Sunday Pick: All the lonely people | from Corner Piece

0:02Happy Sunday. Elise Hugh here. Today we're bringing you a Sunday pick where we share an episode of another podcast from TED handpicked by us for you. I'm excited to tell you about TED's newest podcast, Corner Piece, a show that starts small on life's biggest questions. Co-hosts Taha, Melissa, and Sabrina are lifelong friends and full-time nerds you might know from their YouTube channel, Answer in Progress. On each episode, they take an everyday worry like, is romance dead? And launch a full investigation to figure out how much of the problem is modern life and how much is just part of being human.

0:40The first episode takes on a question a lot of us know too well. From group chats to video calls, technology should make connections easier than ever. So why is everyone so lonely? Sabrina sets out to investigate the loneliness epidemic sweeping the globe, including her own friends and co-hosts. She talks with Professor Faye Bound-Alberti, author of A Biography of Loneliness, to understand what loneliness actually is, where it comes from, and whether there's a cure. Along the way, Taha and Melissa challenge Sabrina to confront her own loneliness with a side quest that reveals just how hard connection can be.

1:18You can find Corner Piece wherever you get your podcasts with new episodes every other Thursday. and you can learn about all of Ted's podcasts at podcasts.ted.com. That's coming up right after a short break.

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4:16Are you guys lonely? This is a personal question, actually. Wait, I shouldn't be laughing. What if the answer is yes?

4:28Hello, I'm Sabrina. I'm Taha. And I'm Melissa. We're friends who have been making stuff on the internet together for the past five years. And this is Corner Piece. A show. Welcome to your ears. We're going to start small on life's biggest questions. Like those day-to-day worries that we think belong just to us. But actually stretch across our culture, our time, and honestly, our humanity. In this episode, I want to understand why loneliness seems so rampant nowadays, when technology should make connection easier than ever. I started by asking these two if they're lonely. I don't really think about it.

5:06But then when I think about it, sometimes I am lonely. But then I stop thinking about it, and then I'm fine. Wow, I've never seen a bigger cry for therapy. A cry for therapy? I don't think therapists are going to be my friend. Deflection. Melissa, are you lonely? Yeah, I do feel lonely sometimes. But like, I'm also someone who really enjoys being alone. And so there's times when I'm alone where I'm totally okay. And then there's sometimes when I'm alone and I'm like, I want companionship or something. I never think about this question. It's too big of a concept. You know what? That's fair. I think that's kind of the reason why I'm asking you guys, because I keep hearing about this whole loneliness epidemic.

5:44It's supposedly really big. It's ruining everybody's lives. And I don't know if I experience loneliness. Like, that's really... So cool. That's why she's like, I'm going to be flexing. Never had a lonely thought in my life. I literally don't mean to flex like this. But, like, I think that the question I'm asking is, like, what is causing this loneliness? If you're forcing me to think about this, I think there's like a bunch of reasons for why it's hard to connect with people. You can be interacting with 100 people every single day and still be completely lonely if you feel like you were never understood.

6:17In a way, you can be understood by yourself and be totally happy being in solitude. Yeah. Sometimes when you're by yourself, you can feel like light and warm and happy. And you can also feel the opposite when you're around people. I'm like trying to grasp for what the feeling of loneliness is, but it just feels like cold and heavy. I think that's pretty accurate actually. It feels like a emptiness in your chest that like no one sees you and no one would notice if you disappeared. Do both of you feel this way? I do sometimes feel like that. But then sometimes I don't. Like, it's something that doesn't just like come and go randomly, but I think that's a normal part of the human experience to sometimes feel not okay.

7:05Taha? Yeah, I don't, I feel like if I had disappeared, it would be a while until someone noticed, except for I have to be at work. I think the reason I don't feel that sad about it is because I do think this is the reality for a lot of people in the sense that you can just exist in a city and be surrounded by millions of people and never actually connect with a single human being and you're just background noise in every single person's life. But I think that's even harder if you're in a environment that is very different to your background or the way you think about things. I'm a brown man in a racist country.

