Hey deserving listeners, a lot of you know that I've been focusing a lot on loneliness lately because not only due to the pandemic, but just I think a lot of people are suffering from loneliness as a part of the investigation, I thought I'd have a special guest on this show.

Billy, why don't you introduce yourself to the podcast?

Sure, my name's Billy Baker. I am a reporter for the Boston Globe and I am the author of a new book called We Need to Hang Out.

I mean I guess the easiest thing would be to tell my story how I got wrapped up in this

and ended up writing a book. It started when I was called to an editor's office

at the Boston Globe magazine with this,

one of the oldest lives in journalism,

which is we have a story you be perfect for, you know,

and it feeds right into the ego, I marched down there,

it was like, okay, what is it?

And I sit down, and this guy looks at me

and he says, I want you to write about how middle-aged men have no friends.

And I was shocked and a little offended and also, you know, are you calling me middle age?

Like a whole bunch of things are spinning through my head in this moment.

Before I could even really say anything, he starts plowing through all this stuff that was new to me which was this all this research on a

crisis of loneliness in this country at the time the Surgeon General was kind of

of using this as his chief platform.

He's this editor is going on about all these mental health consequences which

which made sense but it was what was shocking were all these physical consequences as well.

That loneliness, isolation, even living alone could have these dire effects on your physical health.

And so I kind of sit there like, what, you know, I'm still a little lost?

What does this have to do with me being perfect for this?

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