Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Vivek Murthy Returns (US Surgeon General)

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

Dr. Vivek Murthy (House Calls) is the Surgeon General of the United States and an author. Vivek joins the Armchair Expert to discuss how he defines loneliness, strategies for strengthening connections, and what hustle culture has done to creativity. Vivek and Dax talk about what it takes for people to confide in each other, how taking time away from work can improve mental health, and the power of service. Vivek explains why incarcerating people for drug use is problematic, what it means to cultivate your own solitude, and how romantic matchmaking isn’t what it used to be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Rather, and I'm joined by Mrs. Mouse. Hello there. Hello, an old friend is here today. Yes. And not only did we get to do it in person this time, Dr. Vivek Murthy, our Surgeon General,

who we've had once on before, but it was over Zoom. It was, we got him in person in his full- Regalia. Yes. Yes, in his Admiral's outfit. It was so cool. He, of course, Dr. Vivek Murthy is a physician and a vice admiral

in the United States Public Health Service Commission Corps who has served as the 19th and 21st Surgeon General of the United States. He has a beautiful book out right now called Together, The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World. Additionally, he has a great podcast called House Calls. So please check out House Calls and the book together. Now, very importantly, we have the new Armchair Anonymous prompts.

These will also be on the website. Some people are confused where you find them, These will also be on the website. Some people are confused where you find them, www.armchairexpertpod.com. And they are as follows. Tell us a time something crazy happened on Halloween. Dingles. We're excited. Tell us about a bad babysitting experience.

What if I wrote in? You could, right? Everyone's had some. Yeah. Oh, about my children? Yeah. Excluding Monica. You can talk about other people's kids. No, I love Everyone's had some. Yeah. Oh, about my children? Excluding Monica. You can talk about other people's kids. No, I love those kitties.

Okay, so tell us about a bad babysitting experience. Number three, tell us about a crazy bartending story. You are the bartender in this story. Yes. Not you didn't like a bartender. Exactly. No patrons. Nope.

Although you can have been a patron, but you have to be a bartender. You can have been a patron in your life, but the story has to be you as a bartender. Exactly. Number four, tell us a crazy piercing tattooing incident. Obviously, the waxing story, which no one should listen to. We're going to repeat, or we aim to repeat. Hopefully, no one will listen to that one either. So quickly, crazy thing on Halloween, crazy babysitting, crazy bartending, crazy piercing tattooing.

Please go to the website and submit. Please enjoy Dr. Vivek Murthy. Trip Planner by Expedia. You were made to have strong opinions about sand. We were made to help you and your friends find a place on a beach with a pool and a marina and a waterfall and a soaking tub. Expedia, Made to travel. This episode is brought to you by Secret. Secret deodorant gives you 72 hours of clinically proven odor protection

free of aluminum, parabens, dyes, talc, and baking soda. It's made with pH-balancing minerals and crafted with skin-conditioning oils. So whether you're going for a run or just running late, do what life throws your way and smell like you didn't. Find Secret at your nearest Walmart or Shoppers Drug Mart today. I want to start with an apology. Why? Because during our last interview, and then subsequently two or three hundred times, I've called you Vivek.

Oh. And it's Vivek. It's Vivek, actually. Fuck, I fucked up the correction. That makes sense. That makes sense because he said that. Say it one more time. So Vivek. It. And it's Vivek. It's Vivek, actually. Fuck, I fucked up the correction. That makes sense. That makes sense because he said that. Say it one more time. So Vivek.

It rhymes with lake or bake or shit. Vivek. Yeah, perfect. I don't think I like how the pronunciation was printed from our- Oh, because did it say E-E? E-E-K. Okay, yeah. All right, well, we're going to get there.

That's wrong phonetics. We need to work on that. And then- That's all good. Don't worry. Morty, not mer? Morty. So as if it was spelled M-O-O-R.

Yes. Morty. Oh, my God. Like a cow moo's moo. Yes. Last time we spoke, it was three months into quarantine. Yes. And you were at your sister's house in Miami.

Gosh, you remember that. You were set up. Well, I revisited some stuff in preparation. But yes, you were sitting in a room. Your little boy, who was then three, entered. Oh, yeah. He wanted Papa off the computer. That's right.

And you had this beautiful scenery behind you, this yard, which you later told us had been decorated or horticultured to resemble India. There was jackfruit trees. Yeah, lots of mango trees. Yeah. I think that interview for me is quite seared in my mind and probably yours, Monica, because we had just started doing Zoom interviews. And I was delighted with that one, but I was very nervous about the transition. Oh, wow. Did you also see peacocks in the background? We would have said something if we saw that. Yeah. So it's teeming with peacocks.

The whole neighborhood has a lot of peacocks in it. And so when I would be on Zoom calls, you know, sometimes people have this experience of hearing a dog bark in the background. People would hear peacocks in the background. What is that? Are you in a jungle? It's like, no, it's just a peacock. Which if you haven't heard, they're terrifying. They scream.

They do. They're very loud. Especially you're in Miami. I would think, oh, no, someone's being murdered in the backyard. But they're all free range. It's not like these are your sisters. In the neighborhood, there used to be this place called Parrot Jungle where they had parrots, they had flamingos, they had peacocks, all kinds of animals. And then in 1992, when Hurricane Andrew came, this was the Category 5 storm. It hit South Florida and everything got destroyed and all these animals ended up escaping

into the neighborhood. So we still have peacocks in the neighborhood, but we also from time to time have parrots that just sit in the trees. Wow. It's pretty amazing. That's exciting. There's a huge population of Pasadena parrots.

And when you're filming out there, they have to bring a falconer in to scare them off because they're too noisy to film. Isn't that wild? So you'll be on set and there's just a dude with a falcon there. Talk about a niche job to end up with, right? I would presume you're home based now in DC. We are. We moved back to DC in 2021. For your second go around as Surgeon General. Yes. During the pandemic, we ended up moving somewhat inadvertently to Miami. We went there to visit for five days, ended up staying for 18 months. And it became this incredible, unexpected experience.

So despite all the hardship that was happening, we were losing family members to COVID also. We lost 10 family members to COVID. There's a lot of pain, a lot of challenge. But one thing that helped. You personally did? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, here and in India.

But what made it really possible to make it through all of that was that we were all together. My parents, my grandmother, my sister, myself, my wife, my kids, all of us were together. And the interesting thing is I remember telling my wife, I was like, you know, COVID's really made me realize how important it is to be close to family, to be together. And I was like, I can't think of a single job that I would feel would be worth it to leave this setting, except if there was, I don't know, like an emergency and the president asked us to come help.

Right. And that's literally what happened. I was like, oh my gosh. You have to be careful what? You have to leave. I know. Yeah, self-fulfilling prophecies you doddle on the way like breadcrumbs. You never know.

It's interesting. While you were talking about that, because I think had you been asked three months before, what do you think it'd be like to be just couch surfing at your sister's with your whole family, you would probably think it was going to be uncomfortable and not fun. What I'm always shocked by is when you return home because someone's sick in the hospital or there's a funeral and those things are always shockingly fun in my experience it's like you go there with this weight on your chest oh my god someone's so sick but then you get there and you're in the hospital room it's

like your cousin's there and then this person's there and then all of a sudden no one can help themselves they're kind of making jokes and sure there's a sick dying person right here but we're gonna still keep it light and it's very counterintuitive how fun those things can be. And I guess it's really just a testament to how much we get out of it. That's really well put. There is a certain joy in being together with familiar family and friends, even in hard times. And in fact, I think that joy is part of what makes hard times possible to get through when we're all together. You know, it's not like when you come back home after a long time that it's all easy.

There are some adjustments that are hard. I don't know if you've had this experience, but my parents sort of still think of me the way they did when I lived at home. Of course, you're their baby. In high school. Yeah, and you're like wearing this. For the listener, he looks like he's the admiral of a very large aircraft carrier. Well, it's funny that you mention it.

So technically, I'm the Admiral of the United States Public Health Service. And we have 6,000 officers and they're wonderful human beings who assist in all kinds of public health emergencies. But when I'm home, that doesn't matter.

And it shouldn't. You know, I'm just who I was to my parents back in the day, which is part of what I love. But during the pandemic, it was interesting. I had this experience of, I was doing these daily briefing calls

with President Biden at that time. This was before he was president, but it was about COVID, helping him understand what was happening in the world with COVID and understanding kind of what his thoughts and questions were. So anyway, having these intense daily calls and I'm doing them at the same table that I did my high school homework at. Oh yeah. Oh my God. And I'm like working late into the night to prep for these three or four in the morning. And just as in high school, my parents would get up and come out and say, why are you still up? Why don't you go to bed? And it was very sweet. It was very endearing, but it was like being transported back in time.

It was like all our worlds were colliding. Does your mom love to make you sandwiches and stuff? Oh yeah. She'll often bring food when I'm working and put it next to me just to make sure I eat, which I really love. I know. It's sweet to see the lie

you guys both tell yourselves. Does your mom also love to wait on you hand and foot? She doesn't fucking love it. That is the role she was assigned. And you guys have lied to yourselves. You don't know her. You don't know her.

Oh, good. Monica's home. I get to make some milkshakes. That is, she gets a lot of joy out of- Nurturing her little baby. Yes. And then when we're all out in the world, she doesn't get to do that. And when she's washing your clothes, do you think she's like, oh, goody.

She loves it. So, Monica, what does your mom make for you when you come home? Mainly sandwiches, grilled cheese. There's always, when I land, there's a good meal. She's made something new or exciting. And then as it progresses, she gets less and less interested. And to remind you from last time, Monica didn't have a super traditional Indian household, despite both parents being from India. Yeah. So it's not like she's making dal or anything. No, she's not. But your mom probably is. Yeah, my mom does make a lot of traditional food at home.

That's nice. Yeah, but it's whatever you like. And it sounds like your mom probably is. Yeah, my mom does make a lot of traditional food at home. That's nice. Yeah, but it's whatever you like. And it sounds like your mom knows what you like and she makes it for you when you come home. Yeah, she sure does. I love it. Well, last time you were here, you had written a book and we were talking about that. And you weren't yet again the Surgeon General. Although today's visit is a continuation virtually of what your book was about. And, you know, in that you detail a period of loneliness

in your own life, which was, I guess, in 17, you had left your duties as surgeon general. And over the course of your duties there, you had really not maintained any of your friendships. You were pretty distracted when you were present. I'm curious, you've now got a do-over. And how are you doing on this do-over? You were kind in how you described that last time around, but the truth is it was real negligence on my part. I had made this decision, which was familiar to me, which is I had put work ahead of the people that I cared about. And now, if you had asked me during that time, you know, when I was Surgeon General the first time, hey, Vivek, what's your most important priority in life? I guarantee I would have told you that it

was people and I would have named certain people, my parents, my wife, my kids, my sister. But the reality is the way I was living my life wasn't matching up to that. And there was this gap and it was growing. Friends would call and I just wasn't calling back. I'm like, I'll wait till I have more time. And then weeks would go by.

I wasn't proactively staying in touch with people. And like you were saying, when I was even with my family and friends, I was constantly checking email. I was on my phone. There were reasons for all this that I would tell myself and say, well, there's a lot of work. I need to stay up as often as I can, make sure I'm not getting behind. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to serve and do as much as I can during this short time. I'll catch up later with friends. These are the stories I told myself. I think they're similar to stories perhaps many of us tell ourselves when we defer

things that are critical for our well-being. And what happened actually when President Biden asked me to come serve again as Surgeon General is I had this conversation with my wife and I said, he's asked if we would be open to coming back. And my wife paused and she said, Vivek, what's going to be different this time? Yeah, good for her. She didn't mean, hey, what's different in terms of your work? She meant, how is our life going to be different? And I made a commitment to her and to myself at that time that I would not make that same mistake. I realize a lot of times we make mistakes in life and we don't have a second chance.

I was blessed to have another opportunity to get it right. And so while it's not perfect, what I do, I think better now, I really do try to prioritize family and friends in a few ways. One, I work hard whenever I'm in town to make it home for dinner and to be there for dinner, for bedtime with my kids and to be present. The second thing that I do is I try to make sure that I'm there for the critical things that are happening in our kids' school. So whether that's being the mystery reader in class, which I do from time to time, or whether that's making sure I'm there for the parent-teacher conferences. Really quick, what are your duties during the mystery reading? Yeah. So this is interesting. So typically- Do you wear a bag over your head? No. No. It was a singing show.

Masked singer. Yeah, yeah. It was like masked reader. They were like sushi rolls. So my kids are young. They're five and seven. So they're in elementary school. And sometimes I have to go to pick them up or to drop them off and go directly to work. So I'm in my uniform like when I'm on campus. So the kids all think that I'm a pilot or a police officer. Yeah, you're in Maverick. Like they

just saw you flying jets. You're a hero. So they're literally just, you know, as kindergartners so beautifully do, would just point at me and say, you're a hero. So they're literally just, you know, as kindergartners so beautifully do, would just point at me and say, you're a pilot. So, but the mystery reader is actually fun because that's when parents get to go and read a book. But one of my secret pleasures is I love to tell stories to my kids, but to make up the stories. So every night I'll gather them in my arms and I'll make up a story for them. And at this point, doing this for a few years, we've created this whole mythical universe of characters and everything. And so when I go to

their school, I'll make up a story for their classmates. Oh, you will. You'll improv a story. Yeah. This is high wire act. Well, for me, it's my chance to be creative. I realized shortly after my medical training that I was an artist trapped in a doctor's body. We've met a few of you. And then weirdly, some correlation. Well, I would say that's definitely true of Siddhartha Mukherjee. Yeah, yeah. Like, what an artist that dude is.

Yeah. Writing is so next level. And then Atul Gawande. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, very much an artist that is medical. Absolutely. You wanted to say it was a lot of Indian people.

Well, I did see that immediate categorical, but then I was like. It actually makes sense, though, because many Indian people are. First gen forced to do something. Yeah, more scientific when maybe their art side is a little more suppressed. Harder to get some safety. If you're looking for more Indian doctor writers, Abraham Verghese would be another one. Oh, I don't know. Oh my gosh,

he's such a beautiful writer. He's in California. He teaches at Stanford. We're going to have to look him up. He has a beautiful book that just came out called The Covenant of Water,

which is a fiction book that he wrote, bestseller and everything. But Oprah has been raving about this. When I saw her a few months ago, she told me that

it was one of the best, if not the best, fiction book that she had ever read. Wow. She's had that it was one of the best, if not the best, fiction book that she had ever read. Wow. She's had that book club for 30 years. That's quite a statement. Yeah.

It was really high praise. That's like me saying what car peels out the best. I know. What would you say? I know. My Hellcat. 80 miles an hour, it'll peel out. So you'll go and you'll do that off the dump.

It's not my place to do this, but I similarly make up stories for the kids. Oh, wow. But I think because I come from an improv background to start my story they each get to pick a word so it'll be like unicorn and toothbrush so somehow i've got to incorporate these in a non-thrown away manner you know they got to be instrumental for the story the unicorn and toothbrush or whatever two words they throw out i don't know i just feel like maybe it could i love that up. I like that a lot. You might need a challenge.

And then they're like excited to see how I'm going to incorporate these. And I don't know. And I'm a little scared too. And it's the end of the day and I'm tired. Sometimes those stories take it out of you, don't they? They do. They take it out of you. Yeah.

I actually almost took improv classes in college myself. My best friend from high school, we went to college together and she took improv classes and she's incredible. I think I was just too scared to college together and she took improv classes and she's incredible. I think I was just too scared to take them. I thought I would fail. I know. You're naturally just comparing yourself to people you should not.

Melissa McCarthy, Will Ferrell. If you looked at it as sanctioned adult play with these very loose parameters, you don't have to be good at it. It's exceedingly fun. You also will fail. No one goes through improv without failing a ton.

Oh, the vast majority. Yeah. To have like a perfect show is pretty rare and hard to do. So it's almost freeing. It's like I'm going to mess up at some point. But with people and you laugh. But when we talk about addressing loneliness and how people get involved in stuff, especially in a world where participation in some kind of religious community is in the decline.

