Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Niobe Way:

We are definitely seeing a dramatic decline in connection. We are seeing it in my samples of kids. We are seeing it around the globe. We are seeing shocking rates, as you alluded to, of loneliness, of suicide rates. I mean, it’s just off the charts.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Dr. Niobe Way. She’s a professor of applied psychology at NYU where she’s the founder of The Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity. She’s also a founder of the Listening Project, a program developed to teach young people how to engage in active listening. The mission is to address what Way calls the crisis of connection. People are more technologically connected than ever, but they’re also lonelier than ever. Way’s human-driven research focuses on how people, and young boys in particular, form relationships and how those relationships impact their lives. And further, how losing those relationships can have devastating consequences. That’s coming up. Stay tuned.

Q&A

Now, let’s get to your questions. Here on Stay Tuned, we get a lot of great questions every week from listeners who I don’t know. But every once in a while I get an excellent question from somebody who’s a friend and a colleague. So this popped up in a text to me over the weekend. “A question from your editor. Could the DOJ make a plea deal with Trump that includes him agreeing not to run for president? Is that legal?” And of course, my editor is the great Peter Gethers who edited my book Doing Justice at Kanaf and who I talk to all the time. And he has a question. I thought it was a great question, a version of which other people have also put forward. And let me answer it. It is absolutely legal. The DOJ could make a plea deal with Donald Trump and they could hypothetically be negotiating a plea deal as we all wait with bated breath on whether or not there will be a charge relating to the Mar-a-Lago documents, the classified and otherwise sensitive documents that allegedly were mishandled.

Just like with respect to all sorts of other rights, people can make an arrangement and agree to a bargain in which a politician like Donald Trump seeks not to run for office. Now, there’s a version of this that happens with a little bit more frequency, and that is sometimes in public corruption investigations. At the beginning of a case or during a resolution negotiation, a politician agrees to resign from office. Some version of that happened when Elliot Spitzer was investigated by the Southern District of New York a number of years ago. He left the governorship and was ultimately not prosecuted. Now here, I think it’s more highly unusual thing. I’m not aware of a precedent for it where someone agrees in a plea disposition not to run for office again.

I think more importantly and more relevantly here, it’s not something Donald Trump’s lawyers are engaging in, I don’t think at all. I don’t think they’re engaging in plea talks. I don’t think he has any interest in pleading guilty to anything, whether it’s a felony or a misdemeanor. I think the meeting that happened at the Department of Justice this week was one in which Donald Trump’s lawyers aggressively argued against any indictment or charge whatsoever. Not a sensitive plea negotiation, whose terms would be agreed to by both parties. So I think the idea of pleading to something or getting even a declination on the condition that Donald Trump not run for office again, is highly, highly unlikely, though there’s nothing that prevents it legally as far as I know.

I also think from the perspective of the Department of Justice, it might look a little bit political to be seeking a resolution in which no further run for office would be permitted. It would arguably look a little bit like the department has an interest not in holding Donald Trump accountable for past crimes, but in a political result that takes him off the table in 2024. So for various reasons, Peter, I think a great question, an interesting legal question but I think as a political matter and as a practical matter, not going to happen.

This question comes in an email from Mark. “Hello, Preet, longtime listener of Stay Tuned and CAFE Insider and value the content on both shows every week. Thank you.” Well, thank you, Mark. “My question has to do with the audio recording of Trump talking to his staffers that emerged last week, at least to the public. If this is evidence of him sharing documents requiring security clearance, and at this point it’s just speculation, how is that evidence presented in court to the jury, relayed to the public and so on?”

So Mark, I think the tape you’re referring to is one that to my knowledge has not been heard by anyone in the public but has been reported on. It’s a tape from the summer of 2021 in which Donald Trump seems to, according to reports, acknowledge that he has possession of classified documents, sensitive documents. He understands that they’re classified and tends to understand that they have not been declassified, notwithstanding other arguments that he and his lawyers have been making about telepathically declassifying documents or standing order to declassify or the automatic declassification of documents when they left the White House and came to Mar-a-Lago. So that’s pretty probative evidence.

And if I understand your question correctly, to be a procedural one, if prosecutors are in possession of a tape like that, how is it used and is it appropriate to be used? Well, you may be familiar with the hearsay rule. People talk about hearsay all the time on television programs and in film. And basically, the hearsay rule says that out of court statements are not permitted to be used at trial. That if you’re going to get testimony from someone, it shouldn’t be from something they said out of court. It should be something that can be tested in court by cross-examination and otherwise. But there are exceptions to the hearsay rule. And one very, very important exception, particularly in criminal cases is the admission of a party opponent. So the hearsay rule says no out of court statements generally speaking, but there’s an exception for admissions by a party opponent. And the rule says a statement is admissible as an exception to the hearsay rule if it is offered against a party, and here it would be offered against Trump. And it is his own statement in either his individual or a representative capacity.

And here, Donald’s Trump’s statements, as reported, are his own statements and they’re adopted by him and they’re made by him and they’d be offered against him. And they’re also, by the way, exceptionally probative and relevant to the question at hand. What was Donald Trump’s state of mind with respect to these documents, which bears on the elements that the government has to prove and also bears quite directly on the viability of the defenses that his lawyers have decided to propound and put forward so far? So the simple answer to your question as how is it presented in court, they press the play button. All of this is premised on the foundation by the way that it’s an authentic tape.

There are all sorts of rules of evidence relating to the authentication of documents brought into evidence also relating to tape recordings, also relating to videos. Generally speaking, that has historically not been much of an issue. I suppose as we go forward in this age of artificial intelligence and the prospect of deepfakes, that you’ll increasingly hear a defense that, “That wasn’t me on the tape. That wasn’t me on the video.” I don’t know what the providence of the video is and the tape is in this matter and who was in possession of it and who would be able to testify that it was authentic and real and genuine, but presumably the government has that or will have that.

This question comes in an email from Keith who says, “A serious question, not meant to inflate your ego. But have you ever noticed how many of your guests first response to a query of yours is, ‘That’s a great question’? I often agree and wonder if you come up with them all yourself or have a slew of editorial help. Tell us about your process, Preet. I’ve been a regular listener since the beginning and love the show.”

