Speaker 1: Today. It's great to chat with Narena Hurts on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Narena is a renowned thought leader, academic and broadcaster, named
Speaker 1: by The Observer as one of the world's leading thinkers
Speaker 1: and by Vogue as one of the world's most inspiring women.
Speaker 1: Her previous bestsellers, The Silent Takeover, The Debt Threat, and
Speaker 1: Eyes Wide Open have been published in more than twenty countries,
Speaker 1: and her opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times,
Speaker 1: The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and
Speaker 1: Financial Times. She has hosted her own show on SiriusXM
Speaker 1: and spoken at TED, the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Speaker 1: and Google Zeitgeist. Her latest book is called The Lonely Century,
Speaker 1: How to Restore Human Connection in a world that's pulling apart. Ara,
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to chat with you today. Oh I'm
Speaker 1: so happy to be on your show. Really, I was
Speaker 1: looking forward, really haven't looking forward to this talk for
Speaker 1: a long time. Was such a timely and important book,
Speaker 1: as you know, I mean, why did you will we
Speaker 1: ask you why did you write this book? So it
Speaker 1: was three separate things happening at roughly the same time
Speaker 1: about four years ago. First it was my students. More
Speaker 1: and more students were coming into my office in office
Speaker 1: hours and confiding in me that they were feeling lonely
Speaker 1: and isolated. And I've been teaching at university for about
Speaker 1: twenty years on and off. I hadn't seen you know,
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen this phenomenon, and definitely not in the
Speaker 1: numbers that were coming into my office. So I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Something's going on here, something concerning. And then
Speaker 1: at the same time, in my research, I was investigating
Speaker 1: the rise of right wing populism across the globe, the
Speaker 1: rise of leaders like Trump in the United States or
Speaker 1: La Penn in France, Salveni and Italy. I wanted to
Speaker 1: understand why people were voting for these politicians, and I
Speaker 1: started interviewing right wing populist voters across the globe, and
Speaker 1: one thing that came out time and time again from
Speaker 1: their stories was how lonely and isolated they felt. So
Speaker 1: here was loneliness again popping up in a very different realm.
Speaker 1: And then I had bought an Alexa, an Amazon Alexa,
Speaker 1: and I noted that I was becoming increasingly attached to
Speaker 1: my Alexa, and you know, feeling increasingly close to this
Speaker 1: device in my kitchen, which got me thinking about what
Speaker 1: it came to call the loneliness economy, an entire market
Speaker 1: for goods and services designed really to alleviate loneliness, deliver connection,
Speaker 1: or at best, deliver community. And I thought, well, this
Speaker 1: is a growing market. The market speaking I, there's increasing
Speaker 1: numbers of people who are looking for connection, looking for
Speaker 1: connection with their alexas, looking for connection via populist political parties,
Speaker 1: or looking for connection when they were young and not
Speaker 1: finding it like my students. And I started really digging
Speaker 1: into the subject loneliness and was struck very quickly at
Speaker 1: just how significant and extensive a problem it was, with
Speaker 1: one in five Americans often not always feeling lonely, one
Speaker 1: in five millennials saying that they didn't have a single friend,
Speaker 1: forty percent of office workers saying that they were lonely
Speaker 1: at work, and I realized this was something very significant
Speaker 1: that merited spending the next two years really digging into
Speaker 1: in depth. I'm glad you did, and I can really
Speaker 1: resonate with the Alectra thing. She I guess it's a
Speaker 1: female has been uh my source of sunshine every morning.
Speaker 1: Good morning, Scott, here's the here's the new news of
Speaker 1: the day, and then she has her favorite joke of
Speaker 1: the day. No, I know, I know, I mean me too.
Speaker 1: It's she's a definite addition to our household. And in fact,
Speaker 1: I have a two year old niece, and my sister
Speaker 1: in law tell me that last week they were making
Speaker 1: cards in activity with the with the kid, they were
Speaker 1: making Greek greeting gods for friends and family, and the
Speaker 1: mother said, oh, who should we make a card for next?
Speaker 1: And the kids said, Alexa, I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: So in your book, you makes an interesting argument. You
Speaker 1: say that onliness is not an only ish, It's not
Speaker 1: only an issue of mental health. There's also economics and
Speaker 1: politics involved in this. You know, what do you estimate
Speaker 1: is the full extent of this problem, even beyond the
Speaker 1: mental health issue. So we know, you know, as you
Speaker 1: know all too well, that loneliness is bad for our
Speaker 1: mental health, and that there is a link between loneliness
Speaker 1: and anxiety, and loneliness and depression, and even loneliness and suicide.
