Inventor Spotlight Episode 17: Surgeon-Turned-Inventor: How Dr. Turner Osler Is Redesigning Sitting for Kids & Adults

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:22):
Hi, Hi, everyone.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to Inventor Smart Community podcast of our podcast Spotlight Series,
Episode seventeen. I'm here with Turner, who is also a
serial inventor. I'm starting to discover in our little pre
conversation that we've had here.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
We just want to welcome everyone again.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
We do this podcast where we interview inventors for our
Inventor Smart Community and of course the National Inventor Club.
If you're new here and you're not familiar with our community,
we're just a collection of inventors at all different stages
of development.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
It's a community.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
You can download the app Inventor your Smart Community app
at all the places that you can download Google Play,
your Android or Apple Store, and of course this podcast
is streaming on every platform that you can discover for
your streaming devices.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Welcome mister Turner. How are you. Where are you dialing
in from?

Speaker 3 (01:18):
So I'm in Burlington, Vermond, or actually just outside Burlington,
a little town called Colchester on Lake Champlain, which is
quite frozen.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
You were mentioning earlier that the lake was frozen, and
I was commenting on that beautiful fireplace in the background.
Though I'm in Missouri, so we're kind of just dancing
into spring. So I have a fireplace behind me as well,
but haven't had it on for a few weeks now,
so kind of want to move on from the fireplace,
if you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
But I am enjoying se and yours all right, Ms Rolson.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
So you're a member of our inventor smart community, and
you are a serial inventor, and you've already shown a
couple of things earlier when we were off camera, and
I'm already stoked and excited because I believe in the
power of helping our kids adjust and focus, and I
think you may have tapped into something that is really unique.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
So tell us all about it.

Speaker 4 (02:14):
Well.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
So, my first career was as a trauma surgeon. I
spent years operating on people and teaching surgery to surgery
residents here at the University of Vermont, and then I
started doing epidemiology and one thing led to another and
I got interested in just how bad it is for
people to sit still all day, and the epidemiology is

(02:38):
really compelling. It takes probably two years off the average
person's life, because the average American sits for eight or
ten hours a day, something that we were manifestly not
designed for. So we worked to try and design some
kind of chair that would keep people moving while they
were sitting. And because we have and I had no

(02:58):
business doing any of this designing or inventing stuff, because
you know, my career was an academic surgeon. But there's
a very robust inventor community here in Vermont, especially in Burlington,
with you know, maker spaces and startup spaces and things
and lots of welcoming people with real design skills. So

(03:21):
within a year we had a chair that would keep
people adults moving while they were sitting. And we started
selling these things over the web and now we've sold
about sixteen thousand of them, so.

Speaker 4 (03:29):
That's going all right.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
But it was very hard to get people to buy
into the idea of a chair that would move while
they sat, and because you know, that's not what the
ergonomic community has been pitching for the last one hundred years.
So taking a page from the Apple people, you know,
if you want to if you want to change the

(03:51):
way people interact with the product, you have to go
after the kids so they'll think it's normal and when
they start owning businesses and company and they'll understand. So
we thought, you know, and kids are trapped in school
sitting all day long as well, so maybe we could
come up with some kind of chair that would keep
kids moving while they sat. And there's you know, there

(04:13):
are tippy stools available for kids. You can find them
on Amazon, but they're typically quite expensive, you know, like
one hundred or more dollars. So we had the idea
that we would make a tippy chair for kids that
would be really inexpensive, like free. So we put our

(04:34):
heads together and designed the chair that you can just
stamp out of plywood with a C and C router.
The pieces fit together with a self locking joint. You
just beat on it with a rubber mallet and it
turns into a chair.

Speaker 4 (04:48):
The movement is.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
Provided by using an old tennis ball that's held in
players with a piece of bungee cord, and the rest
of it is just four pieces of plywood that, as
I say, locked together with self locking joints.

Speaker 4 (05:05):
There's no screws or glues involved.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
We called it the button chair because it kind of
looked like a button, but also we kind of love
the butt on kind of sound, and so do the
kids that we tried it out.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
On as they did.

Speaker 4 (05:20):
So anyway, this has its own website.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
You can download the files to make one as a
DIY thing in your basement. You can also download a
C and C file to stamp out hundreds of them
like a cookie cutter. They just made out of plywood,
so and they can fit any kid because it's plywood.
You can cut it off, you know, to fit your kid.

Speaker 4 (05:40):
I did a TED.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
Talk about this idea, and you know, it's had like
forty thousand views, So we're kind of and this the
file has been downloaded to make this thing over over
five thousand times now all around the world.

Speaker 4 (05:56):
So we're kind of getting.