Well, thank you. Ego duly inflated. And of course I have a slew of editorial help. I have a wonderful team at CAFE. You hear their names at the end of every episode, and we couldn’t put the show together without them. So I’ll give you a little bit of an insight into the process with every guest we prepare. And when I say we, I mean me and others on the team, depending on the guest. I get typically every week, for every guest on Stay Tuned because it’s a lengthy and substantive and in-depth interview, a memo of between 15 and 25 pages, sometimes longer, that describes their biography, that has quotes from various writings that they’ve engaged in summaries of topics and issues that are relevant to that person and their expertise. There’s also a list of proposed questions.

So some of the questions I ask that you like and enjoy and that the guest likes and enjoys and comments on come from the team. Some of them come from me as I prepare for the interview and some of them are not planned at all. And some of my favorite questions are the ones that just pop up in my head in the midst of the interview when someone is saying something that I didn’t expect or didn’t know or didn’t appreciate and I respond in the moment with a question there. You’ll see in a few minutes as you listen to my interview with Niobe Way that we talk about this a little bit. I think implicit in your question is what makes for a good question in an interview, and I think as Niobe says, it’s curiosity. And the more curious I am about a guest or the guest’s expertise, particularly when it’s an area or topic that I’m less familiar with and not expert in, I think my curiosity comes to the fore and we have a better conversation. And by the way, if I may say so, Keith, that’s a great question.

I’ll be right back with my conversation with Niobe Way.

THE INTERVIEW

Last month, the Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, issued a warning to the public about the negative health impacts of loneliness and the alarming rates of loneliness in the US. Dr. Niobe Way is a professor of applied psychology at NYU and the author of Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection. She studies what the high stakes of loneliness are. Niobe Way, welcome to the show.

Niobe Way:

Thank you. I’m pleased to be here.

Preet Bharara:

I’m pleased to have you here. You’re my colleague in a different discipline at the New York University. I’m particularly pleased to have you discuss important issues because we spent a lot of time talking about Supreme Court cases and the debt ceiling and the war in Ukraine and the economy. And all of those are obviously important and they’re important in the moment, and also in the long term, some issues certainly are in that category like climate change. But there are other issues that we’ve touched upon every once in a while and I think we overlook them because they don’t seem to be a crisis in the same way that the other things that are covered as crises. And you have spent a large part of your career investigating, talking about, thinking about, speaking about what you call the crisis of connection. I think that’s one of the most under-reported and underappreciated issues and crises of our time. So I’m glad you’re here to talk about it. Could you just, in broad strokes, tell us what you mean when you talk about the crisis of connection?

Niobe Way:

Oh yeah. And I have to say, Preet, even hearing you say that gives me the goosebumps because I really do feel like I’ve been hearing about the crisis of connection for decades from young people. And so I’ve been trying to shout this at the top of the mountain for a long time. Yeah, I’d love to tell you what I mean by crisis of connection. It’s everything I say, by the way, Preet, to you today is really what I’ve learned from listening to young people since 1987 actually. I’m a developmental psychologist and I do studies, longitudinal studies where I follow the same kids over many years, usually six or seven years. Hundreds of kids. I’ve been focusing on boys in the last decade or so in particular. They tell us a very, very clear story.

And it’s interesting, Preet, that you bring in those other issues that you often address in your podcast because actually what I’m going to argue today based on what boys have taught me is that they’re actually all connected to the crisis of connection. So this is what boys teach me, and I’ll tell you a little bit about when I say boys, who I mean. So I started as a high school counselor. I’ll be very quick. I started as a high school counselor in the late ’80s listening to boys of color, predominantly from working class communities.

The thing that struck me the most in listening in when I was a counselor was the discussion of friendships and their desire for friendships and their desire for close male friendships and their struggles to find them. What I realized as I began to actually do research on this topic and when I became a doctoral student at Harvard and I started to actually follow teenagers including teenage boys over many years, fascinated by their friendships and why we weren’t talking about them. And in fact, people oftentimes think boys don’t want those kinds of friendships. And that’s the opposite of what I found at this point, thousands of boys I’ve interviewed over many years.

What the boys tell me, they tell a story that reveals the crisis of connection, which is that when they are in early adolescence, which is about 11, 12, 13, 14 years old, they’re very clear that they want these close friendships, that they’d need these close friendships or else they’d go “wacko,” that they would feel lonely and isolated if they didn’t have friendships. That in which you could share your deep secrets. These are not just friendships to play soccer or basketball. They’re really looking for friendships in which they can be vulnerable, they can share their secrets, they can talk about problems at home and problems with other people and not be laughed at or turned into a joke.

And they talked a lot about their desire. Some boys found those friendships in early adolescents and some boys didn’t. But they all talked about the desire for it. And then as they got older, and remember I’m going back to the same boys year after year after year, as they got older, you began to hear this shift in language from when they were in early adolescence, you heard a lot of words about love and “I can’t live without him.” I mean, beautiful, beautiful quotes from boys in Deep Secrets, which is the book that talks about these findings. You hear this beautiful language in their narratives.

And then as they get older, you start to hear this sort of stereotypic man up language. So you start to hear things like, basically, “It’s hard to find friendships” and, “I don’t want them anymore.” That basically, “I don’t need them. It’s okay. Whatever.” And their language becomes much more both either sort of depressed and you hear a sadness in their interviews, or it becomes this sort of, “I don’t care. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.” And the repetition of “It doesn’t matter” of course suggest that it does matter, and a very frustration that as they are supposed to become a man, that they are supposed to actually disconnect from the very relationships that they yearn for, which is with other boys and the emotional intimacy between boys.

Preet Bharara:

How does that happen if it’s the case based on your study that most boys want to have and want to maintain strong friendships with other boys, that something in that dynamic causes them to adopt the languages you’ve written about of self-reliance and autonomy and not having to rely on other people? If everybody wants it, what is causing it not to happen?

Niobe Way:

What’s the problem?

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Niobe Way:

Yeah, yeah. No, thank you for asking that question actually. So essentially what I’ve learned… I mean, that was my big question in years and years of hearing these patterns of the crisis of connection among boys and then realizing it’s a larger crisis of connection across the whole culture, particularly among boys and men, but also among girls and women as well, is really that we live in a culture, a modern culture I call it in my new book that’s coming out next fall, “boy culture” where we privilege everything we associate with being hard over everything we associate with being soft. So we think that maturity is defined in the same way as masculinity, which is designed as the same way as we define success, which is being independent, autonomous, stoic, all the things that we put on the top of the hierarchy of human qualities. And then we demean and mock the soft sides, the vulnerability, the softness, the sensitivity.

