Don Martin

So it's a really cool thing.

It's a really cool evolution of the mall.

And I know that there's a mall near me that's nearing extinction that they're considering turning into a water park, at least part of it turning into a water park.

And I'm like, well, I don't know about that.

in the middle of winter here in the Chicagoland area.

But it's interesting to see what the next evolution for the American mall might be because they've been struggling to stay afloat in a lot of places.

Again, just like talking about young people, usually when we talk about loneliness, we talk about it in big broad strokes data, which typically centers the cisgender heterosexual white experience.

However, to no one's surprise, whenever you start intersecting that data with any kind of marginality, so if you're a person of color, if you're disabled, if you're a queer person, you experience much greater loneliness.

It turns out if you are ostracized from society,

already.

That disconnection is just greater.

It's just bigger and worse.

However, what's fascinating about looking at marginalized communities and loneliness is how marginalized and oppressed communities have risen to create community where they otherwise would not have had any.

So I'll just talk about the queer community experience.

If you have young children listening, I'm going to mention a couple of things.

And you're warned.

Queer people have...

historically created community in some rather interesting places.

If you know the singer Bette Midler, she actually has a nickname called Bathhouse Betty, and that's because she used to sing in bathhouses in New York.

And I'm not going to go into much more detail about that, but it will tell you that for a good period of time,