Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast in which we take a

look at the loneliness epidemic that long predates the COVID lockdowns which of course only made things worse. But it's not

primarily a cultural or even a technological problem in origin as many believe. The

issue I think largely has to do with how our built environment is designed and then social and technological aspects compound the problem.

Sources today include the PBS news hour, Studio Leonardo, The Happy Urbanist, a TED Talk,

Changing Places, Strong Towns, Not Just Bikes, and Vaux, with an additional members only clip from Andrewism.

Your declaration in this report very clearly linked loneliness to matters of life or death, to put it plainly. This one number stuck out to me.

It found social isolation increases the risk of

premature mortality by nearly 30%. How and why did you come to focus on this topic?

Well, I'm not, I had certainly had first-hand experience

with loneliness in my own life

and also in my care of patients, where I found

so often people would come into the hospital

for one condition or another, but there was loneliness lurking in the background.

But it was only when I began my tenure as surgeon general that I started to realize in talking to people across the country that loneliness was extraordinarily common.

In fact, we are now finding that one in two adults report measurable levels of loneliness,

and it turns out that young people are most affected than any other group.

And here's why this is so concerning.

It's because we've realized that loneliness is more than just a bad feeling.

It has real consequences for our mental and physical health. It increases our risk of depression, anxiety, and suicide, but social disconnection also raises the risk of heart disease and dementia and premature death on levels on par with smoking daily and even greater than the risks that we see associated with obesity.

So however you look at it, loneliness and isolation are public health concerns that we have to prioritize.

We see according to your numbers that things were already trending this way that was then

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