Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #226 The Healing Power of Community

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

CAUTION: Contains swearing and themes of an adult nature. This is the final podcast episode of the year - I have decided to take a short break from the podcast over Christmas to switch off and relax with my family and it's that sentiment that has influenced the topic of this final compilation episode. This is the time of year where many of us take a pause, spend time with our loved ones and think of others. So, I thought this was the perfect time to celebrate the magic that happens when community comes together. This week, my team and I have put together some of the very best inspirational clips around this topic. Humans are not designed to be alone. We’ve evolved to live our lives as individual members of a large supportive group. Back when the human brain was doing much of its evolution, we hunted together, we ate together and we sat around a campfire in the evenings and talked together, swapping stories, songs and smiles. We’re designed to survive and thrive by being connected to one another. This is why we feel joyful and safe when we‘re getting along well with the people we share our lives with. But our modern, busy, disconnected lives can do great damage to these connections and our health. A rising number of us are suffering from loneliness and this is not only affecting our mental health, but also our physical health. In fact, high social stress is an even bigger risk factor for dying from chronic disease than physical inactivity, alcohol intake and smoking put together! The good news is though, there is plenty we can do to build new connections and nurture the important relationships in our lives. Research has shown time and time again, that by giving to others and to our community, we can increase our own happiness, as well as the happiness of others. In today’s episode, you will hear some heart-warming stories and uplifting advice about the healing power of community from some of my former guests including: Gabor Mate, Johann Hari, Dan Buettner, Tommy Wood, Laurie Santos, Julian Abel, Pippa Grange, The Happy Pear, Kelly McGonigal and John McAvoy. My team and I really enjoyed putting this episode together for you. I hope you enjoy listening, and I hope it inspires you to live a more contented and connected life. This episode includes clips from:   Episode 37 Gabor Mate Episode 94 Johann Hari episode 67 Dan Buettner Episode 167 Tommy Wood Episode 138 Julian Abel Episode 151 Laurie Santos Episode 38 Happy Pear Episode 126 Pippa Grange Episode 109 Kelly McGonigal Episode 91 John McAvoy Thanks to our sponsors:   https://leafyard.com/livemore   https://vivobarefoot.com/livemore   http://www.blublox.com/livemore   Show notes available at https://drchatterjee.com/226 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

Hi, my name is Rangan Chatterjee. Welcome to Feel Better Live More. Hello, how are you doing? This is going to be the last full-length podcast episode of the year. I have decided to take a short break from the podcast over Christmas. It is the first year in five years where I do not have a book coming out in between Christmas and New Year. You may have heard that my next book, Happy Minds, Happy Life is coming out in March 2022 in the UK and June 2022 in the US and Canada. So I wanted to take advantage of that and properly switch off and relax with my family over Christmas. And in many ways, it's that sentiment that has influenced the topic of this final compilation episode. This, of course, is the time of year where many of us

take a pause, spend time with our loved ones and think of others. So for this final episode of the year, I really wanted to celebrate the power of community. So my team have put together some of the very best inspirational clips around this topic. As humans, we evolved to be part of a tribe. Connection is what makes us human. But our modern, busy, disconnected lives are pulling so many of us away from this. But community and friendship is really, really important for our health. Many of us struggle these days with our mental well-being and our happiness. And of course, as you will read about in my upcoming book, Happy Minds, Happy Life, there are plenty of simple things that we can do each day that will

make a big difference. But it's not all about what we can do for ourselves. Research has shown time and time again that by giving to others and to our community, we can increase our own happiness as well as the happiness of others. Even the act of chatting to a stranger can have a significant impact on how we feel. That could be the barista at your coffee shop, the checkout assistant at the supermarket, the news agent, or even the Amazon delivery driver. So in this episode, you are going to hear some inspiring stories and advice from some of my former guests, including Gabor Mate, Johan Hari, Laurie Santos, Julian Abel, Pippa Grange, Tommy Wood, Dan Boettner, Kelly McGonigal, John McAvoy, as well as the happy pair.

My team and I really enjoyed putting this episode together for you. I hope you enjoyed listening and I hope it inspires you to live a more contented and connected life. it inspires you to live a more contented and connected life. My first guest is the incredible Dr. Gabor Mate. In this clip from episode 37, he explains why we no longer live in a culture that meets our human needs and how loneliness and lack of meaningful connection can affect our health. What about this whole idea that we're quite isolated now? You know, many of us have moved away from where we grew up. We don't have friends. We don't have a family network around us. And often two parents are working. So you've got this really stressful situation where everyone's trying to do the best that they can. They're trying to, you know,

make enough money to feed themselves, to house themselves. They're also trying to spend enough time with their children, yet they have no support. So there's a huge amount of pressure then that goes on to the kids, but also on the parents. Yes. And you mentioned a little bit about hunter-gatherer societies and how for the bulk of human evolution, we have lived and raised our children a certain way. I wonder if you could expand on that.

Well, some versions of human beings have been on the earth for millions of years. They've been hominids for millions of years. There have been human species for hundreds of thousands of years, and our own particular species probably for about 100,000 years. For all of that prehistory, until about 9,000 years ago, virtually all human beings lived in small hunter-gatherer bands. This is a revolution. This is how we became human beings.

You might liken modern society to a zoo, where you take an animal from a natural habitat and you put them in a completely artificial, restricted situation, and you expect them to stay as normal as he was out there in the wild, essentially, that's what's happened to human beings, in that in a very short space of time, in a blink of an eye from the perspective of evolution, we've gone from the hunter-gatherer, small band, communal attachment based group to a society

which is alienated disconnected and that disconnection is is accelerating at a tremendous rate throughout the world urbanization it's taking people out of their villages and it's the big cities where they're alone so what we're having in is societies that are less and less natural to the actual makeup of human beings from the evolutionary perspective, which means that children are being brought up under increasingly artificial and disconnected circumstances. And Johan Hari, who's written a book recently on depression called Lost connections is pointing exactly. That's what happened in modern society.

So that these lost connections characterize the modern world and as they do, you're getting the spread of autoimmune disease into countries that never used to have it before. So we think autoimmune disease is one of these, or addictions for that matter. So if you look at the rate of addiction now in countries

like China and India, it's going up exponentially precisely because of the, and it's not a question of idealizing the old way of life. We can't go back. And of course, there's all kinds of benefits to progress and industrialization. Trouble is that as we progress, we forget what we've lost. So instead of combining progress, we're trying to hold on to what was best about some of the old ways. We just throw everything out and we think we can reinvent ourselves. And as we do, we're making ourselves sick. Yeah, you're right.

And I think it's a really great point. We're not saying we need to go back to hunter-gatherer tribes. We can't. Yeah. Not only should we not, we can't. And there are so many great benefits of the modern world and, as you say, industrialization. I guess it's how do we learn from the past?

