Kate Bowler A basketball coach, the surgeon general, and a history professor walk into a bar. Sounds like the start of a great joke. Or a terrible joke. Or the start of the Everything Happens Podcast season 12. Hey. I’m Kate Bowler, and I’m so glad you’re here. It’s season 12! Can you believe it? I can’t. We are going to have a great season of amazing conversations with the beautiful, fun, lovely, kind people that you really want to meet. And today’s conversation is really a special one. My friends, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy and Duke men’s basketball coach Jon Scheyer join me for a conversation taped in person at Duke University. Together, we discuss the loneliness that is ailing us, how we might begin to feel a little more connected to each other. And just like the stuff, we might be a little embarrassed to admit to others. But before you meet them, I thought I would give you a little bit of their background. Dr. Vivek Murthy is the current U.S. Surgeon General, which basically means that he serves as everyone’s doctor. No pressure. But he is the author of the bestselling book Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World. And he is among the most trusted voices in America on matters of public health. Vivek has some really helpful information about the cost of loneliness, the impact of social media on our relationships. You’re just going to hear it in his voice. He is gentle and kind and curious. All the things you need from a good doctor. And hey, I know you’re like, why are you qualified to interview a sports person? These are really great questions. I will attempt to answer them. One. No, I won’t, I won’t. Look, Jon Scheyer is Duke University’s men’s basketball coach. Again, no pressure. But before coaching, Jon led the Blue Devils to a national championship in 2010 and played professional basketball for the Miami Heat before an injury ended his professional career. But I will let him tell you more about that. But if there are any UNC fans who are tempted to stop listening here, okay, look. Hang on. I promise there’s room for you here, too. If you can just handle, like, a teensy bit of Duke Blue. These are two beautiful people who are wonderful friends. And so, without further ado, my friends, Vivek and Jon.
Kate Bowler I’m so happy! You guys, it’s two of my very favorite people, and I’m forcing them to be friends in public for the very first time. You guys, thank you so much for being here. These are people who think so deeply about the social fabric that weaves us together, or the things that keep us apart. So I am really excited about this conversation and thought maybe we could start out with, you know, the Surgeon General, because those are words that I use frequently. Um, you have a really weird job. You are America’s doctor, and you’ve spent a lot of time traveling the country really thinking about what ails Americans. And you started noticing something even before the pandemic. Loneliness. And I wondered if we could start there.
Dr. Vivek Murthy Absolutely. Well, let me just say I’m so excited to be here at Duke with Kate. And I made her promise that, you know, whenever I get together with Kate, she always makes me laugh, like, uncontrollably. So I’m going to try to control it, keep it in today. But I’m thrilled to be here because I’ve actually had the chance to come to Duke at a number of points in my life. When I was thinking about where to go to medical school, when I was at various points in between, and to be able to come back now, to be able to engage on a topic that is profoundly meaningful to me, and I hope, you know, also resonates with you, which is the topic of loneliness and social connection is a special privilege. But if you had told me that we would be here talking about loneliness, if you told me that seven, eight years ago, I would have said, I think you’re probably off. But what happened to me along the way was that during my first stint as Surgeon General, I began by traveling around the country and talking to people, just then asking them, how can I be helpful? And I was trying to just listen to what their stories were. And I heard a lot of stories that you might expect—people who are concerned about the addiction crisis in their community, folks who are worried about rising rates of depression and anxiety that they were seeing among young people. But I also started to hear these stories about loneliness. I heard from young students who were on college campuses who would say, you know, I’m surrounded by hundreds of other kids here, but I, I don’t know, I feel like nobody really knows me for who I am. I feel like I can’t be myself. I heard the same from parents who are busy, surrounded, you know, in their day-to-day lives, by so many people, but just felt profoundly alone. I would talk to members of Congress and I would hear the same thing, that they were feeling lonely. I would talk to CEOs. They were feeling lonely, too. And that’s what really led me to dig into this and to recognize that, not only is loneliness extraordinarily common with one in two adults in America struggling with loneliness, and the numbers are actually much higher among young people. But it was also really consequential for our health that when we struggled with that sense of social disconnection, it turns out it increased our risk for depression, anxiety and suicide, but also for physical illness, for heart disease, for dementia and for premature death. So all of those came together to really motivate me to say, you know what? Loneliness is actually a public health issue. It’s not just a bad feeling, and it’s one that we’ve got to address with great urgency.
Kate I guess it’s funny, too, that we’re sitting here with Coach Scheyer because I want to play the song that’s like, “All I do is win, win, win” every time he walks into a room, which I think is a common feeling around a friend. But I think one of the kind of special things about this conversation is that though you’ve shown tremendous resilience, like you, you always know how to get back up, but you’ve had seasons in your life where you really got knocked down, especially with like a life-altering injury. I wondered if you could talk a bit about what that season was like for you and whether, like the kind of what the emotional world was like when you kind of found you weren’t exactly winning.
Coach Jon Scheyer Absolutely. And, uh, by the way, it’s an honor to be here with both of you tonight. Dr. Murthy, Kate, uh—
Dr. Vivek Murthy Call me Vivek. You got to call me Vivek.
Coach Jon Scheyer Vivek, okay.
Kate I promise I would call him Coach Scheyer if I worked in “Dr. Bowler” all the time.
Coach Jon Scheyer In the back, you know, Kate said, listen, you better be calling us doctor, professor. Like that’s what you’re calling us today.
Kate I’m not ordained, but maybe “Reverend Doctor…”
Coach Jon Scheyer And, you know, we’re not going to talk about your choice for medical school, by the way, that the fact you didn’t choose Duke. Uh, but it is an honor, and…
Dr. Vivek Murthy I’m not sure, I got in, actually.
