From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - The Answer To America's Loneliness Epidemic Is Family

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

Sean and Rachel dive into Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's warning that loneliness has become an epidemic in the United States, and how he missed the mark on providing solutions to what is ailing the nation.  Together they provide why focusing on family can help cure the loneliness sweeping the country, and how the government has exacerbated the problem by enacting policies that work against the nuclear family. Follow Sean and Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Mejuri. From November 25th to December 2nd, get 25% off everything on orders over $150 in Mejuri's biggest sale ever. From bold hoops to minimalist stacks, Mejuri has something for everyone. Mejuri makes handcrafted fine jewelry for every day made with responsibly sourced materials.

So you can look and feel good about gifting and wearing them. Shop your wishlist 25% off at Mijeri.com today. Hey everyone, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy along with my co-host for the podcast, my partner in life, and my wife, Rachel Campos Duffy. Sean, it's great to be back. We have a great topic today, which is the answer to the epidemic of loneliness. We actually talk about this a lot, and our government has come up with an answer. They really have. They really have. And I give the Surgeon General who came up

with the answers, his answers. We'll debate his answer to the problem. I do give him credit for talking about it because it is important. And we have an epidemic. And by the way, loneliness, you know, epidemics went through the roof during COVID. They did. I don't know if they've ever recovered from that. But we were already on that trajectory because of a lot of cultural factors, which we're going to talk about. But the U.S. Surgeon General is Vivek Murthy. He rolled out this new advisory on loneliness and his concern about the fact that Americans are becoming more and more disconnected, not connected to each other, and that there are negative consequences for the individual in terms of their mental, but also there's some, we're talking about the physical impact of loneliness on your body, which is astounding, but also the impact on the country. And so that's what he was sort of putting out. He put out this report, this government report, Sean, you've seen these often when you were in Congress. And he came up

with some pillars. So he did. So one, we have a problem, loneliness. Good for you. I'm going to applaud you, Attorney General. And now he comes out with the solutions to loneliness. And they are pillar number one, strengthen social infrastructure in local communities. Okay. Pillar two, enact pro-connection public policies. Pillar three, mobilize the health sector. Pillar two, enact pro-connection public policies. Pillar three, mobilize the health sector. Pillar four, reform digital environments. Five, deepen our knowledge. And six, cultivate a culture of connection. It's interesting.

So just- Was there something missing from that? Well, yes, there was. But it's interesting to lay out the story of loneliness. The Surgeon General talked about his own loneliness. He kind of put himself into his work and kind of had become disconnected from everyone else in his life. And once he lost that job, he felt really lonely and depressed. And so he had to bring himself back out of the loneliness. And where do you think he went? Who

did he lean on when he felt really lonely, Rachel? He leaned on his family. He talked about his, you know, he expressed how he felt that he felt lonely. He felt, you know, because loneliness leads to depression. And his mom would call him every day and his wife was there for him and his dad was there for him. And of course, he's from an Indian family and family, his sister as well. He leaned on his family. And yet, weirdly, he never talks about family as the answer to loneliness in his six pillars. Dumb, stupid report. Now, I say that in jest because I do think there was one section in there when he talked about technology and he had some really great stuff on that. So let me just talk

about loneliness in America. So there is an epidemic, as he says. There's no question about it. He lays out the stats in this report. You can look up the report. They're very clear. I think we all feel it and see it anyway. I don't need a government report to tell us that people are less connected, more lonely, more depressed. We see that in the rates of, you know, people depending on pharma drugs to keep them, you know, not depressed. We see that in suicide rates, suicide ideation rates. We just see it all over the place. But, you know, he talks about tech and one other point he talks about, there's an epidemic across all demographics, but that it's most pronounced on two ends, about there's an epidemic across all demographics, but that it's most pronounced on two ends.

