Hi everybody and welcome to Coaches Corner. I am so excited to bring you this week's episode

because I get a lot of questions on friendship. How to make friends, how to maintain friends,

what is healthy friendship, shy, and a friendship relationship. And today's guest has written

a book on friendship, a New York Times best-selling book called Platonic, How the Science of

Attachment can help you make and keep friends. And she's studied friendship and the importance

of friendship, how we make friends, how we keep friends, how we maintain friends, all the things.

Her name is Dr. Marissa G. Franco and she's known for digesting and communicating science in a way

that resonates deeply enough with people to actually change their lives. She works as a professor at

the University of Maryland and her book, which I just mentioned, Platonic, came out in September and

already made the New York Times best-seller list. She writes about friendship for psychology today and

has been featured as a connection expert for major publications like the New York Times,

telegraph, vice, so on and so forth. She speaks on belonging across the country. And belonging is

such a thing. You've heard me talk about on the podcast before. Belonging is something we need for

survival. Way back when we were evolving as humans, we needed a tribe. We needed to belong. We

needed each other to survive. If you didn't belong, if you were all on your own, you wouldn't survive.

So when we don't have a sense of belonging, when we have a sense of loneliness, when we feel like

we don't have our community, don't have our tribe, it can create a lot of anxiety in us. And it can

really wrap up our nervous system because on a biological level, our brain's going, wait,

if I don't have belonging, if I don't have people, I may die. I may not survive. So belonging

and friendship is so, so, so important. And I really think you're going to get so much value out

of today's episode. Even if you have great friends, you think you are a good friend, I really,

really encourage you to listen because it will just solidify your friendships even more. And

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