Coach Jon Scheyer I have a feeling you did. If I had to guess. But, you know, it’s such an important topic. You mentioned the injury that I had. And, you know, when I left Duke, we won the national championship. And was really proud of the career that I had here, even though there were some people that were happy about the upgrade at point guard with the guy Kyrie Irving coming in. I didn’t I didn’t feel too bad. I saw that one day and I said who’s this Kyrie guy? And uh, he’s, anyway, I don’t take as much offense to that anymore. But I was playing summer league with Miami Heat and you know, first game that I, right before the first game that I played, that’s when LeBron James came out and said, I’m taking my talents to South Beach. Okay. Chris Bosh said he signing with Miami. Dwayne Wade reached on with them. And I go from finishing up at Duke to thinking I’m going to be teammates with LeBron with five championships and they need minimum contract guys on that. Like, I fit that category, they need shooting, I fit. In the first game of summer league, I hit the game-winning shot. The second game I got poked in the eye. I had an optic nerve injury and lost all my vision immediately in my right eye. And, so as my team’s playing the rest of summer league, uh, I flew back to Chicago. Saw a specialist, who told me I probably won’t be able to play the game again, that I love. And then the next week, I’m in the hospital having steroids pumped into me trying to get the swelling down instead of thinking that I’m gonna be teammates with LeBron James. And there was a defining moment in my life. It was a very lonely moment. But the thing that kept it together for me was the amazing support that I had from my family. The amazing support I had from my Duke family. You know, there’s a guy, Terry Kim, who’s a great doctor here at Duke, and he’s an amazing eye doctor. And Terry was on me every step of the way. Coach K, every step of the way. A couple of my close teammates calling, checking in, checking in every day. And if it wasn’t for them, I don’t know what I would have been feeling at that time. But, uh, looking in the key moments and that’s one for me in my life, how people show up is important. How people show up when things are, when it’s not winning a championship. A lot of people showed up for that, that was great. But here I am a few months later, not signed to play anywhere. I don’t know what’s going to happen, and those people in my life that showed up made a huge difference.
Kate Yeah, do you think you would have had a hard time, like if you hadn’t been—it sounds like they, like, rushed in. When, when you feel like things are bottoming out, like, what kind of obstacles do you think people feel when they’re not, when they’re not really sure if people want to hear from them, or like, especially if they’re telling the same hard story like the 18th time where they’re like, no, I still have this horrible problem. My life is still hard.
Coach Jon Scheyer You know, I find this a lot with some of our players or some different experiences that I’ve gone through where you end up, you end up really, uh, internalizing so much, right? And, you know, one of the things that I’ve felt when I’ve been in those moments, I think everybody in this audience, I’m sure, has, you know, felt lonely at some time. And you end up, the moments I felt the best is when I end up reaching out to people. And where you get outside of your bubble somehow, and sometimes that can be harder. You know, there’s like, I want to talk about some of our players, what I think they go through as well some point tonight, but, uh, they may not give you the response you’re hoping for. You know, and that’s some—but, but the message is being delivered. And so for me, in those moments, uh, I’m not sure I was outwardly as thankful as I should have been, right? But that changed my life. And I think that’s an important thing is just for all of us doing the right thing in those moments when it’s not easy to do it, and it literally can change somebody’s life.
Kate It’s so nice, too, when people and get their kind of personality, like there’s the person who sends the text like that. That was it. The beautiful doctor who even remembers when your injury was.
Coach Jon Scheyer So literally, Terry Kim. I got, I got injured in 2010, July 13th. I wake up to a text every July 13th from two people: my mom and Terry Kim. And that’s an amazing thing on his part. Like that, that means a lot. Yeah. And it’s something because of that, some of our guys have had important dates or injuries or surgeries, and I’ve passed it on, like, that’s something I’ve learned from Terry. And that’s, I know how it makes me feel. So I know how it can make somebody else feel.
Kate Yeah. I have, I have friends who do that where they—and if they know that they’re going to forget, they even like put it in the calendar for later. Like, if someone goes through a divorce or someone has, uh, some kind of thing, they just weren’t sure that they could get through when they’re like, all right, I’ll just use Outlook to remind myself that, that somewhere in the future I will want to know that I was changed. I, I know that this is really close to your heart, Dr. Murthy. That, like, people were in a really weird position where we’re not entirely sure how to reach out together. I mean, it’s obvious that this is so important to you if you wanted to come to the world’s greatest university on the first stop of your tour. But why is this such a, I guess, a passion project for you right now, and especially with young people?
Dr. Vivek Murthy Well, I think it’s very personal for me, as I know it is for so many of us. I’ve had my own struggles with loneliness that I didn’t talk about for many years, because I had a sense of shame around that. When I was a kid growing up, you know, a lot of times I would actually fake a stomachache so that I wouldn’t have to go to school. And I still haven’t told my mother this, though, and she doesn’t come to any of my talks, and thankfully she doesn’t know this.
Kate I’ll text her directly after.
Dr. Vivek Murthy Thank you, Kate. Thank you for looking out for me. But the reason is not because I was scared about, like, teachers or exams. I was actually scared about going to school and walking into that cafeteria one more time and not knowing who I could sit next to, or walking out onto the playground and not being sure if there is anybody who’d want to play with me. I had a hard time as a shy, introverted kid making friends even though I wanted to. And, um, I never talked about it because I was ashamed. Even though my parents loved me, I never discussed it and I didn’t. I looked around me at my classmates and it seemed like everyone was doing great. It seemed like everyone had it all figured out. They had all had their sets of friends, so they were perfectly happy. I realize now, having talked to some of those classmates, that was a real illusion, right? We’ve become so good at putting masks on and making it seem like everything is okay, whether those are digital masks and in terms of how we portray ourselves on social media, or whether that’s even just how we interact in real life. And so a lot of times it seems like we’re the only ones struggling. But it turns out others are too. And for me that was the case. So I have also like a later point in my life as an adult, I’ve also struggled with that sense of loneliness. One of the, I think, deepest bouts of loneliness I felt was actually after my first stint as Surgeon General when I, you know, ended up leaving, government service was fairly abrupt, you know, like my departure. And I had made a critical mistake, like during my first term, which is that I had sort of convinced myself, oh, you know, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I didn’t realize it would be twice in a lifetime. But I thought of, you know, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I should do everything I can to make as much of an impact as I can, as much contribution as I can. And, and we with that argument, I ended up neglecting a lot of my relationships.
Kate Because you were like, you’re like in a go for gold, sprint, sprint, sprint.
