The Science of Friendship

Call Your Girlfriend

Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow

Society & Culture

4.7 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2020

⏱️ 41 minutes

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Summary

From looking at our brain activity inside fMRI machines to mapping social networks, scientists are looking closely at friendship. Science journalist Lydia Denworth shares her look into the latest research finding what we know affectively to be true -- that friendship helps us live longer, better lives.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend, a podcast for long distance besties everywhere.
0:05.0	She's Anne Friedman! She is Amina too so. On today's agenda we are talking about
0:11.0	the science of friendship with science journalist Lydia Denworth, who's the author of
0:15.6	friendship, the evolution, biology, and extraordinary power of life's fundamental bond.
0:30.0	Friendship, the evolution, biology, and extraordinary power of life's fundamental bond is
0:52.0	out now. And is something that we read and informed a few of the science parts of our
0:58.2	own book about friendship. So here I am with Lydia. Lydia thank you so much for being on
1:04.1	the podcast. Thanks for having me it's great to be here. So I know you are a science journalist.
1:09.6	I'm curious to hear why the science of friendship was something that you wanted to delve into.
1:15.8	You know part of my job as a journalist and as a science journalist in particular is to sort of
1:23.2	go and listen to scientists especially when they talk to each other and try to work out what
1:29.0	they think is interesting and important and new. And this idea that there was a biology and an
1:36.0	evolutionary story to friendship was definitely that. About five years ago I went to a conference
1:42.8	for social neuroscience and it was a lot about this. And so I was really intrigued because I
1:49.7	hadn't really thought about the biology of friendship which makes me like pretty much everybody else.
1:55.2	And I thought friendship huh? That seems like something I could dig into. And you know I'm at a
2:03.9	point in my life where my kids are beginning to go off to college and I was losing my mother.
2:09.5	You know I'm in transition a little bit. I mean I have my husband of many years but it did sort
2:16.0	of seem like a wake-up call. Hey maybe I better really really make sure that I'm paying attention
2:21.8	to my friends and that I guess that I have my friendship house in order. So it was personal for
2:27.8	you as well as what you're saying. It was both. Yeah I mean it was work and it was personal and I
2:31.8	thought that I would really like to become an expert on this. And what was the conversation among
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