What Loneliness Does To Your Brain with Ben Rein

What does loneliness do to our brains? Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, and Gary O’Reilly explore how the loneliness epidemic impacts our minds, bodies, and even our lifespan with neuroscientist Ben Rein, author of Why Brains Need Friends: The Science of Social Connection.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  On special edition, we finally got neuroscientist on top of the lonely situation.

• 0:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Good, about time.

• 0:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, and what's the cure?

• 0:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Bring a friend.

• 0:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Coming up, all about loneliness and what we're doing about it.

• 0:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk's special edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. And when you hear special edition, it means Gary O'Reilly is in the house.

• 0:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Hey Neil.

• 0:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You and your editors cooked this stuff up.

• 0:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, we did.

• 0:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And today, it's like the lonely brain, all human physiological conditions.

• 0:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, and this is something that we'll explore.

• 0:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 0:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Understand why when we get in the middle.

• 0:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll do that. Chuck?

• 0:54Chuck Nice?

  Hey, lonely everything. Just lonely.

• 1:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Lonely man.

• 1:00Chuck Nice?

  Lonely man. Brain and everything else.

• 1:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We'll see what we can do about that. Well, set us up here.

• 1:08Gary O'Reilly?

  We've been hearing there's a loneliness epidemic, whether you're male, you're female, you're rich, you're poor, you're young, you're old. Or for a variety of reasons, people are getting lonelier. But what does loneliness actually do to our brains? Are our brains equipped to deal with the social isolation of modern life? Does loneliness make us less healthy? We'll learn about why social interactions matter so much to our health and whether they can be stimulated through drugs like MDMA.

• 1:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 1:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Others. Yeah, I knew that would wake you up. You're back in the room. Well done.

• 1:45Chuck Nice?

  Now, now we're talking.

• 1:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 1:47Chuck Nice?

  A little Molly in the action.

• 1:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When I hear MDMA, I think of medical doctor and master of arts. That's as an academic.

• 1:55Gary O'Reilly?

  That's not what it stands for.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's not what it stands for.

• 1:56Chuck Nice?

  I was gonna say, I'm gonna say, you sound like a blast at a nightclub. Hey, you got any medical doctor and master of arts?

• 2:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We found one of the world's experts on that very subject, a neuroscientist that goes by Ben Rhine. Ben, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

• 2:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  One time you came in virtually.

• 2:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Way better to poke you in the flesh here.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  It's awesome to be here.

• 2:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You actually do exist. That was not a bot that you set up.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  That was my AI avatar.

• 2:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm looking at your, I mean, I can't, how do you have this many, you're a neuroscientist, chief science officer, that's badass.

• 2:33Chuck Nice?

  Of the starship Enterprise.

• 2:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes, we're saluting. No matter what follows that, that's a badass title. Chief science officer, which was Spock on.

• 2:41Chuck Nice?

  That's correct.

• 2:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, of the Mind Science Foundation. Ooh, clinical assistant professor at SUNY Buffalo, and that's where you're based. Up in Buffalo, New York, where they invented buffalo wings, as I'm told. We can get him to verify that.

• 2:56Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 2:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Adjunct lecturer at Stanford University. You're bi-coastal because you actually did some work out at Stanford. So they know you, they're familiar with your work. And you're authored just recently of Why Brains Need Friends. Ooh, the neuroscience of social connection.

• 3:19Chuck Nice?

  I hear the theme song now. Down, down, down, down, down, down, down. Okay.

• 3:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got that. Oh, the friends, was that your attempt?

• 3:26Chuck Nice?

  That was my, yes.

• 3:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It wasn't that bad. All right, let me, let's get to the bottom of this. It's possible to be alone, but not lonely. It's possible to be surrounded by people, maybe even your best friends, and be lonely. And it's possible to be completely alone and not be lonely. So where do you fit into this matrix?

• 3:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, so what you're describing or alluding to is the distinction between loneliness and isolation.

• 3:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, isolation, that's another word.

• 3:56Speaker 03

  We got another word in the house. So isolation is, is the objective state of being by yourself, right? You're by yourself, you are isolated, you are alone. But you can be lonely while amongst others. Loneliness is the feeling that your social needs are not being met. And so it's complicated because you can come home from a family vacation with your entire extended family for a week and go sit in your family room by yourself. You're alone, but you are not lonely. You are just where you need to be. You wish you, you know, you're very satisfied with the level of social contact you're getting because you've had way too much. Or you can go to a concert where there's 20,000 people around you. But if you go by yourself and you're not interacting with anybody and you feel alone,

• 4:40Speaker 03

  you can be lonely in a crowd.

• 4:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Especially because everyone else is not lonely because they're enjoying the concert with their friends, their loved ones. So the fact that everyone else is not alone has made you alone. Is that a fair way to characterize that?

• 4:55Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, I mean, I think you can feel lonely without acknowledging that the people around you aren't lonely too, right? But I think once you notice that, it maybe makes it worse, right? You know, I've had times where I'm traveling by myself and I go sit at a restaurant and I wish I had people with me and the table next to me is all happy and everyone's gathering and I'm, you know, it draws attention to...

• 5:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You should bathe next time before you...

• 5:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are other reasons why you... But, but, so this new word, tell me again, isolated?

• 5:22Speaker 03

  Isolation.

• 5:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it's commonly reported, I think even in the Guinness Book of World Records, they say the loneliest person ever. And they cite the person who's running the command module that's orbiting the moon while the other two astronauts are down on the lunar surface walking around. And so the three of them go together, they're not alone, they're not isolated, they're not lonely, they get to the moon, two drop out and the other stays in orbit. So while two are on one side of the moon and the other one goes to the other side of the moon, he's not only farther from Earth, he's the diameter of the moon away from his fellow astronauts. So in the case of Apollo 11, it was Michael Collins, but any of the Apollo missions would

• 6:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  have had somebody the full diameter of the moon away from fellow astronauts. And they call that the loneliest person, but I will not say that anymore.

• 6:13Chuck Nice?

  He's just isolated.

• 6:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's just isolated.

• 6:15Speaker 03

  That's right. He's the most isolated. It's kind of a scary place to be, it sounds.

• 6:19Chuck Nice?

  Not for me.

• 6:22Chuck Nice?

  Sounds like the best place to know. The best place not in the world, okay? That's what that is. And if he has children, he is very happy.

• 6:31Speaker 03

  See, that person may be not lonely in that moment, right? If you just flew to, I don't know how long it takes to get to the moon, but you just sat with...

• 6:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Three days.

• 6:39Speaker 03

  Okay, so you're three days of social interaction with two people. The other two people go out and you're by yourself, you're like, oh my gosh, this is a, this is amazing, right?

• 6:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I thought they'd never leave.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 6:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, man!

• 6:49Speaker 03

  I gotta go to the bathroom.

• 6:50Chuck Nice?

  I'm taking off this suit. I'm gonna sit here naked.

• 6:54Gary O'Reilly?

  When you experience an isolation, when you are in a state of loneliness...

• 7:00Gary O'Reilly?

  What's happening in the brain?

• 7:01Speaker 03

  So, being isolated or lonely, you know, it's a form of stress. We, human beings are social animals. When we are taken away from our tribe, we experience a rise in cortisol. You know, the traditional stress response, the HPA axis in the body, which is the body's stress response system, the switch turns on, cortisol starts flowing into the blood, and we feel stressed.

• 7:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where does the cortisol come from?

• 7:28Speaker 03

  So, the cortisol comes from the pituitary.

• 7:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I was wondering, okay.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  But, yeah, so, it's not, you know, it's not healthy for us. It's not what we, what we're designed for, right? We are, we exist best in groups, we survive best in groups. And so, when we are apart from our group, this sort of threat signal in the brain flips on that says, "You are at risk, you are in danger."

• 7:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You could be picked off from the tribe.

• 7:48Speaker 03

  Right, exactly.

• 7:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By a lion.

• 7:49Speaker 03

  Right, and what's interesting is, you look at solitary animals, there's, you know, like tigers, for instance.

• 7:54Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 7:55Speaker 03

  Tigers don't exist in groups because they're, you know, they're so effective.

• 7:57Chuck Nice?

  They don't have to. I'm a tiger.

• 8:02Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 8:02Chuck Nice?

  That's what I do.

• 8:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do your head like that.

• 8:04Chuck Nice?

