Sunday Pick: Do all my friends secretly hate me? | from Corner Piece

Anna Goldfarb (0:03)

Happy Sunday, y'all. Elise Huw here, and today we are bringing you a Sunday Pick where we share an episode of another podcast from TED, handpicked by us for you.

You might remember Corner Piece from a recent Sunday Pick. It's TED's newest podcast, a show that starts small on life's biggest questions. Co-hosts Taha, Melissa and Sabrina, lifelong friends and full-time nerds you might know from their YouTube channel, Answer in Progress. Take an everyday worry and launch a full investigation to figure out how much of the problem is modern life and how much is just part of being human. Today, we're sharing another recent episode, this time all about friendship and a question that might feel familiar. Why does making friends as an adult feel like mission impossible? Melissa explores what it actually means to be a friend, all while grappling with a friendship breakup of her own.

Along the way, she talks with authors and friendship experts Anna Goldfarb and Dr. Marisa G. Franco. Together, they get into why friendship can get so complicated as we get older and how to build closer bonds. You can find Corner Piece wherever you get your podcasts with new episodes every other Thursday. And you can learn all about TED's podcasts at podcasts.ted.com. That's coming up after a short break.

Melissa Fernandes (1:25)

When I was a kid, I had all these dreams of what I thought friendship would be like when I was older.

Big apartments, large living rooms, pizza nights, the kind of thing that you'd see in the show Friends. I guess that's because my parents had it on TV all the time when I was younger. What I've always found really beautiful about the show was the genuine connection these people seemed to share with each other. They have this casualness with each other and show up as themselves, unannounced, happy, sad, and everything in between. They laugh together, cry together, and are present in each other's lives. I know that this is television, but when I look at the picture of friendship in my life today, it's very different than what I had imagined. Recently, I went through a pretty tough friendship loss or breakup.

I think I just thought I told myself that it was fine and I was over it. But we were friends for years, pretty much all through childhood and into adulthood, but long story short, we had a small fight that unraveled into this year-long process of slow distancing, and now we don't really talk to each other. I guess when you're just friends at someone for so long, I guess you have these expectations, and when things change so suddenly without any communication, you're just kind of like, you're just, I don't know, like feeling left wondering what is going on for over a year. You're just confused, and so I just don't understand what the, I don't know what the play space is, you know?

She was one of my oldest and closest friends, and I miss her a lot. And I think I'm still making sense of what happened and processing the grief of it all. Like, I'm too scared to even text her. So on this episode of Corner Piece, we're talking about friendship. Am I a bad friend? And what does it even mean to be a good friend? And not just the kinds that you see on screen. I mean, real friends.

So I called my friends, Taha and Sabrina, to ask them how they maintain their friendships.

Taha Khan (4:00)

Do you guys ever just call your friends spontaneously?

Sabrina Cruz (4:05)

So what do you think my answer is, Taha?

Taha Khan (4:08)

You schedule in spontaneous phone call with friend, and then you roll a dice and you have a system.

Melissa Fernandes (4:18)

I don't anymore, but when I was a kid, I used to, when I was in elementary school, I used to just call my friends after school.

Sabrina Cruz (4:26)

Elementary school? With a landline?

Melissa Fernandes (4:28)

Yeah, you just grab the landline.

Marisa G. Franco (4:31)

You were allowed?

Melissa Fernandes (4:32)

Yeah, I'd be like, hello, is Amanda free for a call? And then they'll be like, okay, one second, and then you'll just talk. And then when you want it, when you're sick of being on the phone, you have to like fake, be like, oh, my mom's calling me for dinner.

Sabrina Cruz (4:48)

You have to fake.

Melissa Fernandes (4:49)

I have to go now.

Because you can't just talk forever. You have nothing to do. What homework do you have when you're in grade four? Like go to your times tables and then you're done.

Taha Khan (5:00)