I certainly don't participate in anything like that. It is important to figure out what things are appealing to people. How do you get people to buy in? How do you get them to put themselves out there? These are huge hurdles for people. And I think the more inviting and the more fun the things are, the more appealing they are. I think it's absolutely right.

One is even though we're adults and we're grown up, we still want to have fun, you know, just like kids do. And when we can get together and have fun, it's wonderful. When I was in residency in medical school, I used to organize a lot of game nights at our place. These are a lot of the games that we played when we were kids, but people just wanted to have fun. We would do dance parties at our home and we were all terrible dancers,

but we just wanted to have fun, you know, and it brought us together. So I couldn't agree with you more. I think fun is underrated, is an antidote to loneliness and is a way to rebuild the fabric of society. But we need more of it, not less of it. And I think particularly when we think about our kids, and I actually am coming to you guys from sitting down with a group of university chaplains who I was meeting with. These are individuals who kind of look out for the spiritual health and well-being of the student body. Okay. And they're deeply concerned

about the mental health crisis that's happening among young people. And something that I've been working on for the last few years, so we were meeting to discuss it. But one of the things that comes out so often, it came out of this conversation with them, but also my round tables with young people everywhere,

is that we have, I think, forced such an overly structured, overly regimented way of being instead of expectations on young people today that the fun in their life, the white space for creativity, for exploration, for making mistakes and learning from them, I worry a lot of that has been squeezed out. Kids are so overscheduled today. They always talk to me about being caught up in hustle culture. They say, hey, I'm hustling after fancy job, fancy internship. I'm supposed to be famous and get all these followers and build my brand, do all these things.

It's just exhausting. But I'm told that that's what I got to do to make it. It's really unfortunate that the full architecture is results forward. So it's like when you have a kid, well, how will you get better at dance if you don't have this instruction? Not, hey, dance is fun. That's the sole purpose of this exercise. We're going for one hour. If you don't get better, who gives a shit?

And then you become an adult. It's supposed to flip like a light switch and you're supposed to enjoy process. And we know intellectually that that is the route to happiness is enjoying the process, not the results. Yet you got to undo 24 years of methodical brainwash that everything's about results. So two things I'd say about that. One is I would love it if we taught every child and if we as adults model this, if we taught them to wake up every morning and just appreciate something that brought them joy in their lives over the prior day or for the prior week. And then to ask themselves, what do I want to do that's going to bring me joy today? Maybe it's something simple, like I'm going to take a walk with a

friend. Maybe it's I'm going to play this game. Maybe it's I'm going to watch that thing. It's going to make me laugh, whatever it is. But joy is a renewable resource that we have within us. And it's like electricity. It can power us in doing different things in our life. It can give us energy. It can give us perspective. But we don't really cultivate joy. We try to cultivate skills. We tell ourselves, hey, those skills are the key to success. But all the skills in the world without the joy is like having the most powerful car in the world with no electricity or gas in it.

It's not going anywhere. Thanks for putting it in my name. That was for you, Dan. Thanks for putting it in my name. That was for you, Dan. I appreciate it. Well, let's talk about globally your different approach to previous surgeon generals, which is they have historically focused on physical ailments. Now, let's just for a minute put quotes over physical because your mental health is part of your – yeah. But let's just say they have been far more targeted on physical maladies.

And your approach is kind of a departure. And so even though we did it in the first interview, let's go through some of the dark statistics associated with loneliness and lack of social connection. The headline, which people are now hearing with some regularity is the smoking analogy. Will you tell us the effects of loneliness? Yeah, absolutely. And you're right that this issue is unusual for a surgeon general to talk about. I never thought I would talk about or deal with loneliness when I was going through my Senate confirmation hearing to be a surgeon all the first time around. I was asked, hey, what are your priorities? This was not one of the ones

that I listed because it wasn't on my radar. What did you list just out of curiosity? Yes, the obesity crisis, which is a real health crisis. I talked about tobacco-related disease, which still takes nearly half a million lives every year. And I talked about the addiction crisis,

which continues, again, to be a problem. But what I hadn't realized is how mental health and specifically the loneliness crisis was actually tied into all of those.

Of course. Yeah, all the chronic. And it was not something I learned about in med school, but it was something that I was educated on by people I met all across America who would tell me in their own words and through their own stories

that they were feeling really isolated, that they didn't have someone in their life they could count on. College students would say to me all the time, you know what, I feel invisible. I feel like if I disappear tomorrow, no one would care. And that's heartbreaking to hear from anyone, but particularly from a young person. So as I dug into it, I realized two things. One is that loneliness is incredibly common. And the recent Surgeon General's advisory we issued a few months ago on the epidemic of loneliness and isolation actually pegs this number

at around 50% of adults who are reporting measurable levels of loneliness. But the numbers are actually even higher among young people who are experiencing the highest levels of loneliness across the age spectrum. So I realized, number one, it's incredibly common. But the second thing I realized, to your point, Dax, was how consequential it was for our health and well-being. So we find that when people are struggling with loneliness and with isolation, their risk of anxiety and depression and suicide go up. But their risk of physical illness goes up, too. So they have an approximately 30% increase in their risk of physical illness goes up too. So they have approximately 30% increase in their risk of heart disease and stroke. Their risk of dementia among older people goes up by 50%.

Their risk of premature death goes up as well. And people have done studies looking at this and they find that the mortality impact overall of loneliness and isolation is comparable to what we see with smoking. I say that as somebody who holds an office that has focused for more than half a century on smoking, on tobacco-related disease. But I have now come to believe that addressing loneliness is just as important a public health priority as addressing tobacco-related illness. They're both critically important. It's a Herculean task, but it feels absolutely imperative that we start looking at

these things as one whole complex system, right? Like even when you look at obesity rates and there's this incredible San Diego study where they find that of the patients there in this obesity trial, that two thirds of them had been sexually assaulted, molested, right? And you see now, well, that's an insane correlation. And then you look at addiction and you see the correlations there, and then you incorporate loneliness. And then when you're all alone and miserable, how do you self-medicate? There's different options. Doritos are a great one. Cigarettes are a great one. Jack Daniels is a great one. It's hard to pinpoint where the momentum starts rolling in the wrong direction, but there's so many factors and someone has to synthesize all these things, right?

You're exactly right. And I think for too long, what's happened has been the opposite. We've had specific groups looking at diabetes, specific groups looking at heart disease. And look, some of that is important because the biological mechanisms are different, the medications that are needed to treat these can be different. But if we look further and further upstream, we realize that these are part of a deeper interconnected system. And you spoke about trauma. Trauma that may happen from abuse or from other experiences, especially early in life, can have so many myriad consequences downstream in terms of not just mental health, but physical health outcomes too. The interesting thing about trauma is in addition to counseling and professional help being incredibly useful for

many people in overcoming the adverse effects of trauma, one of the biggest sources of healing for people who've gone through trauma are healthy relationships. Maybe the most impactful, if you read Body Keeps the Score, it's like that might be the best solution to trauma. Yeah. We see this in studies as well. There's a study done in Kauai actually over several decades. It looked at kids who had high, what are called ACE scores, or adverse childhood experience scores. So they had a lot of trauma early in their lives. I'm an 8 out of 11.

Just to let you know. I like to brag about that. No one knows how to respond because you want to say congratulations. I'm sorry. But also then it's like really bad. What are we going to go for? I'm glad you mentioned that, Dax, because there are a lot of people walking around with very high degrees of trauma in their life, and you can't tell from the outside.

I think that's the important thing for people to know, is that there's no stereotype to someone who's gone through trauma, but it's manifesting in different ways in our lives behind the scenes. Sometimes it's in addiction. Sometimes it's in abuse that we may perpetrate on others. Sometimes it's in depression and anxiety. It comes out in different ways. But one of the things they found in this Kauai study

was that when they looked at kids who had gone through high degrees of trauma, they found that what made the difference between the kids who ended up doing well later in life and those who didn't were actually the presence of healthy, trusted relationships. And that could be a parent. It could be a close friend. It could be a teacher or a mentor, but we all need these relationships to thrive. And this is, I think, so important to underscore because I think there is a thread in our culture that tells us that, hey, to be successful, we've got to be independent. And what does independent mean? It means we shouldn't need other people. We should be able to do everything. Yeah. And look,

there's nothing that's wrong with striving for getting better and better. We should do that. We should strive to be our best selves, to develop better and better skills, to be stronger, to be more resilient. But that is not incompatible with needing and relying on other people because we evolved to be interdependent species. Thousands of years ago, if we said and modeled our lives after that notion of independence that we don't need anyone else, I'll tell you what happened to us. The person who left the group, so to speak, and said, don't need anyone else. I'm out there on my own. That person got eaten by a predator. They starved from insufficient food supply. It was the people who stuck together and said, yeah, we got to get better on our own, but we'll share food. We'll take turns watching

around the fire at night to protect the group from predators. Those are the people who lived longer. Yes. I want to first say my explanation of yes, why I'm here, semi-functional as an adult, is one person, Aaron Weakley. I meet another kid in sixth grade. He has the same kind of trauma as I do, probably worse. We confide in one another. We learn to trust one another. The problem with trauma is it warps your worldview. Well, you could say it warps it or it anchors it in reality, which is there are predators, there are bad guys. And the only thing that can counteract that narrative is to be kind of submerged in good guys, to have the active data in front of you at all times. No, no, this person

is not one of those people. This person loves me and is committed to me and sacrifices for me. That's the antidote to the worldview that you have to take on as a result of trauma. So can I ask you about Aaron? Yeah, yeah. How old were you when you met Aaron? 11 or 12, sixth grade. What allowed you guys to start talking about what you had been through to confide in each other? That's a great question.

I just think that kids who have been through it see it in each other. I think you know when you're around someone else who's hypervigilant and craves arousal states and is comfortable in chaos. I think you pick up the clues and then observing what was happening in his house and broaching that topic and then us just sharing about that.

I wish I knew exactly what happened, but in my story, we were star-crossed. We were meant to see each other and get each other through all of it, and still are best friends. I was with him last weekend. That's incredible. One, that you found him in your life and that he found you, but really also that you opened up to each other. Because I actually think we cross paths with people who have gone through painful experiences like us, but a lot of times those are misconnections. People don't open up and talk. And especially boys who are at that age where they're starting to get a sense that, hey,

they need to stop talking about their feelings and emotions and they need to put forward a more traditional picture of strength. They don't talk about or open up about these things. So I think it's really remarkable that you did. I can give you the best example ever. We're driving down the road, Christmas morning, and the song, and I will always love you comes on the radio. And it's like out of a movie. I don't change it. He doesn't change it. And then about two minutes into the song, I go,

I got to tell you something. I love this song. That's awesome. Oh my God. I'm so glad you said that. My sister got the tape for her birthday two weeks ago and I stole the tape and I've been listening to it over That's awesome. Oh my God, I'm so glad you said that. My sister got the tape for her birthday two weeks ago and I stole the tape and have been listening to it over and over again. We just had this moment like, okay, great.

It's okay for us to like this song. I love that. Shit as stupid as that, though, I think was what kept me functional and not in a total spiral of pathology. Although that came, but now I got to jump because I wanted to touch on that thing I agreed with you on. I talk too much. I have to admit something.

This shirt is a cigarette shirt. A cigarette shirt? On the back. It's vintage. It's vintage. But I did wear it today knowing that it was a bad choice. Can I see the back? Mm-hmm.

Okay. I've also never smoked a cigarette, so I feel like I'm still winning. Oh, it's Marlboro. Yeah, it's got a snake. And you hate snakes. You hate snakes and cigarettes. I know. What a shirt for you to pick out. I know. Isn't it kind of cool, though? Cigarettes are bad, but if you

find a cool vintage... Smoke them responsibly? Nope. You should never smoke them. But if there's a cool vintage shirt, you can buy it. Well, I certainly don't want to get in the way of fashion, but I'm glad that you don't smoke. Yeah, I don't. That's really important. Never have, never will. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Sasha hated sand, the way it stuck to things for weeks. So when Maddie shared a surf trip on Expedia Trip Planner, he hesitated. Then he added a hotel with a cliffside pool to the plan. And they both spent the week in the water. You were made to follow your whims.

We were made to help find a place on the beach with a pool and a waterfall and a soaking tub and of course a great shower. Expedia. made to travel oh french lavender soy blend candle i told you home sense has good gift options well i don't know mom's gonna love it she'll take one sniff and be transported to that anniversary trip you took to san trope a few years ago forget it she complained about her sunburn the whole trip it's only 14 14 now that's a vacation i can get behind deal so good everyone approves only at home sense so i first came to

edward jones with a great deal of trepidation. When I first met with my advisor, I really was feeling vulnerable about what I would have to share. I was, of course, pleasantly surprised to find that there was absolutely no judgment and a lot of support. And when it was time to get serious, he really took my hand and helped me to do that. Edward Jones. We do money differently. Visit edwardjones.ca slash different. Now, having this focus on mental health, which of course does lead downriver to all these other chronic conditions that are killing us in epidemic levels. Is that a tough sell for your colleagues to mobilize the government, the biggest instrument on planet Earth, to kind of confront this issue of loneliness?

Is that a tough sell? Do you have half the government going like, this seems a little touchy-feely baloney to me? Was it a tough sell? I have actually been surprised at how little pushback there has been. And I have some ideas as to why. Number one, the reason I think loneliness has resonated so strongly as an issue to address in the public is I think the same reason it's resonating in government, which is that people are experiencing in their lives. It's personal. And I've had private conversations with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle about this. I've talked to many people in the executive branch about this. And everyone has a story, either about their own life or about somebody in their life who they're concerned about. And when you pair your personal story with this really powerful data that talks about the health impact of

loneliness, it's hard not to accept that this is a profound public health challenge that we've got to address. And it's hard also not to accept that there's something foundational about this, that if we were to build stronger connections in our lives and in our community, it would make us healthier on a variety of grounds, right? It would help us address a number of other illnesses in terms of reducing the incidence of those illnesses. But it's bigger than health because we see that when communities are connected, they're more connected,

they tend to be more economically prosperous. They tend to have lower levels of violence. They tend to be more resilient in the face of adversity, like a hurricane or a tornado. And this makes sense intuitively, right? And it's like, if we're all connected to one another and we're going to help one another, and if we help one another, we're more likely to stay after a disaster or help each other through difficult times. But there's also this issue around polarization, right? Like right now, there are a few people I meet in the country who aren't worried about the polarization that

they read about and hear on the airwaves. A country that is isolated and disconnected from one another is much more easier to exploit and to divide. I think a lot of people thought Russia was fueling the right, but they were fueling the left as well. They were organizing from Russia, Occupy Wall Street rallies. Anything that separated us or created division was appealing to them. And this is what we should expect from foreign adversaries that are looking for our weak spots, is that they will look at our loneliness and disconnection and realize that it is a vulnerability. It is both a health risk, but it's also a national security risk. And this is why I think the response from colleagues I've worked with in government has actually been quite positive

to address this. Interestingly, going all the way back to 2018, I think it was, one of the earliest conversations I had with President Biden about any health topic was actually about loneliness. He actually wrote me a letter afterward, and he wanted to understand more about loneliness. He was very concerned about how common it was and how it was impacting the country. So he has, for a variety of reasons, I think a deep appreciation for mental health more broadly as an important topic. But I think he and other government leaders now recognize that loneliness is a key part of that as well. And that if we're not actively stitching together the social fabric of our country, we will continue to watch it fray. And that means that we're going to continue to watch increases in polarization, increases in

health conditions. And when I was talking to a group of university chaplains this morning, one of the things that they were telling me is that they have noticed just this profound sense of loneliness among their students that has been growing over the years. And right alongside that, they have felt that the joy that students used to come to campus with has diminished. And there's a direct correlation between those two. That's so sad because college is so fun. It should be. It's the best time. I mean, is it worthwhile to try to establish causality to that?

I guess I have two questions. One is, are we really seeing enormous uptick? Are we seeing a comfort level with reporting it and acknowledging it and owning it? Because it's a safer place to acknowledge that. So it's like, one is, is it on the increase? And then two, do we know what's causing it? And is that even relevant? If really the solution is, we know what the solution is, it maybe doesn't matter what the causality is.

