Why do brains need friends? (with Ben Rein)

Why do human brains need social interaction? Why might AI chatbots be insufficient to scratch the itch? What do we love so much about real human touch and in-person interaction? Why do so many of us live with dogs? From empathy to introversion to social media to isolation (and what to do about it), we’ve got it all this week with guest Ben Rein, author of the new book Why Brains Need Friends.

Episode Audio

Episode Video

More Information:

Ben Rein (2025). Why Brains Need Friends: The Neuroscience of Social Connection. Avery:New York.

Eagleman D, Downar J. (2016). Brain and behavior: a cognitive neuroscience perspective. Sinauer Associates : Massachusetts. 2016. (Chapter on Social Neuroscience)

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"[A] neuroscientist and polymath."
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"David Eagleman may be the best combination of scientist and fiction-writer alive."
- Stewart Brand

"David Eagleman is the kind of guy who really does make being a neuroscientist look like fun."
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"A popularizer of impressive gusto...[Eagleman] aims, grandly, to do for the study of the mind what Copernicus did for the study of the stars."
- New York Observer

"David Eagleman offers startling lessons.... His method is to ask us to cast off our lazy commonplace assumptions.
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"Eagleman has a talent for testing the untestable, for taking seemingly sophomoric notions and using them to nail down the slippery stuff of consciousness."
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"What Eagleman seems to be calling for is a new Enlightenment."
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