Lydia Denworth

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert.

[1] I'm Monica Plathman, and I'm joined by Din Rither.

[2] Hi there.

[3] Hi.

[4] I think someone sent me something like, would you like a contact to interview Dan Rather?

[5] And I was like, oh my goodness, yes.

[6] Wow.

[7] I would love to introduce Dan Rather as Dan Rather.

[8] What about Monica Monsoon?

[9] Do you think she exists in real life?

[10] Let's scour the internet.

[11] She has to exist in some backwater in like rural Tennessee as a. meteorologist.

[12] Can't wait to meet her.

[13] Well, today we have a really, really appropriate guest because, look, hopefully most of us are self -quarantined.

[14] If you're not and you have to work, first of all, thank you so much to the people that are working and risking their health, working at grocery stores, delivering food, all the different services that we need.

[15] Man, am I grateful for all you guys?

[16] Me too.

[17] The doctors, everyone in the medical community, putting themselves at risk to help us.

[18] Thank you all.

[19] So appreciated.

[20] and what do I want to say about that, Monica?

[21] Yeah, and also it's part of our responsibility if you're not one of those people to help those people out by staying home, which is what we're doing.

[22] So this episode is really important.

[23] We have with us Lydia Denworth.

[24] She's a science journalist and author.

[25] She's a contributing editor for Scientific American and writes for psychology today.

[26] Her work has also appeared in the Atlantic Newsweek, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Time.

[27] And she has written a very, very wonderful book about friendship and the value of it.

[28] The biology, the science.

[29] The science behind it and how crucial it is to us to thrive on this planet.

[30] It's just a wonderful message, I think, to be hearing at this time.

[31] And we talk about the fact check, but again, it can be very isolating right now.

[32] So you know what?

[33] Call people maybe instead of text.

[34] Hear someone's voice.

[35] Space time.

[36] Let them hear yours.

[37] Let them see your face.

[38] Yeah.

[39] Do all these things.

[40] They're very helpful.

[41] Also just should be noted that we also know that people want as much normalcy as they can get right now because things are feeling topsy -turvy.

[42] So, you know, we did an episode on Monday focusing on what's going on.

[43] But we're going to get back to normal.

[44] We're going to start having our regularly scheduled shows that aren't about what's going on.

[45] And hopefully it will provide some.

[46] And I will often make jokes about COVID -19 because that's my nature.

[47] And it doesn't mean I am at all downplaying the same.

[48] seriousness of it.

[49] We got to laugh.

[50] I think everyone should be taking every precaution.

[51] I feel horrendous for anyone whose family members are suffering from it.

[52] And also, I will continue to make lots of jokes about it.

[53] So without further ado, please enjoy Lydia Denworth.

[54] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to armchair expert early and ad free right now.

[55] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts.

[56] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[57] Okay, so Lydia, you did not originally pursue science in any capacity, right?

[58] No, I did not.

[59] And this is ironic, of course, because Lydia is a very esteemed now, scientific journalists.

[60] I am a contributing editor at Scientific American, and I did write quite a lot for Scientific American Mind, which has been folded into the mothership of Scientific American.

[61] But my work appears in the Atlantic, the New York Times, Newsweek time.

[62] Okay, great.

[63] General has appeared.

[64] But again, not a history in science.

[65] I majored in history, and I was that person who took the minimum amount of science required through high school and college and thought that, you know, this would be the last thing I would end up doing.

[66] Sure, sure.

[67] Was it the math component, do you think?

[68] Probably partly.

[69] Now, of course, I recognize that perhaps I'm of that generation where I had the sense I wasn't good at math as a girl.

[70] But now, Well, this is one of the great things about writing about science and not necessarily doing science is that you don't actually have to be able to do the math.

[71] Sure, sure, sure.

[72] But you have to have a conceptual aptitude for all these concepts and an understanding, right?

[73] You do.

[74] You do.

[75] And you also have to have an ability to or a willingness to admit ignorance on a daily basis.

[76] And talking to scientists, you have to be able to say, keep explaining it to me or I didn't get that.

[77] And some of them are amazing about that.

[78] And some of them are very sort of arrogant and have a little patience for that.

[79] Sure.

[80] Guess who gets covered more?

[81] You know, I love the people who are really game for talking about it.

[82] And then I do say, I'm going to ask you really basic questions.

[83] And sometimes I'm just checking my own understanding.

[84] But the thing is that so back when I started on this maybe about 15 years ago, So sort of halfway through my journalism career, I started filling my shelves with, like, you know, the complete idiot's guide to genetics or whatever it was.

[85] I have a very nice reference section on science, and I refer to it on a regular basis.

[86] And then I talked to scientists themselves, too.

[87] Yeah.

[88] Okay.

[89] So back in Philadelphia, where you're from, what did mom and dad do?

[90] They were both lawyers.

[91] Oh, okay.

[92] Were you at any point going to pursue law?

[93] No, I was not.

[94] My parents, they wanted us to be engaged in the world in a meaningful way.

[95] And I do think that they probably thought that law was one way to do that.

[96] But no, nobody, I think maybe because I just never showed any interest whatsoever.

[97] But as you pointed out, there is that cultural layer, which was that no teachers were guiding women towards STEM at all.

[98] It was just pretty much assumed that wasn't their lane and they weren't encouraged.

[99] They were probably dissuaded most often.

[100] that.

[101] It's also true that I really loved history in English and languages.

[102] I took French for years and in fact, just today, coming here at the gas station, I was able to help a woman tourist who wasn't able to communicate with the guy at the gas station.

[103] My French is rough now because it's been years, but at one point I lived there briefly.

[104] So I was thanking my education.

[105] I can only hope you return the favor and acted very condescending and annoyed.

[106] You're helping her with her French the way the French help us.

[107] She was so grateful.

[108] She was so grateful.

[109] So it was lovely.

[110] And do you have siblings?

[111] I have a twin brother.

[112] Oh, you do.

[113] Has anyone ever asked you when you've said that identical?

[114] Has that ever come out of someone's mouth?

[115] All the time.

[116] And, you know, they need the complete idiots guide to genetics because that's not possible.

[117] So anyway, yeah.

[118] Okay, so a twin brother.

[119] A twin brother.

[120] And I've known several sets of twins, but they were always the same gender.

[121] So how does being a twin boy and girl play out?

[122] Same closeness and all that?

[123] Probably not quite.

[124] I mean, I think it's more like just being siblings.

[125] The only thing is that there's less hierarchy because you came into the world pretty much at the same time.

[126] And is one of you left -handed and one of you right -handed?

[127] No, we're both right -handed.

[128] Darn it.

[129] That's supposed to be a thing.

[130] There's really high rates of...

[131] Yeah, because generally twins face each other when they play.

[132] And so whatever one is dominant, will cause the other one to be left -hand dominant.

[133] Interesting.

[134] I haven't heard that.

[135] Yeah.

[136] That is interesting.

[137] She'll fact check it.

[138] I'm like, I'm saying that.

[139] I learned that 25 years ago.

[140] There's going to be another topic we're going to go over that I learned 25 years ago, and I'm sure to put my foot in my mouth about.

[141] But so you went to Princeton, Monica.

[142] Where are unifiles?

[143] Were you always aiming at Princeton?

[144] No, but I was aiming at, you know, something I believe.

[145] A big school, right?

[146] A strong school for sure.

[147] That was the milieu I grew up in.

[148] I went to a private high school outside.

[149] I grew up in Center City, Philadelphia, but I went to high school outside where, you know, that was very much the goal was to go to a really good school.

[150] It was called Shipley and still there, still a good school.

[151] But I was a little bit of a fish out of water because I was coming from Center City, Philadelphia, and there were a handful of us who did that.

[152] But mostly it was kids from the suburbs.

[153] But Princeton, I really just, honestly, when I was doing my college tours, which I've now been in the midst of doing with my own kids, so it is a funny thing when you're revisiting that sort of phase of life.

[154] But it's just so beautiful.

[155] The school.

[156] The school is gorgeous.

[157] And I remember that I visited it on a gorgeous October day when the leaves were changing and all the gothic art. It looked like college was supposed to look.

[158] Right from a movie.

[159] From a movie.

[160] And when you're young and you start attending one of these schools, you have some appreciation for it.

[161] but I don't think it's till you're older, like where I'll even go back to UCLA and I'm like, I got it to just spend every day in this place.

[162] It's just so beautiful and so laid out for just learn.

[163] I don't know.

[164] There's something magical about those places.

[165] No, I really do think that's true.

[166] And I do feel that there was a lot that was really special and wonderful about it and plenty of things that were more complicated.

[167] Yeah.

[168] But I definitely got a good education.

[169] And when you first got out, you were doing a different type of journalism.

[170] So my very first job was at Ms. Magazine and then they suspended publication.

[171] So then I went to psychology today and then they ran out of money.

[172] And so then I went to Newsweek.

[173] And so that was all in the space of I can't remember two or three years.

[174] And I kept thinking, gosh, is it me killing off magazines everywhere I go?

[175] That's how I feel about movies.

[176] But I ended up at Newsweek, which was a great place to be.

[177] And I really enjoyed.

[178] So when I was there, I was.

[179] reporting and fact -checking.

[180] I was a fact -checker early on, which I think is a critical skill that I'm not all journalists today because there's far fewer fact -checkers in the world.

[181] So I love that you all have the fact -check at the end of your show.

[182] But I was sort of in what was then called the back of the book.

[183] And so health, education, so social issue stuff, you know.

[184] And science was part of that then.

[185] And I did work on it a little bit.

[186] And actually, I had to fact -check a story about the discovery of a lemur in Madagascar, I mean, lemurs only live in Madagascar, but this one kind of lemur that they had thought was extinct and then somebody discovered or refound, I guess.

[187] And I had to call this German scientist who had found the lemur.

[188] And he had this very heavy German accent.

[189] And the writer, the science writer was Sharon Bagley at the time.

[190] And she's one of the all -time great science writers.

[191] And she had written this lovely lead about how, how hard it had been to find the lemur.

[192] You know, they'd had to cross, I can't remember at all now, but let's say they had to cross three rivers and climb two mountains and somebody had broken an ankle and things like that.

[193] And so my job as the fact checker was, was it three mountains or two mountains?

[194] Or, you know, was it a left ankle or a right ankle, whatever it was.

[195] And there was this long pause.

[196] And then he says, Lydia, Lydia, it is the lemur that is important.

[197] And it is one of the fundamental problems Like some scientists, they really just want you to talk about the work and they don't want the color, right?

[198] Because a fact checker, because I remember, like, here's, I did a interview recently.

[199] And then they called it back at some point and said, what shirt were you wearing under your sweater?

[200] Yes.

[201] And I'm like, I don't fucking know what I had no idea.

[202] A month ago, I doubt I knew on the day.

[203] Right.

[204] And then I just wondered in that moment, I'm like, well, I don't know.

[205] So I'm like, are they just going to ditch that part?

[206] Is that what they would do?

[207] When you can come up against that, like, was it three mountains or two?

[208] I don't know, Lydia.

[209] You know, like, what do you do?

[210] Yeah, the fact checker will certainly make the case that we can't include whatever the detail is that we can't verify.

[211] Okay.

[212] Sometimes the writer wins out or they have some other argument for why they know it's so.

[213] And, but...

[214] Do they see you as adversarial or helpful?

[215] Some do and some don't.

[216] It's a very interesting, you know, sometimes they think you're just as a fact checker trying to take all the fun out of everything, right?

[217] I think Monica's trying to publicly assassinate my...

[218] I am.

[219] You're qualifying everything.

[220] You're correcting.

[221] She's only on a mission to correct me. But I think it's helped my science journalism now that that's what I do, for sure, that I had that grounding in fact -checking and, you know, accuracy.

[222] Okay, so how did science come knocking on your door?

[223] Well, about mid -career, and I did sort of leave out that after those couple of first few jobs at Newsweek, I ended up that I was the year.

[224] European Bureau Chief for People magazine for several years.

