Loneliness & Brain Health: Neuroscience of Social Connection with Ben Rein

[00:00:00]BEN: Those who were the most socially isolated  were 50% more likely to die by any cause.

[00:00:05]NEIL: That's quite an indictment.

[00:00:06]BEN: Being isolated, it's a form  of stress. We, human beings, are social animals. When we are taken away  from our tribe, we experience a rise in cortisol, the traditional stress  response. And, we feel stressed.

[00:00:20]NEIL: They say the loneliest person ever, the  person who is running the command module that's orbiting the moon while the other two astronauts  are down on the lunar surface walking around.

[00:00:32]BEN: Kind of a scary place to be, it sounds.

[00:00:34]CHUCK: Not for me. And if he  has children, he is very happy.

[00:00:42]NEIL: This is StarTalk's special edition. Neil  deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist.

[00:00:52]And when you hear special edition, it  means Gary O'Reilly is in the house.

[00:00:57]GARY: Hey, Neil.

[00:00:57]NEIL: You and your editors cooked this stuff up.

[00:01:00]GARY: Yes, we did.

[00:01:01]NEIL: And today, it's like the lonely  brain, all human physiological conditions.

[00:01:07]GARY: Yeah, and this is  something that we'll explore.

[00:01:10]NEIL: Okay.

[00:01:10]GARY: You'll understand why  when we get in the middle.

[00:01:11]NEIL: We'll do that. Chuck. Hey.

[00:01:13]CHUCK: Lonely everything. Just lonely.  Lonely man. Brain and everything else.

[00:01:22]NEIL: We'll see what we can do  about that. Well, set us up here.

[00:01:26]GARY: We've been hearing there's a loneliness  epidemic, whether you're male, you're female, you're rich, you're poor, you're young, you're  old, or for a variety of reasons, people are getting lonelier. But what does loneliness  actually do to our brains? Are our brains equipped to deal with the social isolation of modern life?  Does loneliness make us less healthy? We'll learn about why social interactions matter so much to  our health, and whether they can be stimulated through drugs like MDMA. Yes! Yeah, I knew that  would wake you up. You're back in the room.

[00:02:04]CHUCK: Now we're talking.

[00:02:05]GARY: Yeah.

[00:02:06]CHUCK: A little Molly in the action, man.

[00:02:08]NEIL: When I hear MDMA, I think of medical  doctor and master of arts as an academic.

[00:02:13]GARY: That's not what it stands for.

[00:02:14]NEIL: That's not what it stands for.

[00:02:14]CHUCK: I was gonna say, you sound  like a blast at a nightclub. Hey, you got any medical doctor and master of arts?

[00:02:23]NEIL: Well, we found one of the  world's experts on that very subject, a neuroscientist that goes by Ben  Rein. Ben, welcome back to StarTalk.

[00:02:33]BEN: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

[00:02:34]NEIL: One time, you came in virtually.

[00:02:37]CHUCK: Yeah.

[00:02:37]NEIL: Way better to poke you in the flesh here.

[00:02:38]BEN: It's awesome to be here.

[00:02:39]NEIL: You actually do exist. That  was not a bot that you set up.

[00:02:42]BEN: That was my AI avatar.

[00:02:44]NEIL: I'm looking at your, I mean,  I can't, how do you have this many, you're a neuroscientist, chief  science officer, that's badass.

[00:02:52]CHUCK: Of the Starship Enterprise.

[00:02:54]GARY: Yes, we're saluting.

[00:02:54]NEIL: No matter what follows that, that's a badass  title. Chief science officer, which was Spock on Star Trek, of the Mind Science Foundation.  Ooh, clinical assistant professor at SUNY Buffalo, and that's where you're based, up in Buffalo,  New York, where they invented buffalo wings, as I'm told. We can get them to verify that. It's  true. Adjunct lecturer at Stanford University, you're bi-coastal because you actually did  some work out at Stanford, so they know you, they're familiar with your work.  And you're author, just recently, of Why Brains Need Friends. Ooh, the  neuroscience of social connection.

[00:03:37]CHUCK: I hear the theme song  now. Do do do do do do do do.

[00:03:41]NEIL: Okay.

[00:03:41]GARY: We got there.

[00:03:43]NEIL: Oh, the friends. Was that your attempt?

[00:03:44]CHUCK: That was my, yes.

[00:03:46]GARY: It wasn't that bad.

[00:03:47]NEIL: All right, let's get to the bottom of  this. It's possible to be alone, but not lonely.

[00:03:54]It's possible to be surrounded by people,  maybe even your best friends, and be lonely.

[00:04:01]And it's possible to be completely alone and not  be lonely. So where do you fit in to this matrix?

[00:04:07]BEN: Yeah, so what you're  describing or alluding to is the distinction between loneliness and isolation.

[00:04:13]NEIL: Oh, isolation is another word.

[00:04:14]BEN: We got another word. So isolation is  the objective state of being by yourself, right? You're by yourself, you are isolated,  you are alone. But you can be lonely while amongst others. Loneliness is the feeling  that your social needs are not being met.

[00:04:32]And so it's complicated because you can come  home from a family vacation with your entire extended family for a week and go sit in  your family room by yourself. You're alone, but you are not lonely. You are just where you  need to be. You wish you, you know, you're very satisfied with the level of social contact  you're getting because you had way too much.

[00:04:50]Or you can go to a concert where there's 20,000  people around you. But if you go by yourself and you're not interacting with anybody and  you feel alone, you can be lonely in a crowd.

[00:05:00]NEIL: Especially because everyone else  is not lonely because they're enjoying the concert with their friends, their  loved ones. So the fact that everyone else is not alone has made you alone.  Is that a fair way to characterize that?

[00:05:13]BEN: Yeah, I mean, I think you can  feel lonely without acknowledging that the people around you aren't lonely too,  right? But I think once you notice that, it maybe makes it worse, right? I've had  times where I'm traveling by myself and I go sit at a restaurant and I wish I  had people with me and the table next to me is all happy and everyone's gathering  and I'm, you know, it draws attention to... NEIL: You should bathe next  time before you... There are other reasons why you... So this  new word, tell me again, isolated?

[00:05:40]BEN: Isolation.

[00:05:41]NEIL: Okay, so it's commonly reported, I think,  even in the Guinness Book of World Records, they say, the loneliest person ever. And  they cite the person who's running the command module that's orbiting the moon  while the other two astronauts are down on the lunar surface walking around.  And so the three of them go together, they're not alone, they're not isolated,  they're not lonely, they get to the moon, two drop out and the other stays in orbit. So  while two are on one side of the moon and the other one goes to the other side of the moon, he's  not only farther from Earth, he's the diameter of the moon away from his fellow astronauts. So in  the case of Apollo 11, it was Michael Collins, but any of the Apollo missions would have had  somebody the full diameter of the moon away from fellow astronauts. And they call that the  loneliest person, but I will not say that anymore.

[00:06:31]CHUCK: He's just isolated.

[00:06:33]NEIL: He's just isolated.

[00:06:33]BEN: That's right, he's the most isolated.  It's kind of a scary place to be, it sounds.

[00:06:37]CHUCK: Not for me. It sounds like the best  place in the whole universe. The best place not in the world, okay? That's what that is.  And if he has children, he is very happy.

[00:06:49]BEN: See, that person may be not lonely in  that moment, right? If you just flew to, I don't know how long it takes to get  to the moon, but you just sat with- NEIL: Three days.

[00:06:57]BEN: Okay, so you're three days of social  interaction with two people. The other two people go out and you're by yourself.  You're like, oh my gosh, this is amazing.

[00:07:04]NEIL: I thought they'd never leave.

[00:07:06]GARY: Exactly.

[00:07:07]BEN: I gotta go to the bathroom.

[00:07:08]CHUCK: I'm taking off this  suit. I'm gonna sit here naked.

[00:07:12]GARY: When you experience un-isolation,  when you are in a state of loneliness, what's happening in the brain?

[00:07:20]BEN: So, being isolated or lonely, it's a form  of stress. We human beings are social animals.

[00:07:27]When we are taken away from our tribe,  we experience a rise in cortisol, the traditional stress response, the HPA axis  in the body, which is the body stress response system. The switch turns on, cortisol starts  flowing into the blood, and we feel stressed.

[00:07:44]NEIL: Where does the cortisol come from?

[00:07:46]BEN: So, the cortisol comes from the pituitary.

[00:07:47]NEIL: That's what I was wondering, okay.

[00:07:49]BEN: But, yeah, so, it's not healthy for  us. It's not what we're designed for, right? We exist best in groups, we survive best in  groups, and so when we are apart from our group, this sort of threat signal in the brain flips  on that says you are at risk, you are in danger.

[00:08:05]NEIL: You're getting picked off from the tribe.