  That's right. You see how I roll by myself? Cause I'm a tiger.

• 8:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, tigers are not as sociable as lions?

• 8:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, to my understanding, yeah.

• 8:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, alright.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  Sort of not my space, but yeah, I, I understand that tigers specifically are solitary. And so, what's interesting about that, as I mentioned, when humans are isolated, cortisol starts going up, stress response triggered. When tigers are placed around each other, they show that response. Cortisol starts going up. When they are by themselves, they feel content.

• 8:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Cause they know what the other tigers had, they had those big teeth and those big sharp claws.

• 8:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that what I look like?

• 8:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's too many tigers in here. They never looked in the mirror. Am I that bad?

• 8:45Speaker 03

  I mean, they're horrifying, but they're competing for food, right, and resources. So, their, their brain's threat signal is saying, "Hey, if you're around these tigers, you might go hungry," because they're so good at hunting, they might steal all your food and kind of deplete the area of resources for you. And so, we, we are wired accordingly. We are wired for what we're, the way we survive best, which is.

• 9:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chemically wired.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  Chemically wired, yes, and so.

• 9:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I say that only because there's other electrical signals in your brain.

• 9:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 9:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And this affects the electrical signals or?

• 9:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's all intertwined, you know.

• 9:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just being a physicist on you.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I appreciate it. No, that is also an interesting thing. Total aside, but people think the brain is all electricity or they think it's all chemicals, but it's actually the system works in a way that it goes back and forth between chemicals.

• 9:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Electrochemical.

• 9:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, so the electrical signal travels and then chemicals come out and then.

• 9:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chemicals pick it up, yeah.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they're one in the same.

• 9:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In synchrony.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  So, being isolated is, as I said, a form of stress. But on the opposite side of that, getting to this idea of, you know, we're wired to be social, being alone makes us feel stressed, but being around others also makes us feel good. We have these social reward systems in our brain where when we have positive interactions where around others, basically these three neurotransmitters that many people have probably heard of oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine. Those three work together to create this sense of social reward. And specifically, when I say reward, you know, it's not like, oh, you're getting a treat or something. It is rewarding and reinforcing. It is pleasant to be around others. And so your brain is telling you, this is something that you should do again because this is pleasant.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  It's just the same way that eating a delicious nutritious meal, you know, will drive dopamine release in your brain because that's your brain's way of saying, hey, this is good for you. And dopamine is that, it's like the molecule of reinforcement, right? Come back and do this again. And so the same thing happens when we socialize. So we are wired to feel good around others so that we keep coming back and we're also wired to feel badly when we're alone.

• 10:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But to be around others and that brings in the which chemical?

• 10:44Speaker 03

  Oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine.

• 10:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, the sweet of chemicals. And then I'm pleased by that. But if I don't do it and those chemicals don't appear, I'm not depressed, I just don't experience that joy. So why is the absence of it bad just because the presence of it is good?

• 11:03Speaker 03

  Okay, so.

• 11:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was a good question. Man.

• 11:06Chuck Nice?

  You're getting better at this. You should do a podcast.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  It is a good question. So it.

• 11:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's up to you to judge whether it was a good.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  No, it is a good question because it points out an important nuance that basically the absence of interaction, isolation, the neurobiological signature of that is a distinct problem from the absence of the pleasure.

• 11:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See, I told you it was a good question.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  It was a good question.

• 11:28Chuck Nice?

  And how long does that take? Because if I'm isolated for a short period of time, let's say I'm going on a drive by myself, it is pleasant, you know? I would assume that the cortisol release happens when you realize that this isolation is a sustained state.

• 11:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it's probably at the point where, I don't think anyone's really tracked that down exactly, but I would think it's at the point where you realize it's a problem, right? And it feels wrong, something feels wrong, you know? And that sort of signal may be subconscious in many cases because I think humans tend to be pretty bad at detecting when we are lonely.

• 12:02Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  We're very good at detecting when we are.

• 12:06Chuck Nice?

  Happy with other people.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  Right, we've had enough, it's time to go home from the party, but we're not as good, I think it's because our lives are so complex, right? We have all these other stressors, work, sleep, you know? There's so many reasons that you can explain, this is why I'm not feeling so good today. My work is stressful, I didn't get a good night of sleep, whatever it may be. And I don't think a lot of people think it's because I haven't seen my friends in a while. That doesn't really pop into the consciousness of today's culture, in my opinion. And, you know, the truth is, the more isolated people, the longer you spend alone, you know, depression rates increase, anxiety increases, and as I hope we'll get to in this conversation, aside from the mood problems, there's all sorts of health problems as well.

• 12:59Speaker 04

  I'm Ali Khan Hemraj and I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 13:14Gary O'Reilly?

  So what happens to the brain once it gets into a long-term loneliness? So you've got this rinse and repeat of chemical, electrochemical pattern going on and on and on. What just goes on then?

• 13:24Speaker 03

  Okay, so I mentioned that isolation is stress and it drives cortisol levels up. So in chronic stress, when cortisol is high, elevated for too long, what happens is cortisol loses its anti-inflammatory properties. So let me back up here. When you have a short period of stress, cortisol comes in and what it can do is reduce inflammation, which is actually a great thing because you're facing some sort of challenge, your body's telling you you're stressed, we gotta get this inflammation out here because we maybe need to fight a saber-toothed tiger, whatever it may be. But over time, if the cortisol remains high, then the tissues of the body sort of stop responding to it, they become desensitized to it.

• 14:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that called addiction?

• 14:04Speaker 03

  Addiction?

• 14:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you're addicted, you no longer respond to the same dose.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, well, yeah, so I guess so, yeah, it's like it's in a way...

• 14:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a form of addiction.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, the body's tissues have become desensitized to cortisol. And so with that, one of the body's main anti-inflammation systems is out of order. And that's bad because it can lead to chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation, which, you know, I hate because it's become such a sort of a social media thing where everyone's just throwing out there like chronic inflammation, chronic inflammation. But it actually is a serious problem, a health problem, associated with chronic stress and seemingly associated with isolation. And so let me, let me talk about a very specific mouse research study that we'll just sort of explain.

• 14:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, mice again.

• 14:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, so there was a researcher, Luis McCullough, at University of Houston, and... They were doing stroke research. They were looking at if you induce a specific stroke, you know, by very scientifically, right? This isn't like, oh, the mouse had a stroke. It's like, we occluded the artery for 30 seconds exactly, right? And it produces a very reliable area of damage in the brain because the oxygen and glucose aren't flowing, the cells die. Here's this part of the brain that is now dead because there was no blood. They noticed that some of the mice were experiencing much larger areas of damage. For some reason, they had more dead cells. Couldn't find an explanation. Turns out, the mice that were having worse strokes were living alone. They were singly housed mice.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  Even though they were experiencing the exact same, like, loss of blood flow, they had worse damage in the brain. How can that be? Well, it's true what I mentioned, that chronic isolation drives up inflammation. Well, maybe this inflammation is sort of making the neurons less healthy and resilient to this sort of insult. And so what they did is they blocked these inflammatory markers in the isolated mice and found that that reversed the problem. So when they turned down the inflammation that isolation was inducing, then the mice had the same size stroke that they would be expected to have.

• 16:02Chuck Nice?

  So now, if you could repeat that experiment, but instead of inducing the stroke with the, you know, the restriction of glucose or whatever, and just have them smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol for many years while working a job that's killing them, I think you'd have a better result.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  I don't know if you could get a mouse to smoke a cigarette, but I think that...

• 16:28Speaker 03

  That would definitely not be approved by IRB. The French mice will smoke a cigarette. But I think it would have a similar effect.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  And the reason I... With a French accent. The birds cost a squeak. Squeak, squeak.

• 16:42Speaker 03

  The reason I tell that story is because I think it helps paint a picture of like, why is isolation actually bad? Why is chronic inflammation bad? Well, it's to the detriment of the function of your organs, your brain.

• 16:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The two words you haven't used yet, but we've all heard it in our lives. And it feels like it derives exactly out of everything you're saying. And it's, are you extroverted or introverted? That's what it sounds like you're describing. And taken to its extremes, extroverts will live longer than introverts with less disease and overall greater happiness.

