I'm Kimberly Atkins' store in from Magna Chocrabardi and this is on point.

Jennifer Senior, if you don't mind, could you start us off by reading a brief excerpt

from your recent piece in the Atlantic?

Oh, I'd be delighted to.

Thank you for having me here.

Let's see.

When you're in middle age, which I am, mid-middle age to be precise, I am now if you

are 52, you start to realize how very much you need your friends.

They're the flora and fauna in a life that hasn't had much diversity, because you've been

so busy, so relentlessly, stupidly busy, with middle-age things, kids, house, spouse, or

some modern-day version of Zorba's full catastrophe.

Then one day you look up and discover that the ambition monkey is the children into whom

you have pumped thousands of kilowatt hours or no longer partial to your company.

Your partner may or may not still be by your side.

And what then remains with any luck, your friends?

Group changes in turmoil and good times, if you're lucky.

You have a friend to ride the waves of life with.

But since 1990, the percentage of Americans who say they don't have a single close friend

has quadrupled, according to the survey center on American life, 12% of those surveyed last

May say they don't have any close friends.

That's up from just 3% from the past three decades.

And as you can imagine, the pandemic has only made things worse.

...