Making the Human Zoo More Habitable

Before diving into today's topic, I want to share an unexpected surprise: Bryan Johnson's psilocybin trip went viral on IG & X. When I zoomed into the picture, I realized he was wearing the Olo eye mask.

I'll write more about the therapeutic use of psychedelics soon, but today we're exploring how space changes how we feel.

The wellness real estate market is expected to double from $500+ billion to over $1 trillion in the next 5 years. Architects and interior designers are adding circadian lighting systems, biophilic atriums, and advanced air filtration.

But walk into most of these spaces and something's off. They look perfect—natural light, living walls, beautiful materials. Yet they don't feel restorative. And there's a reason for that: we've been designing for the eyes while ignoring what the nervous system hears.

Your Brain Hears Before It Sees

Sound reaches your brain in 8-10 milliseconds. Vision takes 20-40 milliseconds. Which means your nervous system is already responding to the acoustic environment before you're consciously aware of it—before you've even registered what you're looking at.

This matters more than you'd think. Your auditory system has been a survival mechanism for hundreds of thousands of years, constantly monitoring the environment for safety and threat. It never turns off. And it processes sound with millisecond precision, detecting patterns you'll never consciously notice.

So when something feels "off" about a space, it's often not what you're seeing. It's what you're hearing—or more precisely, what your nervous system is processing below the level of conscious awareness.

The Problem With "Good" Acoustic Design

Walk into a wellness-focused building—a yoga studio, a spa, a high-end residential lobby. The designers did everything right: acoustic panels on the walls, sound-absorbing materials, maybe a white noise system to create ambient calm.

But here's what they've missed: all of that is subtractive. It removes the bad stuff—echo, harsh reflections, intrusive noise. But it doesn't add anything back. You're left with acoustic emptiness. Or worse, with white noise systems that your brainstem recognizes as unnatural—a flat, repetitive pattern that requires cognitive energy to filter out.

For 300,000 years, human hearing operated in environments full of specific acoustic patterns: rustling leaves, moving water, wind through trees, birdsong at dawn. These weren't just pleasant sounds. They were information—constant feedback that told our auditory system "the environment is stable, resources are available, no immediate threats.”

Modern acoustic design can make a space quiet. But quiet isn't the same as safe. And your nervous system knows the difference.

What's Actually Missing

Natural soundscapes have temporal variation—they change moment to moment in complex, irregular ways. They have spatial depth—you can sense where sounds are coming from and how the space around you is shaped. They cover a broad range of frequencies, not just the narrow bands of HVAC hum or electronic tones.

When these patterns are missing, your auditory system keeps searching for cues that aren't there. It evolved to use this acoustic information to assess safety, and without it, the environment registers as incomplete. Not necessarily threatening, but not completely safe either—and you can't consciously identify why.

This isn't about lacking discipline. You can't think your way into nervous system regulation when the acoustic environment is signaling—at a pre-conscious level—that something's not quite right.

Bringing It Into Built Spaces

This is why Olo is partnering with EHA, a luxury retreat center in Estonia, to integrate biophilic acoustic design into their physical spaces.

Our team has direct experience owning and operating retreat centers, so we know what actually creates conditions for nervous system reset. It's not just about removing stressors or creating visual beauty. It's about designing acoustic environments that communicate safety to the body before the mind even registers what's happening.

This partnership represents our first step in extending beyond headphones and into the architecture itself. Because if we're serious about creating spaces where people can actually restore—not just understand they should relax, but physiologically downregulate—the acoustic layer isn't optional. It's foundational.

The Larger Question

The wellness real estate boom is happening because people recognize something's wrong with how we've built our world. We've optimized for productivity, efficiency, aesthetics—everything except the actual biology of the humans who have to live and work in these spaces.

Sound is where that gap becomes most obvious. It's invisible, it's undervalued, and it's constantly affecting you whether you notice it or not.

The difference between a $500 billion market and a $1 trillion one isn't just about adding more amenities. It's about whether we're designing for the full spectrum of human biology—including the acoustic patterns our nervous systems evolved to depend on.

Events

We're heading to San Francisco, New York, and London over the next few months to talk about this work. And speaking at the Eudemonia Summit in West Palm Beach.

If you're designing spaces where human regulation actually matters, let's talk.

P.S.: You can get $50 off any Eudemonia badge with promo code mpesonen

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