There’s so many demeaning comments we can say to each other about being overly sensitive, too vulnerable, weak. We associate vulnerability with weakness. So not only do boys get that message during adolescents when they’re supposed to become a man to stop showing their soft side, because otherwise that means they’re girly and gay. And Preet, I have to say something very clear to your listeners, we think we’ve become more enlightened around issues of sexuality, et cetera. We think we would no longer think that girly and gay is a slur, but we are definitely still in a culture that thinks to be girly and gay is a slur, meaning it’s a negative thing. So boys still are talking about they don’t want to look like a girl, they don’t want to sound like a girl. And in fact, this desire for friendship has been feminized and seen as soft, the desire for emotional intimacy with same-sex peers. So the idea is that they want to grow up to become mature and a man. And that is defined as literally not being soft and being able to control your emotions.

Preet Bharara:

When you say we, we impose these standards or these rules or these dynamics, who is we? Is we Americans? Or is we adults? Or is we just boys generally all over the world?

Niobe Way:

Well, it’s interesting because I would say that when I say we, I mean really people are participating in modern culture. But who’s driving modern culture? The values perpetuated modern culture, which the self is over relationships, all the things that are relational are demeaned and all the things that are about the “me, me, me” are privileged. So in modern culture, I would say it’s very much driven by American values. And so to me, when I say we, for the boys I’ve interviewed, I’m definitely talking about American society. But I see it around the world. I’ve lived around the world in many different places. I see it in China. I’ve lived in China for many years. Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. In Europe. I was born in Paris.

So I see that sort of infusion of American hyper-masculinity into the culture where you have students, Indian students, for example, saying they didn’t know. When I present on the importance of relationships and friendships, they said, “I thought that was just a value from my culture, not from American culture.” And so the idea is that it’s definitely coming from American culture and being infiltrated into the larger world that somehow being a man and being an adult. And that’s the disturbing part in particular, is it’s even about being an adult is not showing your soft side.

So I would say I blame American society a lot on sort of what it’s doing to the world. There’s something interesting there because we also perpetuate the myth, I think, that we’re the sort of the most enlightened in the world, American adults. And in fact, we really do perpetuate in one aspect this notion of maturity and adulthood and certainly masculinity that’s really only half of our humanity are hard side and not the other side. And a lot of cultures, Preet, as you may know directly, a lot of cultures around the world are much more explicitly valuing both sides of our humanity. And then the pressure to sort of value only one half gets instilled as they become more and more Americanized.

Preet Bharara:

Do you have a working definition of friend or friendship?

Niobe Way:

Again, I don’t define, I always listen to what kids tell me. So what kids tell me is that a friend that they’re looking for is someone to be able to share their secrets and not be laughed at. And that’s coming from boys. And girls, girls pretty much say the same thing, but they don’t talk about being laughed at because that’s a very masculine thing that boys do with each other, is they mock the vulnerability by making it into a joke.

Preet Bharara:

When we read about studies, and maybe you can put some numbers on the board here, that say, and I’ve read about them with some alarm for the last couple of years, that men and boys in particular but people generally in America, have fewer people they consider to be close friends today than they did 30 years, 40 years ago by dramatically shrinking numbers. Is it your sense that that’s the working definition of friend in those studies as well?

Niobe Way:

Yeah. I mean, this is the thing. I mean, it’s just so clear. Young people just tell us this story. I mean, we’re losing our capacity with friendships. And yes, technology… Everybody always asks me, “Is it because of technology? Is it because of Facebook and Instagram and TikTok, et cetera?” It’s not because of that. It’s that we are using that technology in a way that aligns with our cultural values, which is the “me, me, me” and that looking for affirmation.

We are definitely seeing a dramatic decline in connection. We are seeing it in my samples of kids. We are seeing it around the globe. We are seeing shocking rates as you alluded to, of loneliness, of suicide rates. I mean, it’s just off the charts. And by the way, Black and brown boys are the most likely to be committing suicide at this point in the United States.

And so the idea is that we are really getting worse. And I would say the reason is, is because we keep on not seeing what the problem is. We keep on thinking it’s about lonely people or it’s about depressed people. Its not. It’s a whole culture that doesn’t value what is essential to our human nature, which is the love of each other, the love of ourselves and the love of each other, and ultimately a culture that does not align with our nature. So this culture and nature clash that we’re experiencing, a culture that doesn’t fit what humans need, all humans, creates this crisis of connection, and that’s what boys teach me.

So it really is, we keep on thinking for… I’ll give you an example, Preet. We keep on thinking it’s a mental health crisis. Well, no, the mental health crisis is a symptom. It’s a symptom of the crisis of connection. The boys tell us, “If I don’t have these close connections, I will go wacko.” And that’s what you see in the mass shooters. That’s what you see in the heavily lonely kids who do bad things, do violent things, is that sense of utter isolation makes kids and put boys in particular because the pressures more on them, makes kids go wacko because it’s really a culture that doesn’t pay attention to human needs. So I would say as long as we don’t pay attention to the real problem, well, it’s just going to get worse and worse and worse and then have reverberations in to how we care for each other or don’t care for each other, basically.

Preet Bharara:

So there’s this other concept that Americans focus on rhetorically and otherwise, and that’s the notion of the family. And there’s controversy about how you define family. But I wonder in your studies about loneliness and friendship and the crisis of connection, where does that intersect with how Americans think about, talk about, feel about family?

Niobe Way:

It’s just a strange thing. So I’m bicultural. So I was born in France. My dad was in France his whole life. I’ve lived in lots of different cultures. So I feel like I actually have some insight into being American because I’ve lived outside of it as well for many long periods of my life. So I would say that basically Americans fundamentally do not see relationships whether it’s friendships or family relationships as foundational as they do for the desire for autonomy and independence and freedom, freedom to do what you want, say what you want, et cetera, that we have imbibed a value system that places our relationships on the bottom.