Speaker 1: We also know that loneliness is bad for our physical health,
Speaker 1: manifesting in higher blood pressure, higher levels of corticel stress,
Speaker 1: hormones in our body, higher pulse rates, all of these
Speaker 1: essentially not good for our body to be in a
Speaker 1: statu for protracted periods, as loneliness often is for many,
Speaker 1: which is why loneliness can even reduce our life expectancy
Speaker 1: by as much as make our risk of dying prematurely
Speaker 1: be as much as thirty percent higher than if you're
Speaker 1: not lonely. So but as you say, it's not just
Speaker 1: health the data effects, loneliness is also bad for our wealth,
Speaker 1: bad for our wealth collectively, in part because of the
Speaker 1: cost the healthcare burden, a healthcare burden that loneliness puts
Speaker 1: on our public health systems, but also because loneliness is
Speaker 1: bad for the workplace. Lonely workers are less efficient, less motivated,
Speaker 1: less productive, and more likely to quit a company than
Speaker 1: workers who aren't. In fact, the single biggest determinant for
Speaker 1: whether somebody will remain at a company or not is
Speaker 1: whether they have a friend at work. So loneliness is
Speaker 1: a really significant business problem as well, and also, as
Speaker 1: I found in my research, inexorably linked to the rise
Speaker 1: of right wing populism in recent years. I'm not saying,
Speaker 1: of course, that everyone who's lonely votes for populists of
Speaker 1: the right. Of course they don't, but a significant countery
Speaker 1: of those who do are lonely. Lonely in the sense
Speaker 1: of have more limited social networks, much weaker support systems,
Speaker 1: so weaker ties with friends, fewer acquaintances, even fewer people
Speaker 1: to rely upon in times of need, but also lonely
Speaker 1: in the sense of feeling invisible, feeling unseen, feeling unheard,
Speaker 1: feeling disconnected not only from their friends and family, but
Speaker 1: also from their fellow citizens and from mainstream politicians. And
Speaker 1: of course, right wing populists like Trump played incredibly effectively
Speaker 1: to this, speaking to this craving for community with their
Speaker 1: rallies and their spectacles, their theaters of community that they
Speaker 1: put on, but also speaking directly to this sense of
Speaker 1: forsakenness that so many people felt. You the forgotten people
Speaker 1: I am seeing and hearing you was rhetoric you would
Speaker 1: hear from Trump, but also from Lipen in France and
Speaker 1: from Salvenia and Italy. I thought that was really an
Speaker 1: interesting point in your book, about how a lot of
Speaker 1: only people might be more attractive to populism. Could you
Speaker 1: just could you see it being the case that people
Speaker 1: who are onely, are just craving the need for belonging
Speaker 1: in lots of different ways. I mean, couldn't one make
Speaker 1: the case that people who are want to be part
Speaker 1: of Antifa on the extreme far left as well also
Speaker 1: are extremely lonely. I mean, not to just single out
Speaker 1: I don't want to just single out yes, Trump supporters,
Speaker 1: but I mean on any of the extremes, even the
Speaker 1: extreme left. Couldn't one argue that extreme loneliness is causing
Speaker 1: people to be more extreme than maybe they would have
Speaker 1: been in the past. Definitely, And I think right wing
Speaker 1: populists have been particularly good at speaking to that, which
Speaker 1: is why we see this stronger link with right wing populists.
Speaker 1: But there's no reason why necessarily so. And there are
Speaker 1: groups of people who are seeking belonging, and they will
Speaker 1: go to wherever they find it, whether it is on
Speaker 1: the right or the left, whether it's on Reddit, the
Speaker 1: game the game stoppers who congregated on Reddit, or whether
Speaker 1: it was the group who stormed the Capital. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, what these groups have in common or the
Speaker 1: in cells who are finding community. What these groups have
Speaker 1: in commonies that they're populated with lonely people who are
Speaker 1: looking for belonging and looking for a sense of identity
Speaker 1: and looking to be seen and heard, and they're finding
Speaker 1: it there. And that's, you know, the challenge centrist people
Speaker 1: of the center have. How do how do we deliver
Speaker 1: a sense of community and belonging. Well, ironically, I am
Speaker 1: I am a centrist, and I feel like, ironically centrists
Speaker 1: are feeling more and more lonely because because everyone's moving
Speaker 1: to the extremes, so so the people in the center
Speaker 1: are the onliest of them all. Now, well, maybe that's
Speaker 1: maybe that's a good, a good state of affairs, because
Speaker 1: maybe that's when we'll see real change, and change that
Speaker 1: will be positively impactful for many. Well, I sure hope so. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, and that's what we really do care about,
Speaker 1: you know, how can we make sure that everyone is
Speaker 1: able to give and receive care? You talk about that
Speaker 1: a little bit in your book. I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: some of your your thoughts and some practical things, and
Speaker 1: also which dimensions are under our control? Yes, so so
Speaker 1: so the question of care. I think it's an important
Speaker 1: one to spend a little bit of time on because
Speaker 1: what we've really seen over the past few decades has
Speaker 1: been a steady devaluing of qualities like compassion and care,
Speaker 1: and they'd a hypervalorization of qualities like competitiveness and determination.
Speaker 1: And we see this in terms of what jobs are
Speaker 1: valued in society. People who care for others are typically
Speaker 1: actually paid below market rates as compared to people who
Speaker 1: are delivering efficiency and those sorts of qualities. We see
Speaker 1: it in terms of how people are rewarded at work.
Speaker 1: You know, in most companies, qualities like kindness and care
Speaker 1: are not explicitly rewarded. And we see it in how
Speaker 1: we treat each other and what we value in each other,
Speaker 1: because what I argue is that over the past few decades,
Speaker 1: we've essentially become increasingly individualistic. Increasingly we cast ourselves from
Speaker 1: citizens to consumers, from collaborators to competitors, from really from
Speaker 1: helpers to hustlers, increasingly seen ourselves in those ways and
Speaker 1: being increasingly I focused, ME focused, which of course inevitably
Speaker 1: was going to make us lonelier. So when we're thinking
Speaker 1: about the solutions and how to come together again, part
Speaker 1: of it is about revaluing as a society qualities like
Speaker 1: care and compassion and acknowledging the importance of community as well.
