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Dr. Jeremy Nobel, gets quoted in Boston Globe article “Loneliness epidemic: How potluck dinners can build connections”

December 17, 2024

Over half of Americans are lonely. In Maine, potluck dinners are helping.

Sharing food and stories helps foster the connection our times so desperately need.

“Be curious. Make things. Have conversations.” That’s the three-step prescription for addressing loneliness from Dr. Jeremy Nobel, a Harvard Medical School faculty member and author of the book Project UnLonely: Healing our Crisis of Disconnection (and a member of the Community Plate advisory board). At a community potluck, those three elements are built in. Meeting new people and learning about their dishes naturally foster inquisitiveness. Preparing and sharing your own dish is an act of creativity and bravery. Conversations naturally follow — and the result is connection and community.”

Read Project UnLonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection

Project UnLonely book cover
Insight into our new world of loneliness that offers solace, hope, and solutions.

Even before 2020, chronic loneliness was a private experience of profound anguish that had become a public health crisis. Since then it has reached new heights. Loneliness assumes many forms, from enduring physical isolation to feeling rejected because of difference, and it can have devastating consequences for our physical and mental health. As the founder of Project UnLonely, Jeremy Nobel unpacks our personal and national experience of loneliness to discover its roots and take steps to find comfort and connection.

Dr. Nobel leverages many voices, from pioneering researchers, to leaders in business, education, the arts, and health care, to the lived experience of lonely people of every age, background, and circumstance. He discovers that the pandemic isolated us in ways that were not only physical, and that, at its core, a true sense of loneliness results from a disconnection to the self. He clarifies how meaningful reconnection can be nourished and sustained. And he reveals that an important component of the healing process is engaging in creativity. Make things!

Supportive, clear-eyed, and comforting, this is the book we will take into our new normal and rely on for years to come.

Order the Book

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