You know me, Steven. I'm like, let's hug! Let's take a selfie!

I'm Angela Duckworth. I'm Steven Dubner. And you're listening to no stupid questions.

Today on the show, what does it mean to be friends with someone who has no idea that you exist?

Instead of having a conversation with an actual friend, I'll just listen to Steven and Angela

have a conversation with each other.

Angela, a listener named Caitlin writes to say that the highlight of her day is listening to

this podcast on her walks. She writes, it feels like hanging out with close friends.

Oh, I was going to ask for your response. Your response is, oh, it's the opposite of my response,

but okay. Yours is ew. No, Caitlin, just so you know, aww.

She continues, my question is, how useful are these parasocial relationships in maintaining mental

health? So Angie, before I continue reading the email, I think I understand this word from context,

but can you define a word I'd never heard before, parasocial?

I think the idea of a parasocial relationship is that it's an asymmetric relationship. It's one

sided. So Caitlin might feel like she's hanging out with us, but we do not feel like in order

we in any sense hang out with her. Well, right now we are.

Well, except for now, this is as good as it gets Caitlin.

So she says how useful are these relationships? And then she continues,

or will my almost daily rewatching of friends and rereading of Harry Potter hinder my ability

to form quote normal relationships in the long run. Also, she writes, what does the research say

about our friendships and emotional dependency with AI artificial intelligence? Did they count

as parasocial relationships? I think of the movie her. Did you ever see her Angie?

I didn't. Is that the one where Scarlett Johansson plays like the equivalent of Alexa or something?

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