What Loneliness Does To Your Brain with Ben Rein

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4.6 • 14.1K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2025

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What does loneliness do to our brains? Neil deGrasse Tyson, Chuck Nice, and Gary O’Reilly explore how the loneliness epidemic impacts our minds, bodies, and even our lifespan with neuroscientist Ben Rein, author of Why Brains Need Friends: The Science of Social Connection.

Transcript

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0:00.0	On special edition, we finally got neuroscientist on top of the lonely situation.
0:05.0	Good. About time.
0:06.0	Yeah. And what's the cure?
0:07.0	Bring a friend.
0:08.0	Coming up, all about loneliness and what we're doing about it.
0:13.0	Welcome to StarTalk.
0:17.0	Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:28.0	This is StarTalk's special edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, you're a personal astrophysicist.
0:34.6	And when you hear special edition, it means Gary O'Reilly is in the house.
0:39.4	Hey Neil.
0:39.9	You and your editors cook this stuff up.
0:42.5	Yes, we did.
0:43.4	And today it's like the lonely brain, all human physiological conditions.
0:48.9	Yeah, and this is something that we'll explore.
0:51.4	Okay.
0:51.7	You don't understand why when we get in the middle of it.
0:53.3	We'll do that.
0:53.9	Chuck.
0:54.5	Hey. Lonely everything. Chuck. Hey.
0:55.8	Lonely everything.
0:57.8	Just lonely.
0:59.8	Lonely man.
	...

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