Article Club

 Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Article Club. Welcome. This is the show where we choose an article. We read our article and we talk about it. And we talk about it. And this one is a doozy. Yeah. What's going on today? This one, what are we reading? Were we to listen to it? Which I did not. 'cause I don't believe listening counts as reading.

Right. Ironically. But with this medium is 41 minutes long, so it's a meaty sucker. And we all know I have trouble printing and my printout happened to be 29 pages. Wow. Somehow double sided. Like I said, it's a doozy. So this one comes to us from the Atlantic where, mm-hmm. All sorts of gems up in there called the antisocial century.

So the premise is we, America, this is all about America. Although it sounds like this is a global problem, but Americans are spending more and more time alone. And like there's huge impacts of that downstream on our personalities, on how we relate to other people. And even there's some, and we'll get in here at the end, our relationship to reality, which is a little bit crazy.

My biggest takeaway from this is that we don't know what's good for us, and we think being antisocial is good for us, but it turns out it's deeply not. Yeah, we think it's rejuvenating or something. Yeah. But it turns out. Not at all. So we'll get into that. The article opens, talking about the author's favorite restaurant that is basically now just all takeout, which shout out to.

The company we work for Uber Eats. Yeah. We, we we're part of building Uber Eats together. Yeah. We part of this. I was like, really? Where this friendship butted, ironically, we're part, ironically we're part of the problem as it turns out, and 77% or something. The article says 74, all restaurant traffic is takeout, is like off premise.

All these fancy terms for basically just mean that everyone's ordering takeout. And what's crazy is everyone's like, oh, that must have happened when Covid happened. But actually no, it's up 61% since Covid. So we're just, they're just hibernating. Yeah. Shout out to call back to the last sleep episode where even if you're hibernating, you might not be getting exactly the rejuvenation that sleep, you know?

And then the sad, the sad part about everyone eating, you know, only ordering takeout is that people having dinner or drinks with friends is down by 30% in the last 20 years. So basically people just are not hanging out. Truly sad. Okay. Before you get into the rest of the article. Yeah. Also, people going out by themselves is up.

Yes. Which is kind of crazy. It's not just I'm hermiting, I don't wanna go anywhere. It's, I don't wanna see people, but I will go out by myself. Yeah. It's like I just wanna be alone. Mm-hmm. I talk a lot about the difference between alone and solitude and alone. Yeah. The line that just absolutely sent me on this was the privatization of American Leisure.

What a freaking freaking line. And so I think most people talk about this like, oh, COVID ruined us. Covid was like the big deciding factor of us all just spending time indoors and becoming antisocial. But America's actually spent more time alone in 2023 than they did in 2021 when we were all truly locked in our apartments.

So this is not a Covid problem. This is like been happening since the seventies and eighties. We've just been in this downward real spiral of decline of hanging out with other people. And then you hear about our guy of Vek, Murthy has now declared loneliness a public health epidemic. Yes. Um, along with smoking and obesity.

Yes. And the parents are not. All right. I know. No one's all right. No, I mean, yeah. We get into here about how the men are also not All right. Which, yeah. Oh yeah. My boyfriend says I talked too much about, but it's what they not what, what do they call it in the article? And we can dig into it like the, like solo.

Monks or something. What does he say? Oh, I don't know, but I, I only recently learned that secular monks, oh, I only learned that incel means involuntary celibate. Oh yeah. Fascinating. I once asked my grandmother, who has lived alone since my grandfather died in 1999. I was like, do you ever get lonely? Or, I thought you were gonna say horny.

No. She has had boyfriends, but they'd never lived with them. And she was like, I don't get lonely, but sometimes they get lonesome. Which I was like, I don't totally know what the difference is there, but I think it's sort of what they're talking about with like solitude versus Right. Actually loneliness.

Okay. Can I tell you my, maybe the biggest earth shattering thing for me was. I never thought about loneliness as a biological trigger. Mm-hmm. To get out and get the things you need for your mind. Totally. So in the article he's talking about, Hey, maybe we're lonely for a reason. And it used to be that if you start to feel that loneliness, it's a cue to get up and go and go.

You know, hang out with somebody, get a little infusion of the social. Stuff that we need as human beings. And now you can just pick up your phone, scroll through it, and it kind of, I don't know that it alleviates that feeling or if it numbs that feeling or if it makes that feeling less. Well, what he was saying is you don't actually get that sa, the salience of loneliness because you have this like low grade simmering.

Mm-hmm. Of like a simulation of alone. I can always know where people are and so I'm not really alone or I can always text people or be on social media. Right, right. So you're not actually fully feeling that. So then you don't actually feel like you need to go out and socialize. So say loneliness is a biological response.

You start to feel lonely, I guess. Do you, you're one person who does more things than most people I know. And it's not just socializing. It's a variety of things. It's you go to concerts, you go to talks, you, yeah. Make resolutions to have intergenerational friendships. Is that, do you feel like that's in response to something biological, do you think that's habitual?