• 17:18Speaker 03

  They do. It seems that they do, yeah. I mean, there are studies showing that extroverts are generally happier. First off, is the chicken or the egg? Are they so extroverted because they're so happy all the time and they just want to talk? Or is it that they're talking more? Well, if you ask people who are extroverted to talk more with others and be more extroverted, their mood even improves. So it seems that that mood benefits are related to the extroversion. But as for the health benefits, so this is where it gets delicate. Because to tell the average person, go spend every afternoon socializing, right? Get coffee with friends, see friends all the time. For someone who is more introverted, that is not a healthy prescription.

• 17:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's stress right there.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  Right, exactly.

• 18:00Gary O'Reilly?

  What am I gonna wear? I'm not talking to him anymore. It's all sorts of dynamics in there, yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  But for an extrovert, that actually probably will be good for them and extend their lives. And you know, there's a recent report that came out on these super agers. These people who are...

• 18:15Chuck Nice?

  Live to 100.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  They're not necessarily, they're like living to 200 years old, but that they are, I think, 80 and above. But if you scan their brains, their brains look closer to 60-year-olds. They're resistant to aging, the traditional path of aging.

• 18:28Chuck Nice?

  Very cool.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  And what's amazing is that the one unifying trait amongst these super agers is that they're all extroverts and that they all claim to live very social lives. And you know, this paper came out and every single metric that they looked at made perfect sense. Like they did all this brain imaging and it made perfect sense. They showed lower levels of inflammation. You know, they showed thicker, uh, certain brain areas. And it makes sense that as you're continuing to live a social lifestyle and you're exercising these brain areas, because socializing is indeed an exercise for the brain. It's like a workout for your muscles.

• 19:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if it causes stress to an introvert... That can't be good for them.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  Right. Okay, so we're weaving a lot of topics together here, so I want to separate them. So introverted people still benefit from socializing, but the sort of threshold of where that becomes unhealthy or unpleasant is way lower. So if you have an introverted person, let's say come into this room right now and pretend to be an extrovert for 10 minutes, you know, they're gonna-

• 19:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They're gonna leave exhausted.

• 19:28Speaker 03

  Well, no, actually, that's what you'd think. I mean, they'd probably kick and scream on the way in and please, you know, I don't want to do that, but they would actually feel better afterwards because there's only 10 minutes.

• 19:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  But if you ask them to do the same thing and say, okay, for the next week of your life, pretend you're extroverted, do just the same thing you just did, they are going to be miserable at the end of it. But if you have an extrovert do that, just like the 10-minute period, they're going to feel great after, and after a week, they're still going to feel great.

• 19:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ah.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  So it's like, you know, people talk about their social battery. You could sort of think of it as introverts have a smaller social battery that charges up faster and-

• 19:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And depletes faster.

• 20:00Speaker 03

  And, well, extroverts, extroverted battery.

• 20:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm saying.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, so introverts' battery charges up faster and actually depletes slower because then they need to be recharged less frequently.

• 20:09Gary O'Reilly?

  Is it about learning your own limit as to what social interaction, because you can have, even for an extrovert, there can be too much social interaction?

• 20:17Speaker 03

  Yes, absolutely. So there's trait extroversion measures. People often think that, oh, I can be, you know, introverted in the morning and extroverted in the afternoon, but the truth is, everybody has a very stable level of trait extroversion. The higher you score on extroversion, the higher your social intake should be, basically, to make you happy. The more tolerant you are, the larger your social battery is. And so-

• 20:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The more capacity you have for-

• 20:43Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 20:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  And the more energy, you know, the more energy you get from interacting, the more you can tolerate before you get frustrated and want to be alone. So I actually, in my book, I have a trait extroversion scale that people can take and then sort of figure out where they land on that. And then the second sort of practice that I-

• 20:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a little quiz that you can take.

• 21:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's 20 questions. It's things like, some of them are obvious, like, oh, I-

• 21:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How come it's not 19 questions or 17 questions?

• 21:08Speaker 03

  Um, this, because the scientists in this case decided to be trendy, you know?

• 21:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I've just, I always wondered when, there's a nice round number of fundamental questions. They probably threw in a few extra just to make it easy to remember.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  I can actually tell you why. It's because this is one dimension of the Big Five Personality Test, and so it's 100 questions, each dimension is five, or a fifth, so it's 20.

• 21:29Chuck Nice?

  You're right, because it's scaled to one to five, so it just you scale to a hundred. So make friends easily, warm up quickly to others. I show feelings when I'm happy. I have a lot of fun. I laugh a lot. I take charge. I have a strong personality. I know how to captivate people. I see myself as a good teacher or leader. I can talk to others into doing things. I'm the first to act. I'm easy to get to know. I don't keep others at a distance. I reveal a lot about myself. I often get caught up in excitement. I'm very enthusiastic. I have talent for influencing people. I don't wait for others to lead the way. I don't hold back my opinions and I have an assertive personality. That sounds like an asshole.

• 22:09Speaker 03

  Some of them are interesting.

• 22:12Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, like. I'm just saying, I don't want to hang out with that person. No, I'm joking. I am that person. No, oh man, that's scary.

• 22:20Gary O'Reilly?

  That's perfection.

• 22:22Chuck Nice?

  I don't think so. I think, you know, there's, I think there's degrees to that because actually every single thing there, that is me, but in different like gradations.

• 22:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Ah, you've got more of one.

• 22:34Chuck Nice?

  I've got more of one than the other, but I've got, I've got them all.

• 22:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How does the autism spectrum dovetail to this description?

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Introversion, extroversion?

• 22:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:42Chuck Nice?

  Hmm.

• 22:43Speaker 03

  That's a good question. You know, I think.

• 22:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  See, I got another good question.

• 22:45Gary O'Reilly?

  I know, you're on fire.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  And I'll admit before I answer this, like this is not, I haven't read any literature on this specifically.

• 22:53Chuck Nice?

  Okay, I'm sorry.

• 22:54Speaker 03

  I think I understood who that was intended to be.

• 22:56Chuck Nice?

  Yes, exactly. I try my best not to do a real impersonation of them because, you know.

• 23:02Speaker 03

  Right. I would postulate that, that those on the autism spectrum can land anywhere on this continuum of extroversion, right? It's not necessarily, you know, extroversion is as described there. It's, it's really sort of a personality.

• 23:15Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 23:15Speaker 03

  And, you know, I've met plenty of people who are diagnosed with autism and are very extroverted.

• 23:19Chuck Nice?

  What about the person who is introverted until they're extroverted? So they have certain situations, and I know people like this.

• 23:29Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 23:29Chuck Nice?

  They don't have a word to say. And then when they're around me and one other friend, they're.

• 23:39Chuck Nice?

  Freaking nuts. Like, I mean, they're mad, they're like a madman. And then you get him outside. It's like the frog. That frog is just like, hello, my baby. Hello, my dog. Right? And then he says, hey, I got this frog. He's like, rivet. So what, what is that?

• 23:56Speaker 03

  Well, I'm not really sure. I mean, I think that.

• 23:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a frog in the top hat and cane?

• 23:59Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 23:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is this the one I'm remembering?

• 24:00Chuck Nice?

  And he's like, oh, my God, I got this frog.

• 24:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a dancing frog.

• 24:03Chuck Nice?

  And it sings and dances.

• 24:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, right.

• 24:04Chuck Nice?

  And then as soon as the people leave, there is like, hello, my.

• 24:11Gary O'Reilly?

  There are performers and athletes like that.

• 24:13Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 24:14Gary O'Reilly?

  That are new players before the game. Nothing going on. Cross the white line, go out on the field.

• 24:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Onto the pitch?

• 24:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 24:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I said that right?

• 24:25Gary O'Reilly?

  The field, on the pitch, on the field. Thank you.

• 24:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He said field.

• 24:27Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, I know.

• 24:28Speaker 03

  He's been here too long.

• 24:31Gary O'Reilly?

  They become a very different person. Very, very different. So it's that kind of almost light switch moment that Chuck's talking about.

• 24:39Chuck Nice?

  So what I'm saying is, if that person who's an introvert but has their extroverted kind of supercharge, and they get that all the time, will that make them the same as an extrovert being happy over a period of time? Like.

