John Cacioppo, a University of Chicago neuroscientist, learned a lot about loneliness as a child. Born in Texas, growing up in Louisiana and Missouri, Cacioppo attended 10 different schools before eighth grade. “Early on I learned about connections and disconnections,” he said. For his latest book, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, he studied the subject professionally. Find out more about his work here, and his life below.
Q. What do you wake up to?
A. My alarm clock.
Q. What music have you listened to today?
A. I love electronic, so I’ve been listening to electronic instrumentals. Cirque du Soleil music is often a favorite.
Q. What’s your favorite word?
A. Love.
Q. What do you find beautiful?
A. Our species. This research has really made me a bigger fan of our species. We’re capable of really awful things but we’re a cool species on average.
Q. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A. A fireman.
Q. What is your favorite alcoholic beverage?
A. Single malt scotch, neat.
Q. What is your greatest extravagance?
A. Time with my family.
Q. If you could take only one more journey, where would you go?
A. Back to my family.
Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A. The same one. I couldn’t ask for a better profession.
Q. If you were about to be executed, what would you want to eat for your final meal?
A. I forget to eat all the time…. So it wouldn’t matter. Eating is not high on my agenda.
Q. What’s your favorite holiday and why?
A. Thanksgiving – when one expresses gratitude to family and friends.
Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. I was on a track team, and my parents always hosted all the kids and families. We’d have 300 people in our house, and I remember my dad coming back with a car full of sandwiches.
Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. In my office is a huge poster …. It’s an Andy Warhol treatment of a photograph my son made of himself.
Q. What promise do you make to yourself that you break the most often?
A. To get more sleep.
Q. What should you throw away but haven’t been able to part with?
A. Bad habits.
Q. Who is the one person living or dead you would most want to have a beer with?
A. Nikola Tesla. He was a really bizarre man, and an isolate. His influence on the world was surprisingly diminished by the fact that he was an isolate. It would be interesting to talk to him and figure out why.
*Photo by Aaron Salcido.