How do we learn from our evolutionary heritage? And what can we implement from that within the constraints of the modern world? Certainly that's how I see it. And you mentioned Johan Hari's new book, and I write a huge quarter of my book on stress is about relationships and our lack of connection these days we've been told that we're more connected than we've ever been before and certainly in a digital sense that may be the case but

you know when we talk about real human meaningful connection what I see around me with the public but what i also see in my practice as a doctor is i don't think we've ever been this disconnected and lonely and we're more wired but we're less connected when a community comes together incredible things can happen and as you heard in the last clip gabor and i I both mentioned the great work of Johan Hari. In this clip from episode 94, Johan shares the heartwarming story of how the residents of the small districts of Berlin formed an unlikely community and the profound effects this had on everyone involved. This had on everyone involved. When individuals see themselves as part of a kind of connected tapestry of wider meaning, right, which would have happened in the tribes in which humans evolved, they feel much better about their lives.

They feel much more satisfied. Naturally, I learned so much from scientists, some of the leading scientists in the world and reading loads of studies. I think the place that taught me the most about depression and anxiety were not those people, actually. And I'll just tell you the story of what happened in this place, if that's OK, because it is something I think about every day. In the summer of 2011, on a big anonymous council estate in Berlin, a German-Turkish woman called Nuria Cengiz climbed out of her wheelchair and put a sign in her window. She lives on the ground floor. The sign said something like, I got a notice saying I'm going to be evicted next Thursday. So on Wednesday night, I'm going

to kill myself. Now this is a council estate. It's in a funny area. It's called Kotti. It's a poor part of what used to be West Berlin. And basically no one wanted to live there for years. It was a mixture of recent Muslim immigrants like Nuria, gay men and punk squatters, right? As you can imagine, these three groups didn't get on very well, but no one really knew anyone, right? No one knew who this woman was. People are walking past her window and they're worried about her. And they're also pissed off because their rents are going up. Loads of people are being evicted. So they know they might be next. People start to knock on Nouria's door. They said, do you need any help? And at first Nouria said, fuck you. I don't want any help.

Shut the door in their faces, right? They're like, we shouldn't just leave her. What should we do? And this was actually the summer of the revolution in Egypt. And one of them was watching it on the telly and they had an idea, right? There's a big road that goes through Kotti into the center of Berlin. And he said, you know, if we just blocked the road for a day, it goes right through this council estate. He said, if we just block the road for a day and, you know, we protest and we wheel Nouria out, there'll be a bit of a fuss. The media will

probably come. They'll probably let us stay. There might even be a little bit of pressure to keep our rents down. Right. So they decide to do it. Why not? They block the road. Nouria's like, I'm going to kill myself anyway. I may as well let them push me into the middle of the street. They block the road. Nouria's like, I'm going to kill myself anyway. I may as well let them push me into the middle of the street. And they sit there and they protest. And the media does come. It's a little bit of a kerfuffle that day in Berlin. And then at the end of the day, the police come and they say, okay, you've had your fun. Take it all down. And the people there are like, well, hang on a minute. You haven't told Nouria she gets to stay. Actually, we want a rent freeze for this whole council estate. So when we've got that, then we'll take it down. But of course they knew the minute they left the barricades that they put up, the police would just tear it down anyway. So one of my favorite people at Cotty, Tanya Gartner, who's one of the punk squatters, she wears tiny little mini skirts, even in Berlin winter. She's quite hardcore. Tanya had this idea. In her flat, she had a klaxon, you know, those things that make a loud noise at football matches. So she went and got it. She came down and she said, okay, here's what we're going

to do. We're going to drop a timetable to man this barricade 24 hours a day until we've got what we want, until Nuria gets told she can stay in until we get a rent freeze. And if the police come to take the barricade down, let off the klaxon, we'll all come down from our flats and stop them. So people start signing up to man this barricade, people who would never have met, right? So this very unlikely pairing. So Nuria, who's very religious Muslim in a full hijab, was paired with Tanya in her tiny little mini skirt, right? And I can't remember what night shift they got. It might be Tuesday nights. So they're sitting there, Tuesday nights, super awkward. They're like, what have we got in common? We've got nothing to talk about. As the weeks went on, they started talking and Tanya and Nuria realised they had something really

profound in common. Nuria had come to Berlin when she was 16 from her village in Turkey. She had two young children and her job was to raise enough money to send back for her husband to come and join her. Sitting there in the cold in Cottey, she told Tanya something she never told anyone in Germany. After she'd been in Berlin for 18 months, she got word from home that her husband to come and join her. Sitting there in the cold in Cottey, she told Tanya something she never told anyone in Germany. After she'd been in Berlin for 18 months, she got word from home that her husband was dead. And she'd always told people that he'd died of a heart attack. He'd actually died of tuberculosis, which was seen as a kind of shameful disease of poverty. That's when Tanya told Nuria something she never talked about. She'd come to Cottey when she was even younger, when she was 15. She'd been thrown out by a middle-class family. She'd made her way. She lived in this punk squat and she got pregnant not long

after she arrived. So they both realized that they had been children with children of their own in this frightening place they didn't understand, right? They realized they had loads in common. There were loads of these pairings happening over Cotty. There was a young lad who kept being a Turkish-German lad who kept being nearly thrown out of school. They said he had ADHD. He got paired with a very grumpy old white German guy called Dieter, who said he didn't believe in direct action because he loved Stalin. But in this case, he'd make an exception. He started helping him with his homework.

He started doing much better at school. Directly opposite this council estate, there's a gay club called Zudblock. It's run by a man I love called Rick Hardstein, who, to give you a sense of what he's like, the previous place he owned was called Cafe Anal. Okay, this is a pretty hardcore gay club, right? And when they opened it, about two years before the protest began, you know, there's a lot of religious Muslims there. Some of them had smashed the windows. People were really pissed off. And when the protest began, Zudblock, the gay club, gave all their furniture to the protest. And after a while, they said, you know, you guys could have all your meetings in our club. You could, you know, we'll give you drinks, we'll give you free food. And even the lefties at Kotti were like, look,

we're not going to get these very religious Muslims to come and have meetings underneath posters for things so obscene, I won't describe them on your podcast, right? It's not going to happen. But actually it did start to happen. As one of the Turkish German women put it to me, not going to happen. But actually it did start to happen. As one of the Turkish-German women put it to me, we all realised we had to take these small steps to understand each other. After the protest had been going on for about a year, one day a guy turned up at the protest called Tunkay, who was in his early fifties. And Tunkay, when you meet him, it's obvious he's got some kind of cognitive difficulties and he'd been living homeless, but he has an amazing energy about him. He started asking if he could help out. Everyone liked him. And by this time they'd actually, the barricade had turned into