• 24:54Speaker 03

  Okay, so I think what you're getting at is all this neuroscience that I'm describing about, like how we benefit from interactions and how we don't benefit from being isolated. It all fits within the complex nature of our lives and how we're influenced on a daily basis. And so we're trying to fit these like really specific neuroscience pieces, puzzle pieces, into interactions that are constantly changing. And so one of the sort of exercises that I encourage is for people to do introspection and ask themselves, like reflect on, how was the experience I just had, the social experience? I call this idea social journaling. You come home from an interaction and you jot down some notes. You could use a template. I have a template in the book too of like a bunch of prompts, things that matter.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  By understanding what social situations you feel the most comfortable in, you can start to sort of curate your social diet. You know, the interactions you're taking in. So it sounds like your friend feels super comfortable and capable of being themselves and being really outgoing in this certain context that you're describing. And maybe, you know, certain athletes, when they're around their teammates, they may feel like they can open up. And so it's, that's important, you know, to find that identity and self-expression. is important and I can guarantee that if you ask your friend to, you know, a scale of one to 10, if you gave them a survey after you hung out, how much did you enjoy this experience? How's your mood? They probably feel much better after those interactions.

• 26:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 26:15Speaker 03

  Where they are more extroverted and they are more sociable than the interactions where they're sitting there quietly.

• 26:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 26:21Gary O'Reilly?

  So we know all social interactions aren't the same.

• 26:24Speaker 03

  Right.

• 26:24Gary O'Reilly?

  There's different levels, there's different engagements. How does the brain react to an in-person encounter as opposed to a virtual?

• 26:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And before you get to that.

• 26:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 26:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Surely there's a difference between walking into a room of people you know and walking through a room of entire strangers. Hmm. And personally, I'm completely comfortable in a room of strangers. There's just more people to meet and to learn what they do. That's how I view it. But I know people who just are only comfortable with friends and they don't see that as an opportunity or anything positive. Yet it still fulfills the tribe sense that we're around other people and that should boost your chemicals, the good chemicals. Yeah.

• 27:05Chuck Nice?

  See, I'm just the opposite. I want to walk into a room of strangers because they don't know me and they're like, they don't know what an a-hole I am. All the people who know me are just like, God, that guy's here.

• 27:20Speaker 03

  I think what you're asking about, it really comes down to an element of extroversion, right? I believe one of the questions on there was like, I make friends easily.

• 27:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  Right? And so more extroverted people will feel more comfortable in a room of strangers.

• 27:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Built into the understanding of the scale.

• 27:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So now, virtual, real.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 27:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's the difference there? By the way, I no longer value the virtual conversation today as I did during COVID. During COVID, oh wow, that's cool. I can still read. And I realized there was something missing. Only after the fact am I saying, that was not a real interaction. I couldn't smell you. I didn't see you. I don't know what you're wearing. I couldn't read your moods. It was not an interaction. I might as well have just been looking at a picture in a book. Hmm. And so. You needed a better camera.

• 28:12Gary O'Reilly?

  It was the best we could do.

• 28:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, so have you studied what the brain is doing in either of those cases?

• 28:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. So as for virtual versus in-person, you know, We humans have been acting as, living as a social species for, you know, and our ancestors included, millions of years. We are built for detecting and processing and understanding social cues that we are giving one another, right? Facial expressions, vocal tone, body language. There's so much information just in this room right now, right? And by the way, that's one of the reasons why I mentioned it's like an exercise for your brain. You're constantly processing all this information. In the absence of those social cues, like when we are messaging or interacting with someone on Twitter or X, or when you're on FaceTime, you know, you can sort of think

• 28:58Speaker 03

  about how each of these various media of interaction strip away certain social cues, right? When we go from in-person to video, yeah, it's like, oh, I can see them, I can hear them. It's realistic, but it's not because you cannot make eye contact. It's impossible. You cannot smell them, their smells that your brain is probably detecting in the background. You cannot see their entire body, you know, you can only see whatever, this picture. And so you're missing some of that information that feeds your brain. When you go to a phone call, you can't even see them anymore. Facial expressions, body language out the door. You go to a text message, you can't hear their tone of voice. It's just the words. And so, you know, my belief is that as we strip away this sort of texture of our interactions, we're losing a lot of the important signals that tell our brains we are interacting with the human.

• 29:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that fully accounts for my reactions, that I was, I found them much less fulfilling.

• 29:48Speaker 03

  And that's also shown in the data. So there are, like I said, there's not much data on like brain responses, but there are data on mood responses. And people basically don't feel as good after interacting online. And it seems like the less lifelike the interaction is, for instance, texting is less lifelike than video call, the worse the benefits are. They don't feel quite as good, but they still feel better having less lifelike interactions than they do having no interaction at all.

• 30:12Gary O'Reilly?

  That's why I gave up my real doll.

• 30:16Gary O'Reilly?

  So is there a science behind people being likable? A proven science? Or is that just like, it's the way they look?

• 30:25Speaker 03

  That's part of it, actually. But yeah, there is a proven science. There's a, there's a lot of psychology research on this about what makes people likable. Sort of a arguably shallow topic to study, but it's important because it may sound shallow, but the truth is being well-liked is, is very important, obviously for...

• 30:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Till you get elected.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  Till you get elected. It's back in the day when we were like, you know, 100,000 years ago, a couple hundred thousand years ago, it was how you stayed alive by being with your tribe and not being kicked out for being annoying and disliked. So just giving Chuck a moment to talk, to speak on that.

• 30:57Chuck Nice?

  That's why I've learned to survive on my own.

• 31:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just trying to picture the annoying person in the cave getting kicked out.

• 31:04Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 31:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you be annoying in a cave?

• 31:06Chuck Nice?

  Uh, it's a closed area, so all I can say is it has to do with what you ate earlier.

• 31:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is that too?

• 31:14Speaker 03

  So there's, there's a lot of ways I could describe this. Let me put it this way. There's a research study that I really like because they had people come in to the lab and interact with either a likable character or an unlikable character. And they didn't know the person they were interacting with was an actress, but she was instructed by the researchers to do one of two things. In the likable condition, you know, she was super attentive.

• 31:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Same person.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  Same person, yeah. So in, in the likable condition, she was really polite and obviously made a lot of eye contact, listened a lot, had a good interaction, was very just supportive of them in general. In the unlikable condition, they instructed her to avoid eye contact, to speak about controversial topics, wait for the other person to voice their opinion, and then purposely voice the opposite opinion, to not be attentive, to actually set an alarm on her phone as if it was ringing. You know, and then basically from there on, sitting on her phone and ignoring the person, you know, to me, that sounds pretty unlikable, right? You would definitely have a different experience interacting with that person.

• 32:18Speaker 03

  And I like to share that, one, because I think it's funny that these scientists had to come up with, like, how do we make this person unlikable? And that's what they did. But that's all based on research. You know, people view all those characteristics as unlikable. But it reveals a lot about how we sort of interpret others. And, you know, there are brain areas, most of them are in the prefrontal cortex, that are sort of devoted to determining how well-liked, or how much you like someone else.

• 32:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Catch me up on something. There's the frontal cortex, then there's a prefrontal cortex. There's a cortex on top of the cortex.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  So the prefrontal cortex is like the foremost part of the frontal cortex.

• 32:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why isn't that just the frontal cortex?

• 32:53Speaker 03

  The frontal cortex involves, includes the prefrontal cortex. The frontal cortex is just this whole thing.

• 32:58Chuck Nice?

  The whole thing is the frontal cortex?

• 33:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, the whole.

• 33:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, okay, okay. Thank you for clarifying that, because I'm thinking the prefrontal cortex is some extra other place, but it's just an area of the frontal cortex. Is that a fair?

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's the form, it's the frontmost.

• 33:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The front area of the cortex.

• 33:14Chuck Nice?

  So it's not like your oven, like, there's a dial and then it says prefrontal cortex, and then full cortex, and frontal cortex, and then?

• 33:21Speaker 03

  Right, yeah, it's the very front. And, and that area is, is one of the areas that's very evolved in humans.

• 33:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes. Seems to me, part of what it is to be likable is you perceive that the other person cares about you. In some way, they'll ask about you. And at some level, that's empathy, right? The capacity to be, even be able to do that. Is that, is that a measurable thing in your brain research?

• 33:45Speaker 03

  Empathy?

• 33:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 33:46Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of research on empathy I've done. That's some of the research I've done myself at Stanford is on empathy.

• 33:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Would war even be possible if everyone were empathetic? I mean, I'm just thinking of these things taken to extremes.

• 33:59Speaker 03

  Right.

