Modern Friendship with Anna Goldfarb

Discussion post for January 3, 2025

As we head into 2025, the idea of community feels intrinsically important to our well-being - both as people and a country. For so many of us, adult friendship can be a challenging landscape to navigate. Anna Goldfarb has written a wonderful new book about friendship in the modern era. We loved this conversation with her and know you will, too.

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Episode Resources:

• Anna Goldfarb

• Modern Friendship: How to Nurture Our Most Valued Connections by Anna Goldfarb (Amazon)

Episode Transcript

Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

Beth [00:00:09] This is Beth Silvers.

Sarah [00:00:10] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.

Beth [00:00:12] Where we take a different approach to the news.

[00:00:14] Music Interlude.

Sarah [00:00:29] Thank you so much for joining us today. And in this new year, happy New Year to everyone. We are wrapping up our holiday break as a team, but we are thrilled to be bringing you this brand new conversation with Anna Goldfarb of The New York Times. Anna writes about friendship for The Times and has written a new book called Modern Friendship. And we absolutely loved this conversation with her. As we start this new year, it's a particularly apt and appropriate time to be thinking about friendship, something I think many, many of us will be prioritizing in 2025. And so we wanted to have Anna on to talk about how we can be intentional about cultivating community now and throughout this new year. So without further ado, Anna Goldfarb.

[00:01:10] Music Interlude.

Beth [00:01:20] Anna Goldfarb, welcome to Pantsuit Politics. We're so happy that you're here.

Anna Goldfarb [00:01:24] My gosh. I'm delighted to be here.

Beth [00:01:26] So I was reading your book, Modern Friendship, thinking about the many times Sarah and I have discussed an epidemic of loneliness. And I really appreciated that in writing this book you seemed to want to do more than just describe the problem. So I would love to hear about how you approach this task. I know this arose out of your reporting. How did you decide I want to do more than describe the problem?

Anna Goldfarb [00:01:55] The one thing about reporting on friendship is the more I learned, the more questions I had. I was like, well, why? I was like a little kid in the backseat. Like, well, why? Well, why? And we always hear friendships last for a reason, a season or a lifetime. And I'm like but why? What determines if one friend is a season? Tell me more. And I just had a lot of fun writing this book because I wanted to know on a molecular level what is going on with these friendships? Is it me? Is it them? Is it the atmosphere? Is it the culture? And the answers was more simple than that of just here is how human beings make choices. Here's how a human being in a busy, overwhelming, hyper fluid society, this is how they make their choices. And when we think about our identities and what we are, a friend doesn't even crack the top 10. It's like I'm a spouse. I'm a parent. I am an employee. I'm an auntie. You go on and on. And then friends it's like down by the bottom, usually. Who are my obligations to? Who's the priority in my life? And friends keep coming up short.

[00:03:12] So I wanted to know, like, what was it about? Is it about friends? What is it about this relationship that people tend to relegate it to the sidelines? And what I learned is like, well, humans have to make choices. There's a reasoning behind who we choose to keep close and who we don't. So what is that reason? And I got really into the weeds with that. I just got real deep into it and I wanted clarity of is this me? What am I doing wrong? And the answer is it's all of it? You can do everything right and sit at a cafe across your best friend, but feel disconnected. So it really is all of it. It's about time. That's what I learned, is that friendship is time. Friendship is a story of time. It's how you engage with time. It's your future. What is our future together? And I'm talking in broad strokes, but it really helped me understand friendship and what container is appropriate to put them in.

Sarah [00:04:12] Well, and I do want to say I appreciated that you didn't just describe the problem. And also, I think you brought some very enlightening descriptions to the problem that really helped me see it more clearly or put words to something I had seen. I loved where you talked about why we feel like we have 100 friends and zero friends. Because we always hear that survey question somebody can't list top three friends. And I'm like I don't think that's true. I think people can list friends, but they don't know who to call. I can list these people who are my 'friends'. And we won't even get into the way that Facebook has polluted that term and confused that term and messed with that term, but that they don't feel like there is someone supporting them or that they can call, that they put the time in, that they can then ask for the time back. And I think the way you really broke apart the modern situations that can lend to that, that contribute to that. Like you said, it's not that I'm doing something wrong; it's that the way we live today and the normal constraints on our time and energy are really a big hill to climb.

