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Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. I'm really glad you're here. This evening is our get lit with All Of It book club event. Tonight we are meeting at the New York Public Library to discuss Lone Women by Victor LaValle. Plus, we have musical guest banjo player Kaia Kater. I'm looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible. It's so great to be able to gather in-person and talk about this fantastic book.

Now, if you can't make it to 40th and 5th Avenue, check out the live stream. You can head to wnyc.org/getlit for more info, but we do hope to see you later on tonight. That's happening at 6:00 PM by the way. Let's get this hour started with a Mental Health Monday conversation.

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This month, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy released an advisory noting that loneliness and isolation in America posed a significant health risk, stating, "The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is similar to that caused by smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day." Here's Dr. Murthy explaining further.

Dr. Vivek Murthy: Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling. Being socially disconnected, which can range from feeling alone to being isolated is bad both for individual and societal health. Research shows that loneliness and isolation are associated with a greater risk of heart disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. In fact, lacking connection can increase the risk of premature death to levels comparable to smoking daily.

Loneliness and social isolation are also far more common than we might realize. About one in two American adults report experiencing loneliness, everyone can be impacted, across all ages, socioeconomic conditions, and geographies. This widespread disconnection presents profound threats to our health and well-being.

Alison Stewart: The warning comes at a time when more people are emerging from the isolation of the pandemic, and yet many Americans especially teenagers are still reporting feeling alone. Our next guest has spent a lot of time thinking about the effects of isolation. Kristen Radtke is the author of the 2021 Book, Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness. She combines research, memoir, cultural critique, and beautiful art to explore the roots of our loneliness epidemic. She's the perfect guest to join us for our final installment of Mental Health Mondays. Kristen, welcome back to All Of It.

Kristen Radtke: Thank you so much, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to hear from you. What's a time in your life when you felt loneliness? What got you through? Why do you think more Americans have been feeling isolated and disconnected? Excuse me. What role has loneliness played in your life? Give us a call, 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. If you'd like to remain anonymous, you can send us a DM on Instagram @allofitwnyc. The conversation for this half-hour is loneliness. Kristen, when you interviewed people about loneliness first of all, how willing were they to talk to you about it?

Kristen Radtke: Surprisingly to me, extremely willing. What I found so fascinating was that almost everybody had a story. People would recall it really quickly. A lot of people thought about moments of transition, like going through a breakup or moving to a new place, having a child, starting a new job, graduating for school, things like that. Some people talked about it in these really broad terms, and then some people had these really evocative stories of a really specific moment in time, like even a specific day.

Alison Stewart: What did you [unintelligible 00:03:53] out from the difference between alone and being lonely?

Kristen Radtke: I think often we conflate those two things, but there's a big difference between being alone and being lonely. You can spend a lot of time alone and not feel lonely, and you can spend a lot of time with other people and feel lonely. Everyone has a different biological threshold that we're born with, it's like an internal trigger that tells us how much time we need to spend with other people, but loneliness we can think of it as the gap between the relationships we have and the relationships we want. Just spending a lot of time with people doesn't necessarily quell that loneliness. It doesn't stop it. We need to be having meaningful conversation, connections. We need to feel safe, things like that.

Alison Stewart: That's why you can feel lonely at work. You can feel lonely in a relationship. You can feel lonely in a friendship.

Kristen Radtke: Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: In your research, you note that loneliness tends to spike around three ages, late 20s, mid-50s, and 80s, what accounts for these spikes? What do they have in common, those age range?

Kristen Radtke: I think that they're all moments of transition. When you're in your 20s, you are trying to figure out who you are. Maybe you're moving to a new place. Maybe you're moving out of your family's house. You're trying to make it on your own. Maybe you're entering a serious relationship, getting a new job. In your 50s a lot of people are nearing retirement. If they've had children, their kids are moving out. Then in your 80s, you're going through a ton of changes. Maybe a lot of people that you love are gone. Maybe you're having to grapple with moving into assisted living, things like that. We're really looking at moments where you're going through a lot of change, and transitions can be particularly difficult I think for feeling lonely.

Alison Stewart: Loneliness is the subject of today's Mental Health Mondays. My guest is Kristen Radtke, author of Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness. Listeners, we'd love to get you in on this conversation. We want to hear from you. When was a time in your life when you felt the loneliness? What got you through it? Why do you think more Americans have been feeling isolated and disconnected? What role has loneliness played in your life? Our phone lines are open, 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC.

Of course, if you'd like to be anonymous, you can send us a direct message on Instagram @allofitwnyc. You spoke to some people working with this really great organization called The Silver Line, what does The Silver Line do?

