Sunday Pick: All the lonely people | from Corner Piece

TED Talks Daily

Hosts Sabrina, Taha, and Melissa investigate the modern loneliness epidemic by debating whether digital communication can replace physical presence and interviewing

Key takeaways

• Professor Faye Bound-Alberti defines loneliness as the gap between desired and actual social relationships, distinguishing it from chosen solitude or structural deprivation.
• The hosts debate digital versus physical connection, with Taha and Melissa finding text-based interactions unfulfilling compared to in-person contact.

Main topics

• Loneliness epidemic
• Digital vs physical connection

Notable quotes

"Loneliness nowadays is defined as a sense of lack."

Conclusion

The episode offers listeners a practical framework for understanding lo

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:01) you Happy Sunday. Elise Hugh here. Today, we're bringing you a Sunday Pick, where we share an episode of another podcast from Ted, handpicked by us for you. I'm excited to tell you about Ted's newest podcast, Corner Piece, a show that starts small on life's biggest questions. Co-hosts... Taha, Melissa, and Sabrina are lifelong friends and full-time nerds. You might know from their YouTube channel, Answer in Progress. On each episode, they take an everyday worry like, is romance dead? And launch a full investigation to figure out how much of the problem is modern life and how much is just part of being human. The first episode takes on a question a lot of us know too well. From group chats to video calls, technology should make connections easier than ever. So why is everyone so lonely? Sabrina sets out to investigate the loneliness epidemic sweeping the globe, including her own friends and co-hosts. She talks with Professor Faye Bound-Alberti, author of A Biography of Loneliness, to understand what loneliness actually is, where it comes from, and whether there's a cure. Along the way, Taha and Melissa challenge Sabrina to confront her own loneliness. with a side quest that reveals just how hard connection can be. You can find Corner Piece wherever you get your podcasts, with new episodes every other Thursday. And you can learn about all of Ted's podcasts at podcast.ted.com. That's coming up right after a short break. Speaker 8 (1:44) I'm Rima Grace, and on This is Uncomfortable, we talk about the emotional side of money, what it does to our relationships, our sense of self, and the choices we make. Each week, I talk with real people and experts about the parts of money we usually keep to ourselves. Tune in every Thursday to hear conversations and stories about life and how money messes with it. Listen to This is Uncomfortable on your favorite podcast app. Speaker 8 (2:18) Are you guys lonely? Speaker 6 (2:19) This is a personal question, actually. Speaker 7 (2:23) Wait, I shouldn't be laughing. What if the answer is yes? Speaker 2 (2:30) Hello, I'm Sabrina. Speaker 3 (2:31) I'm Taha. And Speaker 2 (2:32) I'm Melissa. We're Speaker 3 (2:34) friends who've been making stuff on the internet together for the past five years. Speaker 6 (2:37) And Speaker 7 (2:38) this is Corner Piece. Speaker 6 (2:39) A show. Welcome to your ears. We're going to start small on life's biggest questions. Like Speaker 7 (2:45) those day-to-day worries that we think belong Speaker 5 (2:47) just to us. But Speaker 7 (2:48) actually stretch across our culture, our time, and honestly, our humanity. In this episode, I want to understand why loneliness seems so rampant nowadays when technology should make connection easier than ever. I started by asking these two if they're lonely. Speaker 3 (3:05) I don't really think about it. But then when I think about it, sometimes I am lonely. But then I stop thinking about it and then I'm fine. Speaker 2 (3:13) Wow, I've never seen a bigger cry for therapy. Speaker 6 (3:16) A cry for therapy? I don't think therapists are going to be my friend. Speaker 5 (3:20) Deflection. Melissa, are you lonely? Yeah, I do feel lonely sometimes. But like I'm also someone who really enjoys being alone. And so there's times when I'm alone where I'm totally okay. And then there's some times when I'm alone and I'm like... I want companionship or Speaker 7 (3:35) something. I Speaker 3 (3:36) never think about this question. It's too big of a concept. Speaker 7 (3:39) You know what? That's fair. I think that's kind of the reason why I'm asking you guys. Because I keep hearing about this whole loneliness Speaker 2 (3:45) epidemic. It's supposedly really big. It's ruining everybody's lives. And I don't know if I experience loneliness. Like, that's really... Based. Speaker 7 (3:53) So Speaker 3 (3:54) cool. Speaker 5 (3:54) That's Speaker 2 (3:54) why Speaker 5 (3:54) she's like, I'm going to be flexing. Never had a lonely thought in my life. I literally Speaker 7 (3:58) don't mean to flex like this. But like, I think that the question I'm asking is like, what is causing this loneliness? If Speaker 3 (4:05) you're forcing me to think about this, I think there's like a bunch of reasons for why it's hard to connect