Speaker 1: Of course, and some companies are actually making some inroads
Speaker 1: on that front. I was inspired in conversations with Cisco,
Speaker 1: the global technology company, to discover that they actually have
Speaker 1: a scheme in their company whereby anyone up and down
Speaker 1: the organization, from cleaner to CEO can nominate anyone else
Speaker 1: in the company for a cash ward between one hundred
Speaker 1: and ten thousand dollars for doing something particularly kind or
Speaker 1: helpful or nice. This is a company really saying, you know,
Speaker 1: we value it and we're putting our money where our
Speaker 1: mouth is. And Cisco has considerably lower turnover than the
Speaker 1: industry average, interestingly, and also was voted the best company
Speaker 1: in the world to work for by its employees for
Speaker 1: two years running. So if we think of these qualities,
Speaker 1: sometimes we mistakenly can think of these qualities as being
Speaker 1: inimicable to success, and yet they actually can help drive success. Agreed,
Speaker 1: just kind of on community. I think one thing. I'm
Speaker 1: sure we've got so much more we can talk about,
Speaker 1: but just on community, because I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that really struck me as I thought about it
Speaker 1: and as I looked at the research was the extent
Speaker 1: to which really since the financial crisis, and this is
Speaker 1: true across the globe, but in the United States as well,
Speaker 1: we've really seen a defunding of what we might think
Speaker 1: of as the infrastructure of community, of public libraries, of
Speaker 1: public parks, of youth clubs, of elderly daycare centers. And
Speaker 1: yet people need physical spaces to be together, to do
Speaker 1: things together, if we are to feel not only less alone,
Speaker 1: but to come together as societies. In the United States,
Speaker 1: public libraries have seen a forty percent decrease in public
Speaker 1: funding in federal funding since two thousand and eight, forty percent.
Speaker 1: And so again it's as we think about how to reconnect,
Speaker 1: how to feel less lonely, and importantly, how to come
Speaker 1: together again, there are clearly elements of this which will
Speaker 1: need government attention, including as a matter of urgency, refunding
Speaker 1: this infrastructure of community that has been so badly eroded
Speaker 1: over the past few decades. It's such a good point,
Speaker 1: I mean, the community part is such a good point,
Speaker 1: and and the fact that we should be putting more
Speaker 1: economic resources towards taking this issue seriously. But you know,
Speaker 1: I also asked, you know, what's under our control, because
Speaker 1: it's not. I don't think that we're completely helpless victims.
Speaker 1: So what do you think we can do, you know,
Speaker 1: to to try to get get change our well, increase
Speaker 1: our connection with others. Yes, I totally agree. We are
Speaker 1: not helpless victims, and there is so much we can do,
Speaker 1: and my book's full of ideas. Just my point, maybe
Speaker 1: just appointed just a few. You know, one thing obviously
Speaker 1: we can do is we can We're also responsible for
Speaker 1: the communities in which we live in. This isn't only
Speaker 1: about state funding or federal funding of communities. We need
Speaker 1: to actively nurture our own communities and buy in our
Speaker 1: local shops, support our local independence stores, go to our
Speaker 1: local cafes. Don't be careful not to trade off the
Speaker 1: convenience of a contactless existence where we order our food
Speaker 1: on grub hub and order our groceries online and do
Speaker 1: our yoga with adrin. Be careful not to trade that
Speaker 1: off for community. And of course, during the pandemic, you know,
Speaker 1: we were very grateful we could live that way. But
Speaker 1: moving forward, as we come out of it really important
Speaker 1: to do that, to commit to those in person, face
Speaker 1: to face interactions in our neighborhoods. Partly because even a
Speaker 1: thirty second exchange with a barista in our local cafe
Speaker 1: will make us feel happier as well as more connected
Speaker 1: and less lonely, but partly because it's through those exchanges.
Speaker 1: It's through figuring out where to put your mat in
Speaker 1: the yoga class and making sure not to downward dog
Speaker 1: in front of someone's face. It's through those moments in
Speaker 1: the grocery store when you're wheeling your trolley and you're
Speaker 1: being careful not to bump into someone that we're practicing
Speaker 1: the skills that underpin community and indeed inclusive democracy, skills
Speaker 1: of reciprocity, civility, thinking about others and not only ourselves.
Speaker 1: So that's something we really can do. And also maybe
Speaker 1: there are events that your local community is putting on,
Speaker 1: show up at them, initiate your own events yourself. You know,
Speaker 1: I was someone Scott who before the pandemic, and before
Speaker 1: I started writing my book, I didn't appreciate enough the
Speaker 1: importance of my local community. You know, I was go
Speaker 1: go go, traveling around the world the whole time, spending
Speaker 1: endless time in hotels on airplanes. I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: do these things that as I was writing my book
Speaker 1: I realized were actually negative for myself as well as
Speaker 1: for the environment. In which I live in. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't stop and exchange ten words with the postman
Speaker 1: as I saw him. I didn't stop and say hello
Speaker 1: to my neighbor as I walked by. I just, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of blindly went on with my own life as
Speaker 1: many of us do, and writing my book and researching
Speaker 1: it and really thinking about how important these small interactions
Speaker 1: are made me change how I behaved. And of course
Speaker 1: in the pandemic and when we were locked down, I
Speaker 1: think many of us became extremely appreciative of our local environments,
Speaker 1: our local neighbors, our local cafes, you know, many of these,
Speaker 1: many of our local stores were heroes during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: really kept us going. So's that's one thing we can do.
Speaker 1: Another thing that we can do, although I do think
Speaker 1: there's a role for government here as well, is try
Speaker 1: and put our phones down more and be more present
Speaker 1: with each other. It's really hard to do because these
Speaker 1: our devices, social media designed to be addictive, and it
Speaker 1: sure is, so it's hard to do. But what I
Speaker 1: found in my research was that even in this fascinating study,
Speaker 1: even when a couple have a smartphone on a table
Speaker 1: in front of them, even when the smartphones turned off,
Speaker 1: and even when neither of them are touching it, the
Speaker 1: couple feel less connected to each other and less sympathetic.
