2026
- Connection · One Chart4 min read
40% of Americans report moderate to severe loneliness. The barrier they name is time.
The second annual Social Connection in America survey, run by RAND and The Connection Institute with Julianne Holt-Lunstad — the author of the 148-study meta-analysis this site cites more than any other — as its scientific lead, was released this morning.
- Connection · One Chart3 min read
Another country counts: half of Australians report some form of social disconnection
Ending Loneliness Together, the Australian research coalition led from the University of Sydney, released its State of the Nation report today: a nationally weighted survey of 4,001 people aged 12 to 95, fielded in January and February.
- Purpose · Evidence4 min read
Purpose in life and dying: the largest analysis yet, 488,765 people, and the honest size of the effect
A meta-analysis published today inPsychological Medicine, open access, pools 25 samples — eight large national cohorts with individual-level data plus 17 published studies — totaling 488,765 people followed for up to 32 years, with 48,928 deaths.
- Connection · One Chart4 min read
One in five Americans was lonely 'a lot of the day yesterday.' That number belongs on every health dashboard.
Gallup's latest well-being report, published today, is headlined by depression — 19.1% of US adults say they currently have or are being treated for it, roughly 51 million people, nearly double the 2015 figure — but the line we watch is the one underneath.
- Connection · Purpose4 min read
Loneliness shortens life mostly by taking your reasons. A new study puts the share at 88%.
Connection and purpose are two of the five fundamentals, and a paper in the March issue of Social Science & Medicine suggests they are closer to one fundamental wearing two hats.
- Connection3 min read
The oldest study of happiness has one finding, and it isn't about romance
Today is the one day a year the country agrees that a relationship is worth money. The longest-running study of adult life ever conducted agrees too, but not about which relationship.
2025
- Evidence · Connection4 min read
The Blue Zones researchers answered. Here is what the reply settles, and what it can't.
Fifteen months ago we wrote about the Ig Nobel Prize awarded to a demographer whose work argues that many of the world's claimed oldest people are the product of missing birth certificates and pension fraud, and that the Blue Zones might be artifacts of bad records.
- Movement4 min read
12,500 athletes over fifty are in Des Moines this week. None of them are optimizing.
The National Senior Games open today in Des Moines, Iowa, and run through August 4: more than 12,500 registered athletes, all at least fifty years old, competing in 25 sports from track and swimming to pickleball and powerlifting.
- Connection4 min read
871,000 deaths a year: the WHO put a number on loneliness
The WHO Commission on Social Connection, after a three-year investigation, reported today that about one person in six worldwide is affected by loneliness, and that over 2014 to 2019 loneliness was associated with an estimated 871,000 deaths a year — roughly a hundred an hour.
- Connection4 min read
The World Health Assembly just made loneliness a health priority. It took a vote to say the obvious.
This week in Geneva the World Health Assembly adopted its first resolution on social connection, co-sponsored by Spain and Chile. It urges member states to build strategies for meaningful social connection into national health policy, to collect data on loneliness and isolation, to…
- Industry · Evidence4 min read
A $101 million prize for restoring ten years of function. Watch the yardstick, not the money.
XPRIZE named forty semifinalists today in its $101 million Healthspan competition, chosen from more than 600 teams in 58 countries. Each gets $250,000 to run a trial.
- Connection · Psychology4 min read
The chatbot's maker studied loneliness. Its heaviest users had more of it.
OpenAI and the MIT Media Lab released two studies of what ChatGPT does to the people who use it most. One analyzed nearly 40 million interactions automatically; the other was a four-week randomized trial of 1,000 people.
- Connection · Purpose4 min read
The Surgeon General's last prescription has no drug in it
Vivek Murthy, leaving office this month after two terms as US Surgeon General, released a document today he calls a Parting Prescription for America. It has no dosing table.
- Real Food · Evidence5 min read
Two reports, seventeen days apart, two answers on alcohol. Both are right.
The US Surgeon General issued an advisory today calling alcohol a leading preventable cause of cancer — about 100,000 cases and 20,000 deaths a year in the United States, across at least seven cancer types — and asked Congress to put a cancer warning on the label.
2024
- Real Food · Evidence5 min read
The National Academies says moderate drinkers live longer. Read that sentence slowly.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released today a congressionally requested review of moderate drinking — up to two drinks a day for men, one for women — and eight health outcomes.
- Psychology4 min read
Oxford's word of the year is "brain rot." Longevity content is the premium tier.
Oxford University Press named "brain rot" its Word of the Year today, after a public vote of more than 37,000 people. Oxford's definition: the supposed deterioration of a person's mental state from overconsuming trivial content, now particularly online.
- Evidence4 min read
A Blue Zones critic won an Ig Nobel today. What changes for you?
The Blue Zones are five regions — Sardinia, Okinawa, Ikaria, Nicoya in Costa Rica and Loma Linda, California — reported to have unusual numbers of very old people, and one of the best-known stories about simple living and long life.