• 33:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The absence or existence accounts for practically everything that disrupts society.

• 34:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, I've, I've actually, I'm reading one of your books right now. You use the term Goldilocks Zone, right, to refer to.

• 34:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But it's in the field, Goldilocks.

• 34:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yes.

• 34:12Speaker 03

  But is the idea that it's in the perfect place, right? It has to, if it was.

• 34:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For planets.

• 34:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, if the planet were any further from the sun, we would have frozen lakes and if we were any closer, we would burn up, right? That's kind of how I view empathy. I think we have empathy in the Goldilocks Zone, that if we had any more, and we, let's say, for instance, you saw, you know, I broke my finger, and looking at my broken finger, you felt the full sensation of your finger being broken.

• 34:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That would be terrible.

• 34:37Speaker 03

  That's too much empathy, right?

• 34:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:39Speaker 03

  Because if you wanted to help me, you would have to like, look away while you're like, bandaging up my finger, right? It would just be too much. It's, it's way more than is necessary to motivate you to support me, right? And that, by the way, is sort of the purpose of empathy, right? You could tell someone's hurt, you're like, oh, gosh, you know, let me help.

• 34:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 34:54Speaker 03

  Or if you see they're happy, it's, it's a way to communicate emotions non-verbally. Empathy is also positive. But if you had no empathy, you saw my broken finger and you're like, who cares? You would have no motivation to support me or to help me, right? And so we are right in this.

• 35:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's psychopathic.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  At the extreme limit of that.

• 35:10Speaker 03

  Right, and so humans.

• 35:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Where you harm someone and you don't even care that you harm them or feel any of the pain that they might experience.

• 35:16Speaker 03

  Right, and humans, on, on average, of course, there's a range of empathy.

• 35:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's psychopath, sociopath, I think is.

• 35:23Speaker 03

  Uh, psychopath, no, psychopath.

• 35:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Psychopath, is it?

• 35:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So, humans on average, of course, there's a range. Most people fall into this range where we feel some empathy for other people, but it's not so much that we're totally taking on the full sensation. And what's important, on the note of war, is that, you know, I mentioned earlier that the brain sort of evolved to treat those in our in-group differently. Empathy is one of those things. We are, there's plenty of studies showing that people's brains, the brain areas that are associated with empathy, they will activate more for others that they view as in their in-group. And it doesn't really matter, like, really what that in-group is. It can be race, it can be religion, it could be political affiliation. You know, there's all sorts of things. And so when we see others as unlike us, and there's this concept of self-other overlap.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  If you picture two, like a Venn diagram, right, you're one circle, the other person is the other circle. How much of an overlap are those circles? The further apart those circles are, the less empathy you're going to experience, and the less activity in those empathy-related brain areas.

• 36:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The easier it will be for you to kill them.

• 36:25Speaker 03

  Right. The less painful it will be for you to witness them struggling.

• 36:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 36:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so in war, this is a clear out-group situation.

• 36:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With propaganda to even, that even feeds the separation of the Venn diagram.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  Right. And what that does is it basically dehumanizes your brain's representation of that person. That it doesn't respond, like I mentioned on social media, right? We, we don't see social cues. The brain says, I don't know if I'm interacting with a person. This could be, this is a screen, right? If you can get you, get a person to dissociate the human so far from themselves that they see nothing in common, then those empathy areas aren't going to come online, and it's going to be easy to harm them.

• 37:01Chuck Nice?

  Mm-hmm. So then, social media, does that add to the desensitization of empathy in others? Because you're not having a human-to-human interaction? There's this technology in between you?

• 37:17Speaker 03

  So I, we don't know that yet, but I published a paper on this a couple of years ago. I called it the virtual disengagement hypothesis.

• 37:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And what journal does those go in?

• 37:25Speaker 03

  So that journal is called neuroscience.

• 37:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Duh, okay.

• 37:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good, good journal title to publish.

• 37:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's a little on the nose, but. It felt like it was appropriate for the topic.

• 37:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh-huh.

• 37:35Speaker 03

  But yeah, and so this idea that my student Maria Tavares and I published is that when we are not experiencing these social cues online, there's no reason that the empathy areas in our brain should turn on. And so this could potentially explain why there's such hostility online. I mean, raise your hand if you've experienced harassment online. I mean, my goodness.

• 37:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You know, would never happen one-on-one. You just know this.

• 37:57Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 37:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Even with people with highly different views from you, it just degrades immediately.

• 38:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. And by the way, there's, you know, there's a whole research field on this. It's called computer-mediated communication. That's what they called it in the eighties before social media and all this came about. So when the computer came about, they started doing research where they would have people interact through computers. Which is what we now do almost every day, pretty much every day. And they found that people behave differently. They were more unfiltered, they would be swearing, they would be hostile. And you know, that wasn't like the finding, but it was part of what they saw. And they didn't have an explanation for it.

• 38:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Because modern society likes to medicate things. Are there good and bad medications that are being taken that will affect people's isolation or inclination to be more sociable?

• 38:46Speaker 03

  You mean drugs?

• 38:49Chuck Nice?

  Just say it.

• 38:50Gary O'Reilly?

  No.

• 38:50Chuck Nice?

  Drugs.

• 38:52Gary O'Reilly?

  No, can't make.

• 38:53Speaker 03

  I just, I didn't know if you were talking about like behavioral interventions or like drugs.

• 38:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Two drugs, yeah.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, okay, yeah, for sure. I mean, there's, there's a lot of research on, and not very well-recognized research.

• 39:04Chuck Nice?

  I know, because I'm the one who did it.

• 39:06Speaker 03

  Subject on how drugs influence the social brain. And you know, there's research, for instance, on painkillers, right? When you take a painkiller, we all know that painkillers, you know, this is over the counter stuff, can reduce our pain, obviously. But did you know it can also reduce your empathy for someone else's pain? So if you have painkillers in your system and you're.

• 39:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why am I only learning about this now?

• 39:28Speaker 03

  Right.

• 39:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Because I only just asked the question.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  Because Gary had a great question.

• 39:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 39:32Speaker 03

  It also reduces social pain too, by the way, because there's some, there's a significant overlap in the brain between physical pain and social pain, how it's processed. So if you take acetaminophen and someone insults you, you're not probably going to feel as bad.

• 39:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Really?

• 39:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:46Chuck Nice?

  And can you take a bottle of acetaminophen? Does that, does that help?

• 39:50Speaker 03

  For a comedy performance.

• 39:54Chuck Nice?

  For a hospital crowd. Exactly. Bring it on, bitches. I don't, I'm sorry.

• 40:00Speaker 03

  So, and the other thing too, is that, you know, not only does it reduce your social pain, but also the pain of others. So if you are on acetaminophen and you see someone who is socially excluded, for instance, from a group, you're probably going to feel less bad for them. It actually sort of blunts the brain's ability to turn on these areas, brain areas, that process and make us feel pain, in the, the emotional component of pain, not the physical part.

• 40:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when I was a kid, I wanted to be a superhero. I don't know if that's unusual or what, but I wanted to be a protector of the geeks. Because geeks, back in my day, before geeks were the richest people in the world, they were completely abused by the football quarterback and get wedgie'd up on the

• 41:04Chuck Nice?

  That's still happening.

• 41:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's still happening.

• 41:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Don't worry, I'm pretty sure that's still happening.

• 41:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But I was a little bit bigger than most people and I was probably physically fit a year and a half before my chronological age. So I could kick your ass if I had to. But I was also a geek. So if I ever saw someone who was undersocialized, getting abused, I, it would be almost an irrational level of rage, I would feel. And I want to just, this is where the superhero feelings come in. I wanted to just jump in the middle of there and just pummel the person who's abusing one of my people, one of my geeks.

• 41:43Chuck Nice?

  The Incredible Nerd Hulk.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  That's pretty much what you are in real life.

• 41:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I guess this is protecting my tribe, I guess. It's still yet another step to want to harm someone who, I mean, I could just separate them, but I felt this urge to just do what the superheroes do to the bad guys.

• 42:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. You know? Yeah, I mean, that's entirely natural for a human being, right? You want to protect your group and sometimes that means eliminating the threat.

• 42:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm. That's very militaristic, say.

• 42:16Chuck Nice?

  Eliminating threat.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:18Chuck Nice?

  That was very Pete Headset, I think.