a physical structure with a roof, right? A lot of them are construction workers. So they started saying to Tungkay, you know, you should come and live in this thing we've built, right? It's quite nice. We don't want you to be homeless. He started living there. He became a much loved part of the protest camp. And after he'd been there for nine months, one day the police came. They would come every now and then to inspect. And Tungkay doesn't like it when people argue. So he went to hug one of the police officers, but they thought he was attacking them. So they arrested him. That was when it was discovered. Tungkay had been shut away for 20 years in a psychiatric hospital, often literally in a padded cell. He'd escaped one day, lived on the streets for a couple of months and made his way to kotti at which point the police took him back to this psychiatric hospital so this entire kotti

protest turned itself into a free tung kai movement right they descend on this psychiatric hospital at the other side of berlin and these psychiatrists are like what is this they've got you know had this person shut away for 20 years and suddenly they've got all these women in hijabs, these punks and these very camp gay men demanding his release. They're like, oh, they don't understand it. And I remember Uli Hartmann, one of the protesters said to them, yeah, but you don't love him. He doesn't belong with you. We love him. He belongs with us. And many things happened at Cottey. I guess the headline is they got a rent freeze for their entire housing project. They then launched a referendum initiative to keep rents down across the entire city. They've got the largest number of written signatures in the history of the city

of Berlin. They got Tunkai back. He lives there still. But the last time I saw Nuria, I remember her saying to me, you know, I'm really glad I got to stay in my neighborhood. That's great. I gained so much more than that. I was surrounded by these incredible people all along and I would never have known. And so many of the people there, these insights would just blow the surface. I remember Neriman Tanker, who's another one of the Turkish German women there, saying to me, you know, when I grew up in Turkey, I grew up in a village and I called my whole village home. And I learned when I came to live in the Western world, that what you're meant to call home is just your four walls. And then this whole protest began and I started to call all these people my home, right? And she said, she realized in some sense in this culture, we are

homeless, right? There's a Bosnian writer called Alexander Heyman who said, home is where people notice when you're not there. By that standard, lots of us are homeless. And it was so clear to me in Kotti, think about how unhappy these people were, right? Nuria was about to kill herself. Tunkai was shut away in a padded cell. Loads of them were depressed and anxious. In the main, these people did not need to be drugged. They needed to be together. They needed to be seen. They needed to be loved and valued. They needed to have a sense that they were part of a tribe, that they had purpose and meaning in their lives. And I remember sitting with Tanya one time outside Zublock and her saying to me, you know, when you feel like shit and you're all alone, you think there's something wrong with you. But what we did is we came out of our corner crying and we started

to fight. and we realized we were surrounded by people who felt the same way. And to me, this is the most important thing I learned, right? I love these people in Cotty, as I'm sure you can tell, but in one sense, they are not exceptional. They were entirely randomly selected people, right? Ordinary people have changed the world time and time again. They don't do it by sitting at home alone. They do it by joining up with other people. This hunger for reconnection and for rediscovery of meaning and other people and meaningful values is just beneath the surface for all of us, right? And arguably, it's the most important thing as a society we should be trying to promote.

That is profound. I can't stop thinking about it. Home is when someone notices when you are not there. Human connection and friendship have incredible benefits for our health as well as our happiness. Next up is a clip from episode 67 with National Geographic Explorer and author Dan Buettner. Dan has led teams of researchers across the globe to discover the secrets of blue zones, geographical areas where high percentages of centenarians live long and active lives. In this clip, he explains how human connection and a sense of community can benefit our health and longevity in ways we might not imagine. The Blue Zones are Okinawa, Japan, Sardinia, Italy, Ikaria, Greece, Nicoya Peninsula of Costa Rica, and among the Seventh-day Adventists.

So we have five places that produce longevity. Costa Rica and among the Seventh-day Adventists. So we have five places that produce longevity. What's correlating? What are the common denominators in all five of these places that is producing manifestly the health that the rest of us want? And one of those mysteries we came across in the year 2000, a tiny cluster of islands about 1,500 kilometers south of Tokyo, the islands of Okinawa, there's 161 of these islands, you find the longest-lived population in the history of the Earth. And I thought, aha, now there's a good mystery. How do these islanders, you know, with no great technology,

with no great access to top-of-the-line medicine, how are they living so long and avoiding disease? Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, if you're looking for something at this time of year to kickstart your health, I'd highly recommend that you consider AG1. AG1 has been in my own life for over five years now. It's a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It contains vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important, especially at this time of year. It also contains

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they are doubling the five free travel packs to 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. So the longest lived women in the world live in Okinawa. The longest lived men live in the highlands of Sardinia, an area called the Nuoro province, six villages, 40,000 people. And do we know why there's that difference between male longevity and female longevity? I can only hypothesize. Okay. So in Okinawa, for example, women have much stronger social networks than men do. Men tend to be solo and women form these

and stick with these social constructs known as a moai. So they support each other, not only literally, but figuratively. They take care of each other. People who are rudderless in the world, they don't know why they wake up. They don't know how they fit in. They don't know why their lives matter. It is very hard to navigate a world when you don't feel like you're needed. In blue zones, they live in places where if you don't show up to the village festival, if you don't show up to church, temple, or mosque, somebody can be pounding on your door saying, where are you? The purpose comes with mother's milk. There's Ikigai in Okinawa, Plante Vida in the Nicoya Peninsula. People know their sense of purpose,

live their sense of purpose, and they have a rudder to get through every single day. And that eliminates not only the existential stress of, do I matter? But it also makes day-to-day decisions really easy. I argue in the blue zone, the one most dependable thing you can do to add years to your life is to curate a circle of friends, four or five friends who A, you can do to add years to your life is to curate a circle of friends, four or five friends who, A, you can count on, but that also means you have to be willing to be counted on on their bad days. People whose idea of recreation is walking or golfing or playing tennis. People who will keep your mind challenged. People in the blue zones are not only living long lives, they're living happy lives. They're rich, they're fulfilled, they're full of great social connection, they're full of meaning, they're full of the things that make life worth living. Social connection can also greatly benefit our brain health. In this next clip from episode 167,