with people. You can be interacting with 100 people every single day and still be completely lonely if you feel like you are never understood. In a way. you can be understood by yourself and be totally happy being in solitude. Speaker 5 (4:24) Yeah. Sometimes when you're by yourself, you can feel like light and warm and happy. And you can also feel the opposite when you're around people. I'm like trying to grasp for what the feeling of loneliness is, but it just feels like cold and heavy. I Speaker 3 (4:40) think that's pretty accurate, actually. It feels like an emptiness in your chest that like no one sees you. No one would notice if you disappeared. Do Speaker 5 (4:50) both of you feel this way? I do sometimes feel like that, but then sometimes I don't. Like, it's something that doesn't just, like, come and go randomly, but I think that's a normal part of the human experience to sometimes feel... Not okay? Taha? Speaker 3 (5:07) Yeah, I don't... I feel like if I disappeared, it would be a while until someone noticed. Except for I have to be at work. I think the reason I don't feel that sad about it is because I do think this is the reality for a lot of people in the sense that you can just exist in a city and be surrounded by millions of people and never actually connect with a single human being and you're just background noise in every single person's life. But I think that's even harder if you're in a environment that is very different to your background or the way you think about things. I'm a brown man in a Speaker 6 (5:42) racist country. Like, I don't know what to do with that. But like, that's kind of part of the loneliness for me. Like, I'm like, hey, man, you're gonna be on my side during the race war? I don't really know. Like, I don't, I mean, that's all part of it, right? It's like, this Speaker 5 (5:55) is Speaker 3 (5:57) the reality of my life. And so I just... I'm like, all right. Speaker 5 (6:02) To you, what does it mean to be understood? Speaker 3 (6:05) I feel like it's pretty obvious Speaker 6 (6:07) when you are understood. Like you don't feel like a stranger in a community. You feel like you belong. You're asking me as if you guys don't know. This Speaker 2 (6:17) entire conversation is because I don't know. Yeah, okay, Speaker 6 (6:20) Sabrina, you don't know. No, no, you just don't know what loneliness feels like because your entire life is perfect and based. That's what I'm learning from this conversation. Speaker 7 (6:33) I don't know if that's true. I actually feel like an outsider pretty often. But I've been lucky enough to find people who do understand me, like Taha and Melissa, and I don't feel lonely because I have technology to stay connected to them, even when we live five time zones apart. Speaker 2 (6:51) When I hear people talking about loneliness... I want to like grab them by the shoulders and shake them and say like, what do you mean? We got phones. We've got group chats. We've got Zoom. I just don't get it. She's Speaker 5 (7:04) doing the thing that people do when you tell them you're lonely. You're like, no, you're not. There's all of these things that you could be doing. So you're not lonely. But Speaker 6 (7:11) she's doing it on a societal level. She's like, she's looking at the loneliness epidemic and going, all of you guys have phones and you can put yourselves in group chats. None of you are lonely. Speaker 7 (7:23) Do you think there's a difference between like Speaker 2 (7:25) the physical connection in the Speaker 7 (7:27) real world versus a digital connection? Because I'd be Speaker 2 (7:30) in group chats. For Speaker 5 (7:31) me, I do feel a huge difference between the relationships that I maintain solely digitally and the ones that I have in real life. Like if we're just sending each other memes back and forth, I'm kind of like, sure, whatever. But do I feel something in the same way? No. Speaker 3 (7:50) Yeah, I'm the same. I mean, I don't like texts ever. I feel like it's always a thing for me to do and it never feels like a meaningful connection. That doesn't mean that I don't like hearing from my friends. It just means that I don't love the text-based interaction that's always very unfulfilling. Speaker 7 (8:16) I found this kind of surprising. For me, digital interactions have always felt almost identical to physical ones. You know how in TV shows when friends just barge into each other's houses? That's what texting a group chat feels like to me. A second home where all of my friends are just always hanging out. It's all of the convenience of physical connection without needing to travel or coordinate schedules. Speaker 5 (8:40) Sabrina in a group chat, she is the same level. It is like I'm sitting next to you, which is not an experience that I have with like any of my other friends. Speaker 3 (8:50) Wait, that is actually true. But wouldn't it be better if you just met up every day and you didn't have a group chat? No, that Speaker 2 (8:57) actually seems... Actually, I got uncomfortable with you saying that. I think that my relationships are probably fine. We're Speaker 7 (9:04)