7:42Like, I don't know what to do with that. But like, that's kind of part of the loneliness for me. Like, I'm like, hey man, you gotta be on my side during the race war? I don't really know. like i don't i mean that's all part of it right it's like yeah this is the reality of my life and so i just i'm like all right to you what does it mean to be understood i feel like it's pretty obvious when you are understood like you don't feel like a stranger in a community you feel like you belong you're asking me as if you guys don't know this entire conversation is because I don't know. Yeah, okay, Sabrina, you don't know.

8:20No, no, no. You just don't know what loneliness feels like because your entire life is perfect and based. That's what I'm learning from this conversation.

8:31I don't know if that's true. I actually feel like an outsider pretty often. But I've been lucky enough to find people who do understand me, like Taha and Melissa. And I don't feel lonely because I have technology to stay connected to them. Even when we live five time zones apart. When I hear people talking about loneliness, I want to like grab them by the shoulders and shake them and say like, what do you mean? We got phones, we've got group chats, we've got Zoom. I just don't get it. She's doing the thing that people do when you tell them you're lonely and you're like, no, you're not. There's all of these things that you could be doing so you're not lonely.

9:10But she's doing it on a societal level. She's like, she's looking at the loneliness this epidemic and going, all of you guys have phones and you can put yourselves in group chats. None of you are lonely. Do you think there's a difference between like the physical connection in the real world versus a digital connection? Because I'd be in group chats. For me, I do feel a huge difference between the relationships that I maintain solely digitally and the ones that I have in real life. Like if we're just sending each other memes back and forth, I'm kind of like, sure, whatever. but do I feel something in the same way?

9:48No. Yeah, I'm the same. I mean, I don't like texts ever. I feel like it's always a thing for me to do and it never feels like a meaningful connection. That doesn't mean that I don't like hearing from my friends. It just means that I don't love the text-based interaction that's always very unfulfilling.

10:14I found this kind of surprising. For me, digital interactions have always felt almost identical to physical ones. You know how in TV shows when friends just barge into each other's houses? That's what texting a group chat feels like to me. A second home where all of my friends are just always hanging out. It's all of the convenience of physical connection without needing to travel or coordinate schedules. Sabrina in a group chat? She is the same level. it is like I'm sitting next to you, which is not an experience that I have with any of my other friends. Wait, that is actually true. But wouldn't it be better if you just met up every day and you didn't have a group chat?

10:55No. That's crazy. Actually, I got uncomfortable with you saying that. I think that my relationships are probably fine. We're friends. Yeah. Yeah. Sure, man. How often do we hang out in real life, guys? I think we might have hung out 10 times. 15? In the last 6 years? And isn't that enough? No!

11:28It's strange knowing that my friends are lonely, when I'm not. It makes me want to be there for them, but evidently, I don't know how. I thought our texts and video calls were enough. They are for me. But I guess the cure for loneliness isn't the same for every person, which makes the idea of a loneliness epidemic even scarier. How do we handle that? Maybe instead of focusing on individual cases, I should figure out what's causing all this loneliness in the first place. Where is it coming from?

12:01So I reached out to the author of a biography of loneliness, the history of an emotion, to help me out. After the break, I talk with Faye Bound-Alberti.

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14:19my name is Faye Bandalberti I'm a historian of medicine emotion in the body I'd love to get your help in trying to understand loneliness you know the way that I define it is it's a sense of lack that comes from the social relationships you want and those that you have. So that can be variable, can't it? A sort of occasional loneliness is normal. And it's part of us kind of like evaluating what's happening in our lives, what's working, what's not. Pinch points in life where there's a kind of rite of passage or a change, whether we're becoming an adult or we're going through divorce or we're retiring.

14:58That is the moment when we tend to kind of calibrate and work out how are we now. Yeah, it's like boredom. People think boredom is a negative thing, but boredom is a really good sign that you aren't interested in something at the moment. That's such a good analogy. It is a wonderful signal from our bodies and ourselves that we want something else. It's not actually a single emotion. It's a cluster of different kinds of emotion. So what a teenage boy who's feeling isolated and has no friends might describe as loneliness is going to be really different from what an older person who's been widowed might describe as loneliness.