[225] And that was really because my husband and I had, when we just got married, we ended up living in France for a couple years.

[226] And then we were living in London.

[227] He got a job.

[228] And so I got a job and the job I could get.

[229] Some of my colleagues from Newsweek had moved to be editors at People.

[230] So I just went to be a reporter at People, which really wasn't my sort of jam at the time.

[231] But then I stayed and got this and ended up running the thing.

[232] It was in the 90s when Diana died, actually.

[233] Oh, wow.

[234] So I had this completely other experience as a journalist and I learned a lot about the importance of story and the human side of things from that.

[235] And I had a lot of fun.

[236] Let me tell you.

[237] There was a, you know, I got to do all kinds of.

[238] The parties are better.

[239] Well, you get to go to everything like, you know, Wimbledon or concerts or fashion shows or.

[240] With the best seat.

[241] Yeah, right.

[242] And I even spent a couple days with Tony Blair right before I became prime minister because his press people want.

[243] at a story in People magazine.

[244] And so, you know, so there were some very cool things, but then there's things that I personally don't, I don't think I have really the skills to be a good celebrity journalist.

[245] Maybe you'll be happy to know this.

[246] I was not, I was not really good at sort of, you know, tracking people down and insisting that they tell me things they didn't want to tell me. But so, so then we moved back to New York and I started having kids.

[247] And so I was freelancing and I gravitated right back to the kind of stuff I'd been doing at Newsweek, which was kind of health and education and things like that.

[248] And I got interested in lead poisoning.

[249] This is your first book.

[250] My first book, right.

[251] That is basically how I became a science writer, is that my first book, which took a very long time to then come to fruition, but I got into it from a children's health perspective.

[252] Because you were a new mother?

[253] Because I was a new mother, and I was kind of obsessed with the fact that the way I heard about this doctor who was described to me by my mother as an unsung hero who had been one of the first to understand that lead was harmful to kids and then had had this big fight with industry to get lead taken out of things.

[254] It turned out to be a very simplistic version of the story, but not incorrect.

[255] Can I ask what era this was?

[256] In the 70s.

[257] I mean, his work was primarily in the 70s and then in the 80s.

[258] And I was hearing about this in the, well, when I first heard about him, would have been the very late 90s when my oldest child was just a baby.

[259] So like many knew mothers.

[260] I was kind of outraged that something that had been shown to be bad for kids would take such a long time to do anything about.

[261] So that's what got me into it.

[262] But then I found that there was this other scientist.

[263] His name was Claire Patterson.

[264] He was a geochemist out at Caltech, actually right here.

[265] And he was a very fascinating guy who did a lot of cool things like dating the age of the earth.

[266] But in the process of dating the age of earth figured out that lead was contaminating everything.

[267] So he had a similar story on the environmental side, and this guy, Herb Needleman that I was writing about, was on the health and kids' side.

[268] And I thought that the two of them would make a really interesting sort of dual biography of how we handled this issue.

[269] But it meant I was suddenly spending all this time reading Claire Patterson's geochemical journal articles, which were very difficult.

[270] And I had had chemistry in 10th grade.

[271] And like I said, I didn't take anymore.

[272] And I was a little freaked out.

[273] But what happened was that when I wrote the book, all the scientists involved liked a lot how I told that science.

[274] Some science journalists really do have a strong science background, and that can be a great asset.

[275] I had the journalism background, the storytelling background.

[276] I needed to do the work to understand the science, but it turned out that I had to explain it well enough so that I could understand it myself.

[277] And that I made no assumptions about what the reader understood.

[278] By the way, for you personally, I think that's the single best way to learn, is that if you are forced to pass on knowledge, you really have to learn it.

[279] Oh, absolutely.

[280] And I mean, I know in my kids' school, that's something that they talk about a lot is, you know, now explain it to this kid over here, right?

[281] And so today, I now feel this is one of the my favorite things about the work that I do is that I truly am learning something new just about every day, you know, intentionally.

[282] And that's really just, it's so fun.

[283] really rewarding.

[284] Is there something we should still be panicked about with lead?

[285] Where is it still, like, where hasn't it been addressed?

[286] Well, so my book, which came out about 10 years ago, really was celebrating the success of, I mean, and getting lead out of gasoline and other things was one of the great public health success stories of the 20th century because the average blood lead level in Americans drop 90 % when it got taken out of gasoline.

[287] And lead is really a case study for everything else that we're putting out in the world and for environmental toxins certainly but also even for climate change because it's all about our inability to really plan for the long haul or to make sure that we knew what something was going to do before we put it out in the world but the thing was at the end of the book I said you know so we've had this amazing progress but then what happened was we didn't quite finish the job right we like to do this We lacked the political will and the, you know, it seemed less urgent.

[288] This is, can I just say, this is a repetitive problem of human memory, right?

[289] This is the vaccine crisis.

[290] It's like if you grew up around polio, you are not a vax denier.

[291] It's just that simple.

[292] But then we clean up that condition and then people immediately forget.

[293] That's exactly right.

[294] And so, you know, everything that happened in Flint, Michigan, happened years after my book came out.

[295] It was that failure to finish the job coming back.

[296] The bill came due.

[297] That's exactly right.

[298] So it's still in paint in old houses.

[299] And that's changing slowly as the housing stock sort of turns over and you have more new houses.

[300] And then it is in water pipes.

[301] And now people are paying attention to that.

[302] And in Flint, you know, there were a whole lot of things set in place for them to do that would have protected against this.

[303] But they didn't do it.

[304] So, yes.

[305] So lead is still a problem.

[306] It is not the problem that it.

[307] was when we were spewing it out of cartel pipes and things like that.

[308] But it really does have a long -term chronic effect on kids' health.

[309] Well, I just want to hit your second book.

[310] I can hear you whisper.

[311] Do you have a son that's deaf?

[312] I do.

[313] Okay, so I was born deaf.

[314] Really?

[315] Yes, and I did not get my hearing until around two years old.

[316] We lived out in the country.

[317] My mom brought me home from the hospital.

[318] I appeared to be healthy.

[319] I was callicky.

[320] That was one issue.

[321] Probably such a glaring issue that the other stuff got ignored.

[322] I suspect that's right.

[323] So then at a certain point, I had an earache, or she suspected I did.

[324] We went into town.

[325] The doctor looked at my ears, and he immediately said, you know, Dax's is deaf.

[326] And my mom said, no, he's not deaf.

[327] Dax, touch your nose.

[328] And then I touched my nose.

[329] And then he turned me so I couldn't see her.

[330] And he said, now tell him, touch his nose.

[331] And I didn't do it.

[332] So I had scar tissue over both eardrums.

[333] I had an operation.

[334] I could hear the very, you know, the next day.

[335] Up until that point, my nickname had been grunt.

[336] My brother spoke really early.

[337] They were wondering why I wasn't speaking and I was grunting, grunting, grunting, and then all of a sudden I started speaking and whatnot.

[338] So I've always had this personal interest in it.

[339] And then I took this fascinating anthropology class on death culture that I got really, really interested in.

[340] And so when I heard that this was what your book was about, I got very excited because we had a pretty specific point of view in anthropology, which is most of this technology was destroying great and thriving deaf communities in weird ways.

[341] And I don't think it was an aspect people thought of when they thought of, say, the cochlear implant, right?

[342] That this was going to be helpful to get kids online in some capacity hearing -wise, but all it really did is put them in a position where they weren't really set for the deaf school, where they could have had this great identity and culture and shared community, and instead forced them to kind of streamline in an area that they couldn't find community and culture.

[343] So I was just wondering what your personal experience was.

[344] and what your book was about.

[345] And I wonder if any of those things overlap.

[346] Oh, for sure.

[347] So this is some controversial stuff still, but I will say this.

[348] So my book is three things.

[349] I can hear you with Spurs part memoir, my experience being Alex's mom.

[350] And my own son was the first deaf child that I knew in any meaningful way.

[351] Yeah.

[352] It's also a brain book.

[353] One of the things I discovered quickly was how much deafness can be seen as a brain story because whether or not sound gets into the brain has all these knock -on effects for spoken language, but also for literacy and reading.

[354] And that was not something I knew.

[355] Is that because hearing is the first experience with some kind of conceptual, like you're hearing a noise and then you convert it into something?

[356] Is it the lack of that that impedes other?

[357] It is that the auditory cortex, the part of the brain that processes sound, needs to be stimulated by sound to operate.

[358] And if it is not, after a certain period of time, it kind of gets co -opted.

[359] The real estate gets used for something else.

[360] Oh, so then it's conceivable that even if there was some magic hardware upgrade for the eardrums, that the hearing cortex would have already fatigued or something.

[361] That's exactly what happens.

[362] There's a sensitive period for hearing, which is basically it starts to shut at about age three to seven, or three to seven years of deafness.

[363] I mean, so if you lose your hearing later in life.

[364] But the reason it's so significant for very young children is because they need their learning language.

[365] So let me say this.

[366] If they have parents who are fluent signers, then learning ASL in America, American sign languages are different in every country.

[367] But if you're learning sign language from fluent native signers, the same language circuits get laid down in the brain as spoken language does for a hearing child but the problem is only about 5 % of deaf and heart of hearing kids are born to deaf parents who sign fluently and so a hearing parent like me even though you can and I did learn some sign is going to be signing at a very rudimentary level and so there's a lot to this story in my book does.

[368] So the third piece, I said it was memoir, its brain, and then it's also about deaf cultural histories.

[369] And especially my experience as a hearing parent being thrown into this world where there was this political controversy, and I was so surprised to find myself in the middle of this because I am a liberal person.

[370] I think of myself as a tolerant person, but the story that the deaf community with a capital D was telling in the 90s and on, and there are still people who do, was that it was even tantamount to child abuse to put a cochlear implant in your child, which is to say that parents don't have a say.

[371] Their argument was that you should let kids grow up and be old enough to make the decision themselves.

[372] But the science, the neuroscience, will tell you that if you do that, you have made a decision because then that window that we were just talking about shuts.

[373] And so in fact, I mean, so there are benefits to getting a cochlear implant.

[374] later in life, even if you've been deaf for a long time, but it will not give you the same access to sound that it does if you get it under the age of three.

[375] Because of the brain.

[376] Because of the brain.

[377] Hearing is actually just begins with the ears, but hearing is really about the brain.

[378] And there are people who learned how to speak just by vibration, by feeling their throat and things like that.

[379] That is a very hard way to do it.

[380] Somebody described it as like trying to learn Japanese through a soundproof window, like, you know, just watching somebody, right?

[381] You know, and what I wanted to understand with the sort of journey I go on in the book is trying to understand how to help my kid who is in this situation that I know nothing about.

[382] And can I ask, did you know immediately?

[383] No, it was a actually, he was born a couple weeks early and he failed a hearing screening right in the hospital, but then we went back a few weeks later and he got tested and they said he passed and they said it was just because there was mucus in his ears because he was early.

[384] So that was the one thing that we tested for than we thought was not a problem.

[385] But then everything was a bit delayed in his language especially.

[386] And so it wasn't until he was about 18 months old that we knew for sure that he had a hearing loss.

[387] And then what ended up happening is that it got worse.

[388] And so the analogy I use is that the whole experience was kind of like falling downstairs in slow motion because it just kept – it took a really long time and getting worse and more things kept happening.

[389] And whenever you thought you knew what you were dealing with, and something new happened.

[390] And it's a shock to parents.

[391] Let me say, this son is about to turn 17.

[392] He's an amazing kid, and he's thrived.

[393] And most deaf people grow up to live really wonderful, fulfilling lives, right?

[394] And so you have to go from A to B to C. You can't just jump over and assume everything is going to be okay.

[395] I mean, now I see.

[396] Well, within it encapsulates perfectly the struggle that all parents have, whether they have a deaf child or not, is that your identity that you place on them.

[397] And it is, I think the biggest challenge is to see them as their own individual.

[398] And that may include them being in a different community you were in.

[399] And that's, that's very hard.