Do you think it's knowing thyself? It's probably a lot of things conflated together. I think it's one, we are hyper social animals. I am just leaning into that. I think I'm afraid of what my emotional state could look like if I don't do that. Do you self identify as that? Like an extrovert? Like a hyper social extrovert?

Yeah, I mean, sometimes I've thought to myself is am, what am I like running away from? Or why can't I sit alone? I think some of it's a productivity mindset that we have. You know, that's the. Another episode on capitalism. But I think some of it's just the need to be totally productive at all times. And productivity for me can look like a lot of different things.

Like I've got a Thursday night, I'm gonna learn something. This thing. Exactly. Exactly. Experience life and culture. I should be deepening myself. It sort of reminds me of I have a travel obsession slash problem slash this idea of a life CV that millennials now have. It used to be, I haven't heard that. Oh, live cv.

It's like I used to be, you work 30 years at a company and that's your, and you go home to your family or whatever. Now we can all see all the places everyone's been. Mm-hmm. The other day on Instagram, there was this stupid checkbox thing going around that was like, check all this countries you've been to or whatever, and pass it along.

It's like this. It's like this, look at me thing. Self life, cv, self. Yeah. Yeah. And then are you really? You know, are you doing it to enrich your, who are you doing it for? Exactly. Am I, am I just going to these talks to tell people? I'm going to talks? I think you, from my, my interpretation, you have less of that, um, life CV that I need to show off.

In fact, you don't at all. And maybe it's more, I have this time, I wanna use it. Yeah. To my brain, I feel the need to make the most outta it at all times, probably. Mm-hmm. But have you ever felt it. That it would be biological, like, have you ever thought about that? I haven't thought about it. When I lived in DC right after college, I didn't have a set group of friends and the like biological fear of what if I don't have a social life or like the craving more human interaction.

So I feel like I got really good at finding these things and now that I have friends, I'm like, well if I'm doing these things here, I might as well do them with other people. I see two birds, one stone. Okay. Okay. Let's take a walk through kind of the historical context. I please. I thought this was so wild of how we got here to this loneliness epidemic.

The article goes to talk about like the 19 hundreds through 1960s, which were a boom time for socialism. It's like Gatsby era. You had all these churches, you had a rise in birth rates after World War ii, there was all this like building of infrastructure in the us um, of, or I. I talk a lot about like third spaces, but like places outside of your home where you could gather.

So that was like churches, bowling alleys, civic centers, playgrounds, like all this infrastructure. One of my favorite sort of novellas or whatever that I'd read in college that he talks about a lot in here is the Robert Putnam Bowling Alone. Had you ever read that before? Mm-hmm. So it was this whole theory from 1985 to 1994 involvement in community organizations across the US just dropped in half.

Across every social activity and every demographic. And some of this was basically that post World War II boom of like all these churches and all of these community spaces started slowly declining, kind of declining. And then there was also this rise of pri individualism. Which is probably related to capitalism if we're being honest.

Mm-hmm. Um, and, and very American. Totally. And then also there was the increase of TV and cars. Yeah. That combo. And he makes it very clear. Yeah. TV plus car. Yeah. Car you cars. You could build these houses out in the suburbs farther away from the cities. Yep. You didn't need to have like the high density of people.

Nope. And then once you had these houses, what were you gonna do in them? Watch the tv. You could drive far away from other people and entertain yourself. Forever. And if you watch tv, you were less likely to engage in literally every other, any kind of social interaction. There was that crazy stat in there around, I don't know, 300 hours a year or something that people could have used.

They sent, yeah. UNK it into tv and you could have all the things that you could do. Could have done 300 hours. Yeah. Which of course is the productivity. Okay. And today, I think about how many of my social conversations with people are actually about which TV we're watching like that, that has. Is currency in its own right.

Well, it's definitely the small talk of our era. Yeah, that's very true. I wonder how that compares to the early days of tv. Yeah, that's probably all people talking about. Everyone was watching the same thing. You couldn't actually choose, so there was no like Yeah. Personality to show your, or like there was no prestige TV or in the sixties or, I care about like with you people with curated opinion.

Mm-hmm. Right. Like there's a mess out there. I can do anything at any time I need, I need somebody I trust to tell me where the art is. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of, I started watching Real Pain last night. I liked it so far. I liked it so far. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I like that. It's not free. You like that? It's not free.

It's now free. You can watch it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. There's some ads, but it's just like totally jarring in a movie like that with, it's just a thoughtful, again, piece of art, and then I'm watching a Totally and so Arby's A, so now nowadays it's like, it's even worse because we spend 30% of our waking life on screens.

Mm-hmm. Which is. Wild. I bet it's more, I feel like during Covid, my friends and I, we all compare like how much we were on our phones, like our average avatar's. Scary. I can't look at the, I can't look at the stats, but I've been on a journey turning my phone to, to gray scale, trying all the app timers, all the things pretty unsuccessfully.

