00:11
Okay, so now that we have spent some time talking about weak ties, weak social ties, like, you know,
these unnamed friendships that might be transient, it might not even develop into a regular thing,
but it's helpful for us. And now we have some things to talk about strong
friendships, stronger ties. So, do you want to share this article that you found?
Yeah, well, this is the one with the funny title.
Oh, yes. Friends with Health Benefit. I mean, one could say that Friends with Benefit also
has a health benefit, but I'm not going to dive into that.
We don't have to go quite that far. That's not even that far. I think it is entirely reasonable
to say that Friends with Benefits can have a health benefit effect, but this article is...
Is not really concerned with that kind of health.
Right. It's playing with the title because Friends with Benefits, for any
listeners who don't know what that means...
Yeah.
Right? This is, you know...
No, stop.
Stop.
You don't have to say anything. If you don't know what Friends with Benefit is, just go watch
a film by Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis in it, titled...
Oh, my God.
Friends with Benefit, I think. And I think it came out on 2010?
Okay.
I'm typing this furiously now.
I have... I do know about this. I can't recommend it. Also, everyone listening,
I'd like to point out that when I was told to stop, I put my hands up. It was not visible.
I was like, okay.
2011! 2011. Close enough. Close enough. I don't know if that's the best definition,
but I do remember it to be a fairly enjoyable movie that would probably
be cancelled if it was published nowadays.
Okay.
Hey, it would tell you all the definitions of what Friends with Benefit means.
It will at least give you a concept.
You'll get an idea.
Usually, these movies have a tendency to go,
Friends with Benefit is an impossibility, and then it turns into a love story anyway.
I'd be curious to know what this one is.
I think that's how it turned out, but then if it's between Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake,
it's like, okay, I kind of don't blame you guys.
You're supposed to suspend the reality.
It can't just be Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake in your mind.
It's supposed to be the characters.
If Mila Kunis makes a move on me, I will follow accordingly.
I'm not disagreeing with you.
03:01
What I'm saying is that the reality of the...
Anyway, we're not a movie critic over here, right?
This is not what we should be doing.
Back to the original topic of Friends with Health Benefits,
which is a currently active research that is shared in Scientific American, is it?
This was a Scientific American article.
That's where the title is getting played with.
And the actual paper, I think they're just covering several large studies.
It might just be a...
Yeah, it seems like a meta-analysis type.
Yeah, it's a meta-public issue.
It's like taking all of them and a journalist has taken it upon them to deliver this consensus.
It's an amalgamation of 149 studies.
I guess more or less suggesting that having strong relationship, whether family or friends,
was a powerful indicator in predicting longevity as smoking or abusing alcohol,
which we all know to correlate very strongly to a person's longevity.
That's interesting, right?
Like it's as big of a factor as an alcohol abusing, right?
This is not just drinking alcohol for fun, so abusing alcohol or smoking,
which we all know to be extremely harmful to health.
Right. It's saying that...
So in this one, I'm also seeing...
So we're quoting a little bit off of this, right?
So they had one of them, which was a meta-analysis, the 149.
And it's basically comparing addictive, which is like a neurological function,
right? Addictive things to your longevity, the strength of that indicator,
to having strong relationships with friends or family as a similarly powerful indicator.
As well as a study that was five years before that, which looks like...
I just realized, I'm not sure. I think it's just...
It's 70-year-olds of 15,000 70-year-old Australians in 2005,
quoting size and strength of a person's circle of friends,
not even necessarily his or her family, predicted survival a decade later.
So the idea of having a lot of those people and the strengths with them might have
indicated something. And then the strength of that is a powerful indicator,
as shown in the next meta-analysis.
Ah, okay, okay.
Yeah. So there is a lot in this particular page. People can share the link after.
Because we're just pulling out the articles that we found 10 minutes ago.
Don't expect us to have read everything. Because, right, I think right off the bat,
I think to myself, like, is it talking about strength of these individual social ties?
06:07
Or are they talking about the number of social ties?