Dr. Vivek Murthy Yeah. So like, I would, when friends would call me back, I’ll just call them back later when things are less busy. A less busy day never quite came, right? And so months went by. Uh, even when I was with my kids, with my family, at the, you know, dinner table, I’d be distracted. I’d be like, you know, checking emails, checking the news, making sure I was up on top of stuff. And I would tell myself, oh, I need to do this as part of work I don’t want to get behind, etc.. Anyway, there are all these stories we tell ourselves, you know, to rationalize why we do what we do. But those are the stories I was telling myself. The consequence of that was that when, you know, my time in government ended suddenly, I was left without the work community that I had, and I felt estranged from the other relationships that had sustained me for years earlier in life. And it was my wife, Alice, who finally one day said to me when she noticed just how much I was struggling in those days. Afterward, she said, she said, part of your challenge is you don’t have a community anymore. Like, you have to rebuild a community. And I struggled for a while with how to do that. And I felt a sense of embarrassment, honestly, at reaching back out to some of those friends who I had neglected.
Kate You might know me from such things as I’ve been the Surgeon General.
Dr. Vivek Murthy Well, it was like, I felt I felt bad to ask them to, like, be there for me when I hadn’t exactly been there for them over the last couple of years, right? And so, I finally was having a, you know, breakfast with, with one friend in Boston. And she said to me, she said Vivek, you know what your problem is? So your problem is not that you don’t have friends. It’s that you’re not experiencing friendship. There are actually people in your life who, if you call them up today, they would be more than happy to be there for you to reconnect, because the love they had for you five years ago is still there, even if you haven’t experienced it. So what you’ve got to do is experience the latent friendships that exist in your life. But don’t walk around thinking you don’t have people that care about you. And that was a very powerful thing for me to hear. And ever since that conversation, I’ve actually shared this story, you know, from time to time with, with audiences because I think in all of our lives, I suspect if we pause and think about it, there’s somebody we can think of who does deeply care for us. Maybe we haven’t talked to them in a few years. Maybe we had a disagreement with them some time ago, and it’s been awkward since. But we know deep inside that they care for us, that if there was an emergency, they would show up for us, and if they were in a crisis, we would want to show up for them too.
Kate Yeah. I think that is… The Everything Happens Project, we get a lot of mail and I think that is one of the like, hardest bits of mail we get from people is when we say like, interdependence is the only way that we can sustain ourselves during difficult times. And then they’re like, great actually, but I don’t, I don’t have somebody. And I really, I like that you’re like, it’s also could be like an excavation project. It sounds like we’ve been, we’ve been many people over the course of our lives, and it sounds like maybe reaching backwards sometimes.
Dr. Vivek Murthy Yes. I think the chapters that we’ve lived earlier in life, those don’t become sealed off from us entirely. We can go back to high school friends and middle school friends and people from earlier versions of our life. And the other thing is like if we even despite that, if we feel like there’s not somebody that we have in our life, another thing that I found is really powerful is that we can forge bonds with people by looking for ways to serve the folks around us. And this is something that I came to realize over time that I didn’t know before, which is that service turns out to be one of the most powerful antidotes to loneliness. When we see a colleague who might be struggling and we reach out to help them, we’ve got a teammate who’s having a tough day, and we just stop by at the end of practice or an end of the day to check in on them and see how they’re doing. We’ve got a neighbor who we see struggling in their yard, or somebody in your dorm, uh, who you realize is, uh, you know, might be having a rough time and you just again stop by to check on them and see how they’re doing. Those small moments are the glue that brings us together as human beings. We, we I think sometimes, thanks to Hollywood and Bollywood and all of the sort of like, you know, fantasies that we draw out in movies and, and in books, we think that it’s the grand gestures that create connection. But it turns out it’s in the small acts of kindness that we actually forge deep bonds. And not only do we feel connection when we serve other people, but we remind ourselves of something that we can easily forget when we struggle with loneliness, which is that we have worth, that we have value to bring to the world, because that’s something that we lose. Like, the loneliness over time can erode your self-esteem and your sense of self. You can start to feel like, hey, I’m probably—you can feel the way I did when I was in elementary school, but hey, I’m lonely because I’m not likable or I’m not lovable, and it’s a terrible feeling to have that makes it actually harder to to reach out. But service can actually short circuit that downward spiraling and forge really powerful, beautiful connections.
Kate That’s so lovely. Like, that’s, that’s so lovely. I was one of those kids who, like, really struggled with friendships. And I remember sitting on the bus being like, I just wish I knew what other people were thinking because then I would know how to connect. But I love that you’re saying, well, just find a way to be useful. I honestly, it’s one of the things… So John is a killer friend. Like, he has like, a he has a talent for friendship. And I think that’s because he’s very good at kind of like instead of talking about him, he’ll like, isolate something about someone else that’s really lovely. And I kind of, uh, ’cause this is my chance to ask you personal questions in public, I, I kind of wondered if that was maybe a skill you developed early on when you were trying to figure out how to bring people together. Because I read somewhere that you, like, insert words about basketball, blah, blah, team, blah, blah. Captain, maybe.
Coach Jon Scheyer Yeah. You’re close.
Kate Champion, championship.
Coach Jon Scheyer Yeah exactly. Ball. Defense. Rebound.
Kate Moment of importance. But you like wrote all these lovely letters to your whole team about like not about like this is all the great stuff in general, but like the letter was about them. Like, these are the things you’re good at. These are your gifts. And I thought, like what? Uh, because you were an adolescent boy at the time.
Coach Jon Scheyer I was.
Kate But I kind of just wondered, like, how did you figure that out? And, like, how has that served you?
Coach Jon Scheyer You know, I’m not sure. To be honest. I wanted to win very badly, and I was willing to do whatever it took. But I also, knew the importance of everybody on the team. And I think that’s something that I’ve learned more and more as I’ve gone on as a player and as a coach in my life. Having empathy is important, right? It’s it’s hard being the best player, needing to score 20 points a game and rebounds. It’s also hard being the guy that’s trying to fit in and earn playing time, like it’s important to connect and have empathy for each situation. So on our high school team, we had 15 kids. And our school never won a state championship before. And so I just wanted them to understand how much I cared, but almost also how much I believed in each one of them. So instead of just writing a letter to one of them, I decided to write a personal letter to each player.
