Americans are spending more and more time alone, and more than a third will report experiencing “severe loneliness” in 2021. The director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development – the longest study of human life – concludes in a new book that personal relationships are “an important factor [that] stands for the consistency and strength of its associations with physical health, mental health and longevity.”
Lack of this relationship can actually affect political behavior and interest in extreme ideologies. In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, Galen Druck talks with Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard study, about the lessons he’s searching for in American politics.
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