Speaker 3 (05:57):
Into the space of making empowering schools to make their
own tippy furniture. The idea was a high school would
have a S and C router. They could make chairs
for all the kids in the school and they'd be
independent of the larcenets school furniture industry, kind of a
power to the people's sixties thing.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Can I jump in? I just want to ask a
couple of questions.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
So, in the discovery of this, is this more geared
towards younger adolescents toddlers?

Speaker 3 (06:24):
Yes, yeah, So we were kind of thinking anywhere from
preschool to middle school was kind of the spot we
were looking for. By the time kids get bigger, you know,
we have other ideas in mind for them, but the
business being able to make these things out of plywood independently,
you know, and inexpensively, because as I say, we give

(06:44):
away the design. There's an idea that I really liked
because it would get kids moving immediately and without any
upfront investment by schools. So that's gone all right, but
hasn't taken off in the viral way I had hoped.
And meanwhile, you know, you can't stop messing around with
ideas as I'm sure I'm sure.

Speaker 4 (07:05):
You have this same problem.

Speaker 3 (07:07):
So one day I was messing around with a tennis
ball and I thought, you know, if you fold in
the sides of a tennis ball, you get kind of
an interesting shape. And as we were screwing around with
that shape, you know, we found this kind of b
concave disc, kind of like an erythracite, like a red
blood cell, but you could the bottom of it could
be hemispheric with a ring that keeps it from actually

(07:30):
tipping over, and you could put a pad on top
and you would have a tipping platform that kids can
sit on. It doesn't roll away like a ball, doesn't
fall over and is but requires constant postural readjustment in
order to stay balanced. So we've measured this in the
lab with rebreathing equipment to measure carbon dioxide production to

(07:54):
consumption and something like if you put a kid on
something like this, their metabolic rate goes up by about
thirty percent. Context fifty percent is like walking. So by
putting a kid on a tippy chair you can kind
of keep them metabolically engaged. Also turns out it's a
big help for kids with ADHD and stuff like that, because.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
We're going to be my additional questions and comments kids
that are ADHD and that have trouble kind of sitting
still and focusing as it is. And this is amazing
and what a great presentation, Sarah. This is incredible. It's
really innovative stuff here and please continue.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (08:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
Well, so the thing that I most loved about this
design is it will be dirt cheap to make because
you can blow mold it. You I don't know if
you know about blow molding and spin molding, but you
can if you have such a factor. You take a
glob of a recycled plastic and you just blow a
big bubble like it would with bubble gum, and then
you hit it from both sides with a mold that

(08:55):
shapes it.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
So you can imagine this started.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
Out as a big bubble of recycled plastic and thenk
you just press it from both sides of the mold,
let it cool and open it up, and now you
have basically a chair that's ready to go. So we
think we can probably make these things for under ten
dollars a pop. And you know, we hope, you know,
put active chairs under every kid in every school. And

(09:20):
as you probably know, almost nobody thinks of anything first.
It's almost Thomas Edison, who was, you know, the archetypal inventor,
readily admitted that he had never invented anything.

Speaker 4 (09:33):
He had just improved stuff. So I actually had this idea.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
I encountered this idea, I would say when I got
I met a guy for strength string at the International
Furniture Convention in Javit Center, New York City a few
years ago, and he had come from Norway and brought
what you know, this beautiful piece of bent plywood that

(09:58):
it's the kind of stuff that Norway just excels in
so they they make these things and they have them
in schools for kids to sit on.

Speaker 4 (10:06):
And you know, I was just swept away. It was
just such a beautiful design and it works so well
and in front of these things are terrific. How much
how much do you sell them for?

Speaker 3 (10:17):
And he said eight hundred dollars And I said, wow,
I don't know if we're going to get schools in
the United States to spring for eight hundred dollars a kid.

Speaker 4 (10:29):
And he said, no, of course not.

Speaker 3 (10:31):
But I'm selling them in Norway, where we care about kids.
In the United States, we can hardly get We can
hardly get money for glitter for preschooler's art projects. Now,
this had to be very inexpensive, and it captures one
hundred percent of the function of Freda's beautiful eight hundred
dollars chair for about ten bucks.

Speaker 4 (10:50):
So you know, I love this idea.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
And I've been trying to find somebody in the in
the school furniture space that manufactures school furniture because I
want to find somebody to.

Speaker 4 (11:03):
Make this design and get it out into the world.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
I don't have the bandwidth to do that right now,
and I don't really have the connections to be selling
furniture to schools. I have the connections to give away
furniture to school that's easy, But selling furniture to schools
will require a partner who you know, has you know,
connections and expertise and understands how the buying process works
for school districts and that sort of thing. So anyway,

(11:28):
I love this design and I'm hoping, you know, somebody
somewhere will hear this like a note in a bottle.
I hope somebody picks up on this idea and runs
with it, because I really want this design to get
out the world.