• 42:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, sorry. Sorry, guys.

• 42:24Chuck Nice?

  Optimum lethality.

• 42:26Gary O'Reilly?

  So we've gone through painkillers and how they can affect. So what are the positive drugs? I mean, is it just alcohol? Or what else are we going to go to?

• 42:35Speaker 03

  So I would actually argue that alcohol is not a positive drug.

• 42:37Chuck Nice?

  That's definitely not positive. I mean, it feels positive when you're, when you're consuming it.

• 42:42Gary O'Reilly?

  So short term?

• 42:43Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 42:43Speaker 03

  So alcohol, it relieves anxiety. You know, there's a study that showed that for every drink consumed, people show a 4% reduction in social anxiety. And, and actually, you know, the way alcohol works in the brain is it, it turns down the activity of neurons and it's done, it's been shown to do so specifically in the amygdala. It's emotional.

• 43:01Chuck Nice?

  Fight or flight.

• 43:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When you say drinking, like the, the classical drink.

• 43:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A shot, a glass of wine, a bottle of beer. 4% is not much.

• 43:08Speaker 03

  But if you have five of them. Now we're talking, now we're talking 20%.

• 43:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  20% down.

• 43:13Speaker 03

  That's pretty good.

• 43:14Chuck Nice?

  And so, and the same time, does it lower inhibition as well?

• 43:18Speaker 03

  Alcohol makes your brain cells better at turning each other's activity down.

• 43:22Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  And so what happens is what your brain's normally doing that all the time, the brain cell, or the activity of your brain goes down. And when this happens in, say, the prefrontal cortex, normally a lot of your behavioral inhibitions stem from the prefrontal cortex. You might get an urge to, you know, lean over and kiss someone or start a fight and your prefrontal cortex is like, that's not a good idea, let's not do that.

• 43:42Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 43:43Speaker 03

  But those higher level processing areas, their activity is going down and so they're not quite as effective at shutting down those impulses.

• 43:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not just, are you more sociable, are you more likely to get into a fight?

• 43:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 43:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Both of those can happen here.

• 43:56Speaker 03

  Right, exactly. That's why I argue that it actually makes us less effective interactors. It reduces social anxiety. It reduces how much distress we feel in interactions. But what that also means is that, for instance, when people are shown negative social cues in research labs and they're given alcohol, their amygdala responds less. So they show less of an emotional reaction to negative social cues. So now let's think about putting that in the context of a bar. You go to kiss someone, they're showing you a face that tells you, don't kiss me. Your amygdala is not saying, this is bad.

• 44:27Chuck Nice?

  You know you want it.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  Right, exactly.

• 44:29Chuck Nice?

  You can't resist this. Give us a kiss.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  You are failing to properly interpret their emotional cues, right? Or you try to, you know, whatever, you, you say a really inappropriate joke and it doesn't land and it's insulting and you hurt someone's feelings, you're much more likely to brush it off. Or you just actually did something damaging to a relationship. And so I, you know, it may make us feel less, but it probably actually makes us act worse because we could become less considerate of others' emotions.

• 44:57Gary O'Reilly?

  So you've done research with Molly.

• 44:59Chuck Nice?

  At MDMA.

• 45:00Gary O'Reilly?

  MDMA. Does that have a positive effect on people's ability to be sociable?

• 45:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the full name, by the way, is, we're going there, 3, 4-methylendioxymethamphetamine. That's why it's shortened.

• 45:14Chuck Nice?

  I didn't want to show up and say that.

• 45:16Speaker 03

  So. We all knew that. Yeah, it's just a fun one to throw out there, right? You memorize that, you have to use it. One more time, let's hear it. 3, 4-methylendioxymethamphetamine. Got it. And you may notice the last couple of syllables, methamphetamine.

• 45:26Chuck Nice?

  Well, we know what that is.

• 45:28Speaker 03

  It's very similar. It acts similarly in the brain as well. Okay, so unlike alcohol. Unlike alcohol. Yes. MDMA makes people much more social. It's pro-social. In fact, it's also been shown to increase empathy. It's one of the only drugs on the planet that's called an empathogen because it enhances empathy. And actually, that, my research. Empathogen. Empathogen. That's sneaky there. Yeah.

• 45:51Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 45:51Speaker 03

  Instead of a pathogen. Yes, empathogen, thank you. Opposite. Yeah, and my own research at Stanford in mice, not in humans, showed that the empathogenic properties, this ability to increase empathy, is related to this serotonin release that it drives.

• 46:07Chuck Nice?

  It does the same thing in us too, right?

• 46:08Speaker 03

  It does, it does the same thing. We just don't know yet in humans whether the specific signal that we track down in mice is also the same in humans and responsible for the empathic properties.

• 46:18Chuck Nice?

  Now, do the mice break out glow sticks and start listening to music while, like, and just dance non-stop?

• 46:24Speaker 03

  No, they, they just like hanging out around each other a lot more. It's really funny. If you, so, some research that I didn't do, but another colleague of mine, Boris Hyfis, did. If you have like an arena and there's like a cup here with a mouse underneath it and a, and a cup over here with like an object, right, an animate object, and you let a mouse run free in this little chamber, most mice will kind of spend more time near the other mouse. But if you give that mouse in the middle ecstasy, they will spend way more time over here with the other mouse. But the thing I love about this is if you give the mouse under the cup ecstasy too, so now they both have ecstasy in their veins, but this mouse, even though it's the one in control, will spend even more time near that other mouse. So it's, there's.

• 46:59Chuck Nice?

  And they're both just up against the cup like, "I love you so much."

• 47:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, just to be clear, because forgive my, my drug illiteracy here. Ecstasy is the same as MDMA?

• 47:11Speaker 03

  Ecstasy is technically the street version.

• 47:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If you get the good stuff, it is.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  I, I, this is a, I, I should use MDMA, but people know the word ecstasy. Ecstasy is the street version, which can also be mixed with other things.

• 47:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, thank you for clarifying that, alright.

• 47:24Speaker 03

  So yeah, I'm referring to MDMA, the drug MDMA specifically, because obviously in the lab, we are using pure MDMA.

• 47:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what's the downside of this drug? The love drug.

• 47:30Speaker 03

  Oh, I mean, what it does is it drives the release of these three neurotransmitters. Serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. Mostly serotonin and dopamine. And by the way, just want to mention that this is also the same neurotransmitters that are released in social reward. And so it can kind of make sense why MDMA enhances those feelings of connectedness. It's acting on those.

• 47:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And by the way, there's a writer called Nora Ephron, is that what you said?

• 47:55Speaker 03

  Noradrenaline.

• 47:59Speaker 03

  Well, it's noradrenaline, but it's noradrenaline.

• 48:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Norepinephrine. Neuroepinephrine.

• 48:04Speaker 03

  No.

• 48:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Noro.

• 48:05Speaker 03

  Nor, N-O-R.

• 48:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, just nor? Noradrenaline, okay. Saying it like you knew what you were talking about.

• 48:10Speaker 03

  Well, no, I thought that's what he was talking about.

• 48:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's the downside?

• 48:13Speaker 03

  There's, okay, there's a lot of downsides. I mean, it's, it's not a drug that like, there's no future for this drug to be taken like daily, like a prescription, right? Because it's, it's too toxic. It would not be good for you. It's, it's been shown to disrupt serotonin-producing neurons in the brain with, you know, repeated use. It's, it's a really intense, powerful drug. It's not necessarily clean for the brain, but it's also sort of demonized. It's funny because there's some research where a study decades ago gave MDMA to primates. And they found that after giving them some amount of doses, they looked at their brains and they found just holes in their brains. The brains were like eaten away. Turns out, the study was published, the news broke and everything. They came back later and they were like, whoops, we mislabeled our vials. That was actually meth that we were giving them.

• 48:57Speaker 03

  And so it's actually not quite as toxic as meth. But there's this kind of public impression that it like will put holes in your brain and stuff, which is not true.

• 49:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are no holes in my brain.

• 49:09Gary O'Reilly?

  So is there a chance that? The lonely epidemic that we're going through can find a medication that works.

• 49:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, good question.