[400] One of the analogies that resonated most with me was the idea that having a deaf child, if you are hearing parent and don't know the deaf world, is a bit like adopting from another race, you know?

[401] So you love your child enormously, but they do have a piece of identity that you will not.

[402] never share.

[403] So I explore all of that and had to sort of make myself a little uncomfortable about, you know, sort of interrogating my own biases.

[404] And I do come down strongly on the side of parents who choose a cochlear implant.

[405] And I think that there are enormous advantages.

[406] And I did understand, though.

[407] At first, I couldn't understand.

[408] And on most hearing people don't get why deaf people would even be opposed.

[409] Yeah, of course.

[410] And the short version is that they think of deafness as a difference and not a disability and not something that needs to be fixed.

[411] And they understand that adults who lose their hearing later in life when they already are part of the sporal world would choose a cochlear implant to remain in their social world.

[412] But for children, exactly as you said right at the beginning, it's the worry is that you're taking them away from deaf culture.

[413] My hope is that you can have both.

[414] You can have a cochlear implant and you can choose to be part of the deaf world.

[415] But I do think that having that access to sound and then language.

[416] And then what I really came to understand was how important that was also for your ability to learn to read and things like that.

[417] A bunch of downstream.

[418] Downstream, it turns out to be really important because you're laying down those tracks in the brain for sound.

[419] And then that leads to language and then that leads to reading.

[420] And I never thought about sound as being so integral for reading, but it is.

[421] Do you think that's connected to your dyslexia?

[422] I don't know.

[423] It could be, right?

[424] So dyslexia, we often think of dyslexia as visual, but it has a real auditory component, a real sound component to it.

[425] I mean, I can't say it with you.

[426] But to your point, if that part of the brain needs activity or will get commandeered and the cutoff is three and I was at two, then clearly some, I would have to imagine there was some.

[427] Well, one of the things we know now is how much is even happening like just zero to one for a deaf kid.

[428] For instance, if you get a cochlear implant one, there's some stuff that's changed even before then.

[429] We know now zero to three is so critical, but we're also beginning to understand how much is happening in the brain, even in that first year.

[430] Right.

[431] And there's a lot you can do it with it.

[432] But anyway.

[433] So that felt off topic maybe to you.

[434] We're here to talk about a specific book, but I don't think it does at all because the topic of your new book is friendship and the necessity, the benefits, the biological component, the evolutionary.

[435] And so within even the deaf community, that is what you're talking about.

[436] They were, at least from the perspective I was hearing in that class, you're asking them to leave the most valuable thing in their life, which is this community and this friendship and in some cases.

[437] Yes.

[438] And one of the things I did was really explore what the deaf community was, you know, how it came to be, why it was so important and special.

[439] You know, what happened really was that the deaf civil rights movement, flowered in the 1990s right as cochlear implants were coming on the scene.

[440] So there was a perfect storm politically in a way.

[441] And ASL was actually being recognized appropriately as a true language.

[442] So there were a lot of good things happening for deaf people.

[443] And cochlear implants looked like just one more thing that wasn't going to work.

[444] They do work.

[445] Not for everyone, but in fact, they do work in an incredible way.

[446] From a science point of view, they...

[447] It's incredible way through.

[448] incredible what it can do.

[449] And so, yes, there's a community, and the thing is that ASL is the beating heart of the deaf community with a capital D. But it's also true that communication and community can happen then for kids who do use technology to hear because then they are not only in the deaf world, but they have an easier time of being part of the hearing world.

[450] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[451] We've all been there, turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[452] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[453] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[454] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[455] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[456] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[457] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[458] Prime members can listen early and ad -free on Amazon Music.

[459] What's up, guys?

[460] This is your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

[461] And let me tell you, it's too good.

[462] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[463] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[464] And I don't mean just friends.

[465] I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox.

[466] The list goes on.

[467] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[468] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[469] Okay, so it's very obvious why you wrote the first two books.

[470] So now why do you think your new book, friendship, the evolution, biology, and extraordinary power of life's fundamental bond.

[471] What led you there?

[472] Yeah.

[473] That second book, I can hear you whisper, really got me interested in the brain.

[474] And it meant that then what happened was that as a science journalist, I was primarily covering the brain and psychology and things like that.

[475] And I started hearing that there was this new approach in neuroscience, or there was a sort of subfield called social neuroscience, where they were really.

[476] considering how the brain interacts with other people.

[477] And so a lot of people think about neuroscience and it is, a lot of it is about mapping connections inside the brain.

[478] But I went to a meeting about five years ago, the first time I went to a social neuroscience conference.

[479] And just for reference, that was only the fourth time they were having a meeting of this group.

[480] So it really is a relatively new sort of subfield.

[481] And I realized that they were also talking about mapping the connections outside of the brain from me to you or to my friends and my family.

[482] And that's all kinds of social behavior.

[483] But friendship kept coming up.

[484] And I thought, wow, I'm hearing about friendship at a neuroscience conference.

[485] Like, that's not really something I would have expected.

[486] And I thought that was interesting.

[487] I mean, we've cared about friendship as a society for millennia.

[488] You know, Aristotle and Socrates and Plato talked about it.

[489] And I'm sure whoever came before them talked about it but we have always thought of it as cultural really and and of course there is a lot of culture to friendship but it turns out what's new was that there is also this biology to it and an evolutionary story because we're finding it in other species friendship or something like it in other species and that just felt really intriguing to me and it also felt like something that would be important and interesting to spend a couple years on i mean if you're going to write a book You have to decide you can live with the topic for a few years.

[490] And I was at a moment in my life where my kids were beginning to leave home.

[491] And I was losing my mother.

[492] And, well, she has severe dimension now.

[493] So she's still alive.

[494] But that was all happening then.

[495] So I was very, I was certainly buffeted by other people's emotions.

[496] But I was also worried about was I paying enough attention to my friends because pretty soon I was going to be.

[497] It is very easy for people with children as I have them to not make.

[498] time for friendship for that to be one of the first things that that gets ex off.

[499] And this is both obvious and profound that we know how important friendship is, but we don't actually act like it most of the time.

[500] And it often drops to the bottom of the list, especially when you're in a busy phase of life.

[501] Well, you do it as well with your marital partner, which is like, okay, well, that's a given.

[502] So I don't need to nurture that thing.

[503] It's just there.

[504] It exists.

[505] It doesn't require all kinds of nurturing.

[506] As much effort.

[507] And in fact, we snap at our marital.

[508] partners in ways that we wouldn't treat our friends.

[509] So there's an interesting...

[510] Oh, I saw you speak about this.

[511] And one of the things that immediately interested me is how differently we treat lovers than friends.

[512] It's kind of a longest.

[513] But I think we should...

[514] Let's start at the beginning.

[515] Let's just start with some the very basic inescapable facts that we are a highly, highly social animal.

[516] We are not a tiger.

[517] We are not solitary.

[518] In fact, we are the primate that lives in the largest cohesive groups ever recorded on this planet.

[519] So we're the ultimate social animal and we cannot exist.

[520] We've never found a man or woman existing solitarily on planet Earth.

[521] Except for the Unabomber and that's what gets raised as an example.

[522] Well, the shooters, every time there's a mass shooter you come to find out they were very solitary.

[523] They tend not to have friends, which is just the tip of the problem, but it is a fact.

[524] And there's a couple of high horses I'll get on and one of them is sleep.

[525] People go, oh, the type of person that only needs three hours.

[526] And I'll go, no, no, there is no human that needs three hours.

[527] Oh, you're so right.

[528] It's inaccurate.

[529] Yeah.

[530] And likewise, the notion of the hermit, you know, the romantic person on a mountaintop, that, that too is not, you can do that, just not how we're supposed to be, like it or not.

[531] You're correct about that.

[532] And yet, the thing is that I thought was so interesting was that, you know, when we think about evolution, at least those of us who are not spending all of our time focused on it, like evolutionary biologists do, mostly we think about survival of the fittest and competition, right?

[533] And survival of the fittest, by the way, I'm told Darwin never actually used that phrase, but we know what it means, right?

[534] And you have this sense of nature, red, and tooth and claw, right?

[535] The biggest lion is always going to win.

[536] And what this new science is telling us is that, yes, there's competition, but there's also been this extraordinary cooperation.

[537] And so there's at least as much survival of the friend as there has been survival of the fittest, or you could say that the friendliest turn out to be the fittest in many cases.

[538] And we haven't appreciated that fully.

[539] And yet it is, it is what underlies that that human need to connect that you were just talking about.

[540] Well, let's get real basic.

[541] There's a group of 100 people.

[542] One of the persons is an outcast, doesn't have any social bonds.

[543] You're out in a field.

[544] The hyena comes.

[545] One guy's got nine friends.

[546] One guy, no one wants to help.

[547] I don't matter if the one solo guy is the strongest or biggest.

[548] He's going down and the person with eight friends that would die for them is living.

[549] It's predators and sharing food.

[550] And those are the two really two big things, the predation and finding food.

[551] But also then one of the things that people think is that as social groups became more complex, the brain had to become bigger and more complex to deal with that.

[552] And that that's part of what explains our big brains as humans.

[553] Yeah, There's a few really popular competing theories on why we're so disproportionately intelligent over other primates.

[554] But most, I think, in at least anthropology, the most common is just facial recognition requires an incredible amount of computing power, right?

[555] So multi -member groups, for you to be able to look at 200 people and know who they are individually, know where their status is and what impact that has on your survival, that's a lot of complex computing.

[556] It is.

[557] And then you go even beyond that.

[558] humans we have fully formed theory of mind so we can understand not only where they are in the hierarchy or who they are but what they might be thinking and that they have their own set of beliefs about the world and that they might not match up with ours and yeah empathy is incredibly complex right very complex and there turns out i did a whole story on the new neuroscience of empathy and there's sort of three parts to it and so empathy is a big piece of friendship and it is complicated and it does have some it's not all slam done positive because it does have this tribal element to it.

[559] Can I also add probably, and you could speak on it better than I, but mate selection is a big part of evolution that people aren't considering.

[560] They just think of like who will survive and pass on their genes, but obviously they will be selected by a mate and then you're standing in your group and how many people like you vastly increases your appeal to other members of your group.

[561] So the sexual selection components also probably rewarding friendship like ability, cohesiveness.

[562] Yeah.

[563] Yeah, I'm sure that's true.

[564] So I didn't look at mate selection so much because I was looking at friendship, which, in some ways, by definition, is the people you are not having sex with.

[565] Okay.

[566] Although I have come.

[567] You can have sex with friends, though.

[568] Well, and I've come to decide that I think this new science blurs the lines somewhat because it's more about the quality of the relationship than the origin.

[569] The big headline is that friendship is as important for your health as diet and exercise.

[570] and that the relationships that are really good for your health are the ones that are really quality relationships and that can be your spouse but it cannot be too and that's what they find in other species where they don't necessarily have monogamy so yeah you need a good mate who's going to give you healthy offspring but then you need to be able to raise that offspring up to maturity and for that what you need is a really supportive environment and in humans you know we do have monogamous I'm mostly relationships to raise kids in, which is great because kids really do benefit from that.

[571] But in baboons, for instance, in my book, you know, they really found that what mattered most was the strength of social bonds like among these female baboons with other female baboons.

[572] And they were the ones whose babies lived longest.

[573] So the mate selection, which didn't turn out to be the most important thing.

[574] Right.

[575] You know, we have the saying it takes a village.

[576] And I think everyone knows that same.

[577] But I don't think they realize how in discourse.

[578] we are with that concept.

[579] We are not living anywhere close to how we were designed to live.

[580] You should be in a group of kids and there should be a group of moms and dads.

[581] And this is like how we've lived for 99 % of the time we're on Planet Earth.

[582] And we're just not doing that.

[583] And when you find yourself in that group, you, for at least me personally, anecdotally, we do have a friendship circle where we'll go on a vacation together and there's like, there's eight parents and there's 16 kids.

[584] It is infinitely easier.

