What Loneliness Does To Your Brain with Ben Rein

About This Episode

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

What’s the difference between being alone and being lonely? Why can you be surrounded by people and still feel alone? We break down the neurobiology behind social connection, how oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine reward our interactions, and what happens when we’re missing those signals. From rising cortisol levels to chronic inflammation, we learn how prolonged loneliness can actually damage organs and shorten lives.

Do extroverts live longer? How much social time is “enough”? We dig into personality, empathy, and why virtual interactions often leave us unsatisfied. Could our brains be losing their ability to read social cues online—and is that fueling the hostility of the internet age?

Can we medicate loneliness away? How do drugs like MDMA affect empathy? We get into why oxytocin is nature’s antidepressant, and how our pets might literally make us healthier. We get into research on what makes for good socializing and how loneliness leads to more loneliness. How do we dig ourselves out?

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