Now, friendships are definitely way on the bottom, and families are more valued than friendships for sure. But the very simple fact, Preet, and I’m going to sound very old-fashioned when I say this, Americans live… Their children grow up and we live all over the country or all over the world. And we oftentimes don’t actually live close to each other because we don’t actually really value living close to each other. And so I would say families are valued more than friends, but they’re still not valued as much as they should be given they’re foundational to our health and wellbeing.

Preet Bharara:

You’ve mentioned that this crisis can lead to more violence, and it has led to more suicide. It’s been put very starkly by the surgeon general of Vivek Murthy who recently wrote the following, “The risk of premature death posed by social disconnection is similar to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day and even greater than obesity and physical inactivity according to review of research on social connection.” Is that right?

Niobe Way:

Absolutely. That’s what the research shows. I mean, what’s important to say is that he’s not speaking some sort of ideology or some sort of exaggerating the data. That is directly coming from studies.

And I’ll tell you another study, which is interesting for your listeners. So two quick studies, not mine, but it’s in the literature, and Vivek oftentimes refers to them as well. So one is that they do these health-based studies where they give you a mild scrape on your hand and they rate how quickly it heals. Those who are in more connected relationships, are feeling more connected to other people, heal quicker than those who are feeling more isolated. So your body, you are literally your immune system. Your ability to heal is sacrifice when you’re not connected.

And the second finding, which everybody always quotes because they love this because it’s so powerful, they did this at UVA originally and it’s now been replicated. They have people standing at the base of a hill and they have a backpack on and there’s a hill in front of them. They have to estimate the steepness of the hill while they’re holding the backpack. And next to them, there are four conditions. One is that they’re alone, one that they’re with a best friend standing next to them, one that they’re with a stranger and one that they’re with someone they know, but not close. Okay, are you ready, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

I’m bracing myself.

Niobe Way:

All right. The people who are standing next to their best friend estimate the hill as less steep than all the other conditions. So what that means, just to tell your listeners very clearly, is that we are deeply social animals. And when we experience a sense of love and closeness around us, we actually see the world as less difficult.

Preet Bharara:

What if their best friend is named Sisyphus? Is the hill higher?

Niobe Way:

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Preet Bharara:

I think they should redo the experiment with a friend named Sisyphus.

Niobe Way:

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. No, but it’s just incredible to me how sensitive we are. We’re just so sensitive. I mean, and here, we, I mean humans. Humans are just so sensitive. We pick up the vibe next to us and when it feels so supportive, we see the world as less difficult. And so think about what that means in schools, in all contexts, in workplaces. I mean, it’s profound to me. It’s profound to me.

Preet Bharara:

I want to ask you about technology for a moment. You mentioned it earlier. There are aspects of technology and the dedication to the screen that make perfect sense as to why that alienates folks from each other and contributes to the crisis of connection. But in another respect, maybe I’m being silly about this, technology has brought people together. So for example, texting and emailing was not a possibility when I was young. And I get that if you’re just doom scrolling on Twitter or just looking at TikTok, that’s not connecting with people.

I find as a grown person, blessed to have many friends, that I can be in contact with and connected to many more people than I was able to be 30 years ago. And I find connection by text or email with friends, some of whom live far away. I have a friend in the Netherlands who I text on a regular basis. I have friends in California. I have friends who are just busy and I don’t get to see them in New York. These are people I don’t necessarily physically see or have a meal with, but I do feel a connection to them and I share things with them and they share things with me. Am I overstating the value of that or is there something to that?

Niobe Way:

There’s absolutely something to that. And this is something I… Because I get this question a lot from parents is they say, “Is it the problem, the tech… If we got rid of the technology, wouldn’t that be better?” Absolutely not. I mean, I see it in my own life, just like you do, Preet. I mean, I see it in my own life the way texting, texting with my children, texting with my friends, texting with my… We have a family chat. WhatsApp, a family chat that we talk. I mean, we never had that. My entire family, I have a huge family, we’re all on this chat. And so we’re all communicating with each other all the time.

So I would say again, if we understood it’s a cultural problem that leads to a crisis of connection, the culture and nature clash, we would understand that technology actually, and I’m even going to be controversial, Preet, I would even say AI could actually be a tool to help humans connect with other humans. And we use it that way. I’ll give you an example. TikTok, for example. TikTok could easily be a platform where you model an influencer with their best friend trying to address a conflict with each other and coming to a resolution or showing a way that they trust each other on TikTok. I mean, you could easily model relationships on TikTok, which would be very influential in terms of showing modeling people how you actually have close relationships and the kinds of questions you can ask each other to become closer.

AI, I’ll be very blunt, I’m in the midst of trying to build something that actually uses this. Is AI could be used as essentially building an algorithm with AI that helps humans actually connect to each other and ask questions that allows people to see each other and outside of a set of stereotypes? So it really is the way we use technology to just reinforce our very disconnected, and honestly I would say dystopian culture, that is really just about getting self-affirmation rather than connecting.

Preet Bharara:

Going back to my question from a minute ago, do we overemphasize the importance of in-person connection and contact or not?

Niobe Way:

Well, that’s a great question. I think about that question a lot. I actually think it about it almost every day.

Preet Bharara:

Because I get into debates with some people whom I’m close who will be listening. So if I’m texting with somebody, I can have a real conversation. I do that with work colleagues all the time. And obviously, some work colleagues are also friends. My mom and dad like a phone call and the text is not anywhere close to a substitute for a phone call. For me personally, maybe you’ll tell me that I have dystopian tendencies, that I can have a meaningful text exchange with a friend or a colleague that is just as good as a phone call and it’s more efficient. Is there something wrong with me?

Niobe Way:

First of all, definitely, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

Finally, an honest guess.

Niobe Way:

Finally an honest guess. No, I mean basically, this is the funny thing about humans. Because I feel the same way. I have some of my most intimate conversations with my daughter actually on text where we’re-

Preet Bharara:

It’s easier to say some things in text than saying them otherwise.

Niobe Way:

Exactly. And I have to say, I’m going to out myself here, I love the millions of hearts she sometimes sends me in the middle of the day. I mean, she’ll send me heart emoticons and I find myself a little bit addicted to them. So I want the heart emoticon. If she doesn’t send me a heart emoticon, then-

Preet Bharara:

It shouldn’t be the only mode of communication, but I think we just disparage it. Maybe I’m just trying to justify my tendencies, but I have an actual professor and person of science to endorse my view here.