And my excuse I say is, oh, I have kids. I need to support it. Sort of be plugged in. Did you find yourself when he was going through this historical context and making the argument. I mean, it's a pretty ironclad argument about how we spend more and more time alone. But I felt myself going, yeah, no, no, but almost like in defense of the group thread, Uhhuh Uhhuh, it's sort of like unconnected.

Yeah, the whole, and I wouldn't even be able to talk to these people otherwise were Exactly. Oh, this person I knew in high school commented on my thing, and we had a little side DM about this that would've never happened. And I started thinking about, oh, it takes a village, takes a village. He talks a lot about villages and you know what that means and we don't really have them IRL, but is the group thread now the village and is part of that, how much digital interaction would equal real life companionship, you know, and how much does account for?

I don't think that, I think he would argue it's not, 'cause it's literally a correlation. The more you on your phone like. Uh, statistically the less you hang out with other people. Yeah, I guess. Um, but it can't be, it cannot be black and white. There's gotta be a hey equal parts. He even says, have people over for dinner.

Get the kids outside and then it's everything in moderation. I don't think he's like proposing this extreme version of get rid of screens entirely. Yeah. 'cause that would be impossible. Well, the Amish example is interesting. He talks about the Amish and they get a rap as like anti-tech, anything progressive or whatever.

Yeah. That's total. Yeah. And. It's more about things that affect and impact your values of the way you spend time. The way your mind works. Yeah. Like listen, some of them use cars and they use like some other forms of electric things. It's not like they're totally off the grid. Right. But they don't have TVs 'cause.

I thought about that a lot. How this was wild. He was saying how basically all of modern architecture and interior design of spaces, ugh, is purely around focusing a room so that it's directed at a screen. And that was like a change over the last like two decades even. All we are doing is maximizing like your ability to rot on your couch.

A developer who's building apartments is quoted in the article saying. Oh, I just built these apartments for Netflix and chill. Yeah, like that's what people want. That's all a big one. A big comfy couch. A big ass TV. Close. Proximity to fridge. He doesn't say that. But yeah, my roommate is moving out probably this month, which is crazy 'cause I've never lived alone, which is a fascinating touch point on this article.

I've only actually all ever lived with other people. A great like test that he references is that. There's these commuters that are asked if you're on your commute to work, do you think you'd be happier kind of sitting alone quietly, or do you think you'd be happier if you were like talking to some random Joe Schmo next to you and everyone's like, oh, for sure.

The quiet solitude of just reflective time on the mm-hmm. Commute would make me happier. And then they basically place dummies to chat up these other people and they ask them how happy they are when they get off the train and everyone is happier if they talk to someone else. Everyone is delighted. Okay.

Did you have any twinge of this is written by a man and maybe as a woman commuting, you don't fucking wanna talk to somebody? No. You had no twinge of that. He didn't run the experiment. I know, but Well, even the way the article ends, it's like, I think it's a beautiful idea to like take the dead space in life and make a friend out of it.

And that sounds great, but in stranger world sometimes, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes you just gotta like put on your Don't talk to me face. Yeah. And move through the world. Right. But like what trained you to that? And I think, uh. Unwanted attention. Yeah, I think that, um. Part of, he could argue which, which over corrects you, but he could argue that because we aren't having these like micro interactions with random acquaintances, there is more like all of those act interactions that you have are then more abrasive because we're not actually attuned to these things.

People don't know how to interact. I was thinking a lot about how everyone, people talked about, again, post covid, but I think this has probably just been happening over time. Everyone is a total dick to customer service people. There's been more on united flights or plane flights. There's more people getting violent against.

Their flight attendants. There's more people like reporting, like cursing out customer service reps. And a lot of that I think is 'cause we actually don't have these, like a model for these sort of day-to-day interactions is this theory. People are out of practice with how to interact with people. He has a great line in here about tolerance and uh, families teach us love.

Tribes teach us loyalty and the village teaches us tolerance. Mm-hmm. Or like a peaceful coexistence. And so. If you aren't having the village, which is these acquaintance level contacts, your tolerance for anything. Yeah. Whether it be, you know, maybe, maybe this guy who said something that was like an unwanted attention thing to you, you're like, oh, fuck this guy.

But actually, if you interact with him more, you know, oh well he really is like. A nice guy. We, this is probably not the best example. Totally. I, I see the, um, he gives the example of the PTO meeting, if you have an opposing viewpoint or somebody, you know, you disagree with somebody who's on the internet, it's like, yeah.

Can be very divisive and you can't understand each other, whatever. If you're sitting next to each other at a PTO meeting, you hear the argument that you're in each, your kids are in the same class. P-T-A-P-T-P-T-O-P-T-O is out. Oh, it's when his vacation hours. PTAF, Fred, and slip. Clearly I haven't gotten to that phase of parenthood.