Dr. Tommy Wood describes the crucial role that human connection plays in the health of our brain and the powerful idea that your brain needs a reason to be alive. Just how important is connecting with others for our brain health when you really boil it down social connection again is is essentially the sort of foundational aspect of us as a species right we are a collectivist species we benefit from being part of a social group, from having a place in that social group, from having a purpose within that group, which gives us meaning. And having meaning is something

that tells our body that it's worth being alive. Having meaning or not seems to have an effect on the immune system, has an effect on our physiology. And so without social connection, you're essentially not giving that input, which is that you have purpose, you have meaning, you belong. That is one of the critical inputs for the brain to keep working. One of the downstream or threads that comes out of this demand-driven theory of cognitive decline is the grandmother hypothesis. demand-driven theory of cognitive decline is the grandmother hypothesis the grandmother hypothesis states that rather than when you've procreated you are essentially just a useless sack of meat which is what some people will tell you about the evolutionary forces on our bodies right that you're just there to procreate once you've done that there are no more evolutionary forces that are creating fitness right and so like most people will say that your there are no more evolutionary forces that are creating fitness, right? And so

like most people will say that your genes are just there to make you live to 20 or 30 years old, procreate, and then what happens after that doesn't really matter. However, the grandmother hypothesis would state that if you are useful and healthy longer into life, then you are available to help support your progeny, their progeny, and to keep your tribe alive, right? So you are actually increasing the likelihood that your genes will be passed further into the future by being alive to be able to help the new parents or be able to look after the grandchildren. So actually, there are evolutionary forces that exist to keep us healthy for as long as possible. However, you get to a point where you are no longer of use to the group. And then that's probably going to be a trigger for some kind of decline. Because as soon as you're no longer of benefit, you know,

if we think about this from an evolutionary perspective, we think about, you know, hunter-gatherers, you know, early humans. As soon as you're no longer a benefit, you are a detriment to your tribe, to your group. You're going to take up resources. People are going to have to care for you, which they can't really afford to do. So that could trigger this period of decline. You think about wolves or dogs leaving the pack when they're old, so they can go and die peacefully in the wilderness. And humans used to do that in some groups as well. So we are only giving ourselves the input that says, you're worth being here, you're worth having some kind of function because you're part of a group and because you have purpose.

And without social connection, it's almost impossible to have any kind of significant purpose because you don't know that you have purpose because you're not contributing to some kind of goal or group that's greater than yourself. So I think that we've kind of bounced back from the philosophical to the physiological. We've kind of bounced back from the philosophical to the physiological. But at some level, for us to survive and be healthy and functional requires some kind of social input that says, you have meaning, you belong, you have purpose. And so that's going to be critical to physical health, mental health, cognitive function. And that requires social connection.

It requires other people to help you see and learn that. You are an incredibly strong, resilient human being with significant purpose and meaning. You are loved and you have a place. And because of that, you have incredible strength. My next guest is Dr. Julian Abel, a retired consultant in palliative care. Julian is joint leader of a project which aims to end loneliness and improve health in the town of Froome in Somerset. In this clip, he describes the incredible results and explains why social relationships, compassion, and a sense of community are so important for our quality of life, our health and our well-being.

What happened in Froome is remarkable. Maybe you could paint the picture for us. What was going on in Froome before? What did you and colleagues introduce and what was the profound impact that you saw? Froome is a market town. It's always had something of an independent streak about it going back through the years. And there's an incredibly good natured, sensible, clear thinking GP called Dr. Helen Kingston. And she understood that so much of what we do as doctors is not related to drug treatment and wanted people to feel supported by their community. So what she did is that she employed Jenny Hartnell, who's got a background in community development. And Jenny started a community development program from within the medical center, it was really about bringing the community together and making use of the incredible wealth of resources that are present in every community. And then if people

are feeling lonely or isolated, which is very, very common and is worse in illness, in fact, then there's a way of connecting that community resource to what happens inside the medical practice. There's a lady called Kathy who was a businesswoman who got a very severe form of acute rheumatoid arthritis. And she didn't really know the people around her that well. And the rheumatoid arthritis actually put her in a wheelchair within the space of three weeks and her whole life was devastated. So she went to the doctor and said, look, I need a sense of hope that this isn't my life from now on. And so the doctor said, okay, look, I'm going to get you to see a health connector. And so Rose, a health connector,

went to see Kathy. And Kathy said, I need to meet some other people who are going through this because I need to know that I'm not stuck. And then she's connected to this incredible wealth of people of all the stuff that's going on in the community, whether it's talking cafes or whether it's a knitting group or an art group or a healthy walking group or whatever it is. And Kathy makes this journey from being somebody who was relatively isolated and focused to being somebody who is deeply engaged in the community. And she describes the outcome of it about how she has got friends for life. And she knows that they are there for her and she is there for them. And her life is transformed. Not only does she regain her health, she regains her happiness. And that the combination of the medical treatment of her disease with this wealth of support transforms her life. When you say she regains her health, right? So she gets tapped into that when

she's been diagnosed. And I think you said she's in a wheelchair. So when you say she's regained her health, what happens? Her pain and her mobility improve. And obviously some of that is related to treatment of her disease, but her wellbeing improves, her sense of social connectedness, her sense of who's around her, who her friends are, her joy in life, her reason for living, everything is transformed. So it's a personal journey of increasing health and wellbeing and transformation. What's interesting, Julian, for me, as you described her improvements there, is that we started off talking about pain and mobility. And of course, the medical treatment may have helped that. But I also have seen enough to know that actually, it could also be a lot of the other stuff as well. The feeling of connectedness can

absolutely reduce pain in my experience. But you said at the end, her joy in living, her love for life, all that sort of stuff, the kind of softer stuff that often in medicine, we don't measure. But in many ways, that's the most important part of being alive. The most important part of being a human being on planet Earth is how much fulfillment, how much joy do we get day to day? If you start to deal with what matters most in life and what matters most is so often the people we know and love in the places we know and love, you know, that if you start to work with all of that, then a similar kind of transformation that happened to Kathy can take place. And of course, if people are feeling loved and secure, then their anxiety goes down, their pain levels go down. And actually, you know,

then you start producing all the things that we naturally produce as human beings, including oxytocin and endorphins, which are the morphine-type compounds that we naturally produce inside us. I can't get that out of my head that your biochemistry, your biology, your physiology changes when you have close social connections, when you're compassionate to someone else or they're compassionate to you. It matters so much. I mean, it's heartening, isn't it? It's heartwarming. Those moments, even those light moments

where you have a gentle chat with someone, they're heartwarming. We feel it and it sustains us. And what's great is that that sense of heartwarming is not just with you, but it's everyone involved in it. The outcomes of Froome were totally unexpected. We saw emergency admissions drop by 30% at a time where they were increasing everywhere else. And there are no interventions ever which have reduced population emergency admissions.

When communities come together, as Cormac Russell of Nurture Development says, together. As Cormac Russell of Nurture Development says, it's about what's strong, not what's wrong, that we build relationships and we recognize the strength in all of us. And we start to create the warmth of the environment where we can start to solve the problems that we face. And it doesn't matter whether those problems are financial or environmental or whatever comes to the surface, communities acting together through the warmth of human relationships is how we get the transformation. And it goes back to what you were saying, this is not so much the individual, but it's people together, it's communities. And the reason why that's so powerful is because that's how we evolved. We evolved in communities.

