Am I Normal? with Mona Chalabi: How many friends do I need?
How to Be a Better Human
TED
4.1 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 October 2021
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Time with friends just isn’t the same with a screen in between you. That’s a struggle many have faced recently, with half of Americans saying they’ve lost touch with at least one friend during the pandemic. It can be sad, but is falling out of touch with friends normal? How many relationships should we maintain, and what are the different kinds of friendships we need anyways? Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar has been studying social relationships for 50 years, and he has answers. Data journalist Mona Chalabi maps out her own relationships against the averages, and invites us to do the same. This is an episode of Am I Normal? with Mona Chalabi, another podcast from the TED Audio Collective. You can find and follow it wherever you're listening to this. To learn more about "How to Be a Better Human," host Chris Duffy, or find footnotes and additional resources, please visit: go.ted.com/betterhuman
For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ted Audio Collective. Instead of our podcast, instead of how to be a better human, |
| 0:13.0 | we have something a little bit different. |
| 0:14.8 | We have an episode of a new podcast |
| 0:16.8 | from the Ted Audio Collective. |
| 0:18.2 | It's a brand new show called Am I Normal. |
| 0:21.2 | It's hosted by data journalist Mona Chalibi and Mona is one of my favorite writers and thinkers and people. |
| 0:28.7 | She does these incredible illustrations and she also is able to pull apart numbers and statistics and find the real stories behind them. |
| 0:36.4 | These fascinating ways of looking at things where she sees what do the numbers and statistics |
| 0:41.0 | reveal, what do they obscure, what are the narratives behind them and listen |
| 0:45.4 | Mona is kind of one of those people where she finds these stories and then she's like the ideal dinner party |
| 0:51.0 | guess because you turn to her and you're like hey there's this |
| 0:52.7 | weird thing going on am I normal and she goes let's dive into that let's talk about |
| 0:56.9 | that and let me tell you all the research it's amazing after you like it be sure |
| 1:01.8 | to follow am I normal with Mona Chalabi and you can follow that wherever you're listening to this. |
| 1:07.5 | Anywhere you got this podcast, you can get her podcast. |
| 1:10.0 | Okay, without further ado, am I normal? |
| 1:13.0 | It's been about two months since I left New York for London. |
| 1:17.0 | I'm still settling to my new flat here, putting up curtains, choosing a couch, all that. |
| 1:22.0 | I arrived excited to be out of my time. putting up curtains, choosing a couch, all that. |
| 1:22.9 | I arrived excited to be out of my tiny apartment. |
| 1:26.4 | And now that COVID restrictions had lifted, |
| 1:28.4 | I was excited to see people too. |
... |
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