[00:08:06]BEN: Right, exactly.

[00:08:07]NEIL: By a lion.

[00:08:07]BEN: Right, and what's interesting is  you look at solitary animals. There's, you know, like tigers, for instance.

[00:08:13]CHUCK: Yeah.

[00:08:13]BEN: Tigers don't exist in groups because  they're, you know, they're so effective.

[00:08:16]CHUCK: Because they don't have  to. I'm a tiger, that's what I do.

[00:08:21]NEIL: Do your head like that.

[00:08:23]CHUCK: That's right, you see how I  roll by myself? Because I'm a tiger.

[00:08:30]NEIL: So tigers are not as sociable as lions.

[00:08:33]BEN: Yeah, to my understanding, yeah.  It's sort of not my space, but yeah, I understand that tigers specifically are  solitary. And so what's interesting about that, as I mentioned, when humans are  isolated, cortisol starts going up, stress response triggered. When  tigers are placed around each other, they show that response. Cortisol starts going up.  When they are by themselves, they feel content.

[00:08:53]GARY: Because they know what  the other tigers have. They have those big teeth and those big sharp claws.

[00:08:57]BEN: Is that what I look like?  There's too many tigers in here.

[00:09:00]NEIL: They never looked in the mirror.

[00:09:01]CHUCK: Am I that bad?

[00:09:03]BEN: I mean, they're horrifying.  But they're competing for food and resources. So their brain's threat signal is  saying, hey, if you're around these tigers, you might go hungry because they're so good  at hunting, they might steal all your food and kind of deplete the area of resources  for you. And so we are wired accordingly. We are wired for the way we survive best, which  is in groups. Chemically wired. Yes, and so- NEIL: I say that only because there's other electrical signals in your brain. And  this affects the electrical signals?

[00:09:29]BEN: Yeah, it's all intertwined, you know.

[00:09:31]NEIL: I'm just being a physicist on you.

[00:09:33]BEN: Yeah, I appreciate it. No,  that is also an interesting thing, total aside, but people think the brain is all  electricity or they think it's all chemicals, but it's actually, the system works in a way  that it goes back and forth between chemicals.

[00:09:44]NEIL: Electrochemical.

[00:09:45]BEN: Yeah, yeah, so the electrical signal  travels and then chemicals come out and then- NEIL: Chemicals pick it up, yeah.

[00:09:50]BEN: So they're one and the same.

[00:09:51]NEIL: In synchrony.

[00:09:52]BEN: Yeah.

[00:09:53]NEIL: Okay.

[00:09:53]BEN: So being isolated is, as I said, a form  of stress. But on the opposite side of that, getting to this idea of, you know, we're wired  to be social, being alone makes us feel stressed.

[00:10:03]But being around others also makes us feel good.  We have these social reward systems in our brain where when we have positive interactions,  we're around others, basically these three neurotransmitters that many people have probably  heard of, oxytocin, serotonin and dopamine, those three work together to create this sense  of social reward. And specifically, when I say reward, it's not like, oh, you're getting a treat  or something. It is rewarding and reinforcing. It is pleasant to be around others. And so your brain  is telling you, this is something that you should do again, because this is pleasant. It's just  the same way that eating a delicious, nutritious meal will drive dopamine release in your brain,  because that's your brain's way of saying, hey, this is good for you. And dopamine is like the  molecule of reinforcement, right? Come back and do this again. And so the same thing happens when  we socialize. So we are we are wired to feel good around others so that we keep coming back, and  we're also wired to feel badly when we're alone.

[00:10:58]NEIL: But to be around others, and  that brings in the which chemical?

[00:11:02]BEN: Oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine.

[00:11:04]NEIL: Okay, the sweet of chemicals. And then I  am pleased by that. But if I don't do it, and those chemicals don't appear, I'm not depressed,  I just don't experience that joy. So why is the absence of it bad just because the presence  of it is good? That's a good question. Man.

[00:11:24]GARY: You're getting better at this.

[00:11:25]CHUCK: You should do a podcast.

[00:11:27]BEN: It is a good question.

[00:11:29]NEIL: It's up for you to judge  whether it's a good question.

[00:11:31]BEN: No, it is a good question because it points out an important nuance that basically  the absence of interaction, isolation, the neurobiological signature of that is a  distinct problem from the absence of the pleasure.

[00:11:44]NEIL: See, I told you it was a good question.

[00:11:45]CHUCK: It was a good question. And how long  does that take because if I'm isolated for a short period of time, let's say I'm going  on a drive by myself, it is pleasant. I would assume that the cortisol release happens when you  realize that this isolation is a sustained state.

[00:12:02]BEN: Yeah, I mean, it's probably at the point  where, I don't think anyone's really tracked that down exactly, but I would think it's at the  point where you realize it's a problem, right, and it feels wrong, something feels wrong,  and that sort of signal may be subconscious in many cases, because I think humans tend to  be pretty bad at detecting when we are lonely.

[00:12:21]CHUCK: Oh, interesting.

[00:12:21]BEN: We're very good at  detecting when we are satiated.

[00:12:24]CHUCK: Happy with other people.

[00:12:26]BEN: Right, we've had enough, it's time to go  home from the party, but we're not as good, I think it's because our lives are so complex,  right? We have all these other stressors, work, sleep, you know, there's so many reasons that  you can explain, this is why I'm not feeling so good today. My work is stressful, I didn't  get a good night of sleep, whatever it may be, and I don't think a lot of people think it's  because I haven't seen my friends in a while.

[00:12:46]That doesn't really pop into the consciousness  of today's culture, in my opinion, and you know, the truth is, the more isolated people,  the longer you spend alone, you know, depression rates increase, anxiety increases,  and as I hope we'll get to in this conversation, aside from the mood problems, there's  all sorts of health problems as well.

[00:13:33]GARY: So, what happens to the brain once it gets into a long-term loneliness? So, you've  got this rinse and repeat of chemical, electrochemical pattern going on and  on and on. What just goes on then?

[00:13:54]BEN: Okay, so, I mentioned that isolation is  stress, and it drives cortisol levels up. So, in chronic stress, when cortisol is high, elevated  for too long, what happens is cortisol loses its anti-inflammatory properties. So, let me back  up here. When you have a short period of stress, cortisol comes in, and what it can do is reduce  inflammation, which is actually a great thing, because you're facing some sort of challenge,  your body's telling you you're stressed. We've got to get this inflammation out here because  we maybe need to fight a saber-tooth tiger, whatever it may be. But over time, if the  cortisol remains high, then the tissues of the body sort of stop responding to  it, they become desensitized to it.

[00:14:32]NEIL: Is that called addiction?

[00:14:33]BEN: Addiction?

[00:14:34]NEIL: When you're addicted, you no  longer respond to the same dose.

[00:14:38]BEN: So I guess so, yeah, it's like it's in a way.

[00:14:40]NEIL: A form of addiction.

[00:14:41]BEN: Yeah. Okay. The body's tissues have become  desensitized to cortisol. And so with that, one of the body's main anti-inflammation systems is  out of order. And that's bad because it can lead to chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation,  which I hate because it's become such a sort of a social media thing where everyone's just  throwing out there, like chronic inflammation, chronic inflammation. But it actually is a serious  problem, health problem, associated with chronic stress and seemingly associated with isolation.  And so let me let me talk about a very specific mouse research study that will just sort of  explain. Yeah. So there was a researcher, Louis McCullough, at University of Houston, and  they were doing stroke research. They were looking at if you induce a specific stroke, you know,  by very scientifically, right? This isn't like, oh, the mouse had a stroke. It's like we  occluded the artery for 30 seconds exactly, right? And it produces a very reliable area of  damage in the brain because the oxygen and glucose aren't flowing. The cells die. Here's this part  of the brain that is now dead because there was no blood. They noticed that some of the mice were  experiencing much larger areas of damage. For some reason, they had more dead cells. Couldn't find an  explanation. Turns out the mice that were having worse strokes were living alone. They were singly  housed mice. Even though they were experiencing the exact same loss of blood flow, they had  worse damage in the brain. How can that be? Well, it's true what I mentioned, that chronic  isolation drives up inflammation. Well, maybe this inflammation is sort of making the  neurons less healthy and resilient to this sort of insult. And so what they did is they blocked  these inflammatory markers in the isolated mice and found that that reversed the problem. So when  they turned down the inflammation that isolation was inducing, then the mice had the same size  stroke that they would be expected to have.

[00:16:31]CHUCK: So now, if you could repeat that  experiment, but instead of inducing the stroke with the restriction of glucose or whatever,  and just have them smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol for many years, while working a job that's  killing them, I think you've had a better result.

[00:16:51]BEN: I don't know if you could  get a mouse to smoke a cigarette, but I think that would definitely  not be approved by IRB.