Kate Was it like, handwritten? Like you were at your cute little desk with like, a train car aside, just like, writing?
Coach Jon Scheyer I was still at my cute little desk typing it, I typed it, I wasn’t, you know. But, but each one, personal note to each guy. And even a couple years ago, one of my teammates and friends still has a letter somehow. And, uh, after reading it, I said, man, my grammar is not good. You know?
Kate You, you be good, player. Love John.
Coach Jon Scheyer You know, I came a long way my senior year of high school to get into Duke, but it was, it was a little concerning to me after reading it back, but uh, that was a moment I’ll never forget. You know, just the connection. Can I say, I don’t want to go off-topic, but I just want to add what Vivek was saying, because I feel the same way at times right now. Like with the job, I don’t have a 9 to 5 job. It’s an amazing thing, we recruit, our players have stuff going on. It’s it’s… But what I found is the challenge of being present. Is the most difficult one for me personally. I think it’s also the most difficult one for our players. Like now with phones how often, is so, you’re easily accessible, right? There’s always news going on. And so for me, I have three young kids and it’s still something I’m fighting with and working through and wanting to be better at it. But just giving them better quality over quantity, right? If you’re doing both, you’re checking work, if you’re checking, you know, kind of with them? One they know it. That’s the thing I’ve learned about kids and they feel if you’re not fully with them. Then two, you’re not really doing this either. And being present as we’re getting ready for this talk tonight, I just kept coming back to that. How important that is.
Kate Yeah. We’ll be right back.
Kate You’re both very emotionally responsive people. I wondered, like, it sounds like this next go round that you wanted to undo some of the worries of like, maybe not being present or maybe not keeping up with your relationships. Then you adopted like a really lovely practice. So I wondered if you could tell me about your, your Moai and what that is.
Dr. Vivek Murthy Oh, sure. Sure. Thanks, Kate. You know, this came about in 2018 when I was, um, about a year and a half removed from serving in government, still struggling to figure out how to rebuild a community. And I was at this fellowship retreat in Colorado Springs, at this place that had, like, a big lake or a pond in the center. And these two buddies of mine, Sonny and another friend, Dave, were there as well. And we blew off a couple of the sessions and decided to just take a walk together around the pond. And as we did that, it felt really good. We were old friends reconnecting, and we realized that we were, all three of us were actually feeling a little bit lost and a little bit lonely. At that time in our lives, we were trying to figure out work stuff, trying to figure out other life stuff, and we were feeling somewhat disconnected from people. And at the end, I remember I was saying, well, you know, we should get together more often, but how many times you say that with friends? And then it never really happens, right? Like I’m just curious. I just want a show of hands, how many people here have said, you know, we should get together more often, and then it just never, ever happens, right? So almost everyone, we’ve said that. So this is a moment where, um, we said that and it immediately felt wrong.
Kate It felt what?
Dr. Vivek Murthy It felt wrong. It was like, this is not going to happen. Like, this is, this something’s got to be different.
Kate You’re like, we should end this now. And then you all locked away in different parts of the pond and one person canoed out. And that was it.
Dr. Vivek Murthy No, but that would have been very interesting, though.
Kate It would be a tragic ending, but still poignant, I think.
Dr. Vivek Murthy Yes, still poignant. Um, but we did at the end, as we said, we’re going to make an explicit commitment to actually be there for one another. Yeah. And here’s what it’s going to look like. It’s going to and we modeled it off of the Okinawan concept of a Moai. The Okinawan concept is based, it’s old, and it’s based on this notion that when kids are young, that their parents would bring like a group of six, 7 or 8 of them together and say, okay, the from here on, going forward, you all are a Moai. That means you have each other’s backs. You’ll always be there for each other no matter what. Somebody runs into financial trouble, you all help out, somebody runs into health problems, you all help out. Whatever the issue is, you have each other’s backs. And so we decided to build our own Moai to make our implicit friendship explicit. And we did that by committing once a month to video conferencing. And during that time, we decided that we were going to focus on each other. We weren’t going to be distracted by our phones, we’re just going to talk to each other. We also decided that during that time, we were going to talk about we’re really matter to us. Yes, we would have fun, we would joke around as we always did. But we talk about this stuff that friends don’t often talk about openly enough uh, our health, our finances, our family, our fears. And the last thing we decided is that in between those monthly calls that if something came up that we wanted to celebrate or a real challenge that we were facing, that we would just reach out to them, we would text the group and if we needed to, we pull together an emergency call. And when I was on the way from my house to the airport this morning, uh, to come down here to Raleigh, I actually had a call with both of them, like in the car, because something had come up, uh, for one of the group members, and we wanted to actually talk it through. So that’s what we decided to do. And I’ll tell you that, you know, I loved these two guys before. I love them now. But it’s different having this explicit commitment with them where we now show up for one another regularly, consistently, uh, and major decisions in my life about work, about family, about health have been impacted by the conversations I’ve had with this Moai. So many ways I feel like they change the course of my life these last few years.
Kate Hey, can you force people into your Moai? Like, if I was, like, really interested in John having direct say about my life, could this be something we do together, at this time?
Dr. Vivek Murthy I don’t know that you can involuntarily draft people.
Kate Can you? You could, if it were done in public and under the right circumstances. Um, but I guess, I mean, one of the things it sounds like, too, is that with that kind of reciprocity, you can build a level of emotional vulnerab—like almost like increase your threshold for emotional vulnerability and but also sounds like it requires more honesty and feedback than other relationships typically tolerate.
Dr. Vivek Murthy It does, but… I mean, like… Just curious, how many people feel like you’ve ever gotten tired of just, like, trying to put on facades and, like, you know, meet whatever standards society has set for you and be somebody that you’re not? Just out of curiosity, how many people felt that way? Like, I’ve felt that way like, you know, almost all of us. Right. So while it can be hard to be vulnerable and open at times, in the end it’s actually much easier to just be real, right? To be able to be real, to be in a relationship, really feel like I don’t have to be anyone else. I can just, like, be myself. And I think we actually all need that in our lives. That doesn’t mean that we all need like a thousand friends, right? If you just have 1 or 2 friends with whom you can be totally yourselves and you can be vulnerable and opening, you can go to them in a crisis. You can go to them when you have something to celebrate. That could be all you need. Yeah, but one thing I worry about is that we’re living in a time where, like, quantity of friends has somehow superseded quality of friendship.