Anna Goldfarb [00:05:27] Yeah. And no one knows what's happening. We don't have a historical context. We can't say to our grandma, like, how did you handle this? My grandma never went to college. She was married at 18. She didn't have the kinds of friendships that I have. And there's no cultural touchpoint for any of this. My mom didn't have a best guy friend in her 20s and 30s. She didn't have to negotiate that when she-- my mom was married at 21. So our social lives look very, very different than even just a few generations past. And that's what was most shocking to me is we don't have models for this. I mean, it's so culturally new that different genders are friends even, that we work alongside each other, that we have to negotiate juggling romantic relationships along with our friendships. This is all historically new. So we are baby fawns. We are Bambis in the forest just trying to get our legs out underneath us. And it's not our fault that we don't know how to handle these things perfectly.

Beth [00:06:34] I thought it was really striking that you gave text messages the attention that they deserve inside a book about modern friendships. You're totally right. We do not have anyone to advise us on how rapidly the response should come to figure out what our meaning is to this other person that we're communicating with.

Anna Goldfarb [00:06:54] I really think we forget that all of these things are so culturally new and we have no guidance, no consensus of here's what a text message means, here's what the expectation is with replying to text messages. Even as being available 24/7 is culturally new. So it makes sense that we don't know what's meaningful and what's not. We just have so much coming in and we spend so little time considering how our messages land in someone else's inbox. We don't know where they are in their life, what they're doing when we reach out sometimes with low effort messages of like, "Hey, I miss you. Let's hang out." It's like, well, I don't know what to do with that. Hang out why? Do you want to sell me a legging like in a MLM? Why me?

[00:07:44] And you really only need a few times of saying yes to something and having it not really be clear why you said yes and not feeling like it wasn't a good use of your time before you get a little suspicious and a little jaded of, well, why me? Why do you want to go out get a glass of Shiraz with me? What do you need? Why should they rearrange my schedule? Tell my spouse they're on their own for dinner tonight? Because I'm going to go out with you, like. But why? So these are old strategies. These are old strategies we used when we had $14 in our pocket, we're 15 years old. And do you want to hang out Friday? Great. I have nothing on my calendar. I have nothing to do. Friday sounds great. But when you're a busy adult, that's just not going to cut it.

Sarah [00:08:32] Well, I have two questions. So one on the modern adult side. Beth and I just read a really great book. I don't know if you've read it. It's called 4000 Weeks Time Management for Mere Mortals. And he spends a lot of time on time. I was struck how you said, "A good use of my time." And he talks about in the Soviet Union where they put everybody to work for 24/7 and these teams, but that meant nobody was off at the same time. And people hated it because they could never see their friends or their family because if they were on another team, they were never off at the same time. And he talks about how in modern life we've really put this individuality, flexibility, independence up on this pedestal and then we wonder why we're lonely.

[00:09:15] Because that emphasis on freedom and individuality and flexibility makes connection with other human beings really hard. If we all say we want to be in control of our time and have total flexibility, then it does require a sacrifice. I do not struggle with friendships. I have amazing close girlfriends and I still have to give myself a little pep talk that if I spend an entire afternoon just chatting with them, that wasn't me wasting the afternoon. I can still catch my brain doing that. Like you wasted all that time hanging out with Kate. Well, okay, but that wasn't a waste of time. I needed that. That was important to the friendship. But I think that time management flexibility, that voice inside our heads is really, really strong in the 'modern day'.

Anna Goldfarb [00:10:02] Well, I spend a lot of time talking about this desire in a friendship, where desire comes from. And it feels like a waste of time if it's not clear of what you're getting together to talk about, to do together. A huge misunderstanding about friendship is that affection should be enough. People think, well, we care about each other. We love each other. That should be enough to propel our friendship well into the future. But that's not how our lives look. Our lives look like we have to make decisions on good close, who's reliable, what values they hold? Are they aligned with ours? We make decisions all the time. One of my favorite stories in the book is about my friend Adam, who was working at the Apple Store and he brought in the comic books from his lunch break. He went and got the latest Miles Morales comic book and a coworker of his Octavius was like, "You're into comic books?" And he's like, yeah. And they started going on talking about comic books, nonstop talk about comic books. They started calling each other to talk about comic books. They started a podcast about comic books. And then Octavius got really sick and he needed a kidney transplant. And Adam was like, I'm in. What can I do? And Adam helped save his friend's life by donating his kidney.