Right. And I think that's...
I think that's to connect it to why I think, Asame, you brought up the transition,
right, from the friendship theme, was the weak ties and the strong ties have a place.
It's about having... Oh, this is now my opinion, right?
It's about having sort of enough of each or along that range, so that you feel appropriately,
sort of emotionally, mentally, physically satisfied and healthy, right?
So you can't just delete one.
Yeah, right. Even if you love cheese, you can't just eat cheese for the rest of your life.
And, you know, you want a balanced diet, a little bit of carb and a little bit of protein.
I'm sorry, are you telling me I can't just eat cheese all the time?
Unfortunately not, unless you want to die within, like,
a few years and maybe die out of boredom.
Somebody, I feel like we're about to be throwing stones at a few different,
won't name any names, countries.
Oh, that's funny.
But yeah, I think that's the gist, right?
Even for friendships and social interactions that we have,
we want a variety of different ones in moderation.
Yeah, yeah.
And whatever moderation means to an individual person is kind of up to them, but...
Right. It is, as many things in the, I think, social realm of stuff, right?
It's individual and group.
But the idea here is that you want the group around you to create something that feels
positive, supportive, not always easy, not always super comfortable.
Discomfort can be helpful, but on the whole,
it seems to be bettering the space around you, right?
And that could be different for different people.
I'm deviating from this article now, but what sort of
situation or event or something, what sort of situation, setup,
do you think strengthen friendship?
Existing friendship.
Let's say you already know this person's existence and they also know your existence.
If you want to take a step further and want to strengthen your friendship,
what would you do?
Yeah, this...
I mean, when you said you were going to deviate from the article,
09:00
I mean, you went right for the heart of it, huh?
That's my specialty.
That was the most, not necessarily evil sounding laugh I've heard you make,
but it was such a troublemaker style laugh.
I love making people uncomfortable with my questions.
It's a good thing that I sit with discomfort on a regular basis, isn't it?
Yeah, so when you said it, there was actually one particular moment, this isn't the only one,
but it was during grad school and it was a situation in which I had,
I will call it the opportunity to essentially ask for help.
And I won't get into the details about it, but the idea of something had happened
and if I were to ask for help, it was going to be a fairly sizable help.
It wasn't just like, can you come pick up groceries with me?
I mean, that also can be sizable.
You know that this was going to be somewhat of a burden to the other person.
Yes, exactly.
And it was made clear to me in the work that I was doing, in the therapy that I had,
that it was like, actually, this particular moment for the ones that you feel
you are having a stronger connection with, like the people that you're like,
I feel like there might be something here, right?
We get along well, we hang out often, right?
There's relatability between us.
One, not way of testing it, it's not a test.
It's like you're handing the opportunity to them
and you're seeing if that space is going to grow, right?
And that helped because my fear, and as many others may have experienced,
is like, if you're going to ask for help to that degree,
you might instead be so worried about burdening the other people.
That you won't ask for help, right?
Yeah.
And what happens is that you, if you flip that a little bit,
is that you don't give a friend the opportunity to help you.
Like you, you like have removed their imagined burden that they might have.
But in that exchange of, you know, complex and gray social dynamics,
but you've also removed the opportunity for them to try and help you
or to get to know you and to be more vulnerable in those spaces, right?
And so instead I asked, right?
And that actually did, it opened up with a few people.
Not that it necessarily became a long-running one either.
It's just...
No, it doesn't have to be.
Yeah, it's just like there, it was like,
ah, this person is willing and able to do that.
And some, I actually asked a few people because I knew that it was a burden, right?
12:02
I'm like, I don't want to just dump this on someone.
So I'm balancing my own.
And a few of them were like, I want to, I can't do it right now.
I can do this.
Like, is this possible?
And this response of working together to figure something out was really great, right?
That creates that sort of deeper or at least more trusting atmosphere.
Kind of a serious example, but like, I think that example.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us on X at Eigo de Science.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
See you next time.