[00:16:59]NEIL: The French mice will smoke a cigarette.

[00:17:01]BEN: But I think it would have a  similar effect. And the reason I... NEIL: Squeak with a French accent.

[00:17:06]CHUCK: The bacoster, squeak, squeak, squeak.

[00:17:11]BEN: The reason I tell that story is because  I think it helps paint a picture of like, why is isolation actually bad? Why  is chronic inflammation bad? Well, it's to the detriment of the  function of your organs, your brain.

[00:17:25]NEIL: The two words you haven't used  yet, but we've all heard it in our lives, and it feels like it derives exactly out  of everything you're saying. And it's, are you extroverted or introverted? That's  what it sounds like you're describing. And taken to its extremes, extroverts  will live longer than introverts, with less disease and overall  greater happiness. Or would they?

[00:17:48]BEN: They do. It seems that they do, yeah. I mean,  there are studies showing that extroverts are generally happier. First off, is the chicken  or the egg? Are they so extroverted because they're so happy all the time and they just want  to talk? Or is it that they're talking more? Well, if you ask people who are extroverted to talk  more with others and be more extroverted, their mood even improves. So it seems that mood  benefits are related to the extroversion. But as for the health benefits, so this is where it  gets delicate. Because to tell the average person, go spend every afternoon socializing, right? Get  coffee with friends, see friends all the time.

[00:18:22]For someone who is more introverted,  that is not a healthy prescription.

[00:18:26]CHUCK: That's stress right there.

[00:18:28]BEN: Right, exactly.

[00:18:29]GARY: What am I going to wear? I'm not talking to him anymore. It's all sorts  of dynamics in there, yeah.

[00:18:36]BEN: But for an extrovert, that actually probably  will be good for them and extend their lives. And there's a recent report that came out on  these super-agers, these people who are... CHUCK: Live to 100.

[00:18:46]BEN: Not necessarily they're living  to 200 years old, but that they are, I think, 80 and above. But if you scan  their brains, their brains look closer to 60-year-olds. They're resistant to  aging, the traditional path of aging.

[00:18:58]CHUCK: Very cool.

[00:18:59]BEN: And what's amazing is that the one unifying  trait amongst these super-agers is that they're all extroverts and that they all claim to live  very social lives. And this paper came out and every single metric that they looked at made  perfect sense. They did all this brain imaging and it made perfect sense. They showed lower  levels of inflammation. They showed thicker certain brain areas. And it makes  sense that as you're continuing to live a social lifestyle and you're  exercising these brain areas, because socializing is indeed an exercise for  the brain. It's like a workout for your muscles.

[00:19:32]NEIL: But if it causes stress to an  introvert, that can't be good for them.

[00:19:35]BEN: Right. Okay, so we're weaving a lot of topics  together here, so I want to separate them. So, introverted people still benefit from socializing,  but the sort of threshold of where that becomes unhealthy or unpleasant is way lower. So, if  you have an introverted person, let's say, come into this room right now and pretend to be  an extrovert for 10 minutes, they're going to... CHUCK: They're going to leave exhausted.

[00:19:57]BEN: Well, no, actually, that's what you'd think.  I mean, they'd probably kick and scream on the way in, and please, I don't want to do that. But  they would actually feel better afterwards, because there's only 10 minutes. But if you  ask them to do the same thing and say, okay, for the next week of your life, pretend you're  extroverted, do just the same thing you just did, they are going to be miserable at the end  of it. But if you have an extrovert do that, just like the 10 minute period, they're going  to feel great after, and after a week they're still going to feel great. So it's like, people  talk about their social battery, you can sort of think of it as, introverts have a smaller  social battery that charges up faster and... CHUCK: And depletes faster.

[00:20:30]BEN: Well, extroverts... No, introverts, I'm  saying. Yeah, so introverts' battery charges up faster and actually depletes slower, because  then they need to be recharged less frequently.

[00:20:39]GARY: Is it about learning your own  limit as to what social interaction, because you can have, even for an extrovert,  there can be too much social interaction.

[00:20:46]BEN: Yes, absolutely. So, there's trait  extroversion measures. People often think that, oh, I can be, you know, introverted  in the morning and extroverted in the afternoon. But the truth is, everybody has  a very stable level of trait extroversion.

[00:21:00]The higher you score on extroversion, the  higher your social intake should be, basically, to make you happy. The more tolerant you are,  the larger your social battery is. And so... NEIL: The more capacity you have for it.

[00:21:13]BEN: Right, right. And the more  energy you get from interacting, the more you can tolerate before you get  frustrated and want to be alone. So, actually, in my book, I have a trait extroversion  scale that people can take and then sort of figure out where they land on that. And  then the second sort of practice that I... NEIL: It's a little quiz that you can take.

[00:21:30]BEN: Yeah, and it's 20 questions. It's  things like... Some of them are obvious, like, oh, I, you know... NEIL: How come it's not 19  questions or 17 questions?

[00:21:38]BEN: Because the scientists, in this  case, decided to be trendy, you know?

[00:21:42]NEIL: I've just... I always wondered when...  There's a nice round number of fundamental questions. They probably threw in a few  extra just to make it easy to remember.

[00:21:50]BEN: I can actually tell you why. It's  because this is one dimension of the big five personality test, and so it's 100 questions.  Each dimension is five, or a fifth, so it's 20.

[00:21:58]CHUCK: You're right, because it's scaled to one  to five. So it just... You scale to 100. So make friends easily, warm up quickly to others. I  show feelings when I'm happy. I have a lot of fun. I laugh a lot. I take charge. I have a  strong personality. I know how to captivate people. I see myself as a good teacher or  leader. I can talk to others into doing things. I'm the first to act. I'm easy to get  to know. I don't keep others at a distance. I reveal a lot about myself. I often get caught  up in excitement. I'm very enthusiastic. I have talent for influencing people. I don't  wait for others to lead the way. I don't hold back my opinions. And I have an assertive  personality. That sounds like an asshole.

[00:22:38]BEN: Some of them are interesting, aren't they?

[00:22:42]CHUCK: I'm just saying. I don't want to hang out with that person. No, I'm joking. I  am that person. Oh man, that's scary.

[00:22:50]GARY: That's perfection.

[00:22:51]CHUCK: I don't think so. I think  there's degrees to that. Because actually every single thing there, that  is me. But in different gradations.

[00:23:02]GARY: You've got more of one.

[00:23:04]CHUCK: I've got more of one than  the other. But I've got them all.

[00:23:07]NEIL: How does the Autism Spectrum  dovetail to this description?

[00:23:10]BEN: Introversion, extroversion?

[00:23:11]NEIL: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:23:12]BEN: That's a good question.

[00:23:14]NEIL: See, I got another good question.

[00:23:15]GARY: I know, you're on fire.

[00:23:16]BEN: I'll admit before I  answer this, I haven't read any literature on this specifically.  Will you answer the question for you?

[00:23:23]CHUCK: Okay, I'm sorry.

[00:23:24]BEN: I think I understood  how that was intended to be.

[00:23:26]CHUCK: Yes, exactly. I try my best not to do a  real impersonation of them, because, you know.

[00:23:32]BEN: I would postulate that those on the  autism spectrum can land anywhere on this continuum of extroversion, right?  It's not necessarily, you know, extroversion is as described there.  It's really sort of a personality.

[00:23:45]And, you know, I've met plenty of people who are  diagnosed with autism and are very extroverted.

[00:23:49]CHUCK: What about the person who is introverted  until they're extroverted? So they have certain situations, and I know people like this. They  don't have a word to say. And then when they're around me and one other friend, they're freaking  nuts. Like, I mean, they're mad. They're like a madman. And then you get them outside. It's like  the frog. The frog is just like, hello, my baby.

[00:24:19]Hello, my dog. Right? And then he says, hey, I  got this frog. He's like, ribbit. So what is that?

[00:24:25]BEN: Well, I'm not really  sure. I mean, I think that... NEIL: Is this a frog in the top hat and  cane? Yeah. Is this the one I'm remembering?

[00:24:30]CHUCK: And he's like, oh my god, I got  this frog. And he sings and dances.

[00:24:34]Right. And then as soon as the people  leave, then he's like, hello, my baby.

[00:24:40]GARY: See, there are performers  and athletes like that.

[00:24:43]NEIL: Yeah.

[00:24:44]GARY: I knew players before the game. Nothing going on. Cross the white  line, go out on the field.

[00:24:52]NEIL: Onto the pitch. Yeah.

[00:24:54]GARY: I said that right? On the  pitch, on the field. Thank you.

[00:24:56]NEIL: He said field.

[00:24:57]GARY: Yeah, I know.

[00:24:58]CHUCK: He's been here too long.