[00:11:27] And Octavius had a daughter shortly after and named Adam as the godparent. And now they're family. They're not just friends. They're family now. But what's remarkable about this story is it started over comic books. It's something apart from the friends. And that was the most surprising thing I learned writing this book is that friendships need to be about something, and the about needs to be clear and compelling to both people. That's what make friendships stay active. So one of my favorite texts for understanding friendship is Hollywood Walk of Fame speeches. I don't know if you've ever watched some of them. My favorite one is Matthew McConaughey's speech and Guy Fieri's Hollywood Walk of Fame speech. And they walk you through how their friendship started and why it endures. And Matthew McConaughey shares that he was in a bus traveling country when he was acting. And he loved the show Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. And Matthew McConaughey would hit these small towns and want to know where to eat. So he reached out to Guy Fieri. What was the about? Small town road stop restaurants. And he said, "I love your show. Where should I eat in Spokane when I'm there next week?" And Guy Fieri is like you should go here.

[00:12:48] And then after Matthew McConaughey had a reason to reach out again. I went there. Here's what I thought. Here's where I'll be next week. Where should I go? And so that was the about of their fledgling friendship. It's restaurants. But then when Guy Fieri came to L.A. and Matthew McConaughey came to L.A., they got together. They connected over deeper values, values of family, values of faith, values of dealing with fame. And they have a deeper friendship. And that is how friendships work. It has to be about something apart from the friends that you're both so geeked up about that you will tell your spouse, your children, hey, you're on your own for a few hours. I'm meeting with this friend because... So that's what I mean when I say it's a good use of your time. It's because you're talking about something that you're already excited about and already invested in and you have someone to marvel at the world with you. That's what friends are here for. We're here to be like what is up with this planet? Listening to this. Here, check this out. We want to talk about things we care about with our friends, and that's what makes it feel like a good use of time.

Sarah [00:13:56] Well, that's the second part of my question. Look, I know you're not writing a parenting book, but I have a child struggling with friendship. And I think it's really interesting when you said we think it's like when we were 15. We wrote in our book that one of the big struggles with friendship, I think, is that we learn friendship through school where the undercurrent message is you're the same age, so you should have all these shared interests and be the same and be friends, right? We don't really teach kids friendship is built on the shared interest and the shared ability to marvel in the world. I think what you're taught in school is we even talk about in elementary school they're all your friends. Like everybody in school is your friend and we need to be friendly and kind. And I wonder, as you were thinking about this, did you excavate and think, man, this is where we weren't-- because I think that's all something we articulate in modern friendship. We're not taught this. We're not taught how to think about this. We're not taught how to think about how to build a friendship.

[00:14:51] We're taught it should be this shared affection and you have things in common. And so when you encounter something in a friendship like a conflict, all you know is best friends forever. We shouldn't have a conflict. We have all these shared histories or we're in the same grade and so that should be enough. And I wonder how you think about how can we change that narrative for everybody so that our kids who probably will encounter social situations more like what you're describing-- lord, I hope the pace of change does not continue on that we're so different from how we are from our mothers and grandmothers. But how did you think about how can we start this new narrative about from young ages all the way up to rethinking how to build friendships, especially in that school environment? I think it messes us up and we have to unlearn all the things we learned during that age.

