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Wired for Connection

Episode 22 · 5 May 2025 · 1 hr 0 min

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Wired for Connection: Why Friendship Is Important

Why is friendship so important, and why does it feel harder than ever? In part one of the abundant social life series, Randy Lorensen and Dr. John Oberg, with Anthony Marino, talk about why humans are wired for connection.

Each of them defines what a friend means to him. They also talk about belonging, and what books like Tribe and Sapiens say about how humans have lived in community. They cover Anthony's building blocks of friendship, a close friend you rarely see, layers of intimacy, and the skills that make relationships work, like owning mistakes and taking feedback.

After the break they ask what's going wrong. They discuss losing the ability to disagree and stay friends, technology and social media, remote work and isolation among young graduates, and how body language and social skills are learned.

It sets up the rest of the five-part series.

The Loneliness Epidemic, Social Isolation and Why We Need Friends

What you'll discover:

  • What a friend really is, in three different definitions
  • Why humans are wired for community
  • Layers of intimacy and the skills that make friendships work
  • How cutting people out became the easy answer
  • Why disagreeing and staying friends has gotten harder
  • Technology, remote work and social isolation

Timestamps

  • [00:00] Welcome: part one of the abundant social life series
  • [01:15] What a friend means to each of us
  • [03:42] Belonging and friendship
  • [06:06] Books: Tribe and Sapiens
  • [07:19] Community in earlier societies
  • [08:33] Anthony's building blocks of friendship
  • [11:00] A closest friend you rarely see
  • [12:12] Layers of intimacy and four relationship skills
  • [15:54] "Get on a plane tomorrow"
  • [17:08] Owning your mistakes
  • [18:21] Being able to take feedback
  • [19:34] Friends who value things differently
  • [21:59] Judgment, and cutting people out
  • [25:42] Seeing the other side
  • [28:08] Finding the root cause
  • [31:49] What's going wrong today
  • [33:02] When we can't share opinions
  • [36:44] The consequences of speaking up
  • [39:11] Well-formed opinions
  • [41:40] When friends could disagree over dinner
  • [44:09] Technology, and losing the need to coexist
  • [46:35] Self-actualization and transactional relationships
  • [49:08] Young graduates, remote work and isolation
  • [52:52] Soft skills
  • [54:09] Body language and social interaction
  • [57:50] How much has changed since the 1970s
  • [59:05] Young people pushing back on social media
  • [1:00:19] Wrap-up, and what's next

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About the hosts

This episode features Randy Lorensen, Dr. John Oberg and Anthony Marino (Anthony joined as a guest for this series, before becoming a co-host). Host bios are on the host pages linked below.

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Related episodes

Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It was generated automatically from the episode audio, so expect some spelling errors in names and terms.

[00:03] five-part series on having an abundant social life. In this episode, we're going to get into the science and soul of friendship and a lot of just what is a friend, why are friends important, what are the problems in the world if we don't have friends, and really just a great way to kick off this joining me as always, Randy Lorensen, my co-host and serial entrepreneur and frequent guest, Anthony Marino. Jens, welcome. Today we're going to dive right into the first of a five-part or more series on friendship and how to have an abundant social life. And today we're going to dive into kind of the basics, some of the science behind friendship, but really the fundamentals of friendship that people don't talk about that often. excited to dive in and uh talk about not just the science that I'm excited about, but also about like why friendship happens, how friendship happens, and we'll go through a whole series of things. I'm excited about the topic. Yeah, let's let's jump in. Um before we get too into the science, Anthony, John, what is a friend? Let's just talk about what it is. I mean, everybody talks about having friends, but I don't think it means the same thing to everybody. So, what what does a friend mean to you? I know you've got a pretty strong definition. Do you want to go first or second? Um, I just think there's a a huge chasm between friendships and a friend. Um, many many years ago, my dad uh said that if you can go through your life and at any given time count five people on one hand that you can call true friends, you're a lucky man. And that has always stuck with me. And those five have varied over time, but those are people that would give you their last dollar. They're there for you before you even know you need them. And um they they're just they're just there for you all the time.

[02:00] People you can count on. And friendships, they they come and go. Um they're important and crit critically important to have a great social life. But there's just a to me there's a humongous difference between friend and Yeah, I think I'm I'm in the same camp in terms of like, you know, the five people you spend the most time with or the five closest friends you have. The the nuance for me is that I I wanted to have lots of friends at one point in my adult life. And I I had a for reasons we can get into later today, a pretty skewed relationship uh with people broadly due to some of my own kind of uh shortcomings as a human. And um after hours of therapy, one of the things I learned was that you can have different layers of friendship. Like there are people, it's like an onion. There's the five people Anthony talks about that you're closest with. And then I think there's other layers of friendship that maybe have less intensity, less closeness that kind of there's a spectrum between deep true friends that are those five we just talked about and then acquaintances. And there's a whole spectrum of layers in between that people can come in and out of. And sometimes you find that person that belongs right in the center five. And sometimes people don't get there at all.

[03:07] And and so um I think the answer is it kind of depends on on season of life where you are in the friendship relationship and then like Anthony said, people come in and out of your life for sure. Yeah. And and there's definitely different levels and we're going to explore all of that during this series, right? And how to you know throughout the series we're going to talk about, you know, how to find better friends, how to how to be a better friend and and everything in in between. So let's uh let's jump in. John, let's bring the let's put the doctor hat on for a minute. Yeah, sure. Let's uh let's get into the the biology, the science of belonging and friends. And let's let's start there. Yeah, I don't know that I want to hold myself up to be an expert on the biology of things kind of deeply, but on the science part, you know, I I showed the two of you an article on um isolation today. And you know, isolation's been a topic a lot. I'm just looking it up right now to see if I can find the actual uh article title for people that want to see it. the hidden costs of men's social isolation out of scientific American. And this is like the same topic that the the the surgeon general has said that isolation is the number one kind of health crisis in America today. And it's true. You know, I I uh looked for the numbers and couldn't find their source. But um had a you know, therapist tell me years ago that men had 12 people they could talk to about anything, you know, in the 1950s and 60s. And that number is now less than three. I found the less than three number in several scientific articles from, you know, the mid 90s up and through uh the teen years. And when when you have that few people you can talk to about anything, you have less of a social net. And I think that a lot of the mental health crisis today that is tragic. I think there are a lot of those things that can be rooted back to a breakdown of the social fabric and friendships and isolation. And uh I think friendship's a part of that. I don't think it's the whole solution, but I do think it's it's an important part of what we need as a social creature.