[00:25:00]GARY: They become a very different person. Very, very different. So it's that kind of almost  light switch moment that Chuck's talking about.

[00:25:08]CHUCK: So what I'm saying is if that  person who's an introvert but has their extroverted kind of supercharge  and they get that all the time, will that make them the same as an  extrovert being happy over a period of time?

[00:25:23]BEN: Okay, so I think what you're getting at is  all this neuroscience that I'm describing about, like how we benefit from interactions and  how we don't benefit from being isolated, it all fits within the complex nature of our  lives and how we're influenced on a daily basis. And so we're trying to fit these like  really specific neuroscience pieces, puzzle pieces into interactions that are constantly  changing. And so one of the sort of exercises that I encourage is for people to do introspection  and ask themselves, like reflect on, how was the experience I just had, the social experience? I  call this idea social journaling. You come home from an interaction and you jot down some notes.  You could use a template. I have a template in the book too of like a bunch of prompts, things that  matter. By understanding what social situations you feel the most comfortable in, you can start  to sort of curate your social diet, you know, the interactions you're taking in. So it sounds like  your friend feels super comfortable and capable of being themselves and being really outgoing in this  certain context that you're describing, and maybe, you know, certain athletes, when they're around  their teammates, they may feel like they can open up. And so that's important, you know, to find  that identity and self-expression is important.

[00:26:33]And I can guarantee that if you ask your  friend to, you know, on a scale of one to ten, if you gave them a survey after you hung out,  how much did you enjoy this experience? How's your mood? They probably feel much better  after those interactions where they are more extroverted and they are more sociable than the  interactions where they're sitting there quietly.

[00:26:50]CHUCK: Okay.

[00:26:50]GARY: We know all social interactions aren't the  same. There's different levels, there's different engagements. How does the brain react to an  in-person encounter as opposed to a virtual?

[00:27:02]NEIL: And before you get to that, surely  there's a difference between walking to a room of people you know and walking to a  room of entire strangers. And personally, I'm completely comfortable in a room of strangers.  There's just more people to meet and to learn what they do. That's how I view it. But I know people  who just are only comfortable with friends and they don't see that as an opportunity or anything  positive. Yet, it still fulfills the tribe sense that we're around other people and that should  boost your chemicals, the good chemicals.

[00:27:34]BEN: Yeah.

[00:27:35]CHUCK: See, I'm just the opposite. I  want to walk into a room of strangers because they don't know me and they're  like, they don't know what an a-hole I am. All the people who know me are  just like, God, that guy's here.

[00:27:49]BEN: I think what you're asking about, it  really comes down to an element of extroversion, right? I believe one of the questions on  there was like, I make friends easily, right? And so more extroverted people will feel  more comfortable in a room full of strangers.

[00:28:02]NEIL: It's built into the understanding of scale.

[00:28:04]BEN: Yeah.

[00:28:05]NEIL: Okay. So now, virtual real.  What's the difference there? By the way, I no longer value the virtual conversation  today as I did during COVID. During COVID, oh wow, that's cool, I can still, and I  realized there was something missing. Only after the fact am I saying that was not  a real interaction. I couldn't smell you, I didn't see you, I don't know what you're  wearing, I couldn't read your moods. It was not an interaction. I might as well just  looking at a picture in a book. And so.

[00:28:38]CHUCK: You needed a better camera.

[00:28:40]GARY: It was the best we could do.

[00:28:43]NEIL: So have you studied what the  brain is doing in either of those cases?

[00:28:47]BEN: Yeah, so as for virtual versus in person.  You know, we humans have been living as a social species for, you know, and our ancestors  included, millions of years. We are built for detecting and processing and understanding  social cues that we are giving one another, right? Different facial expressions, vocal tone,  body language. There's so much information just in this room right now, right? And by the way,  that's one of the reasons why I mentioned it's like an exercise for your brain. You're constantly  processing all this information. In the absence of those social cues, like when we are messaging  or interacting with someone on Twitter or X, or when you're on FaceTime, you know, you can sort  of think about how each of these various media of interaction strip away certain social cues,  right? When we go from in-person to video, yeah, it's like, oh, I can see them, I can hear them.  It's realistic, but it's not because you cannot make eye contact. It's impossible. You cannot  smell them. There are smells that your brain is probably detecting in the background. You cannot  see their entire body. You know, you can only see whatever this picture. And so you're missing some  of that information that feeds your brain. When you go to a phone call, you can't even see them  anymore. Facial expressions, body language out the door. You go to a text message, you can't  hear their tone of voice. It's just the words.

[00:30:00]And so my belief is that as we strip away  this sort of texture of our interactions, we're losing a lot of the important signals that  tell our brains we are interacting with the human.

[00:30:12]NEIL: So that fully accounts for my  reactions. I found them much less fulfilling.

[00:30:17]BEN: And that's also shown in the  data. So there are, like I said, there's not much data on like brain responses,  but there are data on mood responses. And people basically don't feel as good after  interacting online. And it seems like the less lifelike the interaction is, for instance,  texting is less lifelike than video call, the worse the benefits are. So they don't  feel quite as good, but they still feel better having less lifelike interactions  than they do having no interaction at all.

[00:30:42]CHUCK: That's why I gave up my real doll.

[00:30:45]GARY: So is there a science behind people being likable? A proven science? Or is that  just like, it's the way they look?

[00:30:54]BEN: That's part of it, actually. But yeah,  there is a proven science. There's a lot of psychology research on this, about  what makes people likable. Sort of an arguably shallow topic to study. But it's  important, because it may sound shallow, but the truth is being well-liked  is very important. Obviously for... NEIL: It's how you get elected.

[00:31:11]BEN: It's how you get elected. It's back in  the day when we were like, 100,000 years ago, a couple hundred thousand years ago, it was how  you stayed alive by being with your tribe and not being kicked out for being annoying and disliked.  So, just giving Chuck a moment to speak on that.

[00:31:26]CHUCK: That's how I've  learned to survive on my own.

[00:31:30]NEIL: I'm just trying to picture  the annoying person in the cave getting kicked out. How do  you be annoying in a cave?

[00:31:36]CHUCK: It's a closed area, so all I can say  is it has to do with what you ate earlier.

[00:31:41]GARY: Is that true?

[00:31:42]BEN: So, there's a lot of ways I could  describe this. Let me put it this way.

[00:31:47]There's a research study that I really liked  because they had people come in to the lab and interact with either a likable character or  an unlikable character. And they didn't know the person they were interacting with was  an actress, but she was instructed by the researchers to do one of two things. In the  likable condition, she was super attentive.

[00:32:04]NEIL: She was the same person.

[00:32:05]BEN: Same person, yeah. So in the  likable condition, she was really polite and obviously made a lot of eye contact,  listened a lot, had a good interaction, was very just supportive of them in general. In the  unlikable condition, they instructed her to avoid eye contact, to speak about controversial  topics, wait for the other person to voice their opinion, and then purposely voice the  opposite opinion, to not be attentive, to actually set an alarm on her phone as if it  was ringing, and then basically from there on, sitting on her phone and ignoring the person. To  me, that sounds pretty unlikable, right? You would definitely have a different experience interacting  with that person. And I like to share that, one, because I think it's funny that these scientists  had to come up with, like, how do we make this person unlikable? And that's what they did, but  that's all based on research. You know, people view all those characteristics as unlikable. But  it reveals a lot about how we sort of interpret others. And, you know, there are brain areas,  most of them are in the prefrontal cortex, that are sort of devoted to determining how  well-liked, or how much you like someone else.

[00:33:11]NEIL: Catch me up on something.  There's the frontal cortex, then there's a prefrontal cortex,  there's a cortex on top of the cortex.

[00:33:18]BEN: So the prefrontal cortex is like  the foremost part of the frontal cortex.

[00:33:21]NEIL: Why isn't that just the frontal cortex?

[00:33:22]BEN: The frontal cortex involves, includes the prefrontal cortex. The  frontal cortex is just this whole thing.

[00:33:28]CHUCK: Oh, the whole thing is the frontal cortex.

[00:33:30]BEN: Yeah, the whole thing.

[00:33:31]NEIL: Okay, okay, thank you for clarifying  that, because I'm thinking the prefrontal cortex is some extra other place, but it's just  an area of the frontal cortex. Is that fair?

[00:33:40]BEN: Yeah, it's the form, it's  the front most area of the cortex.

[00:33:44]CHUCK: So it's not like your oven, like  there's a dial and then it says prefrontal cortex, and then full cortex, and  frontal cortex, and then, yeah.

[00:33:51]BEN: Yeah, it's the very front, and that area is  one of the areas that's very evolved in humans.