Yet, and I can totally understand that. I think my previous point is just like in the safe space, oh, at the supermarket. Sure. I love those little interactions. Would I feel safe and comfortable doing them? But I don't know. I'm sure that there's the expectation I there's, there's just like a hint of like, oh, must.

That would be nice to just be able to like plow your way through the world, making friends all day long. There's a bit of entitlement there. I don't know. Yeah. Well, I think about living over, which we probably also have back to the living alone. Nobody's intimidated by me if I say hi to them. Whereas my husband has this boom, boom voice and he'll ask somebody what time?

Like, excuse me, what time is it? And they will noticeably. Shutter. I've, I've, I've told, I've had to tell him, you have to like, I know that's just the way he's like, it's just the way my voice is, but you, you have to approach. People modulate it. And so now he will literally like pray hands when he's asking a waiter for something, he's like, excuse me, Seth.

I'm like, please have another full, he like Gen you flex. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So which is that? That would stink to have to think about that also. Yeah. So might as well stay home. Right? It's basically my point. You're, yeah, you in my sugg, totally disagree with your, or whatever. Remember the snuggy? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean that all built around people who wanna snuggle up at home, Netflix, snuggy delivery food. It's the infrastructure's there for you. The loneliness. He talks about inhibits play and social like we are social beings. We are ultimately like social monkeys. And he talks about, if you take, if you deprive rats and monkeys of play, they are socially and emotionally impaired.

And so I think it, we are seeing this, and he talks a lot about this with like the younger generation who has grown up on screens and who is not. Having this social interactions, there's one line that really got me, which if young adults feel overwhelmed by the emotional costs of physical world togetherness and prone to keeping even close friends at a physical distance, that suggests that phones aren't just rewiring adolescents, they're upending the psychology of friendship as well, which these people that are like, oh yeah.

You know, I'll, I'll just text and stuff on my phone, but there's still things that they don't talk to anyone about, they don't talk to friends about, and then you're not getting any feedback and like, it's just a really vicious cycle. I can't imagine what the internal world, what that does to your internal world.

I. As an adolescent whose brain is forming and you're never fully away from your phone, so you're just constantly, they're just experi, they're being experimented on. Yeah. Which, I mean, all, all these articles seem to have rats that we're experimenting on. Teenage kids are, and middle schoolers, you know, they're, they're being experimented on.

I can't help but be very grateful that this is happening before my kids get to that age. And I know that's not helpful or productive. Right. But it could get worse. Yeah. I, at least I'm aware of, oh, I don't just hand them this phone when they turn, whatever. How old? I don't even know. That's whole question.

Okay, so what are people doing if they're not socializing? They're staying at home, they're, they're more likely to take meetings from home, to shop, from home, to be entertained at home, eat at home, worship at home. There's all these at home churches, basically. The entire economy of the US has like to reorient itself to be focused on American staying at home.

But this is what was interesting when you were talking about having friends over, but they're not, what they're not doing is socializing at home. Over the last 20 years, the amount, average amount of time Americans are spending, like hosting someone in their house or socializing, or even attending a social event in someone else's home is down by a third.

Mm-hmm. So it's not like we're also inviting people in to these Netflix and chill environments that we've created. Right. Okay. I have a lot of questions about solitude. When you're with a partner. Ooh. First of all, I'm curious, do you feel like you and your partner can be alone together? Like is it recharging?

Is it filling up a aloneness cup, but also feels like companionship in this nice way? How does that feel for you? I think 'cause we have not been together as long and we don't live together. So when we're alone together, if we are alone together, I think in my house, yes I do feel that way, but if I'm at his house, I don't feel that way where I'm just, you feel like you're socializing.

I don't have all my creatures of comfort, which is maybe like a part of the, maybe I should just be uncomfortable in that can be enough. But yes, I do. I do. I wouldn't say a hundred percent. I think like sometimes a alone is, is different for me because I always have, I know that I have access to this person, and so I'm constantly probably thinking about like, oh, should I ask him this?

Or what if I wonder what he thinks about this thing that I'm talking about? Mm-hmm. Like just the access to another person makes me not mm-hmm. Be fully enveloped in solitude. Yeah. That's a good point. I, I've been thinking about this a lot while reading the article because I'm never alone having a husband and two children, but you know, I very much relate to, we put the kids to bed and then we sit on the couch and we do work mm-hmm.

While watching something we like, you know, co screen. Mm-hmm. Three screens, phone. Work, laptop, watch a show or whatever, and the last thing we're doing is interacting. Charlie had a, you know, cute idea last year. He's like, let's do one night game night. Like, let's make a point or read night, you know, to like whatever.

Just be off screens. Usually we both read before we go to bed. Once we're like, okay, we're done with screen time. Then we go read and we still haven't interacted yet. I feel, I feel. I, I wonder if it's the, like, I'm like, oh, but I'm with somebody else In the article, he talks about being alone. They're count hours or whatever.