On the young, because of screen time and that loss of social skills that you and I have talked about a lot, that young people have, where they socialize on their screens and through their screens to their so-called friends, instead of in real life with real authentic in-person relationships. And then the elderly, because we have a culture that really ignores and abandons the elderly, puts them off into nursing homes. Doesn't value them. Doesn't value them, doesn't integrate them. And really importantly, and I think it's interesting that somebody from an Indian, Eastern Indian culture doesn't, didn't talk enough about this, which is intergenerational living, which is so important, which has been abandoned culturally. I mean, I remember when I met you, Sean, your whole family, you have 10 brothers and sisters,

you're the 10th of 11, you live in this little town. Everyone lives like within a street or two or a neighborhood of each other. They all meet on a weekly basis for dinners, for coffees, for birthdays. When you have 10 brothers and sisters and God knows how many nieces and nephews, it's always somebody's birthday. There's always a reason to get together. That's the kind of stuff that people used to experience that people don't experience anymore. We have my parents living with us right now for the summer. That's the kind of... When you talk about intergenerational living, that was the norm until about, what, 60 years ago,

50 years ago. And now we just throw them off to the nursing home. And it was that way forever. Families live together and help each other out. The older ones give advice to the newer ones with newer kids, with their career choices. Again, no matter what the era was you were living in, that knowledge base and wisdom that came from your parents, then also the extra assistance they would also give in the house, made a family function. But I want to go back to the causes of loneliness, right? And we've talked a little bit about this, but it's your phone, right? So, so many people are dialing into their phones for bonding, for communication. Oftentimes, I mean, we see this with our kids. They oftentimes don't call. They just want to text. They're friends. They don't, or even us. They don't know how to use the telephone to communicate. Well, I get a lot of calls from kids.

True. But then even we know young boys with video games, they remove themselves and will go down in their basements and play video games where they are maybe interacting online with people over the internet, but they don't know them. It's this interaction, but it's with a screen, really. Yeah, it's faux. They're faux relationships. It is faux. And even when we've seen our kids get together with their friends and we try to work this, but you'll see them all

sitting around on a couch and on chairs, and all of them are on their phones. I mean, we always talk about the 80s. I'll go around and take away all their phones. And in the 80s, that's not what we did. We didn't have phones. We all had to talk to each other and tell stories and hang out. There's that component as well. But another thing that's happening is this work from home. So you oftentimes get connections with people at work.

You build friendships with people at work. You spend a lot of your life with them and you might find a few people that you actually enjoy that after work you might go- Have a drink. Grab a drink or maybe go get apps on Friday night after work. You might go see a baseball game together on a Saturday. When you're working from home and you're only on your phone or your computer and then you want to date with your online app, you don't come into contact with any flesh. And if you don't come into contact with flesh, contact with flesh, you actually become very lonely. And that is the epidemic that is

infecting our society today. Yeah. And so he puts out these pillars, doesn't mention family. these pillars doesn't mention family. And I think it actually is reflective of what the society is telling young people. So we have this epidemic of loneliness at the same time that we have marriage rates just declining, crashing, birth rates declining, crashing. By the way, also fatherlessness. So now a third of boys do not live in the same home as their own father, their biological father. So that's a huge, massive shift. So here's why I think it's a problem. level health official identifying loneliness as an epidemic, something we've never, the scale of loneliness that we're experiencing right now in America is something we've never seen before in our history. And we continue to lie to young people about what the answers to loneliness are. So not everybody is going to be cut out for getting married and having children. But it is very important that as a society and as public health officials, we tell the truth

to young people about what will happen to them if they choose not to get married and not to have kids. Because when you're young, it may feel really fun to like, you know, go out all the time and do all these things and go on trips and be sort of kid free and stress free and responsibility free. But believe it or not, you will not be 28 forever. You will one day be 50 and 60. And just note about what we just said, the loneliness epidemic at the older level, like when you're in your, you know, 60s and beyond. The cure, the way to prevent being lonely is to have kids and grandkids. I mean, that is, so you have to think, it's interesting. Yeah, that will take care of you and invite you and be part of your life. So if when you're in your 20s and 30s and making these decisions about, you know, you have to help young people think far enough ahead to realize that their fur babies won't, just by nature, they're not, cats don't live that long,

by the way. So let me just say this, you have to remind them that they will get older one day, that they will be lonely and wish they had a family. And it's not just about when you're older. Families' relationships are very fulfilling. In the present. From the very beginning, right? Yeah. It's interesting. You're talking about families and in the advisory from the from the surgeon general, they explicitly