15:31When does loneliness go from this emotion to what is now deemed an epidemic? Every time you have a sort of reorganization of a social fabric, you have people feeling disconnected and lonely. Sometimes it's positive, sometimes it's negative. The bit that makes the difference, I think, is when it's enforced and when it's chosen. Because there's a hell of a difference in being what I call structurally lonely, like you don't have any money or you've got no access to resources, to being episodically lonely because of a life change or because you've decided that something isn't working and you're going to change it.

16:06Okay, this helped me understand how the loneliness epidemic can exist in the internet age and even be worsened by it. The internet reorganized our social fabric. It's changed the way we work, date, communicate. And when the pandemic pushed so much of life online, digital connections stopped feeling like an alternative and more like the default. Now, I'm pretty okay with this because I love digital connections. But not everyone does. A bunch of people who crave physical connection are struggling to find it because the world isn't exclusively built with it in mind anymore. It's loneliness, one that can feel structural and almost inescapable.

16:46I do think there's something fundamentally different about a community that's online and a community that's physical in the real world. And it's not just about the fact of having hugs and feeling together with someone. It's also the whole notion of community used to mean common good. So you have to give as well as receive in real life communities. But in online communities, there's not the same level of obligation and of give and take. The way that my mind thinks about loneliness, I think of it as a lack of connection. And I think that I've always assumed that it must be a lack of mental connection, like an intellectual, emotional bond with other people.

17:28All of our conversations about emotions generally tend to be about our brain, don't they? But I don't know that that's where emotions are. I mean, when we do that sort of sense check of what do we need and what's missing, it's sort of thinking quite expansively about ourselves as full human beings. There are going to be people that fulfill our intellectual needs and there are people that fulfill our emotional and physical needs. So maybe it's partly thinking about we need to feel full of people in the right ways, don't we? I see. I think I've been viewing things a little simplistically. Like there's either like you are forming a deep, meaningful connection with somebody or it's nothing.

18:08You know, that's something I've been thinking a lot about recently, too. is like if I think about it in terms of our relationships with people and you have this kind of inner core where you have really deep, meaningful conversations with people and then as the circle moves out, then you have the outer edges tend to be more filled with people that are important to you because you'll pass them on the corridor and you'll say hello and they're kind of... They fulfil some sort of social function, but it's very different. It's about the kind of richness of resources that we have.

18:43After my conversation with Faye, I stopped to think about how I feel. Like, really feel. Which is something I never do. I was constantly stressed out for 20 years before learning I have an anxiety disorder, and I regularly wonder why my head hurts before realizing I haven't drank water all day. So when I really thought about how I feel about my social life, I was surprised. It's narrowed into this wonderful but small world of my closest people. It's been years since I've experienced what Faye calls the outer edges, regular strangers who make up an ambient sense of community. And I know why. It's partly because I work from home and rarely come across strangers.

19:25But it's mostly because I suck at small talk. Hello, how are you doing today? Doing pretty well. I'm awkward, I can't find the right words to say, and I get so self-conscious and stuck in my head that I'm not present enough to actually enjoy the interaction. I wish I could. I want that connection. I want to feel like a part of something big, a community, a neighborhood. But I just suck at the one thing that seems to make that possible. So, at some point over the years, I just kind of accepted that I can't always get what I want. Oh my god. Is this what Taha meant when he said he's lonely, but then just stops thinking about it?

20:16No way. Do we agree? Remember a few weeks ago, we talked and I said I wasn't sure if I was lonely. I thought you said you didn't experience loneliness. Here's the thing. I'm not sure anymore. I don't love that you went and did a bunch of reading and have convinced yourself that you might be lonely. I feel like you're like, you're trying to find something to be interesting. You're not, listen, you don't have to be interesting. Toss, getting stolen valor. You're just trying to be quirky and mysterious. You can just be well adjusted and happy with the friendships you have. That could be the case.