• 49:17Speaker 03

  I think so. I mean, so the purpose of the research I did at Stanford was to figure out what part of this MDMA drug that's doing all these things in the brain and body, what specific signal is driving the empathy? And we figured it out. It was just, it's serotonin release in the nucleus accumbens, this one particular brain area. So theoretically, if you had a person who wanted to increase their empathy, one of the only ways to do that would be to take MDMA. But MDMA has all these off-target effects. You know, I mentioned methamphetamine. It's a stimulant. It can have, there are sensitive populations who should not be having this drug. You know, it can be distress on the heart, you know, and of course, we think of the canonical person on MDMA, they're grinding their teeth, they're running around, you know, their pupils are dilated, right? This is the stimulant component of it.

• 50:01Speaker 03

  But if we could just have a drug that only stimulates serotonin release in the nucleus accumbens, this one signal that seems to be the part that drives empathy, maybe that's actually a feasible drug.

• 50:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's a future in the pharmaceutical.

• 50:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. And that, and maybe that could be something that people take daily, if they wanted to, right? And so it becomes a really difficult philosophical question of like, could this be a cure to our loneliness issue? Because it's like, well, do we need to turn to pharmacological agents for this? I don't think so. You know, I think that.

• 50:34Chuck Nice?

  Go to bingo.

• 50:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Get a pet.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:37Gary O'Reilly?

  I know it sounds a little glib, but pets have been seen to be so therapeutic.

• 50:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Especially for people that are lonely.

• 50:43Speaker 03

  Yes, specifically dogs, in fact, because of similar reason that.

• 50:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because cats don't give a rat's ass without you.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  Well, think about the tiger, right? Cats, solitary.

• 50:51Chuck Nice?

  Yep.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  Dogs are, through the last 30,000 or 40,000 years, humans and dogs have evolved together. And so dogs have taken on all these social.

• 51:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And dogs were, and wolves are social animals.

• 51:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 51:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So the pets play a role, yes, as we know. We all know from airplane riding, because people bring their emotional support pets.

• 51:11Chuck Nice?

  But there are people who have a deficiency of serotonin, or maybe a deficiency of dopamine. So wouldn't that help people like that just to, I mean, there are already SSRIs out there, and there are also dopamine reuptake inhibitors. But wouldn't that help somebody that's in that position where they can't produce it on their own or enough of it or?

• 51:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean. It's not like a dopamine deficiency or serotonin deficiency is like clearly linked to any one condition.

• 51:40Chuck Nice?

  Oh, okay.

• 51:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, so like it used to be thought that like low serotonin was the cause of depression.

• 51:45Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 51:45Speaker 03

  Not the case. By the way, that doesn't mean SSRIs aren't effective.

• 51:48Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 51:48Speaker 03

  Because the increasing serotonin can act on other systems in the brain. It doesn't have to be that it's low serotonin. Anyway, so.

• 51:54Chuck Nice?

  So it's not isolated that way that you can just say, okay, and now you take this and boom.

• 51:58Speaker 03

  Right. SSRI? Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. That's what that means. Yeah, so SSRIs increase serotonin signaling between neurons. Selectively. Selective to serotonin. Yes, good, right. By the way, I was gonna say this, when we think about, you know, dogs, maybe they could fill that void, right, or certain, or having a pet. So when you look into the eyes of a dog, both you and the dog will probably produce oxytocin. That's what research says. And that will not happen in a wolf. Will not happen in a wolf. I assure you. And that's true, that it will not happen in a wolf. I'm not sure if the human produces oxytocin, the wolf definitely does not. But the reason that matters, because I mentioned earlier that, you know, we have the benefits of interaction and the detriment of isolation. When we think about the benefit of interaction, oxytocin is one of those signals that we

• 52:42Speaker 03

  think of oxytocin as, as this like love hormone and this social bonding, which it is. It drives that social reward, which makes us feel good around people. But oxytocin also has a bunch of like therapeutic properties around the body. So it's actually been referred to as nature's medicine by certain researchers, because it can be anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective, there's research showing that it can support like immune function, bone growth, all sorts of things, which it makes sense, because when you are, let's say, raising a child, you are producing a ton of oxytocin, bonding with the child. Also, it's important for you to be healthy to protect the child. You know, when you have a romantic partner and you are in position to reproduce, it's important for you to be healthy so you can successfully reproduce. It's like an evolutionary mechanism, so that when we are connecting with others, our bodies

• 53:27Speaker 03

  are becoming more healthy. And so, on the topic of dogs, dogs have been shown to drive oxytocin release in humans. So if you're looking to sort of supplement some of that connection you've lost out on, a dog could actually like hit that molecular mechanism.

• 53:41Gary O'Reilly?

  So if we're looking at long-term loneliness being detrimental to your health, possibly even taking you all the way to the finish line early, is it patient heal thyself? Or are we in need of community? Are we in need of the support groups? If so, where are they going to come from? Because if there's an epidemic of loneliness, then are we in need of these things?

• 54:07Speaker 03

  I think it's the kind of thing that we can do on our own. You know, like, I think that actually, it's been a lot of external forces in society and culture that have driven us to this point. You know, I tend to blame personally, this, I call it the automation of everything, right? You can do anything now online. You know, our first podcast was online. You can go to, you can go to the bank and take out money with an ATM without talking to a person. You can order groceries without interacting with your community. You can even tour a house on Zillow without going to the house. You can do telemedicine. You can do anything online, basically. And we have, I think, stripped away all of these sort of micro-interactions that we used to have in our lives. They're just no longer there. And so we've, we've kind of been like, persuaded into this position by the convenience of these services.

• 54:52Speaker 03

  But I think that's kind of happened without us really noticing. Plus, you had COVID in there and then the whole thing explodes. But what says that we can't get ourselves out? You know, I think that if people understood the significance of isolation in terms of the health effects and the way it affects their brains, I think that they would care more. It's almost like if we were living in a world where nobody understood what it's like to have sleep deprivation. What would society be? How much different would the world be if science had not discovered that getting four hours of sleep a night is bad for you? Right? Or that eating an unhealthy diet is bad for you? Like, I think we've gotten there with sort of educating the general public about the importance of these various features. But I don't think that people truly understand the significance of socializing in that context.

• 55:37Speaker 03

  And so I'm hoping that maybe we can.

• 55:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So that public awareness is, is being presented in your latest book?

• 55:42Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 55:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is this your first book?

• 55:44Speaker 03

  That is my first book.

• 55:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And your only book?

• 55:45Speaker 03

  And my only book, yeah.

• 55:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. The Brain is an Endless Frontier.

• 55:49Speaker 03

  It is.

• 55:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So this surely will not be your last book?

• 55:53Speaker 03

  That's right. Definitely not.

• 55:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why Brains Need Friends? The Neuroscience of Social. Connection.

• 56:00Speaker 03

  And that book is actually exactly what I just described and it's accessible for anyone. The first page is a no big words clause. It's my clause where I say I will not use big words.

• 56:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You guys are especially guilty of that.

• 56:11Speaker 03

  I know. I'm mad at my field for it.

• 56:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good.

• 56:14Speaker 03

  I'm mad at all of science for it. The jargon is unnecessary, but it's meant for anybody to read and understand.

• 56:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We've got good words in my people. Big bang, black hole.

• 56:22Speaker 03

  You also mentioned that in your book. You know, quark is a.

• 56:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, no, there's some, but with their fun words, even if they're a little obscure, they're not multi-syllabic words. Like dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex.

• 56:33Speaker 03

  Or norepinephrine, or preformethylene, dioxymethamphetamine. That one's out of control, honestly.

• 56:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what is the cost to our life expectancy if you're lonely?

• 56:43Speaker 03

  So there are studies tracking hundreds of thousands of people over like a decade.

• 56:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's a good number. That's a good time.

• 56:49Speaker 03

  Strong number.

• 56:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And a good time.

• 56:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, for a decade and just looking at pure mortality, who died? And what they found is that those who are the most socially isolated were 50% more likely to die by any cause within that decade window.

• 57:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's quite an indictment.

• 57:06Speaker 03

  It is, and I mean, there's a lot more than that, right? Those who are isolated are at higher risk of dementia.

• 57:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, cardiac disease, diabetes, interestingly.

• 57:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Cause there's not someone else in the place saying, don't eat that. Yeah. Well, there's always the annoying other person you're living with that's checking out what you eat. Keeps you healthy.