[05:00] You can go back and look at the sociology of uh you know, how we live together 20,000 years ago and you saw villages of 150 people that broke into smaller groups and and so these social constructs for humans like we are a communal animal. We're not designed to live alone. And uh yeah, so I think I think that's where we're starting this conversation is we have to understand that relationships as we have them are an important part of how we're designed as an animal. And uh we're you know to cooperate with one another. So yeah, I was thinking when Anthony was talking about his dad and the five you know if you have five that you're really fortunate and I think that's true and I do think especially today I don't think most people have five people that they can reach out to today which the science talks about. The other thing that jumped out to me when you said that is even in prison, right? Like the the worst thing they can do to people is put them in isolation. Yeah. Solitary confinement, right? And that that even even there, right, that that so yeah, we definitely are social creatures. Um couple of books we'll link to. Tribe is a great one by Younger. And then there was um I um Yavari wrote one that we'll put on the website as well that the name escape escapes which I thought was just kind of a brief history of sociology and and friendship isn't like the key topic of those books but if you want to kind of understand the sociology from like a a real brief just kind of single book tribe is the shorter one. Sapiens is the longer one. I think they're both worth Um what happens? I mean why are why is that right? Like so so let's talk about that. Like what happens in our brains or what happens physiologically that makes even an inmate dread isolation more than anything? Why why is friendship so important? Yeah. I mean again the biology part I'm going to be guessing on but I think we probably have some type of chemical reaction that happens as a result of kind of getting experiences of pleasure related to community. And that's one part of it. I think the other part of it too is that you know um if you even go back just a few hundred years we depended on one another just for things like hunting and gathering where you know one part of the community would hunt while others gathered and uh it was just working together to do something as simple as getting food onto the table. And if you look kind of like at a probably a more recent you know agricultural society let's call it the 1800s you still had families of people that had to work in concert. you had, you know, people having five, seven, 10, 12 kids and and many of those kids wouldn't survive, you know, till 18. So, you had a different thing happening there, but a level of just um dependency from kind of Maslaw's hierarchy of needs like getting food and shelter taken care of. So, I think, you know, we don't have those same um challenges in the same way today. And so, I think that maybe maybe big underscore maybe might have a a role to play. Yeah, I you know it seems to me that it's in our DNA. I've heard I I don't know how I don't know if anybody knows this for sure, but I've heard numerous times that that in our DNA that people used to be ostracized from a community or kicked out of a community if they didn't do things. And that and so that somewhere that has been in our subconscious or in our DNA even though that's not not really what happens so much today but you know people still get kicked out of societies or groups. So let's uh let's talk about building blocks of relationships of friendships.

[08:33] Anthony what when you think about friends what do what do you think about like what what are those building blocks or what what qualities are you thinking? Do I want to be here? You know, do I want to do I want to spend time in this Um, you know, there I f, you know, historically I found that you you join disparit groups for disparit reasons. You have the gang that you go to the football game with. You have um the neighborhood social dinner party Um and then within that that you have a closer or or less close bond with certain certain people in that group and over time you foster um a closeness with the person or persons you feel most joyful. You know I really really think joy is a underused thought. you know, I really enjoy being in this space at this time with this person. Um, whether it's a spouse, a girlfriend, a group of group of folks that you're, you know, playing poker with in your case. So, I think those are the building blocks for me. If that's not there, it it's like a foundation doesn't exist. Can't you can't get there without that sense of joy. Yeah. That person. And I think I think that's would I guess would you agree with this? I'm just thinking that's especially true for acquaintances or I think earlier you called them different levels of what did you call them? You said friends and real friend or friends. What did you call you had two? They were acquaintances. Yeah.

[10:16] But acquaintances, right? Like I'm just thinking I've had a lot of acquaintances over the years where we play together, we have fun, we do things, and you enjoy being around that person. And that there's a big difference between that and the real friends that you were talking about. You know, those five key friends you were talking about earlier. Yeah. Those five free, you know, the the five friends, they may be the people you spend the least amount of time with. Yeah. You know, they're just you just know they're there. You know, they're me there. We've all had mentors. I still have a mentor that I can that I can turn to. Uh he's a lot older now, but um just like I am, but nonetheless, you know, I don't see him often. I only talk to him on the phone. Um I've I've I've visited him probably five times in the last 10 years, but he's the closest friend I have. Um so acquaintances, friendships, you know that you might see them every weekend, right? Your golf buddies, you know, they're good guys. Love being with them on Saturday, right, at 9:00, right? But that's not that's not the person you're going to call on when the chips are down. No. Yeah. Right. So, that's different and we'll explore that throughout, you know, different throughout this series. Um, we'll we'll go deeper down that. John, talk about I know you've got your building blocks for relationships. You want to dig into those? Yeah. When we talk about relationships, personal and professional, I think the foundation of all that is like an ability of responsibility and accountability, and that's just like being able to show up and do what you say you're going to do.