Anna Goldfarb [00:15:41] I will say that we instinctively learn these things in school of you like horses? I like horses. Are we best friends now? I guess so. We both like horses. I think we know instinctively that this is how we are drawn to people, but we aren't taught how fluid our friendships are and how if our friendship is based on say horses and then one of us breaks their leg and can't ride horses and gets into boybands. And it's like, well, I'm not into the boy bands and then there's conflict of, well, what's our identity and what do we care about? And who has more compelling information for us at any given time? And it's going to be some other girl in the class who's crazy about BTS. And then you're like I just lost a friend. And it's like, well, the interest changed. But we can also negotiate our friendships. We aren't taught that we can negotiate. We can say, hey, Sarah, I want to spend more time with you. What are you interested in these days? How can I help? Are you interested in hiking? I'll start a hiking group with you. You want to work on perfecting your podcast? I'll go to a networking event with you. I'm here to help you. I'm here to support you. I think kids are taught how to make friends, but not how to actually manage this collection of friends that you get and to really be flexible, be happy for your friends if they make other friends. I always felt so competitive and threatened.

Sarah [00:17:15] Yeah, threatened for sure.

Anna Goldfarb [00:17:16] If my friends meet other friends. Now I'm in my 40s, but now I'm thrilled when my friends make new friends because I know I can't be everything to them. I cannot be available at all times. And look, I'm so happy for you that you have this. I want that for my friends, but I don't think that children are giving that message of it's perfectly normal for people to have a web of friends and it's fluid. Things are going to go in and out. You might be really close to a friend, but you're in different classes next year. Everything's okay. To ride the wave, to surf the wave as humans pull people close and distance themselves from others. I want people to feel shatterproof. I can understand what's happening and I have tools to be empowered within this. I can negotiate a friendship. I see that you're into boy bands now if I'm still a kid or maybe an adult. I see you into boy bands now, teach me. What are your favorite boy bands? You can you can interact with this. You don't have to feel beholdened to these trends? We can work with people. We can negotiate. We can say what matters to you and how can I help?

[00:18:29] Music Interlude?

Beth [00:18:40] My nine year old last night said to me, "I think I'm too loyal to my friend's mom because I really don't like it when they have new friends." And I said, "That's not loyalty. That's insecurity. And we need to talk about that." And I loved how in the book you acknowledge that all of us do this. We're writing stories about what's going on with the other person in a way that impacts everything we're doing and is wholly opaque to them. So your metaphor of where we are in our friendships was very helpful to me. Will you talk a little bit for people who have not read the book yet about the bath tub through the bonfire and the fluidity of those tiers?

Anna Goldfarb [00:19:24] These numbers are based on Robin Dunbar's research. He's a British anthropologist. He's done extensive work with friends and social circles. And he found that this is how a healthy friendship adult social network tends to look like. And I renamed them into these water features to show how fluid they are. And to help understand how common it is to dip in and out. I call the most intimate tier the bathtub because it doesn't fit many people. And for men it's usually one person. It's usually the significant other. For women, it's usually a significant other and a best friend. So right there is that create a whole book on that about that whole negotiation of intimacy. But I call that the bathtub. The outer ring I call the Jacuzzi. And those are your Jacuzzi friends. And that's about three to five. Really like your support group, your Academy Award speech people you thank. And all of them have different strengths and weaknesses. But the idea is that this elite tier of friends, you are going to spend the most energy being an excellent friend to. These are your chosen homies. I don't know if people still say homies. That's [inaudible].

[00:20:51] The next tier. The lower tier is the swimming pool. And that's 10 to 15 people. Those are the people you double date with, maybe some coworkers that you're really close to, but they may not know your family or your spouse. There's like people you've hosted for, people you pet sit for. And the next tier I call the beach bonfire group. That's about 50 people. And then the outermost tier is your water park, and that's 150 people, weddings and funerals. That's the third cousins that you know in your network. But as I explain in my book, I call it wholehearted friendship. And that's the paradigm I created that's intended to close the gap between how you want your friends to feel about you and how they actually feel about you. To make it more aligned with wholehearted friendship, you practice those principles on your Jacuzzi friends.

[00:21:45] These are the three people You're going to be an above outstanding superlative friend to. You cannot do it for everyone in your life. And I think that that's a mistake people make. And you mentioned social media and social media whitens our social network. You see them all in a list right next to each other. And it's confusing. I know so much about people in the water park. But you really, really only need to know these kinds of details about people in your Jacuzzi and swimming pool. So that's why social media, I think, is just so jarring and it just fails the task. It doesn't feel like a party of all your friends. It feels like all these people that share a common history with you, but not with each other. So that's why it feels so lonely. It's like, well, there's no cohesion here. I'm getting kind of depressed just talking about it. It's like, yeah, nobody knows each other. They just know me. This isn't actually that much fun.