We haven't been collecting data on loneliness for like a century, so hard to give century-long trends. But there are various data sources that tell us when you look at subpopulations, that loneliness has in fact been increasing among young people, in particular, over years. So this is not just a detection issue per se. Are people more comfortable talking about it?

Maybe. But I think that there's something real happening here. We're also seeing, for example, that isolation in populations has been increasing as well. And if you think about it, maybe, but I think that there's something real happening here. We're also seeing, for example, that isolation in populations has been increasing as well. And if you think about it, it makes sense. When we moved from a society where people were living, let's say, in extended families, where they tended not to travel as much, where you worked in the same place that you tended to grow up, people had a sense of community's roots developed over time, and they kept those roots. Part of modernity has involved moving around a lot more and has also involved families not necessarily living in extended

family environments. Working from home, which is bizarre and novel. Right. So during the pandemic, I think the shift to not working in an office and working more from home, it's a different impact on work relationships, right? So all of these things are happening and leading to dramatic shifts in people's social health and well-being. And this is the thing is we don't often enough think about our social health and how important that is to our overall health and well-being. Like when all these changes were happening in society, we didn't sort of say, hey, we've got to mitigate the impact on our relationships. We've got to think about how to strengthen relationships. We just sort of took it for granted that, yeah, you know, we've always had people in our life. We'll always have people in our life.

That stuff will continue. But I think what the last 20, 30 years has shown us is that we can't take it for granted, that there have been real costs to our connection to one another as we've embraced a lot of modernity, including modern technology. That doesn't mean that we need to go back to the 1950s

or chuck all the progress that we've made or the opportunities that we have. What it does mean is that we have to proactively develop strategies for strengthening connection in our individual lives and as a society more broadly, which is why one of the things that I've called for, in addition to a number of individual steps that we can take, is also on a societal level, the rebuilding of social infrastructure, which, you know, we're used to thinking about bridges and highways as traditional infrastructure, but social infrastructure are the programs and policies that support the development of healthy relationships. Those might be community service

organizations that bring people together. They could be faith organizations that give people opportunities to learn about one another across differences. They may be recreational leagues or youth leagues, but participation in all of these has decreased significantly over the last half century. And we have to rebuild this infrastructure if we want to rebuild connection. Oh God, that seems like hard, very, very hard. Well, it takes work even as adults,

especially in this hustle culture and got to succeed and got to be the best and got to make the most money and got to work really hard and prove that you're working really hard all the time. I sometimes struggle with this because we have a hundred shows now and there is always something I can be doing for this job. Always. There's never like a time where I was like, well, I did it all because we just have a constant. And so I have made a very active choice that I'm going out,

I'm having a glass of wine with my friend. I'm doing that even though I have stuff to do, which feels hard because as someone who's like wants to achieve- Do you want me to leave for some of this? I can step out. Well, it's actually for you to hear. This is one of our sub-tweeting moments.

Yeah, exactly. Is this an intervention? It is important to force yourself This is one of our sub-tweeting moments. Yeah, exactly. Is this an intervention? It is important to force yourself when you're someone who's inclined to want to overachieve or succeed. You could just work forever. You have to stop and say, I'm taking two hours. Maybe it means later in the night I have to do something I don't want to do or work again, but I have to. And I think as a single person,

it can be harder. If I had a family, I think I would be like, well, of course I have to have dinner with my family or I have to put them to bed or something. Drive them to school. Exactly. There are markers that the world appreciates for connection. But if you're single, there isn't that. So you yourself have to just say like, I'm doing this for myself. The only tip maybe I could offer in pursuit of this connection thing, and I'll just speak for a middle-aged man, you have to schedule it. It has to be scheduled. If you're like me and you're just going to wait for some huge pocket of time to materialize and then you're going to reach out to your friend and hope that they too have it, that's never going to work. You're going to reach out to your friend and hope that they too have, that's never going to work. So just recently, and it happened last night, my best friend in LA, Nate Tuck, he has a family.

I have a family. He works on the other side of town. We're never going to see each other. And then we committed six months ago. We're like, hey, first Wednesday of every month, we have dinner. Can we commit to that? That's not outrageous. And yesterday was the first Wednesday of the month.

We had dinner. And every time I leave, I'm like, I'm so delighted I finally cracked how to see him, which is, it has to be scheduled. You have to make it a priority. It's not just going to happen. It won't happen. You guys are exactly right. And I know it can sound overwhelming to rebuild connection in our lives, in our community, but I actually think it's easier than we may think for a couple of reasons. One is because our natural inclination deep down inside of an evolutionary perspective is actually to connect with other people. There may be barriers that have come up over time. Maybe we've come to the point where we don't feel comfortable reaching out or we're worried if other people won't want to hear from us or maybe we don't have time. But intrinsically, we are born to connect. We

are designed to connect. And so this isn't about transforming ourselves into something that's totally different. This is about coming back to who we are. But the other thing is, it's actually the small moments of connection that can make a big difference in how ultimately connected we feel. So to your point, if you schedule time with a friend, even if it's like a half hour to have a meal or an hour to catch up once a month, once every couple months, that can make a big difference. But even if it's smaller than that, I'll tell you something my wife does, which I love. She uses the time that we spend dropping our kids off to school when the four of us are in the car together. She uses that time to just ask the kids about something nice that happened to them. And

that's a chance for us just to talk as a family for those few minutes that we're in the car. So we're repurposing time to connect more deeply. The third thing that I've realized also is time is scarce, right? But there is one way to stretch time and that's actually to give our full attention to someone else. So if the three of us are having dinner together and we said, okay, we're going to catch up for half an hour, but the three of us are actually also kind of on our phones and check an email here and there, that half hour will go by quickly and we'll be like, oh, we didn't get to talk about that much. What happened? But if you try putting your devices away, not in your pocket where you're like waiting for them to vibrate, but put them out of you, just devote your attention for half an hour to somebody else. That can be really powerful. It can make a half hour feel

like an hour or a couple of hours. And so it's not always about how much time we have. Sometimes it's about how much attention we're bringing to a situation that allows us to really enjoy and appreciate the connection there. And to me, these small shifts are cultural shifts that are achievable, but they start with us believing that it's important to prioritize connection. And for me, part of the reason to have a national conversation about this and a global conversation is that if more and more people believe that this is an important priority, then it actually makes it easier for us

to carve out time for this. Like, because I know my wife, Alice, really knows about how important social connection is, it's easier for me to say, okay, I can take an hour on Sunday and talk to my buddies because Alice knows that that's really important for my health and well-being. It's not just an indulgence.

Keep in mind, we all, at least I hope all of us, do get up every morning and brush our teeth, right? Uh-huh. Yeah, minimally. We do that despite the fact that we're really busy. We could say, you know, there's just not enough time to brush our teeth. The to-do list is insanely long. I'll get to it at the end of the week, right? We brush our teeth every morning because we realize, you know what, that's something that's really important to our health and well-being.

And our social connection, let's be honest. Yeah, let's be honest with you. First and foremost. But even if you took those five minutes or so that you brushed your teeth and let's say had five minutes during your day that you were reaching out to somebody that you cared about, whether it's sending them a simple message to say, hey, I'm thinking about you, want to know how you're doing, or calling them on the way to work to say, hey, you know, I only got five minutes, I'm just almost at work, but I just want to hear your voice, see how you're doing. I'll guarantee you that that five minutes can make a huge difference in how you feel over the course of days and weeks. Yes, you have solutions. One is answer a phone call from a friend. I like this. Invite someone over and share a meal. Listen and be

present during conversation. That's what we just talked about. And seek out opportunities to serve others. This last one has so many different benefits. This is a tenant of AA, right? You fully acknowledge the selfishness of the selfless act, which is while I'm helping you, it's hard for me to ruminate on the many things that could make Dax happier. And the freedom from that rumination and self-obsession is a gift. It's so pleasing to stop thinking about myself for some extended period of time. You explain that really beautifully. And that is the power of service. And you understand this well, because the A model, the notion around service is so central in recovery. And I don't only it's a coincidence, when I think about that, at this point, thousands of people

that I have met who are in recovery across the country, very few of them have been able to get there on their own. There was a community, there was a person, there was somebody in their lives who stepped up to help them. And I think we have to broaden how we think about service, that it's not just going to a soup kitchen and volunteering. It's not just building a house with Habitat for Humanity. Those are powerful ways to serve. But service can be seeing someone who's in need and offering a kind word, checking on them, seeing somebody who spilled their coffee in the coffee store

and helping them clean it up or get a new cup. I mean, there are small ways to serve that make a really big difference in how connected we are. And especially when we do this with strangers, this is something that many of us realized during the pandemic when we couldn't see strangers in particular. A lot of people told me, you know, I expected to miss my family, my friends, the people I couldn't see, my work colleagues perhaps, but I didn't expect to miss those strangers at the coffee shop, you know, or to miss seeing people in the grocery store, but it's really nice to see them again. So those small moments of connection where we're kind to someone else, those are all acts of service that help bond us to one another.

You've brought it up a few times, like we're social primates, period. End of story. We're never going to not be social primates. But we have incrementally gone from needing and depending on 100 people in our tribe to now you're just one individual. You don't even need the partnership anymore. You look at marriage rates. And again, this isn't single shaming. This is just data of marriage rates in New York City in the seventies versus now people are more and more and more alone. In my opinion, we're just living in the opposite way we were designed to live. And then we're shocked when we have kind of pandemic level mental health issues. This is not what we were supposed to be doing. It's not. It's not how we were designed to live.

We have, I think, confused functionality with friendship. Like we've somehow assumed that if we can do the functions of daily life, we can get our packages delivered to us, buy our own groceries, take care of all the activities of daily living by ourselves, then perhaps those relationships are nice to have and not necessary. But those relationships were for more than the functions that we see in front of our eyes. They helped us deal with stress. Friendship is one of the greatest buffers for stress. They helped us make sense of confusing times. When we were in times of despair and confusion, it was friends who often hold up a mirror to us

and help us see who we really are and what matters to us. Those are the profound values of friendship and of social connection. And I worry that unless we recognize that value, unless we make a conscious decision to move from what has become a work-centered life to a people-centered life, that we will continue to struggle, I think, with the rates of depression and anxiety and unhappiness and lack of joy that we are seeing so commonly around us, especially among young people. Okay, so I agree. I'm in. This all needs to be addressed.

How do we mechanically, like, what are the steps? How do you take this huge apparatus you're in charge of and actually make the rubber meet the road? So just think about it very simplistically. I think there are three buckets of things we have to do. Number one, we have to change how we think about this so that we make it a priority in our lives. Two, we have to take steps in our individual lives to build greater connection. And those are the small incremental steps. But third, we have to then look at the levers in society, at the institutions in our society, at government, at philanthropy, schools,

workplaces, and ask how can they pull their levers to strengthen social connection in the workplace, in schools, in our communities. If you think about these three buckets, the first one we're starting on, that's part of the purpose of conversations like this that we're having is to give people permission to say, yes, this is important. I can make this a priority in my life. I want to choose a life of connection. That doesn't make me weak. It doesn't make me irresponsible. It doesn't mean I'm not committed to being successful.

It means I understand what's important for my health and well-being. So I think that movement is starting. We need to accelerate it and we need to have more conversations in schools, workplaces, faith organizations, communities around this. But on the individual front, the second bucket, these were some of the steps we were talking about earlier, I think are very powerful. Just spending a few minutes each day connecting with someone you care about, making sure that when you're talking to family and friends that you're giving them your full attention, looking for ways to serve as well in small ways and big ways. These can help us foster greater connection in our life. If we think about the third bucket, then the community bucket, this is about, again, mobilizing our institutions. So if you run a workplace,

for example, workplaces can be really powerful in creating opportunities for people to get to know one another. I'll give you an example of what we do in our office. Once a week when we have our all-hands meetings, we have something we call our Humans of OSG exercise. This is OSG stands for Office of the Search in General. This is a simple 10 to 15 minutes where we have one team member interview another. And it could be about anything in their life, as long as it's not about their current job. It could be about what excited them when they were younger. What did they dream about doing? What worries them? What's their family like? What music do they love? And those 10 to 15 minutes often lead us feeling like we know the person better and feel closer to them than we had perhaps in the prior year of working with them, because we've

come to understand them as a whole person. And that's 10 minutes in an all-staff meeting. It's not putting aside a few hours to have a company picnic on weekends when you can't be with your family. It's not come to happy hour after work where you got to take time away from family. It's very simple, but it's powerful. In schools as well, I think schools do a great job in recognizing the importance of things like math and science and history. But I think schools do a great job in recognizing the importance of things like math and science and history. But I think one of the most important life skills that we can give to kids is a skill to build healthy relationships and manage healthy relationships. Because a lot of people don't know how to do that. And when I talk to folks today, teachers at all levels,

grade school level, college level, many of them are worried that young people today, in part, not because anything of their own fault, but because they're rapidly changing social media environment and technology environment, that many young people are not feeling comfortable reaching out to strangers, building new friendships, initiating conversations. That's a skill set we can't assume everyone is born with. That's something we have to cultivate. So this is what schools can do. So if we focus on these three buckets, I think we can make a big difference. And I lay a lot of this out in our advisory in terms of a national strategy that we need to have to rebuild social connection and community in America. But it starts with what we do in our individual lives. And that's why I think for anyone who's listening here today, who's feeling perhaps the pinch of loneliness,

who's worried about somebody in their own lives. Some of these simple individual steps that we've talked about, that's where it starts. And when you start making those changes in your life, it affects your friends. They're starting to feel more connected. They're starting to ask you what you're doing. One quick anecdote, something I did in my own life, which made a big difference. When I was feeling profoundly lonely in 2017, 2018, my first stint as Surgeon General had ended. I didn't quite know what to do with my life. I was feeling profoundly lonely in 2017, 2018. My first stint as surgeon general had ended. I didn't quite know what to do with my life. I was in part feeling like I had failed, you know, because I hadn't been able to do everything I had wanted to do in the role.

And I had allowed my identity to get really wrapped up in the job. And so when I was no longer in the job, I'm like, well, who am I? What is my worth to society? Why would anyone want me to do something with them or work with them or hang out with them? I was having all of these thoughts. Well, as you point out, loneliness lowers self-esteem. It actually kind of fragments your identity. Without that reflection around you, you can lose your identity, which is counterintuitive.

You really can. And the thing is, all of us go through these times in our life where we're questioning who we are and what our worth is, right? That's just part of living in the world and pushing up against adversity and pushing your boundaries. But we need anchors who can keep us steady and remind us of who we are. And that's what friends do. A friend years ago once told me, we were having one of these late night philosophical conversations in college, and I said to him, how would you define a friend? And he just kind of thought about it. He said, you know, a friend is someone who reminds you of who you are when you forget.

Oh, that's lovely. I like that. They went on to be a poet. That's pretty profound. That's nice. Yeah. And he was right. So what I did is I was lamenting this loneliness, feeling a bit stuck on it. I happened to go to this retreat. It was part of a fellowship retreat with a bunch of folks who I knew and loved, but never saw. And these two friends in particular, we were taking this walk around this lake. Their names are Sonny and Dave. And we actually realized we were all feeling a bit lonely and a bit lost during that time.

And at the end, we were like, you know, it'd be great if we saw each other again. We should try to make it a point to see each other, knowing we lived in different cities, knowing in the back of our heads it probably wasn't going to happen as often as we wanted. But then finally, I was like, you know what? We got to do something to make this different. So we made a commitment to each other at the end of that walk. We said, we are going to call each other

on video conference once a month and talk for two hours. We're not going to be distracted by other devices and stuff when we do that. Number two, we're going to talk about the things that really matter to us that we don't often talk about enough with other friends.