[00:33:56]NEIL: Yes, seems to me part of what it is to  be likable is, you perceive that the other person cares about you. In some way they'll ask  about you, and at some level that's empathy, right? The capacity to even be able to do that.  Is that a measurable thing in your brain research?

[00:34:15]BEN: Empathy?

[00:34:15]NEIL: Yes.

[00:34:16]BEN: Oh yeah, yeah. There's a lot of research on empathy. Some of the research I've  done myself at Stanford is on empathy.

[00:34:20]NEIL: Would war even be possible  if everyone were empathetic? I'm just thinking of these things taken to extremes, the absence or existence accounts for  practically everything that disrupts society.

[00:34:34]BEN: Yeah, you know, I'm reading  one of your books right now, and you use the term Goldilocks Zone to refer to... NEIL: It's in the field, the Goldilocks Zone, yes.

[00:34:42]BEN: But it's the idea that it's  in the perfect place, right?

[00:34:44]NEIL: For planets.

[00:34:46]BEN: Yeah, if the planet were any further  from the sun, we would have frozen lakes, and if we were any closer, we would burn up,  right? That's kind of how I view empathy. I think we have empathy in the Goldilocks Zone,  that if we had any more... And we... Let's say, for instance, you saw, you know, I broke  my finger, and looking at my broken finger, you felt the full sensation  of your finger being broken.

[00:35:06]NEIL: That would be terrible.

[00:35:07]BEN: That's too much empathy, right?  Because if you wanted to help me, you would have to look away while you're  bandaging up my finger, right? It would just be too much. It's way more than is necessary to  motivate you to support me. And that, by the way, is sort of the purpose of empathy. You  could tell someone's hurt, you're like, oh gosh, let me help. Or if you see they're  happy, it's a way to communicate emotions non-verbally. Empathy is also positive. But if  you had no empathy, you saw my broken finger and you're like, who cares? You would have  no motivation to support me or to help me.

[00:35:36]NEIL: That's psychopathic at the extreme  limit of that. You harm someone and you don't even care that you harm them or feel  any of the pain that they might experience.

[00:35:46]BEN: Right. And humans, on average,  of course, there's a range of empathy.

[00:35:51]NEIL: That's psychopath, sociopath, I think.

[00:35:52]BEN: Psychopath, no, psychopath.

[00:35:54]NEIL: Psychopath, is it?

[00:35:54]BEN: Okay. So humans, on average, of course,  there's a range. Most people fall into this range where we feel some empathy for other  people, but it's not so much that we're totally taking on the full sensation. And what's  important on the note of war is that, you know, I mentioned earlier that the brain sort of evolved  to treat those in our in-group differently.

[00:36:14]Empathy is one of those things. We are, there's  plenty of studies showing that people's brains, the brain areas that are associated with empathy,  they will activate more for others that they view as in their in-group. And it doesn't really  matter, like, really what that in-group is.

[00:36:30]It can be race, it can be religion, it could  be political affiliation. You know, there's all sorts of things. And so when we see others as  unlike us, and there's this concept of self-other overlap. If you picture two, like a Venn diagram,  right? You're one circle, the other person is the other circle. How much of an overlap are those  circles? The further apart those circles are, the less empathy you're going to experience  and the less activity in those empathy areas.

[00:36:52]NEIL: The easier it will be for you to kill them.

[00:36:55]BEN: Right, the less painful it will be for  you to witness that I should have said it, yes. And so in war, this is  a clear outgroup situation.

[00:37:03]NEIL: With propaganda to even, that even  feeds the separation of the Venn diagram.

[00:37:08]BEN: Right, and what that does is it  basically dehumanizes your brain's representation of that person, that it doesn't  respond, like I mentioned on social media, right? We don't see social cues, the brain says,  I don't know if I'm interacting with a person, this could be, this is a screen, right?  If you can get a person to dissociate the human so far from themselves  that they see nothing in common, then those empathy areas aren't going to come  online and it's going to be easy to harm them.

[00:37:31]CHUCK: So then social media does that add to  the desensitization of empathy in others because you're not having a human to human interaction?  There's this technology in between you?

[00:37:47]BEN: So we don't know that yet, but I  published a paper on this a couple years ago, I called it the Virtual Disengagement Hypothesis.

[00:37:53]NEIL: And what journal does those go in?

[00:37:54]BEN: So that journal is called Neuroscience.

[00:37:56]NEIL: Duh, okay. Good journal title to publish it.

[00:38:01]CHUCK: It's a little on the nose, but okay.

[00:38:02]BEN: It felt like it was appropriate for the  topic. But yeah, and so this idea that my student Maria Tabaris and I published is that when we  are not experiencing these social cues online, there's no reason that the empathy  areas in our brain should turn on.

[00:38:14]And so this could potentially explain why  there's such hostility online. I mean, raise your hand if you've  experienced harassment online.

[00:38:23]NEIL: Hostility you know would never  happen one-on-one. You just know this.

[00:38:26]BEN: Exactly.

[00:38:27]NEIL: Even with people with highly different  views from you, it just degrades immediately.

[00:38:33]BEN: Yeah, and by the way, there's a  whole research field on this. It's called computer-mediated communication. That's what they  called it in the 80s before social media and all this came about. So when the computer came  about, they started doing research where they would have people interact through computers,  which is what we now do almost every day, pretty much every day. And they found that people  behaved differently. They were more unfiltered, they would be swearing, they would be  hostile, and that wasn't like the finding, but it was part of what they saw, and  they didn't have an explanation for it.

[00:39:01]GARY: Because modern society likes to medicate  things, are there good and bad medications that are being taken that will affect people's  isolation or inclination to be more sociable?

[00:39:15]BEN: You mean drugs?

[00:39:17]NEIL: Just say it.

[00:39:19]GARY: No. Drugs. No, you can't make me.

[00:39:23]BEN: I didn't know if you were talking about  like behavioral interventions or like drugs.

[00:39:26]GARY: Two drugs, yeah.

[00:39:27]BEN: Yeah, like, okay. Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's a lot of research on, and  not very well recognized research.

[00:39:33]CHUCK: I know, because I'm the one who did it.

[00:39:36]BEN: Subject. On how drugs influence the  social brain. And you know, there's research, for instance, on painkillers,  right? When you take a painkiller, we all know that painkillers, you know, this  is over-the-counter stuff, can reduce our pain, obviously. But did you know it can also  reduce your empathy for someone else's pain? So if you have painkillers  in your system, and you're asked... NEIL: Why am I only learning about this now?

[00:39:58]BEN: Right.

[00:39:58]GARY: Because I only just asked a question.

[00:40:00]BEN: Because Gary had a great question. Okay. It  also reduces social pain, too, by the way, because there's a significant overlap in the brain between  physical pain and social pain, how it's processed.

[00:40:09]So if you take acetaminophen and someone insults  you, you're not probably going to feel as bad.

[00:40:14]NEIL: Really?

[00:40:15]CHUCK: Yeah. Can you take a bottle  of acetaminophen? Does that help?

[00:40:20]BEN: For a comedy performance,  I'd say, drown out that thought.

[00:40:24]NEIL: For a hushful crowd.

[00:40:25]CHUCK: Exactly. Bring it on, bitches. I'm sorry.

[00:40:29]BEN: And the other thing, too, is that not only  does it reduce your social pain, but also the pain of others. So if you are on acetaminophen  and you see someone who is socially excluded, for instance, from a group, you're probably  going to feel less bad for them. It actually sort of blunts the brain's ability to turn  on these areas, brain areas, that process and make us feel pain. And the emotional  component of pain, not the physical part.

[00:40:56]NEIL: I don't know if that's unusual or  right. But I wanted to be a protector of the geeks. Because geeks, back in my day, before  geeks were the richest people in the world, they were completely abused by the football  quarterback and get wedgied up on the thing.

[00:41:14]CHUCK: That's still happening.  That's still happening.

[00:41:16]GARY: Don't worry, I'm pretty  sure that's still happening.

[00:41:18]NEIL: But I was a little bit bigger than most  people, and I was probably physically fit a year and a half before my chronological age.  So I could kick your ass if I had to. But I was also a geek. So if I ever saw someone  who was under socialized, getting abused, it would be almost an irrational level  of rage I would feel. And I want to just, this is where the superhero feelings come in.  I want to just jump in the middle there and just pummel the person who's abusing  one of my people, one of my geeks.

[00:41:53]CHUCK: The incredible nerd hulk.

[00:41:55]BEN: That's pretty much what  you are in real life now.

[00:42:01]CHUCK: Oh, I know.

[00:42:01]NEIL: I guess this is, protecting my  tribe, I guess, it's still yet another step to want to harm someone who,  I mean, I could just separate them, but I felt this urge to just do what  the superheroes do to the bad guys.

[00:42:15]CHUCK: Yeah.