20:57But let me explain why I have my doubts. Okay. Loneliness nowadays is defined as a sense of lack. Working on this and thinking about it, I realized that I have gained a desire for more like ambient social connection. Just being with people without them even really knowing who I am. Like being an NPC in the world. This is going to sound rude, but it's not supposed to be. I think you are the natural conclusion of treating socializing like an optimization problem. That's so rude. What I'm saying is that I think that as things have moved, maybe more remote for work, and maybe people are more atomized in their social lives, people are trying to have the super well-connected, these are my best friends, And then, okay, the rest of the time, I don't want to socialize with anyone because I want to do other stuff.

21:56And so the gradient is being flattened into really good friends and then nothing else or just stranger. And then all of the messy in-between stages don't really exist as much. Maybe that's like more prominent for us as people who don't participate in the physical world as much as everyone else. Just little hermits. We don't have a commute. We don't have like these touchstones maybe that historically have binded people together. That type of ambiguity is totally gone, especially in our lives. Yeah, I relate. Sometimes the end of the workday arrives and I'm like, I'm too tired to leave the house.

22:41So I will just hang out by myself. And that's fine. But yeah, I really do need to try hard to get out of the house. I've said this to you guys before, and you guys make fun of me for it, but the best way to exist in society is to pretend like every person in society has a quest that they can give you. What? I'm not looking for a quest. I'm looking to just be around people. The quest is a concept, not a destination, right? Taha, we're talking to somebody who schedules basically every interaction that she has. yeah I don't know how to help her how do we tell her to unstructure some of her life I think we have to force her to schedule like quests for her we can be the quest givers for her we should force her to schedule ambiguous interaction quests I feel like such a loser right now because I felt a little bit of relief I felt safe and held in that moment for putting it in your calendar unbelievable you know part of like the the antithesis of loneliness is feeling seen.

23:49I felt seen at that moment. Just like scheduling ambiguity. 1 p.m. Go to coffee shop. Have an ambiguous experience. 1 p.m. Go to coffee shop. Okay. What do I do at the coffee shop? Have an ambiguous experience. Okay. She needs examples. She needs examples. Get your notepad. I want you to go to a coffee shop. Just talk to someone and be, hey, what did you get for your drink? And they'll go, ah, I got a blah, blah, blah, blah. and you go, oh, cool. Did you like it? And they'll go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you go, okay. Okay, I can do a coffee shop. Try to become a regular even. You need to like exist as part of the fabric of the coffee shop.

24:29Beyond just going to the coffee shop, like what are other ways? There's many things that you can go do to just be around people. I mean, sometimes I like going to workout classes. I don't know, like yoga classes are really nice. Have you ever? I know I'm gonna, I know the answer to this. I'm going to ask you anyways, but like, have you ever considered that? I'm just kind of not convinced it'll work because like part of this is like connecting with the right people. And I don't know if I'm yoga people. You know what I mean? Well, you don't even have to talk to them. You're just kind of in the same space together.

25:03You could do a class pass, which is from my vague understanding, people going and then they do some physical activity, but they don't know each other, but they all decided to be there at the same time. This is so funny. This is my culture. This is your culture? This is what you do? You're describing going to a workout class like that is some magical far off place. Oh yeah, you go to like one of you go to like places where I walk by and I'm like, who is in there? Why is that always popping off? Don't these people have jobs? Well, you're kind of just like you're in a space with a whole bunch of people.

25:41but rather than interacting with everybody else, you're just like sharing the same physical space but you're just doing your own thing. Like you get to experience yourself but with other people. But why do the other people need to be there if you're experiencing it yourself? This is the kind of question, Sabrina, that you could find out for us. Yeah, why don't you just go to one of these classes? Okay, let's do a summary then. You become a regular at a coffee shop. And then go to like some guided meditation class or like a yoga class. Okay. Good luck on the easiest tasks of all time.