Kate Because we have a literal number that tells us. I thought I had 20 and it turns out I’m supposed to have… And then you can see it go up and down.
Dr. Vivek Murthy That’s right. Yeah. And I would have more if Kate friended me on social media. No, I’m just kidding. But but the point is like just in case point, like social media actually pushed so many people to quantitate their relationships, right? And be like and I still remember this in the early days of, uh, you know, when I was on social media, people would be like, oh, I have this many friends, I have that many friends and etc. Even the word friend I think I’m sort of misappropriated, used for an entirely different… we were talking about people who you happen to have an electronic acquaintanceship with.
Kate Yeah, or are aware of. I am aware of these people.
Dr. Vivek Murthy And sometimes people you’re not even aware of. Like, who’s that person again? How did I meet them? But it’s really the—
Kate Why are you liking my vacation photos? Yeah, totally, yeah.
Dr. Vivek Murthy That’s right. So, you know, I think that that, that that was actually very powerful, not only because it moved us from quality to quantity in some ways, but I think it also shifted the nature of our interaction with friends. Right. So I still remember when on my birthday, people would text me and then at some point they started leaving messages for me on social media, like on my public wall. And they were like, “Happy Birthday, I am so glad duh duh duh duh duh.” And then they were in the next year there’s “Happy Birthday” and then eventually was “HBD.” And I was like, wait, what? How did this get to like HBD? But there’s been this like, but if you just write HBD on like post after post after post, you can wish a lot of people happy birthday, but you know what? it doesn’t feel the same as when you actually get a heartfelt message from someone. They write you a card or leave you a voicemail or something like that. And that’s why, in some ways, I almost feel like, if we want to get back to the roots of like truly satisfying relationships, of the essence of them, we have to remember that, like, we like, evolved over thousands of years to process, not just like the content of your speech, but the tone of your voice. Your body language. The expression on your face. The nuance. What we said that also was not said. And that’s why I like now, and this is going to make me sound super old, but I know that there are some of you who don’t know what voicemail is because you don’t use it. And I’ve been called, you know, an old fogey for even mentioning voicemail. But I actually think that voicemail is very powerful because I had a friend who I used to play phone tag with a lot, and what he would do is he would just leave me messages when we couldn’t connect. He’d be like, Hey—his name is Mark—but like, hey, you know, I was just doing this today I was doing that I’m super excited about this, this thing happened at work, I’m a little worried about it. Excited to catch up with you about it when we talk. But just like hearing his voice for a minute, wow, that like, made a difference. It also has made me pick up the phone more now when people call, even if it’s just to say, hey, I’m about to walk into this conversation with Jon and with Kate, can I call you back later? But I’ll tell you that even that five seconds of hearing someone’s voice and them hearing yours makes you feel different because you feel more connected than if you were to just silence a call, maybe text them back and say, I’ll call them in a few days, like when I have time. So I do think that it’s the quality of our relationships that we have to get back, uh, to prioritizing, to investing in and not worry so much about the quality of connections that we have. I was in Colorado recently, when we went, we were together recently. So before our lunch, when we were together in Colorado, I had had this dinner before with, uh, the night before with a group of folks including a young woman who had just graduated from college. And she, she told me a very interesting thing. She said, you know what? she’s like when I was 12 or 13, she said. She said, my parents and I decided that I was not going to open any social media accounts. I was like, wow, that’s very unusual. You know, like 95% of young people are on social media today of adolescents, I should say. And I said, well, what was that like for you? Wasn’t everyone else on social media around you? She was like, yeah, almost everyone else was. She’s like, I was hard in the beginning because I was like, how come I’m the only one who not on it, people are checking stuff, I don’t know what they’re checking. She’s like, but I’ll tell you this. She’s like, I now look back at the last few years, she’s like, and I’m so grateful to my parents. Because, she’s like, I, I don’t have a lot of the anxieties that my friends have. And I have a small circle of friends, but they’re really good friends. She’s like, we’re there for each other. We take care of each other. I say this to all of you not to say that if you got on social media, you made, like a grave mistake and there’s no coming back from it. I’m not saying that. But I am saying that I think it’s worth interrogating and examining just the role that technology and social media in particular, have in our lives and specifically in our relationships. And that it’s important, I think, more so than ever, to draw boundaries around certain areas in our life that are worth protecting, and those include our time in person with other people. So, and then, I thought Jon’s point on this was, was spot on. But like, we’ve all probably been in circumstances where we were talking to somebody else and you could tell they were distracted, that they were doing something else there on their phone, or they were like texting on their computer or something else while they were talking to you or Zooming with you and it doesn’t feel great. And we know when that happens, but to have the ability to just focus in on somebody, to put your device aside to make your in-person time tech-free time. Could be, it’s a small but incredibly powerful shift that you can make in your life, which will enrich the time that you have with people. And it’ll make them feel a lot better because they’ll know that they have one of the greatest gifts you can ever give them, which is your full attention.
Kate Mhm. And I think that’s so true about like this death by weak ties feeling that we all get and like how do you restore that sort of the like the fullness of who we can be if we actually are fully present. And it kind of, it reminded me of something you said the other day, Jon, about like, one way, like if only we had an expert on how to build strong ties, like a team, if you will, a team to beat all teams. Um, pause for grandeur. Like one of your hallmarks is your is honesty. And you’re really good at facilitating communication that isn’t just compliments. I prefer a compliments-only strategy, but like this is a big part of who you are and how you build connection. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about, like, how do you kind of increase people’s ability to be honest with each other? And what have you noticed about that dynamic?
