Hi Thinkers!

Each Sunday we're sending out our newsletter called "In The Same Boat" because we're really in the same boat when it comes to learning English. Subscribe here: https://tolpodcast.substack.com/

And now: loneliness is quietly becoming an epidemic with Japan and UK appointing ministers to deal with the problem. There are economic, technological and metaphysical reasons behind this trend but we are looking at it through our teachers' eyes, trying to find out whether it's possibile to communicate with a machine and build a community with it. One of the lastest episodes of The Ezra Klein Show (Masha's fav podcast) leaves little doubt about it (listen to the conversation with Ethan Mollick) leaving Jedrek in a difficult spot before the upcomming Innovate ELT Conference. But even so, is a clever chatbot a solution to the problem of loneliness more than anti-depressants are to the problem of depression?

We are mentioning an essay by Matthieu Chaigne "La Fabrique des Solitares", William Deresiewicz's collection of essays "The End Of Solitude" as well as Kazuo Ishiguro's "Klara And The Sun" with the conclusion that we are dealing with a cultural shift not merely technological.

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