Niobe Way:

Yeah. No, I mean, this is it. We are starving. I mean, Preet, I’m going to say it very dramatically because this is how young people express it to me. We are starving for connection. We are starving for it. And what’s happening is that most of us don’t feel listened to. That’s about 80% of the country doesn’t feel listened to. So we’re starving for someone to listen to us. But what we haven’t figured out is that if everybody’s starving to be listened to and tell their story, but nobody’s interested in listening to another person to hear their story, we’re never going to feel connected.

We’ve also lost out… I’m going to have to throw this into this interview because it’s so important. We are born interpersonally curious. We are born wanting to know, Preet, about you, about why you do things, why you’re sad, why you’re happy. Every person knows a five-year-old has incessant questions about why do you do things. And what happens is we discourage that form because we feminize that form of curiosity. And so once we feminize it, we demean it and mock it, and it goes away. We call it gossip. It has nothing to do with gossip. So the idea is if we don’t even value interpersonal curiosity, Preet, but it’s essential to form connection, then we’re doomed. So yeah, text and in person, it doesn’t matter in some ways.

Preet Bharara:

Good.

Niobe Way:

It doesn’t matter.

Preet Bharara:

I feel better now.

Niobe Way:

Yeah, definitely.

Preet Bharara:

When we come out of the womb, are we more curious about others or more-

Niobe Way:

Absolutely.

Preet Bharara:

Or more self-interested in about ourselves?

Niobe Way:

No.

Preet Bharara:

And are you saying that’s taught? That’s culturally taught?

Niobe Way:

I’m telling you, if you listen to four and five… I’m not just telling you from my own opinion. I’m telling you from the research, four and five and six year olds are insanely interpersonally curious. They’re asking questions about you and about your emotions and about why. And everybody knows why questions, but it’s oftentimes why about why we do things. A boy says to his mother, “Mommy, why do you smile when you’re feeling sad?” So all of a sudden she realizes he’s asking her a question about why she fakes an emotion.

Another boy says, a little boy, five years old says, “Mommy, are you yelling at me because your mommy yelled at you?” I mean, oh my God. We are coming to this world brilliant in terms of relational intelligence, understanding the human range of emotions, why we fake emotions. They want to know why do we fake emotions. And then by the time 10, 11, 12 into adolescence and then adulthood, we just that form of curiosity out. I mean, neuroscientists say it’s 80% of our time is spent thinking about the thoughts and feelings of other people. And yet in schools and workplaces, we spend all our time getting people not to think about the thoughts and feelings of other people. And so it’s really is we are trained to be so self-obsessed. We’re trained to it.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with Niobe Way after this.

So I’m going to defy your view of the world. And at this moment, I’ll be very self-interested in asking you about me.

Niobe Way:

Yeah. Good. No, definitely.

Preet Bharara:

So I was very shy as a young person. My best friend to this day is a woman I went to high school with, but I didn’t have many other friends. And I’m not in touch with basically anyone from high school. I had a couple of good friends in college because I was still a little shy person and fairly introverted. Almost every good friend that I have today, and I have many, many, many very close dear friends, both male and female, almost all of them became my friends and very close friends after the age of 21 or 22. Law school and in jobs and just otherwise meeting people through the ways that you meet people. On any of those questionnaires that you see people fill out and talk about how many close friends they have, I have more than I can count, and I know that’s one of my blessings.

Niobe Way:

Yeah, it is.

Preet Bharara:

But that’s the reverse of the normal trend where I’ve read most people make all of their best friends before 21 and don’t make a close friend many ever again after 21. Do I have that research correct?

Niobe Way:

Yeah. I mean, basically you see the loss among certainly boys and men, and I know the number’s better among boys and men than girls and women. So definitely. And also since Deep Secrets came out in 2011, I’m still inundated weekly by men around the world saying, “You’re telling my story. This is my story.” So it definitely is the case that most men struggle as they get older to find the friendships that they’re looking for. However, even in my studies as well as my own personal experiences, of course there’s always exceptions. There’s always people that actually have been able to maintain their friendships over time or don’t find them until later in life. And I would actually say I’m in the same category. I found my closest friendships later in life. And I think that probably comes from… Somehow, Preet, I’m going to say something. I know nothing about you, but I’ve got to guess. My guess is that even though you were shy when you were younger, you were surrounded with a lot of love, and so… Am I correct?

Preet Bharara:

Well, in my family, certainly. Yes.

Niobe Way:

Yeah. Yeah. So that’s what I mean. And so what happens for kids that have a very… Can I ask a very personal question? You can choose to…

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

Niobe Way:

What was your relationship like with your mom?

Preet Bharara:

Great. I have the best parents. And I have a great younger brother, three years younger. I just wasn’t particularly social. I was a very awkward kid.

Niobe Way:

Yeah. No, no, I mean, I’m just saying. So what happens with shy kids, and I’ve heard this from… A lot of my students identify as shy actually. And so what I’ve heard is that when you have the closeness in the family, that helps you acquire or keep… Rather not acquire. Keep the skills, the natural human skills that you have as a five-year-old to be able to connect to people. And what happens oftentimes with shy kids, and I have to say this is also true, I’m going to bring in actually those who identify as very, very shy and even those on the spectrum, oftentimes what I’ve heard from kids who I self-identify as being on the spectrum is that actually they don’t think the rules of social engagement, which are actually about faking emotions, make any sense. So they retreat because they don’t think those social rules make any sense. It’s not that they don’t understand them. It’s that they think that it’s make any sense. Why would you fake an emotion with someone you love?

So there’s something interesting about shyness and why thinking about why children… I mean, I believe in temperament, some kids are more shy than others. But there is something interesting to me about what made it not enjoyable for you to engage socially. And the question would be to you, Preet, in your life, is to think about was part of it was that those social rules seemed mystifying to you and you didn’t want to play along? I’ve heard that from other kids and I wonder-

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. I don’t know. Was that, I think, I lacked some confidence in some ways and then you developed… I don’t know.

Niobe Way:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but I just heard that story before. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

People don’t believe me when I say I was deathly shy. If I went to an event or a party, I talked to one person or nobody.

Niobe Way:

No, I believe. I believe it.

Preet Bharara:

And that is not how I am today. Within the family, I’m considered to be overly social, but I was not that way when I was 17. I was that way when I was 30.