• 57:27Speaker 03

  And that's actually interesting too, because there's studies showing that in people diagnosed with colorectal cancer, those who are married are 28% more likely to survive. There are certain forms of cancer that being married is actually a stronger predictor of life of survival than chemotherapy. And part of it, by the way, that doesn't mean chemotherapy doesn't work. Part of it is because their partner is saying, please do chemotherapy.

• 57:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Plus, even in unhappy marriages, they're probably yelling at each other all the time. You're definitely not lonely there. Right. You just wanna die.

• 58:00Speaker 03

  No comment.

• 58:02Speaker 03

  I also, I worry particularly about older people. There are studies, you know, as we age, at least in America, we get more and more isolated. It's just the way our culture works. We spend less time with others. And I think that's a shame and a tragedy because we are entering this period of isolation where we're isolation is making us more prone to all these conditions and outcome, negative outcomes, while we're also becoming more sensitive as we get older.

• 58:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is the value of retirement centers where you have a social network there.

• 58:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so I mentioned the 50% number, you know, and by the way, there are, there's all the other studies showing 30% risk of more, higher risk of mortality, you know, 50% is the one in 300,000 people. But in people above 65, social isolation is linked to a 78% higher risk of death in men and 57% higher in women. And isolated seniors are more prone to dementia and if they're isolated, their memory declines twice as fast.

• 58:52Chuck Nice?

  Wow. But it doesn't make a difference if you are spending time with more old people? Or is it just family or go find some young people to hang out with? Does it make a difference of your social network or just have a social network?

• 59:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In graduate school, I was in an apartment complex. It was an 80 year old lady that lived there. And we're all convinced we just kept her alive.

• 59:13Chuck Nice?

  Yes, because she was stealing your blood while you were sleeping.

• 59:17Speaker 03

  So actually.

• 59:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just the energy, you know, everyone is young, they've got energy, there's parties at night.

• 59:22Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 59:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's no one is just walking slow, talking about their health.

• 59:26Speaker 03

  Right. I think probably, I mean, interacting with younger people may be helpful. There's actually a really interesting study. It's in mice, but it's the only way they could do this type of controlled experiment where they took old mice and they would have those mice interact with younger mice who are like adult age for just 15 minutes a day. And they found that those mice, they lived 33% longer if they interacted for just 15 minutes a day. So you may have actually extended the life of that woman in your apartment.

• 59:49Chuck Nice?

  Interesting.

• 59:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Look at that.

• 59:50Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 59:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. So if you come upon a lonely person, are you assuming they don't want to be lonely? And if that's true, that they don't want to be lonely. How do you get socialized if you're no longer in middle school or high school? Just as an adult, what do you recommend here?

• 1:00:08Speaker 03

  One thing that's important to recognize is that when people become lonely, their brains actually start processing social information differently in a way that makes them continue to be lonely often. You know, when lonelier people actually experience less social reward from interactions, they show lower rise in oxytocin after interacting. They struggle with trust. Yeah, and so it's very likely that for someone who's really isolated and very lonely, when they say, you know what, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna go to this party, I'm gonna see people, and they feel horrible, that that could just continue to spiral. And so it's likely that you may need a few interactions to sort of bump yourself out of that. So to answer your question, you know, does a lonely person mean that they're craving interaction? Not necessarily. They may have sort of distanced themselves from that desire.

• 1:00:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But if they wanna lead a longer, happier life, they should figure out how to do this. But I don't know that there are classes on how to be socialized.

• 1:00:57Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:00:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But when I grew up, both of my parents were highly social. And they were entertaining. We had people coming in every week. So I was exposed to that from very early, that this is what people do. We talk to each other, we hang out, tell jokes, have fun. And so I didn't know a life different from that, growing up. But as an adult, I mean, how would one adjust?

• 1:01:23Chuck Nice?

  I think you have to find a community first. Like, that's the first step. It's like step outside of your daily routine and find a community, no matter how small it is, and then like interact with those people on a consistent basis, and then try to expand from there. But the first step is just finding a small community with something that you like to do.

• 1:01:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did I ask you this question?

• 1:01:49Chuck Nice?

  I don't, were you?

• 1:01:49Speaker 03

  Hey, that's a good answer. No, I agree, because it's ideal if you can find a community where you have something in common. You know, because, as I mentioned, the brain treats people differently if they're perceived as different from you. And I think having something in common, you know, and it can be that you really love mountain biking, and it's a mountain biking club. You know, it doesn't have to be like religion or whatever. It could be anything. Because, first off, that allows you to enter the room and meet those people and feel more comfortable because you know you have something in common. You know that their brain is gonna treat you favorably because you have something in common with them. And I think also, in today's very divided America, at least, I think when we can... Meet someone and the first thing that we perceive about them is that they are similar to us in this one way.

• 1:02:34Speaker 03

  It kind of allows us to pocket all those other perceived differences that often get in the way.

• 1:02:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Is there a simple way out of this?

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  I hate to say it because it's like, it's so obvious. Like, what's the problem? Or what's the solution to our social problem? Well, we should socialize.

• 1:02:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is.

• 1:02:46Speaker 03

  That's anxiety. Say, alright, yeah, wrap it up. But I think what's really important for people to recognize is that our brains have a lot of pitfalls, where we happen to be very bad at estimating socializing. What's gonna happen? How we're gonna feel? How they're gonna respond to us? We, you know, there's all sorts of evidence on this. We expect that people are gonna reject our advance at a conversation, when in truth, that very rarely happens. We expect that giving someone a compliment is gonna be weird, they appreciate it. We expect that the longer we stay in a conversation, the worse it's gonna get, when in reality, that doesn't happen. And we expect that after we leave, if we try to think to ourselves, oh, how much did that person like me? We almost always underestimate that. We actually are better liked than we expect.

• 1:03:26Speaker 03

  And so I think my advice is like, your brain kind of sucks at socializing.

• 1:03:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  By the way, I remember distinctly all of that in high school.

• 1:03:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I had to learn more about what people were actually thinking and feeling to realize how on the negative side I was in interpreting the entire social exchange.

• 1:03:47Speaker 03

  Right. And people also tend to underestimate their own social skills, too. If you ask them, how are you relative to the average person? Most people will say below average. And so I think we put all these obstacles in our way, where we tend to think this is not gonna go well. And so I think when you think about that dilemma of, it's Friday night, you've been invited out, you're sitting on the couch, your TV's right there, and it's like, ah, do I really get dressed and drive to this interaction? And then all of a sudden, those barricades start popping up. Oh, you know, the person's not gonna like me, I'm gonna say something weird. You know, you can place all these barricades in front of yourself that are actually just fake. They're actually just made up.

• 1:04:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Is it a fear of rejection?

• 1:04:22Speaker 03

  I think it is.

• 1:04:23Gary O'Reilly?

  I think so.

• 1:04:24Speaker 03

  Because I think, again, if you think about this, we are evolutionarily sort of built for connection and tribe, existing in tribes. If we fail to, in an interaction, and we are rejected by our tribe, there is a significant consequence associated with that.

• 1:04:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're dead.

• 1:04:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Kicked out of the cave again.

• 1:04:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kicked out of the cave.

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  Right. And so our brains are wise to always be thinking... I want to put my best foot forward, but that often creates unnecessary anxiety. And so, you know, if you're a person who experiences social anxiety, you're not alone. This is almost like ubiquitous in the human race. Like, everybody experiences some level. Obviously, everyone is kind of different on that, but it's natural to feel that way. And, you know, my big sort of prescriptive takeaway is to not fear it. Just enter, and I promise you, and most people have experienced this, when you do go to that event, you actually feel better at the end than you expected.

• 1:05:12Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 1:05:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. Get out there, people. He's gonna be a great dad. Yes. He knows. And he's about to have the baby. Your first kid.

• 1:05:22Speaker 03

  My first kid, yeah.

• 1:05:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, your first kid is gonna come at the same time as your first book.

• 1:05:26Speaker 03

  Two weeks apart.

• 1:05:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Two children, birth at the same time. Nice.

• 1:05:31Speaker 03

  I'm terrified. I'm not gonna lie.

• 1:05:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This one will help you pay your rent, and the other will be the opposite of that. Yeah. All right, dude. Thanks for coming on StarTalk.

• 1:05:41Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:05:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A second time.

• 1:05:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, thanks for having me twice.

• 1:05:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. This has been another installment of StarTalk Special Edition. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. Gary, Chuck? Always a pleasure. Thank you, Ben. All right. Until next time, keep looking up.