Speaker 1: And you know, add layer upon that social media and
Speaker 1: how distracting that is and absorbing, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: no wonder that you can often feel quite alone despite
Speaker 1: being in a room full of people when you're heads
Speaker 1: in your phone. So I try and put my phone
Speaker 1: in a basket in the evening so that it's literally
Speaker 1: not in arms reach, because if it is in arms reach,
Speaker 1: I will reach out for it. But I and I
Speaker 1: try and to spend one day a week where I
Speaker 1: stay offul all my devices. But I do think the
Speaker 1: addiction is such that I do think there's a role
Speaker 1: for government here too, and that in many ways social
Speaker 1: media companies are the tobacco companies of the twenty first
Speaker 1: century and should be regulated as such, and that that's
Speaker 1: something I call for so much more that we can
Speaker 1: do and we can talk about as individuals for sure,
Speaker 1: and we can talk about more more. Scoletle Well, let
Speaker 1: me let me pick up this particular thread you were
Speaker 1: talking about. You use the word civility is I think
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways these technologies is designed to
Speaker 1: to bring out more divisiveness as opposed to the connection.
Speaker 1: Kind of the way the algorithms work, they kind of
Speaker 1: like want to fuel the controversy. So not just in
Speaker 1: the social media realm, but also like you talk about
Speaker 1: how more densely populated cities tend to be less civil,
Speaker 1: you know, like I mean, it's amazing we don't even
Speaker 1: think about, you know, how structures can be designed or
Speaker 1: can influence us in being more or less civil. Could
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about why even the population
Speaker 1: of a city and how densely populated is can it
Speaker 1: can impact something like that? Yes, what's a bit like
Speaker 1: it's a bit like when you go to a supermarket
Speaker 1: and you see a row of jam jars on a shelf.
Speaker 1: You know, if you see fifty jam jars on a shelf,
Speaker 1: you actually your brain just thinks I can't really cope,
Speaker 1: and it becomes the thought of which one to pick
Speaker 1: becomes Actually it can actually become quite stressful, and you
Speaker 1: might easily decide, you know, I'm not going to buy
Speaker 1: a jam that you go to your local corner store
Speaker 1: and there's only six to choose from, it's much easier
Speaker 1: to go and pick one well, that's a bit what
Speaker 1: living in densely populated environments can feel like, where you're
Speaker 1: just overwhelmed with the amount of people around you that
Speaker 1: actually it can just feel easier to put your noise
Speaker 1: canceling headphones on, keep your head down, don't really look
Speaker 1: anyone in the eye, and walk by. So it's partly
Speaker 1: a matter of scale, but there's also research that shows
Speaker 1: that the richer a country is the faster it's citizens,
Speaker 1: and that's another challenge because of course, walking fast, you
Speaker 1: don't take that time that beat to have those conversations
Speaker 1: I talked about that really actually make a difference to
Speaker 1: how connected we feel, those micro exchanges that actually matter.
Speaker 1: More generally, the way we've designed our cities is all
Speaker 1: too frequently designed for cars rather than for people, and
Speaker 1: that comes at a cost as well. There's actually a
Speaker 1: scheme going on in Barcelona in Spain where they've designated
Speaker 1: these superblocks. This was even before the pandemic, so these
Speaker 1: big areas which have been pedestrianized, no cars were allowed
Speaker 1: to drive in, and what they found was just a
Speaker 1: massive uptick in how connected people felt to other people
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood. Kids could play on the streets, people
Speaker 1: were able to hang out, they weren't worried about getting
Speaker 1: run over by cars, and researchers have found that streets
Speaker 1: with less less car flow have as much as three
Speaker 1: times stronger relationships between people on those streets than cars
Speaker 1: which have than streets which have a lot of cars
Speaker 1: driving by them. I mean, people don't think about this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. I'm so glad you're pointing this out.
Speaker 1: It's it's incredible. But there are these brui zones where
Speaker 1: there's uh, you know, we can we can design things
Speaker 1: to alleviate loneliness as well. We can have societies that
Speaker 1: do it right. So let's let's talk a little bit bit.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling depressed. Let's let's talk about good Let's let's
Speaker 1: talk about some positive Let's talk with the zones. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about the zones. Don't be depressed, because this is
Speaker 1: actually a really optimistic bit, because there's so much hope
Speaker 1: in it, because examples of there's so many examples of
Speaker 1: things that actually can that we can do as individuals,
Speaker 1: as businesses, and as governments. So one of the fascinating
Speaker 1: things I found in my research was that there are
Speaker 1: some communities who are not only significantly less lonely than others,
Speaker 1: but whose his members live considerably longer than others and
Speaker 1: in geographic Other people who've who've looked at similar phenomenons
Speaker 1: have coined a term blue zones for some of these areas.
Speaker 1: There are areas like in California where Seven Day Adventists live,
Speaker 1: in Japan where they Okay, now I live, but I
Speaker 1: found I looked at my re search at a group
Speaker 1: that is less researched, and this is the Haridim that
Speaker 1: has ultra religious Orthodox Jews in Israel. So you may
Speaker 1: be familiar with this group of people. They are the
Speaker 1: group who the men typically wear black hats and kind
Speaker 1: of black coats and the women are very modestly dressed.
Speaker 1: Are And what was fascinating about this group is that
Speaker 1: on all conventional measures of health and kind of how
Speaker 1: people should live their lives health wise, this group was
Speaker 1: not doing great. I mean they eat fatty fried, very
Speaker 1: tasty food, but you know, not not kind of dietetic food.