Sarah [00:22:45] And it's really disorienting. You're not a mental health professional, but I was already navigating, negotiating in my head, well, while my tub have is actually one of those big Jacuzzi tubs that I used to have in my 1990s house that can fit more people. So I was justifying in my head why I don't fit inside yours. It's fine. I'll talk to my therapist about it. But my best friends from college and law school, they've heard so much about each other at this point. I feel like I know the lives of their best friends from other phases in life because I know so much about them at this point. It is like what framework would my grandmother have for this? It is very disorienting to realize like, wait, Leslie and Elizabeth don't actually know each other. Maybe they have no interactions except through me. They've now met over the course of several years.

[00:23:38] But it is this very weird thing. And now you know so many of my close friends. I don't want to just complain about social media because I use Marco Polo a lot to stay in touch with my friends. Not only am I seeing their faces, I'm telling them the same thing. I don't remember who I said what to what. And they're all interacting in our heads by based on technology and even more different ways. We've all sent a text to the wrong group text. Everybody's done that. You know what I mean? I think technology both helps and makes this so much worse on many levels. And we're asking our brains to do things that it's just not evolved to do.

Anna Goldfarb [00:24:17] Yeah, and there's no historical precedent. You can't be like, mom, how did you handle the group text in your 20s? It's just we forget because our lives move so fast and our identity is changed so much in ways that weren't even available in the 1970s. James Richardson wrote an incredible book which I blurbed to be transparent, and it's about individualism. And he talks about the explosion of identities just from the 1920s to the 1970s. In the 1920s you were married, have children, that's about it. But now in the 1970s, do you even have children? Some people don't. Some people do. Are you married? Are you separated? Are you divorced?

Sarah [00:25:07] Are you a step parent?

Anna Goldfarb [00:25:08] Are you a step parent? There's so many more configurations of our identity. That's what's beautiful about modern friendships. Is that you can pick people like a butterfly. I'm a divorced mom of two, well, I want to be going to hang out with other divorced moms because they get the struggles I'm dealing with. But that also can alienate you from your friends. And in marriages or single it's like, well, we're not facing the same issues. So all these things have created this breakdown of I don't have children; I'm not I'm a non-parent; but that's made it hard to connect with women who do have children and understanding their struggles. That wasn't an issue in the 1920s. If I was a woman, I'd be married with kids. There's not a choice of which path you choose. So our struggles are just very, very different. Very different challenges. But it's not hopeless.

Beth [00:26:03] Well, I felt like there was just a lot of radical acceptance in your book that by naming those tiers of friends sometimes you just accept, I thought I was in your Jacuzzi and I'm just in your pool. Okay, now I know I'm in your pool and I'm just going to be grateful that I'm in your pool because I'd like to be with you at all. And that was helpful to me. I also really had to sit with the sentence that friendships aren't meant to be well-rounded. It's not a new idea to me that different people have different strengths and roles in our lives. But to begin with maybe even this unconscious list I have of what I'm looking for in a good friend is too much to ask of any one person and certainly to use as a vetting guide for the people that I allow anywhere in my water features.

Anna Goldfarb [00:26:54] My hope with this book is to give people language that the word friend is so ambiguous and I don't even know who considers me their friends. It's just kind of wild. I don't even know who considers me their best friend. And I'm surprised. A friend is, like, you're my best friends. I'm like, really? Me? I'm like, interesting. And we just have a failure of language and we don't have formal ceremonies with our friendships in the way we do with our romantic relationships. So all of it really scrambles our perception of managing healthy friendships. It's like what is this supposed to look like? I don't know. Do you know? They don't know either. Nobody knows what's supposed to look like. But what we can do is reassure our friends. What I learned is that uncertainty creates anxiety. And I really talk about minimizing uncertainty. We have so much in our life that sets us up for anxiety. We don't know what it means when a friend doesn't reply to a text message.