He is counting as you're the only person in the room. Yeah. I'm never the only person in the room. So does that mean I'm doing a better job of getting those socializing companionship hours in? Or does that mean Yeah, he doesn't really talk about if your family counts as that's, you know, yeah. Socializing or not.

Yeah. That's, that's, I guess that's my big question. I will also say. I'm curious, does he talk about kids or being a parent? Talks a lot of time about, about the gender piece of this uhhuh, but more so on how, on the men, on the like young men and then he talks about, I think families are like the love piece, but you actually need, again, these sort of, he calls it the village, I think you could also call it acquaintances, like sort of the, when you're thinking of the concentric circles of connectedness, like the people that you don't necessarily.

That you aren't on the group thread, but that you actually need this sort of layer of people that it's like you see maybe once or twice a year totally kind of thing. Well, we've talked about this a little bit that that having young children and dealing with modern life with children just makes you more.

More likely to reach out and connect, you know, you like. Mm-hmm. You might not have nothing else in common with people, but they have kids down the street, you know, they live near you and they have kids around you, and there's just this inherent sort of need for community to build that village, which is nice.

But the, the big, as I'm reading this, the elephant in the room for me is having. Children is extremely isolating. Mm-hmm. Extremely. Especially in the beginning. Yeah. And I always say Covid kind of prepared us for that. 'cause we had our daughter near the tail end of Covid. I think if we hadn't been hunkered down in the house, not seeing anyone cooking all of our meals or whatever it would've been.

So shocking to all of a sudden be, yeah, like you are inside. There's so many more barriers to going out. So I read this and I'm also like, cool. Sounds nice to go out every night with friends. Cool. Sounds nice to just have people over your house. Do you know what a shit show that is when you have two young kids and you're inviting other kids and family?

Like the schedule's alone, like it's just this other. I don't know. It's just this other whole co like complex thing, which is probably a, that you are not, like, you are not the lonely generation like you are. I bet by all these measures you are probably not the problem child. Well, I think I'm not even being accounted for in this article.

Yeah. In a lot of ways. And, and sure this is a phase, but I just don't think, when you have young children, it's like an accurate scope of how you're doing on the companionship front. You're not, they're, you're not featured 'cause they're not super worried about you Maybe. I don't know. I don't know the, the surgeon warning.

The surgeon general. Like, so parents are like the most, yeah, alongside his loneliest thing. Had this like the parents are not doing well, you know, like cup if full, but what the solutions are for you is a more infrastructure, like is a bunch of policy related things where this is just more, this solutions for people, like young men is like, oh, you gotta get off your, I think that's fair also the, that being all, you know, as an adolescent you are, the phone is all you, you know, screen is, you know.

Uh, because we grew up analog, we've been in this inside, outside world, we've been more social, less social. We've gone through different phases of our lives. We're a bit older. We can recognize that need in ourselves or that when we're spending way too much time on our phones, we're like, oh, this feels different.

Yes, and I need to go back to totally. Uh, I mean the best, the best I think vacation I've taken in the last, I would dare to say decade was when I went sailing last Christmas and we were out of cell cell phone service, and so we just didn't use our phones for an entire week and holy guacamole, I did not know how different I could feel.

Say more, say more. And I think I lasted, say more. I was so much happier. Like my therapist was like, you feel diff, you seem different. After, it literally lasted for probably three months, and then I was on my laptop, stressed at work, on my phone, blah, blah, blah. But the, the just truly didn't, there were days at a time where I didn't even look, pick up my phone.

It was just off. And I think that that. Yeah, like just not being in the screens. Also, I'm sure being in nature, all those things that people we know are good for us made a huge difference mentally. Did it make you feel like the world is so big and your little worries are small? It wasn't like I was having all these realizations in the moment.

It was, um, that like, oh yeah, this doesn't matter. And like, wow, this is so beautiful. It was more my brain after being off my screen for seven days. The baseline was just, I'm woke up A happier person. Hmm. There were no, like, that's the study we need. I know, right? We need to do some research after this. Yeah.

The forced detox. Yeah. Yeah. Two weeks, no phone or whatever. Right? Like, I don't even know what you look at. Yeah. Brain. Exactly. Mood. It was so magical. Which brings us to, I feel like the flip side of this, which I talk about a lot, which is the AI generation. I. If I had a nickel for every single time, someone's like, well, here's this app that'll connect you more, or Here's this technology that'll connect you more.

It's like, well, why is it so hard to just actually connect to people? Why do we need an AI chat bot? Who's gonna be my my boyfriend now? Okay. The craziest thing about all that was, Hey, you people who think the chat bot is creepy, how is it that much creepier to be intimately related with all of your friends over text?

Right. It's like you're just, you're just, you're corresponding via text with a phone like so, and you're doing that all day long in another capacity. And of course it's like, okay, but I know the person behind it. They're not a pretend person or whatever. But that, yeah, it's the same mechanism. Well, do you feel like you ever had conversations.