Speaker 1: This is a group that exercises less than the average
Speaker 1: is rarely. They're actually very they're significantly deprived of vitamin
Speaker 1: D because they're so well covered. Even though they're living
Speaker 1: in Israel. They don't get sunlight, so you eat less healthily,
Speaker 1: more likely to be obese, don't get vitamin D, don't
Speaker 1: exercise as much. You'd think that this group would live
Speaker 1: shorter lives than the averages rarely, but actually they live
Speaker 1: longer lives. They have considerably longer life, which is what
Speaker 1: a curveball. What a curveball. That was fascinating, And the
Speaker 1: researchers who've studied this really believe that it's the community,
Speaker 1: it's the bonds between them which is giving them longer lives.
Speaker 1: This is a group who they do a lot together.
Speaker 1: They go to bermetzvahs and passover Zadars and celebrate Huneker
Speaker 1: and pull him together. So they're off Friday nights with
Speaker 1: big groups of people gathered around tables. So they do
Speaker 1: a lot with other people. And they're also there for
Speaker 1: each other in times of need, provided of course, that
Speaker 1: you're somebody who conforms to the norms of the community.
Speaker 1: If you don't, you're excluded pretty fast. But for those
Speaker 1: who do conform, you know, they really are there for
Speaker 1: each other in times of need. If someone's sick, that
Speaker 1: they know that they can call on others if someone's
Speaker 1: in financial distress, they know that there are people to
Speaker 1: go to, and it's these bonds, it's these ties, it's
Speaker 1: the sense that they're looking out for each other, which
Speaker 1: is thought to deliver this health dividend. And there have
Speaker 1: been other researchers who've looked at the role religion plays
Speaker 1: in health and they've also found interestingly, people who are
Speaker 1: looking at Catholics and health also found that there were
Speaker 1: particular groups of Catholics who lived longer lives. But interestingly,
Speaker 1: it wasn't people who just believed in God or the doctrines.
Speaker 1: It was people who regularly went to church. So it
Speaker 1: was again, it was about the community. It was about
Speaker 1: being part of the community that that delivered a health dividend.
Speaker 1: And there's been other research on the fact that when
Speaker 1: you help others, it's not only good for them, but
Speaker 1: it's also good for you. That people who don't help
Speaker 1: others actually live less long than people who do so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there is a health dividend, a meaningful health dividend
Speaker 1: if we feel more connected to others and are more
Speaker 1: embedded in a community. And it's part of the reason
Speaker 1: in the United States that we see these areas where
Speaker 1: there are what are called deaths of despair. That often
Speaker 1: these are in places where, you know, the communities have
Speaker 1: broken down totally. And I really love the the you know,
Speaker 1: what they do in a career, you know, and the
Speaker 1: fact that they they say they lived to one hundred
Speaker 1: and they and they say, well, we forget to die
Speaker 1: because the way they treat their old people there is
Speaker 1: they don't shun them like we do in America in
Speaker 1: Western societies. You know, when people are above us aorta
Speaker 1: in age, it's sort we forget about them, you know,
Speaker 1: and and we we need to integrate them into the
Speaker 1: community for sure. I mean, it's a heartbreaking statistic. In
Speaker 1: the United States, sixty percent of nursing home residents never
Speaker 1: have a single visitor at all. See, you don't make
Speaker 1: me cry. I mean that's just like horrible, it's just horrible.
Speaker 1: And it's just I don't know why we why we
Speaker 1: why we don't actually you see the wisdom that they have.
Speaker 1: I mean, I try I try to get as many
Speaker 1: people over the age of ninety on my podcast as possible.
Speaker 1: I know that sounds funny, but like this year, I've
Speaker 1: had Noam Chomsky, I've had yeah, there's so much wisdom
Speaker 1: of people who you know, I'm I have Jane o'connoman,
Speaker 1: who's he's approaching nineties eighty seven, Just people who it's
Speaker 1: such great wisdom, you know, of our elders, and they
Speaker 1: don't have to win a Nobel prize in order to
Speaker 1: have wisdom. I mean just you know, like my grandmam
Speaker 1: had more wisdom than maybe a lot of Nobel Prize
Speaker 1: winners just from her own sort of just life experiences.
Speaker 1: And it's just it's a shame. It's a shame. But
Speaker 1: it's not just in the West. This is going on.
Speaker 1: In my book, I wrote about how in Japan, the
Speaker 1: fastest growing demographic who are being incarcerated are retire rates,
Speaker 1: and that's because so many elderly people there, or considerable
Speaker 1: numbers of elderly people there, are feeling so lonely and
Speaker 1: so abandoned by their families that they're intentionally committing crimes
Speaker 1: like shoplifting just in order to be jailed so that
Speaker 1: they can find company and companionship somewhere. So yeah, but
Speaker 1: then not a positive because we don't want to feel negative.
Speaker 1: In South Korea, they have a wonderful scheme called cola tech.
Speaker 1: This is private businesses Cola text, which is an amalgamation
Speaker 1: of word cola, like Coca cola and discothech. And these
Speaker 1: are daytime discos for elderly people, and thousands of elderly
Speaker 1: people dance by day at these daytime cola techs, and
Speaker 1: the entry fees are pretty low, you know, they're operating
Speaker 1: at scale, so they can afford to keep the price
Speaker 1: of the entry fee low and still make a good return.
Speaker 1: And you know, I love I love that thought. I
Speaker 1: love that thought of being old and going to dance
Speaker 1: in discos by day. I love it. Well, sometimes I
Speaker 1: go to the dance clubs, you know, even you know,
Speaker 1: like the standard dance clubs where there's twenty year olds whatever,
Speaker 1: and you have and you see eighty year olds there.
Speaker 1: You know, so every now and then you see an
Speaker 1: eighty old couple coming. You know, I want to be
Speaker 1: you know, eighty, you know, and me and my partner
Speaker 1: you know, go to the dance clubs, you know, with
Speaker 1: everyone else. You know, why don't we just have to
Speaker 1: dance with other eighty year olds? You know, why can't we?