[00:27:57] We don't know what it means when they bail on plans and they give us an excuse and you're like, well, okay, is that a really-- are you being straight with me? I don't know. It's a lot of ambiguity, but we can help by minimizing uncertainty. And that looks like me saying, Beth, Sarah, you are in my Jacuzzi tier. Here's what that means. It means I will reply to your messages as soon as I can. It means we can celebrate our birthdays together. It means I want to spend the holidays with you and we have our own little ceremony. It means I want to celebrate friendiversaries with you. Let's pick a day where it's just we do our own thing. And when your friend gets certainty, then they know that you give them permission to invest in the friendship if they know you're going to be around a long time. I don't want any of my friends to ever second guess what I mean to them. And I started off the book with a really personal moving story about my father's friendship.

Sarah [00:28:56] Left me in tears.

Beth [00:28:58] It was beautiful.

Anna Goldfarb [00:28:59] And why I wanted to write this book. And I've been reporting on friendships for The New York Times for a few years. And with Covid happening and lockdowns, so much of the advice was reach out to people right now. This is the time. Reach out to that friend. And I got a little skeptical of that advice. I'm like, well, why did you lose touch in the first place? How come when you reach out to that friend you have a great conversation, but it doesn't translate into talking again? Actually, probably you're not going to talk for a longer time because you already got the update. I heard all about your family and your kids and it sounds like you're cool. Talk to you in six years. It didn't translate into anything helping loneliness. This was in June 2020 and I saw my parents. They live in South Jersey. And my dad told me that this article opened up an old wound in his soul and he's been thinking about reaching out to one of his dearest friends from childhood named Marty. And he didn't know why him and Marty stopped talking. It's been almost 10 years.

[00:30:03] And he really wanted to reach out, but he was so afraid of what if he's ignored? What if he's rejected or if his friend is angry with them for not reaching out sooner? I'm a journalist. So I want to show off. I want to be like dad I'll solve this for you. I can do this. Let me be your hero. I'm like, here's his info, here's his Facebook, here's his wife's Facebook. I think this is his phone number. Here, reach out. And my dad never did. I kept asking for updates. I'd pester him like, what's up? Did you send it? Did you send it yet? He's like, no, I haven't sent anything. And six months later, in June 2021, he got sick with a bacterial infection and he had to go to the hospital. And while he was at the hospital, he was exposed to Covid and came down with Covid and he was already exhausted from fighting the bacterial infection. And he had no gas in the tank to fight Covid. And this is before a few months before the vaccine. My dad got so sick so quickly. And in the third week of January, he passed away. We all were just shocked.

[00:31:14] I can't believe this is happening to our little family. My dad was a scientist. He's a surfer. He loved cats. He had so many friends from all different parts of his life. He volunteered referee for Special Olympics. He was just such a dynamic person and he had four people at his funeral. And I just felt like this was such a robbery. He deserved better. His own brother couldn't attend because it wasn't safe to fly. His grandkids couldn't attend. It wasn't safe for them to be there. And two days after his funeral, I kept thinking of Marty. Well, my mind kept going back to Marty, and I reached out to Marty's son on LinkedIn and said, "I need to speak with your father. It's important." And 45 minutes later, I was on the phone with Marty, and he was so happy to hear from me. He was like, Anna, oh, my gosh. He was just so happy to hear from me. And I asked if he was sitting down, if he was somewhere quiet. And he was like, yeah, what's up? And I explained that my father died two days ago. And he gasped. He was shocked. And I explained what happened and how just that summer we talked about having my dad reach out to him and how my dad missed him and wanted to connect.

[00:32:35] And Marty cut me off and he said, "I bear responsibility here too. I could have reached out to him as easily as he could have reached out to me." And Marty shared stories about growing up with my dad, how they went to football games in Queens together, how they annoyed my grandma by tracking mud on their sneakers through her house. And we had a really lovely conversation. I invited him to my dad's online Shiva later that night. To see his name there in the sea of faces was healing. It was so healing for me. And I know that meant so much to my dad. That would have meant so much to him. And so that's how I start the book of this is the power of friendship. These friendships are our legacy. And I wanted to understand friendships on this molecular level so that no one has to experience this or feel like there's words unsaid or there's someone that they love that they didn't know how to approach or didn't know how to express their love and commitment to.

