Friendship Podcasts (Part One)

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts. In a way, I feel like it’s a modern twist on the age-old oral tradition of women and men sharing words of wisdom. Of course, deep in-person discussions with the people we know are important, but realistically those aren’t always feasible in our present situations. Besides, in this new digital world, podcasts give us access to the opinions, thoughts, and wisdom of a much wider range of people from around the globe, who may have different perspectives. I like that podcasts allow me to listen whilst doing something else as well, such as chores around the house that would otherwise be boring. In particular, I’ve been listening to podcasts discussing friendships and community relationships. I want to record some key quotations and words of wisdom here so I’m able to look back at them. I hope you might take something from what I share as well. I’ve included the episode title and podcast name for each quotation below.

190. Belonging with Yassmin Abdel-Magied and special guest Mariam Khan – The Guilty Feminist

‘Anyone who’s been from a small village or any sort of community where everyone knows everybody’s business, all you want is your own agency, all you want is for nobody to know your business. But then if you’re part of a society, like we are here in the UK, where everyone is individualised and atomised, all you want to do is be part of a club or a community.’

Yassmin Abdel-Magied

This Cultural Moment Live in Melbourne, Australia Pt.2 – This Cultural Moment

‘So three places we can be: the traditional [local communities], hyper-mobile [long-distance travel], and the digital [through technology]. We live in all three. You go between all three. And you look at that, that’s the challenge before us… So there’s this sense that we don’t know how to live in those three spaces. But what I realised is I think what God is doing – and we’ve just seen it through the grace of the Holy Spirit – a sense of one other space [spiritual, through the ‘communion of saints’]. And it’s the other space that God uses to germinate seeds, to spread those seeds.’

Mark Sayers

How to Navigate Friendships as an Adult with Demi Busch – Coffee & Kettlebells

‘I think that ultimately a tribe is a group of women or men surrounding you that just uplift you, encourage you, and then challenge you to be your best self because if we’re not being our best self then we can’t really pour into the world around. I think that it’s having people in your corner that are going to know the real you and help you and invest in you.’

Demi Busch

Don’t Have Any Friends? – The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast

‘There’s a third kind of friendship that Aristotle talked about. He called it virtuous friendship. It’s when the friendship is centred around the good. Now obviously it’s going to be pleasant and obviously sometimes it’s going to be useful, but that friendship is based around the pursuit of something that is not flimsy and that’s something that is not fleeting. It’s pursuit around pursuing “the good”. That’s when you find someone that’s racing… and you say “oh my gosh, that person’s going for what I’m going for,” and you get the sense that there’s a connection there in that pursuit… and you begin racing alongside of each other, helping each other along.’

Father Mike Schmitz

048: Adult friendships – Straight and Curly

‘I think that things like sport and theatre, you can’t actually hide the true you in either of those circumstances. So I think there’s a reason why those types of friendships last a long time, because your friends who you did triathlon with are the people who, you know, pulled you out of the mud when you fell over and didn’t get your best time, had a really bad day and, you know. My theatre friends are the ones that, you know, who were there for me and drank a lot of whisky when I forgot a line on stage, and I think it’s a testament to those types of friendships because people have seen us at our very, very, very worst, sucking at something we love – and that’s why those friendships are so solid and have lasted so long.’

Carly Jacobs