Two weeks before Jim Morrison died, The Doors released their album L.A. Woman. It includes a song called “The WASP (Texas Radio and the Big Beat),” which includes the following line:
“I love the friends I have gathered together on this thin raft …”
That always struck me as a funny line — ha ha ha, you brought your close friends onto a raft that’s going to sink!
But, for a a lot of people, it might hard to find enough friends that the raft would be in any danger.
Turns out, that might also be within the limits of what people’s brains can actually handle.
Just 5 friends and family?
British evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar has maintained for more than three decades that humans cannot maintain a social network beyond 150 people.
This famous threshold—known as Dunbar’s number—represents everyone from your closest family to people you wouldn’t feel embarrassed running into at an airport at 3 a.m.
Beyond 150, Dunbar told The Wall Street Journal this week, those become “one-way relationships.”
Of those 150, just five people are the family and friends you feel closest to, and 10 are people you see at least once a month. Some 50 others are people you’d invite to a birthday party, and 100 more would be guests at your wedding.
The theory comes from Dunbar’s research comparing primate brain size with social group size. The bigger the neocortex—the part of the brain responsible for language and memory—the larger the network, Dunbar has posited.
The pushback
Not everyone agrees. Swedish researchers argued in 2021 that there is no cutoff number at all, finding that comparing humans with other primates ignores key differences—chimpanzees need to fend off predators and fight for food, while humans largely don’t anymore.
When they repeated Dunbar’s analyses using modern statistical methods and updated data, the results varied wildly—average group sizes ranged from 16 to 109, with confidence intervals so enormous (between 2 and 520 people) that specifying any one number seemed futile.
Dunbar called that research “absolutely bonkers,” telling The New York Times he marveled at the Stockholm University researchers’ “apparent failure to understand relationships.”
And what about social media?
Dunbar says the rise of Facebook and Instagram has done little to change his findings, which he first published in 1993:
If you look at the frequency of postings on social media, frequency of telephone calls, the frequency of face-to-face contacts, the frequency of texting, you see the same layers.
20 percent
Whether Dunbar’s specific number is right or not is probably less important than the broader point about friendship and connection.
An oft-repeated 2023 report from then-U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy found that loneliness and social isolation raise the risk for premature death by nearly 30 percent—comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Strong social connection protects against heart disease, dementia, and stroke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than 20 percent of American adults now report feeling lonely, according to Harvard research. At any given moment, about one out of every two Americans is experiencing measurable levels of loneliness.
Pick up the phone
The good news? You don’t need 150 friends to get the health benefits. Jeffrey Hall, a professor at the University of Kansas, told The New York Times that all you really need is one friend to make a difference.
“Going from zero to one is where we get the most bang for your buck, so to speak,” Hall said. “But if you want to have the most meaningful life, one where you feel bonded and connected to others, more friends are better.”
Parting though: If you’ve been meaning to call that friend you haven’t talked to in months, this might be your sign.
I mean, you’re probably reading this on your phone. How much extra effort would it take?
Your brain—and your heart—will thank you.
7 other things
Hurricane Melissa intensified to a powerful Category 5 as forecasters warned the storm would cause catastrophic flash flooding, life-threatening landslides and extremely strong winds across the Caribbean. The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami warned people in Jamaica to go to shelters and stay there during the storm, with dangerous conditions beginning Monday and lasting through Tuesday. (NBC News)
The Trump administration won’t tap emergency funds to pay for federal food benefits, imperiling benefits starting Nov. 1 for nearly 42 million Americans who rely on the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, according to a memo obtained by POLITICO. The contingency fund holds roughly $5 billion, which would not cover the full $9 billion needed to fund November benefits. (Politico)
Argentina’s President Javier Milei has led his party to a landslide victory in Sunday’s midterm elections, after defining the first two years of his presidency with radical spending cuts and free-market reforms. His party, La Libertad Avanza, won nearly 41% of the vote, taking 13 of 24 Senate seats and 64 of the 127 lower-house seats that were contested. (BBC)
A fighter jet and a helicopter based off the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz both crashed into the South China Sea within 30 minutes of each other, the Navy’s Pacific Fleet said. All crew members were recovered safely. President Donald Trump said the incidents could have been caused by “bad fuel.” He ruled out foul play and said there was “nothing to hide.” (AP)
MSNBC‘s days are numbered. In a memo to staff Monday, the cable news channel’s president said it will officially rebrand from MSNBC to MS NOW on Nov. 15, ahead of the planned spinoff into Versant. Along with the name change comes a new tagline: “Same Mission. New Name.” (Hollywood Reporter)
Iranian women are flouting the country’s law on mandatory veiling: More than three years after mass protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish-Iranian woman who had been detained by police over her dress, open defiance of compulsory hijab is widespread not just in the teeming metropolis of Tehran but also in smaller cities. (The Washington Post)
A menacing 50-degree slope and 9,000 feet straight down: that’s the terrain American mountaineer Jim Morrison tackled when he became the first person to ski the most difficult route on Everest, the infamous Hornbein Couloir on the peak’s North Face. His historic October 15 descent was captured by National Geographic Explorer and photographer Jimmy Chin, who is directing a National Geographic documentary with Chai Vasarhelyi on Morrison’s death-defying achievement. (National Geographic)
Thanks for reading. Photo by DJ Paine on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this Inc.com. See you in the comments!
I never thought reading followed by watching a video could give me my a.m. aerobics - wow - that video of skiing Everest did it!
In some ways I think I was blessed to be an only child who learned to entertain myself with books and to cultivate friends carefully. I have one very close friend. We have known each other for 66 or 67 years now. We know where all of our skeletons are and all of our foibles. She is really more my sister and I hers than her real sister is. Then I have friends who I met at church when I was going and who have stuck with me even after my big move out of the country. My family is small and we just seemed to like it that way. I have been adopted here in my new country though and I’ve slowly made new friends here as well. It’s a process that social media hasn’t played all that big a part in, thank goodness. I’m a Boomer though so my lifelong experience pre social media is, understandably, different from a Gen Z’er. Studies will change by necessity.
Got vertigo just thinking about that crazy descent.
There might be something left of Jamaica after Melissa gets through with it. Very sad but it’s been a slow mover and the waters here have been crazy warm, not only topside but deep as well.
Pentagon is being very quiet about the loss of those two aircraft that just-crashed? Bad fuel is a stupid excuse.
Iranian women are showing how to show up and protest. It’s possible to crack down on a few rebels but not when so many show up. We might learn from this.