[585] So much easier.

[586] Some magic happens.

[587] Yeah.

[588] And when we're in those situations, I'm like, oh, my God, this feels exactly right.

[589] I can feel implicitly that this is how it's supposed to be done.

[590] And it's so less stressful on me. It's so less stressful on the kids.

[591] It's all like everyone's benefiting from this.

[592] And yet we're so compartmentalized in our lives that it's very hard to live that way.

[593] Yes.

[594] And vacations is where most of us achieve it if we ever do.

[595] But yes, I agree 100%.

[596] You need that support.

[597] And it's why we really need to be.

[598] prioritizing or at least not letting friends drop down to the bottom of the priority list.

[599] So let's get into some of the numbers.

[600] When you say it's as relevant to your health as smoking, obesity, I really want to hit that point hard so people feel properly motivated to consider this in their life.

[601] Because no parent that I know is like, yeah, let's smoke cigarettes in the car with the kid.

[602] No one's going to do that.

[603] And yet, I doubt anyone takes it as seriously as that.

[604] The first study that made that link to smoking was back in 1988, and it was really right at the beginning of the idea or recognizing that social relationships and health might be connected in almost any way.

[605] And what they found then with some very early, just the first six studies on this, which basically followed people for years and had a measure of their social connectedness.

[606] The measures were different studies, but the upshot was the more connected.

[607] you were at the beginning, the more likely you were to live for the duration of the study, let's call it 10 years.

[608] And what they found was that the risk of mortality, if you were socially isolated, was equal to the mortality risk of smoking.

[609] You were twice as likely to die if you were socially isolated and you were twice as likely to die if you were smoking a lot.

[610] Since then, they've done more work and what the really gold standard that most people refer to now was a big meta -analysis in 2010, so that's a study of studies where you combine data.

[611] And so this time instead of six studies, it was 148 studies, more than 300 ,000 people.

[612] And the average length of those studies was seven and a half years.

[613] And the people who were the most socially connected were 50 % more likely to live across the breadth of the studies.

[614] So in this case, it was more about how likely you were to survive.

[615] Quitting smoking had less of an effect on how likely you were to survive than your social relationships.

[616] It mattered more than anything else.

[617] Oh, wow.

[618] More than obesity, more than physical inactivity, more than drinking, all those things.

[619] And do they know what's going on physiologically?

[620] That's kind of what they've been doing ever since.

[621] Right.

[622] And so initially the idea was, well, okay, we see there's this correlation, but you're, I'm sure, familiar with correlation just means two things are happening at the same time.

[623] it doesn't mean that one is causing the other.

[624] And quite often you're wrong.

[625] And quite often you're wrong.

[626] And there's been a lot of, you know, that's a lot of, a lot of bad science.

[627] So they said, well, maybe the reason there's this connection between social relationships and health is a concept called social support, which is basically that, you know, like, you know, like your house is under construction.

[628] And so your friends maybe make you dinner more often or something like that or help, I don't know, you know, that somebody helps you move when you finally move in.

[629] Or most pragmatically that you have somebody around to help drive you to the hospital should you need to go.

[630] Like, you know, Monica might notice that, gee, Dax isn't looking so good today.

[631] I think we better go get him checked out.

[632] Can I tell you something funny?

[633] So Monica's currently living at our house.

[634] Oh, there we go.

[635] Because of a medical thing.

[636] Yes.

[637] So she's under our care and observation.

[638] There you go.

[639] And it is, we can talk about it.

[640] So I had a seizure and we were in New York and I was with.

[641] with friends.

[642] Girls trip.

[643] It was a girls trip.

[644] I was with friends.

[645] Thank God.

[646] Thank God.

[647] Because I also had one last year.

[648] Okay.

[649] But I was by myself and I didn't know.

[650] And we went a year without knowing what it was.

[651] And so there were people next to me. Now we have answers to you are exhibit A. And so they figured it out.

[652] That is social support.

[653] Exactly.

[654] And it is clearly a real thing.

[655] and a very important thing and you can understand immediately why that would make a difference for your mortality and your chance of surviving.

[656] Yeah.

[657] The thing is this, though, that that is not the only thing at work and what happens, I mentioned my baboons earlier that I got to go spend a little time with.

[658] So it turned out that the baboons with the strongest social bonds also live longer and I mentioned the babies.

[659] They have more and healthier babies and those in evolutionary terms you can't do better than reproductive success and longevity but baboons don't drive each other to the hospital right right so what's going on right like something else is at work here too yeah it's not only that and so all this works since then so the the list of things that we know that social integration or and friendship on the one hand and loneliness and isolation on the other hand affect now we know it's cardiovascular functioning immune system cognitive health, mental health, stress responses I talked about, and even the rate at which your cells age, like the little caps on your cells get shorter faster if you're less socially connected.

[660] There is still a lot that we are learning about this and we don't have all the answers.

[661] We, I'm using the Royal Wheel.

[662] I'm not doing the science.

[663] I'm just reporting on it.

[664] You know what's ironic about this?

[665] I'm sure this is all leading to a friendship pill.

[666] Oh, my gosh.

[667] No. So the other big statistic, there's this long -running study at Harvard, the Harvard study of adult development that followed these people from the 30s all the way through their whole lives.

[668] So that gave us this information that you can rarely get in humans, where you're really following the course of everything about them and had some medical information, social information, everything you want.

[669] The thing that best predicted health, especially, and happiness at 80, was not your cholesterol level, not your professional success.

[670] not your wealth, but your satisfaction with relationships at 50.

[671] Oh.

[672] Okay.

[673] And at 50 is often the moment where you're totally pulling your hair out.

[674] Maybe your kids are out of the house, but you're in the middle of your career, height of your career, say, or so you're busy, busy, or whatever it is.

[675] And I like to highlight that statistic because I think what all this new science and this fact that there's this biology and evolution to this tells us.

[676] is yes, okay, this is adding to the things you should be paying attention to.

[677] But instead, for me, it's given me permission to hang out with my friends.

[678] To prioritize.

[679] Right?

[680] To prioritize my friends and not to feel bad.

[681] I don't have to feel guilty anymore.

[682] Oh, I'm not writing that story that's due tomorrow.

[683] Well, you know what?

[684] I'll get up early tomorrow.

[685] I'll do it.

[686] But I will be better and healthier and happier.

[687] And so will my friend be if we go out to dinner tonight, you know?

[688] Yeah.

[689] Yeah, because we stupidly categorize that as frivolous activity.

[690] Frivolous.

[691] Exactly.

[692] Extra.

[693] And that's my whole thing here.

[694] That's my schick.

[695] Yeah.

[696] Too many people think of friendship as kind of frivolous and lovely, nice to have, but not essential.

[697] It is essential.

[698] It's part of the infrastructure of who we are as humans.

[699] but i do think we're making progress and since i was raised till now like in my circle like people exercise that's in that period of time is protected and understood and if someone says oh i can't i'm working out you go like yeah yeah you should yeah good yeah and it would be great if if increasingly so like uh yeah your friendships were we're given the same priority and validity when your partner asks you to have those moments or whatnot yeah my wife this year is taking zero trips with me, but it went on a 12 -great girls' trip and then an eight -day one.

[700] And I got to say, in the moment when it's being suggested, I'm like, oh, okay, well, when will?

[701] But then the visual benefits of it are extraordinary.

[702] It actually makes my life way easier when she's just had 12 fulfilling days with her friends somewhere and then comes home.

[703] She's a different person.

[704] And do you go on trips with your friends?

[705] I do.

[706] Yes, I go off -roading with my bros. I guess my...

[707] Excellent.

[708] Yeah, yeah.

[709] Get those adrenaline and cortisol levels through the roof.

[710] Well, I'm not saying that spouses shouldn't also go away together.

[711] They should.

[712] But they do need to make time for each other to spend time with other friends exactly as you're saying.

[713] And it's lovely that you get that.

[714] Now, can I give you an anecdotal?

[715] Two years ago, my stepfather who had prostate cancer, I went up to visit my mother.

[716] When I got there, became clear that that week was going to be the end.

[717] And I was very involved in that process and mostly just in a role of, like, like I got this mom.

[718] Let me take this over.

[719] And in that zone, I was just like, it's business time.

[720] And it wasn't until I left.

[721] I immediately flew from there to LAX where I just picked up my three -year -old daughter.

[722] And then we went to Detroit for fun, just the two of us, and that had been playing for months.

[723] And I got there and I was like, all of a sudden, the week hit me. And I got very unhappy and restless and pessimistic and all this stuff.

[724] And I'm with my daughter.

[725] And So many times I'm like, I'm just going to go home.

[726] I don't know what we're doing here.

[727] I'm miserable.

[728] I just need to go home, go home, go home.

[729] Finally, my friend Scott Johnson came to visit us at the hotel.

[730] He and I started talking.

[731] I started talking about the week and how crazy it was and heightened and all this stuff.

[732] And then, you know, that was, I don't think I've ever felt a more profound dose of the utility of that.

[733] And I just was like, oh, my God, what pill could have given me that or what anything could have given me that.

[734] It can be magic.

[735] It really can.

[736] 100%.

[737] I say that.

[738] as a science journalist.

[739] Yeah, it just feels like without it, I don't know what I, yeah, what I would have done.

[740] Also, quite often, my advice is always like, hey, find that best friend in junior high.

[741] That's the thing that changed my life.

[742] The thing that changed my life was I met someone that was a soulmate and we defined ourselves together and he gave me the courage to be this person I would have normally been afraid to be.

[743] And I really just don't think without that person I'm anywhere that I'm currently at.

[744] And we interviewed Malcolm Gladwell and he had that friend in his school when he was in ninth grade and he talks about fleeing and Anthony Kedis meeting each other.

[745] Yeah, can you just speak on like the power of having that early on and what it can do to the rest of your life?

[746] I love that you brought up middle school.

[747] I love it because you have a whole chapter in the book about childhood and adolescence and the intensity of friendship at that time, especially it's intense for good or.

[748] or not, right?

[749] It can also be hugely painful, and there are kids who feel excluded and ignored.

[750] But what adults need to recognize is how powerful those relationships are.

[751] And in fact, a lot of the psychologists I spoke to think of them as attachment relationships.

[752] You know, we often think of attachment only as mothers and babies and parents.

[753] But John Boldie, who created the idea of attachment theory, thought of it as a cradle to grave phenomenon for other relationships in our lives as well as that caregiver infant relationship and so I think you and your friend have it sounds like still an attachment bond and and that you you know you are so important to each other and that love and affection has had a lot to do with your thriving and succeeding in the world which is what bulby said that that strong relationship with all those positives helps us to do more and to do better and And middle school, it turns out that that is, you mentioned that it was that you came together with shared identity.

[754] And that's what is happening so much to kids that age, right?

[755] They're beginning to figure out who they are in a way that is different.

[756] And they sometimes diverge from the kids that they've known and been good friends with all along because now this one wants to be an athlete and that one wants to be an actor.

[757] And it doesn't mean they don't like each other anymore.

[758] But you just spend more time with somebody who wants to do what.

[759] you want to do.

[760] Right.

[761] I mean, that's a sort of fundamental simple fact about friendship is both similarity and proximity do have a lot to do with it.

[762] But I think that that finding the shared kind of interest and worldview is this essential piece of it.

[763] And if you're lucky enough to find that person at that age, it's the prime moment in your brain development even to make that bond be just sort of this fundamental thing in your life.

[764] Yeah.

[765] So I have this.

[766] Part of the book where I've been off watching these rhesus macaques that live on an island in Puerto Rico where they're doing a lot of very important science of friendship.

[767] They're watching the social behavior like kind of exacting gossip columnists, like who does what to whom, right?

[768] So they're literally charting, you know, who's nearby and proximity has a lot to do with it.

[769] And then I come home to Brooklyn and I find my then 17 -year -old son, Jacob, who's my oldest, sitting on the couch with his best friend, Christian, playing video games.

[770] And I was pissed because it looked like they had never left in the week that I was gone.