And those include our health, our finances, our family, our fears. And the third thing we said is that in between those calls, if things come up that make us really worried or scared or anxious or things that bring us a lot of joy, we're actually going to text each other and let the other two know and respond. And if we need to have an emergency call, we'll do it. We formed something called a MOI, which is an old Okinawan tradition where kids would come together early in life and commit to one another, to be there for one another. And I'll tell you that that MOI really saved me. Huge decisions that I had to make in my life about family, about work, about all kinds of things,

about my health. I called my MOI brothers, Sonny and Dave. I was like, I'm feeling like I'm spinning on this. I don't know what to do here. Or I'm feeling like I'm going to do this, but I'm going to do it for the wrong reasons. I'm feeling really angry about this situation. I'm not sure how to break out of it. And we would help talk each other through it. There was no expense to that. There was no major prep or training we had to go through, but there was an explicit commitment that we made to one another. And I think a lot of times we tiptoe around our friendships in life thinking, hey, I don't want to intrude on my friend's privacy. I don't want to impose on their time. I don't want to make their lives harder by asking them for things. And meanwhile, they're thinking the same thing as well. And so

if we can take the implicit affection and love and commitment we have to one another and make it explicit such that we can ask each other for help. So we can actually be present with one another. We can have regular time with one another as you did with your friends scheduling these monthly dinners. We can strengthen the relationships we have in our life. And I tell you, my life feels a lot less lonely because I have my Moai with Sonny and Dave. Well, it is funny. I have chronically avoided asking for help my whole life. It's such a weakness. I don't want to do it.

And I asked a friend, not even a close friend, like we've hung out a few times. I said, I think I need your advice. I think you've been through stuff that I'm now going through and I'd like to get your advice. And the response was so immediate, like, yeah, name the time, dude.

And in that moment, I recognized like, people love to give advice. They love it. Again, I always thought, I don't want to be a pain in anyone's ass. I just want to be value additive to everyone. But asking someone for advice is value additive. It makes that person feel like they have something to pass on. They like it. I have a couple of questions that are just more surgeon generally questions.

Yeah, whatever you want. Also, what's call 988? So most people are familiar with 911. At least I hope they are. 988 is a similar emergency line that we just recently set up for mental health emergencies. So if you're in crisis or if somebody with you is in crisis, you can call or text 988 and get connected to a trained professional who can help and connect you to care. Oh, that's great. That is great.

Was that a tough sell? It wasn't a tough sell, but it required a lot of investment to actually set up the infrastructure for this. To be able to deal with these calls, you need some real expertise. And you need the technical system set up, which means working closely with states. It's required a massive amount of funding, which thankfully it's been a priority for the president

and Congress has funded it as well. So on a bipartisan basis, we've been able to build. There's still more work to do on it. Most people don't know that 9-1-1 actually took many years to get to the stage that it's at now. Oh, really? And we don't want to take 10, 20, 30, 40 years to build 9-8-8 into everything it can and needs to be. And so there's a lot of emphasis being put now and making the right investments, building out those networks so that you can get the help that you needed whenever you need it. Isn't everyone smelling hot dogs?

I keep getting waffs of hot dogs as if someone's cooking them right next to the air conditioner. Really? I'm not smelling that at all. Maybe I'm having a stroke. I know that now I'm anxious. Luckily there's a doctor here.

If there was a time for me to have a stroke. That's true. I think if that's bread, toast, toast is what you're supposed to smell if you're having a stroke. I think that's bread, toast. Toast is what you're supposed to smell if you're having a stroke. Oh, great. Not hot dogs. These are hot dogs boiled in water is what I'm smelling. Not even on the grill. That's very precise. Yeah. I'm a hot dog connoisseur. It's your new cologne hot dog by Hot Men. Okay. Obviously, the Surgeon General, I imagine you're asked about drug policy. That's a health issue. Increasingly, we're recognizing that as a health issue. It used to be a criminal issue,

but now, thank God, it's more and more a health issue. And you were on record in 2021 saying that there was no value, quote, to incarcerating people for cannabis use, which I couldn't agree with more. But let's get into the harder ones. So Oregon now famously has decriminalized most drugs or put very small fines on things. There's been a couple articles I read recently that says this is not going very well for them. And I wonder what your thoughts are on kind of a global drug policy for America and how do we figure, I mean, I feel qualified. I've done every single drug and I've been addicted to many of figure, I mean, I feel qualified. I've done every single drug and I've been addicted to many of them. I think I could come up with the list of what we

should decriminalize and what we shouldn't. But I'm very curious how you approach it, given your job, when you're thinking about what a drug policy should be for the country. The way I think about it is in part about, you can ask the question, what should be legal and what should not be legal? I think there's a related but somewhat distinct question of what should actually land someone in jail? And I think when you are dealing with people who are struggling with addiction to whatever drug it's to, what those individuals need is medical help. They need treatment. They need support.

That doesn't mean that you overlook any adverse consequences to their addiction. Not at all. What it does mean is that if we are taking people and putting them in prison instead of getting them help and treatment, we are not serving them, but we actually are not serving society, right? Because then what happens to them? They serve their time in prison, they are suffering, they come out, and they are still addicted. So it is better for all of us to take people who may run into trouble with the criminal justice system and try to get them into treatment. It's also important that for folks who are in jail, perhaps for other issues, but who

also have a concurrent addiction issue in their life, that they also have access to treatment in prisons. And this has been a place where we have not had enough readily available treatment, like in our prison system, for folks struggling with substance use disorders. So to me, that has to be a first principle, is that when we identify people struggling with addiction, we get them help. We divert them into the health system. And that's where drug courts actually were focused on, right? And that's where there were a lot of successes that came from drug courts. And you know, the people who I think really appreciate this kind of shift are law enforcement themselves. And I've talked to many law enforcement officers over the years about the drug addiction crisis we've got in America. And many of them say, look, we didn't train as healthcare providers. We can respond to an issue, but we need to know

where to get them, where they can get help. Historically, folks have landed up in emergency rooms, which is not the ideal location to provide somebody with long-term care. So that's why, again, the move toward one, investing more in drug courts, but two, building stronger partnerships between public health and law enforcement so you can get people in to substance use treatment, that is what we have to do. And the third thing I'll just mention is related to what you brought up earlier, Dax, which is our NAA, which is communities of support that help people who are dealing with the substance use disorder. These are invaluable. As much as I'm a believer in certain medications, their ability to help, I think without community, it's very difficult. But I think that's where we also have to support

community organizations that provide that kind of ongoing support, friendship, partnership for folks who are dealing with substance use disorders. All of these are critical parts of the operation here. And look, a lot of this is about the execution as well. Sometimes you have a policy that's well-intended and isn't executed well. And then people will say, oh, that was the wrong idea. But sometimes it's not the idea, it's the execution. So we've got to get this right.

Well, yeah, I think some of the defenders of the Oregon stuff will say, well, they weren't set up to deal with all the treatment of all these people. It's like they just had the law that we're going to decriminalize all this, but they don't really have the infrastructure to send massive amounts of people through detox and stuff. Yeah, you've got to have that treatment capacity set up. And I realize it's not simple. You don't snap your fingers and train a substance use counselor.

But this is why I think it's really critical for us to not only invest as much as we can in training, but also recognize we've got to use technology to make treatment more accessible to people. So one interesting silver lining of the pandemic was that it dramatically accelerated our use of telemedicine, providing virtual care. And this is particularly important for people with substance use disorders who needed medication-assisted treatment, access to counseling. How are they going to get those? Well, it turned out getting them virtually was extraordinarily helpful. It was literally a lifeline. Part of the debate battle that's happening right now is whether those telemedicine authorities should be extended, whether they should be made permanent. I'm a believer that this is the direction that we need to go in of making them part of the long-term apparatus of how we deliver care. When I was visiting Alaska in 2016, I went to visit a small fishing village

called Napaskiak, which is so small. It's 150 people. There are no roads to Napaskiak. You can only get there by boat or by plane. And in this small fishing village, in this small little building, it wasn't even a building, it was almost like a hut, where they had provided first aid, they had a small screen set up on the wall. And I asked them, I said, what is that screen there for? And they said, oh, that's where people can come and sit and get counseling for their substance use disorders from healthcare providers in the lower 48. And what a beautiful way to use technology to bring care to where people are. So in my mind, that's part of what we've got to do to make sure care is accessible. Should we legalize mushrooms?

So psilocybin has been of growing interest in the public because of its potential impact on mental health and particularly on treatment-resistant depression. When I look at some of that data, I think it's very intriguing data. And I think given the scale of the mental health crisis that we have in this country, we should be doing everything possible

to accelerate that research, pull out the stops on it so that we have in this country, we should be doing everything possible to accelerate that research, pull out the stops on it so that we understand how it can help, who it can help, what any potential side effects are, and then figure out how to get it to people in an affordable way, in an accessible way. What I can almost promise is it can't make it worse, minimally, for people who want to try that type of therapy. Well, so this is the interesting thing. You use the word therapy, right? A number of the studies that have been done have also looked at not just recreational psilocybin use, but have actually looked at it as part of a treatment plan. So if you look at Johns Hopkins, for example, some of the research that they've been doing,

people are given psilocybin in a controlled setting. It's done under supervision. They have counselors available to help them process the experience and guide them through it because it can be a great experience for some people. It can be a traumatic experience for other people. It depends on their particular brain, their particular life history, and set of experiences and trauma. It's done in a controlled setting, and it's done with professionals who can give counseling and care. And that's what I'm talking about why research is so important.

It's like understanding the right way to deliver this so that most number of people can have the most amount of benefit is what's really important here. What I'm worried about is one, we haven't done enough to make that research easy and fast. Given the scale of the crisis, we should be pulling out the stops. We should be doing in a sense like what we did with vaccines during COVID, right?

Which is we developed vaccines in a remarkably short timeframe without skipping the safety and efficacy and quality steps. Those were done, but the global community cooperated on an unprecedented scale to get this done because we were in a crisis. The mental health may be a more slow moving crisis. It might be more under the surface, but it's just as much a crisis. And so there are, I think, administrative steps and legal steps that need to be taken to make that research easier and to accelerate it. The thing I worry about is that people will accelerate moves to distribute psilocybin on a widespread basis without any guidance to help their providers about who it helps, who it may hurt, how to administer it.

If you went to a primary care doctor now and said, I have treatment-resistant depression, can you prescribe me psilocybin? How many grams should I take? They wouldn't know what to do with you because guidance hasn't been provided. So this is where we can't rest on the tools we have. We've got some tools to help with depression and anxiety and for the right people, they can be helpful, but we need better tools and we've got to invest in better tools. And I think we have to leave no stone unturned. And I think psilocybin is an area where the initial research I think is intriguing and we is an area where the initial research, I think, is intriguing and we've got to do much more quickly there. I would add the caveat. It does reek of another magic bullet. Here's another thing you can take that will make you feel better. When

we know what's going to make you feel better is connection and interdependence. So it's like, here's yet another external thing. Well, the goal of it is to connect to emotions you haven't been able to access. Like, again, it's not just like do it for fun and see fun colors. Although that's cool too. Sure. We're not going to have the surgeon general say that. But in a therapeutic setting, it's for that. It's for therapy in order to be able to build more connections.

Yeah, but I do think a lot of people have a fantasy that they'll go take ayahuasca or they'll take psilocybin and it'll fix them. They won't have any behavioral changes they need. Like chemically it'll fix it. Yes, but they need to also do that in tandem with a lot of connection. It's a really important point. And two things. One is that's why I think doing it in a therapeutic sense as part of close oversight with counselors is very different from just sort of taking a pill once in the morning with your cholesterol medication or your blood pressure medicine. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

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sources of trauma or pain that may be aggravating our mental illness or causing it in the first place, then all of that is good. But you look at some lifestyle tools, right? You look at sleep, physical exercise, even to some extent, diet and relationships. These all have impacts on our mental health and wellbeing. When we sleep better, that improves our mental health. When we exercise, that lifts our mood and can have a powerful impact on our mental health, which is why whenever I'm cranky and I'm in a bad mood, my wife just tells me, go downstairs and lift something heavy in the gym and you'll feel better. And she's always right. Similarly with friendships, you know, we've talked a lot about social connection here. I really believe that this is a moment coming through COVID when people's

lives have been dramatically changed, when people are actually reflecting on what the future looks like and what perhaps they want from their lives. This is a moment for us to take a hard look at what life should and could look like and to say, what would it look like if we truly built a people-centered life? What would it look like if we invested that five minutes a day in reaching out to other people in our lives? What would it look like if we really did look for ways to serve? We put our side, our phone, and actually focus on the person in front of us. How would we feel? You can do that experiment in your own life, and I think the results will be clear. But the bottom line is if we use this moment to build a movement in our country and around the world to create greater connection, to strengthen the social fabric of society, then I think that will lift all boats.

It will improve our physical and mental health. It'll improve how our kids do in school. It'll improve how people perform in the workplace. And there's good data on all of this. But that's a conscious decision that we have to make right now. Because the forces that are telling us to just keep pursuing more followers online,

thinking that somehow that constitutes friendship or that are forcing us to pursue fancier jobs or titles, thinking that that's the social currency that we need to feel worthy and meaningful. I'll tell you that those in my mind don't work. There are so many people, the three of us all know, who are wealthy, who are powerful, who are famous, and who feel profoundly unhappy and profoundly alone. But the contrast, when I think about patients I've cared for over the years, there are many of them who were not famous, who were not rich, who didn't have powerful, fancy

jobs, but you know, they were really happy. And the common denominator in their lives was that they had fulfilling relationships. One of the earliest patients I took care of was a man who came to see me for his diabetes and high blood pressure. And when I sat down with him, I said, I'm so glad to meet you. Tell me a little bit about your life. And the first thing I remember him saying to me was, you know, doc, I won the lottery and it was the worst thing that ever happened to me. And I was stunned when he said that. And I said, what do you mean? And it turned out he had this amazing life. He worked in the food industry. He had customers who loved him and he had coworkers who he really enjoyed. He lived in a modest home,

but he knew his neighbors. They liked each other, felt he had a community there. But then he won the lottery and he's like, I don't need to do any of this anymore. I'm going to quit my job. I'm going to move to a fancy community, buy a big home on the water. And that's what he did. He moved into this gated community. He was living, quote unquote, the life. But then soon after that, he realized he really missed the people he worked with. He missed the feedback he got from his customers and being able to bring joy into their lives. He didn't know his neighbors because everyone had these big walls up around their houses. And he became lonelier and lonelier and lonelier. I've seen anecdotally among men, especially older men, that their loneliness tends to manifest as anger and irritability.

That's exactly how he became. And shortly after that, he developed high blood pressure and diabetes. And that's what brought him to come see me. And that's why he said that winning the lottery was the worst thing that ever happened to him. So some of these things that we perhaps chase after or told are the keys to success. Let's just be honest. Yeah. I say this all the time, and it drives people nuts, as it should. Still, everyone's going to go, well, let me win the lottery, and I'll tell you if that's right. I know.

You can't believe. That's so strong. It's a narrative. The narrative we inherit is, yes, the big house behind the gates will equal contentment, fulfillment, happiness, self-esteem. And they're just not even correlated. In fact, they might be inversely correlated. You can't accept that. You're like, let me go get it and I'll see if that's true.

And I get it. I get it too. And look, it's the same like when we talk about power, fame. Do you know how many kids there are right now that are 17 years old that look at you and they go, if I could do Harvard undergrad by the time I was 20 and then go to Yale, get a medical degree, like, oh, that's it. Yeah. They're convinced they're going to feel a certain way at the end of that. Yeah.

And here's, I think, the trick is that it's in distinguishing the action from the feeling. There's nothing wrong with winning the lottery. Go for it, win the lottery. But if you believe that winning the lottery is your key to happiness, that's a problem. Nothing wrong with going to a fancy school and becoming a doctor. But if you think that achieving those credentials or getting that diploma alone is what's going to make you happy, then you're set up for disappointment. And look, the thing is, if we all look back at our lives, we all probably can remember things that we aimed for. And as soon as we got them, we started to feel unhappy. There were even things we pined for and then we bought

and they were fun for like a week. Yeah, yeah. When you see them somewhere and you're like, God, I really cared about that thing. I could give a shit about it now. Like all of it. Thinking about kids for a moment, when I think about what we should get them as presents,

I don't want to get them stuff. I want to create experiences for them where they will connect with other people. And this could be around fun. It could be going to visit family. It could be doing really fun things or having adventures with their friends. Buy friends to a water park. Yes. Those kind of experiences, that's what brings us joy. And they usually revolve around some connection that we have with other people. Yeah. Hey, one thing we haven't talked about, but I just want to mention, because I think it's important for people to know,

is that we've talked a lot about the importance of doing activities like service, five minutes of outreach, presence, et cetera, for building your connection with other people. But there's actually one other thing that's important here, which is counterintuitive, which is cultivating solitude. Now, this is counterintuitive because you think, wait, solitude, isn't that being alone? Why is that going to help me be connected to other people? The difference between solitude and loneliness is that solitude is actually a welcome state of being alone. It's a time where you connect more deeply with yourself, where you reflect, where you have a chance to just be in a world that seems like it's moving

faster and faster and faster. And for some people, that could be sitting on your front porch for five minutes and just feeling the wind against your face. It could be taking a walk in your neighborhood. It could be just lying down and putting on some music that helps you feel inspired or calm. It could be any one of those things. It could be meditation. It could be prayer.