Speaker 4 (11:41):
You know.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
I think what I love the most about all of this, too,
is that earlier you made the comments of, you know,
if we're going to start changing the world or changing
people's minds about certain way to do things like recognize
that kids are sitting still way too long in school
is to start with the kids, right.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
Is to give them these tools.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
Early on to where, like you said, when they're an
adults and there maybe they start their businesses. It's incorporated
into their daily lives or their children's lives, and that's
how we evoke change and the and the process of that.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Thank you so much for being so brilliant and really
thinking outside the box. I mean, this is true inventorship
right here.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
Well, I have to say I'm just I'm just a
tip of this spirit where there's dozens of people in
our community here in Burlington, Vermont have contributed ideas. I've
presented this in various forums and people get enthusiastic and
you know, have great ideas and terrible ideas, and sometimes
it thinks a long time betow which is which. But
it's a great It's great to be in a room

(12:45):
with people who are way smarter than I am and
have way more ideas than I would. So it's it's
it's it's been fun for me because I get to
hang out with young, smart kids who you have lots
of ideas. We're right now engaged in a project at
Champlain College with a group of kids that's working to
get our button chair.

Speaker 4 (13:06):
Design through the communities here in Vermont.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
So it's a matter of finding partners to get these
projects underway. So meanwhile, we're kind of funding it based
on this business we have selling office alternatives to office
chairs to adults, and as I mentioned, We sold about
sixteen thousand of them around the world and that's going

(13:33):
pretty well. And we have a variety of designs. But
a chair is kind of expensive, and so we were thinking,
you know, is there a way to keep people moving
that wouldn't involve like making them give up the chair
that they have. And as we were kind of spitballing that,
we thought, well, you know, you can kind of tell
I'm moving all over the place, and the reason is

(13:56):
because I'm sitting on one of our chairs, this one
we call the Tilt. It's you know, it's got a
steel base and actually the seat is padded with buckwheat
halls like a zen meditation cushion, so it doesn't involve
any plastic and biodegradeable You could eat the stuff if
you wanted to. But it's tippy because it sits on

(14:17):
an industrial grade motor mount. So anyways, and so we
keep trying to make a less expensive but fully functional
chair that'll keep people moving while they're sitting. But you
get to the lower limit of what you can do
with a chair. So we thought, you know, is there
some other way to get people to move more while
we're sitting. And we thought, well, you could make their

(14:38):
issue to erocities, you know, the sitting bones of their
pelvis unstable, and that'll guarantee that they keep rebalancing. But
you can also make their feet unstable by putting something
under their feet on the floor, and that would possibly
be a less expensive, simpler thing to do.

Speaker 4 (14:55):
So after noodling around with that for.

Speaker 3 (14:56):
A while, we we came up with this idea, which
we call the footwave. It's it's a a bunch of
cross members that are independently mounted on I guess you
can see their motor mounts three quarter inch natural rubber
things that allow these pieces to move independently of one another,

(15:20):
but also you know, can kind of move in a
concerted way if you put your feet on it. It's
kind of kind of like playing scales on a piano,
only with your feet. And because it's got a hemispheric
rocker on the bottom, the whole thing is kind of unstable,
and so it really compels people to sit up with
good posture and keeps their legs involved. And it's it's

(15:42):
As I was researching all this, it turns out that
the Salaeus muscle, which lies just deep to the gas
stock Nemius muscle and the calf of the of a person.
It's the bulky muscle just above your heel and your
lower leg. It's it's really crucial to human balance, and
so it's basically always engaged and it's ritually endowed with mitochondria,

(16:05):
so it really is very metabolically active, even in unconditioned adults.
So it turns out that if you can keep people's
feet moving, you can really crank up their metabolic rate
without really making a big imposition on the rest of them.
So it's and what that's as an epidemiologist and physition,
what we're really interested in is getting people's you know,

(16:28):
good cholesterol up, they're bad cholesterol down, their insulin down.
We want to we want to keep their glucose down.
We want to arrange all of these parameters in your
circulatory system that keep you healthy and make you live
a long time.

Speaker 4 (16:43):
And you do this by keeping people active.

Speaker 3 (16:46):
And because people spend so much time sitting in front
of their computer, we had to find a way to
make sitting in front of your computer active. And it
turns out if you just make the surface under the
feet unstable, you could really get people to move a
lot and crank up their metabolic rape. The thing that's
for people about it is people don't notice that you've
been messing with their metabolic rate. They're getting exercise without

(17:08):
knowing it. When we measure their expired carbon dioxide and inspired,
we find that we're adding about three thousand steps to
an eight hour workday just by swapping out the chair
that's sitting underneath them, or swapping out this putting a
tippy thing under their feet. So, you know, my interest
is kind of physiologic and medical, but we also kind

(17:31):
of know that nobody's interested in that. It's got to
seem like it's fun and healthful.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
I think too, for me, somebody like me, I'm one
of these, I'm a mover. So I feel like you're
normalizing this condition that so many of us.