[11:51] It's really hard, not impossible, but it's hard to have like the kind of depth of relationship we're talking about if someone is not going to do what they say they're going to do and if they're accountable for their actions like that. It just it becomes more difficult. Not impossible, but more difficult. I've heard, you know, people talk about this at length is those are the kind of the those are the building blocks uh that you you put under the house, so to speak. And then from that you've got four skills in a relationship that generally uh are well more often than not I see them as being unconscious with people but for people like me who needed to be conscious about them I had to actually develop this skill set. And so one of those is about acceptance of being different than somebody else like accepting that someone else has a different point of view than yourself. Uh one is about uh trustworthiness. So when someone shares something with you that you can actually hold that in confidence. people don't think you're going to spill their secrets. Uh the next one is seeing other people in their best light. Like just get assuming best intent. Uh it's hard to have great relationships if you always assume the worst. And then the last one is, you know, vulnerability, like the depth of vulnerability. And there's lots of layers of vulnerability that we can talk about. I think Matthew Kelly has a book about romantic relationships, the seven levels of intimacy that lay it out fairly well uh for um not just romantic relationships, but the first six levels are appropriate for kind of any relationship. And he talks about that first level of relationship is cliche where you know you might bump into someone at a social party and he talk to Anthony about like the weather today, right? Like there's not a whole lot of risk in that for either person. And if you want to go into deeper vulnerability, you get into like sharing facts, you know, and facts might be about like, you know, yesterday's golf score, you know. Um, then you get into like opinions. And that's this this is where you start to take like emotional risks in a relationship because once you share an opinion, you risk judgment. And if people aren't acceptable accepting of you that, you know, and then, you know, the next layer of vulnerability is when you start to share your hopes and dreams because now it's not just your opinions, it's things that are really meaningful, important to you. Past that you get into feelings. Um, and we could have a whole episode on the appropriateness of when and where and how to share feelings.

[13:58] But, you know, when people are sharing feelings in a functional healthy way, that's a deeper level of relationship. Um, there's there there's a functional and dysfunctional way to do that in my experience. Uh, and then you go on into like false, fears, and failures. And now you're really super vulnerable because you're exposing the chinks in your armor and the soft spots. And so and then then there's a level that is you know generally reserved for romantic relationships uh you know onetoone that's about kind of a a kind of a central need uh to the human being. You know those are things that are often sexual in nature um or romantically intimate in ways that would be appropriate you know and uh for husband and wife as an example. And so that's a layer of intimacy that is generally reserved for again you know generally one person. Okay. A lot to unpack there. Yeah. So, we could probably do a whole episode on each one of these. And listeners, we're not going to. So, I just want to I I want to go back through and kind of discuss these in small chunks. Yeah. Not yet. Um, let's just take the first two put together, accountability and responsibility. Yeah.

[15:05] Anthony, you talked about different types of friends. I'm going to So talk about how those two things apply to that different group of f those two different groups of friends. Well, you know, in terms of um I look at that from the perspective almost tied to truthfulness. Um the person, the friend, if you will, um is is part of your existence, you know, and you can ask them anything, gonna get a straight answer. They're they're they're not pulling punches, you know. It's I remember there one time the person I was speaking with um something was going on in my life and he said you know why don't you get on a plane tomorrow and come on down and see me Marco Island thinking I'm living in California not getting on a plane tomorrow Jim no that's crazy no you need to get here and I'm going to help you so the next day I got on a ridiculously price flight, overnight flight, like three stops and got to Marco Island, Florida, and sure as you know, Jim helped me.

[16:26] Um, so that's what I see in accountability and he took responsibility for my problem. You know, he's going to solve it. He's going to help. He's going to do something. May not have worked, but he was going to do something. And that to me that's kind of where that chasm starts versus you, you know, you need a job or you need a you need a a good lawyer for a reason and someone says, "Yeah, I'll get you I'll get you a name." Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. That's the difference to me. Yeah, I like that. I mean, that happened this morning, Randy. I was supposed to be at a meeting and uh I had an email about the meeting. I had a reminder. um it didn't get onto my calendar and it would have been really easy for me to blame my administrative team or whatever. Um but at the end of the day it's my responsibility and so at the end of the meeting I was late. I did show up to the meeting but I was there for part of it and at the end I said hey by the way I know I said that it wasn't on my calendar at the beginning of the meeting. Um during the meeting I checked to find out why and I recognized that you did all the things you were supposed to do. I missed on my side. Apologies again for wasting your time at the beginning of the meeting. Won't happen again. uh to the best of my ability and I wanted you to know I it was but the the fault was on my side and and I wanted them to all hear that in that public setting because you know I showed up late.

[17:48] Yeah. And and that's you know somebody who knows me was like hey that's not you like you don't that's not normal. It's like I know and I wanted to make sure they knew like I own that one because had it been you I would have held you accountable but it was me and it was clearly me and so publicly I put my hat in my hand and I wanted to just say like sorry about that. There was a time in my career I might have made an excuse or tried to pawn off on somebody else to look good. Yeah, there's I mean that again that's something we'll talk about in a future episode is is taking feedback. But you know, one of the things I recognize in both of you is both of you are are willing and able and emotionally mature enough to take feedback and learn from it. Not not everybody is, right? Um, but but I think I think my takeaway from that is that the accountability and the responsibility really applies to those real friends, the ones you can count on when the chips are down. I think I think it matters for relationships professionally, too. I think that in in professional relationships and if you're assessing someone's not um accountable or responsible to some level being aware and accepting that person where they are if they're you know it could be a co-orker or a boss you don't have you know managerial authority over and so accepting that kind of as the landscape for it is so you can navigate it more effectively with less frustration is really really important. Okay, I think it's a great point. So I think on the other hand, I have a lot of friends, acquaintances, whatever you want to call them, that they're not very responsible.