But these moments of solitude are important because when we allow the noise around us to settle, that's when we start to get more and more comfortable with who we are, with recognizing who we are. And one of the things that's happening increasingly right now, not just to young people, but to all of us, is I think that we are become less and less comfortable being on our own, being alone, right? And not being lonely. That's a separate thing. But being physically alone and having that time. Like I've felt that in my own life.

Sometimes I feel like, gosh, if I have the five minutes, I should be doing something. I should be either doing some work or I should be listening to a podcast or I should be doing this or doing that or whatever, being productive. But the truth is sometimes that five minutes, which seems wasteful, is really an investment in regrounding ourselves. In the same way that like if we were working out, we don't work out continuously. We work out and then we give ourselves a break so that our muscles can build and our body can recover. And that's what time and solitude is good for as well. And so whether that's two minutes a day or five minutes a day, we all need those moments of solitude. And it's something that we're trying to teach our kids too right now is how to not always look for something that can occupy them, but how to just take a few minutes, even if it's just two minutes and just breathe.

Sometimes I do this with our kids together is we'll just all breathe together for a minute, take a deep breath in and deep breath out. Box breath. Yeah. Yeah. A good exercise is if you're at dinner with a friend and they go to the bathroom, don't check your phone. Oh, I like this. You just like be there. I know, because it's so hard.

Immediately, when someone starts walking away, you reach for your phone. My tip, so mine's in the morning. I have an hour before I do anything else, right? So it's meditation first, then it's journaling one page. And then if I have time, then it's a page of prose.

And it's non-negotiable. It has to happen. What I like about doing it first thing in the morning is you can feel yourself join in the chaos after it. You can feel your adrenaline and cortisol. You can feel your heart rate change. I think it's really important to observe the trick because when you wake up, if you grab the phone, you're there and there's no break from it. So you're just there, you're in that hyper state and then it never ends. So you go to bed and then you repeat in the morning. But if you can do it first thing in the morning and actually get that, whatever it is for you, 10, 20 minutes of nothingness, it makes you more conscious of how distracting and how not great the other stuff

is for you. It's like sobering up enough. Some people don't even know if they're high because they haven't been sober long enough. I like doing it for me. I love that. How did you develop that practice? That's beautiful. The journaling was a sobriety thing. And so many folks in AA meditate and spoke highly of its impact on their life enough that I believe these are people I trusted. They're not bullshit. Well, they are bullshit artists. That's why they're there. But yeah, I just believe these men who were telling me it was nice for them. And then I learned TM. And yeah, I think it's incredible. And the rare occasion I can't start my day that way, the whole thing's very altered. I hear you. And I think that's great advice for people to have that

solitude at the beginning of the day and to not check your phone before you do it because then your thoughts are already invaded and your brain's already spinning on everything you've got to do on your to-do list. I also have a morning practice as well. Get up early, work out, meditate, and then think either in my mind or write down something I'm grateful for and something I'm looking forward to. And I find that just really helps set the tone for my days. And days I don't do that, if something happens, I'm up late and I wake up late, or if I just somehow slip and like dip into my phone, it just fundamentally is different. My mind's turning already. You feel frayed all day, right? Yeah. Feel frayed and distracted all day. We often talk about time as one of our greatest resources and it absolutely

is. Our attention is also one of our great resources. It's how we make our time count for even more. And our attention is really frayed right now. And a lot of people I talk to say they feel like they can't even read a book anymore because they just don't have the attention to do it. They can't read a full length article anymore because they just get distracted by X, Y, and Z. I think it's a struggle for a lot of people. And just how it's framed, that would be a waste of your limited time to dedicate an hour and a half to doing nothing seems like, well, that's a waste because I'm not doing anything. But in fact, every hour after it probably goes up in some significant percentage of clarity and productivity that I really do think you end up buying that back.

Totally. It's funny. Like if you think about this in sports, we don't say that it's only the time on the basketball court when you're actually playing an official game that counts and that all that time practicing in the weight room, that that's all waste. No, we say that's preparation for the big game. So your morning routine, my morning routine, these moments of solitude, this is preparation for the big game, for the rest of life, for our days. What a pleasure. I'm so glad we got to do it in person. Yeah, me too. It's so nice.

I'm so glad we got to do this in person too. And I loved it last time when it was virtual, but in person has been great. I remember how we ended last time also. Me too. We were talking about matchmaking. Matchmaking. I wondered if that was going to come back up.

Oh, right. What happened? Something fell apart. Did you ever connect with the person? Well, it was three years ago at this point, so I hardly remember. I do remember that the big hangup was location. Yes, he was in Chicago. Yes.

And that is a deal breaker. That's okay. Unfortunately. But I did really appreciate it. I can't believe you, in your busy schedule schedule took time out of your life to do that. The search in general is matchmaking. Listen, I actually, it's funny. I've been thinking more about it since we spoke three years ago.

Because I think that there's just so many people I meet right now, frankly of all ages, who are struggling with this question of how to find a romantic partner, how to find a meaningful relationship, and who are not satisfied with the current ways people do that. And I think online work for some people, but for a lot of people, it's exhausting as a way of meeting people. And there just aren't that many other venues.

We were just talking about it actually with folks in my office who were saying that groups of existing friends tend to get together, but circles where you actually introduce new friends to each other, where circles like integrate or overlap, that just doesn't happen as much anymore. People aren't going to parties anymore in the same way. So I actually think that matchmaking is even more important now than it was when we last spoke.

And I still have the same love for doing it that I did before, because I just think there are a few things that are for me as joyous as being able to bring someone together with somebody else in a relationship that's meaningful to them, whether that lasts for a short time or that lasts forever, it's really meaningful. But I find that a lot of people say they want to be set up by their friends, but it's not happening for a bunch of reasons. It's not because their friends don't care about them, but sometimes their friends aren't sure if it would be awkward if it didn't work out or they aren't sure if it would be intrusive if they suggested it. But it's a meta statement, but it's a matchmaking, matchmaking problem, which is that there are friends out there who want to be matchmade. There are friends who have a network and they can do the matchmaking. But we actually have to bring these folks together.

But this is actually something I find myself thinking about how to work on, especially after my time as Surgeon General. Because I just think if more people find love in their life, that makes the world better. Yeah. I'll say this. We had the founder of Airbnb, Brian Chesney. Yeah, Brian, you know well. Yeah, he's great. He's talking about how he seeks Obama's advice.

How did he keep his head during his time at the Oval Office? And he had all these pro tips. And I said, I think you're missing the biggest one, which is he had two daughters and a wife that didn't give a fuck he was the president of the United States. And you need three people in your life. I said that to him. He's already declared he wants that advice and he wants to have more meaning in his life. And then I offered that as what was my experience and what I'd argue was Obama's. And I had a lot of people where I was like, stop single shaming people and stop child-

Well, I pushed back on that. You did. Love in your life is critical. That's a hundred percent the truth. It does not have to come in the form of marriage or a romantic partner. And I know that because there are plenty of relationships I see in my life that are lonely. They're together and they're lonely. Sure. That's many, not just like, oh, I know one person. That's a lot. So I don't think that the antidote is a romantic partnership. I think finding love in some way and genuine connection is the answer.

And it doesn't have to come in that form. But what would you say for guys? Let's just take guys. I'm not going to say anything about women. Guys die like eight years earlier. That might just because the woman's like making their dinner and stuff. There's a million reasons why they make them go to the doctor. But then the husband also makes the wife do things that she did.

Like it's a co-piloting situation is why it's beneficial. Yeah. Because both people are going like, yeah, it's been a long time since you had a glass of water, Mary. Yeah. And I think it's in part because look, the way our society has constructed itself is that generally speaking, in order to have somebody in your life who is so tightly connected to you and so interwoven into your life that they are reminding you to go to the doctor, making sure that you eat, that they're there for you to talk to, to listen to whenever you have a need. Our society has evolved in a way to say that that generally only happens in marriage or a

long-term relationship or something of that sort. Is there a world where you could get some of that from friends who you love deeply and deeply committed to? Yeah, possibly. And what I find interesting is there are also more movements to bring people together to live in shared spaces, right? So they can be physically around one another more because some of my dearest friends live nowhere near me. If I have a need or something like that, there's more steps to take to actually flag that for them, for them to respond than somebody who's actually living next to me or with me. So you're right. The numbers are the numbers. But what they tell us most importantly is that when you have somebody in your life who is an intimate connection, meaning you love each other deeply, you can trust one another, you can rely on one

another, you can be there for one another, that that does make a difference in your health, your well-being, and your longevity. And there are people who don't necessarily have that in a romantic or platonic relationship. There are people who are in marriages who may not experience that right now. But by and large, having those kind of relationships is what we need to be aiming for. And look, I know these are hard to have without people feeling like you are perhaps blaming them for the life that they're living. I think that we need to be able to talk about the data and what it shows us. But to say that, look, at the end of the day, the sort of active factor here, if you will, is having loving relationships in your life. And you have to ask yourself what those really are, because those aren't transactional relationships. And I think sometimes we think about transactional relationships we have in

our life for somebody that we happen to be friends with on social media. Like, oh yeah, we're friends. But really, when I think about real close friends, is this somebody who you love deeply? Is this somebody who you can be open with and truly be yourself with? Is this somebody who would be there for you in a crisis? And is this somebody who would be honest with you when you're falling short, when you need the feedback, when you need someone to keep you accountable? Those are the kind of really close, intimate connections that we need a few of in our life. We don't need 50. We don't need 100. We don't need 10. We just need a handful. If we have them, then we tend to be healthier, happier, and live longer. On a broader level, though, I love what we're doing now, which is just having dialogue about certain things that we may have slightly different views on, but we're all concerned about the same thing.

I do think part of what we've got to do as a society is figure out how can we talk about stuff that we may not necessarily see eye to eye on or agree totally on, but how can we respect people's intention and not just judge them based on the words that are coming out of their mouth, right? For sure. We do this with our closest friends, right? They might say something like, huh, that sounded funny, but I know that they're not a mean-spirited person. Benefit of the doubt. Yeah, we give them the benefit of the doubt. So how we can move to a place

where we give people the benefit of the doubt instead of judging them off the bat, I think is going to be essential. Because when, again, when I talk to a lot of folks on college campuses about what's creating the problems with loneliness and disconnection, one of the factors they point to

is that it's just a lot harder to have dialogue. Last few years in particular... The entire country became poli-sci majors. Everyone in the country is obsessed with politics in a way that I never witnessed in 48 years. Yeah, and it also seems like the entire country became epidemiologists during COVID. Like everyone has become experts at everything.

The internet, yeah. But we need to get to a place where we can treat each other with some grace and forgiveness as well and recognize that, hey, it's okay if we have different views. It doesn't mean that I'm a hateful person if I have a different point of view on something or an environment where I can raise a question about something that I may not understand and I don't get cast aside as being ignorant or hateful. Yes. Definitely. ignorant or hateful. Yes.

Definitely. The absence of that just means that people don't talk about the questions they have. They resent each other more and we have less conversation. We become more divided. Exactly. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay.

Doctor, what a pleasure. I'm so grateful you are in this position of U.S. Surgeon General. I think everyone should be grateful. You're so thoughtful and caring and like those other two I mentioned, being artistic about you. I see it. I see it. I hope we get to do this again and good luck on this mission, which to me is incredibly important and really, really difficult to confront. So I applaud your effort. I so appreciate both of you. And just like last time, I really just love talking to you and appreciate how honest and funny and deep and profound you can be all at the same time. So this is great to talk about. And my hope is that we'll

have more conversations like this around the dinner table and between friends, because especially after I had kids seven years ago, I think like many parents, I went through one of those moments where I was like, after, of course, worrying that I was gonna be a horrible parent and being totally confused about what to do. I started to just think, how do I want the world to be for my kids? I'm not going to be able to be there all the time. What kind of world are they growing up in? I just keep coming back to this idea that I want for my kids what I want for your kids, what I want for all of us, which is a world that's driven and fueled by love, not a world that is fueled by fear. And I feel there's a lot of fear in the world right now that's manifesting as anger and resentment

and jealousy and rage and insecurity. And it's tearing us apart and it's hurting us and it's damaging our health. A world that's grounded in love, I think is more consistent with who we are intrinsically. That's where people are kind and generous to one another, where they look out for each other, where they have each other's backs.

And so when my kid falls down, I want someone to be there to extend a hand and say, it's okay, get up, you can try again. I want my kids to do that for someone else as well, to be big enough to recognize that we are more than our worst moments and our worst mistakes and to give other people grace in that way. To me, that's fundamentally what all this work is about, is trying to see how can we together create a world that's fueled by love, a world that our kids will thrive in, and a world that I think we all want. I hope you achieve that for my kids and yours and everyone. Talk soon. Be well. You too. Stick around for the fact check. Because they're human, they make lots of mistakes. Just catching my breath.

Yeah, because you were doing a lifty. Oh, boy. Oh, my God. Hang on tight. You're on estrogen, too. I've got so much estrogen going right now. All right, everything's fallen, so we can continue. Perfect.

Oh, my Lord. From only a sliver of your shirt that I saw, it looked like Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon. Oh, sure. And I thought, well, you're really going all in on these vintage tees. Oh, well, I do have a Pink Floyd sweatshirt. Sweatshirt, not tee. Not tee. Okay.

Yeah, this is not a vintage shirt, but it will be someday. It will, yes. Because it's from yesterday. It's a Coldplay shirt. Perhaps one of your grandchildren will wear it. Yeah, or yours. Or my grandchildren. More likely.

Someone's grandchildren may don that one day. Yeah, and it'll be really soft by then. Okay, so let's go. Let's get right into it. You went to another rock concert. I did, and thanks to Wobby Wob. Okay, so let's go. Let's get right into it. You went to another rock concert. I did, and thanks to Wobby Wob. Explain that, because I saw that you thanked him in your post, but I didn't know the mechanics of how that went down.

So Friday, after we recorded Synced, I was getting ready to leave, and Rob said, do you want to go to Coldplay on Sunday? And I was very flummoxed. Sure. You're not expecting that kind of offer. No, I'm not. I'm not. It was a pop out. You're not in the right head space. Exactly. And it was like Halloween so it's spooky. Sure. Yeah. And I said this Sunday and it's so funny how my brain works.

It's like looking for a no. Immediate reason why. Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm similar. Like, oh, unexpected. I didn't expect this. So probably not. So let me think of why it would be why. Yes. Yeah. Yes, yes. I'm similar. Like, oh, unexpected. I didn't expect this, so probably not. So let me think of why it would be not. Right. Exactly.

But then quickly it turned to, yeah, I don't have anything. Sure. Why wouldn't I? I love Coldplay. I love Coldplay. Fuck yes. And Rob had three tickets and he couldn't go. Couldn't go.

How did you get the tickets, Wabi? Someone that works for the band. Ah. He's so hooked up. Oh, this is not a surprise to me. I know. Me either. He's dialed.

So dialed. Yeah, if you need something in the music world. Call him. DM him. DM Wabi Wab. I only go to concerts that I extremely love the band or the person. Right, right. If I just like someone, I'm probably not going to want to endure crowds, traffic, parking.

Yes. But Coldplay is one of those bands. Worth it. Worth it. So I took Laura and Erica, two gal pals. Yeah. Two fine looking broads. I did invite Callie first because Callie and I went to Coldplay when we were in college or high school or something.