state that it's trying to cultivate ways to foster sufficient social connection outside of chosen traditional means and structures. So the traditional the traditional means and structures is the family. And they're saying we want to foster something outside of the family. So the traditional means and structures is the family. And they're saying, we want to foster something outside of the family. So they intentionally left the family out of this conversation where the tried and true way of not being lonely and being fulfilled is to have a family. And so it begs the question, is the Surgeon General, based on his own experience and the numerous studies about the fulfillment that comes from... By the way, if you cohabitate, you just live with someone, it doesn't do the same as if

you actually get married. There's something about marriage. Yeah, there are studies on that. But is there... It doesn't give you the same protection against loneliness is what they say, right? That's right. And so the question is, why are they trying to mislead America and say there's some other way outside of the traditional structures that we can look to to make you less lonely as opposed to leaning into the traditional structure and saying, this is the thousands of years of human history will tell you that a family will make you less lonely and more happy. And he says, I don't want to give that advice. I want to try to see if we can remake human society and get outside those traditional bounds, which, by the way, I guarantee you, is going to lead to more loneliness. It's bad advice. It's also going to be expensive because he talks about the cost of rebuilding social connections. So it's free to get married.

Well, I mean, somebody has to pay for the way it wasn't free for you. You had to pay for the wedding, but you can get me and kids are free, but you can get married and have a kid, but it doesn't cost the government for, you know, it says the cost of rebuilding social connections. So they talked about, you know, investing in parks as if parks are going to solve the problem. He also talked about alerting, you know, making it mandatory for the doctor to ask you about your loneliness level. So if you're a woman, for example, when you go to the hospital and you get a checkup, they'll ask you, has anyone hurt you at home? Because they have these rules about like they need to ask you that in order for domestic abuse, stuff like that.

Okay, so now they want your doctor to, you know, also include loneliness, especially probably for elderly. Okay, that sounds good, but that's not solving the loneliness problem. You can find out that your patient is lonely, but that's not solving the loneliness problem. And I think, again, the answer is in something very simple. It's called a family. But a big state government, a big government idea, the kind of government that Dr. Vivek Murthy, our Surgeon General, works for for sees the family as a threat to their power uh they want you to be like for example remember this was first introduced by obama he says that uh remember they introduced the life of julia and this was a woman a fictional woman who basically gets through life and they show all the different phases of her life from when she was a little girl and how she used government services to when she was, you know, in, you know, just graduated from college and she got free birth control so she could start her career all the way through the

public school that eventually she has a baby with. But oddly, Julia, you never see her husband in this fictional woman who gets through life through all these different government services. But this is what they want. They want Julia dependent on government. If Julia, yeah, here's some of the, if you're watching this, you can see some of these. You can go back and look at the video. It's one of the most depressing things. It was mockable for sure, but it was also really depressing that this woman got through life with government help and not surrounded by the love and support of a family. And that was just not, you know, the main theme here. And so that is part of the agenda. You know, big authoritarian governments

always see the family as a threat. Sean, we had Xi Van Fleet on not long ago. And she talked about how it was inherent to the communist ideology to tear down and break down the family so that you would become more loyal to the state than your family, so much so that you would be willing to even turn your own sibling or parent into the state if they had dissenting points of view. That's how strong the loyalty they want. Yeah. So we talked about a couple of the solutions and one of them was, we need more parks. Well, having more parks is like we're in a famine and we need more forks. Well, forks aren't going to bring you more food. Actually, more food will bring you more forks. So you need more food will bring more need for forks.

Right. Because you have more parks doesn't mean you're going to have less loneliness. If you have no one to go to the park with. Or get no kids in the park. There's no kids in the park. That's right. The park will do nothing to fill you up. Yes, it'll be a beautiful space, but it's the relationship that you would have with

someone as you walk through the park or the kid or the child you'll throw a ball with in the park that will make or the child you'll throw a ball with in the park that will make you happier, right? But then also you mentioned that when you go to the hospital, we need more doctors aware of loneliness. Okay, well, you're right. Ask me the question, but what is the advice that they're going to give me to address my loneliness? I guarantee you the doctor's not going to give you practical advice. I guarantee you, they'll say, here, here's a prescription. Thank you. You'll make some, I'm giving some big money to pharma.