Speaker 1: You know? The point there is integration, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So in the UK, I don't know if there is
Speaker 1: a similar scheme in the United States, but in the
Speaker 1: UK there is an organization which does actually do pair
Speaker 1: young and old intentionally for dancing and that yeah, which
Speaker 1: is which is lovely, But you're right, we need to
Speaker 1: be One of the messages of my book, one of
Speaker 1: the important messages is about on need to do more
Speaker 1: with people who are not like us. So people of
Speaker 1: different ages, people of different ethnicities, people of different socioeconomic backgrounds,
Speaker 1: people with different belief systems. We you know, were only
Speaker 1: as a society going to be able to heal our
Speaker 1: divides and come together if we get better at doing
Speaker 1: things with people who are not like us. So it
Speaker 1: can be dancing, it can be cooking, it can even
Speaker 1: be just sharing our stories. There's a story I write
Speaker 1: in my book. I read about in my book which
Speaker 1: was initiated by a German newspaper, deed site, and the
Speaker 1: journalists were they really wanted to. They were very concerned
Speaker 1: about the growing polarization of political debate in Germany, something
Speaker 1: you know, we can relate to in other countries too,
Speaker 1: and they came up with this scheme whereby it was
Speaker 1: like a political tinder where they matched up people with
Speaker 1: significantly different political views. So, you know, they issued a
Speaker 1: call across Germany. Thousands of people joined the scheme and
Speaker 1: then they matched up, so people who were anti immigration
Speaker 1: with people who were pro immigration, people who wanted Germany
Speaker 1: to leave Europe the EU, for people who didn't really
Speaker 1: different socioeconomic groups, trade unionists with CEOs, asylum seekers with
Speaker 1: anti immigration spokespeople, and all across the country. These pairs
Speaker 1: met up and they just had to meet up for
Speaker 1: two hours. That was all they had to do and
Speaker 1: talk and the outcomes were standing just after just two hours,
Speaker 1: so such a short amount of time. The participants were
Speaker 1: significantly more aware of what they had in common, of
Speaker 1: what they shared, the concerns that they shared. Often it
Speaker 1: was their own family, you know, concerns over their own family.
Speaker 1: They also said that they would be much more likely
Speaker 1: to invite someone like that to a social gathering. And interestingly,
Speaker 1: they said that they trusted Germans in general considerably more
Speaker 1: than when they'd been asked that question before the survey.
Speaker 1: And that's just speaking together. But if you layer upon
Speaker 1: that doing things together, the impact, the impact is real
Speaker 1: and significance and lasting. And that's something which we can
Speaker 1: initiate where we can participate in. But it's also something
Speaker 1: where I think there is a role for government as well.
Speaker 1: And in France, for example, before the pandemic, they trialed
Speaker 1: like a kind of civic service for teenagers where they
Speaker 1: put together teenage is from really different backgrounds and they
Speaker 1: had to live together for a couple of months, work
Speaker 1: out how to live together, successfully, work together, do voluntary work,
Speaker 1: and again a scheme which had really exciting results. So
Speaker 1: there are structural ways we can replicate these kind of
Speaker 1: coming togethers too as well. Wonderful any of the things
Speaker 1: that you described, are they related to muckbang ah, So
Speaker 1: Markfang is something else that I write? Okay, yes, because
Speaker 1: you wrote about that that was very interesting in the
Speaker 1: findings on that. Yeah, yes, so yes, because we've touched
Speaker 1: upon eating together and we'll come back to that. Mukbang
Speaker 1: is eating together, but in a rather unusual way. So
Speaker 1: it's the practice of watching someone on screen eat and
Speaker 1: participating with them by perhaps sending the equivalent of likes
Speaker 1: balloons to them or little messages to them. And it's
Speaker 1: a practice there's really been growing in popularity, particularly in Asia,
Speaker 1: but also increasingly in the United States. And in Europe
Speaker 1: as well. This practice of watching people eat. Often it
Speaker 1: is copious amounts of food, but not necessarily and often
Speaker 1: people are doing it as they're sitting at home on
Speaker 1: their own eating dinner by themselves. Because that's another part
Speaker 1: of the reason we are so much lonelier today than
Speaker 1: in the past is because we just do much less
Speaker 1: with other people than in the past. We more likely
Speaker 1: to eat on our own, live on our own, be
Speaker 1: less likely to be members of a trade union, less
Speaker 1: likely to be members of a church or a parent
Speaker 1: teacher association. But yes, Matt Banker is watching, is puple
Speaker 1: eat and quasi participating in the process. What is fascinating though,
Speaker 1: is that face to face eating together, so really eating
Speaker 1: with real people is a really proven way for feeling
Speaker 1: much more bonded to others and also interestingly pays off
Speaker 1: in the workplace as well. Because there was research done
Speaker 1: in Chicago with firefighters and the researchers wanted to understand
Speaker 1: why some certain companies for firefighters performed better than others,
Speaker 1: and what they found was that companies of firefighters who
Speaker 1: ate together performed twice as well as companies who didn't,
Speaker 1: so they felt much more bonded to each other and
Speaker 1: that delivered in terms of better performance. So eating together
Speaker 1: and eating together, you know again, is a way of
Speaker 1: bringing you can use it to bring different types of
Speaker 1: people together. They also talk about in my book a
Speaker 1: scheme in the United Kingdom in Bristol where where they
Speaker 1: have regular gatherings where people from all different ethnicities and
Speaker 1: backgrounds come together and cook together and share their own
Speaker 1: dishes and recipes, and through talking about food and eating together,
Speaker 1: they share their own stories and histories. Food is historically
Speaker 1: breaking bread together. It has been a way for people
Speaker 1: to come together. And so there's something quite sad at
Speaker 1: the thought of people now sitting at home watching a
Speaker 1: screen and having a kind of only quasi connection with
Speaker 1: someone else at the end of the screen the muckbangers.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, arguably better than just sitting
Speaker 1: in the room on your own and not even having
Speaker 1: that interaction at all. Absolutely, And I mean I was
Speaker 1: amazed just reading your book all the all the different
Speaker 1: things that people can do to increase their connection, manufactured connection,
Speaker 1: I should call it, you know, such as paying people
Speaker 1: to hug you right there there there, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a field. That's a field you know, a career, A
Speaker 1: career one one can have is to be a professional hugger. Yes,
Speaker 1: actually not too far from where you're based is where
Speaker 1: I met in Venice Beach, is where I met Gene,
Speaker 1: who is a professional cuddler. And Jean told me that
Speaker 1: this is before the pandemic. Presumably it was put somewhat
Speaker 1: on pause during the pandemic, but before the pandemic, she
Speaker 1: said that, you know, real growing industry. They had the
Speaker 1: most ever professional cuddlers that that year's Las Vegas convention
Speaker 1: for professional Cuddlers. And I actually checked out in Venice
Speaker 1: Beach a cuddling session where you pay and it's a
Speaker 1: group cuddling session at a place called the Cuddle Sanctuary.
