If you have a few people you can really rely on abd spend quality time with, you benefit from one of the most powerful predictors of long-term well-being that science has so far identified. We don’t just live with our close friends. We are often able to live longer because of them.

(It’s worse in other countries: in Japan, they have millions of people that never even leave their bedrooms, and their superaged society now suffers from the “80-50 problem,” were parents in their 80s are still taking care of their non-working children in their 50s, socially isolated shut-ins.)

And unfortunately, Americans are increasingly socially isolated across the socioeconomic spectrum: more people live by themselves, more eat all their meals alone, and more report that they rarely socialize in person. Loneliness is rising, especially as we age, and it’s just plain bad for your health

Unfortunately both the very poor and the very rich suffer in this area since both financial strain and extreme wealth can limit or erode close friendships in different ways, the first through bad stress and instability, the latter through social isolation and distrust.

These longevity effects hold even after accounting for differences in sex, age, initial health, and ultimate cause of death.

The quality of these relationships matters more than sheer quantity. The metastudy finds that people with a few truly close, supportive friendships fare far better than people with lots of superficial or casual friends.

(The influence of the lack of close friendships on the risk of death is comparable to well-established risk factors like smoking and alcohol consumption, and actually exceeds the influence of other risk factors like physical inactivity and obesity.)

So obviously, America needs more immigrants, not fewer — immigrants completely power our elder care industry, providers are already really struggling to find the workers they need, and Elon’s robots won’t be able to replace them.

(To help you wrap your head around this silver tsunami today: in 1850, only around 2% of the U.S. population was over age 65.)

This is the largest explosion of retirement-age Americans in history. By 2030, demographers project that folks over age 65 will be nearly 1/4th of the U.S. population.

(When’s the last time you read a book? Or had a long screen-less conversation with someone? Or just raw-dogged it for an extended period?)

Stars are basically just the instant after-effects of the Big Bang (which happened only 13.7 billion years ago): like a one-second flash of brightness before the universe settles into utter darkness without stars, leading to the long eventual heat death of the universe (in around 1.7×10^106 years).

For perspective, this expanse of time is like the universe starting with only 1 second of stars and then a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion years of just black holes.