We can solve your loneliness with a pill. Yeah. We will dull your senses, dull your pain through the pill, as opposed to addressing what's driving the loneliness, which is the lack of connection that you have. I know we're going to talk more about this, but you know what? I thought about this. I thought about whatever happened, if something happened to you, I would be beside myself. I don't know. I couldn't live my life without you, actually. There was a time that I could have done that when I was younger. She's totally neutered me. I couldn't.

Yeah. By the way, that is one of my rules. That is one of my thing about marriage. I believe that you should make yourself indispensable. So that's the key to keeping your husband with you. You don't know how to live without me. I can't live without her. But I thought, you know what I would do? I mean, I might go, I'm a Republican, right? I might volunteer at the local GOP and I'd meet other people that are like mine.

And I might, you know, to have with them, and I might stuff brochures, or I'd be involved in my church. I'd go to church. I'd volunteer somewhere. I might be part of the Knights of Columbus, or my local community that has a festival. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to help put together the local Fourth of July festival or whatever festival your town has. I'm going to partake in that. There's a number of things that you can do to engage with people, real people, where you're mission driven to accomplish a goal, whether it's helping people in the church or it's, you know, putting on your community event or, you know, electing Republicans. There's a lot of things you can do if you have time to build those friendships and connections that will address loneliness. But the easiest way, to your point, is to have a family. I mean, listen, it's great. You have the YMCA in your town and YMCA has some sort of club that they have or you have a community center, but there is no community center that would actually replicate what a family could do. Your community center is never going to have the same warm, happy birthday party for you that your family would. You're never going to go on a family trip with

your community center. I mean, it's wonderful that those things exist, you know, for those who maybe are, you know, have had all their family members pass away or whatever. That's, I get that. But the bottom line is we need to be giving really concrete advice on a cultural level of how do we solve the loneliness problem. And the easiest and best thing is for our government to get out of the way, stop paying people to not form families because that's what they're doing at the lower income levels is they're actually paying people to not get married to the fathers of their children. And then we also need to be honest about what happens to you if you choose not to have a family, because this is definitely a trend and it will lead to loneliness. I'll tell you,

this trend, Sean, has been around for a while because when Mother Teresa came to the United States and remember, Mother Teresa was working in the slums of the poorest slums in the world, of Calcutta, in India. I mean, she came to America, and honestly, she was taken aback by a different kind of poverty. She said the greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy, which of course are things she dealt with in India. She said it greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy, which of course are things she dealt with in India. She said it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair,

and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty of the West is a different kind of poverty. It is not only a poverty of loneliness, but it is also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love as there is a hunger for God. And Sean, that observation is exactly why she became a saint. She was able to identify that. She said that she would go to nursing homes, and she was astounded by just how people abandoned their families, their parents there. And also, she was very much a vocal person

talking about abortion in this country. She said, there's no such thing as an unwanted child. She said, I promise you there's no such thing because I'll take any unwanted child that you say you don't want. There are lines of, as you know, Sean, people wanting to have a family, but we abort so many children, it's actually really hard for these families to have a family, but we abort so many children, it's actually really hard for these families to have a child and have a family that they really want to have if they are for some reason infertile. We'll have more of this conversation after this. second, get 25% off everything on orders over $150 in Missouri's biggest sale ever. From bold hoops to minimalist stacks, Missouri has something for everyone. Missouri makes handcrafted fine jewelry for every day made with responsibly sourced materials. So you can look and feel

good about gifting and wearing them. Shop your wishlist 25% off at Missouri.com today. She also talked about that. She said, loneliness and the feelings of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty, which is so true. You know, I grew up, Sean, with my mother had a ministry and she would go to nursing homes and I would come with her and my mom would bring so much joy and love and time. And boy, those people in the nursing homes, they just wanted to see us kids. They wanted to see us around.