[771] They were sitting on the couch playing video games.

[772] And, you know, I'm all, don't you have anything better to do?

[773] You're sitting around doing nothing.

[774] And then I had to stop.

[775] And so, oh, wait, Lydia, they are doing something.

[776] Look at the proximity.

[777] They're just like bonded monkeys.

[778] They're right next to each other on the couch.

[779] You know, these two have been best friends from four.

[780] They're now 21.

[781] They're about to graduate from college.

[782] But so they've been best friends since they were four.

[783] I mean, when they haven't seen each other and they meet up again, the physical hugging and joy and it's a beautiful thing to watch right oh my god oh i always say like our breakthrough as a species isn't cutlery it's like friendship of i think it's the single greatest part of being human well and so and that part of it so many people have appreciated that but now the bonuses that is going to help you live longer yeah that's almost more and more our friend eric says it relentlessly it's like it's all who you're with it has nothing to generally do where you're at.

[784] I couldn't say it better.

[785] That's exactly right.

[786] And it turns out that that's all through this science of friendship, that understanding that and acting on it.

[787] So for instance, parents, like instead of freaking out about how much time your kids are spending online, you should be looking at what are they doing there and with whom.

[788] The point is the with whom piece is really important.

[789] And also, it turns out that kids do better in school if they are allowed to work with their friends and we're often spending time pulling them apart from their friends because they can be disruptive and I say that as the mother of three boys who have often been separated from their friends and I get it I'm not saying that the boys are behaving in a way that is conducive to the classroom necessarily working but but I do think that as adults we have this tendency to only see the negative of that and not maybe try to work with the positive side and maybe they don't get to sit together during the lecture, but then for the project, you could put them back together because they turns out that they have deeper conversations, more cognitively challenging, and they go to more interesting places in their discussion, if they're with a good friend.

[790] And there can be benefits to other stuff too, but like that piece of it is so interesting to me that we, I don't know, I just wish adults would consider the friendship factor just a little bit more.

[791] Or like if you're going to send your kid away to camp or something, you know, really, really, it matters.

[792] whether that kid has a good friend to go with.

[793] Yes.

[794] And, you know, we often think there are things that are worthwhile for, I mean, still on the parenting side of this, worthwhile for kids.

[795] And they are in terms of, you know, like learning about something important.

[796] But if you send a kid off by himself or herself, it's the rare kid who can really do that and engage in the way that they'll get the most out of it.

[797] Whereas if they have the support of good friends, they might well.

[798] Well, good.

[799] That brings me immediately to, so knowing you were coming here and thinking in my own experience, how beneficial all these friendships have been, I have to acknowledge, like, I do that easy.

[800] And so I'm nervous about just going like, well, yeah, everyone should pursue this.

[801] And some people are good at it and some people are bad at it.

[802] And it's heartbreaking to me for the people who have a hard time connecting with other people.

[803] So, you know, what do we do about that?

[804] I think one of the most important things about this new line of work is that the biggest step change in terms of your health and your well -being is from zero to one for friends.

[805] So you need one.

[806] Okay.

[807] You need one.

[808] Okay.

[809] You don't all have to be this life of the party.

[810] You don't have to have big groups of friends.

[811] Some people do.

[812] I mean, it's basically you do you in friendship, but do do friendship somehow.

[813] Right.

[814] And so there are different styles.

[815] And a lot of people prefer just one or two good friends.

[816] And as long as they have that, they're okay.

[817] Now, there are also benefits to quantity and diversity of friendships.

[818] And there's some other things we could get into.

[819] But fundamentally, the most important thing is a couple of quality bonds.

[820] And if you've got one, you're way ahead of the game.

[821] There are still some people who don't even have the one.

[822] There are people who insist that they're good.

[823] And it's important to understand that loneliness to a social psychologist these days is actually the mismatch between the amount of social connection you want and the amount that you have.

[824] So it's not just about being socially isolated because sometimes being alone is a lovely thing.

[825] I actually like to be alone some of the time because I have a very busy life and lots of kids and lots of noise.

[826] And I love it when everybody else is out of the house.

[827] I'm like, okay, woohoo.

[828] But a little of that goes a long way for me, and then I really start wanting to connect.

[829] And I think a lot of people are that way.

[830] Some people, though, kind of stay there.

[831] And there are people who are introverts.

[832] Most introverts, though, do have that one or two really good friends or even a few more.

[833] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[834] If there's someone who really truly is content, mostly being alone, and they're not lying to themselves even about it, then okay.

[835] Yeah, but again, and this is someone who has been sober for 15 years, we're not good at knowing when we lie to ourselves.

[836] Well, that is one of the messages I've been trying to hit is, okay, you can tell me that, but do a little self -reflection and see whether you really mean it.

[837] I think we live increasingly in a time where you can get pretty pleasurably satiated or distracted by some of the options on the table.

[838] that feel social, that don't, as we've had other experts in here, there is a lot of physiological things that do not happen when you're having a relationship online.

[839] Yes.

[840] You need to see people.

[841] You need your mirror neurons to be triggered.

[842] Do you need all these different elements?

[843] Eye contact gets the social parts of the brain really going and the communication parts of the brain.

[844] And that's eye contact in person is different from even like a Skype chat.

[845] But it's not that there's no value to the Skype, I don't think.

[846] It's just that it's different.

[847] And that, yes, I agree totally.

[848] You need those in -person relationships.

[849] I think it's really interesting, though.

[850] I was happy to discover that as I was coming to the end of reporting on the book, it turned out that there was this raft of new work on social media, looking at social media and well -being, but also specifically at relationships.

[851] And the big picture story was that it's not as terrible as we've all come to believe if you are using it, for instance, as one extra channel with which to communicate with people that you also see offline.

[852] And then, like, it strengthens those relationships.

[853] And if you have a bigger network online, you tend to have a bigger network offline.

[854] So there actually is more going on that's more of a mirror of your online and your offline life than we sometimes appreciate it.

[855] That's a refreshing take.

[856] Well, I was kind of dreading, to be really honest, having to report on this piece of it, because it felt like a quagmire.

[857] It felt like, right?

[858] There's so many people sort of, there's hysteria.

[859] over here, and then there's a sort of tech enthusiast.

[860] So I wasn't sure.

[861] I mean, it's, it's not easy if you're not the researcher either to sort of decide that you feel that there's a story, that a storyline that's rising above the rest of it.

[862] And that is what I felt, which was that we can tamp down the hysteria a bit.

[863] What we need to do, well, scientists are beginning to ask more nuanced, contextual questions about this.

[864] And they're trying to sort of say, as the big picture, even for adolescence.

[865] So let me just give you the facts and figures here.

[866] So there was this really important big study that came out from the University of Oxford a year ago.

[867] And what they did was they looked at these big data sets that existed about adolescence and had a lot of information about their lives, not just technology use.

[868] And what they were looking at was a statistic called the percent of variation in well -being that could be attributed to technology use.

[869] And it was negative, but it was less than half a percent.

[870] Point four percent.

[871] This is for 350 ,000 adolescents.

[872] And so we're talking about at a population level.

[873] We're not talking about every individual kid, okay?

[874] And that's an important point.

[875] But it was 0 .4%.

[876] Wearing glasses, which I am right now, was worse for your well -being.

[877] Thank you.

[878] I'm old enough now that I'm comfortable in my skin and I, you know.

[879] But wearing glasses was worse.

[880] Eating a good breakfast sleep, you were talking about sleep, getting a good night's sleep was so much more important.

[881] important on the positive side for your well -being than technology use on the negative side that the point of this work, and this was a much more rigorous statistical technique, and the point was to look at the forest for the trees and say, what's the net positive?

[882] What's the net?

[883] Right.

[884] What's the net?

[885] And how does it shake out compared to everything else going on in kids' lives, right?

[886] And the other piece, and I mentioned this before, but I'll say it again because it's so important is that it turns out that parents, what they obsess about is time online.

[887] But the very concept of screen time has come to mean almost nothing because it encompasses so much stuff that's so different that scientists now are saying, well, that's not at all what we should be counting.

[888] And yet that's what most of the research at the beginning was counting.

[889] So it was just saying, you know, you spent more time, you spent less time, but they weren't looking at what you were doing in that time.

[890] And so it was just quantitative and not qualitative.

[891] Which is, you know, when a field of science is new that it is a sort of a blunt instrument, It takes time to figure out how to ask better questions, but that's where we are now.

[892] And so in addition to that study from Oxford, there's been several others that do this kind of sort of let's get the big picture of view.

[893] And the big picture view just isn't quite as terrible as we have been led to believe.

[894] Oh, that's good.

[895] But that doesn't mean that there aren't some people, especially teenagers for whom social media is a problem, like especially if you already suffer from depression and anxiety, it can exacerbate it.

[896] But knowing that you already have that problem and that makes it worse, There's a different solution to that than worrying about social media as being the sort of evil thing that is sending everybody down this path of destruction.

[897] Well, at the conclusion of researching and writing this book, what was the number one moment you had as a parent where you're like, fuck?

[898] God, I wish I would have known this 10 years.

[899] There had to be moments, right?

[900] Oh, there were many.

[901] So I've already, I already mentioned one was this sort of watching my kid play video games and recognizing that while I am not.

[902] saying that kids should play video games all the time, that I as a parent was just really missing a big piece of the story that was going on, the social, visceral connection between these two boys.

[903] But the other thing just in general as a parent, clearly this health and longevity research is telling us that pretty much the most important skill or one of the most important skills that our kids can have in the world is to be a good friend, to be able to make friends, to be able to maintain friends.

[904] We as adults need to recognize that that's a skill that they grow, that they develop, acquire, and they perfect and they don't come into it instantly being good at it necessarily.

[905] And so we need to be explicit about that being an important thing to be.

[906] It can't just all be about achievement.

[907] And, you know, so I really work now with my kids about sort of not that you should be intervening in every little interaction.

[908] In fact, a big piece of it is that kids need enough time together unstructured to just hang out, work it out.

[909] amongst themselves.

[910] And that time, like sleepovers, I dreaded sleepovers as a parent.

[911] You know, other than blood and fire, like, can we have a sleepover?

[912] It's my least favorite sentence.

[913] Just because it's a pain and I get tired and it's noisy and they don't sleep, I don't sleep.

[914] Everybody eats too much junk or I have to cook or, you know, I don't know, for more, you know, whatever.

[915] And I wish I were more generous spirited about it, but that was always the way I felt.

[916] But I really have come to see it differently.

[917] I see that.

[918] I see that is one of the last unstructured bastions of childhood.

[919] And yeah, okay, I know.

[920] There's a lot of worry where parents are like, oh, but, you know, their rules are different.

[921] Fine.

[922] I can't believe there's nobody's house that you think your kid can go stay at.

[923] Also, seeing other rules in action, it couldn't be more beneficial.

[924] It's like, oh, we do this this way.

[925] They do it that way.

[926] What's the result?

[927] But the one other thing I just want to say as a parent that I think is really, really important.

[928] And this is true, like we mentioned spouses and everything, but you got to model the thing that you think matters.

[929] Oh, yeah, you can say all day long.

[930] You could say all day long, but if you never spend time with your friends or you never say, you know what, this is what I'm doing now and you, kid, are not absolutely everything, you know what I mean?

[931] Then you're not sending the right message.

[932] Couldn't agree more.

[933] Well, what's funny, if I could frame this in this single most provocative way possible, it would be if you were a parent of a teenager who had a ton of friends and smoked cigarettes versus was completely isolated and alone and didn't smoke cigarettes.

[934] No parent in the world wouldn't think the priority be the cigarette smoking.

[935] But just speaking, purely data -driven, you'd probably be better worrying about the isolated kit.

[936] I just wanted to make it as provocative as possible.

[937] Okay, that is provocative.

[938] And I have not had that thought and I'm going to tread carefully, but I've got to say that you have a point.

[939] You have a point.

[940] You should still work on getting them to not smoke.

[941] Yeah, we don't want any smoke.