Niobe Way:

Yeah. And I think also gaining confidence, obviously. I mean, I think gaining confidence for anybody helps you connect to people with more confidence. You’re more able to connect. But I do think teenagers will tell you, and even the most extreme forms, even in unfortunately people who have committed suicide, who’ve written journals that they’ve made public or letters, they will talk about the isolation they feel as a young person when people are all sort of engaged in a way of interaction that they think is fake and they’re looking for authenticity. It’s like the Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye which is he’s looking for people who aren’t phony. I’ve just seen that narrative in boys that are really suffering a sense of looking for authenticity.

Preet Bharara:

So I want to ask you also about the relationship between the crisis of connection and the hoards of people who don’t have close connections, the relationship between that phenomenon and a couple of other things. One is romantic relationships. What effect does the crisis of connection have on the ability of people who don’t have deep friendships or haven’t been able to form them on their ability to form deep and lasting romantic relationships?

Niobe Way:

It has a terrible effect. I mean, it has terrible effect. Because ultimately, I mean, Erik Erikson said this in the 1960s and it’s definitely true. He’s the godfather of identity development. Basically, you learn the skills as a child with your family and with your friends, the skills of relationships. And that’s just a fact. You can learn them later in life, Preet. I mean, you can learn them in your 20s and 30s, but you already learn them also with your family.

So basically you learn those skills with your family and your friends. And having friends, especially in young adulthood where you can test out what happens when you have conflict and figuring out conflict and figuring out intimacy in your 20s and 30s, the ability to have romantic relationships. So I would say what’s happening now in the breakdown of relationships that you see in all sorts of ways is, and there’s a lot of articles about this now, is that men are feeling very positive that there’s so much attention to their emotional lives right now and their need for friendships, which is, I like that I’m a part of that, making that a positive thing. But they’re also feeling like they’re turning to their partner now as their therapist and wanting their girlfriend or wife to help them figure out their emotional problems rather than turning to a friend because they don’t have any friends.

So that puts an enormous weight on a relationship when the wife is playing both the role of spouse or girlfriend and then also therapist, and then sometimes also organizer, and all sorts of things that women tend to do in a relationship with a family. So I just think there’s a very negative dynamic happening that men are seeing women as their only friends and women are seeing women as friends and also of course their partners, but they don’t want to be their partner’s only friend because that’s an enormous burden on the woman. So I would say it’s had a devastating effect.

And again, it’s funny because… It’s not funny. I really want to say this. If we make it about the problem is men’s problem, we lose what boys are teaching us, because boys are really saying it’s a cultural problem. It’s not a group problem. It’s not a men problem, it’s not a woman problem. It’s not a problem with a group of people. It’s a cultural problem that we’re all colluding in. We keep on missing what the issue is, and then we keep on not solving it.

And I just have to say this one more time because people miss it all the time. As long as we say we have a mental health crisis, the solution is only medication and therapy, get more therapists, et cetera. If we see that as a symptom of the crisis of connection rather than the problem, it’s a symptom of the problem. If we see our problem as a crisis of connection, Preet, which is why I give you a big hug for stating it as one of the biggest crisis of our times, then we have to say that the solution has to be to build connection. Not just add more therapists, right? I mean, a therapist is a good thing, but that shouldn’t be just the only solution we have. It should be building connection.

Preet Bharara:

Is the decline in the quality and numerosity of friendships directly proportional or inversely proportional to the rise of therapists?

Niobe Way:

It’s interesting. I don’t know. I don’t know. But I do know when they get those… The new book is going to come out in the fall. I read a lot of manifestos of mass shooters, which was very depressing and difficult to read. But what you hear is that whole sense of… I’m not going to name mass shooters because I don’t want to perpetuate a kind of obsession with mass shooters. But one of them mentioned… They mention the culture. They mention that nobody seems to care that they’re lonely and isolated. They literally say this. This is not my academic language. That there’s a higher of humanness in our culture where some humans are considered more human than others. And that is true. We see that in all our ideological structures where certain humans are more human than other humans, whether it’s a based on class, race or gender, sexuality, et cetera.

And they name it. They want us to see that it’s a cultural problem. It’s not an individual problem. And when nobody pays attention, what happens with these mass shooters? I’m not justifying it. I’m just saying when the solution becomes they should see a therapist and they’re saying, “I want you to care that I feel radically lonely. I want you to care” and people are saying, “You should go see a therapist,” that’s a disconnect. That’s a disconnect. Because it’s the same thing when kids are bullied, what we oftentimes do is we take them out of that school. Are you kidding me? What does that do internally to a person who’s being bullied? And then the reaction is, “It’s kind of your problem. We need to put you in a new school. We need to get you into a therapist.”

So I just think the therapy discussion, again, I don’t want to… Therapists are really important. My kids see therapists. They’re super important people to support people. I’m not dissing therapists. But a culture that only thinks the solution to problems is therapy, is someone who doesn’t get it. Doesn’t get it. And doesn’t get that it has to be a culture that privileges, privileges building connections in the workplace and the home and schools. That’s our top priority, how to make people feel connected to themselves and each other across difference within communities, et cetera.

Preet Bharara:

So we talk about politics on this show all the time, the central theme of the program and of how I think about the world and you can affect change that way. We talk about our increasingly polarized politics. And you mentioned a moment ago, you’re reading manifestos of mass shooters. Those people are hopefully few and far between mercifully, but how on a broader level does the crisis that you write about and research affect our politics?

Niobe Way:

So Hannah Arendt said in the 1930s, she wrote a book on totalitarianism, and she said, “At the root of totalitarianism and fascism is loneliness.” She talks about how loneliness basically creates a desire to find a group, and that it’s a group that oftentimes is a hate group because there’s nothing more bonding in a very unhealthy way with bonding with people who hate another group. So whether that’s the incel movement, whether that’s the sort of very, very angry, whether right or left that’s violent towards the other side, that essentially loneliness, the disconnection from the self leads to a disconnection from seeing the humanity of others.

So I always say this to my students, they always repeat it because it’s deep, what boys teach me. And again, I want to repeat, it’s boys of color from working class communities, it’s very important. They’re on the edges of power that they oftentimes have the most insight. When we’re disconnected to our own humanity, we cannot see the humanity of other people. So I would argue, and people are going to think I’m joking, I’m not joking. Donald Trump is very disconnected from his own humanity. I mean, that is a lonely guy.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s a guy I have never heard. That’s interesting you mentioned that. I think the evidence is that he does not have any close personal friends.