And I mean, there is a lot of loneliness in nursing homes in America. And I have to tell you, I know there's some cases where you have to do that. There are medical reasons why some families make that choice. But there are, I know you and I both know people who've worked in nursing homes. We have a sister-in-law that did as well. And people just abandoned their loved ones there. It's really sad.

Here's what it comes down to as well, Rachel. You're right, family is so important. But people in today's society and culture have become self-centered, self-absorbed. Everything is about them. And when it's only about you, it's really hard to build a relationship with someone else. And oftentimes relationships are, they grow from giving and sharing of yourself with someone. And again, whether the family shares, the husband and the wife shares with the kids, and the kids later share with the adults. But whether you're volunteering, all of those things where relationships are built, you have to give something for it.

And when you drive an ideology of being self-centered and self-absorbed and self-important in today's culture, you're not going to give to anybody or anything. You're not going to be generous with yourself. And then therefore, the consequence of that is loneliness. And again, sometimes it was maybe in our time, it was a little more natural just to fall into these traditional tracks because that's what culture supported. And I noticed it was starting to get undermined when we got married. But for the most part, culture supported these themes of, you know, get an education, get married, or in case you get a job, get married and have kids. Like that's what we did. And today, that's not what's being promoted and pushed on our kids. It's all about you. As we talked about in prior podcasts, it's about get your job, advance your career, build your bank account,

podcast it's about get your job advance your career build your bank account focus on you and if you do that this study will tell you you will be lonely yeah it will not fulfill you i think about when we had our first child evita she was an only child and she was so loved she was not only an only child she was the first grandchild and on all of my side of the family. So she was wildly like loved and spoiled and she was kind of turning into a diva. And what cured her was having a sibling and realizing she wasn't the center of the world. And I think this selfishness that you're talking about, Sean, that so many young people have because they have, you know, they are living single for so much longer and learning to just take care of their own needs. The cure to all that is to have kids.

I mean, as soon as you have kids, you start living for something else. And it actually turns out to be really good for the society. This brings me back to the tech part of the report, which I think is the better part of Dr. Murthy's report. He talks about how technology takes us away from other people, but also it leads to this narcissism, this, you know, how many likes did I get? How many, you know, you know, all the Instagrammable stuff that people are doing to, you know, they go on these, you know, single people go on these trips and sort of showcasing their trips so other people can be envious but at

the end of the day um you know at the end of your life those things aren't going to be there but they're pretending to have fun put it on social media when they're not actually having fun yeah don't don't project fun on social media actually go have fun with people enjoy yourself you don't have to share it with your social media fans. Share it with the people that you're with. And the result, again, will be so much more effective and so much better. Can I tell you what? There's a time to be self. There's a time when you're out of your house and you're in college and you can wake up late on Saturday and Sunday, maybe when you get your first job. There's a time to do that and soak that self-centeredness up and really love it.

But then there's a time to move on. And it seems like today, you can get your health care coverage covered by your parents until you're 26. Well, that was the life of Julia. That's what they bragged about. That's right. So we push this adolescence or this young adulthood for so long, all of a sudden, you're 30 years old, you're 35 years old, and you haven't made these important life decisions that kind of build this next phase of your life, which is the family and the kids. And I think with all of this fall, it does fall into your job and your career and your finances. But the roots, the building blocks

are those early decisions of finding love, focusing on that, and then building a family around it. I do. I think the role of government in this really is to have a great economy. When people have a great economy, they're more likely to want to have a family. They're more likely to take that leap. It can be scary. You know, Sean, you remember what that was like to all of a sudden go from being only responsible for yourself and now you're responsible for me and then me and a baby and then me and nine babies. That's a scary proposition. And it's even scarier to take that leap when you're living in a crappy economy like the one we are right now. And that is definitely playing into it.

I was like, I got in my wedding ring. I'm like, what am I supposed to wear? I remember wearing it on my hands. I'm supposed to wear a ring? I've really taken off my ring. I even speed climbed. I saw this tweet, Sean, that was really interesting the other day. It was from a guy named Jeremy Wayne Tate.