26:21So I got to figuring out my loneliness, one seemingly easy task at a time. Hello. I'm doing well. How are you? After the break, I report back to Taha and Melissa. So Verizon knows that holiday math can be complicated. Okay, let's see. We got the four kids, four gifts each, six teacher gifts. Wait, oh, what did we get in? Sandy and the dogs. Oh, I can't forget the dogs. Know what doesn't need math? Simplicity plan from Verizon. One plan, one price. Just$30 a line per month for you or the whole family. The holidays are complicated. Shopping our best deals and switching to Verizon is simple. For new customers,$30 per line includes auto pay and switch discount.

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28:28Could I grab the vanilla chai latte? After a few weeks full of surprises that sound incredibly mundane, but were surprisingly profound. I think I know why I'm nervous. I don't think I'm going to be good at yoga. It was time to report back to Taha and Melissa. So, a few weeks ago, you guys sent me out on a quest. Oh, did you do that? Wait, I can ask you about it now? Couldn't you guys remember what you asked me to do? Interact with general society. That's what I remember. I want to know whether or not you can walk into a coffee shop and say, I'll get the usual, please. Yeah. So here's the thing.

29:12I was hoping to go to a cafe today at like, I don't know, lunchtime. But then I was in calls from like 9 a.m. to, what time is it right now? 2.30 p.m.

29:30and I don't know. It's just like, it's so much easier for me to just sit at home, make a tea and use my phone. I'll do it tomorrow. Okay. Okay. So you failed. Okay. Here's what happened. I live from home. I work from home. It turns out that in the dead of winter, it's really tough to just be like, oh, I got to go to a cafe now. But once I started going, I did my best Taha Khan impression, and I tried to chat. Hi there. Hi there. How are you doing today? Good, how are you? I'm doing well. Do you have anything that's, like, warm but not caffeinated? So the Alana 12 comes without espresso. So just steamed tea and steamed milk.

30:18Okay. And some lavender syrup. Okay, cool. But the chai itself, it's caffeinated because it's like tea. Okay, that's fair. Do you think it's like really caffeinated or like, I don't know, I'm trying not to ruin my sleep because it's kind of late in the day. Do you like the London Fog? I do, I do. Okay, then yeah, could I do the London Fog with oat milk, please?

30:40Should I just sit down? Yeah. Okay, cool.

30:49Oof, I feel like I forced myself to talk. I felt like a creep just trying to say more things when she very clearly wanted the interaction to end. What did you end up getting? Did you get a caffeinated beverage? Yeah. Oh my god. You folded? I folded. Your first interaction, you folded? I think this is the worst Taha impression of all time. It is around 3 p.m.? There's a huge snowstorm going on, which is a bit of a bummer. And I heavily considered not coming out. But I think I remember the way I felt the last time that I didn't want to go out. Went out anyway. And I just felt better.

31:40Crazy weather outside. Yeah. I think it's going to stop around five. Oh, okay, that's good. Did you have any trouble getting in? No, I booked the Uber game. I live closed. Okay, so it's not too bad. Cool. Thank you. There are so many wrong things that happened, but I'm just like, all right. Not all of us can be, like, level 20. No, listen. Are you a regular at this cafe? It took actually a surprisingly long time for me to be able to get into the habit of regularly going out to a cafe. So I've been going to a cafe for about a week now. and it's kind of funny i've started looking forward to it like a little excuse to get outside of the house have a bit of a walk outside buy a warm little drink it's not convenient but the inconvenience is kind of worth it i wore the same jacket every single time i was really trying to set them up you think that is important to be a regular is crazy well no i was just like i was trying to be like i'll set the tone i'll be like a almost a cartoon character okay did you talk to the other regulars no because everybody's on their laptops or they're already like that was the thing right like it was everyone's on their laptop or they're like in their own social groups like i'm sitting in the same spot i was sitting in yesterday because like when you're at school i feel like a sense of claim to it one time i did talk to somebody was like i was sat at a table and then i saw like this group of four friends show up and they were like oh we have to sit far apart so i was like oh yeah i could just move it's okay you guys and they were like grateful i understand i sound pathetic according to tahas standards but it was like a nice interaction listen that's that's i think i think that's good like that feels good it did feel good now here's the bad news oh yeah it was a really nice feeling to go to this place repeatedly but it was like not a financially sound decision the price the price of being a regular was too high okay so now i now i get to ask you how was your class i want to hear what you guys thought the yoga class went like i think you hated it and you didn't talk to anyone and then you left yeah i feel like someone probably told you to do downward dog and you're like excuse me and then you didn't do it do you guys hate me this is so mean 7 31 a.m i am heading to the first yoga class of my life and i'm pretty nervous honestly like i know that i'm doing this to kind of get out of my head and into my body, but I genuinely don't know if I'm going to be able to do that.