[19:15] They're not very accountable, right? And I still have people that I have relationships with, but I have different expectations. Was that true for you guys or am I kind of unique in that? I have I don't want to use names. I I I got a friend who great guy. We get We can have lunch. We can go do things. We have fun. We've been on trips But he may or may not show up to right? And if you're supposed to be there at 7, you probably won't be there at 7:00. You'll probably be there at 7:30. This is going to get to what we're going to get to, I think, acceptance and seeing people in the best light. When I was younger, I had more trouble with that, right? Like I I probably would have kept those people off more. But I've got people now that I wouldn't consider them super responsible or accountable. They're friends. They're probably not the people I'm ever going to count on when the chips are down, though. Yeah. So, back to the definition of friends. They're they're they're people in your life who you enjoy being with and tolerate um their lack of timeliness or selfishness. Yeah. I bumped into somebody who's an artist once and I just I recognized that I wasn't going to have that type of relationship because they had a um my words that I used initially were flaky and a whole bunch of really judgmental words and then some people in you know the mental health world kind of called me on that and they're like hey those are your words and your judgments but how about they value things differently than you value them. I was like, "Oh, damn." Like, that's unfortunately very accurate. And my view was very tainted um by my own desire to make myself feel good and and normalize my value system versus their value system. And and so I think um you know, good friends often share common values, often share common goals, often share um you know, a common path for a period.

[21:14] And so sometimes it's about responsibility and accountability the way that you and I might see it. Sometimes it's just about having similar values around those things, right? Yeah. And and so that's I so I don't want someone leaving here thinking like if you're not highly accountable, high responsible, type A, whatever, you can't have that's just not true. I've met people who have very very different value systems than me that have very friends whose friends would never be close with me. And that's and that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a good transition into I'm going to I'm going to lump together in the things you went over. Acceptance and seeing others in the best light. Yeah. Right. And um I mean is that something I'm probably a lot better at now than I was when I was younger? I mean there's still certainly a judgmental side of me at times. Not I'm not going to deny that that's there, but I think there was much more of one when I was younger. But let's I mean do you guys have opinions on that? just I mean challenges with that. How how important do you think it is? Well, I think it it gets to what John was talking about just a minute ago that in the case of the artist.

[22:22] Um yeah, his value set is different but you know understanding that and accepting that is is okay. I mean it creates the uh framework of a potential relationship, right? If you are just beside yourself because the the uh the person was late today um and you're not going to get past that, then you're, you know, one side of the house is going to be open and the the wind is going to come through and the rain and it's gonna it's going to cause trouble. So, you've got to decide, am I going to have four sides to this home? And then, am I going to let people in and give them a chance? Um, that's the first step. Um, that said, the person that's always late, that person I would cut out of my life because they're showing a side of selfishness that I don't want to participate. You know, selfishness is really something that leads to a lot of negative outcomes.

[23:28] uh when things get tough, when you need something or they need something, um there's selfishness can lead to untruthfulness. There's just a there's a there's a lot to unpack with that and that's one of the my big red flags when I see a selfish person. Um see, I I agree with that for the most part, Anthony, but there are times too where I know that that person I may play a role in their life or they may play one in my life. And so for a moment I if I can find alignment for a moment then I may choose to walk along with that person for a moment and then recognize where it may not be um functional or healthy for me anymore too without judgment about like just hey we're not on the same path like we're just you know our paths cross for a minute we walk in parallel for a moment in fact I think the Japanese word for marriage is l literally translated to something like walking along parallel paths and you know for obviously for a long period of time for marriage but so I I used to have the approach I would just cut people out and replace them and that was a very transa was like I didn't want to admit it but it was you know for me it was what can you do for me lately for you it sounds like you didn't want to waste your time getting so different no you articulated it better than I did but I I didn't mean that if if it happened once or twice was I was going to cut him out it would it would get to the a point where I cut him out is after talking to the person after you know not confronting but you know pointing out that I'm seeing it this way. You know, you want to try to salvage all your relationships so they can be salvaged. It's hard work that you know that you're you're accountable for for taking on taking some effort to create the right environment. Sometimes people don't see themselves as 15 minutes late, it's no big deal, right? or you know whatever whatever they didn't do for you in their mind they didn't they didn't think it was going to have that kind of impact.

[25:26] So, just like in a marriage, you've got to say, you know, I recently was hours ago with a young couple, one side of a young couple, and man, this one side of this young couple was really dug in. They're not seeing the other side. And I said, "Miss sir, you're not going to solve your problem, I don't think, unless you loosen up a little bit on seeing the other side of the the argument here." So, um, no, so I I agree with you. You got to give it give it some time. I mean, there are egregious things that we all know. Well, I think, you know, the three of us have been friends for a long time. We've been, you know, Ant and I went through this what, three, four years ago. I can't It was a while ago. Yeah. And I think this I think that's a pretty good example of like how it goes well. Yeah. You'll I'll let you tell the story because you could tell it better than me probably. Well, Sean let me down. He wasn't up. I knew you I knew you'd tell it the right way. No, we had we had um a misalignment of roles and um in my mind anyway. And uh we had a we we we I I regressed and withdrew and he he confronted it um with what you know what's up and I finally um you know I I was man enough to say it out loud and we hashed it out and but from your point of view you had a frustration that when I stood in your shoes was so understandable even if I didn't share the perception it was like oh like from that point point of view, I'd be pretty upset, too. Yeah.

[27:05] But I did the classic um withdrawal. You know, I'll just fix it myself. I'll just handle it. I'll just, you know, I don't want to stir it stir it up or I don't I didn't really know what to say. I I felt like I might be I might hurt him if I pointed this out or and then I was also thinking, am I right? And so you go back and forth and then you get busy and you're running a business and you know two weeks goes by and you're more and more pissed uh two weeks down the road. So my wife had a dream I did something wrong once and woke up angry at me. That's still a thing. We'll talk about that in another episode. No, I think but I think the great part So here's the cool part though. Like the cool part was we talked about it. Anthony was able to share like hey here's my point of view. I was able to see it from your point of view and then we said okay well how do we like how do we get back to alignment because I don't think the gap is as big as we think it is and I think it took a call may I don't think it took two calls. Yeah we got there we got there very very quickly I calmed down once it was on the table. Yeah and then I we were able to problem solve what the root cause issue was. I think there was a bunch of little things, but there was one particular thing and I didn't remember what it what it's so far removed from my conscious. I don't even remember what it was, but I know there was one big thing. There was one big thing and like in a good negotiation, you solve the big thing first and then you can work on it's the biggest mistake people make. You know, they try to solve all the little problems in their life.