And he had this beautiful picture of his family. It looks like he has one, two, three, four, five. He has six kids and his wife. And they're on the beach. They're a gorgeous family. And he says, he posts this picture. He says, to be honest, I kind of regret getting married at 23. If I could go back and do it over again, I would marry her at 18. And I would not have waited until 24 to start having kids. If we

would have started earlier, I could have had at least 10. There's nothing better. So again, I'm pushing on people, you have to get married, you have to have kids. But I do think we have to be honest with young people about what the root of happiness and loneliness are and what are the most basic cures for loneliness. And again, it's being surrounded by a family and the growth and the kind of perspective that comes from having children, because that's kind of what we were made to do on earth. Can I take this in another direction? Sure. So we're coming into Memorial Day, right?

Yes. And we give thanks to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. And we do that. Also, what happens is a lot of people have a few days off and they celebrate it. But it's also the kickoff to the summer. And one of the things that I look forward to the most the whole year is also we've lived in New Jersey for about a year and a half. And my heart, as I said a number of times, is in Wisconsin. I love Wisconsin.

We get to go back for about two weeks. And if I went back to Wisconsin to this little cabin that we have on this beautiful lake. In your hometown. By myself, it would be disastrous. I would not have fun. I would not look forward to it. And it would be okay if you and I went together, but it still wouldn't be as much fun. No, I agree. I look forward to going to our cabin with all of our kids, right? So we do campfires, s'mores, listen to music, paddleboard, swim, tell stories, water, we play board games, water ski, they fish. The amount of stuff we do together as a family is remarkable. And I love it

to death. Like that gives me so much joy and happiness to be there with my family. And I bring that up because I think if you have, if you do have a family and I'm going to say, I'm going to give you advice. I'm going to say it's so much fun that this year we've like doubled the number of kids we're having at the cabin because all the cousins have had time, different in different groups of cousins have come up to stay with our kids at the cabin. And this year, like literally all of them have called in advance to say, we're coming to the cabin. And I tried to count how many it was going to be. It was going to be probably we're pushing 15 to 16 kids. And then all of us, you and I, so I think it's we're going to be around 20 kids, 20 people total. It's going to be a lot.

Yeah. It's a lot. It's so much fun though. They have such great memories there. I plan. I strategize. I do airline. I mean, I do all the tickets. I do all the schedule stuff.

That's true. Because it's a, like for me, it's a really wonderful time. And by the way, I end up driving a boat all the time. We end up doing dishes. But I love to have all my kids with us, and we thoroughly enjoy it. So as you come into the summer, I think it's so important to think about your family and what can you do with them. And everyone has different resources, and one family might go off to Europe. We've never done that.

We don't have the money to go take all our kids to Europe. We go to Wisconsin. But maybe you're going to go camping. Maybe you're going to go to a lodge in the mountains. Maybe you're going to go fishing. Maybe you're going to go to a lodge in the mountains. You're going to go fishing. Go to the beach for the weekend. When we first got married, we didn't have any money. We'd go to Hayward and go to my parents' cabin.

But you can have a cookout in your backyard. You can pitch a tent in your yard. Yes. And go, we're going to put our phones away and we're going to spend a night and do a little mini campfire on a Weber grill if you want. Oh, my gosh. Kids would love that. And play Connect Four, whatever. Whatever your resources are, you can find a time to build memories with your family that you'll love and they'll love. And as you get a few more

dollars, you can maybe expand that. But everyone has that opportunity. And we're talking about families. I think if you're single, right, and you're in a different phase of your life, maybe you go, do I have a couple of friends I could get away with? Yeah. Maybe you can plan a cool trip somewhere. Maybe it's the adjoining town

or maybe we're going to go across the country, but we're going to go on a little adventure together. And before we go, we're going to go, obviously our phones, we have to use them. We have to stay in touch a little bit, but let's do all we can to put the damn things away. Let's put them away, turn them off, and actually go 1980s and have real conversations and drink a beer. In the car.

Take a road trip. I love road trip. By the way, I loved road tripping with our kids. I love my minivan, by the way. The sliding, the Dodge, the Chrysler. It was a Chrysler. No, it wasn't a Dodge. It was a Chrysler.