[942] But if you had to pick, right, no, this is true.

[943] So if you have a kid who, has a harder time, do you try to do play dates?

[944] Do you try to teach them about cooperation?

[945] Are there things you can enact that can help with that?

[946] Yes, there are.

[947] And I say this as not as, you know, an expert therapist, child therapist, or even a teacher having to deal day in, day out in the classroom.

[948] But but it turns out that there are some sort of small things adults can do.

[949] Like I just have done a story on friendship and autism, actually.

[950] And there was a study that found that kids with autism who, are mainstreamed in inclusive environments are often socially left out.

[951] And it's not that they're being rejected.

[952] They're kind of being ignored.

[953] And on the playground, it always looked like they weren't interested.

[954] But now what we know is that they are interested in social interaction.

[955] And so it turned out that there's a couple of things they did that that helped.

[956] But also getting the adults on the playground to just do small things like check that that kid knows the rules to the game that these other kids are playing and sort of help say, well, maybe you can all play together.

[957] Just inserting, it doesn't always work.

[958] I'm not being really polyanish about this here.

[959] I know kids can be their own world.

[960] But it turned out that that did help.

[961] That did make a difference in that, like on a playground, for instance, the adults often just thought that their job was to sort of stand, you know, be more of a shop around the distance.

[962] Keep violence at bay.

[963] Right.

[964] Minimize the most critical stuff, but not engage.

[965] And small things helped.

[966] Now, if it's your own kid who's sitting home, I do think that the shared interest piece of friendship is, I keep coming back to that when people ask me about either helping kids make friends or adults who are lonely or have just moved to a new place or older adults who've retired and are sort of staying home, it's very hard to get people to just become friends by sort of throwing them together.

[967] But if they have a shared purpose or a shared interest, then that almost always works better.

[968] And so for a kid who's really alone, I do think that it would be really important for parents not to guess on their own part what they think their kid might like, but to really try to figure out what their kid actually likes.

[969] Yeah, but that's harder than you would think.

[970] It can be hard.

[971] I know it can be.

[972] And so sometimes if you really can't get that information, then maybe you have to try a bunch of different things, a little trial by error.

[973] I don't know.

[974] But that does turn out to be something that brings kids together.

[975] And remember, like even if there's just one friend.

[976] Yeah.

[977] That's okay.

[978] That will work.

[979] And so parents don't have to think, well, she only has this one friend, which we often do.

[980] It's tricky because I feel like we're in this weird age now where we're almost de -incentivizing.

[981] Disincentivizing.

[982] I had a seizure, so I can't.

[983] She's on a name.

[984] A new excuse for everything.

[985] Exactly.

[986] Disincentivizing cooperation because we're like, that's squibizing.

[987] washing their personality.

[988] Like that seems to be kind of this new agey thought of, well, we want them to grow up to be strong and independent and this and that.

[989] So let them just kind of, I don't know.

[990] A part of me is like, that's not how the world works.

[991] I always wonder if that's the L .A. silo.

[992] Like there's this Rye technique movement that a lot of people use.

[993] I'm not saying I'm critical of it.

[994] But basically the goal is personal validation versus outside validation, which I think is a great goal.

[995] But at the same time, I was the first when this was being pitched in my household.

[996] I was like, yeah, but you're counting out that we are a social animal that's supposed to respond to the pressure of the group.

[997] And that's how we all monitor each other and keep each other.

[998] Like, so the goal isn't total independence and self -validation because you will not work within a group and we are a group animal.

[999] So I'm a little hesitant to some of those sweeping thoughts.

[1000] Thank you.

[1001] Hadn't even looked at my book yet when you said that probably.

[1002] And that's the argument I make.

[1003] a lot of it is that.

[1004] And we, especially in the U .S., we have this real culture of individuality and independence.

[1005] And there are some great things about that, but it just sort of fails to acknowledge how much we are a group animal and how much the community matters.

[1006] You know, it's funny, I just came from this conference that was about adolescent development and education.

[1007] And one of the things that came up was, well, what about like if kids are being homeschooled?

[1008] If kids are homeschooled or they're just doing online courses and often the reason given is because they're being bullied and bullying is a huge problem and it really is you know sometimes there's physical danger and sometimes it's just it's you're really worried about kids mental health but one of the problems is that if they get taken entirely out of social interaction then they're missing out on a huge amount of social learning by the way i think they're missing the single most important part of even going to school it's not to learn biology yeah yeah you can learn how to biology in other ways.

[1009] Cooperate with other human beings.

[1010] It's to learn how to cooperate.

[1011] Kids need those peer -to -peer relationships.

[1012] I'm not trying to judge a parent who's really afraid for their kids' health, but they do need to get that peer -to -peer somewhere else.

[1013] That is the critical piece of this, right?

[1014] Is maybe that particular school environment is not the right one.

[1015] I can't judge, you know, case by case.

[1016] But knowing that that that peer -to -peer interaction is essential for kids and that there's all this stuff that they're going to learn from that, that they can't get from their relationship with parents alone.

[1017] is really important.

[1018] I think it would also be very, very tempting as well, and I would not fall to any parent.

[1019] But again, because we project so much of our own experience onto our kids, if they had a uniquely terrible experience with school, they're that much more likely, I think, to be like, you know what?

[1020] I'm not putting them through this when you don't know.

[1021] You know?

[1022] Okay.

[1023] So I have somebody for you to be talking to later this spring.

[1024] My friend Judy Warner is writing a book called, and then they stopped talking to me. And it's about making sense of middle school.

[1025] And her whole idea is that parents are putting their own filter of middle school on how kids get through it.

[1026] Yeah, I go in the opposite way.

[1027] I'm expecting that to be the best year of my kids' whole life.

[1028] And that too won't come to fruition.

[1029] No, that could be hard to pull off in middle school.

[1030] All right.

[1031] My last question for you is, what is the difference between vertical and horizontal relationships?

[1032] It has to do with authority and age.

[1033] So vertical relationship would be between parent and kid.

[1034] Oh, okay.

[1035] And horizontal would be peer to peer.

[1036] Oh, okay.

[1037] And so, for instance, there are things you get from a peer -to -peer horizontal relationship that you can't get from your parents are there's elements of trust and cooperation that come with those kinds of relationships and loyalty.

[1038] But really importantly, to be a good friend, one of the things you have to be able to do is give support.

[1039] And you don't really get to do that with your parents so much.

[1040] You really are receiving support, but you're not learning how to give it too.

[1041] And so with your friends, you do start to get that give and take.

[1042] And that's actually one of the most essential pieces of friendship, like at the simplest definition of friendship is that it has to have this reciprocity and cooperation to it.

[1043] Yes.

[1044] I constantly obsess about the notion that we are preparing them for a relationship they'll never have in their life, which is no one's going to fucking dote on these girls the way I'm doing it.

[1045] So it's like I'm misleading them.

[1046] No, no, no, no, you're not.

[1047] You are storing up for them that that is a gift.

[1048] You are giving them a gift and being wholly loved by one's parents.

[1049] nothing better and really truly.

[1050] I'll just regularly say to my wife, if they think they're going to get away with this shit with a boyfriend, there's no way.

[1051] Well, that is why they need both.

[1052] They need you and then they need those peer -to -peer relationships, those horizontal relationships where they get the message that, yeah, yeah, what worked over there is not exactly the same over here and you have to be a different person.

[1053] And so that's my biggest worry about kids who are either isolated or are then kept out of school and peer -to -pure.

[1054] Spending, yeah, time with only adults and parents and whatnot.

[1055] Yeah.

[1056] Yeah.

[1057] Well, Lydia, I'm so glad that you're making this as important as the other health risks that we all kind of observe because, again, I'm just a huge proponent of like find your soulmate, create an identity together, make each other feel confident.

[1058] I just think it's the most special, glorious thing about being on this ride.

[1059] So friendship, the evolution, biology, and extraordinary power of life's fundamental bond, please buy Lydia's book and learn all about this and prioritizing your own life.

[1060] friendships and model good friendships, be a good friend, receive good friends.

[1061] Exactly.

[1062] Thank you so much for having me. This was great.

[1063] And I'm so glad friendship is such a part of both of your lives.

[1064] That's terrific.

[1065] Well, it's the recipe of our success, I believe.

[1066] Sure is.

[1067] And now she's living with us.

[1068] Who knows what's next?

[1069] You really are exhibit A. I'm going to have to carry that out.

[1070] Just do a whole book on my life.

[1071] All right.

[1072] Well, we look forward to your next endeavor.

[1073] I'm sure something will grab you again and take you in a wholly other direction.

[1074] Perhaps.

[1075] We'll see.

[1076] Okay.

[1077] Bye -bye.

[1078] Bye -bye.

[1079] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1080] We're back.

[1081] I'm so excited to be recording in person, face to face.

[1082] Face to face.

[1083] Our last couple fact checks were remote.

[1084] So just catch everyone up, assuming not everyone watches my Instagram stories.

[1085] I can't imagine they do.

[1086] I was traveling for Top Gear America.

[1087] I went to Colorado, then I went to Austin.

[1088] Yes.

[1089] Best friend Aaron Weekly flew to Austin to be with me for the eight days of filming.

[1090] Yep.

[1091] They then pulled the plug.

[1092] Yep.

[1093] On filming.

[1094] He and I drove home.

[1095] I don't want to brag, but 1 ,400 miles and 18 hours and 30 minutes.

[1096] No stops.

[1097] Well, no, I had to stop for my son to pee nonstop.

[1098] That motherfucker peed every year.

[1099] Oh, but I mean you didn't like stop at a hotel.

[1100] No, no hotel stopped.

[1101] No restaurant stops.

[1102] Yeah.

[1103] We ate in the car.

[1104] Yeah.

[1105] And he peed on the side of the road and we fueled up and that was it.

[1106] So we drove straight home and then we were in miniature mouse's beautiful apartment.

[1107] Yes, you were.

[1108] Oh, my God.

[1109] It was like being away at a spa or something.

[1110] It just smells so good in there.

[1111] Monica has such great style.

[1112] I mean, I've always been aware of it, but I was acutely aware of it being in your little dwelling.

[1113] Yeah.

[1114] Even the napkins.

[1115] So the bowls and the plates are all set on the dining room table and they're very fashionable.

[1116] And there's these beautiful cloth napkins with cute little embroidered foxes on them.

[1117] I just got those.

[1118] They're so cute.

[1119] Thanks.

[1120] We're so opposite as boys and girls and you and I. When I was a bachelor, I was like, yeah, I need 20 plates.

[1121] Uh -huh.

[1122] And they all look the same.

[1123] I want the bowls to match the plates, blah, blah, blah.

[1124] Every dish is kind of unique.

[1125] It's interesting.

[1126] It's artful.

[1127] You open up, there's like 12 different variety of bowl.

[1128] Yeah, a lot of bowls.

[1129] Yeah.

[1130] I love those blue ones that are deep dish.

[1131] They're kind of narrow at top, but they're very deep.

[1132] I don't really know which ones your time.

[1133] Okay, well, they're great.

[1134] And my son made us Hello Fresh last night.

[1135] It was fucking delicious.

[1136] This beef over some rice with some peppers.

[1137] Oh, my God.

[1138] We wanted six more servings of it.

[1139] It was so good.

[1140] But your linens are beautiful.

[1141] The couch is extraordinary.

[1142] My son's been sleeping on it.

[1143] It's ruined.

[1144] Everything in your house is ruined.

[1145] I had terrible gas the last two nights and I was farting in your bed.

[1146] You definitely need to throw your mat.

[1147] out.

[1148] My son has ruined your couch.

[1149] It was the fart filter.

[1150] Yes, it's become Dak Shepard's Fart Filters prototype.

[1151] Oh, and I showered in your, your fucking shampoo and conditioner is so nice.

[1152] What a luxurious product.

[1153] I washed my butthole with that lava soap you have.

[1154] Oh, yeah.

[1155] It stung my butthole.

[1156] Does it sting your butthole?