There's sort of the protective veneer that that phones give you, that removes you a little bit. I don't know that I've done this. I'm sure I have, but that I've had conversations with friends over texts where they like dump all this stuff on me and then I see them in person and we don't acknowledge that.

Or I can only on, on breakups, like break like early dating stories that's, thank God for texts. Like how did people do that? Mm-hmm. In the olden times. Mm-hmm. They had to call the person. Yeah, I know, right? It's like the Selena Gomez song. And then what about when, when AI becomes, call him on the. Boom. Right.

What about when AI can actually just talk to you? So it's like truly like I know is all, we're just not getting like the physical contact piece, and is that that important? I don't know. I do think it's easy to say, oh, that's so creepy. Oh, that's so inhuman. Oh, look at all the dangers or whatever. Maybe it also helps people.

Yeah, maybe they're really lonely old people who this brings the socialization that they couldn't otherwise have. Maybe they're immobile, maybe. This could be good for some people. I think this brings me back to like, maybe you're savvy enough to train your ai. It's like, oh my God, I'm just thinking about Smarter Child, our ver a IM smarter child.

Did you not have Smarter Child? No. You know, a IM Sure, sure. Yeah. AOL Instant Messenger. Yeah. A OL Instant Messenger Smarter Child was a, I don't know, somebody you could put on your buddy list. And it was a, it was a robot, a bot. It was a bot. But what would it talk to you about? You would, it would, sometimes it would be sassy.

You'd just ask it questions and like get it to say funny stuff and Yeah. You guys didn't have Smarter Child, was it? And you didn't really, it wasn't like, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm really talking to a person. I'm lonely. I'm gonna talk to Smarter Child. Yeah, you were, it was sort of like a game. Why, or like, look what Smarter Child said.

Yeah. Then he talks about you have this bot who maybe tells you what you need to hear and is very lovely. Right. And then what happens when you actually go into the real world or, and someone disagrees with you or someone like, does something you don't like because Right. You have no tools. Humans are fallible for.

And then you don't know how to deal with this, and then you're like, oh, I just prefer my world. Yeah. With my AI bot or I, I don't even know why I'm paying devil playing devils advocate on this stuff because you, you love the ai. Yeah. Figured I'm like, you're gonna hire an, like, I'm, I'm not about to like talk to an AI or have them babysit my children.

Although I did dream about Smart House, the Disney Channel original movie for a long time, where it's like, dear house, o like Pam, like Pam. Pam, make me a smoothie Pat now. Pat. Pat. Now my kid can control Siri. She's like, Hey Siri, turn on the frozen soundtrack. Turn it up, da da da. Yeah. And I'm like, oh shit.

She and the house are gonna rebel against it. Oh yeah. This weekend, this past weekend, a friend works on Alexa and she was saying, you know that you can train your Alexa so that she'll say. At dinner time. Blue's, having broccoli and chicken for dinner. God. And then your kid's like, oh, well I'll eat my broccoli and chicken 'cause blue's having it.

Ooh, maybe we try that. I know we've been doing, um, jokes. She says, Hey, you know, dear, Hey Siri, tell me a joke for kids. Which. Important distinction because we were like, Hey, Siri, tell me a joke. And they weren't inappropriate, but it was like above that. Not, no. Like why is the giraffe's neck long? 'cause their feet are stinky.

Um, that's horrible. Why? You know, it's a good quote, unquote, but what I was going to say is how do you deal with people in the real world if AI chatbots become your new normal and you fall in love with them and dah, dah, dah. But also, are there tools that they could help you learn for navigating relationships?

Right. Totally. Especially if so much of our relationships are happening digitally. Hey, but how do I, what do I respond to this person with? I don't know. Totally. He talks a lot about how the young men are not all right, and that more than any other age group or gender spread. Mm-hmm. That they are. Spending less and less time with other people.

Mm-hmm. And, and this bleeds into politics. This bleeds into extremism. Yeah. And so what the heck do you do about it? There's a whole blooming thread on the boys are not All right. Also in the parenting world. It is a scientific fact that, I don't know by what age the boys are a year behind girls. Like in development?

Yeah. Yeah. They just take a little bit longer. So do you hold them back? How do you make sure school is set up for sit down and learn and young boys can't necessarily do that or control their bodies or, and what does that mean? Have you heard about that Netflix doc? Don't die about this guy who's this gazillionaire who.

Turns out his Mormon, who's dead set on living as long as he possibly can, like wants to live forever. They talk a little bit about this too, and I think about all these longevity startups that are happening. But if you look at his day, his entire day is alone and it's all doing these physical optimization things to, it increases longevity.

And then you're just sort of like For what? Yeah, well, the irony, you're not doing anything social. The irony in all of that is that people who are anti or don't have that social stimulation are unhealthy. Because they're mentally right, right. So like, yeah, maybe you'll live mentally he's doing know all this mental things to, so how do they, how are people not calculating that part?