Coach Jon Scheyer Well, one um, it’s I’m going to sound a little old here, but it is different is, our teams have gone on. You know, when I came in in 2006, you know, we were on our phones. You didn’t have picture phones or you’re not taking pictures or anything like that. Now, so much of our players communication happens, they’re they’re snapping their texting like maybe FaceTime for one second. But there’s not the, they’re not doing video calls or they’re not on the phone for long periods of time. And so one of the things we have to talk about confronting often and confronting isn’t just negative stuff, it’s anything in the moment. On Monday we actually had a values meeting.
Kate What’s a values meeting?
Coach Jon Scheyer So values is basically the standards we’re going to live by. What are the values we believe in, where… Gives our team identity. Like I’ve learned from Coach K, we don’t have, our role is to show up on time, you know? But the values is something not only that I’m instilling in our players, but they are speaking on what they believe in as well. Uh, but I tell them the, the there’s really two things for me. And the first one I mentioned is trust. Because there’s so many different vehicles that can break up trust now, you know, especially for a college athlete. When you think about the space that they’re in, uh, there’s, pressure from friends, from family, from us as coaches. Uh, there’s expectations for immediate success. There’s Instagram, there’s Twitter. There’s any, any form of social media. And trust is not just given. It’s earned. But to me, the only way to get that is by being honest all the time. And so we actually had a coach come on staff Emmanuel Doherty this summer. And we had meetings at the end of the summer. Uh, they were very honest about things that were really good and they need to continue to do. And there they’re also things that our players needed to do a lot better. And we just laid it out there for them. And Emmanuel was kind of taken aback. He’s been coaching now for almost 20 years and wow, we can really be honest here. We can really do that and was rejuvenated by it because to me it’s, you know, look, a lot of coaches, they’re worried about losing players to the transfer portal or, or what could happen if the, you know, if it doesn’t go very well. But for us, you know, like I’m proud we haven’t had a player transfer in this past spring. We haven’t actually we actually haven’t even brought a transfer in this year, which is rare right now in college basketball. But it’s all built on telling the truth. And the special part is our guys now are getting to the point where they’re telling each other the truth in real-time. You know, they’re confronting each other. Uh, hey, Cal, I need you now. Or Tyrese, pick it up, or you’re doing great. Like any of those comments in what saying we’ve had our own program for a long time, learned this from Coach K, but is to get outside of yourself. And the more you’re encouraging and talking to others, the better you become. And I felt that as a player, I feel as a coach all the time because you’re talking to everybody else. Uh, but it’s something that I think is key for any young person, but also especially our players in a young athlete.
Kate Yeah, I like that there’s like a, I mean, there’s a cost to being known. Is that we will people will know us for the things we’re amazing at, and then people will also know us and our faults. And like, I mean, to me, that’s been one of the great gifts of learning how to be a good friend and to be in relationship with others is like by myself. I was only ever going to be. So, you know, the foundation was only ever going to be so wide. And this building, whatever this is, was only going to get so tall. But it has been people coming alongside me and being like, hey, no one likes it when you’re late, no one. Or um, like I grew up with, um, a habit of like, um, um, devastating but hilarious comments. Which I hoped would endear me to others. It did not. And it was like the the first friends who were like, hey, by the way, like, this is, this is, this is never going to work. And I just, I, I love that you’re like teaching people the grittiness of that, those kind of connections and that we can be I don’t know that we can be more when we let people see all of us.
Kate We’ll be right back.
Kate Okay. This is a student question and we talked a little bit about it: social media. That’s it. Social media. I like this. “I go between feeling totally immersed in other people’s lives online and then feeling like I have nothing to do this weekend. I always end up feeling like something’s wrong with me.” Coach, do you want to start us off with like, I mean, you’ve lived two kind of different lives. One is this authority figure and then the other, as a student in this, do you think this is getting much harder than when you were a student?
Coach Jon Scheyer No question. No question. I feel for, uh, our students right now and how rampant social media is. And, you know, look, for me, I’ll just. I’ll confide in all of you. You know, before we played one game last year, I got off the Twitter. Yeah. You know, I just I got off and I said, I’m not doing it. I’m not reading. I’m not—and it’s, uh, probably the best decision I’ve ever made. Like, I have, the first week, you know, a lot of news is on there. It’s part of, you know, my job. So I had to find a different way to get that news. Yeah, but part of me, I kept going to the app, and then it’s oh, I forgot, I deleted it. In the first couple weeks it was tough. By the time, uh, like, right now, I will never go back on it. Just will never go back on it. And, you know, I think the biggest thing I go back to being present, uh, I think I’ve learned over time, too, and, Vivek, I’m sure you this is your world. You can speak on this even better. Uh, but a lot of what you see isn’t real. At the end of the day, a lot of what you see isn’t real. And it’s a snapshot or it’s a sliver of, you know, an entire day or, uh, it’s like somebody could have a bad time at a concert. And you see the one moment of where they’re dancing and doing this and you think it’s the best time ever. While that person may want to be at home watching a movie or, you know, it’s just it’s not real. And so all I can tell you is I have empathy for whoever asked that question. Like, it’s not easy. But I also know the less I’m on, the better that I feel. That’s just me personally. I don’t know what you would say to that.
Dr. Vivek Murthy Yeah. No, I, I couldn’t agree more with you, Jon. I actually had personally a very similar experience. I had to have surgery on my hand, uh, earlier this year and, my two Moai brothers, Sonny and Dave called me two days before the surgery and they said, we know you’re going to have to be taken half days for the two days after the surgery, half days at work. So it’s going to be a good time for you to make a change or reset in your life. What do you want to reset? I was like, huh.
Kate Oh my gosh, that’s so thoughtful.
