Welcome to the Eric Erickson Show podcast, Our 2.

Greetings. Welcome. It is Eric Erickson across the nation. That is my real name.

Y'all do realize that, right? I had an email this morning from someone who told me I should come up with a more creative pseudonym for radio than Eric Eurek's.

It's real.

It's real name.

Nonetheless, the phone number, if you want to be on the program, 8779773-725.

I'm not going to talk about the headlines right now.

I've actually been reading some stuff that I find very interesting that I talk about on

occasion.

I'm going to get to alienating a lot of you as this hour goes on, making some of you mad at me. Why would I burn down my whole office? I'm not. At least I don't want to. I don't intentionally willfully sit behind the microphone to make people mad. But I want to talk about a very serious subject. And it actually is, I'm not making light of it. I'm not trying to build up, it actually is probably a more serious subject than you are aware of.

And if you're a man or a married woman in particular, please stick around and listen to me here.

There is new research out on American isolation.

And what the research shows, there's a study from the American Enterprise Institute,

there's a study from Pew, a couple of others out there, and they all point to the same

trend that men in the United

States of America are far more isolated these days than women.

Men are far less likely to have a friend that they confide in, that they open up to about

personal struggles.

Women are far more likely.

Now, it's less for women now than before COVID, but still about two times as high as

men.

What is really notable here is the percentage of men with at least six close friends fell by

...