Social connectedness
40
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10
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10
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Search complete. 40 mentions across 10 episodes found for "Social connectedness".
Sep 13, 2026
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Dan HarrisGUEST
The final recommendation, and this one will go to you, Laurie, um, also counterintuitive in this age of individualism and, uh, tech-induced isolation, invest in social connection when you feel stuck.
Laurie SantosGUEST
Yes.
Laurie SantosGUEST
Single most robust finding in all of happiness research.
Laurie SantosGUEST
Um, happy people are just more social, and social people are just more happy.
Laurie SantosGUEST
Um, it's just one of the most reliable predictors of how good you're feeling.
Laurie SantosGUEST
And social connection, I think, can be incredibly important for getting unstuck for a couple different reasons, right? One is that we use other people as good social indicators, social comparisons, right? If you're feeling stuck and there's a particular thing you want to move towards, find other people who are doing that.
Laurie SantosGUEST
Gretchen mentioned this earlier.
Helen ThomsonHOST
Um, a- you know, the smells and the sounds that we know lower our cortisol, that make us less stressed.
Cat de LangeHOST
And that social connection as well.
Cat de LangeHOST
It's a space where people come together.
Cat de LangeHOST
And I think that everything that you have with the green spaces, which we know there's so much evidence for, that's still there under the baseline.
13 MINS LATER
Cat de LangeHOST
... and it was absolutely amazing.
Cat de LangeHOST
And we've talked about awe before and, um, what happens when we experience awe.
Cat de LangeHOST
This was an awesome experience, and one of the things that we found is that it can increase a sense of social connection, and I thought it was really interesting that after the eclipse, that we'd been hanging out, like, I'd been chatting to these guys who were there to see it from Belgium, and then afterwards they were just so nice, and then we were, like, hugging-
Helen ThomsonHOST
[laughs]
Dan HarrisHOST
That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Wayfair, every style, every home.
Dan HarrisHOST
[chime] The final recommendation, and this one will go to you, Laurie, um, also counterintuitive in this age of individualism and, uh, tech-induced isolation, invest in social connection when you feel stuck.
Laurie SantosGUEST
Yes.
Laurie SantosGUEST
Single most robust finding in all of happiness research.
Laurie SantosGUEST
Um, happy people are just more social, and social people are just more happy.
Laurie SantosGUEST
Um, it's just one of the most reliable predictors of how good you're feeling.
Laurie SantosGUEST
And social connection, I think, can be incredibly important for getting unstuck for a couple different reasons, right? One is that we use other people as good social indicators, social comparisons, right? If you're feeling stuck and there's a particular thing you want to move towards, find other people who are doing that.
Laurie SantosGUEST
Gretchen mentioned this earlier.
Walter StorholtHOST
We've kind of got four main categories to hit, although as we zero in specifically to the pilot world as well, I think there may be a few more that kind of bubble up to the surface.
Walter StorholtHOST
The first one that comes to mind that's definitely not in that money category would be those social connections in the workplace.
Walter StorholtHOST
I mean, not only do people identify with work, but that's where they have all of their interaction.
Walter StorholtHOST
Their friends are all in the workplace in many cases, and You shut that off and it gets a lot harder to stay in touch with people harder than you think, I would imagine.
Walter StorholtHOST
Okay.
Walter StorholtHOST
Yeah.
Walter StorholtHOST
We've hit a couple of different things, right? Social connections in the workplace.
Walter StorholtHOST
Yes, some money worries, but our main focus today is kind of a little bit on the outside of that.
Ronald HoffmanHOST
Um, so.
Layla MuedinHOST
But you know what? Th- there is, there is also social connection, and a, a profound thing that I heard from a, a Dr.
Layla MuedinHOST
Zach Bush said, "The more the, the...
Layla MuedinHOST
Well, the question is not what did you eat for dinner, it's who did you have dinner with?"
Brian MilnerHOST
But I have to kind of build it for you because it's important to understand it's not just an AI issue.
Brian MilnerHOST
It's a social connection issue.
Brian MilnerHOST
And I'll start with a particular survey.
Brian MilnerHOST
It's from the Barnes Family Foundation.
Brian MilnerHOST
They had a study that came out called Social Connection in America, and this is from December 2025.
Brian MilnerHOST
So not that long ago, not even a year ago.
Brian MilnerHOST
They surveyed 10,000 U.S. adults for this survey.
Brian MilnerHOST
We'll find ways to kind of acquire it when we don't have it.
Barbara GiesserGUEST
What we're going to talk about today are the six pillars of brain health, how these can help people with MS feel and function their best.
Barbara GiesserGUEST
So the six pillars of brain health are nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress management, social connection, and avoiding harmful substances.
Barbara GiesserGUEST
And we're going to review how each of these in particular can help people live their best lives with MS.
Barbara GiesserGUEST
So let's talk about diet first.
6 MINS LATER
Barbara GiesserGUEST
Sometimes it's exercise, sometimes it's engaging in a hobby, Sometimes it's talking to a friend.
Barbara GiesserGUEST
Sometimes it's some professional counseling.
Barbara GiesserGUEST
Social connection.
Barbara GiesserGUEST
The National MS Society likes to say, when MS short circuits you, the society helps you connect.
Lauren SimmondsHOST
Maybe just to mention a few stats about loneliness.
Lauren SimmondsHOST
Michelle Lim, who's the founder for Social Connection in Australia, one of the stats from her research is that it's almost one in three of us are lonely at any given time.
Lauren SimmondsHOST
So that's a lot of people that tend to feel lonely.
Lauren SimmondsHOST
In Australia, thankfully, we're actually one of the one in five countries that has a loneliness awareness campaign.
6 MINS LATER
Trisna Sari-FraserGUEST
But having said that, how fragile their work was, how precarious.
Trisna Sari-FraserGUEST
So I went back and studied psychology again and was very fortunate to discover a particular orientation called community psychology and This particular orientation, in Australia we do work, as you might expect a psychologist to work, one-on-one therapeutically, but as an orientation and it's an international discipline, we're much more likely to sort of reject the psychologist as expert and believe in the incredible impact that peer mentors and school teachers have in communities.
Trisna Sari-FraserGUEST
And then I was really, really lucky after finishing the masters to discover a PhD position looking at intercultural music engagement and how it can facilitate community resilience and social connection.
Trisna Sari-FraserGUEST
And it really did feel like a bit of a dream.
Jillian SandstromGUEST
I teach at a university, so I'm teaching young people.
Jillian SandstromGUEST
I teach this class called Social Connection and Disconnection, and I wanted to teach that so that we could talk about loneliness and normalize.
Jillian SandstromGUEST
So they know that they're not the only person who feels alone and feels like they don't have the friends that they'd like to have, all this kind of stuff.
Jillian SandstromGUEST
But as part of that class, I get them to talk to a stranger.
18 MINS LATER
Jillian SandstromGUEST
And I feel like that could be a challenge too.
Jillian SandstromGUEST
And I'm going to pivot to talking about education because that's something, it's a workplace of sorts.
Jillian SandstromGUEST
You know, and I'm aware of research on professors feeling like they don't need to to pay any attention to that kind of social connection with their students and feel like it's not my job to be friends with my students.
Jillian SandstromGUEST
And I don't think that's what anybody is saying.