[1157] No, you must have a bunch of cuts up there.

[1158] I think I have cuts.

[1159] Yeah, I have wet butt cuts.

[1160] You know, it's a disaster back there.

[1161] Look, the only thing it's comforting is my son's anus is 20 times worse than me. Oh, well, that's true.

[1162] It's all relative, you know?

[1163] Well, the soap I use is a volcanic ash soap.

[1164] And I love it.

[1165] I'm obsessed with it and I hoard it.

[1166] So I buy like - Sorry I used it.

[1167] No, I know I'm glad I'm happy to share with my friends.

[1168] Okay.

[1169] But I buy like 15 at once so that I have enough for like the year.

[1170] You're so ahead of the curve.

[1171] You were hoarding before anyone else was.

[1172] Yeah, I was hoarding before Corona.

[1173] And also I'm against hoarding during this time.

[1174] I think it's really a bad idea to buy like 400 cases of toilet paper.

[1175] I don't understand this.

[1176] No toilet paper for people who need it.

[1177] I just don't.

[1178] I mean, I brought it up with Sun Jay, but I don't, of all the things, of all the things, toilet paper, because all these people have showers.

[1179] That's what I said.

[1180] Get in the shower and scrub your asshole.

[1181] Exactly.

[1182] But boy, what a party we had in there.

[1183] It's fun and kind of like tingly to know people are staying at your house.

[1184] I bet there's something really kind of like scary about it sure like we're going to read your journal or exactly you're going to find something that I didn't take care of well enough or even like you said I'm going to buy you a lamp for your nightstand and I was like oh no like I'm exposed and then I was like they're going to come in and they're going to think like oh it's so dusty in here no way I felt nervous oh my God no We love it.

[1185] We're in love with that place.

[1186] We want to retire there.

[1187] Oh, good.

[1188] I also loved, I have this feeling when I rent a motorhome or when I'm staying in a hotel for a protracted period.

[1189] I like when my life gets small like that.

[1190] We all have this desire to buy these outrageous houses on big pieces of property where that's the dream we were all sold.

[1191] But man, when your life gets tiny and manageable, it reminded me of living that one bedroom apartment for 10 years in Santa Monica and it was fucking easy.

[1192] Yeah, I know.

[1193] It's kind of worry free.

[1194] I like that part.

[1195] You texted me and said, why did you buy a house?

[1196] Totally.

[1197] The whole time I'm in there, I'm like, you had it made in the shade.

[1198] Oh, no. And now I do have a house sitting there with, I can't do anything to it for who knows how long.

[1199] Yeah.

[1200] Yeah.

[1201] It's been a crazy time.

[1202] It has been a crazy time.

[1203] And I think some people enjoy crazy times and some people hate them.

[1204] And I'm sympathetic to the people that hate them.

[1205] But I am the type that likes like a little bit of chaos and a little bit of like, oh I've never experienced this right like we took a walk how goddamn fun that was the funest walk we had to walk six feet apart we walked six feet apart which was weird but it was a heightened walk we had more fun on that walk than we would have normally had on a walk well it felt like going to Disneyland or something because it was the only thing we could do yeah it makes me appreciate the tiniest things like taking a walk it does it does make you feel very grateful and have a lot of gratitude for friendships circling back around and I've never felt more.

[1206] You just take for granted the people in your life and the proximity to those people and all of it.

[1207] Like this is a good wake -up call to his friendships are real, real, real important.

[1208] Yeah.

[1209] Oh, I want to throw out there.

[1210] So what my son and I have been doing, which is really fun, is we've been doing online AA meetings that are set up on that Zoom.

[1211] Yeah, Zoom is having a real day day.

[1212] Zoom's having a boom.

[1213] But they're really fun.

[1214] I totally dig it.

[1215] And then it's funny because my son and I are the only two people that are sitting next to each other in the meeting.

[1216] You know, everyone else is at their computer and then we're snuggling on the couch, basically.

[1217] It's really funny.

[1218] Tonight's meeting we're going to do shirtless, we decided.

[1219] Okay.

[1220] Just to spice it up for the other guys in the meeting.

[1221] That's nice.

[1222] Yeah.

[1223] Yeah, we didn't do a fact check on the last episode.

[1224] So interesting.

[1225] You totally are of the opinion that he disagreed with me and I'm of the opinion he agreed with me. I know.

[1226] Well, I don't think he'd disagree, but I think he was.

[1227] saying like that could be right and also don't think that could we get a tie -breaking vote from rob just to say what do you think um son jay's response was to my question i i think it's similar to what she said that it could be a thing but it's not the mindset that's going to help contain this thank you rob robert he just earned a lot of credibility because it's your theory that he just agrees with me because he's a boy yeah because boys agree with each other well in general and girls agree with each other.

[1228] Well, yeah, you think you have the same theory about me and Kristen.

[1229] When we were in Turks and Kekos, that was like the big issue.

[1230] Oh, yeah.

[1231] You thought that we were like always on the same page and you could never.

[1232] Well, I felt ganged up on.

[1233] Right.

[1234] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1235] I do think when it's a male or female debate, there's been a couple of them.

[1236] When it's that specific topic, you are clearly on the female side, which you should be.

[1237] And I'm clearly on the male side.

[1238] I'm saying more in the, on the spectrum of pragmatic.

[1239] versus emotional, I think you're in the dead center of Kristen and I. Would you agree with that?

[1240] I see.

[1241] I see.

[1242] Yeah.

[1243] I do.

[1244] I mean, if it's a zero to 10, zero is the most emotional headspace you can be in, acting purely out of emotions.

[1245] And 10 is acting purely out of facts.

[1246] I think I'm a seven.

[1247] I think I'm closer to acting out of facts than acting out of emotion.

[1248] Okay.

[1249] Do you think that's true or no?

[1250] I think it'd be a six, but yeah.

[1251] Yeah, yeah.

[1252] She is very much more emotional than I am.

[1253] Mm -hmm.

[1254] And I am very much more pragmatic.

[1255] Yeah, I mean, I tend to think that they're all tied together anyway.

[1256] I think it's a little naive to think that you're only pragmatic because you're looking at facts.

[1257] Like there's emotion going into that too.

[1258] Of course.

[1259] By the way, I hope it's clear.

[1260] I'm not making an argument that I'm right that people should be like me. No. No, I don't think people should be like me. I think some people should be like me and some people should be like Kristen and some people should be like you.

[1261] I think we need all variety of us to work.

[1262] Okay, so Lydia has the sweetest message that could be possibly conveyed.

[1263] Yeah.

[1264] I mean, it is a tricky situation because right now everyone's isolated.

[1265] But that's what you've got to find ways like Zoom, virtual community, call people, don't text, pick up the phone, hear someone's voice.

[1266] Exactly.

[1267] It makes such a big difference.

[1268] Phone, Skype, sex, FaceTime sex.

[1269] Marco Polo.

[1270] Marco Polo sex.

[1271] Marco Polo has been saving our friend group.

[1272] We have a girl's Marco Polo and we've just been on it nonstop.

[1273] I bet.

[1274] It's video messaging.

[1275] I told my mom to get on it yesterday.

[1276] I will say, though, this isn't lining up in a male -female way, the way I think.

[1277] thought it might.

[1278] Because most of the meetings I've been in in the Zoom meetings, the guys are, they're very emotional about this whole thing.

[1279] Yeah.

[1280] There's a lot of fear.

[1281] There should be.

[1282] This is a real threat.

[1283] Of course.

[1284] Of course.

[1285] We have a different opinion, which is totally fine, which is I don't believe you need fear to do all the right things.

[1286] But it's not, the other thing is, I think you are conflating to things.

[1287] You think because people are talking about it and talking about stats and being knowledgeable that there's panic.

[1288] And that doesn't seem 100 % fair.

[1289] I don't think that is panicked to be up to date and know everything at all.

[1290] You have said, like, I don't think there's a reason to just like be watching the news and like getting that information.

[1291] But there is.

[1292] Oh, I don't.

[1293] Yeah.

[1294] We disagree on that.

[1295] I think a lot of people I know are glued to CNN.

[1296] They're glued to Twitter.

[1297] They're glued to Instagram.

[1298] They're getting an all day update, which I don't think is healthy at all.

[1299] If you want to get informed, schedule an hour a night that you're going to watch your show, you're going to learn at the end of the day, all the updates, so you're well informed.

[1300] You don't have to spend all your waking hours doing it.

[1301] You can do it in a scheduled slot so that doesn't overtake your thoughts.

[1302] That works for you.

[1303] It wouldn't work for you to watch CNN all day.

[1304] That would make you feel panics or fear or whatever.

[1305] I totally want to.

[1306] The first couple days, I did it.

[1307] I compare it to people's endless obsession with Trump on the left or they just like can't eat it enough.

[1308] They got to eat it all day long and they got to talk about it all day long.

[1309] I personally disagree with that notion of living.

[1310] But why do you have to disagree with it as a whole?

[1311] Why can't you just say, I personally, that doesn't work for me. So I'm not going to do that.

[1312] But to say that other people shouldn't do it doesn't seem helpful because you don't know what it's doing for them.

[1313] It could be giving them a sense of control that they need in a world of chaos right now.

[1314] It could be providing them something that they need.

[1315] It could be.

[1316] There's no studies for us to know yet, but there are other studies on other topics where I believe it creates anxiety for protracted periods of time as opposed to just dedicating an hour to worry about it, knowing what you should do the next steps for tomorrow.

[1317] But sitting around watching the death toll and the ticker tape, I just can't imagine.

[1318] and how that's possibly helpful to anyone.

[1319] But it is, actually, in my opinion, because if you're debating whether you're going to go on a walk with someone and walk one foot away from them or six feet, if you had just watched CNN, you might be like, I'll take the extra precaution.

[1320] If I'm going to go to the grocery store today, I'll bring wipes with me. If I haven't been watching CNN, I'm probably not doing that.

[1321] Right.

[1322] So it just circled back to what I think our fundamental disagreement is, is I don't think you need that to be motivated.

[1323] But I think maybe you personally need that to be motivated or you at least believe other people need that to be motivated.

[1324] I believe a lot of people need knowledge to be motivated.

[1325] Yeah.

[1326] And also, how will they know?

[1327] How will they know what to do if they're not paying attention?

[1328] You can learn everything in a half hour.

[1329] The stuff that's on TV is about a half hour of content spread out over 24 hours.

[1330] If you watch it says you're learning the same thing over and over again, then a new host comes on.

[1331] Don Lemon tells you the same shit Anderson Cooper just told you.

[1332] And then Anderson tells you the stuff Sanjay said.

[1333] there's no real new information.

[1334] There's a few data points that come out every day, and they can be learned in 15 minutes.

[1335] Yeah.

[1336] And I hope people don't need to be fearful and scared to do the right thing.

[1337] Sure.

[1338] That's a pessimistic view of us, I think.

[1339] I just think it's a lot to ask of people to not be fearful right now.

[1340] It's okay to be fearful.

[1341] I just, that's just the truth.

[1342] It's okay.

[1343] There's a scary, chaotic thing that we don't know what it's, it's going to turn into.

[1344] There's so many unknowns and so many factors.

[1345] And to ask people to not be scared of that is not really in touch with human emotion.

[1346] I mean, that's what happens with people.

[1347] Well, I agree.

[1348] That's totally what happens.

[1349] I don't think anyone should feel guilty for feeling fearful.

[1350] It really is just, do you think you need fear to be motivated?

[1351] I don't think so, but you do.

[1352] And that's totally fine.

[1353] I just think it's individual.

[1354] I don't think you need it, clearly.

[1355] You don't.

[1356] And I believe that you don't.

[1357] I don't think you're lying.

[1358] And I think some people needed and there's probably a spectrum but I just don't want to tell people how they should be handling this because well I think if people are right now overrun with anxiety and they know when they feel anxious I for those people I would recommend that you schedule a time to get updated right and don't spend all day doing it for those people who are feeling genuine fear and anxiety and overwhelmed yeah that's I think that's a good idea um okay so you said oh there are high rates and identical twins of one being right -handed and one being left -handed.