It's a really important part of human evolution. So why do we often not prioritize human connection in our lives? My next guest is Laurie Santos, Professor of Psychology at Yale University. And in this clip from episode 151, she explains why our instincts about what will truly make us happy often lead us in the wrong direction and the surprising effects connection with others can have on our happiness. connection with others, and have on our happiness. It'd just be nice if our brain was like pointing us towards the things that were really going to make us happy, if we went after the stuff that we were really going to like. But the data suggests

that that's just not the case. There are all these domains where we think, if I could only get X, then I would be happy. But then we get that X and it just doesn't work. You know, many of us think, oh, if I could just get that beach house or that new car, or even just, you know, at a local level, I'm just going to buy these new shoes, it'll make me happy. The data suggests that, yeah, it makes you happy for like, you know, a split second. It doesn't kind of give you lasting happiness. It doesn't even give you happiness that lasts for as long as we think. And so there's all these ways where we think that changing our circumstances is going to boost happiness, but in fact, it just doesn't work. The flip side, though, is there's all these different interventions we can do to boost our happiness. One of the biggest behaviors that

works super well for improving well-being is social connection. One of the most famous papers in positive psychology by the psychologists Marty Seligman and Ed Diener say that social connection and feeling socially connected is a necessary condition for very high happiness. You just simply don't find highly happy people who don't also feel socially connected. But we also know from the intervention work that improving your social connection, making new social connections, even talking to strangers on your commute can actually boost up your well-being in ways we really, really don't expect. And these types of effects hold across personality variables. So you get the same sorts of boosts of happiness for social connection for introverts and for extroverts. It seems to work in ways we don't expect. What does the research say about talking to strangers and talking to people we don't know?

Because I think there's some quite nice research there, isn't there, showing us just how impactful those interactions are. Yeah. And just how wrong we are about those interactions. You know, this is another domain where at least my intuition is that, yeah, maybe it'll make me feel okay. But like, you know, it's not a major force in our happiness. In fact, if you, you know, plop me on a train, you know, going to work in the morning, you know, maybe I'd talk to somebody, but usually I'd put my headphones on and listen to a podcast or, you know, get some work done or try to get through some email. And it turns out that this is a mistake when it comes to maximizing your happiness. There's some lovely work by the University of Chicago psychologist Nick Epley, who did direct studies on this, where he found some subjects who are about to do their daily commute on a train. What he tells subjects is either, for the rest of the train ride,

don't talk to anybody. Please try to enjoy your solitude. Or for the rest of the train ride, just do what you normally do. It's kind of the control condition. Or for the rest of the train ride, I want you to try to make a meaningful social connection with somebody. Like talk to someone and don't just talk about the weather. Like really try to get to know them. What do people predict? Because he has one group of subjects predict ahead of time, which is going to make people feel happy. And people predict that the enjoy your solitude condition is going to feel awesome, right? They predict that that's going to maximize their happiness. And they don't just predict that the social connection condition is going to feel neutral. They predict that it's going to actively suck. It's going to take them down from baseline. And what Nick finds is just the opposite. It's

that solitude condition that feels yucky. The social connection condition makes you feel great. And I think this is a problem, right? This is another domain where we have these bad intuitions about what makes us happy. And what's worse is it doesn't just affect our behavior. It changes the structures that we create. You know, I'm sure, you know, in the UK, they have, you know, quiet cars on trains and things like that. You know, Nick's evidence suggests that that's not necessarily a way to maximize passenger experience, right? We would maybe be better off with like a chatty car where you go in the car and everyone's like talking and interacting and getting to know one another. But, you know, those are not the systems we build in because we have these incorrect theories about what's going to make us feel good.

The next clip comes from Stephen and David Flynn, also known as the Happy Pair. They have a mission to create a healthier, happier world and have built a community around their cafe of the same name in their hometown in Ireland. Back in episode 38, they spoke to me about how fundamental community is to our happiness and health and why connecting with others can bring us joy. Loneliness is something that is endemic in society these days. And when people talk about loneliness, they often imagine elderly people, you know, living by themselves. But I can tell you that

as a doctor, I'm seeing a lot of young guys, you know, particularly between the age of 13 and 40, who are lonely in the sense that, sure, they've got jobs, they're seeing people, but they're not actually making time to see their friends. They're too busy. You know, we're learning more and more that being lonely is as harmful on your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, which is just, it's just profound. For people listening to this who don't live in a very tightly knit community like you guys do, is there stuff that they can learn about how they can create communities to help them lead happier and healthier lives? Brilliant. Love it. I think the first one, I totally validate with everything which you're

saying. I know now one of the leading causes of disease nowadays is not cancer. It's not heart disease. it's isolation loneliness and depression and that's what it's saying is the root of so many of these diseases as you're saying and interesting enough when we were here we were on our way over traveling this morning we were reading stuff about the blue zones and what the blue zones say is what's number one in terms of longevity health and happiness it's not kale it's not yoga it's not swimming in the sea it's the tribe it's the tribe of people you surround yourselves. It's the community that's number one in terms of longevity in the communities that live the longest and kind of most wholesome kind of lives.

I remember a friend was telling me, it was Sarah after we were swimming in the sea, we were back having breakfast in the happy pair. And she was telling me about an interesting guy who lived in just a normal housing estate. And he decided, I wonder what happens if I pull down the wall in my garden and put a swing and a bench in it. And he happened to live on a corner of the road. And he found it was amazing. So strangers would come and sit down at his bench.

He'd come out of his house and suddenly he talked to them. And they went from being a stranger to someone he knew. And then from getting to know them more, he was hanging out with them. They became dear friends. So I think it's in modern day society, it's just connecting with another human to be more intimate, to show our vulnerability. And I think that's ultimately it. And I think anyone who's listening to this, it's simply like, I know we're on our way down to London later and London can feel so lonely because everyone's in such a rush. They're so busy,

but it's amazing when we're, I guess, approaching London as a foreigner in for two days, you're really excited. You're chatting away to anyone on a foreigner in for two days, you're really excited. You're chatting away to anyone on the tube. And like initially say you're on the tube and you pull out, you know, a little, maybe it'll be like a tub of berries and you offer the person next to you, they think it's nearly like poisoned. But slowly, if you offer another person, another person and four people reject, but one person said yes.

And then you go back to the others and they'll all take one. And then suddenly you're talking and it's amazing. Just it's great that you guys persevere with that and make you know all it takes is one person to great conversations in the tube like I've been surprised that I quickly get to something deep and significant and I think that's the challenge of society nowadays

like there's never been a time where there's more kind of stimulation more demands on us more kind of we're busier than we've ever been but ultimately this is a challenge which we personally both find is that you've, it's constantly, you have to catch yourself and go, okay, now this is where it's at. This is life. This is everything. It's to breathe, to take it easy. And when we were discussing earlier, when I talked about, it's often you meet people that are terminally ill or who've kind of had a near death experience or something where they really, they

really appreciate the moment where they're living life differently they're not going around on autopilot like i often am you often are i'm sure all of us kind of in some form we go in this robotic quick quick more more more where it's only when you can really catch yourself and kind of go okay life is now it's about connection my next guest is the psychologist dr pippa grange in this clip from episode 126 of the podcast she explains why relationships are so important and how we can cultivate closer connections if we practice the courage to be ourselves you talk about relationships and how relationships are really fundamental to I guess our overall well-being why do you think relationships are so important why have relationships sort of become fragmented in the way we live these days and what can we do about it?