[28:37] Yeah. They But the big thing still there you got to solve the big thing. But I think as I think about this, it's it really comes back to these things of acceptance, seeing people in their best light. And that it's hard as humans, right? Like as friends, as humans, because we do we get tied up in our own stuff, our own and we're thinking about how it affects us. But in this case with without I guess knowing all the details, you know, look, Anony's thinking about well, this is how I feel and this is how I take it and John's thinking it and versus once you got into each other's shoes and talked about it. Well, somebody has to go first, right? And to Anony's credit, he went first, right? And so I didn't know what was going on and he went first and he shared what the problem was with vulnerability. I think I then responded with acceptance like, "Oh crap." And I took a minute and my recollection is I said, 'Okay, well here's how I see it and he did the same thing back then. He's like, "Okay, well that also makes sense." And then it was like then it was about picking a finish line that we both wanted and how do we both get there together, you know, and we were then navigating the road, you know, with the relationship in mind with solving a problem and we both wanted the same thing. And so, and this is where relationships get sideways is they, you know, someone defends their position because they want to feel a certain way or they want to avoid conflict or, you know, and we get hijacked, right? And so, um, in this case, we didn't allow each other to get hijacked because there's a deep level of care and we had the benefit of having done this for two or three companies before that, working together. And so, um, for me, I I can't speak for Anthony, but that getting through that moment for that thing, I think deepened trust for me because I had a lot of confidence that no matter what at that point, we could navigate anything. It was hard. It was a hard I don't know if that Yeah. No, it was it was it and I don't want to make this a male female thing, but I have to, you know, I was trying to solve everything myself without talking to anybody, let alone the person I had the issue with. So, I did wasn't seeking counsel from other people. I was, you know, in classic fashion, trying to just be a hero and handle it myself and or, you know, burying my head in the sand. Um, which is something that happens way more often to men than women because they tend to seek out community.

[31:03] Women seek community. They seek input when they make a decision. They usually don't make it off the cuff. They usually have talked to a handful of people and got good advice and counsel and then then come around. But I think tend to is the I think that's the key, right? Like like this happens to men and women both. It happen like it you know men ask for help, women but but I think that's you know broad generalizations. That's right. Yeah. All right. And vulnerability. You guys have hit on vulnerability. I think there's a little too much to unpack on this episode. Maybe maybe that even becomes a part six is digging into that someday. But uh listeners, we're going to go to break. We'll be back shortly and when we come back, we're going to talk about some of the problems and and why loneliness and friendship is is an issue. All right, listeners, welcome back. Uh as I mentioned, after the break, we're going to come back and talk about the problem, right? because I think a lot of people feel they're alone in this and God I don't have enough friends or I don't have good friends or you know and then leads to depression and a bunch of other stuff but let's let's talk about why this has been happening Anthony John um you know and we we talked about during the break a little bit opinions oh yeah um you guys want to dig into that sharing opinions and people not feeling about it and arguments and whatever everything else that leads to it these days you know opinions are the first real layer of vulnerability where people can be at risk and and that used to be um probably a little bit less true in decades past. But today, if you have an opinion, um there's a lot more energy put behind opinions and a lot of people, you know, we've had the cancel culture and all these types of things and a lot more uh polarization uh in society around a lot of things, you know, a lot of politization of things that wouldn't have been um politicized more historically. And I I don't um it makes opinions more dangerous to share, right?

[32:59] and and so and that and then people Anthony I don't know what your experience has been my experience has been that when you don't share an opinion with somebody those people could have been you know dinner acquaintances and even good friends in decades past and uh and that's almost impossible today and so um I mean you've seen a shift in this too with opinions oh without a doubt you know they I'm I'm older than these guys and you know grew grew up in the yeah can't believe it right just take a look at Um, you know, the 70s uh culture was a culture of discussion. You know, we had we we exited, you know, the the 60s with a a rough ride um with a lot of protests and so forth, strong opinions that actually uh created change in the world. And then there was constant discussion on campuses about, you know, where the world was going, the difference between capitalism, communism. We had a cold war brewing with with uh the Soviet Union.

[34:06] There was just all kinds of discussion and open-mindedness to listen to the other side. It wasn't this what we have today where it's opinions of one. You know, someone has an opinion, that's it. it's over. Put it out on social media and that's the answer. And there there isn't there's just nasty dialogue. There's not a true dialogue of discussion and open-mindedness from a from a large part of the uh what you see. Now, what you don't see is the cocktail parties, the dinner parties, uh the afternoon of the bar, where I think still it still exists. I think there's still more of it there. This this social media situation is where you're just getting these black and white discussions and um makes people not want to share an opinion because they're going to get shot at. When you say it's still there though, compare the 70s to now. Oh, it's Well, we there was a lot we had different tools that we were using in the 70s. Yeah.

[35:25] not everybody was. And there was no not everybody. And there was just a I don't know, maybe the older you get, the better it was. You know, there could be some of that. No, it was it was different coming through, but there was just, you know, there was just dialogue and it it didn't ma there was no, you know, right or we didn't have a right or left. It wasn't a right or left. It was, yeah, I generally think this and how do you feel about that? It was it was much calmer, but the consequences have changed so much, right? And I I can't speak to the 70s, but I'm just thinking the 80s. I I remember being in college and we would have discussions and you would you would have debates, heated debates with people. I remember this in my freshman dorm, you'd go in this our our houses study hall and inevitably these debates would break up and if there's eight people in there, there might be four people on this side and four people on this side and you'd debate. And if there were seven people on one side and one on the other side, usually me, but like a couple of us would go join the person that was by themselves just to debate the other side. And when we got done, we were still friends. And we might be on different sides arguing with different people. And today, I feel like the consequences are a certain percentage, I don't know what that percentage is of society, feels like you can't be friends. Well, back up to the part where you said you debate the other side. Like there's a step that I think is missing.