You did? In Atlanta? Yeah. Oh, was it fun? One of my first concerts was so fun. Your first concert was in college? No, no. It was actually in middle school. Oh, wow.

Rolling back the timeline. Britney Spears. But I don't go to concerts. So it wasn't like, oh, I went to that and then the next year, there's big gaps, right? So, I mean, I've probably only been to like less than 10

concerts in my life. In your whole life? Yeah. Three of which this year? Two of which. Two of which, yeah. That's like my last two months. Exactly. And so her and I, and we were obsessed. It was like our song. Yellow was our song. We loved it. Yellow's my song, too. It's a lot of people's song.

I think 20 to 30 million people, it's their song. Yeah, it is. But so I asked her, but she has a little baby and said she couldn't come. See how they shine for you. And did they play that? Yes. They got it, right? People would have burnt the place down. My top three songs, they played. Okay.

Okay, we're- You're going to mark that. Okay, I already know some of this. Oh, you do? You meet at Houston's home base. Yeah, how'd you know that? I know things. How?

I know things. Tell me how. I've got your Sonos programmed at home, remember? You track me, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I also broke into your phone and I can, shared your location. Molly told you? No, Charlie this morning.

Oh, yeah. Anywho, yes, we went to Houston's first. Now, tactically, you're after the fact, so you'll be able to answer this. I would be, of course, immediately thinking of that idea because you're in Pasadena where Houston is. Exactly. But I get full when I go to Houston. Do I want to go to a concert fucking packed full of chowder?

Okay, that's interesting. You know, I'm more looking for a nap, not a walk into an arena. Okay. Well, we didn't eat that much. And then you have leftovers in your car for four hours during the show. Well, okay, so I got my chicken sandwich. Yeah, which means you got two of the three to go, probably. Yeah, I had one piece of it.

Erica had one piece of it. Oh, okay. So there was only one piece left, so I gave it to Jess. Oh, okay. No problem. It made tons of sense. Yes. Your loss, his gain. it to Jess. Oh, okay. No problem then. It made tons of sense. Yes. Your loss, his gain.

Exactly. It was perfect. I actually wanted to walk from Houston's to the concert. I heard that. And that would have been about a 30-minute endeavor? 50. Ooh. But I can't, like, if you know if you have-

Did you not learn anything from your trip to Cara? It's one thing to walk there before the concert. You're right. It's the walk back. But with two others. You got to remember Monica. Well, yeah. And not by myself.

Okay. So who cares? Yeah. Safety in numbers. Yeah, yeah. So I wanted to do that. Laura said absolutely not. Yeah, right.

Okay. But I was like, okay, guys, though, it's a 50-minute walk and a 26-minute drive because of traffic, because of this concert. Yeah. And then we made a new plan, which was drive pretty much to where the blue ended on my map. Mm-hmm. And then park there. Great. And then walk on the yellow, orangey, and the red.

Kind of a mixed bag. Yeah. Yeah. yellow, orangey, and the red. Kind of a mixed bag. Yeah. Yeah. So the concert technically started at 6.30, and they didn't come on till 8.30.

I knew that because Wobby Wob's in the know. Yes. So we were planning on getting there just for Coldplay. At 8.29. Yes. Yes. And we thought we had plenty of time, and as we're getting there,

all of a sudden the blue is over but there's no place to park. So then we're there, right? And we're stuck and so we have to park there and it's a shit show. I mean, it is crazy. Yes.

And we're in this line of cars driving to where we're supposed to park and we're just getting further and further and further away from the rules bill. Oh, boy. Yeah. Where are they taking us? What is going on? And bird scooters are off the table because of Erica's injury and trauma.

Erica has an injury and trauma. Yeah, lots of leg surgery. And I'm never doing that. Okay. So that's also off the table. And they're probably all taken. I didn't see any. Because I'll do that with Calvin.

Like, when Calvin and I go to the Hollywood Bowl, we'll take a little bird. We'll park down. You will? Smart. He'll sit on the front. Yeah, that's great. Okay, but no, because you could break your knee. I think I've never noticed when I pull up to Hollywood Bowl,

but presumably there's a couple thousand scooters piled up there. Yeah, and I'm normally just leaving early if it's with Calvin at the Hollywood Bowl, so that's easy to find one. Right. Okay. Okay. Well, I wasn't looking, and it would have been off the table anyway. Yes, just throwing it out there. And where would I – we're already in there.

Like, you can't just pull over. There's no sun No at Houston's Oh at Houston's I had this thought when you were still back at Houston's Oh Leave the car Grab three bird scooters

And probably a 10 minute scooter ride If it was a 50 minute walk Oh god That's a good idea Right No You're riding 5X's speed you're walking I'm never doing that

Okay So This episode is not brought to you by bird No it's not It's just a coincidence we're talking about it. So we're just going further and further and further away. Finally. Laura is so funny.

She's like, this is unacceptable. She cannot wrap her head around. She wants to see a manager. What is going on here? I want to talk to a manager. Yes. And we do eventually, when we finally get to where we think we're supposed to park, I roll down the window and she's like asking us to pay.

I didn't even know we had to pay, but we did. And Laura like stuck her head and she was like, is there, is this where we're parking? And they were like, yes. And she said, well, is there any way we can park closer? It's like, this is outrageous. This is unacceptable. And she was like, it's like this is outrageous this is unacceptable and and she was like it's like a 25 minute walk and the lady was like yeah you guys were late and we were like whoa what so anyway you paid the price we i guess we did yeah we paid we park and was it on the golf course yes oh okay

yeah so you're on the course though kind of. I mean, I got, I had a hunch you were now in Altadena from the way you're describing this. It feels like it might as well have been. I don't know. Azusa? Plus it was so dark and I pull in and they're like, go straight. And I was like, straight? Like straight as there's a tree here. Like it was, it was willy nilly. It was willy nilly. Did you like driving on the golf course though? I always enjoy that. It was kind of fun. Yeah, it's soft. But okay, so then I parked.

I'm feeling a little anxious because I know we're going to be late. Yeah. And good luck finding your car when the show's over. Because it's not like you're in rows. Like J2, you're on a golf course. Or are we on the 13th fairway right now? Well, big balloons oh that's good which helped so we knew we were in lot nine okay okay that's far and you still remember good job yep lot nine and so then we start walking we're like walking really fast it was we were laughing because we're like this is absurd eric

was like i want to get a drink so stopped. There was like a little drink stand. And we kept walking. I'm like, she'll meet up with us because Laura's declared that she walked slow. Okay. So we thought it was best that we keep going. Oh, great. And then Erica could meet up. Double time it.

Yeah. And so Laura and I are walking. And all of a sudden, Laura's like, Monica, get over. There's some sort of bus coming. Oh. And we look, and it's Erica in one of those pedicab, pedi, like. With bicycle wheels? What are they called?

Hitchcocks or hitchsaws. Rickshaw. Rickshaw. Oh, my God. Hitchcocks. Rickshaws. And she's in it and she's like

get in ah pedicab is right that too okay okay that for some reason sounds

what's it sound like racist yeah more than rickshaw yeah rickshaw well rickshaw is Chinese that's a Chinese word oh no

okay yeah I don't know anything about this conveyance you can call it a tuk tuk well that's that's the a tuk tuk I think

specifically is like a Thai three-wheuk. Well, that's the... A tuk-tuk, I think, specifically is like a Thai three-wheeler. With an auto rickshaw. A cycle rickshaw is also called a pedicab. Okay, I'm gonna go with pedicab then. Okay. And his name was Kevin Kim. Shout out. Hey.

And Kevin got us there. What's up, KK? And he went all over the place. I bet. Yeah. Oh, wonderful, though. She figured that out. She made a really good declaration, Erica. She was like, this is so us.

Because when we were pulling in and Laura was like having a panic and was like, we can't. We can't. This is crazy. I was like, Laura, it's time to get into acceptance mode. Sure. This is where we are. This is where we're going to be. And once we got to the concert and we were laughing about the pedicab, Erica said, it's so us. She's like, I am what could be.

You are what is. And Laura is what's not. And we were all laughing really hard. Anywho, the concert was unbelievable. Really? Yes. And I had, you know, I was- I know.

You know what I'm going to say. I do, yeah. The last concert I went to set the bar at- Astronomically high. A gajillion. Like, no one could ever beat that. And by the way, it wasn't Taylor, but it was so good. They put on such a good show.

They always do. Yeah, he's a showman, right? Yes, and it's beautiful, and it's so communal. Like, the message is so nice. There was one song, and about, like, halfway through, he stops, and he's, you know, talking and says, just for this one song, I want everyone to put their phones away. Not video or take pictures.

Let's just all be here. Because I want to take my pants off. Yep. And he doesn't want to get canceled. No, no. He's like, let's just all be here. It's like for two minutes. Yeah, yeah.

And I thought that was so beautiful. And we look, there's a mom and a boy who just can't do it. They can't do it, yeah And I thought that was so beautiful And we look, there's a mom and a boy Uh-huh Who just can't do it They can't do it, yeah They can't do it Yeah, yeah Or addicted

And I was shocked Did you get consumed by that? Now, here's where you and I, I think, are similar Well I could let that ruin this two minutes. It did for them too. It didn't for me. It didn't.

You didn't stay obsessed about it? Because I knew that. I was like, oh no, now I'm going to be focused on them. And the whole point is to be present. Sheriffing this thing, yeah. So I'm not doing that. Oh, good job. I hate that about myself.

It's why I have the trick of like reading license plates out loud when I notice someone's tailgating me and trying to do something. I just can't. And I wouldn't even care, by the way. Like they had been recording the whole other time. But because this thing happened, now I care about that thing. It's such a slippery

slope. It is a slippery slope. It did make me sad that, oh my God, for two minutes, we can't all just do that? I'm going to take a wild swing to defend them. Great. Do you think they didn't speak English and they didn't actually hear what he said? That's what I was just thinking. Maybe there's some translator.

Yeah, or a couple people from Czech Republic. There were a lot of global citizens at this concert. I don't think they were because there was a guy next to us, British man, very attractive with his wife. Very attractive couple. Maybe Chris's relative. I hope so. I hope so.

And then he really kept that to himself because we were chatting with them a little bit. Because they were so attractive. Yeah. That's the only reason why. And Laura was next to him. And so she was talking and was saying, oh my God, that's so annoying.

And he was like, I know my wife is fuming. Oh, okay. So it was affecting a lot of people. It was. This is wonderful. And then the guy was like, but I don't care. I think it's for community. Like they want to post it so people in Brazil can see it.

I mean, he went. So he went the same place I did. These are Portuguese speakers. No, no, no, no. He's not saying they themselves were. He's just saying for like the global good. So everyone could, who doesn't have access to the concert could have it. And I mean, it was really like passionate and optimistic.

But a stretch. It was a big stretch. It was a duck, duck, goose for sure. Yeah, yeah. Because like. Veiled as a ding, ding, ding. You can, you can do the whole concert and just not do the two minutes. Yeah.

Just be here. So then in the middle of the two minute stretch when it's like so lovely, the boy who's recording, also the boy and the mom are recording. Good. Maybe just one could do it. I don't know. They need both angles for when they splice it together. When they edit it.

Maybe they were filming 3D. You need two cameras. Well, the boy had to stop because it wasn't working. He probably ran out of memory. He did. He had run out of storage. How old was the boy?

My guess is 11 or 12. No. I know. Look, by the way, I'm not mad at the boy. No. What's the boy now? I mean, I'm a little mad at him. Oh, okay.

I'm not. It's not his fault, but the mom. Yeah. Come on, mom. Mom. But what if mom didn't speak English? She did. Okay.

The guy would have told us because the guy leaned over to help the boy with the storage. Oh, okay. He was like an IT expert all of a sudden. Chris Martin's brother is also an IT. A Mac genius. He would have said like, oh, they actually don't speak English. And he didn't say that. Okay.

So. All right. We're back. It's fine. Yeah. It's all good. Okay. Big pop out. Okay. Guest singer? Okay. I did cry. Yeah. It's all good. Okay. Big pop out.

Okay. Guest singer? Okay. I did cry. Oh, at what song? So it was a new song I didn't know. Wow. That says a lot.

Yeah. But because, I'm going to find the name of it. Okay. Because I listened to it on the way home, of course. Let's see if he's, text the boy and see if he'll send the video over the song. I got his number in the middle of all this. During the concert, he takes a time. He's, I love him.

We have to have him on. We have to have him on. Yeah. He takes a moment in the show. People have like signs up and stuff. And he takes a moment to acknowledge some of the signs and say hi to the people. And he did a gender reveal, which was really exciting. Oh, was it a girl? It was a boy.

Oh, it was a boy. Yeah, and it was really cute. He asked these two girls to come up. They had a sign, and it said, Let Somebody Go, which is the name of a song. I didn't know that. Okay. It said, Let Somebody Go, pick me and my sister or whatever.

So he asked them to come up. They were so sweet. They did not speak English. They were from another country. Right. And he brought them up. He like set stools for them to sit next to him on the piano while he played. And he said, sorry, this isn't going to sound as good as it does recorded because I recorded this with Selena Gomez.

Uh-huh. And so it's not, but I'll do my best. Uh-huh. And so he starts playing and then she comes out. Of course. Wonderful. She sounded so good. Did she sound amazing?

She did. She sounded so good. It was so exciting. It was such a good pop out. And these girls, they're just, I mean, can you imagine? No, no. How special. And so I cried then.

Did he stare right at him Barbie style? No, he was playing, so he didn't have to stare. Okay. Which was good. He didn't play his piano at them? No, no, he didn't. Pull up a stool. It was really special and really sweet, and I loved it.

Are you going to play the song that made you cry? Oh, do you want me? It's that song. Of course. Yeah, I want to see if I recognize it. This is the song that they sing together. How fuzzy. When I called the mathematicians

and I asked them to explain they said love is only equal to the pain And when everything was going wrong You could turn my sorrow into song Oh, it hurts like snow

To let somebody go Well, that's lovely. I don't know that song. Yeah, I didn't know it either. Beautiful. Yeah. Makes me want to play my favorite Coldplay song. Yellow? No.

Okay, play it. Okay. I'm not trying to hear it. Okay. I wonder if it's mine. It's not. Damn it. Because you were one of a few people that didn't seem to respond as much to this song that I didn't.

Chills already. Oh, yeah. Magic. He played it. I love this song. Oh. Yeah, I do love it. Call it magic.

Call it true. I call it magic. When I'm with you. And I just got broken. Broken into two Still I call it magic When I'm next to you And I don't, and I don't, and I don't, and I don't No I don't, it's true No I don't, no I don't, and I don't, and I don't No, I don't, it's true

I don't, no, I don't, no, I don't, no, I don't Want anybody else but you No, I don't, no, I don't, no, I don't, no, I don't No, I don't, it's true Really good. That one, I would say the defining characteristic of Coldplay for me is that no other band will I do one of their songs on repeat for longer. For sure, like Yellow was on repeat for six months when I was on the ground lead.

Anytime I was driving, I was listening to it. I drove to Michigan from Detroit several different times for my job. I would listen to it for, I don't know, four hours of the 26-hour drive. And then that song could not stop listening to it. Last year or the year before? It's such a good song. Oh, and they played it.

They played it. They played it all. They played it all. They played Sparks, which is my favorite, and Fix You, which is my second favorite. You already said favorite like four times so you should say oh okay but it'd be fun if you just said my favorite fix you those are my faves and uh that he played them all he played fix you and sparks in the encore

one of the most attractive performers of all time right he was everyone's heart just yeah everyone pqing like crazy for sure but he's also goofy like he's like dances funny yeah and he's just like he's confident yeah some say he dances as good as bruno mars some do even bruno i've heard say that and how was getting out of there? This was the silver lining I predicted. Okay, it took us 30 minutes to get from the concert to the car. Yeah.

But getting out because we were at the end. Yes. We could like get out a back way. It was super easy. Oh, good. Yes. And you think the people that were up close probably sat for at least 30? Yeah, six hours. Yeah, okay. So it worked out. So in the end, it was super easy. Oh, good. Yes. And you think the people that were up close probably sat for at least 30? Yeah, six hours.

