growing income inequality, and it's to reward every employee—from CEO to janitor—with company stock
By Sasha RogelbergJuly 20, 2026
2 days ago
OpenAI says its AI models secretly broke out of a secure test environment and hacked into AI company Hugging Face in order to cheat on an evaluation
Cybersecurity
OpenAI says its AI models secretly broke out of a secure test environment and hacked into AI company Hugging Face in order to cheat on an evaluation
By Jeremy Kahn and Emily ForliniJuly 21, 2026
22 hours ago
Mathematicians grapple with a ‘very rapid and very unsettling change’ as AI cracks yet another century-old problem
AI
Mathematicians grapple with a ‘very rapid and very unsettling change’ as AI cracks yet another century-old problem
By Eva RoytburgJuly 21, 2026
1 day ago
Despite a $156 million contract, Knicks star Jalen Brunson still calls his parents for financial advice any time he makes a big purchase
Success
Despite a $156 million contract, Knicks star Jalen Brunson still calls his parents for financial advice any time he makes a big purchase
By Emma BurleighJuly 21, 2026
1 day ago
‘I want to die broke’: Billionaire philanthropist Denny Sanford dies after giving away $4 billion
Success
‘I want to die broke’: Billionaire philanthropist Denny Sanford dies after giving away $4 billion
By Sydney LakeJuly 20, 2026
2 days ago
'Dr. Doom' Nouriel Roubini says we're headed for universal basic income or 'some form of socialism' as AI revolutionizes work—He calls that optimistic
AI
'Dr. Doom' Nouriel Roubini says we're headed for universal basic income or 'some form of socialism' as AI revolutionizes work—He calls that optimistic
By Jason MaJuly 18, 2026
4 days ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.