Yeah, the doors that open for like, I love that thing. I thought I was, like, I'd arrived. I'm like, I don't. Yeah. Road tripping with the kids was great. Masculinity be damned. I'm like, I'm driving this minivan and loving it. So anyway, those are, but think about your summer.

Think about your time. Be intentional. And it won't fall in your lap unless you're Rachel and I plan everything and it falls in her lap. Oh, that's actually true. But think it out. And whether it's your kids, your spouse, or your friends, do something together to build those relationships and experiences and memories that are so important in our lives. And if you're young and if you're single, think about the messages that are being sent to you through the culture. And think about the long term.

Because I just don't want to leave this podcast without reemphasizing that our culture, including this report by Dr. Vivek Murthy, is lying to you. Your YMCA and your local park are not going to cure you. And your doctor who diagnoses you as lonely, they won't cure you from your loneliness. Loneliness comes from authentic human connections. And you build those connections at work, of course, you build them through friendships you have from schools, but there is no connection deeper than with your family. And if you're young, you should start thinking about building a family, having relationships.

That's why we talk so much about prioritizing your love life and realize from people who are older than you and have wisdom that having children actually changes who you are for the better. You become who you are meant to be. By the way, I want to end on this. I have a friend who is a cardiologist who— By the way, you can start going to church.

Oh, yeah. You'll meet a lot of great people. Couldn't agree more. Socially, but also what happens to you spiritually is remarkable. So that is an easy place to go start to find connections, not just with God, but other people of faith. So you can try that out too. That's actually true. I have a friend who's a cardiologist and he obviously meets a lot of people who are at the end of their life through his job. And I asked him, what is it that people

talk about the most as they're on their deathbed on their deathbeds or, you know, they're, you know, terribly sick and they know they're going to die. What is their biggest regret? He said, biggest regret, not having more kids. So even the ones who had a few say their regret was not having had more at the end of their life. And he said it with such a certainty, hands down. And by the way, this cardiologist, nine kids. So he took the advice that he learned from other people on their deathbed. I'm not going to have a regret of not having more kids. I've had enough. You've had enough. We've done our part. We ran through the tapes. You know what? Go ask someone who you think is a little older and they seem to be really happy.

Ask them what their secret is, what's made them happy. But I think you'll be interested to see kind of what they, what they. There's a reason why grandparents love their grandkids. It's got to be the most amazing. I see it every day with, you know, my parents are here staying with us. And, you know, my mom came as a surprise from Fox. It was a surprise. No, but I mean, for Fox and Friends. It was a surprise from Fox and Friends. I'll tell you about that sometime. That was a surprise. No, but I mean for Fox and Friends. It was a surprise from Fox and

Friends. I'll tell you about that sometime. That was a lot of work. Very interesting experience. I was surprised on air by my mom. I knew when she sat down that she did not come for me. She came for the grandkids, especially Valentina, who she's obsessed with. So, you know, there's something about grandkids. So anyway, I hope this helps. I hope that our Surgeon General maybe takes a look at his own life, which was clearly helped by his strong family connections, maybe adds that to his government report. Or better yet, don't listen to government reports. As Sean said, talk to the people in your own life who are living happy, not lonely lives into the future. Ask them what made them not lonely, what's protected them from loneliness. If you want to be happy, do the same thing.

Find happy people who are happy and talk to them. That's a great, great advice. Great advice. All right. It's a wonderful topic. I'm glad we got to it because I was a little confused by our government reports. But it kind of just shows you these government reports aren't worth a damn. Yeah, I'm not going to say what I think.

But anyway, good conversation. Listen, thanks for joining us this edition of The Kitchen Table. We appreciate it. If you like our podcast, you can rate, review, subscribe, wherever you get your podcast, but also you can get our podcast at foxnewspodcast.com. And again, like and subscribe.

We would appreciate that. We're going to do one more podcast, taking questions from you on Friday. So send in questions if you have them. And if we don't talk to you before, we hope you have a great summer and great Memorial Day weekend. All right. Bye, everybody. Bye. Listen ad-free with a Fox News Podcast Plus subscription on Apple Podcasts.

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