Kristen Radtke: The Silver Line is this nonprofit in the UK that offers-- It's like a phone line that lonely seniors can call when they need someone to talk to. I think it would be great if we had more resources like this in the US, but it offers a space where if you're feeling a little itchy for conversation or something like that, you can reach out. Then they do all kinds of other great outreach. They have a buddy system, things like that. Like people will come and make visits. Well, it's an amazing service. It's not the end all be all solution for loneliness. I think we still need to look at how our communities are structured, and how we can offer support to each other as peers, but I think it's a really great start.

Alison Stewart: What did you think when you heard the Surgeon General's report when you heard about it and the details of it?

Kristen Radtke: Well, it's one of those things where I think your first impulse is like, well, let's look at that and why might that be? If someone's spending a lot more time alone, are they more likely to be in a dangerous situation? We know that for example, by data that people are more likely to eat unhealthily when they spend a lot of time alone, because there's no one there to be like, "Don't eat that slice of pizza." Or maybe you're more likely to have an accident or something like that, and no one is there to help you, but through decades of research has shown that the disparity in life expectancy between those who spend a lot of time alone and those who don't is too great to attribute to factors such as that. If you compare two people, one who's lonely and one who's not, who has very similar lifestyles, you'll still see that increase in premature mortality in people who are lonely.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Sherry or Sherry, excuse me. Sherry is calling in from Chelsea. Hi Sherry.

Sherry: Hi. What I was thinking is that the loneliness and the depression are self-sustaining, because people who get that way are less likely to want to get up and make that phone call to somebody or get out of the house and do something. You have to be proactive in a way to avoid that, but then when you get depressed, you can't, and other people need to call you and say, let's go do something. Don't stay home alone, but once they start feeling that way, they can't get themselves out of it.

Alison Stewart: Sherry, thank you for calling in. I'm curious, from your research Kristen what is something that we can do for someone that we observe and we think, "I think that person's lonely," even if you don't know them well?

Kristen Radtke: Well, Sherry is exactly right. When we enter a prolonged state of loneliness, we actually go into a state that's called hypervigilance where we're less likely to reach out, we're less likely to make connections, and when we have an opportunity, sometimes we're really unwilling to take it, because we start to perceive the world as threatening rather than welcoming. It's exactly right that when we're feeling lonely, we need to resist that. We need to opposite action that desire to stay inward and we need to reach out.

To answer your question, Alison, if we see someone maybe who's reaching out less often we can often interpret that as, "Oh, maybe they just don't want to see me." That's actually why we consider loneliness to be contagious because once someone else stops reaching out the other person may feel rejected by that. I think you need to push past that. If you see someone whose behavior is changing, take the first step, make the call.

Alison Stewart: On Instagram, someone has written, "I believe that being private about our personal life also contributes to hampering us building relationships which contributes to loneliness. Modern society values privacy in a way that is harmful, speaks to our inability to be curious while being respectful and non-judgmental." That's very interesting.

Kristen Radtke: It is really interesting. I grew up in the Midwest, which is a rather private place. Growing up, you were polite by not asking too many questions or by not sharing too much. I think we all know what it's like to ask someone how they're doing and not really expect a real answer so I completely agree with that.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Priya calling in from Millburn, New Jersey. Hi, Priya. Thank you so much for calling All Of It. You're on the air.

Priya: Oh, hi there. Thanks for taking my call. I just said or just posed the question of do we problematize loneliness excessively here in the US. Isn't it just perfectly okay to be at home and go for a walk and read and do all the things that you enjoy, but then when you see people on social media doing other things, you feel like, "Oh, they're not lonely. They're doing all these fun cool things and I'm just reading my book and going on my walk and working on my laptop all day." Are we problematizing these things and that's making it worse? Is loneliness really so bad? We define it as something that's bad, but is it truly bad? I don't know.

Alison Stewart: To follow up on Priya's point, just from reading your book and doing some research, there's a difference then from FOMO, fear of missing out, versus loneliness, right?

Kristen Radtke: Yes. Absolutely. Sorry if you can hear. There's some kind of alarm going off in my office in the background. There is a huge difference between being alone and being lonely. We've seen a lot of stats about, particularly in teenagers, things like that, the way that social media can lead to more depression, feeling left out, things like that. Certainly, if we feel satisfied with our time spent alone, there's nothing wrong with that. I also do think that there's a benefit to loneliness, which is that if we learn to listen to it, it can help us reach out to other people. In the same way that when we're hungry, we eat, when we feel lonely, we need to reach out.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Emily from Brooklyn. Hi. Emily, thanks for calling All Of It.

Emily: Hi. Thanks for having me. Just to build off of what you said about that there can be a benefit to loneliness and that it gives us a signal to reach out to other people, the comment that I wanted to contribute is that I think as a culture, we don't necessarily have the tools to connect with and to rely on ourselves or to be in self-inquiry and self-relationship and so when we do experience that loneliness, a lot of people don't know how to connect to the relationship to self as a way to dive more deeply into the ability to build from that foundation of self to form meaningful relationships with others.

