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Billy Baker is the author of We Need to Hang Out, a memoir of Making Friends. Billy is a staff writer for the Boston

Globe, where he writes narrative features and humorous columns. A native of South Boston,

he's a graduate of Boston Latin School, Tulane University, and the Columbia Journalism School.

He has received the Deborah Howell Award for Writing Excellence from the American Society of News Editors and was a member of the Globe team that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings.

Welcome, Billy. Thanks so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss we need to hang out a memoir of making friends well thank you

so much for having me it's my pleasure we were just hanging out with kyle which is great

because my husband as we discussed is like so good at keeping his friends more so than most

i would say people men whatever and is always like encouraging me to call friends. And so when I

told him about your book originally, he just, like, glommed onto this and has recommended it front, right, and center. So anyway. That's fantastic. And he seems like a natural glue guy, like this phrase, I use in the book of a velvet hook, like these things we need to find that are these soft connectors, is a way to be friends with our friends.

Sometimes that velvet hook is a person.

You know, it's the Kyle's of the world who are like, let's get the band back together and then follow Stu on it. So I love it. I love the energy he gives off. Yeah, it's really amazing. Yeah. I think I'm much more in the camp that you kind of described of like, life is. We have our kids. We have our work. Like, yeah, there are good friends. But like, oh, wait, you moved to like a country to another continent. You know, somebody was asking me about one of my good friends. And I was like, oh, yeah, no, she's one of my best friends. She lives in Seattle. And then like, two minutes later, I was like, actually, I think she might have moved to

Portland. Like, now I'm confused. I have to check my cat. Like, anyway, so I feel like I have close friends, and I love them. And I, you know, but I need to do a much better job. So anyway, your book came at the right time for me, too. So for anybody who does know what we're talking about, can you tell what your book is about? And then the fun story that you recount in the book of how this became a book.

Sure, yeah. So it became a book because I was conned by an editor with one of the oldest lies in journalism, which is we have a story we think you'd be perfect for. And so I march into the editor's

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