[00:33:44] So this is my mission. I wrote this book in memory of my dad. I know that he was such a fabulous friend, and I want people to be inspired by his story. And I talked with Marty. I didn't tell him I was writing about this in the book. And I'm like I should probably tell him. It's coming out soon. So I reached out to him and I'm like, well, funny story. You're in the book. And he's like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, you'll see. And I sent it to him and he called me after he read it and he said that he has just tremendous guilt that he wasn't a better friend to my dad. And I said, Marty, you are such a wonderful friend that my dad never forgot you. And I just said your story is going to inspire so many people to want to figure this friendship thing out. And your story with my dad will live on. So it's just really personal. This is really meaningful. This is my mission of here's what's going on, everyone. I know we see these gloom and doom headlines of there's a loneliness epidemic. Friendships are endangered. And they are, but we're not victims. We can feel empowerment. We can understand the new landscape and work with it. We can surf it. We can be shatterproof. And that's my goal, to honor my father in this way.

Beth [00:35:04] Thank you for telling that story. When I read your introduction, I was also really affected by it, and I thought that had to be so hard to write, but so important and cathartic to write. And I'm sure that saying it out loud also takes a lot from you. But this is a great example of the book. It's so generous. You've written about wholehearted friendship. You wrote about it in a wholehearted way. There are lots of moments of vulnerability that really help us do something with what we've just read. So you have all these scripts in the book. Let me end here by trying to practice what you describe in the book. I hope that we can all stay in touch because I think you are such an interesting thinker and gifted storyteller. And I would love to connect with you again very soon. And I will put that more specifically in a follow up email.

Anna Goldfarb [00:35:49] Yes. I could be the friendship correspondent for Pantsuit Politics.

Sarah [00:35:54] I love it. Perfect.

Anna Goldfarb [00:35:55] If you ever want to talk about friendship in any context, I'm your girl. I'm your girl for a day.

Beth [00:36:02] Perfect. Thank you so much for joining us.

Anna Goldfarb [00:36:04] Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[00:36:06] Music Interlude.

Sarah [00:36:15] We'll be back in your ears on Tuesday afternoon with a brand new episode covering the news of the weekend in the past two weeks here at Pantsuit Politics. And until then, keep it nuanced y’all.

[00:36:24] Music Interlude.

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

Beth: Alise Napp is our Managing Director. Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima.

Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers: Ali Edwards, Nick and Alysa Vilelli, Amy & Derek Starr Redwine, Amy Whited, Anya Binsacca, Ashley Rene, Ashley Terry, Barry Kaufman, Becca Dorval, Beth Loy, Brandon & Jessica Krausse, Catherine Kniss, Chelsea Gaarder, Christi Matthews, Christian Campbell, Christie Johnson, Christina Quartararo, Connie Peruchietti, Crystal Kemp, The Adair Family, Ellen Burnes, Emily Holladay, Emily Helen Olson, Gabrielle McDonald and Wren, Genny Francis, The Charney Family, Heather Ericacae, Jacque Earp, Jan Feltz, Janice Elliott, Jeff Davis, Jen Ross, Jeremy Sequoia, Jessica Whitehead, Jessica Boro, Jill Bisignano, Julie Haller, Julie Hough, Karin True, Katherine Vollmer, Katie Johnson, Katy Stigers, Kimberley Ludwig, Kristen Redford Hydinger, Kristina Wener, Krysten Wendell, Laura Martin, Laurie LaDow, Lee Chaix McDonough, Leighanna Pillgram-Larsen, Lily McClure, Linda Daniel, Linsey Sauer, Bookshelf on Church, Martha Bronitsky, Megan Hart, Michelle Palacios, Michelle Wood, Morgan McHugh, Onica Ulveling, Paula Bremer, The Villanueva Family, Sabrina Drago, Samantha Chalmers, Sasha Egolf, Sarah Greenup, Sarah Ralph, Shannon Frawley, Stephanie Elms, Susanne Dickinson, The Lebo Family, The Munene Family, Tiffany Hassler, Tracey Puthoff, Veronica Samoulides, Vicki Jackman.