Niobe Way:

Exactly. Exactly. And you see him… I mean, I didn’t know how to say the emotion when I respond to Trump. But the point is, what’s fascinating is he sounds like in obviously less isolated, but a little bit like a tone in some of the mass shooter manifestos. And I’m not equating. I’m not equating for all your listeners. I’m just saying there’s a kind of voice you hear in very isolated people, and it’s a very angry voice, and it’s very much anti. So the fact that some mass shooters are anti girls or anti-Black people or anti-Jewish people. It’s classic symptom of loneliness where you think you’re going to get the connection to other people who hate girls or who hate Black people. What happens? Of course you don’t. So Trump actually doesn’t get the connection with people who hate the Democrats or who hate women or who hate Black people. He doesn’t actually get the connection because you can’t actually build connection off of hate. I mean, that doesn’t actually create connection.

But the idea is to understand… I’m not saying have sympathy for Trump. I’m not saying that. I’m saying understanding the nature of why he’s so spiteful, why he’s so hateful. Because if we’re going to prevent it, we have to understand why mass shooters do it. And it’s not about sympathize, it’s not forgiving them. It’s not saying we should forgive them for their sins. It’s really saying we have to understand why they kill people or say something hateful or damage this country as Trump has very much done in order to prevent it and to grow from it. And that’s what we keep on not doing. We keep on thinking, “Oh, it’s Trump is the problem,” or it’s the mass shooters is the problem.” They’re not the problem. They’re symptoms. Trump is a symptom of our culture. I mean, it’s simple as that. He’s a symptom of our culture.

Preet Bharara:

So let’s talk about how we might go about getting on the right path and solving the culture problem. These qualities you say that we teach boys, overly perhaps to my ear are not inherently bad.

Niobe Way:

Absolutely.

Preet Bharara:

Autonomy. Ambition. Individualism. I possess all those qualities, but I value my friendships deeply. Are you just saying that we need to do them in different proportions?

Niobe Way:

Well, this is it. Remember that there’s a hierarchy of humanness, but there’s also a hierarchy of human qualities where we’ve put what are human qualities, not gendered qualities, thinking on top and feeling on bottom. And we’ve given them a gender identity. But thinking and feeling do not have a gender identity. They are basically human qualities thinking as half of our humanity, feeling as the other half of our humanity and they work together like yin yang. So the idea is that they function together. You cannot think without feeling. You cannot feel without thinking. Neuroscientists have been saying that for decades.

So the idea is we’ve taken human qualities, we’ve put them on a hierarchy and we’ve gendered them. So it’s to get back to what it actually means to be human, which is coming out from developmental psychology, my work as well as social neuroscience, which is that we’re both hard and soft. We want autonomy and we want connection. We need to be stoic at times. When someone’s suffering, stoicism is really important when you’re listening to someone’s suffering. But also vulnerability is necessary to build closeness. We need both of those qualities, but we keep on privileging one and demeaning the other. And sometimes we think we have to flip the hierarchy. We can’t flip the hierarchy because then we lose the autonomy and the stoicism that we need as well. So we have to stop thinking that it’s a hierarchy. It’s both two parts of our humanity that are core to our ability to thrive. And we have to nourish both and value both equally. Not saying one is somehow better. And I have to say one study, because I am a walking body of studies.

Preet Bharara:

It’s part of your humanity.

Niobe Way:

Exactly. It’s part of my humanity. It’s part of me. So in the Harvard’s, I think it’s the Center for Making Caring Common, they have a study that found something like, and you can find it on the web, 75 to 80% of parents said that academic achievement is more important than kindness. And so the whole fact of, if you live in a culture that thinks that academic achievement is more important, this is not Harvard parents, this is parents across the country, that academic achievement is more important than kindness, we’re in trouble. We’re in trouble. So it’s just that whole notion of really seeing that these parts of ourselves do not have a social identity. It does not have a gender, a race, a class, identity. Thinking and feeling are human capacities that we’re born with. Same with stoicism and vulnerability. You could go on and on and on.

Preet Bharara:

So what else can we do? What else should educators do, parents do, folks who are listening?

Niobe Way:

Okay, there’s so much. There’s so much. Okay, so we do a thing called… Which shall have to be another interview, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

Okay.

Niobe Way:

We do thing called the Listening Project in schools across New York City. We’re now trying to expand it. And actually Vivek Murthy is quite interested in what we’re doing. So it’s where we’re teaching something called transformative interviewing to kids of all ages. We also teach a course at NYU in this method. It comes out of a method that I was actually training doctoral students for like 30 years at this point. It’s a form of listening with curiosity. And I’m now defining it in the work that’s about to come out as the necessary ingredient for relational intelligence. It teaches us how to actually listen with curiosity, not listen, meaning don’t talk, which oftentimes means you’re not listening.

Preet Bharara:

By the way, that’s a good thing for podcasters to take also.

Niobe Way:

That’s what I’m saying, Preet. But you’re doing it with me, right? I mean, when I say something, you say something that riffs off of what I just said, and then ask me a question about it. And that makes me the response, which is so fundamental. Preet. You already know this as a podcaster, but I feel listened to when you do that, right? When you lift off of what I just said and then you ask me a question about it to get more detail about what I mean, that actually makes me feel listened to and heard. And then what happens is then I actually, Preet, I actually feel connected to you because I feel like you’re actually listening to what I’m saying. If you were just silent and then you just asked me your next question on your list, I actually wouldn’t feel listened to. And guess what would happen? I wouldn’t talk as much because I would feel like-

Preet Bharara:

Oh, and we wouldn’t have any listeners.

Niobe Way:

No, exactly. Exactly.

Preet Bharara:

I don’t know where you put it on the hierarchy of human needs, and it sounds like you put it pretty high. I’ve come at this from a different angle, and that is that the human need to be listened to and the way it manifests itself in my prior work is in confessions.

Niobe Way:

Oh, interesting.

Preet Bharara:

And I’ve asked the question.

Niobe Way:

Interesting.