My work is as an artist, but also as an embodied voice coach. I work with people on breath and body and trying to help them to really reinvest in self-inquiry and self-trust and self-intimacy. I think we've lost some of those tools within our culture and society. would say as much as loneliness is an indicator to reach out to others, it's also perhaps a moment to look inward and to build sustainable tools for relationship to self.

Alison Stewart: Emily, have you observed why you think people aren't able to tune inward and understand themselves?

Emily: Absolutely. Yes. I think that we're living in a very much late-stage capitalist grind culture where people are generally quite disconnected from their bodies truthfully and from sensation and from presence. Although in the West, I think mindfulness practices have definitely infiltrated but not to the extent that people are willing to just sit with themselves. I feel like it's like mindfulness is a hack to be more productive or to be more focused, but can we actually access tools like breath and feeling our own touch and feeling our feet on the ground so that we can actually experience a more holistic sense of ourselves as human beings that is below the neck, not just the neck up is what I would say.

Alison Stewart: Emily, thank you for calling in. On Instagram, someone has written to us, "I am married, involved in my son's school, and I'm desperately lonely. I think it's a vicious cycle as the loneliness makes me feel like I don't deserve companionship." As you were, in your book, researching and writing about loneliness, you talk a little bit about romantic relationships, but not a whole lot. I spent a lot of time. How did you want to tackle romantic relationships in the book? What did you want people to think about?

Kristen Radtke: Well, I think that, particularly in romantic comedies or media in general, we see a relationship as the solution to everything. As the, "Then they lived happily ever, ever after, after," and there's this song and, "And I'll never be lonely anymore," which isn't true. Of course, we need all kinds of relationships. We need friendships. One individual person cannot always fulfill all of our needs.

I think the other thing that that message touches on is the feelings of shame that are often associated with loneliness. It feels like something that we're doing wrong. It feels like something that's a personal fault, which is, I think, something we really need to fight against because it's like a biological evolutionary trigger that's just telling you there's something else out there that you need, that you need to seek out.

Alison Stewart: I also want people to know that this book is beautiful art and it's a graphic piece of work. How did you want to approach loneliness through art?

Kristen Radtke: It's a great question. I think the project started when I-- I live in New York and New York is a great place to observe people obviously because we spend a lot of time in public alone together. I started by drawing just a series of people alone doing things in public places and then started from there, started questioning what loneliness was, what's the difference between loneliness and aloneness, et cetera. I think the biggest challenge with drawing loneliness was how do you communicate loneliness without just continuing to draw people alone in an empty room or something like that because, of course, loneliness is so much more complex.

Alison Stewart: We are a radio station, so we want to acknowledge the book starts and ends with radio your book. CQ, your dad was a big fan of Ham Radio. You're a big fan of Casey Kasem Show. We know that during the pandemic a lot of people listened, more people listened than before or listened longer and have sent us notes and DMs that it helped them not feel as alone, and found some comfort. Why do you think radio is a good medium for connection?

Kristen Radtke: Well, I think there's something really particular about the human voice. It's like the way that we've moved more to text than to phone calls or we talk about feeling assaulted by a voicemail or something like that. There is ways in which it's a lot easier just to read text. Speaking like the caller who was talking about slowing down, radio and the human voice helps us do that. It helps us feel more connected to a real human person so I do think that's really valuable. I also think the radio is a extraordinary collection of a whole lot of different points of view and voices, which is, I think, often imperative in helping us feel less alone.

Alison Stewart: From the research you did, is there anything about loneliness that you think is just been misreported or is apocryphal or just really not helpful and you would like to take this opportunity to say what you think about it?

Kristen Radtke: I think the main thing with loneliness is that we often are like, "Just put yourself out there more and then everything will change." This idea that just spending time with other people is enough. I think that that can be damaging because I remember once when I moved to a new city and I just really couldn't meet anyone that I felt connected to. I would go to these events for my industry or things like that and I would go home feeling lonelier than before because I was just trying to force these connections.

Relationships take time to build and it's not just about having a person there, it's about having the right people in your life. I think it's about not getting down in yourself when you are in a room full of people and you still aren't feeling socially fulfilled.

Alison Stewart: The name of the book is Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness. My guest has been Kristen Radtke. Kristen, thank you so much for being with us.

Kristen Radtke: Thank you, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Thanks to everybody who called in with comments and thanks to everybody who reached out on social media. Wanted you to know that we did see your comments, we hear you, and we're hoping that listening to us may help a little bit. Kristen, thanks so much.

Kristen Radtke: Thank you.

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