[1359] So in about 21 % of identical twin pairs, one twin is right -handed and the other is left -handed or ambidextrous.

[1360] The 21%.

[1361] So since identical twins share identical genes, this is evidence that handedness is not a totally genetic trait.

[1362] There's a subset of identical twins called mirror image twins.

[1363] Mirror imaging in twins occurs when the fertilized ovum separates later than usual.

[1364] sometime between seven and 12 days after fertilization.

[1365] They may have hair whirls that wind in opposite directions and moles or other skin markings that are identical, but on opposite sides of the face or body.

[1366] Yeah.

[1367] In a few cases of mirror imaging, one twin may display cytos in varis, where the position of internal organs is on the side opposite to their usual placement.

[1368] The heart is on the right rather than on the left, for example.

[1369] Oh, you know some boy's erections curve to the right or the left?

[1370] I wonder if the mirror twins, the boy's boner goes to the right and then his twin goes to the left.

[1371] I don't think they're having boners in the fetus.

[1372] Well, certainly not.

[1373] But if it's growing mirror image, we need more details.

[1374] I wonder if there's been any boner studies.

[1375] Well, we'll look into it.

[1376] That could be a fascinating fact.

[1377] Rob, put that on the yearly fact check.

[1378] Okay, she said survival of the fittest, which she was like, I don't think Darwin even actually said, survival of the fittest, which was coined not by Darwin, but by the philosopher Herbert Spencer.

[1379] Oh, Herbie Spencer.

[1380] Is widely misunderstood according to this.

[1381] Darwin did not consider the process of evolution as the survival of the fittest.

[1382] He regarded it as survival of the fitter because the struggle for existence is relative and thus not absolute.

[1383] Hmm.

[1384] Good distinction, Darwin.

[1385] Yeah.

[1386] He's so smart.

[1387] Still with us, too.

[1388] 258 years old this year.

[1389] Oh, my goodness.

[1390] Yeah, it's incredible.

[1391] Proving he was the fitter.

[1392] He took the sorcerer stone.

[1393] Yes.

[1394] Have you been keeping up with Harry Potter as your kids are reading it?

[1395] No. Mm. Yeah.

[1396] You're missing out.

[1397] I know.

[1398] I know.

[1399] I love how much you love it.

[1400] I want to send you to Hogwarts so bad.

[1401] Oh, my God.

[1402] A part of me wishes, like, my seizure affected my brain in a way that I was like living like because truly every now and then a part of me feels like what's happening right now is not real that I'm like living in my seizure sure that I'm still in the seizure and then soon I'll come out of it but right now I'm like this is what happens in a seizure yeah pandemic so in the real life world I'm seizing so it's like a dream you know I I had a very similar experience.

[1403] I was in this horrific rollover accident when I was 18 and, you know, the car was flattened.

[1404] I was in the back.

[1405] I've told you the story that glass blew out.

[1406] I should have been ejected.

[1407] And I just walked out of it.

[1408] I remember being at like a high school party two days later and I was at the party and I just kept thinking, I think I'm dead.

[1409] I don't think you can survive that.

[1410] Right.

[1411] And I don't think I'm letting go.

[1412] Yeah.

[1413] And I had this pervasive feeling that I wasn't letting go for at least a week.

[1414] Really?

[1415] I was convinced I was dead.

[1416] It just didn't add up.

[1417] Yeah, I've had that a few times, a few thoughts of like, oh, I wonder if this is real or if my brain is skittsing and that's why it's happening.

[1418] And then I was thinking like, oh, well, if that's true, I hope I get to live out some sort of wonderful fantasy too, like a hog war.

[1419] It's like I get to actually go there or something during the seizure.

[1420] Were you in love with Terence Posner when you're reading the books?

[1421] Like, did you want him as a boyfriend?

[1422] No, you didn't.

[1423] He's not my favorite character in the books.

[1424] Who is?

[1425] Serious Black is my favorite character.

[1426] How old is Sirius Black?

[1427] I don't know because in Wizards can live like really old.

[1428] I guess here's my question.

[1429] Did you have a boyfriend in that story?

[1430] Like someone you were in love with?

[1431] I did love Sirius Black.

[1432] I don't know if I was like hot for him.

[1433] I mean, maybe I was.

[1434] I mean, he was like so mysterious and brooding and he was misunderstood.

[1435] But he did, oh, he did the right thing.

[1436] Like Will Hunt.

[1437] for Harry.

[1438] Yeah, kind of like Will.

[1439] Yeah, misunderstood.

[1440] Speaking of my boyfriend, so I watched Contagent twice, two days in a row, and I'm dying to watch it again.

[1441] No one will watch it with me again.

[1442] I'll watch it.

[1443] I love that.

[1444] Let's watch it tonight.

[1445] I loved it so much.

[1446] I had never seen it.

[1447] Oh, it's great.

[1448] And it rose the second in the Warner Brothers Library after Harry Potter since this all began.

[1449] So everyone's watching it.

[1450] It's so good.

[1451] My boyfriend's in it.

[1452] he's wonderful and hot and even though he's in the middle of a contagion he's still hot and okay so I was obviously I was scared because of the contagion but part of the contagion in that movie is they have seizures so I saw a bunch of people having seizures and I did not like that That part you didn't like.

[1453] That part I really did not like.

[1454] There was so much foam coming out of their mouth and it was spewing out.

[1455] Oh.

[1456] Whoa.

[1457] Like spittle.

[1458] Yeah.

[1459] In the movie.

[1460] And I was like, that must be so exaggerated.

[1461] I knew I had a little bit of foam.

[1462] Sure.

[1463] So then I asked Kristen if it was exaggerated and she said no. I said I had that much foam and she said yes.

[1464] Are we sure she's not exaggerating?

[1465] I think she would exaggerate on the other side if she was going to exaggerate.

[1466] So I think that was true.

[1467] Well, it looked horrible.

[1468] Also, Gwyneth Paltrow had a seizure on it and she, that is like, no, she had a lot of phone.

[1469] Oh, okay.

[1470] But I'm saying that is the most egoless acting I've ever seen because it looks disgusting.

[1471] She's so pretty in that movie and then she has a horrible seizure and she dies quickly.

[1472] Sorry, spoiler, but it is like the first two minutes of the movie.

[1473] I was supposed to say spoiler before you spoil it, just to remind you of how it works.

[1474] But it's so early on.

[1475] It's so early on.

[1476] If you see the poster, you can tell.

[1477] She's half dead on the poster.

[1478] Yeah.

[1479] Anyway, so then I had to talk to my therapist about this.

[1480] The reason I'm sharing this is in case anyone has something similar.

[1481] I was feeling like, I wonder if people like you or other people are getting annoyed that I'm still talking about.

[1482] it or I have questions about it.

[1483] I'm looking into it still.

[1484] And sometimes I fear that that's bothering you or bothering other people.

[1485] She said, first of all, of course you're going to have anxiety.

[1486] So it would be abnormal if you weren't having anxiety about it.

[1487] And two, of course you're asking a bunch of questions and you're still thinking about it and you're trying to figure it out because you weren't there for that.

[1488] You had an experience that you weren't there.

[1489] You weren't therefore, and you're relying on other people's information for you to integrate this into your brain and your body.

[1490] So, yeah, you're going to have to ask a lot of questions and continue to.

[1491] And I really liked that explanation of what was going on.

[1492] Yeah.

[1493] I never mind when you talk about it, because I think you and I often fall into this very well -worn male -female dynamic, which is guys want to try.

[1494] to solve the problem when they hear someone say something it's not our nature to think oh our job is just to listen and to commiserate and let the person know that they've been seen and heard we take it as um we got to solve this for you so it doesn't happen again so quite often when you're scared i jump right into let's do x y and z so that you're not scared like even that movie i would say while you're dealing with this fear of it don't watch that movie you know that would be part of my suggestion it's such a good movie you know but like that's where my head goes is I don't like that you're uncomfortable and I want to prevent you from being uncomfortable so I'm going to think of a lot of ways that this won't happen again but it sounds like probably often I'm not either sympathizing with you or empathizing with you but really I don't think either of us are at fall I think it's a very male -female thing that I know I have to work hard against.

[1495] It's just my first instinct is to try to come up with a solution.

[1496] Right.

[1497] I understand that.

[1498] Of course, the hard thing is for me, too, is that there really isn't a solution.

[1499] I am on the best solution I can be on right now, and I'm doing that.

[1500] There's so many.

[1501] Right.

[1502] You don't know what the future holds.

[1503] I don't know what the future holds, exactly.

[1504] And I don't know if I'm going to have another one.

[1505] I'm hopefully not, but I could.

[1506] And the more I talk to people, the more it's like, yeah, you could.

[1507] Yeah.

[1508] Hopefully you won't, but you could.

[1509] And, you know, and I guess then I have to walk through.

[1510] Okay, so if I do, what does that mean?

[1511] You know, and then it's just a whole thing.

[1512] And so I can already, it's funny because even like knowing what you're looking for, here's exactly where mine immediately went to, which is, here's what I know about you and what you know about you.

[1513] You are OCD.

[1514] You're a very obsessive, compulsive person.

[1515] Dr. Drew pointed it out.

[1516] You conceded to that is your nature.

[1517] It's your superpower.

[1518] So it makes you such a great worker and a great editor and a great everything.

[1519] But you're an obsessive compulsive person.

[1520] And I don't think you should research.

[1521] I think that's your obsessive compote.

[1522] So I'll be quick to go, stop reading this stuff.

[1523] You have a doctor who you must trust, who is in charge of this.

[1524] listen to the doctor don't obsessively research this that whole issue aside which i'm not dismissing or i'm not taking serious it all is going to be processed by this human being you and let's get you to the best version of yourself of process sure i don't 100 % agree with the not research i mean i do think like googling is not helpful all the time but i do feel that this is now a condition i have And I do need to be educated on that.

[1525] I need to know what it means, what the triggers are.

[1526] I mean, this is, again, this is parallels a little bit what we were talking about earlier.

[1527] Like, I feel more in control when I know, okay, I'm doing the right things to prevent something like this from happening.

[1528] And it might still happen and that's fine.

[1529] But I don't want to just like be walking around blind, like drinking a bottle of wine.

[1530] Now I know that's not a good idea.

[1531] You know, I think it's.

[1532] So what you said is.

[1533] absolutely logical, defendable, winnable in a court case.

[1534] But I'll point out, when something's wrong with your car, something's wrong with the steering, you take it to the mechanic, the mechanic says this, and then you allow them.

[1535] You don't research your car for three hours on the internet.

[1536] You go, oh, the mechanic knows, and I trust him or her, and that's that.

[1537] And there's a million things like that, that you don't research.

[1538] You just trust the professional.

[1539] And this thing, even though you've got two of the top 100 neurologists in the world at your disposal, you're still doing supplemental research, which I would just argue would be like you reading a ton about steering components.

[1540] What are you going to learn mechanics overnight from Google?

[1541] No. Sure, you can read 20 articles that make you feel like you have learned that.

[1542] But if you're dealing with two of the neurologists on the planet, I think you can leave it at that, personally.

[1543] I see what you're saying.

[1544] Oh, good.

[1545] Thanks for hearing me. Yeah.

[1546] Anyway, so it's a lot to process.

[1547] It is.

[1548] That's all.

[1549] Yeah.

[1550] It's scary.

[1551] It's powerless.

[1552] But I think you and I proved what this whole episode was about, which is the immense value of friendship.

[1553] Oh, man. Yes.

[1554] And I think all of us have the capacity to really go in directions that, until we say it out loud to someone we trust yeah you know it can all seem quite real yeah i'm glad to be on this journey with you of figuring this out i'm glad to be a part of your life that feels stable and thanks yeah i love you love you follow armchair expert on the wondery app amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts you can listen to every episode of armchair expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[1555] Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry .com slash survey.