Dr. Vivek Murthy Yeah, that’s very thoughtful. I was like, huhhhh. And we kind of came to this conclusion that they knew that, you know, I was checking social media here and there and I, you know, I was like, I gotta do for my job, I got to do it here or there or whatever. But it was always like it never left me feeling great, you know, that was like it felt somewhat draining. And also it took a lot of time, you know. And so they said, well, why don’t you, do something related to that? So I’m going to just stop checking all the apps. I’m going to delete them. I’m not going to look at them anymore. And I’ll tell you, I was a little twitchy for the first few days, but I actually started to feel better and better and better. You know what it was like? It was like the noise settled. I was actually able to focus on the stuff I cared about. I was able to actually think about who I want it to be. I was able to actually read more. I felt like I could pay attention to a book for longer. So that was like, good for me. But I’ll tell you that just more broadly, I think I do feel for, um, for college students now and for grad students who are whose lives are, you know, in many cases, immersed in social media. And, look, I’ve often found when I talk to college students and high school students, they have like a remarkable amount of insight into how social media is making them feel. A lot of them. There are three common things that young people tell me about social media. They say it often makes them feel worse about themselves, that they find themselves constantly comparing themselves to other people’s lives, their accomplishments, their looks. The second thing is, they tell me sometimes it makes them feel worse about their friendships, and they see other people doing stuff that seems fun and extra exciting, but without them. But the third thing they say is they can’t get off it.
Kate Totally.
Dr. Vivek Murthy And I don’t think it’s because somehow this generation of people have been born with dramatically less willpower than prior generations. That’s also not what’s going on. What’s happening is that these products are designed to maximize how much time we spend on them, because that’s what the revenue model is based on. And so if the goal is to maximize how much time you spend, then I want to make sure I’m engaging you with content that’s, that’s stoking fear, that’s stoking anxiety and stoking conflict. Because those three things, from an evolutionary perspective draw our attention. Right? So it’s not that we’re like, bad or broken or not disciplined. It’s that in some ways, we’re the victims of what the apps are trying to do, right? Which is manipulate us, manipulate us to spend more time on them. So it’s for those reasons that I think it’s so important, uh, for us if we’re on social media. To figure out how we draw the right boundaries around it. Right? That could be like what Jon and I did. Which is to say, you know what? We’re actually just not going to use it. It could be dramatically reducing your utilization and say, okay, they’re only specific times in the day or the week when I’m going to use it might be saying, here are the specific purposes I’m going to use it for. If I’m going to post something I’m not necessarily going to check comments. You got to figure out what’s best for you. The last thing I’ll tell you is that making any of these changes alone is hard. Like, if I didn’t have, like, Sonny and Dave in my Moai checking on me and being like, hey, did you, are you staying off of them, or are you still checking? What are you doing? I probably would have easily crept back in, right? But change is hard individually, change together is much more feasible. And so if you have a couple of other friends who are also struggling with the same. If you form a pact with them to say, okay, what if all three or four or five of us decided that we’re going to take a sabbath here from social media, or we decided that we’re only going to check it once a week, you know, for an hour, or we’re only going to use it in whatever way you prescribe. It will be a lot easier to do, and I guarantee you, guarantee you that there are other people, like, classmates of yours, who are struggling with social media. Who are saying what people say on surveys all the time, which is around 50% of people are saying that social media is making them feel worse about their body image. A third of people are saying that they’re staying up well past midnight on weeknights using social media and, uh, you know, and digital media more broadly. And that’s taking away from sleep, which we know is essential, like for your mental health as well as for your overall function. So people are struggling. You’re not alone if you are. And making a pact with others, they try to make a shift around our social media usage could be one of the most powerful things we do to not only free up time, but to improve the quality of time and quality of interaction we have.
Kate But someone should issue a Surgeon’s General warning. Who would that…?
Dr. Vivek Murthy I am so glad you mentioned this.
Kate Who would that person be? This wasn’t…
Dr. Vivek Murthy Well, so a few months ago. We actually—.
Kate I like that. You didn’t even bring it up even though you totally did it. I think it’s insane. Like, this. Is a really big shift in how we talk about it. Like because there’s an official now, like it feels validated in a way it never was before.
Dr. Vivek Murthy Yeah. You know, I, it was in May of this year, what Kate’s referring to is that we issued the very first Surgeon General’s advisory on social media and youth mental health, calling out the fact that, and really warning people, that there are serious negative effects here. And just to tell you, 1 or 2 of them, we, we found that when adolescents are spending three hours on social media a day or more, they experience a doubling in their risk of anxiety and depression symptoms. And the average amount that adolescents are spending each day today is 3.5 hours. So it’s more than that, right? We, I mentioned earlier, that half of adolescents are saying that using social media makes them feel worse about their body image, but so many are also saying that they’re exposed to hate speech, that they’re exposed—six out of ten adolescent girls say they’ve been approached by strangers on social media in ways that have been may have made them feel uncomfortable. And then, of course, there’s what it’s taking away from. What I worry about most are protecting three areas in our, in our lives, especially for adolescents and for, uh, and for college students, which is your time sleeping, your time in person with friends, and your time learning as well. Because those three are really vital. And, you know, our attention, like, if you’re like me, you feel like your attention got like left back somewhere in the dust ten years ago. And it’s, like, hard to focus, right? So many people say they feel that way these days. It’s just to harder to focus, harder to read a book, etc. I don’t think it’s an accident that people are saying that. And when you imagine if, like our, our phones are buzzing, if we’re getting social media alerts all the time when we’re trying to study or do something like you’re, you’re just not focused. And you think, I’m just looking at that and then I’m back focusing, and it often can take you up to 20 minutes plus to regain your focus. Once you lose it, uh, and you lose a very quickly, you know, when you turn to look at a screen or to check your inbox. So all that just to say that I, we issued the advisory, uh, that warning, if you will, because for the last 20 years, we’ve essentially had the unfettered, like, spread and use of social media, not just in the United States, but across the world with very little study. And you know, as to the adverse effects with very little, uh, guardrails and safety standards enforced. But when, you know, when I was growing up, we had a huge issue with motor vehicle accidents in the United States. Motor vehicle fatalities were really, really high. Now, you know what we didn’t do in that situation? We didn’t say, you know what? This is just a price of modernity. Cars are here to stay, we’re not going back to horses and buggies, we just got to tolerate all these deaths. We didn’t say that. We said, we’re not going to go back to our horses and buggies, but we’re going to sure as heck commit to making cars safer. And so we established safety standards that got us seatbelts and airbags and crash testing and a host of other safety measures. We need the same thing with social media. We need the kind of safety measures put in place and actually enforce, then make it safer, not just for young people, but for everyone. And right now, the entire burden of managing this is falling on young people and on their parents. Right? The parents, most of your parents, they didn’t grow up with social media. And it’s rapidly evolving. And what we’ve fundamentally done, I think, is pick the best product designers in the world who are making these platforms and increasing, in a sense, their addictiveness against young people and their parents. And that is literally the definition of an unfair fight. And so that’s why we issued that advisory, where we called for policy action to finally have the backs of parents and young people. And I will continue to push for the kind of safety standards that we desperately need.