Preet Bharara:

And there’s a chapter in my book that addresses the crazy anomaly that people would think intuitively that somebody who’s declared war on Americans and is an operational terrorist, why would such a person immediately after being taken into custody, talk about all the things that they plan, talk about the people they plan them with, when that hurts their cause because terrorists like others want to be heard and want their stories to be known?

Niobe Way:

Of course, of course. And oftentimes, the root of their violence, like we talked about totalitarianism, the root of their violence is loneliness. And that’s true whether we’re talking about terrorists or mass shooters or a political leader. I mean, essentially it is fundamental that when we’re… Again, I’m going to repeat it because it’s so important. When we’re disconnected from our own humanity, meaning when we don’t feel seen, we don’t see ourselves. So we’re struggling. No one’s seeing us. We start to disconnect from our own humanity, and then we cannot see the humanity of other people. So when you get people who have been victims of crimes that want to yell at the perpetrator to get them to see, there’s no way. There’s no way they’re going to see because they committed the act, because they literally don’t see. And their response fundamentally, psychologically, is they don’t feel seen.

And so the whole thing of breaking the cycle with this method, the listening with curiosity and the Listening Project is really about how do you start to actually listen and not just listen by not talking. And this is why it definitely is relevant to podcasters, listening by not talking. Actually by listening, by saying, “So what did you mean by that? And then what happened? And then what…” I mean, all those beautiful things that five-year-olds do where they keep on asking a question until they get an answer and they won’t stop.

And so the whole thing is that we think that even listening is not talking at all. It’s just a funny thing. It’s like, why would we think that’s listening? I mean, it can be listening, but the point is, oftentimes it’s actually you’re spacing out while someone’s talking. So I just think that notion of understanding, like you said in the beginning of your podcast to loop around, if we’re in a culture that doesn’t listen, that doesn’t allow us to see our own humanity and we live in a culture that doesn’t value our full humanity, we really shouldn’t be so surprised that we’re seeing such high levels of violence and suicide and depression and anxiety and loneliness.

I mean, it is a culture that is literally… I mean, I hate to say the word nurture because it’s counter to what it actually does, but that nurtures a kind of disconnection, a kind of anger and a kind of seething, that we’re all seething to be listened to, but refusing to listen. Because why would I listen to you Preet if I don’t feel like you listen to me? And so somehow we have to break the cycle by, to go back to your question, bringing it into our schools, teaching this method. We teach in all different topics, English classes, advisory groups. It’s a tool that you could use in any topic. You can bring it into the workplace. It’s shifting the paradigm from not saying, “What’s wrong with you?” which is how we oftentimes treat other people, “But what can I learn from you about the nature of our problems and how to solve them? And what can you teach me about myself through your stories?”

And then they get to do the same thing with you, learning from you so that you’re both learning from each other about each other, but also about the larger world and about how to solve our own problems. And to me, I do want to add one thing. Just remember in case people think I’m being bleak, I’m not being bleak. The beautiful thing about listening to young people is they teach us that we have already within ourselves, it’s natural, the capacity to solve our own problems. That it’s a natural human capacity. So all the solution at the workplace, at the home, and the schools, is to nurture our natural relational intelligence, to ask questions of each other, to learn from each other, to wonder about why we smile when we’re feeling sad. That beautiful human capacity.

Even, Preet, the way you’re listening now, I can tell that you’re really listening. I don’t know how I can tell, but I can tell in your questions, in the way you’re engaging with me. That’s a gorgeous human capacity. And so to really nourish that and value it and celebrate it in these different contexts is the only way we’re going to start breaking the culture from its obsession with one version of humanity.

Preet Bharara:

Niobe Way, thank you so much for your work, your research, your writing, and for being on the show.

Niobe Way:

Oh, thank you so much, Preet.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Niobe Way continues for members of the CAFE Insider community.

Niobe Way:

It’s really engaging with each other around real questions. Not what’s your major, not what do you do, but actually where is home for you and thinking about asking those questions, and then they ask you that question. And then a deep connection gets built because you start to see each other as you see yourself.

Preet Bharara:

To try out the membership for just $1 for a month, head to cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider.

I want to end the show this week by highlighting a graduation story. As you are surely aware, especially if there are young people in your lives, we are in peak graduation season. For my family, it’s a pretty big year. Not one, but two of my kids are graduating this spring. One, my oldest, my daughter, just graduated from college, and my youngest son in a couple of weeks will be graduating from high school. I’m not sure how that’s possible since they were both just born. It’s a joyous and sometimes bittersweet time when we celebrate the accomplishments of our loved ones, and in some cases, send them off to go somewhere new.

And for 14 year old Xavier Jones, his 8th grade graduation meant so much more than that. As reported last Friday by KMOV News 4, after his grandpa’s car broke down a couple of days before graduation, Xavier decided to walk for two hours, a six-mile journey through St. Louis, Missouri to Harris-Stowe State University, where his middle school graduation was taking place. He was determined to walk the stage and receive his diploma. The university was so inspired by Xavier and his tenacity that its president, the university President, Dr. LaTonia Collins Smith, decided to offer Xavier a full ride to the college once he graduates from high school in four years.

To Xavier, who aspires to be a NASCAR driver, the scholarship means the world. Quote, “It means that I’m going to do something great and that I finally made it out of the 8th grade,” he said. But his story doesn’t end there. Last Friday, Xavier got not one, but two more surprises. This time from Miami Dolphins football player, Terron Armstead. When Armstead heard about what happened in Xavier’s long Trek to make his graduation, Armstead knew he wanted to do something for Xavier and his family. He said, “Xavier’s a leader whether he wanted to be or not. His story is inspiring, it’s motivating. That’s what leaders do.”

So last week during a celebrity basketball game Armstead organized in his hometown a couple of miles from St. Louis, Armstead surprised Xavier with a brand new electric bike and a new car for his family. Xavier’s grandpa, who has been taking care of him and his six siblings after their mom passed away some years ago, was so touched by the gift, he said, “This means a whole lot. I don’t know what to say. I’m so thankful.”

I hope Xavier’s commitment inspires you like it inspired me. And if there are any graduates in your family, congratulations to them and to you on this great achievement.

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Niobe Way. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me at @PreetBharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. Or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669-24-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters@CAFE.com.

Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producers are Adam Waller and Matthew Billy. The CAFE team is David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Wiener, Jake Kaplan, Namita Shah, and Claudia Hernandez. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.