I think they are, I don't know about the social piece, but he's doing stuff to also make sure that his brain stays sharp too. But yeah, it's so, well we gotta build in that. So, because who, who could, we've talked before about like how celebrities are so lonely because ultimately you have to pay people to be your friend and they're Yeah, and they're always trying to get something right.

'cause no one, everyone's trying to get paid. There's no to travel with you on the schedule. So it's so. Lonely. And again, then all the people that are around you all the time are ones that have to be because they work for you. Yeah. Another thing that really struck me is the hopelessness, the male hopelessness.

They just like don't have the oomph in them to reach out when they need it or don't feel like they need it. And we talk about this a lot with the men in our lives who want to have the kind of intimate mm-hmm. Friendships and relationships that we have. And we're constantly, you know, we have an annual girls trip, we have dah, dah, dah.

We plan the things, we make it a point to see each other. We tell each other mostly everything. And. You know, my, my husband has lots of great friends, but he doesn't have those sorts of relationships. Yeah. Those confidants. I find myself pushing him ass, that guy out, go get a beer. You know? Especially later in life, especially as a dad.

Do you think that's, so they just had the crutch before, like, my dad actually has a lot of. Strong male friend, like what did our parents or our grandparents do for men to socialize? I think there was more infrastructure. It was like, and maybe, yeah, it was like the, you know, the um, had Shriners Club harder and all that shit.

Maybe you had to work harder to stay in touch. Maybe there was more of an expectation that you would end up in the place that you started. Yeah. So you kind of invest with, yeah. You just had the people grew with those people. Mm-hmm. Whereas us, it's there. I never had that expectation. I don't know about you.

Yeah. No, no. 'cause I, around the town as a kid, yeah. You maybe be you more so the people stay there, but I don't think, I think they would've, there was no expectation, but most people that grew up in Kentucky, in Louisville, stay there. The later in life, male friendships have seemed to be. Tougher. So my, my greatuncle just died a month ago and uh, I'm sorry, at his funeral, thank you.

At his, I mean he was 93. He had a very long life. But at his funeral, my mom, I didn't go, but my mom said that she was like, there were your grandma's brother, my grandma's brother. She said there were 150 people there. And she was like, and there were all these people that were like my age. 'cause he had this like social club.

My mom was just like, I was. Shocked by like all of these different organizations he was a part of and that he like built all this community around these different things. He had a men's book club. He had a men's group where they like did a salon where they brought different articles and talked about them.

Group was, I thought you meant a hair salon. Yeah. No, he had a boba shop. I'm like, he's doing this at 93. Like that's incredible. Crazy. Okay. That right there is the reason it's important to get out Yeah. With and be around people. Yeah. You live 93, 50 people at your funeral at 93 when everyone else is dead.

Yeah. That's incredible. We've really built the listener up with all of this exciting stuff about how we're fucked from a loneliness perspective. So what's the solution? Simple. Just turn off that phone, invite people over, turn off that phone, invite people over. He throws a little bit on the government. We need to build more of these services.

I really feel that. Yeah. Where can we, where do we go? He talks about like in neighborhoods, especially lower income neighborhoods library, there is literally nowhere for teens are just bored. They're going on the phones, go to seven 11 or whatever. I remember I grew up in the suburbs and it was like, do we go to the movie?

Do we go to the movies? Do we go to the mall? We would never go into our town center and walk around. We would never go to the library. You wouldn't go back to school athletic, you'd to somebody's basement, right? It's basically public space degree. What did you go? We went over to people's houses a lot or like played sports.

It was like the athletic kind of stuff. You were outside playing sports? You know, we did like the T-ball league. We went bowling some, we'd go to movies, we'd go to the the pool at our country club, which is, you know, obviously. Prohibitive, but sounds nice. Oh, not super inclusive. I mean, there's not a lot of that public infrastructure.

I wonder how team sports and theater and kids activities have changed. I. With digital stuff now. 'cause that was the way it was. If you wanted to be social and do something fun with your friends, you just did one of these activities. Yeah. Plays or whatever. This is just even more important than getting even less funding.

That's certainly getting cut in this administration when it turns out it's probably the most effective part of school. I mean, religion is also on the decline, which I'm sure is contributing to some of this. 'cause you don't have that weekly. Mm-hmm. You know, random. Mrs. Smith that you see it at the church every weekend.

But I liked the commentary on the rituals. I have a lot of friends and I'm like, are you going to take your kids to church or synagogue or whatever? And they're like, no, but we'll have our own Sunday ritual. And I'm like, will you really? A nice idea. Are you really's idea? Are you really going into into the woods every Sunday or whatever?

And is that with other people? Like which part is it solving? The spiritual part, there's a lot of conversation about, yeah, we, we want our kids to be spiritual and believe in something, so how do we build that as a family, but that there's no place to meet other people around that. Yeah. There's people in my life who I think are doing a good job of, Hey, life is crazy, but I'm gonna set up a recurring time to talk about something with each other.