Kate My suggestion also was that there’s like a companion app that I can download. So when I click on Instagram, a photo of you emerges. That’s just like…or just like a gentle, kind of, which I would take. Like, I want to look into this face and feel lightly chastised. But also supported. You know what I mean? I think that’s why I was honestly really excited about the two of you meeting, too, is that you’re both people who really, like, have this very, like an intense emotional responsiveness to what makes other people connect. And it’s been so lovely talking with you and I, I hear, Dr. Murthy, that you have a challenge for us that I am not responsible for explaining, and I’m excited about hearing about it.
Dr. Vivek Murthy I do. Um, let me tell you guys about it. So, and I just love this conversation, by the way, just a minute. Thank you so much, Kate. And thank you, Jon, and thank Duke and all of the wonderful people who made today possible. Part of what we’re actually doing as part of this tour is issuing a challenge to all of the students that we meet, and faculty and, and, uh, and staff as well, everyone who’s here, which is we’re calling our 5-for-5 challenge. And this is where we’re challenging everyone to take five actions over the next five days that will help you connect with someone else. And you can do that through three ways. By expressing gratitude to someone, by extending support to someone. Or by asking for help. So if you do one of those three things each day for the next five days. You can mix and match them how you want. You can call someone and express your gratitude to them. You can, uh, stop by their dorm room and you know that they’ve been having a hard time and extend some support. Or you could reach out to a friend or family member and ask them for help. But those acts done over five days, we believe, will actually leave you feeling better off five days later, more connected and reminded of the connections that you may have had in your life who like me, you may have had these friends, but not been experiencing friendship. This is a way for you to, to actually change that. So that’s our 5-for-5 challenge. Thank you all so much for being here today.
Kate Vivek challenged us with the 5-for-5 challenge. Okay, so what that is, is you have to do five actions over the next five days, that will help us connect with someone else through expressing our gratitude to someone, or by extending support to them in some way, or maybe by even asking for help yourself. So I thought we could end today’s conversation by doing one of those acts together. Okay. All right. Unless you’re driving, I want you to close your eyes. I want you to think of someone right now that you are grateful for. Maybe it was someone who had an impact on you when you were a kid. An old coach or teacher or teammate. Or maybe it’s someone who checked on you after you had a hard time. Who sent a gift or a note when you were struggling? It doesn’t matter how long it’s been since you’ve talked to them or seen them. Pull out your phone. Unless you’re driving, then please don’t. You can just do this when you get home. But pull up that person’s contact or email or social media. Write up a few lines of a text or an email to them. Let them know that you’re thinking of them and thank them for the impact they had on your life. Okay, I’ll give you a second. Okay, now hit send. There. We did it! May our small act of gratitude join a ripple effect. And may tomorrow be another chance to reach out or ask for help. Or show up for someone in need. To close, I wanted to share a blessing for when you need a little more love and connection in your life. It’s from my new book, Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day!, which is available everywhere books are sold. I’m also been having some pang-y feelings you’ll be able to tell. I’ve been propped up on my toes, peering over fences, but mostly staring at the peeling paint. Hoping has become longing. Wanting has become needing. I can see love everywhere but here. There is a naturalness to the way other people experience their joys, popping up like tender spring grasses. The earth, it seems, is always warm and autumn seedlings break open and bring life. Life everywhere. And I chew on my lip as neighbors roll their eyes at relationships, children, plans, gifts I would tear open like a Christmas present. What riches. Scatter my heart like a dandelion. Drifting high over these walls and setting down gently where good things grow. Contentment and wonder, surprise a new adventure. Comfort and the hands of those who know love’s value a love’s cost. Envy will be blown away by another breeze. And I rest here waiting. Waiting for the blooms. Here’s to blooming together, my dears. Thank you so much for joining me on season 12. Bless you, my dears. And a huge thanks to Chris Simmons and his team at Duke University for hosting this event. Mary Pat McMahon and the Office of Student Affairs. The staff at Page Auditorium and the office of the U.S. Surgeon General for making this conversation and event possible. We’ve put information about the 5-for-5 challenge in the show notes, and we’d love to hear what connections have popped up from this practice. Leave me a note on social media, I’m at @KateCBowler, or leave our team of voicemail. You can call us at (919) 322-8731. And if you are into short reflections to start or end your day, my new book, Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day!, is available everywhere books are sold. Each entry includes a short reflection, a blessing for the ups and downs and in-betweens. Like a blessing for when life feels incomplete or and then a prompt to help you feel a little grounded each day. And if that sounds like something you need, we’re inviting people to read it for the 40 days of Lent, which begins Wednesday, February 14th. I’ll be sending out a daily email with that day’s reflection prompt, if that sounds like your thing. Sign up for free at KateBowler.com/lent.
Kate And a big thank you to my team and partners for the work they put into this podcast and all of our resources. Lilly Endowment, the Duke Endowment and Duke Divinity School. There’s no way we would have been able to do this without you. Your support makes everything happen at Everything Happens. This podcast is my favorite kind of group project. Jess Richie, Harriet Putnam, Keith Weston, Gwen Heginbotham, Brenda Thompson, Hope Anderson, Kristen Balzer, Jeb Burt, Sammi Filippi, and Katherine Smith. I love making beautiful things with you all and we do it for you is a song I’m still working on. Yes, you in the carpool lane or trying to fall asleep or multitasking. You are our absolute favorite and we are so grateful we get to do this. Make things for you. Let us know who you want to hear from. And hey, if you wouldn’t mind, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You have no idea how much those things matter. It takes only a few seconds. I will talk to you next week when I’ll be speaking with the hilarious and oddest two of my very favorite traits Stephanie Wittels Wachs. You are going to love her. This is Everything Happens with me, Kate Bowler.
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