I think relationships are the point. You know, they're not just important, they're the point. You know, we've talked ourselves into this idea that we're all separately, as if we're walking next to each other, but we're all separately on this, you know, big journey to achievement and outcomes collectively, if it's convenient. And sometimes we might even link arms, but we've forgotten that the point, the joy, the very raison d'etre, the thing that we're here for is each other, is to connect.

That's where all the joy is. If you win the World Cup and there's nobody in the stadium, how does that feel? Or nobody's tuned in? You know, it's the shared joy of our journeys that is the point. Yeah. I think it's really interesting that we have almost like confined our ideas about intimacy to our one relationship, you know, or to our, you know, to the sexual realm rather than it be like, for me, intimacy is about, can I just show up as me and be real and be close to you?

Can I connect, right? That's intimacy. This is an intimate conversation because we're talking in real terms about who we are and what we care about and we're exposed, right? But that is the juice of life. That is where the richness and zest is, when we can actually connect like that, because you can't be intimate and performative. Let me just sit with that. You can't be intimate and performative. Yeah, absolutely. You can't perform who you are and be real enough to be intimate. They're almost kind of opposites right yeah so you know for me the more we can actually say about who we are and what we care about the more we can sort of just expose okay this this is it yeah how do people

listen to this who go okay i want a bit more intimacy in my life. How do they start going about getting it? Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning a really special evening where I share how you can break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life that truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the architect of your health and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health and together we're going to learn the skill

of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life, and I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour and I can't wait to see you there. ThePathLatitudeMattery.com forward slash tour. I can't wait to see you there. This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now, journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision making, and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits, and improve our relationships.

There are, of course, many different ways to journal, and as with most things, it's important that you find the method that works best for you. As with most things, it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three question journal. In it, you will find a really simple and structured way of answering the three most impactful questions I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January, I have received hundreds of messages from people telling me how much it has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already

have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal, that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three question journal completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal or click on the link in your podcast app. When you want to move to be more intimate, this isn't something that you just start. You just, you know, there's no technique involved. It's a journey. So I don't want people to feel like I'm not getting it. I'm not doing it properly. You know, it's no technique involved. It's a journey. So I don't want people to feel like I'm not getting it.

I'm not doing it properly. You know, it's a journey. It might take you years and that's okay. It's a brilliant journey. But, you know, start by eye contact. So, you know, when you speak to somebody, can you hold their gaze? Do you revert to your phone pretty quickly when you get into an elevator or you get in the back of an Uber or something?

You know, can you connect? And it's different to introversion, right? I make this point in the book. People who are introverted tend to have stronger personal boundaries and prefer privacy and a richer inner world. And there's no judgment on that whatsoever because they can still have really deep intimate relationships. It's more about how are you connecting and showing up as you without guarding all of you. When you can do that and just show up, the opportunity for that energy exchange between you is so strong. When we apologize for who we are all the time or for what we do,

it gets in the way of intimacy. Just be, you you know rather than just neatening everything off you can't do that when you're intimate no you know you don't need to do that when you're intimate because you're allowed to be human so what can we do to incorporate more social connection into our lives my next guest is ke Kelly McGonigal, a US research psychologist, lecturer at Stanford University, and best-selling author. In this next clip from episode 109, Kelly describes the incredible things that can happen when we move together with other people. The rewards that we get from playing an active role in our lives, literally active, being engaged,

exerting ourselves, pursuing meaningful goals, and the rewards that we get from connecting with other people and being part of a community, they are so connected that it's one of the reasons why people who are physically active are less lonely. They have better relationships with other people. There's something about being sedentary that makes it more difficult to be that version of ourselves that thrives in community. And I don't mean, that sounds, I don't want to shame anyone who doesn't exercise or feels like they can't for physical or mental health reasons. And yet at the same time,

I feel like it's really important to express this message that to whatever degree you can move your body, it makes you a different version of yourself that it's not even just better for other people. It allows you to experience that core human joy of interdependence. You know, there's so many important dimensions of social community. They're your close relationships, you know, your partnerships in life, your family. But it's so important to have social relationships that are a little bit casual, but where you know you can show up and belong, where people are happy to see you. And when you're having a bad day, they give you, you know, just that level of support where it's okay to be who you are and there are people who care.

And it's amazing how much movement facilitates that level of connection where you're sort of allowed to be who you are. When things are difficult, people support you in this kind of easy way that we sometimes don't find in our close relationships where, you know, things get very complicated. One of the reasons why movement and things like park run or things like my dance classes help people experience that is movement often asks us to be the best version of ourselves and also good friends to other human beings. So, you know, you go for a run and it's just so natural to cheer other people on. Like if you finish first to support other people in finishing, it's so natural to receive that

support. It's like an easier place to allow yourself to be congratulated and supported. We get to practice these kinds of rituals of just like easy human interdependence and things like runs and ninja warrior training and all these other places where people experiencing connection. It's because like you're asked to do things that are a little bit hard. And then when you do it, people, people congratulate you and see your strength and you get to do that for others. And there's this kind of bigger than self effort and bigger than self joy that people experience. That is some psychologists call it a sense of we agency. You get together and you're doing something and you experience a sense of self that literally

transcends the borders of your skin and your body. You feel connected to almost like a community is like an organism in itself. I mean, it's such like we could get into the neuroscience of this, but literally if you're running in a pack or you're in a dance class and you're moving in sync with other people, your brain starts to expand its sense of awareness so that you literally can, like the people you see running in stride with you

or the people you see moving in a dance class with you, your brain is like, that's happening at the same time that my brain is saying run or stretch your arm. And it just starts to assume I'm part of something bigger, an organism that's all moving as one. And it creates this amazing sense of self-transcendence. Next, we'll hear again from the happy pair. Part of their daily routine involves walking down to their local beach at sunrise and jumping in for a swim.

They explain how it all started and why a community of like-minded people now join them to start the day together in this incredible way. Dave was down walking Elsie, his first child, to sleep, as you do at 5am in the morning. Yeah, seven years ago. And the sun rose and Dave took a picture and put it up on social media and people really connected with it because it was a symbol of hope, new dawn, beauty, nature. You know, it was very simple. There was a purity to it.