[36:58] And so one of my kids, we were having a conversation about um something that was going on in the Middle East. And so and I, you know, we it was he started by asking questions about one side and then I forced him into questions about the other side and there was a third side in this particular uh situation. So I then forced him into thinking about the uncomfortable third side and he just what sides? So this is about the um October 7th thing that happened with the Palestinians and Hamas. So Israel and Hamas and Gaza and Israel. Yeah. And so I I said, you know, what do you think it must have been like to been an Israeli on that day who was near, you know, the border? And and we had a long probably we were on 12-h hour car ride home. We probably had a 30 or 40 minute talk and he was really empathetic to that the plight. And I said, "Well, so tell me about what it would have been like to be kind of a non-combatant on the Gazin side. Like what do you suppose that must have been like?" And then he it was like you could see the brain expanding. Like he he had some really intelligent commentary. And I said, he's like, "So, you think one side or the other?" I said, "I'm not going to tell you what I think yet. Now, I want you to think about what it must have been like to be someone who was so angry for so long that they wanted to kill people and be willing to, you know, sacrifice her own life." Like, what must that have been like? And that's in no way am I um like saying that that's an acceptable form of behavior, right? I just I don't I don't believe that. But I I think there's a lot we can do to be empathetic about different points of view before developing an opinion. And so what I shared with him was like, look, whatever opinion you have, I'm going to respect that opinion. If you've already debated both sides of it passionately and successfully to a point where you can really truly understand and and then you form your opinion, I'm going to respect the fact that you formed that opinion.

[38:43] You can have your opinion no matter what, but well-formed opinions are a thing. And then you can decide if and how you want to share those opinions. And so for me, I find myself a lot of times I used to have an opinion about everything. And then when I started listening more, I found myself getting a lot more educated on other people's points of view. And it helped me to in some cases change my opinion, in some cases strengthen my opinion, but in some cases I'm just quiet about it. And you know, but and um but yeah, I think wellformed opinions are important. And I think being able to see both sides is really really important. I think that step of like being able to argue both sides before you put your foot down a side is probably helpful in most cases. I think that's the biggest difference between today and yesterday is the opinions aren't wellformed well informed. And I'm not sure the reason, but the outlet is I can just bang a few keys on my phone and tell everybody in the un in my universe, my Twitter verse, my Facebook verse, my Instagram verse, what my opinion is. And someone's going to listen to me and there's an excitement about someone listening to me. Never, you know, the earth is flat. I can tell everybody, well, buddy, you taking a look up there?

[40:06] You know, so because this the outlet exists and then it fermentss itself. Then someone else says, "Yeah, the earth is definitely flat. I know it. I saw I saw a picture, you know, and and on and on it goes." And well, this I think one of the things too is we we you know uh we use the word opinion where it isn't really appropriate. You know, it's like um you know, if someone assassinates another person character, you know, you're you're an a-hole. That's my Well, that that's actually character assassination. And and when it gets to the point of defaming someone or it's lielist or slander, like the mechanisms we have in place to protect for that today don't seem to fit the environment today. And so I'm just I I'm saddened by people's willingness to jump to character assassination, which I find to be fairly dysfunctional. Um and and call and then try to couch that as an opinion, as a way of protecting that. And I just I don't we've got to find a way as a society to make that not acceptable. Maybe from a regulatory perspective that not what I'm talking about. But like really um letting people couch untr knowing untruths as opinions to protect free speech. I think that's a problem we've I hope we can kind of regain our intellectual honesty around that.

[41:20] There's it's I I just I'm going to keep going back to the consequences and and what do people accept and and what's okay, right? If you if and I don't again we we talked about during the break a little bit when it started and we we'll probably go down that path but at some point 70s 80s even 90s I feel like you could have these discussions you could still be friends people would have dinner families weren't splitting up over Thanksgiving dinner about the president they might not agree but they were still family and now this is a very real thing and Anthony mentioned social media and so its role I mean I think most of us thought when the internet came out and social media, oh, what a great way to bring everybody together, but it hasn't done that. I think that I I think this is one of the big the big problems with creating friendship. Okay. It has brought people together in some ways. Like I'm keeping up with people from my high school that I never would have kept up with otherwise. So So it's it's a mixed bag, right? Right. Yeah. Well, how is it how has it added to the problem, I guess, is is the better question I should be asking. Yeah. Look, the greatest analogy I've heard is when you see social media, you see someone's well-manicured front yard and you're not looking at the inside of the house or the backyard or the garage. And so, but if you don't know that and you then kind of take that to mean that the whole house is like that, the whole, you know, and and look, very rarely is someone's life their social media. Like, I just I haven't met many people where those two things are the same. And so, and and this is true of kind of advertising more broadly.

[42:55] There was a kind of a wellocumented schism of psychologists in the 60s that left the world of clinical psychology and went into advertising to make more money and there was a really big kind of ethical concern debate around that um and you know is it manipulation if you have that level of understanding of someone's psyche while you're advertising to them and you know and then are you drive and so I think I think that is a similar kind of analog people shotgunning their opinions uninformed opinions out into the world and then people they create these echo chambers and we have these technologies that create that echo chamber because what that creates is a person staying on that social media site longer and more views means more impressions of ads which is what they really want and so it suits their their economic benefit to keep you in that echo chamber because you keep coming back to view more ads and I don't think they're like manipulative about that I think the social media sites are pretty open about that. So, there's no secret there, right? Well, and it's I think what you're talking about the echo chamber, right? If we go to what Anthony said about let's pick on the flatearther since he already started. Um, you know, if and I hope it doesn't turn out to be true. That would be but in the 70s or 80s again or where whatever in the, you know, yesterday I think you called it was a good phrase. If you were a flatearther, I can't imagine anybody wouldn't have thought you were insane, which maybe that's a bad thing. I don't know. But if you said, "Hey, the earth's flat." People would have just laughed at you and you would have still been friends and they've been like, "Oh, look at crazy Anthony. He thinks he thinks the earth's flat." But you still coexisted in your neighborhood or your school or your work or wherever you were. Now you can go on social media and find a million people that agree with you. Well, and yeah, I think there's a we we have to draw a distinction between like facts and opinions, too, right?