Speaker 1: And yes, and you know, I didn't really know what
Speaker 1: to expect before I went, And to be honest, it
Speaker 1: probably didn't play that well to my British reserve and
Speaker 1: yet not perhpas my cup of tea. But it was,
Speaker 1: you know, I could see that it could play a
Speaker 1: really helpful role for people. And what was so interesting
Speaker 1: was just how diverse the people who were attending the
Speaker 1: session were. They just looked like people who were showing
Speaker 1: up at you know, at your weekly yoga class, wearing
Speaker 1: kind of sweatpants and things. A real array of people,
Speaker 1: a university administratory, aspirring film directress, a debor c who
Speaker 1: just moved to Los Angeles, but people who just felt lonely,
Speaker 1: craving intimacy and connection, craving you know, something as basic
Speaker 1: as touch, very fundamental human need to be held, to
Speaker 1: be touched, and went and found a place to do
Speaker 1: it in a consensual way where they can meet that need.
Speaker 1: There was one person I met those through this journey
Speaker 1: who had, you know, taken this to the extreme, Carl,
Speaker 1: because you know, this was a nice looking man. I
Speaker 1: met him in Beverly Hills at the Starbucks in his
Speaker 1: early fifties, told me about how he had moved to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, felt very lonely. It was working for a
Speaker 1: media company, earning a good salary, but fans, it was
Speaker 1: very hard to meet new people have moved into town.
Speaker 1: He was divorced and he started actually seeing Gene, which
Speaker 1: is how I met him, Jeane the Cuddler, And he
Speaker 1: said it transformed his life. He felt so much happier,
Speaker 1: so much less alone, so much more productive. And then
Speaker 1: he said to me, are you using my real name
Speaker 1: in your book and I said, no, I'm changing it.
Speaker 1: And he said, well, and I you know, can I
Speaker 1: tell you something In recent months, I haven't just been
Speaker 1: seeing Gene. It hasn't been enough. I've actually been seeing
Speaker 1: other people to cuddle me. And I said, oh, gosh,
Speaker 1: that must be really expensive and he said, yes it is.
Speaker 1: And you know how I'm paying for it? And I
Speaker 1: said no, and he said, I live in my car.
Speaker 1: And this is a man in his fifties, earning a
Speaker 1: good salary, working for a major media company, who is
Speaker 1: so lonely, so starving closeness that he is living in
Speaker 1: his car, showering at the twenty four to seven gym,
Speaker 1: leaving his food in the refrigerator at work, just to
Speaker 1: be able to have those moments of connection. It's obviously
Speaker 1: an extreme case, but when we know that one in
Speaker 1: five millennials so that they don't have a single friend
Speaker 1: at all, When we know that forty percent of office
Speaker 1: workers are feeling lonely at work, it raises really big
Speaker 1: questions about what kind of a society we've created that's
Speaker 1: manifesting in this way. In this way, absolutely, it also
Speaker 1: just just makes me think, like, is he addicted to hugs, like,
Speaker 1: does he need an intervention like that? That seems so
Speaker 1: extreme that well, this is the psychologist in me. I'm
Speaker 1: on brand. I'm on brand by asking that question. But
Speaker 1: is he has he become too attached to the to
Speaker 1: the hug for sure, So I'm sure it's a legitimate
Speaker 1: question in that case to be asking. But as we
Speaker 1: subcontract care and hugs and even friendship to the market,
Speaker 1: you know, I think there is a danger that more
Speaker 1: people will risk finding their needs met in these ways
Speaker 1: instead of what we might think of as more traditional,
Speaker 1: kind of real ways of connecting. I for example, another
Speaker 1: thing I experimented as part of my research with was
Speaker 1: I rented a friend in New York. You can rent friends.
Speaker 1: I rented Brittany for three hours. We had drank matcha
Speaker 1: tea together in downtown Manhattan. We went to a bookstore,
Speaker 1: we went to urban outfitters and tried on sunglasses and hats.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously it wasn't like being with an old friend,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was a fun experience. It was
Speaker 1: like being with a new friend, someone who laughed at
Speaker 1: all my jokes and seemed to find me very interesting.