[00:42:16]BEN: Well, yeah, I mean, that's  entirely natural for a human being, right? You want to protect your group, and  sometimes that means eliminating the threat.

[00:42:24]NEIL: That's very militaristic, say,  eliminating the threat. We talked about... CHUCK: That was very Pete headset on you.

[00:42:31]BEN: Yeah, sorry.

[00:42:31]CHUCK: Sorry, guys. Optimum lethality.

[00:42:35]GARY: So we've gone through painkillers  and how they can affect... So what are the positive drugs? I mean, is it just  alcohol, or what else are we going to go to?

[00:42:45]BEN: So I would actually argue that  alcohol is not a positive drug.

[00:42:47]CHUCK: That's definitely not positive. I mean,  it feels positive when you're consuming it.

[00:42:52]GARY: So it's short-term.

[00:42:53]BEN: So alcohol, it relieves anxiety. There's a  study that showed that for every drink consumed, people show a 4% reduction in  social anxiety. And actually, the way alcohol works in the brain is  it turns down the activity of neurons, and it's been shown to do so specifically  in the amygdala. It's emotional.

[00:43:11]NEIL: Fight or flight. When you say drinking,  you mean like the classical drink. So a shot, a glass of wine, a bottle of beer. 4% is not much.

[00:43:18]BEN: But if you have five of them, now  we're talking 20%. That's pretty good.

[00:43:24]CHUCK: And at the same time,  does it lower inhibition as well?

[00:43:27]BEN: Alcohol makes your brain cells better  at turning each other's activity down. And so what happens is what your brain's normally  doing that all the time, the activity of your brain goes down. And when this happens in,  say, the prefrontal cortex, normally a lot of your behavioral inhibitions stem from the  prefrontal cortex. You might get an urge to, you know, lean over and kiss someone or start  a fight. And your prefrontal cortex is like, that's not a good idea. Let's not do that.  But those higher level processing areas, their activity is going down. And so they're not quite  as effective at shutting down those impulses.

[00:44:00]NEIL: So it's not just, are you more sociable?  Are you more likely to get into a fight?

[00:44:04]BEN: Yes.

[00:44:04]NEIL: Both of those can happen here.

[00:44:06]BEN: Right, exactly. That's why I argue that it  actually makes us less effective interactors.

[00:44:10]It reduces social anxiety. It reduces how  much distress we feel in interactions. But what that also means is that, for instance,  when people are shown negative social cues in research labs and they're given alcohol, their  amygdala responds less. So they show less of an emotional reaction to negative social cues.  So now let's think about putting that in the context of a bar. You go to kiss someone,  they're showing you a face that tells you, don't kiss me. Your amygdala is not saying,  this is bad. You want it. Right, exactly.

[00:44:39]CHUCK: You can't resist this. Give us a kiss.

[00:44:44]BEN: You are failing to properly interpret their  emotional cues, right? Or you try to, you know, whatever. You say a really inappropriate joke  and it doesn't land and it's insulting and you hurt someone's feelings, you're much more  likely to brush it off. Or you just actually did something damaging to a relationship. And  so it may make us feel less, but it probably actually makes us act worse because we could  become less considerate of others' emotions.

[00:45:07]GARY: So you've done research with Molly.

[00:45:09]BEN: MDMA.

[00:45:10]GARY: MDMA. Does that have a positive  effect on people's ability to be sociable?

[00:45:17]BEN: Yeah, so the full name by  the way, since we're going there, 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine.  That's why it's shortened to MDMA.

[00:45:24]GARY: I didn't want to show off and say that.

[00:45:26]NEIL: We all knew that.

[00:45:27]BEN: Yeah, it's just a fun one to throw out  there. You memorize that, you have to use it.

[00:45:30]NEIL: One more time, let's hear it.

[00:45:32]BEN: 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine.

[00:45:33]NEIL: Got it.

[00:45:34]BEN: And you may notice the last  couple of syllables, methamphetamine.

[00:45:36]CHUCK: Well, we know what that is.

[00:45:38]BEN: It's very similar. It acts  similarly in the brain as well.

[00:45:41]NEIL: Unlike alcohol.

[00:45:42]BEN: Unlike alcohol, MDMA makes people  much more social. It's pro-social. In fact, it's also been shown to increase empathy. It's  one of the only drugs on the planet that's called an empathogen because it enhances  empathy. And actually, my research... NEIL: Empathogen.

[00:45:58]BEN: Empathogen.

[00:45:59]NEIL: That's sneaky there.

[00:46:00]BEN: Yeah, right.

[00:46:01]NEIL: Instead of a pathogen.

[00:46:02]BEN: Yes. Empathogen. Thank you. Opposite.  Yeah. In my own research at Stanford, in mice, not in humans, showed  that the empathogenic properties, this ability to increase empathy, is related  to this serotonin release that it drives.

[00:46:16]CHUCK: It does the same thing in us too, right?

[00:46:19]BEN: It does the same thing. We just don't know  yet in humans whether the specific signal that we track down in mice is also the same in humans  and irresponsible for the empathic properties.

[00:46:28]CHUCK: Now, do the mice break out glow sticks and  start listening to music and just dance non-stop?

[00:46:34]BEN: No, they just like hanging out around  each other a lot more. It's really funny.

[00:46:37]So some research that I didn't do, but another  colleague of mine, Boris Heifetz, did. If you have an arena and there's a cup here with a mouse  underneath it and a cup over here with an object, an inanimate object, and you let a mouse run  free in this little chamber, most mice will spend more time near the other mouse. But if  you give that mouse in the middle ecstasy, they will spend way more time over here with the  other mouse. But the thing I love about this is if you give the mouse under the cup ecstasy too,  so now they both have ecstasy in their veins, this mouse, even though it's the one in control,  will spend even more time near that other mouse.

[00:47:09]CHUCK: And they're both just up against  the cup like, I love you so much.

[00:47:14]NEIL: Wait, just to be clear, forgive my drug  illiteracy here, ecstasy is the same as MDMA?

[00:47:21]BEN: Ecstasy is technically the street version.

[00:47:23]CHUCK: If you get the good stuff it is.

[00:47:26]BEN: I should use MDMA, but people know the  word ecstasy. Ecstasy is the street version, which can also be mixed with other things.

[00:47:32]NEIL: Right, thank you for clarifying that.

[00:47:34]BEN: So yeah, I'm referring to MDMA, the drug, MDMA specifically, because obviously  in the lab we are using pure MDMA.

[00:47:38]NEIL: So what's the downside of the drug?

[00:47:40]CHUCK: The love drug.

[00:47:40]BEN: Oh, I mean, what it does is it drives  the release of these three neurotransmitters, serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine,  mostly serotonin and dopamine. And by the way, just want to mention that this is  also the same neurotransmitters that are released in social reward.  And so it can kind of make sense why MDMA enhances those feelings of  connectedness. It's acting on those.

[00:48:02]NEIL: And by the way, there's a writer  called norephrine. Is that what you said?

[00:48:05]BEN: Norepinephrine.

[00:48:08]CHUCK: Nore?

[00:48:09]BEN: Yeah, well, it's noradrenaline,  but it's norepinephrine.

[00:48:11]NEIL: Norepinephrine.

[00:48:13]CHUCK: Norepinephrine. No, noro.

[00:48:15]BEN: Nor, N-O-R.

[00:48:15]CHUCK: Oh, just nor? Norepinephrine. Okay.

[00:48:18]NEIL: You're saying it like you  knew what you were talking about.

[00:48:20]CHUCK: No, I thought that's what he said.

[00:48:21]NEIL: What's the downside?

[00:48:23]BEN: There's, okay, there's a lot of downsides.  I mean, it's not a drug that like, there's no future for this drug to be taken daily like a  prescription, right, because it's too toxic. It would not be good for you. It's been shown to  disrupt the serotonin-producing neurons in the brain with repeated use. It's a really intense,  powerful drug that's not necessarily clean for the brain, but it's also sort of demonized. It's  funny because there's some research where a study decades ago gave MDMA to primates, and they  found that after giving them some amount of doses, they looked at their brains and they found  just holes in their brains. The brains were like eaten away. Turns out, the study was  published, the news broke and everything.

[00:49:02]They came back later and they were like, whoops,  we mislabeled our vials. That was actually meth that we were giving them. And so it's actually  not quite as toxic as meth, but there's this kind of public impression that it will put holes  in your brain and stuff, which is not true.

[00:49:15]CHUCK: There are no holes in my brain.

[00:49:18]GARY: So is there a chance that  the lonely epidemic that we're going through can find a medication that works?

[00:49:26]NEIL: Oh, good question.