Speaker 4 (17:47):
Have, right, and you are.

Speaker 3 (17:48):
So you are so lucky to be a natural figitter,
because the epidemiology is very clear. Natural born figitors live
about two years longer than the rest of people.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Wooh. You will take it, of course, but do it
for free.

Speaker 4 (18:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
Yeah, But I like the message that it's kind of
normalizing because you know, I've had friends over the years.
They'll sit, they'll rock they'll sway. They have to constantly.
And I did notice that you were kind of moving.
And it's funny when I do these types of interviews.
I'm trying my best Tuesday, and I.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
Love got like a little move envy over here. I'm like,
this guy's all this.

Speaker 3 (18:29):
If I I'll send you one of our chairs and
then when you move, you can blame your goddamn chairs,
say it's my fault.

Speaker 5 (18:36):
Well, every time I do an interview, I could say
what why I'm doing this, and we'll get the word
out double fast if you will, so listen, man, you
and your team and your community.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
This is brilliant.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
This is groundbreaking, brilliant, the normalizing of this type of
energy that so many of us possess.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
Not adults but kids who yes, ostracized for ADHD.

Speaker 4 (19:02):
Yes, now it can be normalized.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yes, yeah, I'm almost gonna well, Andy will laugh. I
could be in tears because I have a best friend
and her he's twenty five now, but her son, when
he was little, he got in.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
So much trouble at school all.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
The time, and he was coming home with the little
blue paper clip you know, card whatever, And it was
almost every day he was handing it to his mom,
and I was getting so upset. I go, you know,
this is breaking his confidence, his self esteem. He's almost
expecting it. The next year in school, he asked the
teacher what color the cards were, you know, for that

(19:37):
type of discipline sit still, don't move kind of things.
So this, you know, and I'm sure you hear this
all the time as you've developed and talked to hundreds
of people. But that's real life stuff too. I remember
feeling so bad for Louis, like he can't help it.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
He's moving around, you know.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
And in previous iterations of human culture, you know, when
we were hunter gatherers, Louis would have been a star
because he would have found, yes, more rabbits over the hill,
because he couldn't sit still, whereas the kids who sat
still would have been eaten by wolves.

Speaker 4 (20:11):
So, you know, the business.

Speaker 3 (20:13):
Of ostracizing people who are active, it's a terrible mistake
because such people get a lot done.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
That's right, that's right.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
You know. It goes back to you know, when you
need something done, ask a busy person. We got it,
we can fit it in somehow. It was such a
pleasure speaking with you this afternoon. I really enjoyed your presentation.
I just think it's spot on, it's revolutionary, and anything
to do with kids and their development is always a

(20:47):
sparkle for me. I run a nonprofit where we give
musical instruments to underfunded music programs throughout our communities and
I watch them just thrive and thrive and thrive. And
a lot of kids have some behavioral stuff or some ADHD.
Their fidgety music is also an amazing outlet for those

(21:08):
students as well. So anything to do with the kids
is just, you know, it's the future.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
Really it is.

Speaker 4 (21:15):
Yeah, you know you're doing the right thing when you're
doing something for a kid.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
I think so too, I really do.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
It was an absolute pleasure having you on episode seventeen
of our Inventor Spotlight. I think you're brilliant and I
can't wait to get to know you more in our
community and invite your friends to join us. And we'd
love to know more about your development and where this
is going. And we'll do our best on our end
to support you. Brian and I and Sean and I'm

(21:45):
not sure if Andy's coming with us. We're going to
be in Chicago this weekend for the Inspired Home show,
so you never know what conversations will come up, people
that we meet, things that we see, and I'll keep
my eye out for any type of furniture developers and
I'll just collect information from you for you. I won't
speak for you, but if I could grab a card

(22:06):
or something that sparks me, I'm on it.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
I'm gonna.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
I love what you're doing. I think it's amazing. Thank
you for being part of the show today.

Speaker 4 (22:14):
Thanks for having me on it with a fun good
thank you.

Speaker 2 (22:17):
All right, everyone, you can check us out at Invenor
Smart Community.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
You can download the app.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
You can go to Nationalinventor Club dot com if you're unsure,
if you're an inventor you're just kind of dabbling with
it and you just want some information, just to subscribe
to the newsletter to start and just kind of grab
some resources and get a feel of this community. We
would love to have you. We're all inventors at all
different stages of development, and you are welcome to join

(22:44):
us in this community. Until then, mister Turner, I hope
to see you at some of our other meetings, and
of course any activity in the app that you that
you provide with us.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
All right, everyone, Thank you see you next time. Bye bye,

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Inventor Spotlight Episode 17: Surgeon-Turned-Inventor: How Dr. Turner Osler Is Redesigning Sitting for Kids & Adults

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