The Kings of Calm

Photographs by Sarah Johnson

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cathedral-like mountain towers above me; a lake laps at my feet; sunshine distilled through pine needles warms my skin. Close your eyes, a voice intones. Let your shoulders fall naturally and keep your chest open. Take a few full, deep breaths to settle into this moment, inhaling deeply and slowly releasing your breath, allowing any tension you may be holding to soften.

Fifteen minutes later, the voice asks me to bring my attention back to the room. I open my eyes to see not a mountain and a lake, but a photo of them on my cracked iPhone screen, now riddled with notifications from email, Slack, several major news publications, iMessage, Signal, WhatsApp, and Twitter. Then I turn to a somewhat larger screen to work for eight hours, followed by some relaxing time in the evening with a yet bigger screen, paired with the iPhone, the global pandemic, environmental catastrophe, and the inescapable shrieks of my toddler—rather than snowmelt and birdsong—as background noise.

My short-lived meditative oasis came courtesy of Calm, the most popular mindfulness app and one of the most popular apps in existence, full stop. More than 100 million people now have Calm on their smartphone, after downloads surged by a third in the coronavirus pandemic’s early days last spring.

“What an extraordinary 12 months this has been,” one of Calm’s founders, Michael Acton Smith, told me, a somewhat awed tone to his voice, as his co-founder, Alex Tew, nodded. We met via Zoom in February, with me in San Francisco, Tew in the Cotswolds, and Acton Smith on the western Irish coast. “When the pandemic hit, interest went completely through the roof,” Acton Smith said. “We’ve had our work cut out for us,”