Understanding Friendship - Lydia Denworth - #152

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, friends, welcome back. You may be able to notice a slight nasal tone, slightly more than usual to my voice, and that is because I'm currently self-isolating, got a little bit of a fever, don't have a massive cough, but given the government's guidelines on staying at home, if you think you might have some of the symptoms of COVID-19, I've elected to stay in the house, which is great for recording and editing podcasts, but slightly less good for having an exciting life. However, if you are feeling like you might have some of the symptoms as well, which are high temperature and or dry cough, I would urge you to do the same. It is all of our duties to pull together at the moment. So don't be a dick and go out of the house if you think that you are ill, because you might infect a lot of people and that would be very bad. Onto today's guest, Lydia Denworth. We're talking about her new book, Friendship, and it seems pretty timely a topic to be talking about. We're constantly told that we're more connected than ever, but have never felt more alone. We're learning about this loneliness epidemic, which is sweeping the world. Today, expect to learn what friendship is, how you can improve the quality of the friendships in your own life, what loneliness does to the body, how friendship and loneliness both actually manifest in the brain, and a bunch of hacks that both me and Lydia came up with about how you can deepen your friendships and make sure that you're spending enough time, good quality time with the people in your life that matter. But for now, please welcome the wise and wonderful Lydia Denworth.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Lydia, has there ever been a better time to be talking about friendship?

**Lydia Denworth** (1:58)
It's pretty top of mind these days, isn't it? Right now. It's critical that we hang out with our friends, that we help each other. I'm sorry, you know what? I shouldn't be saying that right now. We shouldn't be hanging out.

**Chris Williamson** (2:12)
You can't hang out, and that's the problem, right? That's the challenge.

**Lydia Denworth** (2:15)
You can't hang out, right. And so, but the thing is that our need to connect is a fundamental piece of the fabric of society and of what it is to be human. And so we have to find ways to be with our friends from a distance right now. We have to show up from a distance.

**Chris Williamson** (2:37)
Yeah, I suppose that previously if we'd had a global pandemic at any other time in human history, we wouldn't have had the technology to facilitate this, our tech friendship that we're about to have for the next 45 minutes or so, you know?

**Lydia Denworth** (2:52)
No, that's right. And the irony is that so many people are so worried about the effects of technology and the sort of digital revolution on friendship and on social interaction. But right now, the timing is perfect for us to embrace digital friendship and all that it has to offer.
And I hope what we do is that from this experience, we take the good and then, you know, we get back to spending some time in real life with people. I mean, that should never go away as being important. But since we can't do that right at this moment, we are really fortunate that we have these ways to connect. And in fact, I'm having more Zoom video conferencing with my friends that, in fact, I never did that with my friends. I only did it for work. And now everybody wants to have a Zoom conference. It's really kind of hilarious.

**Chris Williamson** (3:42)
Yeah, that's kind of funny, this proxy for friendship that we've got. So how do you define a friendship?

**Lydia Denworth** (3:50)
Well, what's really interesting is that when biologists and neuroscientists and anthropologists really set out to study friendship more seriously recently, one of the things that they were trying to do from the start was define it and measure it, figure out what it was exactly, because in science, you have to be able to measure, you need definitions, and really it comes down to a very simple sort of minimal. There are three minimal requirements. A friendship is a relationship that's long-lasting, so it's stable and reliable, it's somebody you've known a while. It's positive, it makes you feel good, both of you, and it's reciprocal, so there's cooperation involved. So you have to have give and take, right? It can't just be, it can't be lopsided, let's say.

**Chris Williamson** (4:43)