[44:45] Like I think there's there's things that are scientifically acceptable. By definition, science moves itself forward and makes yesterday's information obsolete. And so we're in a we're in a growing body of knowledge. The frontier of knowledge moves. And so, and then opinion is generally in a place where there may not be facts. So, take it away from flat earth. Let's say it's political, right? Yeah. And it could be what side of the aisle or what or some political issue. Yeah. The fact is it used to be that if you were around the dinner table or in your community, you had people on both sides and you coexisted. Yep. The level of acceptance has gone down. Yeah. It seems like now you just you aren't forced to coexist and you aren't forced like I think it's weakened us mentally because we're not forced to consider the other opinions of people around us because we are able to isolate. There's a level weird there's a level of independence we have right Randy like there you know people are more able to be independent kind of economically and from kind of a Maslovian hierarchy of needs than ever before. Like if you look at like the poverty levels of today and and how we live relative to others in history, I think you know we say that people in the US in poverty, most of them live better than any king or emperor for the last 2,000 years, save the ones that have listen lived in the last hundred. And and so you like so there there's this level of like maybe economic decadence on the one hand that's caused independence where we don't and again I'm supposing here this is not my area of expertise but this would be one thing I would hold out to be thought about would be like is it true that because we're so successful from a Maslovian perspective right in the hierarchy of needs that we are quicker to discount people. Yeah. Right.

[46:30] So like like physical shelter and you know food and you know like those things and we're we're all about self-actualization which means we can discard and transactionalize people which is I mean that's a shame like like relationship and transaction are about as you know opposed as you can get. Yeah. This that makes me think of we have a group text that we're in with a few other people and when we were talking about the direwolves, the one person in there was saying how he thought it was a good thing that if there were dinosaurs and direwolves running around eating people because people would basically his concept was it would be good for humanity because we'd have real problems to worry about instead of all the petty I'm paraphrasing but we would have real problems instead of all the petty that we worry about as humans. There are people that think that, you know, alien life and UFOs would do a good do a whole really good job of like unifying the world. Like, you know, the US was much less at odds with each other during the Cold War because we had a common enemy in the Eastern block countries. And so, and and right now there's no, you know, global enemies.

[47:33] So, we've there's some people that think we've turned in on ourselves to find internal enemies and that, you know, Independence Day with Will Smith and you know, that would be like a great scenario in the sense that we could all come to again It's It's interesting, right? Like Like we're Yeah. So, okay, we agree that not being able to have opinions and really express them has has created part of this problem. We agree that social media has actually probably created more isolation and weaker things. I think the other thing we want to discuss here is remote work. Yeah. Like a lot of I think that has also isolated people. Do it. I mean, what are you guys thoughts on remote right? You're not at the proverbial water cooler. You're not, you know, on the fly uh communicating. Everything is You're you're not seeing the same.

[48:39] You're not feeling body language. You can feel body language when you're with somebody because you can see it. You can see the color of their face change if they're upset, their person of their lips, their posture, so on and so forth. So there's a definite communication breakdown in that. And the stranger part to me is people love it. And there's this whole movement. I just read an article this morning about uh college graduates just in the last year that there is a tremendous increase in the number of college graduates that are seeking some sort of hybrid or remote job versus versus the 9 to5. They think the 9 to5 Monday through Friday is me. Which by the way is so interesting because all of the Gallup polls in kind of recent years have said one of the most important things that people expect in their job as a best friend at work.

[49:40] Yeah. Which I mean those two things are just so and they're both true, right? Like you miss the whole water cooler. You miss the shared experiences of you know snacks, lunch, break, what like you you you miss so much of that. And then you have an expectation that your employer creates an environment for that. It's a it's a very tough dichotomy for employers right now for sure. And and it's like remote work can do a lot to increase productivity in um in kind of one frame, but then you lose so much more in other ways too. And so uh and and I work with companies uh that are fully remote and I work in companies that are uh not remote at all as as a consultant. And uh it's it's a very different set of dynamics. But it's it's tough to it's tough. And by the way, with one of the companies I work with that's remote only, we had to fire somebody because they were remote only 40 hours a week and they were working for two companies in the same 40 hours. Yeah. And and that's I think unfortunately fairly common. Well, it's an opportunity cost, right? If let's let's just use 25% of the day because everyone says no one's working eight hours remotely. So this is 25% of your day is spent effectively alone where yesterday that 25% created you were with people face to face and it created an opportunity to expand your social network which could lead to a friend network or acquaintance network that could ultimately perhaps as you said um I get my be I got a best friend out of work. And if I think back on the people that are on my business world. Two of them I work side So what what would have h would I have made those people as friends? Would they be friends if I if I was working remotely in in the 80s and 90s? I don't know. It's qu it's a good question. I think I think you know this is this is where I think um my encouragement to business owners is to teach these relationship skills we talked about like responsibility and accountability is kind of the kind of table stakes for a company and then having you know the skills of you know healthy debate and we'll get into conflict in a different episode for relationship and by teach them of course they would tell them to listen to the tales of abundance podcast and go to the tales of abundance website to get this information I'm not sure where else you could get it yeah I mean I think I think yeah in modeling it and being students of themselves, but most importantly going to the website, watching the Yeah. Uh, absolutely. But look, these aren't skills that that we came up with here. These are things that are ages old, you know, long before I was alive. And and um but but I think it I think it does take work. I think I think, you know, it's funny. We um soft skills is an interesting term that came from a military uh uh kind of I think consulting agreement. And hard skills were things that had hard assets, you know, ammunition and tanks, and soft skills were things that didn't. So finance at the initially was considered a soft skill. And so I think now, I mean, can you imagine someone talking about finance today as if it was a soft skill? I mean, these things that we call soft skills aren't actually soft skill.

