Good evening, everybody. Hope you're all getting through the week well.

Winding it down, focusing on some self-care, tons of joy and pleasure, and of course, lots and lots of rest.

Gratik got a great show plan for you. We're going to be talking a lot about monogamy. Yep. People don't ask the right questions. Don't quite understand it. And that kind of gets in the way of us having these healthy, long-term sustainable relationships. But I wanted to open the show by talking about the brain and social

isolation. Yep, it's a hot topic right now. But studies show over and over that social isolation

and loneliness have a negative impact on the functioning of the brain. Now, we know

relational health is our mental health and a way to really assess how mentally healthy you are is to look at the quality of the brain. Now, we know relational health is our mental health and a way

to really assess how mentally healthy you are is to look at the quality and health of the relationships

you're in. What kind of person are you and all the different relationships you show up in and vice versa?

But we know more importantly that one of the most toxic things psychologically is isolation.

Isolation absolutely will always be. But what impact does it have on the brain?

Well, a lot of new studies are showing that it has a massive impact. And we're not just talking

about things like memory, right? So we need to be prioritizing that. And we've talked about that

at the beginning of the pandemic, you know, staying connected, reaching out, using things like FaceTime so you can actually get some eye contact, leaving your house and going

out in the world so you can just see other human beings moving around in the world, right?

And we need to prioritize that. We can't think that this isn't something that that is totally

neutral. Researchers are actually going as far as to refer to the impacts neurologically of, you know,

isolation as a silent epidemic.

That's a big deal.

That quarantining social distancing have been great.

We've needed that.

It's helped decrease the, you know, transmission and positives of the virus spreading, but that there's adverse health

effects. And that was always that double bind, right? We need to do something to prevent death

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