A recurring time to see friends we don't normally see, and it's unsexy, but scheduling, you know? Yeah. What any good ones. Friends are just no, just like literally have a calendar of their friends slash couple friends and are rotating. Hosting something. They're like coming into my TV home. They're like, it's 2025.

Be on the lookout for some calendar holds. Nice. I like that. Which, and it's not necessarily even at their house. Yeah. It's like we can move it when we get to it, but we're putting it on the calendar, which I love. Yeah. Okay, so TLDR Hang out with people. Go outside, but go out, become Amish. You know, you can be discerning still.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My only push. You know, Hey, hey, give me a smile. No, thank you. You don't have to smile. Yeah. You don't have to talk to the random man on the train who's just giving you bids for, uh, attention or just telling you to smile. That doesn't count as a conver a strike of a conversation. No, it does not count.

Exactly. Yeah. That's all I'm here to say. All right. Should we shift to our favorite little ending segment here? You betcha. You bet you bottom dollar. So at the end of every episode, we just. Chat a little bit about what's on the group chat, what's hitting up that thread these days. So this is a very personal, but I'm learning ubiquitous challenge.

You may have noticed from across the aisle that I have developed a sty on my eye across the aisle, and this is my second sty. In three months I had a lower one. Now I got an upper one. And they last for months. It's so annoying. And turns out everyone I tell about this is like, oh yeah, I just had a Ty, or I have Blepharitis, which I have only recently learned as a thing.

So, uh, my, my group chat has been blown up about how to treat a ty. Okay. Can we just tell, tell us what is this? Like, what is actually happening? It's basically like when a tear ducted or an eyelash duct gets co clogged and it looks like sort of the worst underground pimple you've ever had, hormonal, like on your eyelid.

No, they, they, no one really knows. It could be like stress, it could just be poor eye hygiene. It's could have two and three. I know apparently this is actually somewhat common because plug your ears if you're sensitive, but it oozes stuff at night and so it, you know, it wouldn't be surprising that one gets another.

But I've learned a couple of things. Everyone tells you, like just do a, a warm or hot compress, but I learned about this sick eye hot compress that is microwave, so it's not wet, so you just have to microwave it. It's sort of like those, those neck pillows you would use that were filled with lavender when you were younger.

Mm-hmm. Um, but for your eye, I'm pretty sure my sister sleeps with one of those every night. Sick. I think so. So I got one of those and that I'm doing that multiple times a day. And then my other, my other thing for the eyes is these wipes, which I just ordered off Amazon, they haven't come yet. So I'm, I'm preemptively telling you these eye wipes to keep the area clean.

Okay, great. Great. So those are preventative? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also Uhhuh. Okay. And there's nothing they can give you other than that I'm told no. You know, fuck the, just put ice on it. I know. Fuck that. I know the ophthalmologist, which it's 2025, which sounds like you have a lisp. When you say ophthalmologist, it's just like hot, compress baby.

Wow. Thank you. PSA in a unrelated fashion, something that's blowing up the group thread on my end is Martha Stewart. Oh, just watched her Netflix documentary and my mother basically was the most incredible cook host Martha Stewart esque. Without the edge, I would say, but oh my God. I was completely manipulated by the media to think that, that she was this like totally, she was robbed me, evil woman or whatever, and it was an absolute witch hunt.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. This case should have never been brought against her. It is wild that she was just dragged through the mud, like what's her name in game of rounds. Ccy or whatever, and like, I don't know, Martha, I just read her, um, as a baller businesswoman, as a tag on self-made billionaire that, that I know we're gonna female self drag her through the mud in these legal things.

And that's what I thought too. Like, oh, she is bad insider trading, blah, blah, blah. No, James Comey. Jim Jimbo, what were you doing? The hell man made an example of her. God, I just read her interview with Pamela Anderson. In, um, maybe l she interviewed Pam. Pam or the other Yeah, they interviewed each other basically.

Cute and legends. The both of them. She also got short end of the stick. Yeah. Oh God. And I'm so happy that she like, yeah, it, it was like, oh. Started with the Justin Bieber roast, became friends with Snoop and is like, continue to reinvent herself. I know. She's a Phoenix. A great Insta follow. Yeah. Okay. Total babe.

Like still got the hot tips. Yeah. Um, so never, never Martha. And she's still solo. Right? Yeah. And she has, yeah, she's had a crazy sort of like romantic story too. Love her. And you know what? Like go Martha, follow, not that she needs, needs it beat of her own, beat of her own drum. Not, not everyone's gonna understand you, but like, keep on going.

You do you Martha. Yeah, exactly. Love that. All right, well, on that note, you do you, you do you, you do you, except with other people, beat of March to the beat of your own drum with other people. That's the moral of the story joining marching band. All right, we'll see you next time. Bye.