Speaker 1: Of course, you did well, I'll give you that for
Speaker 1: free or half the price, half the price you paid Brittany,
Speaker 1: that's a deal. Well, she was forty dollars an hour,
Speaker 1: so twenty dollars on yours. And on the one hand,
Speaker 1: you know these market interventions, whether it is Alexa, you know,
Speaker 1: being my friend or Brittany being my friend. On the
Speaker 1: one hand, you know this is there's something positive here
Speaker 1: that you know, for people who feel lonely, there are
Speaker 1: these ways that you can find connection, and with elderly people.
Speaker 1: One of these social robot companies, elie Q and Israeli
Speaker 1: start up, these ship thousands of these little social robots
Speaker 1: to Floridians during the pandemic who were self isolating, to
Speaker 1: elderly Floridians, and they're estimate is a very heartwarming of
Speaker 1: people saying I would have felt so lonely had I
Speaker 1: not had my LQ robot with me. So on the
Speaker 1: one hand, the market actually does offer some kind of
Speaker 1: exciting ways. The loneliness economy can help mitigate loneliness. And
Speaker 1: yet if we were to replace traditional human relationships with
Speaker 1: ones we could buy, the danger is that what we're
Speaker 1: doing is we're firstly replacing relationships where we have to
Speaker 1: give and take where we have to be mindful of
Speaker 1: the other with relationships that really don't demand that of us.
Speaker 1: And the dangers of course that when these substitute products
Speaker 1: become it's even more compelling that we choose them over
Speaker 1: these flesh and blood normal relationships which demands so much
Speaker 1: more of us and therefore end up really isolating ourselves
Speaker 1: even more so. Yeah, so it's double edged. I'm excited
Speaker 1: on the one hand by the opportunity the market provides,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to creating spaces for people to
Speaker 1: come together the secular cathedrals of the twenty first century.
Speaker 1: I think the market really does have for an exciting
Speaker 1: role to play there. And to some degree, I'm excited
Speaker 1: about the role that artificial intelligence and social robots can
Speaker 1: play in alleviating loneliness, especially amongst the elderly. In Japan,
Speaker 1: where the takeup of this is its significant, you see
Speaker 1: elderly women knitting bonnets for their robot carers. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: a thinking error to assume that people can't feel connected
Speaker 1: to an inanimate object. I mean, do you have are
Speaker 1: they called rumbas in America? Well, those little vacuum those
Speaker 1: round vacuum cleaners. Oh yeah, you know what they other
Speaker 1: like vacuum cleaners. People become so attached to them that
Speaker 1: one inten give them names, one intent create costumes for them,
Speaker 1: which I find fascinating, and some people even take them
Speaker 1: on holiday. And those are just little vacuum cleaners. So
Speaker 1: we can become attached to these objects. But the quest
Speaker 1: and that can be and that can be good for
Speaker 1: us as individuals if we're feeling lonely, But it does
Speaker 1: raise kind of interesting questions about what kind of society
Speaker 1: would we be if we were to substitute human relationships
Speaker 1: for robot ones. So maybe the challenge for us is
Speaker 1: to always be more human than the best robots, more caring,
Speaker 1: more compassionate, use the existence and the ever growing prevalence
Speaker 1: of these robots as a reason to make ourselves out
Speaker 1: the robot. It's very interesting because you do talk about
Speaker 1: the implications of creating more human like AI and how
Speaker 1: it can reduce her empathy for our humans. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can get get to the point where could imagine
Speaker 1: a wife being to a husband. Why can't you be
Speaker 1: more like my robot? My robot listens to me all
Speaker 1: the time and does everything I want, how come you
Speaker 1: don't do more of that? Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Once we start comparing, we don't want to start comparing
Speaker 1: our fellow in messy humans, in perfect humans, to these
Speaker 1: perfect robots who take care of all of our needs. Yes,
Speaker 1: and also, as emotional AI becomes more advanced, you know,
Speaker 1: will you know much faster than our loving kind however
Speaker 1: and loving and kind our spouse or partner may be.
Speaker 1: You know, we'll be able to just from the blink
Speaker 1: of our eyes, from the first kind of sound that
Speaker 1: it hears, be able to figure out our mood, how
Speaker 1: we're feeling, what we want in a way that a
Speaker 1: human will exactly. I mean, it's it's a it's exciting
Speaker 1: to think that these kinds of robots are on the horizon,
Speaker 1: but it's also kind of scary. I mean, we didn't
Speaker 1: even talk about sex robots. I mean, that's a whole
Speaker 1: thing that's that's coming down the pipeline. And and I
Speaker 1: mean I I have a sex worker friends who tell
Speaker 1: me that most of the clients that they see they
Speaker 1: don't even want sex, they just want it, They just
Speaker 1: want connection. And I think that that's not discussed that frequently.
Speaker 1: That's so true, and it's the same finding actually from
Speaker 1: sex robot manufacturers who say that one of the things
Speaker 1: that they're finding is the number of people who are
Speaker 1: buying a sex robot doll not to have intercourse with,
Speaker 1: but actually to be their friend, and some of them
Speaker 1: are marketing it for their robot, their sex robot dolls
Speaker 1: very much in that way. There was some very weird,
Speaker 1: very advert that I saw which had pictures of the
Speaker 1: sex robot doll kind of perched on in a park
Speaker 1: like having a picnic in inverted commas with with their
Speaker 1: owner watching television next to the now. Yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that you have this conversation started, and
Speaker 1: it's one that we need to be having more of
Speaker 1: a a sia, especially especially as we get more technologies
Speaker 1: that try to fulfill this need concomitant with lack of
Speaker 1: the real need in the real world. And it's it's
Speaker 1: that this is gonna this is going to be just
Speaker 1: such an important conversation to continue. Narita, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for being on the podcast day and for the
Speaker 1: great work you're doing. Thank you so much for having
Speaker 1: me on. Thanks for listening to this episode of the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in some way
Speaker 1: to something you heard, I encourage you to join in
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