34:36The idea of being around people doing anything physical kind of freaks me out. I'm like the kind of person who's self-conscious at the gym. I have my doubts that I'll feel anything but a little bit sweaty after this. We'll see though. I'm trying to keep an open mind. It was a really interesting thing to attend because, like, my perception of what a yoga class is is, like, a very specific demographic of people, right? For lack of a better word, I was expecting a room full of Melissa's. I'm giving you – I'm serving you nothing right now. She's seething. She's keeping it in. She's so mad. The closer I get, the less convinced I am that there's going to be anyone at this class.

35:20Who's going to a yoga class at like 8 a.m. on a workday? The only people out right now are just people walking their dogs. It was the most eclectic cluster of people that I could have ever imagined. We had like some college students. We had a bunch of like retirees. We had a guy who looked like a personal trainer. And I almost laughed from how like pleasantly ridiculous it was optically. Because there's mirrors everywhere in this place. Melissa, can you describe, what is it called? The baby pose? The rocking baby pose? Rocking baby or like happy baby. Maybe it's called happy baby. It's a very vulnerable position.

36:01You are on your back and you grab the side of your foot and you just bring your knees towards your chest. You look like a giant baby. It's a very aptly named pose. In that moment, there was like 15 of us in this room, all doing the happy baby pose. All of us look so stupid, but it was really pleasant because all of us look so stupid. Do you feel like these different interactions have brought you closer to people? All of these experiences impacted me in ways that I didn't expect. It highlighted parts of my life that I thought was normal and fine and showed that, like, there are alternatives that exist out there that are pleasant and actually, like, make me feel kind of fuzzy inside.

37:00Speaking with Faye taught me why loneliness is so rampant nowadays. Going on my quest taught me that that loneliness isn't necessarily a bad thing. Now, it feels bad, and in some ways, it's bad for you. The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. That's why I chose to ignore it and deny its existence in my life. It felt shameful, like something I should run away from. But loneliness, with its piercing, gnawing, painful clarity, can act as an incredible signal for what we want, what we need. I would like to see us not use the language of a loneliness epidemic because I think that calling it an epidemic puts it outside of us and our social structures that cause loneliness.

37:51It's not this thing that's invaded us. It is a natural human response to the way we live. and there are some moments and some experiences of loneliness that feel like a gift because they help us to connect with something that's bigger than ourselves I think. People are less likely to feel lonely if they feel that they're held by something some sort of system. It used to be religion that would make people feel integrated for good and ill. The idea that you have a purpose in life that's predestined by God. You know, there's something comforting about that. However, what we have now are other ways that people connect meaning through things like environmentalism or passion and commitments to people that they've never met, but they believe in something.

38:39And that search for meaning, I think, is just, is universal. At a time when it is so easy to feel lost and without purpose, loneliness can help us find our way to each other and ourselves. Did you feel connected to your fellow person? I did feel connected to my fellow person. It was like pleasant knowing that like the things that I feel is like hyper individual insecurities are just like part of normal life. Like it was nice being around people and like recognizing that I'm not alone. Ha!

39:43TED's executive producer is Daniela Balarezzo. Special thanks to Roxanne Hylash, Valentina Bohonini, Lainey Lott, James Ryerson, Kara Leibovitz, and Tansika Sangwarnivong. Operation support from Angela Innes. This podcast was made possible through the support of Grant 63685 from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

40:22We'll be right back.

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