So we got in the habit of going down to see sunrise because we used to get up at half four to go into the fruit market. So we enjoyed those early hours of the day. And we were down there and I remember it was a rainy day and it was, it was September and it was kind of cold. And I was down taking a picture of the sunrise and there was a fella there and he said, do you want to get in there lads? And I'll mind your, your gear. And it was like, and if anything happens, I'll get in and save you. And I was like, I don't really want to do this, but here's a man challenged me. It's like, of and I'll mind your your gear and it was like and if anything happens I'll get in and save you it's like I don't really want to do this but here's a man challenged me it's like of course I'll do it and in I got and I came out and we got chatting and he said his name was Neil

and he said I'll see you here tomorrow at the same time I was like okay so went down the next day and then there was Caroline another friend Caroline Barrington she was in the beach and she came and joined us and we swam together at sunrise and then we got out and then afterwards see you again tomorrow so we did that for a September and then it like, I wonder if we're going to keep this going. And then Hugo joined us and then Fran joined us. And then we'd go on the 1st of October and we'd end up jokingly going, oh, we've paid our membership for October. We've got to keep going. And we've certainly done it for about two and a half years. And we, um, Every morning?

Every morning when we're at home. And we put things up on social media. And I started using Snapchat about two or three years ago. And it's very of the moment, like as in I'm going to have lunch now. Does anyone want to come? And someone actually shows up in a physical form. So you're taking this digital platform and it's actually connecting in the physical realm. So remember, we used to get hundreds of messages from people going, I'd love to come and join you. But they didn't realize Sunrise was at 4, you had to get at 4.30am. There was a wind that would have skinned you.

The water was two degrees and the air temperature was zero. So it was quite a bracing experience, albeit phenomenal and very invigorating. So I remember it was summer and I remember going, this was a Tuesday morning. I put it up on Snapchat, right, enough of these messages. We're having a public swim rise. Everyone's invited. We're meeting at the Happy Pair at 4.30 a.m. because Sunrise was at 4.50.

And this was the big hook. There's going to be free porridge. And we're going to bring tea. So I met Dave that Thursday morning at 4 a.m. to prepare the porridge. And I wasn't sure. You know, I thought there might be five people. There might be Raj, Mark, maybe a few others,

maybe the usual crew. And we couldn't find a small pot. So we ended up cooking a big pot. And we walk out at 4.30 a.m. And there's about 150 people. We walked in the middle of the road down to the sea. The sun rises. It was a beautiful experience.

And subsequently, we've probably had 500, 700 people do it, like big ones. And now that's for these kind of big public swim rise events, which we've done really just to celebrate community and the simple act of kind of you know the sunrise it's such a symbol of hope and and dawn and a new beginning and like it's a great opportunity to come along meet like-minded people and enjoy in this basic simple thing of swimming at sunday and nowadays pretty much every day of the week we'll get people from all over the world come and join us you know like there there was a guy from alaska stopped over a week there was a guy from Boston came over. Because it's a thing and people know it's going to be happening. And when you guys were in town, you will be there at the ocean in the morning. Yeah, down at sunrise. And there's a lot of cross demographics. There could be Linda and

I think Detty just turned 69. Linda's 70. There could be Neil who's like 45. There's a great cross section of people who come and do it. And like, although you swim in the sea, it's cold. So it brings you back to the present moment. It's quite bracing. You forget what you're stressing about. You come out and then you share tea with people. You have great chats, great friendship, great joy that although in winter it might seem like quite a stoic pursuiter, a kind of crazy activity. On the way down, it's raining, it's miserable. You're going, am I crazy? Like, this is ridiculous. And then you come back on, oh my God, that was amazing. Do your kids ever come with you?

Yeah, yeah, kids do. Kids do come with us. But I was going to say two things on that is like, we often call it Dr. C because it's just the best medicine there is of all. We'll often go down and you'll kind of say, like, I don't always like the person getting into the sea, but I love the person coming out because it's such a, like it brings you back to the present moment like nothing else. And there's lots of medical studies now backing this up and cold water therapy in terms of invigorating your immune system, your whole kind of body and your mental health primarily really. Yeah, there's quite a bit of work going on about how it could be a treatment for depression as well, potentially. And it's just incredible. You have created a community where not only yourselves,

but many other people also go into the ocean every morning in Ireland, even in the winter, which is just incredible in itself. But I'm interested on an individual level, you know, what benefits have you felt in your own life from having that sort of morning ritual? I think it's one of the highlights of our days, honestly. And I can say me personally, like sometimes you'll go, oh, geez, it's so early. I don't feel like it. And it can be challenging. And then you'll walk down to, you'll meet, there might be a couple of people at the shop and we'll make tea. We usually make a four litre flask of tea and we'll bring some little snacks because it's as much the community and the chats after as important as the sea and we'll walk down and you'll kind of go geez are we crazy and then you'll suddenly turn

around the corner to the beach and you'll see the light you'll see the dawn you're like you're suddenly my spirits are lift we'll get down to the beach there'll be it's this sense of overcoming this obstacle we're getting in this cold water together. And you'll meet people on the beach and in we go. One of the most powerful things that we can do is give to others, be that our money, our time, our friendship or our compassion. In this next clip, we'll hear again from Professor Laurie Santos as she reveals why helping others is what will make us truly happy. Happy people are disproportionately other-oriented.

They, like, matched for a salary level, give more of their money to charities than people who are not so happy. They give more of their time, they volunteer, right? They just tend to be more focused on helping other people than in kind of doing selfish pursuits. And the research shows that then if you go and do an intervention where you force people to do nice stuff for others, that will actually improve people's well-being more than they think. This is actually a study by Liz Dunn, who we mentioned earlier. She goes up to people on the street and hands them some money and says, okay, you just got this money. Here's how you have to spend it. One group is told you have to spend this on yourself. Do something nice. Treat yourself. Another group is told, well, the way I want you to spend this money is to do something nice for someone else, right?

Then she has subjects agree that they can be called later in the day or later that week. And what she finds is that subjects who spend the money on other people tend to be significantly happier than those who spend the money on themselves. Now, this is not, again, what we think, right? But it's what the data show. And again, you know, I teach this class, but I get this intuition wrong. If I'm having a crappy day, you know, be like, I'm going to go out and get myself a latte or I'm going to get a manicure, right? I don't think like I'm going to go buy my coworker a latte right now, or I'm going to like, you know, get a little gift card for my friend to get a manicure. Like I think me, me, me, me. But the data suggests that, like, just sort of switching gears, spending our money and our time on other people is a way to bump up our happiness.

By the age of 18, John McAvoy was one of the UK's most notorious armed robbers and spent 10 years in maximum security prisons. During that time, he transformed his life and he's now a man on a mission to make amends and make sure no other child goes that same route into crime. Coming up, a clip from episode 91 of the podcast when we spoke about the role that we can all play in society to ensure the health and happiness of our communities. But first, we'll hear again from Dr. Pippa Grange as she explains the concept of One Health. One of the things I'm loving at the moment that I'm reading about is One Health. So the idea of, you know, instead of health being a phenomena within your body,

within the package of you as one human being, it is an intersection between you, animal species and the planet, you know, which we're kind of seeing right now with COVID, right? So I think it's a much more humble, but much more rational actually position to step back and say, well, of course my health can't be just within my own body. It's's ours it's an us thing including the planet and other species so you know that gets categorized as woo-woo that gets into the alternate and i think well that's just because we haven't evolved our thinking enough yet this this zeitgeist we're in was alternate at one point yeah i meanippa, I'm sure that this is why I feel, it's funny, like I'll

share this. I feel a real deep connection to you, even though I never met you until about an hour ago, because as I read that book, there was so much in it that made me feel something deeply. And what you just said about One Health, now I haven't thought about it in the term of One Health, but something I've been sitting with for a few months is this idea that health has been a very individualistic pursuit, like many things in society. And can we truly be, you know, in inverted commas, healthy if the planet around us is sick or the people in our community are struggling. We're not separate, but culturally we see ourselves as separate. Health-wise, we see ourselves as separate. We have to move away from I to we.