Yeah, okay. So it worked out. So in the end, it was a win. It was. It was so fun. And I liked that it happened last minute because I bet if I had it planned. You would have got your expectations too high? I don't know.

I probably just would have been like, I'm tired. Oh. I don't really want to. Yeah. But this was impromptu. No time for that. No time. And how about a concert on a Sunday night?

Tricky? No, great. What time did you go to sleep? One. And I went to sleep at one the night before because we had another event. Yes. That was a late night. That was a late night.

Women's Peace and Humanitarian Fun Gala honoring Kristen. Yes, honoring Kristen. Lovely evening. Lovely. Speaking of songs. Special, yeah, shout out to Sarah Bareilles. My God. Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What one person can do

with a microphone. Oh my God. I was beside myself. Yeah. Where she goes in her range and with the control and the emotion and the passion and the wow, what a charismatic performer.

So incredible. So incredible. And she sang Armor, also my fave. Oh, same, my fave too. So many faves. I was slack-jawed at that performance.

Crying, crying during that. Yeah, crying. It's an incredible song, and the lyrics are so good. And she's perfect. She is perfect. I've never heard a voice that sounds so pure. I want to say singing robot, because everything's hit perfectly. But opposite of robot, the most human voice ever.

Yes. So much personality to the voice. God, she's good. So that was lovely because she came and she sang three songs. And yeah, it was a beautiful evening. Send everyone out on a real high note. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

And that was, and I got to wear my gal address, one of my gal addresses. One of your several mini gal addresses. I got to check one off the list. Did you have a hard time selecting from your many options? Did you try on different ones before you committed to that one? I did, but I knew it wasn't going to be like the most formal of formals. So I chose the one I chose because it felt like it could go. Cocktail?

Both. Not really cocktail. Not cocktail. I don't even know what that word is, to be honest. It's something I see on invitations. Yeah. Cocktail is less fancy, but like kind of fancy, but less fancy. Does it go cocktail, formal, black tie?

Yeah, I would say. And this was formal? Right. Okay. Slash cocktail? Slash black tie. Okay. It's hard to pin down.

There was a wide range of outfits. Yeah. I didn't fit in my white shirt. Okay. I don't have any white shirts that fit my neck anymore. So I had to have a rubber band connecting the button and the hole. I didn't notice. Well, I knew that the tie would obscure the rubber band.

Okay. I'm mad I didn't figure this out for Hannah's wedding or the other times I've had to wear it. Because generally, I get help to button it and then my neck veins stick out the whole time because i'm and i don't have enough blood oxygen in my brain okay and then i make weird choices oh my god okay so there's no time for that yeah no why didn't you just wear oh could you wear oh because i wanted to wear a tie then i'd have to wear the tile undone then it's like what this guy just get off of a long day at work oh right it's like he's making an interesting fashion choice uh--huh. Like tired. Right.

Can I tell you about last night? Yeah. Okay. So we were invited to Larry and Jen's house. Larry Trilling. And Jen Trilling. To eat under the sukkah. Tell me about that.

Okay. I'll give you the whole, as I remember it from Larry. So the Jews were enslaved by Egyptgypt and then they were set free and then they wandered the desert without any permanent homes for 40 years this is the biblical story they lived at that time in sukkahs in tents and every year you rejoin the sukkah, and you give thanks for having a permanent place to live. It's kind of tied in also with the harvest fest. It's such a beautiful tradition, and then Jen made this great.

She said, you know, a big aspect of this tradition is to think about who's not here with you in the sukkah that you miss. And she said, you know, people in these pictures that aren't here anymore. So take a minute and think of who you want to invite into the sukkah in your heart. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. And then that just got me swirling about my dad. No.

He definitely was who I wanted to bring into the sukkah. Yeah. Did you bring him in? Yeah. But then I woke up this morning and I was, it'sah. Yeah. Did you bring him in? Yeah. But then I woke up this morning and I was, it's sad. Yeah. It's really sad when you don't get any redos anymore. No second chances at something. That's a real bummer. I think I was a good son. I think I was kind and generous, but I also think I was very judgmental of him way more than I would be anyone else. Like he did not get a fair day in court.

But that's so human. We do this to our parents. You're not alone. Yes, but now I think I'm of the age where that has gone. And I just want to hang with him now. I want to hang with him as a human being without even considering what he did or didn't do right. I just want to be around him. Yeah.

And so, yeah, this morning I was journaling and I was thinking like, what a friendly guy he was. He was so fucking friendly. Everywhere he went, he was excited to see people. He was so social and smiley. And so that was a beautiful part. I got to tell you, I've sat in on like a handful of Jewish ceremonies. I went to a baby naming.

I love them all. Amazing traditions. Yes. They're not like, in my experience, I've only been to a handful. There's not a lot of like guilt and shame. Now listen, the whole week before is about self-exploration of what you could have done better this year. Yes. Which I love. Yeah. But I don't know, there's something about it that I respond to a lot. It's not so much theoretical, like, hey, to get to this place or when you get to this place, and God's thinking this. It's more like, what are you doing with the people around you that you love? Yeah.

I don't know. I like that. Yeah, me too. Yeah. If I had to pick one so far, that would be the one I would. That's your choice. What about Hinduism? I haven't had enough experience.

Maybe I would also love that. Yeah. They're very different, but similar, I think, in that there's no prescription. Right. And you're not going to, like, it's not about going to heaven or trying to achieve something so that. Yeah, yeah. Results. Yeah, exactly.

It's more about process. Yeah. But it was a beautiful night and the food was delicious. process. Yeah. But it was a beautiful night and the food was delicious. And, you know, I've known his children since they were Lincoln and Delta's age. And now they're all adults. Oh, my God.

And only one of his daughters was there. But she's turned out to be so confident and interesting and Larry-like. Oh. It's so awesome to see. That's awesome. Yeah. It was, whew, what a lovely evening.like. Oh. It's so awesome to see. That's awesome. Yeah. It was, what a lovely evening.

Good. Yeah. Now, do you think, because I think it's important what you said about your dad because those of us who have that ability still,

Yeah. it's a good reminder to understand these people in our family for who they are independently and not who they are connected to us and even when you know it and you know you should it's so hard it is so i wonder like do you think do you think if he was here you would be able to i don't know because what you know in what i've

said on here and just full honesty like i was supporting him in a way that I don't think was the greatest thing for our relationship. Yeah. That every time the phone rang, I knew it was going to be a request. Like that wasn't a good dynamic for us. Yeah. So I don't want to be unrealistic that, you know, he had, but he was a dependent for the last five years. And that was kind of, didn't help with me being able to just hang with them like we were seated next to each other on an airplane. Yeah.

But let's just say that wasn't- Well, you became a parent. Well, I was gonna say, so there's like two aspects. One is if that continued, I can only be so optimistic, but I do think being a parent for now a long time has definitely made me more sympathetic to that role because like my kids I can already feel it they expect perfection out of me yeah and there's no compassion if I don't reach it which is just completely normal that's how I was too part of me it's really interesting being a parent

there's so much good side but there's a little bit of heartbreak that like especially i'd say with lincoln or it's like i wish you could just meet me as a person you'd really like me but she loves you she does she does but it's gonna always be locked in that parental paradigm and i think there's and again she just expects so much of me it's this exactly how I was with my parents. It's how everyone is with their parents. If they're lucky, that's the thing I also recognize. When I just said you were the parent, I meant you became his parent. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And that's a confused, that's really hard to overcome. I think if you're lucky, like I am, you do expect so much because they give so much.

They can give you all of these things. If they are able to love you unconditionally, you take that for granted. You kind of can't help it. It's just part of the cycle. And she's lucky that she can expect perfection. Yeah, that part's lovely. But look, I even noticed like Larry's daughter doesn't get to meet Larry Trilling. Yeah.

Like Larry Trilling is magic on earth. Yeah. Anyone who meets him is just infected with his magic. His kids aren't going to be. They're his fucking kids. And I feel a little bit because I see how cool the daughter is. And I'm a little bit like, God, if you could just meet your dad as like he were directing you in something, you'd be like, oh, my God, this guy's the biggest gift to planet Earth. Yeah.

Anyhow. It's just not the way those relationships are. They can't. Or you can't be the parent and be tough on them and demand things of them and all that kind of stuff. It's an accountability relationship. Yes. Right? I'm holding them accountable.

They're holding me accountable. But all that to say, yeah yeah i would very much love to just hang with them yeah because i have other friends whose parents are i can see where they're at in the trajectory and i i'm on the sidelines thinking like oh man you like now's the time to just kind of let all that go and hang with the person i know but i also know that anyone could have told me that and i likely although tom hon said something really profound one time that I did take to heart, which was he was sharing about his father having passed, and he said it's really tricky when you've blamed every one of your character defects on somebody,

and they're no longer there to blame anymore. Now you're really like, what are we doing? This person's not even here. Right. That did affect me greatly while my dad was still alive interesting or i was like oh yeah don't wait till he's dead to get over this right as who do we have on recently someone we had on said oh god it's probably upcoming and i'm spoiling it that's okay easter Easter egg. It's not a spoil. It's an Easter egg. It's an Easter egg. Somebody said it's never too late to have a good childhood. It's a good boy, I think.

Was it? Yeah. Of course it was. Yeah. And that's such a good reminder when you're dwelling in some old vestigial stuff. Like you do have the power. Yeah. To redefine that narrative.

Okay, great. That actually just reminds me of one of the main things. Before even the sukkah, and me journaling about my dad this morning, Lincoln's class had like a fundraiser, go eat at this restaurant, and they give some money to the school. So we had gotten takeout, and I had ordered it, and then I was going to go pick it up. And I said, Lincoln, come with me.

And she's on the couch. She's like, I don't want to come. Of course. And I'm like, no, get in the car it up. And I said, Lincoln, come with me. And she's on the couch. She's like, I don't want to come. Of course. And I'm like, no, get in the car. This is for your school. You're coming with me. We go, we dance the whole way there to our favorite songs. We have so much fun crossing the road.

We have fun inside the place. We come back, we're partying in the car and we get home and she goes, oh my God, that was so fun. I'm so glad I came. And I was thinking, yes, my dad loved to run errands with me. Constantly wanted to go to the fucking hardware store. Oh, wow. I'd be like, oh my God, I don't want to go to the hardware. Right?

You know, when you're a kid, you just don't want to do anything that your parents are doing. Yeah. And yet, it was pretty fun. We'd ride in his cool car and he might peel out, you know, same shit. And that's what was really, that started the treadmill of thinking of my dad is like, I should have just enjoyed all those errands.

I know you can't. You can't. Yeah. It's okay. It's bittersweet. Yeah. But now I want to run errands with him.

Now I'm ready. Okay. All right. Yeah. I get that. I get that. I'm sorry that you don't get that opportunity.

That's okay. Could have been worse. Like what if he, like we could have gone on a bad turn. Yeah. I know. I think this we could have gone on a bad term. I think it was like the best case scenario. Yeah.

I think it's just sad when people that you love die. Yes. I just figured this out. I got a huge break. Wow. That's going to be the headline. This is proprietary to me. It's painful when people you love die. A lot of people think it,

everyone's afraid to say it. I finally voiced it. Controversial opinion. Anywho. Anywhom. So this is for Vivek. Vivek is also the name of my cousin. Oh, really?

Yeah. You have a Vivek? Yeah. Then you should have your arms fully around the pronunciation. I thought it was Vivek. Okay. Has he been calling your cousin the wrong name? I've only met him like twice.

Oh, okay. So we've met Vivek more. Yeah, exactly. This Vivek. Yeah. First fact is really important. Okay. Okay.

Oh. What? Sorry. I know it was a long one. Go for it. But I've been meaning to say, have you seen any footage from the sphere in Vegas? No. You haven't? What's the sphere? You know, they built this enormous the sphere in Vegas? No. You haven't?

What's the sphere? You know, they built this enormous- For F1? No. They built this venue in Vegas called the sphere. The entire thing is a big sphere. The whole outside is LCD panels. They can make anything.

They make it look like the moon. It's enormous. They had their first concert this weekend, U2. Oh, I saw the Kimmel's went. Oh, okay. I saw they postedmel's went. Oh, okay. I saw they posted. And you're like, because it's infinity around you and they can make it look like it's like a thousand feet high.

I want to go to that. I want to go so bad. Oh, cool. I text, it wasn't Kimmel because people think that because you just said this, but I text someone had posted about it. And I was like, oh my God, you got to tell me about this thing.

I'm so interested in it. Do you think if someone was on shrooms, their head would physically explode in there? He said, mine didn't. I was on shrooms. I was like, oh my God, that must have been fucking next level. That's cool. So now it's a mission of mine to go see something at the sphere. I'll go tonight.

Help me. I want to go. Wow, that's cool. Okay, so that's on the list. Okay, first fact that's really important. Does my mom like to make sandwiches for me? You said she doesn't, and she does. You called her.

You're just doubling down. I just know. You're just reiterating what you thought. I really, I know it because they want me to come home so bad all the time. And then they always want to make me sandwiches. That means she knows what she has to do to get you home. No, because sometimes I don't even want the sandwich. But I say yes. And I do think this is a bit cultural.

Making the sandwiches? Making food. It's like food is her love language. Right. Oh, God. Hello? Hi, Mom. Nermy.

Hey, Dax. How are you? I'm good. I'm sorry, but you have to solve another debate for us. Yeah. Okay. So Monica claims, this is her claim, that you love making sandwiches for her when she's home. And I said, you know, she just loves you and she's willing to make the sandwiches for you.

And then now today on the fact check, she's claiming that, no, in fact, you love making her the sandwiches as if she talked to you, which I found out she hadn't. So I figured I would call and ask you. It's sort of in the middle there. Okay. Kind of a combination of both. Yeah. I mean, I do it. Yeah.

I like to do things for her when she's here. Yeah. Because we don't see her much. And she's so cute and little. Yeah. No, but mom, you love cooking, right? You guys talk louder. I do enjoy doing, I mean, I do enjoy that kind of stuff.

I do it for Neil all the time. See, yeah. Haven't you gotten your fill doing it with Neil? Yeah, I guess so. But that is the way you nurture, right, mom? Don't you think? Yeah. Yeah, I do Don't you think? Yeah. Yeah, I do things for people all the time.

That's just kind of, you know. I'm a cancer, so. Cancer, just like Kristen. Yeah, just like Erin Weekly. And Erin Weekly, exactly. Yeah. Okay, when I visit, will you make me a sandwich? Of course.

Oh! I would love to. What kind of sandwich do you like? Here's where it gets difficult. I don't eat gluten anymore. But that's okay. We'll figure something creative out. We can figure that out. Like a big head of lettuce cut in half

stacked full of cold cuts in the middle. Oh, yeah. That sounds really good, actually. Yeah, my mom likes that kind. Well, thank you for always picking up. It really flatters me that you're willing to chat with me when I call. And I just got home,

so, from the grocery store. So, you caught me at the right time. Okay, well, listen,

Christmas is only two months away, so let's start planning that menu for Monica's sandwich. No, I'll be home. I'm going home

in a couple weeks. Oh, a couple weeks. Yeah, well, you're gone. That's right, she's going to be here.

I'm already thinking about what to make. Oh, a couple weeks. Yeah, well, you're gone. That's right. She's going to be here. I'm already thinking about what to make. Oh, I wish everyone was lucky enough to have Nermy as their mom. Me too. They'd be better off. Yep. Monica likes the quesadillas, so we're thinking about that. I do.

I do. That's what my little baby likes. She loves it. All right, well, we love you. Thank you. Love you. Thank you. All right, bye-bye. Bye. God, I love her. She loves it. All right. Well, we love you. Thank you. Love you. Thank you. All right.

Bye-bye. Bye. God, I love her. She's so wonderful. She's really cute. Yeah. I love that she'll pick up when I call. Of course she will.

Well, when I call my own mother, it's like one in three she picks up. Well, I'm hard to get, you know? Also, she's always got to pick up in case something happens. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. It's kind of mean what you're doing. I don't want to give her too much compliments here. Like, if you call my dad right now, he could be in the middle of a meeting, but he will pick up in case you some happen that's what i'm saying yeah it's kind of mean what you're doing compliments here like if you call my dad right now he could be in the middle of a meeting but he will sprinting down the street trying to get a cab he'd stop right in his tracks yeah

they're because you know they're scared a lot like me it runs in the blood it does it does thicker than mud oh they're cute though okay so that solved that she's already thinking about what to make me. Well, did it solve it or did we both win? She said in the middle. She said in the middle, so we can both take that as a win. Okay, I will. I'm willing to share the win with you.