[00:49:27]BEN: I think so. I mean, so the purpose  of the research I did at Stanford was to figure out what part of this MDMA drug that's  doing all these things in the brain and body, what specific signal is driving the  empathy. And we figured it out. It's serotonin release in the nucleus accumbens, this  one particular brain area. So theoretically, if you had a person who wanted to increase  their empathy, one of the only ways to do that would be to take MDMA. But MDMA has  all these off-target effects. I mentioned methamphetamine. It's a stimulant. It can  have... There are sensitive populations who should not be having this drug. You know, it can  be distress on the heart, you know. And of course, we think of the canonical person on MDMA. They're  grinding their teeth, they're running around, you know, their pupils are dilated, right?  This is the stimulant component of it. But if we could just have a drug that only stimulates  serotonin release in the nucleus accumbens, this one signal that seems to be the part that drives  empathy, maybe that's actually a feasible drug.

[00:50:22]NEIL: It's a future in the  pharmaceutical portfolio.

[00:50:26]BEN: And maybe that could be something  that people take daily if they wanted to, right? And so it becomes a really  difficult philosophical question of, like, could this be a cure to our loneliness  issue? Because it's like, well, do we need to turn to pharmacological agents for this?  I don't think so. You know, I think that... CHUCK: Go to Bingo.

[00:50:45]GARY: Get a pet.

[00:50:46]BEN: Yeah.

[00:50:46]GARY: I know it sounds a little glib, but  pets have been seen to be so therapeutic, especially for people that are lonely.

[00:50:53]BEN: Yes, specifically dogs, in fact,  because of similar reason that... NEIL: Because cats don't  give a rat's ass about you.

[00:50:58]BEN: Well, think about the tiger, right? Cats, solitary? Yep. Dogs are, through  the last 30 or 40,000 years, humans and dogs have evolved together and  so dogs have taken on all these social... NEIL: And dogs were, and  wolves are social animals.

[00:51:13]BEN: Yeah.

[00:51:14]NEIL: Yeah. So the pets play a role, yes, as  we know. We all know from airplane riding, because people bring the emotional support pets.

[00:51:21]CHUCK: But there are people who have a deficiency  of serotonin or maybe a deficiency of dopamine, so wouldn't that help people like that?  Just to... I mean, there are already SSRIs out there and there are also dopamine  reuptake inhibitors, but wouldn't that help somebody that's in that position where they can't  produce it on their own or enough of it or...?

[00:51:43]BEN: Yeah, I mean, it's not like  a dopamine deficiency or serotonin deficiency is like clearly  linked to any one condition.

[00:51:50]CHUCK: Oh, okay.

[00:51:51]BEN: Yeah, so like it used to be thought that  like low serotonin was the cause of depression, not the case. By the way, that doesn't mean SSRIs  aren't effective, because the increasing serotonin can act on other systems in the brain. It doesn't  have to be that it's low serotonin. Anyway, so... CHUCK: So it's not isolated that  way that you can just say, okay, and now you take this and boom, I got you.

[00:52:09]NEIL: SSRI?

[00:52:09]BEN: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.

[00:52:11]NEIL: That's what that means.

[00:52:12]BEN: Yeah, so SSRIs increase  serotonin signaling between neurons.

[00:52:16]NEIL: Selectively?

[00:52:17]BEN: Selective to serotonin, correct. By the way,  I was going to say this, when we think about dogs, maybe they could fill that void, having a  pet. So when you look into the eyes of a dog, both you and the dog will probably produce  oxytocin. That's what research says.

[00:52:32]NEIL: That will not happen  in a wolf. I assure you.

[00:52:35]BEN: And it's true that it will not happen in a  wolf. I'm not sure if the human produces oxytocin.

[00:52:39]The wolf definitely does not. But the reason  that matters is because I mentioned earlier that we have the benefits of interaction and the  detriment of isolation. When we think about the benefit of interaction, oxytocin is one of those  signals that we think of oxytocin as this love hormone and this social bonding, which it is.  It drives that social reward, which makes us feel good around people. But oxytocin also has a  bunch of therapeutic properties around the body.

[00:53:05]So it's actually been referred to as nature's  medicine by certain researchers, because it can be anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective. There's  research showing that it can support immune function, bone growth, all sorts of things,  which it makes sense because when you are, let's say, raising a child, you are producing a  ton of oxytocin, bonding with the child. Also, it's important for you to be healthy to protect  the child. And when you have a romantic partner and you are in position to reproduce,  it's important for you to be healthy so you can successfully reproduce. It's like an  evolutionary mechanism so that when we are connecting with others, our bodies are becoming  more healthy. And so, on the topic of dogs, dogs have been shown to drive oxytocin release in  humans. So if you're looking to sort of supplement some of that connection you've lost out on, a  dog could actually hit that molecular mechanism.

[00:53:51]GARY: So if we're looking at long-term  loneliness being detrimental to your health, possibly even taking you all the way to the finish  line early, is it patient heal thyself? Or are we in need of community? Are we in need of the  support groups? If so, where are they going to come from? Because if there's an epidemic of  loneliness, then are we in need of these things?

[00:54:17]BEN: I think it's the kind of thing that we  can do on our own. I think that actually it's been a lot of external forces in society and  culture that have driven us to this point. I tend to blame personally this, I call it the  automation of everything. You can do anything now online. Our first podcast was online.  You can go to the bank and take out money with an ATM without talking to a person. You  can order groceries without interacting with your community. You can even tour a house  on Zillow without going to the house. You can do telemedicine. You can do anything online  basically. And we have, I think, stripped away all of these sort of micro-interactions  that we used to have in our lives, they're just no longer there. And so we've kind  of been like persuaded into this position by the convenience of these services. But I think that's  kind of happened without us really noticing. Plus, you had COVID in there and then the whole  thing explodes. But what says that we can't get ourselves out? You know, I think that if  people understood the significance of isolation in terms of the health effects and the way it  affects their brains, I think that they would care more. It's almost like if we were living in  a world where nobody understood what it's like to have sleep deprivation. What would society be? How  much different would the world be if science had not discovered that getting four hours of sleep  a night is bad for you, right? Or that eating an unhealthy diet is bad for you? Like, I think we've  gotten there with sort of educating the general public about the importance of these various  features. But I don't think that people truly understand the significance of socializing in that  context. And so I'm hoping that maybe we can... NEIL: So that public awareness is  being presented in your latest book.

[00:55:52]BEN: That's right.

[00:55:53]NEIL: Is this your first book?

[00:55:54]BEN: That is my first book.

[00:55:55]NEIL: And your only book?

[00:55:55]BEN: And my only book, yeah.

[00:55:56]NEIL: Okay. The brain is an endless frontier.

[00:55:59]BEN: It is.

[00:56:00]NEIL: So this surely will not be your last book.

[00:56:03]BEN: That's right. Definitely not.

[00:56:04]NEIL: Why Brains Need Friends, The  Neuroscience of Social Connection.

[00:56:10]BEN: And that book is actually exactly what I  just described. And it's accessible for anyone.

[00:56:15]The first page is a no big words clause. It's  my clause where I say, I will not use big words.

[00:56:19]NEIL: You guys are especially guilty of that.

[00:56:21]BEN: I know. I'm mad at my field for it.

[00:56:23]NEIL: Good.

[00:56:24]BEN: I'm mad at all of science for  it. The jargon is unnecessary. But it's meant for anybody to read and understand.

[00:56:28]NEIL: We've got good words in  my people. Big bang, black hole.

[00:56:32]BEN: You also mentioned that in your book.  You know, quark is a, you know, there's some.

[00:56:36]NEIL: But if they're fun words, even if they're a  little obscure, they're not multi-syllabic words.

[00:56:41]CHUCK: Like dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

[00:56:43]BEN: Or norepinephrine or preformethylene-dioxymethamphetamine.  That one's out of control, honestly.

[00:56:49]NEIL: So what is the cost to our  life expectancy if you're lonely?

[00:56:53]BEN: So there are studies tracking hundreds  of thousands of people over like a decade.

[00:56:57]NEIL: That's a good number. That's a good time.

[00:56:59]BEN: A strong number. And a good time. Yeah, for  a decade. And just looking at pure mortality, who died. And what they found is that  those who are the most socially isolated were 50% more likely to die by any  cause within that decade window.

[00:57:15]NEIL: That's quite an indictment.

[00:57:16]BEN: It is. And I mean, there's a lot more  than that, right? Those who are isolated are at higher risk of dementia, I see. Yeah.  Cardiac disease, diabetes, interestingly.

[00:57:28]NEIL: Because there's not someone else  in the place saying, Don't eat that.

[00:57:31]GARY: Yeah.

[00:57:33]NEIL: There's always the annoying other person you're living with that's  checking out what you eat.

[00:57:36]BEN: And that's actually interesting, too,  because there's studies showing that in people diagnosed with colorectal cancer, those who  are married are 28% more likely to survive.