We have to move away from single ideas to multiple possibilities. And I think that's just where we're right at the cusp of now. And for me, some of the reasons we don't step into that curiosity or creativity are fear. Yeah. I was genuinely surprised, but the further along the journey I've gone since I've been released from prison, the social difference in this country is and how so few have so much and so many have so little

to the degree where children, like a headmaster once phoned me up when it was snowing. I remember when I was at school, snow day, I was loving it. Didn't have school. I didn't have school. Like you'd be at school for three, four days. I was loving it. And headmaster phoned me up in Essex and I developed a really close relationship with him. And he said, we've had to close the school. And I said, I bet the kids love it. And he said, John, he said, I feel so bad because I know today for the next two or three days probably, that probably about 70% of my school will not eat a meal for breakfast or lunch because they're solely reliant on the school providing those meals because the kids aren't eating when they're home

because the mums and dads haven't got the money or they haven't got the food to eat. I mean, this sort of inequality is staggering and it's not something I typically talk a lot about on this podcast, but I think it's an important topic. And as I try and talk to more and more varied people about different things, about ultimately how to live better how we can all live better lives and i think we live better lives not only when we feel better

individually but when society is happier and healthier around us it's very hard to be happy when yes you're individually doing well but people around you are struggling yes but we are all on the same rock we're all on this earth at the same moment in time in history like we all were here together and we're all going to end up in the same six foot hole at the end of it so again my belief is the fact we should work together and we should help other people and that's what life should be about it shouldn't be about profit constantly like selling you stuff constantly. It should be about working together and helping your fellow man. Because like you said, society, community becomes so much better

by living that sort of existence. Finally, we'll hear some powerful closing thoughts from Dr. Julian Abel. Julian has cared for many, many patients at the end of their lives, and he now reflects on what they can teach us about what truly matters in life. Somewhere along the line, as capitalist society, where we've been encouraged to buy more, get more things, get more stuff, you know, get these houses, insulate ourselves off from people around us, We've kind of lost it somewhere, haven't we? That actually, it's who we are as humans. I think that's right, that we have been led to believe that acquisition is the way of happiness,

that if we have beauty, if we have lots of goods, that's how we're going to become happy. In my work as a palliative care physician, I talked to literally thousands of people about dying and about what was important in their lives. And often through the course of the illness, people felt a diminished sense of self because they couldn't do the things that they recognized as being important to them. But with the people around them, they appreciated the people around them for their love and their care and their friendship. And so we tend to have this kind of dual standard of thinking about acquisition as being meaningful for ourselves, but we appreciate the people around us for the quality of the character they have. It sounds like you're saying that we judge other people differently from the way we judge ourselves.

Precisely. I mean, it was a conversation I had with nearly every one of my patients. I would say, look, have a think about the people who you really appreciate the most and why you appreciate them. And people would say it's about their love, about their kindness. And they would say, has the love and the kindness diminished in you, even though you're not able to do the things that you usually do? And of course, the love and the kindness is still there. And I would say we don't need to be terminally ill to appreciate that. That's something that we can do now in our lives.

we can do now in our lives. If you like the people around you for the qualities of their character, it's kind of at the heart of it all is, well, you can develop those qualities yourself. You don't have to become a saint. You can just do a little bit and become a slightly kinder, a more compassionate person. The people who used to impress me the most were the people who came to the end of their lives and they weren't great businessmen or didn't have massive achievement, but they approached death with a sense of peace. And when I asked them about that, they said, well, I've had a good life. I've had good people around me. I've had great children. I love my husband and my wife, and I feel satisfied with the way that life went. And to be so open and face death in this peaceful way, to me, was really inspirational and impressive.

And then I remember one gentleman who I treated who was a great international business leader. And he was talking about this subject and his wife was there. And he was saying, I can't do, I can't run my businesses and who am I? And so we talked about appreciating people for who they are and why he loved his wife and all of that. And then his wife popped up and said, people loved you for who you are, not because you were a great business leader. And she encapsulated that so

perfectly, just the way that she said it. And of course, he understood about the powerful impact of the kindness and quite a lot of the physical and emotional suffering that he had got better quite quickly. And he was able to die peacefully with that. And I think that it absolutely gives you a sense of what's important in life and what's not quite so important. Yeah. I think many of us, myself included, need that reminder about what truly is important i think we we get so caught up in small things don't we actually when it's all said and done it comes down to connection and relationships that's what we value the most that concludes today's special compilation episode i really hope you enjoyed it of Of course, these are all clips from

previous conversations. So do consider going back to the original episodes to hear more from your favorite guests. And in the spirit of community and gratitude, I want to give a shout out right now to all of the people on my team who contribute to podcast episodes like this one going out week after week. So a big thank you to my wife, Fids, to Sarah, Gareth, Steph, Claire, Jeremy, Richard, and Hannah. I appreciate every single one of you. I also want to give a shout out to you for listening. I know time is super precious and I want to thank you for sharing some of yours with me every single week. I do not take it for granted. Wherever you are in the world, however you choose to spend time at the end of the year, I hope it is restful, peaceful and rejuvenating. And if I

could ask a favour of you at the end of the year, here are some things that you can do that really do make a difference. You can share this episode or previous episodes with family and friends. You could leave a review on your podcast app like Apple Podcasts. And finally, I am really, really excited about my next book, Happy Minds, Happy Life. I genuinely think it is the best book that I've written so far. every single person who has read an early copy has shared a similar sentiment with me it has very different content to my last four books this one is all about happiness and mental well-being and the relationship between those things and our health if you are interested in that book and you think it is likely you will buy it when it comes out

my request is would you consider pre-ordering the book? It makes a big, big difference to authors. Pre-orders determine how much visibility is given to the book when it comes out and which shops are going to stock it. So if you are a fan, if you do like my books, please do consider pre-ordering. All the links to do so are in your podcast app or on my website. Thank you again for listening. I will see you back at the start of January so are in your podcast app or on my website. Thank you again for listening. I will see you back at the start of January. And in the meantime, remember, you are the architects of your own health. Making lifestyle changes always worth it.

Because when you feel better, you live more. you