Okay, me too. Ask me if I like making mac and cheese for my kids, which I do a couple nights a week. Do you like making mac and cheese for the kids? Can't stand it. But I'm absolutely willing to do it because I love them. And I don't let them know I can't stand it. And when they're out of the house and they come back to the house, But I'm absolutely willing to do it because I love them. And I don't let them know I can't stand them. And? And? When they are out of the house and they come back to the house, I bet you you're going to love it.

Whipping up that macaroni and cheese. Daddy's special macaroni and cheese. You're going to be making bolognese. You're going to love it. You already love making them that. Yeah. So, see? Get over it. See, I'm right.

Okay, marriage rates, New York City. Okay. In 19—oh, no. Oh. My doctor's calling. Not to take a big turn, but I had an appointment this morning. That's why they called. And she's, like, in there, you know, with—

In your vagina? In my vagina. Okay. Because I don't know what doctor this is. Sorry, yes. This was the fertility doctor. Okay, great. And that was the nurse.

Desiree, shout out. I love her. D-dog. And—but the doctor this morning, I was having the ultrasound. And in the middle of it, she was like, do you have painful periods? And I said, well, sometimes. and I do have really painful ovulation I have really bad back pain and then she like took out the wand and she was like it kind of looks like your left ovary it looks a little stuck which could be a sign of endometriosis

and she said it just kind of plainly like that and and I was like, I know what that is, and that's really bad. Yeah, yeah. I said, okay. She's like, I'm not sure we wouldn't be able to know just off of an ultrasound. She's like, but when I'm in there for the retrieval, she's going to try to move it and see if it's stuck. Okay. My understanding of endometriosis is like a webbing that grows in your uterus and makes everything when it's expanding hurt because it's not as expandable. I don't know. She kind of explained it, but I always black out after they say these big things.

You spiral off into something morbid. Well, because she's like, you know, it can mean this, this. It can mean infertility. And she says that just like very plainly. Yes. But I've also heard that pregnancy can cure endometriosis. And I am an OBGYN. You are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's just hard to get pregnant, I think.

It makes it harder. It makes it harder. But maybe that's then good why I'm doing this. Maybe that's helpful. I don't know. Yeah. Maybe I have endometriosis. Although, is there anything comforting about that?

Because I might go like, well, fuck, that explains my back pain. Half the time when I have something, I just want an explanation that feels comforting. For sure, except during the back pain, I went to the doctor recently for it, and she was like, oh, I think it was the cyst or whatever. Yeah. You know, I went to the doctor recently for it and she was like, oh, I think it was the cyst or whatever. In my head, I've been like, I really hope this back pain doesn't mean I have endometriosis. Uh-huh. Although you've had back pain since I've known you.

Right. Which. Which would mean you've had endometriosis. For a long time. For a long time. Yeah. So we'll see, I guess. Some people it's fucking debilitating. I know. And it's, mine is getting, like this last time, it a long time. Yeah. So we'll see, I guess. Some people it's fucking debilitating. I know.

And mine is getting, like this last time, it was, I couldn't stand. Ooh. It was really bad. And I remember thinking, this feels really wrong. Like it shouldn't be this bad. Tricky question to ask somebody, though. Do you have painful periods? Because I don't, no one really enjoys their period.

Exactly. And so what is relative to what? Right. I mean, I know this feeling of this back pain feeling versus what I feel during my period much different. So if I was feeling that during my period, I'd be like, yeah, I have painful periods. I can't stand. Right. Anyway, so that's, I guess, TBD and just another day at the doc where they—

Well, you go there often enough, you're going to find stuff. Yeah, you have to go every other day. I have to go on Wednesday, then I'll be going on Friday. My retrieval's probably going to be on Sunday, maybe Monday. Ooh, weekend retrieval. I know. I hope it's on Sunday. We'll see.

I'll keep everyone updated on that. Okay. Anyway, marriage rates. Okay, marriage rates in New York City. Marriage rates. Okay. Marriage rates in New York City in 1990 was 8.6 marriages per 1,000 residents of New York. 8.6 marriages per 1,000 residents is what it says.

And then now it says 5.2 or that, sorry, 2021, 5.2. Okay. Let. Okay. Let me see. I can also look here. So that's more, no, that's about a 40%. I mean, in Nevada, it's 26.2. Per 1,000. Yeah. I would think that's per 100.

Wouldn't you? It says rates are based on provisional counts per a thousand total population residing in area it sounds low another one that's I mean I've seen the one you're referencing I think that this one says 37%

and 32% yeah there's also that would be 300 out of a thousand this is from genesisun.com. It says 38.5% of millennials in New York State are married, compared to 43.9% nationally. But the one I read was from the CDC. Center for Disease Control. They think that marriage is a disease?

Yeah. Oh, my God. Well, then no wonder they're monitoring it. But luckily, the rate seems very, very low. More people have tonsillitis, I think, than are married. Statistica. Statistica. Okay.

The stat that was actually from Kahneman about once you hit a certain income level, happiness. It plateaus. Plateaus. And then eventually drops. Mm-hmm. His number was $75,000. I mean, this was a long time. It was 2020.

Twenty-twin. It's 2010. Okay. But they've done new research. Okay. A Nobel Prize winning economist. And now it says money does appear to boost happiness at least for most people up to earnings of 500 000 oh it's now 500 000 well that's an enormous difference between conaman's

it makes way more sense actually to me yes um yeah because 87 000 in la 78 oh sorry 78 i mean sorry 75 75 000 in la you can't have a home. No. You can't, no. No. Yeah. So 500,000 makes sense. You have plenty. These apartments on the corner, they've just hit the like rental boards.

Uh-huh. Yeah, the one bedrooms are like maybe four and the two bedrooms are five. Wow. So that would be 60,000 a year. Renting. Rent just for your rental fee. Oh, my God. So you have to make $120,000 to clear $60,000.

Yeah. So you got to make $120,000 just to live. Well, you have to have roommates. It's like that's why everyone has roommates. It's so hard. Or be married. Ding, ding, ding. Dual income.

Dual – as long as both people are working. Dualipa. As long as both people are dualipa. Yes. If both people are dualipa, you're fine. You're fine. You can live most places in the city. Youua Lipa. As long as both people are Dua Lipa. Yes, if both people are Dua Lipa, you're fine. You're fine. You can live most places in the city. Is that metric people that are getting married?

Because I'm seeing the total married in New York is 47%. So, yeah, I think that's people that are getting married actively, maybe that's the rate. Like how many people got married? In that period. Maybe. Not current marital status.

That could make sense. Okay, let me read what it says. That actually would make sense. It says marriage rate. That must mean for the year. Maybe that's what it means. Eight people out of every thousand got married this year. Yeah, that makes sense.

We are calculating how many people are currently deciding to do it. So this is the right metric. Not just like a 50-year-old who's been married for 30 years. Right. Because marriage hasn't dropped in half, but the rate of current frequency has dropped almost in half. Yeah. Okay. Well, okay.

Ding, ding, ding. This is from Harvard Health Publishing. Okay. Marriage and men's health. I'm going to read it. Oh, yeah. Many people find love without getting married, and many marriages turn loveless and hostile as divorce rates soar.

Single parenting is now common, and society is becoming increasingly comfortable with various patterns of cohabitation. The many social, economic, psychological, and spiritual ramifications of these huge changes have been the topic of much discussion and debate, and more will follow. of these huge changes have been the topic of much discussion and debate, and more will follow. A major survey of 127,545 American adults found that married men are healthier than men who were never married or whose marriages ended in divorce or widowhood. Men who have marital partners also

live longer than men without spouses. Men who marry after age 25 get more protection than those who tie the knot at a younger age. And the longer a man stays married, the greater his survival advantage over his unmarried peers. But is marriage itself responsible for the better health and longer life? Although it's hard to be sure, marriage seems to deserve a large part of the credit. Some have argued that self-selection would skew the results if healthy men are more likely to marry than men with health problems. But research shows the reverse is true. Hmm. That's bizarre. Yeah. Another potential factor is loneliness. Ding, ding, ding, vivac. Is the institution of marriage linked to better health, or is it simply a question of living with another person? Although studies vary, the answer seems to be a little bit of both. People living with

unmarried partners tend to fare better than those living alone, but men living with their wives have the best health of all. Numerous studies conducted over the past 150 years suggest that marriage is good for health. More recently, scientists have begun to understand why married men enjoy better health than their single, divorced, and widowed peers. But before we turn to the why, let's look at how marriage affects specific diseases, including America's leading killers, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. Wow. Yeah, how stark is this difference? Okay. This is like a little, looks like a sidebar.

It's in a different box. I'm going to read it. Okay, fine. Are educated wives heartbreakers? In the 1980s, several studies suggested that men whose wives had more education than they had were more likely to die from coronary artery disease than men married to less educated women. With more and more women getting advanced degrees, that might give some single guys pause. But a 2002 study found that the more educated a man's wife, the lower his risk for coronary artery disease and risk factors such as hypertension, obesity, high cholesterol, smoking, and lack of exercise. And in 2009 study reported

that men married to more educated women also enjoyed a lower death rate than men married to less educated women. In the contemporary world, smart wives promote healthy hearts. Okay, back out of the sidebar. Marriage and the heart. If marriage protects health, the heart would be a likely beneficiary. Japanese scientists reported that never married men were three times

more likely to die from cardiovascular disease than married men. Three times more likely. Apparently. That's significant. And a report from the Framingham Offspring Study also suggests that marriage is truly heartwarming. That doesn't sound very scientific. It doesn't. They let one in. Scientists evaluated 3,682 adults over a 10-year period.

Even after taking major cardiovascular risk factors such as age, body fat, smoking, blood pressure, diabetes, and cholesterol into account, married men had a 46% lower rate of death than unmarried men. In the Framingham study, marital happiness did not seem to influence the overall protective effect of the marriage. But in other studies, marital unhappiness and stress have been linked to an important cardio risk factor, hypertension. So those are competing. Yeah. Overtime, in fact, marital stress is associated with thickening of the heart's main pumping chamber, but job stress does not take a similar toll on the heart. Huh. Coronary artery disease and hypertension are among the most important cause of heart failure,

a chronic disabling condition that results when the weakened heart muscle is unable to pump all the blood that the body's tissue needs. But even after this serious problem is developed, a supportive marriage is associated with improved survival. Okay, marriage and cancer. The well-established links between stress, depression, social isolation, and heart disease make it easy to see how a good marriage might protect the heart. But cancer is a different matter. Indeed, there is little evidence that marriage reduces the overall risk of getting cancer. Still, marriage can influence the outcome.

For example, a study of 27,779 cancer cases found that unmarried individuals were more likely to have advanced disease at the same time of diagnosis than married persons. Well, that— That makes sense. That makes sense, yeah. Yeah, because your wife's like, fucking go to the doctor. Yeah, or like, what's that mole on the top of your head? No one else can see. Right.

Unmarried patients were less likely to receive treatment than married patients. But even among people who received cancer therapy, marriage was linked to improved survival. Patients who have intact marriages when cancer is diagnosed have better survival than patients who are separated at the time of diagnosis. Prostate cancer is a particular concern for men. Oh! then separated and widowed patients 38 months, men who had never married and an intermediate survival rate 49 months. And researchers from Harvard and UCLA have identified similar survival benefits for married patients with bladder cancer, a predominantly male disease. Well, that's interesting. There's more, but it all is.

We get the. Yeah, we get it. Yeah. We get it. If you're a man who wants to live 69 months after your diagnosis, give Monica a call. Get her on the phone. You better be worthy, though. Uh-huh.

Kick you to the curb. Yeah. She's an educated one. I sure am. You know, decide which study you believe. That's the maddening part of all this. I know. I mean, what are you going to do?

But it's maddening. It is. That. That concludes it? I think concludes it. I love Vivek. It was very fun to see him in his Admiral's outfit. I know. It looked so.

It looked like. What did it look like. It looked so, um, it looked it looked like what did it look like? It looked intimidating. Intimidating. But he's so nice and sweet. Okay, so here's a hypothetical. Okay. There's a riddle, I guess. Oh my god, I love riddles. So, while Vivek was here,

he's in an admiral's outfit. And there's a breach of the gate. Like, there's some shit going on outside of the attic. We're under attack. Oh, oh my God. There's been an uprising. Sounds like that might come true. Okay.

And they've breached the perimeter. Okay. You're in here. Who do you want to be in charge of this? Oh, dang. Because you have someone that's really nice. so he has really nice going for him. Okay. But he's got the outfit that looks like he should be in charge.

But I'm not very nice, and I'm in shorts. You should take his jacket, and then you do it. No. Look, he's the surgeon general. Yeah, if I get wounded. Yeah, then of course. If someone comes in and is like, help, help, there's a medical emergency, I want it to be him. Yeah, absolutely. Me too.

Me too. I just think I should go out and do the hand-to-hand combat. I will give you that. I'll agree. Hard, but I admire your integrity. Update. What? I fixed my shelf. Oh, yes. It your integrity. Update. What? I fixed my shelf.

Oh, yes. This is a great update. I fixed my shelf. I feel a little bit like a fraud, though, because I half fixed it. That's okay. What happened— You were going to ditch the whole thing a minute ago. I was, and we talked about me being conflicted about whether I was going to fix

it or not because I shouldn't need your approval. Me thinking you're lazy. It got pretty deep. Yeah. And I did have the piece. It was behind my jeans, the piece that fell off. And so that was good. I was like, okay, I don't have to cut the wood. Yeah, that was your biggest hurdle. And I was like, I can figure this out. And then when I picked it up, it still had the nails poking out. So I was like, huh, let me just try to stick it back in. And I did that, but it wouldn't go all the way in. And so I took a hammer and I hammered it back in as much as I could. It was so loud and I was self-conscious. By myself in my apartment, I was self-conscious about how loud it was.

Yeah. This was an interesting part of the story for me. Yeah, because there's just like, when you're in an apartment, you can hear stuff. Yeah. And I get anxious. People are going to hammer sometimes. I know, but like I don't know why.

Someone's up there like recording a podcast or something. I mean, I've been there. That's true. So I get it. No, I just feel like they're like. Then they can go, Monica Padman is hammering below me. They know what I'm doing or they'll worry and they'll come check. Like, I don't know.

I just get, I feel seen or exposed in a way I don't like. Yeah, you're making your position known. Yeah. And I wanted to add some other nails

for reinforcement. And I started to do that and it was so loud and it was, it was hard. Like I couldn't. Well, because they weren't started.

Exactly. Yeah. And then I thought, oh, maybe I could try't. Well, because they weren't started. Exactly. Yeah. And then I thought, oh, maybe I could try to drill this, but I don't have a drill. That would be faster. Yeah. So I just left it as, like, I hammered in what was already there. You didn't add any new nails. I started one, but I stopped.

Let's finish that. It's so loud. I know, but your neighbors can handle five minutes of hammering. Should I hit like 3 p.m.? Yes, exactly. No one's napping. It's not napping time.

It's not dinner time. I just like, I want to. If you hired someone to come fix it, they would be hammering. I know. For some reason,

that doesn't feel, it feels like I'm doing something weird if I'm doing it. Right. I don't know. Congratulations though. You're already in a much better Right. I don't know. Congratulations, though. You're already in a much better position than you were last week.

Yeah, I put the shelf back up on it. I put all my stuff back. It seems fine. It's working, yeah. Let's just drive two or three more nails into those rails. Okay. And if you, I don't want to offend you. You've certainly already thought this out.

But you know to hold the nail next to the wood and the outside of the thing to make sure it's not longer than both those things. You don't want it to pop out the other side. I did do that. I did do that, but I have bad eyes and I can't be sure. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. A lot of challenges. Yeah.

Anyway. Well, big congrats. But that's a big update. Everyone's proud of you. I'm proud of you. Thank you. Well thank you well done thanks all right love you love you