[53:03] Like these are, this is what makes the world go around. I think about like how deals get done and how, you know, when I need help, I can call somebody. I had a child who was on the way to the emergency room the other day at a hospital where I know people there and I called one of the senior executives like, "Hey, my son's having a hard time breathing and he's like, "I'll call ahead." And we got to the parking lot. They were waiting with open arms and he got the most amazing service and it was like the level of kind of um comfort that gave, you know, my family. Like these these are relationship things. I wouldn't have felt comfortable calling that person at 9:00 at night had I not kind of walked arm- arm with them. and and uh and I would expect anybody in my friend group to call me anytime they need my help like that's you know um yeah yeah the you know the other thing that we we didn't plan on talking about but I was just thinking I also think co contributed to this right I mean kind of goes that's where some of the remote work I mean social media but that being abandoned I know looking at my own kids the oldest especially like really he was not happy during co like he is a very social being. Yeah. And just being isolated. And you know, I think there's more and more data coming out now that that lockdown in people Oh, there's m Yeah. Huge data for the people in for the kids in school all the way from K through 12. I haven't seen any data on colleges, although I'm sure it's similar if it exists that it really like it's it's measurable the impact. By the way, I in my own family, I can see that the rebound coming uh later. And so um but it's you know look the pandemic was this generation's kind of global incident. Yeah. I was I was talking to a guy just in the last week or two who had two young kids. One of them was one of them was born early in CO and that first year or two where everybody's faces were covered all the time and he's talking about the one that's two years younger but they're like almost equally developed socially. Yeah. And because the younger one and he did and his take on it, whether this is right or not, but his take was that the older one not everybody being covered in masks and not seeing facial expressions and all of that basically slowed his growth and being able to just have social interaction and all that. So, body language is a huge part of how we communicate. For sure. Yeah. Well, Randy, tell us what's coming up in the rest of the series. Well, let's let's let's go to the why before we wrap things up. Sorry. Sorry. Jumping ahead.

[55:37] Getting ahead. So, excuse me. The why. Why is this uh why is this a problem? Why is this a problem or why are friendships important? Well, both. I mean, it could be why are they important and then so what I mean, same question. Why is why is not having friendships a I think we go back to the top of the show, right? I mean, this is this it's like without friendships, like we're a communal animal, right? Like we're we're designed to work in community with one another and having isolation, you know, we we start life as dependent on our parents to eat. Like you literally can't eat on your own when you're born. And so you move from dependence to independence and you gain that independence over a period of time and growth. And then you have the opportunity to move to interdependence. And so if you kind of if you get stuck in that independence, you you lose the opportunity for indep interdependence and that interdependence is where the magic really is. And uh so I think you know that's the way that I would talk about it.

[56:39] Yeah. Like you say it's a it's a it's a learned skill. We're products of our environment. Um so if I if your environment is I'm alone. I mean I said it earlier during the break and you guys are too young to remember this term but starting in the 70s there was or maybe probably the late 60s more and more two-income families started to permeate the universe here and that created a the an output of that was latch key kids. Latch key kids were home alone. Uh my son-in-law is a principal at a elementary school and more than threequarters of the kids are walking home alone are getting a ride from a grandma who drops them off at the house and they they're they're alone. So becoming they became during the 70s and 80s and they're and we're creating more and more every day people that are used to being alone. Well, and there's and there was I mean the sexual revolution of the 60s too had like a necessary and important positive changes for women in particular being able to have independence. Like my mom couldn't get a credit card without a man co-signing her in the 1970s which is just nuts to me.

[57:58] Couldn't get a mortgage without a husband cosigning. Like that's just that's just a you know basswards to me. But there the unintended consequence of a pendulum is sometimes it overswings. And if you if you swing independence so far that you let go of and and you're trying to get rid of dependence, which is appropriate, but if you swing all the way to where you lose interdependence, I think, you know, that would be a huge part of like I think what would and then and then you've got to look at like the cold war ending and looking at like how do we find the next enemy? Again, not my area of scientific research, but I'm super interested to like think through like what does that mean? And and then my question is like what can I do about it? and what I can do about it is usually inside my family, my friendships. Like, how do I how do I handle that? Yeah, I don't I'm nervous about it. I don't I don't see uh our way out of where we are right now. So, how do we best cope with this situation? What how do we uh you know evolve to a place where maybe our friends are virtual?

[59:05] No, but young people are are railing against some of the social media and some of this stuff. I mean, you know, you talk look at the fourth turning in that the book that's written about the cycles we go through in Dalio's book about the different like I think maybe this is going to be correcting itself because we're in a cycle that we've been in before. So, I'm a little more hopeful than that. I think I'm I'm worried, but I am hopeful that that we've seen things like this before in a different way. I I think there's a billion dollar business opportunity there somewhere. I don't know what it is, but yeah, I would say there's there's big opportunity for somebody that wants to fix this. I think that's a good place to wrap up this first episode. Uh, in the in the next episode, listeners, we are going to be talking about how to cultivate these friendships and how to find your your group of people. Give us a quick teaser on the ones after that, too. I know we got some other cool topics coming after that. Well, let me look ahead. So, we have that. Then we have maintain. So once you found your people, we're going to talk about nurturing the bond, maintaining maintaining those friendships when you have them once you have them. And then friendships throughout time, right? Because you have friendships that are kids are very different than an adulthood. And some of those you maintain and some of them rotate in and out as Anthony was talking about earlier. So we'll talk about that and that that drift. And uh and then we're going to finish up with supporting supporting your friends, navigating conflict. And we've had discussions. We may add some things to this from time to time as well, but those are the five that we'll be we'll be going over here in this in this initial series. Love it.

[1:00:33] Great. All right, Anthony, John, thank you. Listeners, thank you for listening. Uh again, please wherever you listen to podcasts, go subscribe, download, give us five stars. uh that help us grow the podcast. Tell your friends about it or just go to tales of abundance pot talesofabundance.com and you can listen to the podcast there or we have a plethora of free tools for you to check out. Love it. Great.