This episode is going to be a little different, perhaps a little heavier than usual.

I want to talk about the power of reaching out.

How simply being there for someone can make an unfathomable difference.

Right? We tend to think of, you know, a monumental impact requiring monumental action.

And sometimes that's simply not the case.

Sometimes it's just showing up and letting someone know that, hey, I'm in your corner.

And I've been thinking a lot about this, right?

This came to mind because over the past couple

weeks, I've had two people I went to high school with Passaway, right? Young men in their mid-30s, gone.

And by the way, there are two of many people from my high school that have either OD'd and died or taken their lives.

It's an epidemic.

And I'm sure it is across the board, right?

But being that I am one and hear about it often, I know that particularly young men are feeling isolated.

They're feeling lost.

They're feeling depressed. They're feeling depressed.

Pandemic exacerbated this quite a bit. It's a problem. And it's a complicated problem.

You can point to a lot of things. The way we connect now doesn't actually make us feel connected.

We can't trick our brains into thinking that followers

online are the same as friends grilling steaks with us in the backyard. It's different.

But it's not only isolation, right? I think there's a crisis of meaning, of purpose, of feeling

a part of something. There's a societal void. I don't think there's any question about that.

You know, and in my little corner of the universe here, I talk frequently about the process of

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