The Dangers of Despair & Social Isolation | Dr. Michael Platt & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | I think about this whole thing of like deaths of despair and, you know, not long ago you

00:00:07.120 | were talking about group selection.

00:00:09.040 | I feel like these two themes might be related.

00:00:11.720 | I feel like right now politically and culturally in this country, and now starting in Europe

00:00:16.900 | as well, it really is, it has become an us versus them kind of scenario.

00:00:22.720 | There doesn't seem to be a middle at all, it's like a big trough.

00:00:26.840 | And even the suggestion that somebody could kind of switch between groups is kind of like

00:00:30.420 | a no, because they believe and have said and done this, no, because they believe and have

00:00:37.480 | said and done this, and very strong opinions from both sides.

00:00:39.860 | So I don't think we're in a just hug it out kind of landscape right now.

00:00:48.880 | And so I'm curious what forms of non-physical affiliative behavior exist out there.

00:00:55.320 | There are social media accounts out there, like Upworthy, which, you know, just consistently

00:00:59.840 | puts out positive content.

00:01:02.160 | There are people who are very positive in their, you know, in their online behavior,

00:01:07.320 | and there's encouragement, it exists online, but it seems to be swamped by these like high

00:01:14.200 | salience like attacks, like what's the deal?

00:01:17.740 | What can we do?

00:01:18.740 | Yeah, I mean, this is a fundamental question for our age, I think, and we're on a trajectory

00:01:23.640 | toward, well, I mean, I don't want to give the impression that I'm a complete pessimist,

00:01:28.380 | but I could, I was about to say toward oblivion, between like, the despair that has been driving

00:01:35.960 | people to either commit suicide, or to, you know, develop severe mental illness, or physical

00:01:45.840 | health issues, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, etc., that are, I think, a consequence of

00:01:51.560 | being, in some cases, a consequence of being isolated because you are not interacting.

00:01:56.600 | That's part of who we are as a species, and we don't thrive.

00:01:59.920 | I mean, the work is very clear that like, being isolated, being alone is worse for your

00:02:04.260 | health than smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

00:02:06.360 | I mean, it's just really, really bad, and it scales, it's almost linear to how many

00:02:11.760 | contacts you have, you know, per week, or per month.

00:02:15.280 | So that's all really bad, and I do believe that's also driving, that's a big driver

00:02:20.400 | for, not just the deaths of despair, but like, the lack of coupling, and the lack, you know,

00:02:26.120 | and crashing rates of fertility, which is also a real thing, and it is happening, and

00:02:31.320 | if we don't counter it, it's going to be bad.

00:02:33.840 | Getting back to synchrony, one of the most effective ways to get in sync with somebody

00:02:39.000 | that you're out of sync with, or that you don't know, right, who's different from

00:02:42.840 | you, is through conversation, but deep conversation, okay, and there's a couple parts to this.

00:02:48.400 | You have to make the time and the space to do this, you have to have an intentional mindset,

00:02:52.840 | and we and other scientists have worked with, there are these structured sets of questions

00:02:58.120 | that have been developed.

00:02:59.120 | There's one called Fast Friends, developed by the Arons in the late 1990s, there's commercially

00:03:03.400 | available decks online that you can get.

00:03:06.360 | And they're cool because they, each question, you know, you can kind of take it at a superficial

00:03:11.240 | level or a deep level, but they're designed to kind of like, break the ice, and then get

00:03:14.900 | you really fast into like really deep questions.

00:03:18.360 | Is this like 100 questions to fall in love type thing that was published in the New York

00:03:22.600 | Times?

00:03:23.600 | Yeah, it's very similar to that, but in this case it's about connecting, like deep connection.

00:03:30.480 | I think it's more about deep connection than sort of romance part of this, and what happens

00:03:36.280 | during that, and my good friend and colleague Emily Falk at the Annenberg School had a really

00:03:42.780 | nice paper recently that showed that by measuring brain activity itself in people who don't

00:03:48.000 | know each other, as they work through these questions, and their brain, you know, one

00:03:52.480 | brain is in this space, another brain is in this space, and they over time come into really

00:03:57.980 | close alignment, and that's associated with all this good stuff.

00:04:02.120 | Like I like you more, I feel closer to you, I value you more, et cetera, et cetera.

00:04:06.560 | And once you're in that kind of alignment, now you're set to sort of do things together.

00:04:11.920 | And now I think that gets back to your question, like, we can't hug it out, but we have to

00:04:17.120 | somehow create space, and when I say space, like give people the space to do that.

00:04:23.120 | Like I'm going to talk to, you know, somebody from the other political party or from the

00:04:26.720 | whatever, that's not a bad thing, right?

00:04:29.520 | In fact, that's what we need to do, but instead we're, especially online, reinforcing and

00:04:34.640 | making the barriers harder to have those conversations, which are the necessary thing, I think, to

00:04:41.800 | establish the glue that keeps us together.

00:04:44.960 | [Music]

The Dangers of Despair & Social Isolation | Dr. Michael Platt & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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