[00:57:46]There are certain forms of cancer that being  married is actually a stronger predictor of life of survival than chemotherapy. And part of  it, by the way, that doesn't mean chemotherapy doesn't work. Part of it is because their  partner is saying, Please do chemotherapy.

[00:57:58]NEIL: Plus, even in unhappy marriages, they're probably yelling at each other all  the time. You're definitely not lonely there.

[00:58:03]CHUCK: Right. You just want to die.

[00:58:08]BEN: No comment. I also worry particularly about  older people. There are studies, as we age, at least in America, we get more and more  isolated. It's just the way our culture works.

[00:58:21]We spend less time with others. And I think  that's a shame and a tragedy because we are entering this period of isolation where isolation  is making us more prone to all these conditions and the outcome, negative outcomes, while we're  also becoming more sensitive as we get older.

[00:58:35]NEIL: This is the value of retirement centers,  where you have a social network there.

[00:58:39]BEN: Yeah, and so I mentioned the 50% number.  By the way, there's other studies showing 30% higher risk of mortality, 50% is the one  in 300,000 people. But in people above 65, social isolation is linked to a 78% higher risk of  death in men and 57% higher in women. And isolated seniors are more prone to dementia, and if they're  isolated, their memory declines twice as fast.

[00:59:02]CHUCK: Wow. But does it make a difference if  you are spending time with more old people, or is it just family or go find  some young people to hang out with?

[00:59:13]Does it make a difference, your social  network, or just have a social network?

[00:59:17]NEIL: In graduate school, I was  in an apartment complex. It was an 80-year-old lady that lived there. And  we're all convinced we just kept her alive.

[00:59:23]CHUCK: Yes, because she was stealing  your blood while you were... BEN: So actually... NEIL: Just the energy. You know, everyone  is young, they've got energy. There's parties at night. And it's known as just  walking slow, talking about their health.

[00:59:36]BEN: Right. I think probably, I mean,  interacting with younger people may be helpful. There's actually a really  interesting study. It's in mice, but it's the only way they could do this type  of controlled experiment, where they took old mice and they would have those mice interact with  younger mice, who are like adult age, for just 15 minutes a day. And they found that those mice,  they lived 33% longer. If they interacted for just 15 minutes a day. So you may have actually  extended the life of that woman in your apartment.

[01:00:00]NEIL: It's interesting.

[01:00:00]CHUCK: Look at that. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:00:02]NEIL: So if you come upon a lonely person, are  you assuming they don't want to be lonely? And if that's true, that they don't want to be  lonely, how do you get socialized if you're no longer in middle school or high school,  just as an adult? What do you recommend here?

[01:00:18]BEN: One thing that's important to recognize  is that when people become lonely, their brains actually start processing social information  differently in a way that makes them continue to be lonely, often. You know, when lonelier  people actually experience less social reward from interactions, they show lower rise in oxytocin  after interacting, they struggle with trust. Yeah, and so it's very likely that for someone who's  really isolated and very lonely, when they say, you know what, I'm going to do it, I'm going  to go to this party, I'm going to see people, and they feel horrible, that that could just  continue to spiral. And so it's likely that you may need a few interactions to sort of bump  yourself out of that. So to answer your question, does a lonely person mean that  they're craving interaction?

[01:00:55]Not necessarily. They may have sort of  distanced themselves from that desire.

[01:00:59]NEIL: But if they want to lead a longer, happier  life, they should figure out how to do this.

[01:01:04]But I don't know that there are classes on  how to be socialized. But when I grew up, both of my parents were highly social, and  they were entertaining. We had people coming in every week. So I was exposed to that from  very early, that this is what people do. We talk to each other, we hang out, tell  jokes, have fun. And so I didn't know a life different from that growing up. But  as an adult, I mean, how would one adjust?

[01:01:33]CHUCK: I think you have to find a community  first. Like, that's the first step. It's like step outside of your daily routine and  find a community no matter how small it is, and then interact with those people on a  consistent basis, and then try to expand from there. But the first step is just finding a small  community with something that you like to do.

[01:01:57]NEIL: Did I ask you this question?

[01:01:59]CHUCK: I don't, were you?

[01:02:00]BEN: Hey, that's a good answer. No, I agree  because it's ideal if you can find a community where you have something in common. Because as I  mentioned, the brain treats people differently if they're perceived as different from you.  And I think having something in common, and it can be that you really love mountain  biking and it's a mountain biking club. It doesn't have to be like religion or whatever.  It could be anything. Because first off, that allows you to enter the room and meet  other people and feel more comfortable because you know you have something in  common. You know that their brain is going to treat you favorably because you  have something in common with them. And I think also in today's very divided America  at least, I think when we can meet someone and the first thing that we perceive about them  is that they are similar to us in this one way, it kind of allows us to pocket all those other  perceived differences that often get in the way.

[01:02:47]NEIL: Is there a simple way out of this?

[01:02:49]BEN: I hate to say it because it's so obvious.  What's the solution to our social problem? Well, we should socialize. There it is.  That seems obvious. All right, wrap it up. But I think what's really important  for people to recognize is that our brains have a lot of pitfalls where we happen to be very bad  at estimating socializing. What's going to happen?

[01:03:09]How we're going to feel? How they're going to  respond to us? There's all sorts of evidence on this. We expect that people are going to reject  our advance at a conversation when in truth that very rarely happens. We expect that giving someone  a compliment is going to be weird. They appreciate it. We expect that the longer we stay in a  conversation, the worse it's going to get when in reality that doesn't happen. We expect that  after we leave, if we try to think to ourselves, how much did that person like me? We almost always  underestimate that. We actually are better like than we expect. And so, I think my advice is  like your brain kind of sucks at socializing.

[01:03:43]NEIL: By the way, I remembered distinctly  all of that in high school. And I had to learn more about what people were  actually thinking and feeling to realize how on the negative side I was in  interpreting the entire social exchange.

[01:03:57]BEN: Right. And people also tend to underestimate  their own social skills, too. If you ask them, how are you relative to the average person, most  people will say below average. And so, I think we put all these obstacles in our way, where we tend  to think this is not going to go well. And so, I think when you think about that dilemma of it's  Friday night, you've been invited out, you're sitting on the couch, your TV is right there.  And it's like, do I really get dressed and drive to this interaction? And then all of a sudden,  those barricades start popping up. Oh, you know, the person is not going to like me. I'm going  to say something weird. You know, you can place all these barricades in front of yourself that are  actually just fake. They're actually just made up.

[01:04:31]GARY: Is it a fear of rejection?

[01:04:32]BEN: I think it is.

[01:04:33]NEIL: I think so.

[01:04:34]BEN: Because I think, again, if you think  about this, we are evolutionarily sort of built for connection and tribe, existing  in tribes. If we fail in an interaction, and we are rejected by our tribe, there is a  significant consequence associated with that.

[01:04:49]NEIL: You're dead.

[01:04:49]GARY: You should have a cave again.

[01:04:51]NEIL: You should have a cave.

[01:04:52]BEN: And so our brains are wise to always be  thinking, I want to put my best foot forward, but that often creates unnecessary anxiety.  And so, you know, if you're a person who experiences social anxiety, you're not alone.  This is almost like ubiquitous in the human race. Like everybody experiences some level.  Obviously, everyone is kind of different on that, but it's natural to feel that way. And, you  know, my big sort of prescriptive takeaway is to not fear it. Just enter, and I promise  you, and most people have experienced this, when you do go to that event, you actually  feel better at the end than you expected.

[01:05:23]CHUCK: Okay. All right. Get out there, people.

[01:05:26]NEIL: He's going to be a great dad.

[01:05:27]CHUCK: Yes. He knows all about it. And  he's about to have a baby. Yeah, well.

[01:05:31]NEIL: Your first kid. Well, your first kid is  going to come at the same time as your first book.

[01:05:36]BEN: Two weeks apart.

[01:05:37]CHUCK: Two children, birth at the same time. Nice.

[01:05:41]BEN: I'm terrified. I'm not going to lie.

[01:05:43]NEIL: This one will help you pay your rent  and the other will be the opposite of that.

[01:05:47]CHUCK: Yeah.

[01:05:48]NEIL: All right, dude. Thanks  for coming on Star Talk.

[01:05:51]BEN: Thank you for having me.

[01:05:51]NEIL: For a second time.

[01:05:52]BEN: Yeah, thanks for having me twice.

[01:05:53]NEIL: Okay. This has been another  installment of Star Talk Special Edition.

[01:06:00]I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson,  your personal astrophysicist.

[01:06:03]CHUCK: Gary, Chuck, always a pleasure.

[01:06:05]NEIL: Thank you, Ben. All right.  Until next time, keep looking up.