All posts tagged: Friendship

My friends are spouting conspiracy theories – what should I say?

My friends are spouting conspiracy theories – what should I say?

Published by Sam Flores

Recently, I had a conversation with a friend who explained that her ill health was down to reasons I would describe as dubious. Taking certain supplements and changing her diet have significantly improved her health. Good for her. However, she was disappointed and a little annoyed that I didn’t share her outrage and wasn’t going to follow her views. I’ve got another friend who thinks cholesterol is a lie and that we should live largely on meat (and supplements). Another went through a sugar causes cancer phase. And another is sceptical of vaccines. Each of them may be right. They might not. We are learning more about the human body every day. But I was raised by scientists and I want to see a large-scale trial before I get outraged and change the way I live. Equally, I’m not convinced that a lightly regulated for-profit industry (supplements) is automatically more trustworthy than a highly regulated for-profit one (pharma). I want to be respectful of their choices and the research they have done into their specific conditions, but …

Leslie Mann, Isla Fisher in Friendship Comedy

Leslie Mann, Isla Fisher in Friendship Comedy

Published by Daniella Wilson

Have you ever had the experience of booking a trip that promised to be a blissful getaway, only to find once there that you’re having…not the worst time, but definitely a disappointing one? That the food that looked so pretty online tastes bland in person, that the overstuffed pillows give you neck pains, that — come to think of it — there’s not really that much to do at this resort beyond linger beside a lukewarm pool? If so, the aura of letdown surrounding Spa Weekend, the latest outing from writer-directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, ought to feel familiar. On paper, it’s a variation on the “R-rated hijinks plus heartfelt emotion plus beloved cast” equation that’s worked so well for Bridesmaids and Girls Trip and Lucas and Moore’s own commercially successful though creatively uninspired Bad Moms. In execution, the hijinks feel awfully tame, the emotion shallow, the stars underserved. Spa Weekend The Bottom Line A likable cast let down by uninteresting hijinks. Release date: Friday, Aug. 21Cast: Leslie Mann, Isla Fisher, Michelle Buteau, Anna …

Zoe Tay revisits memorable places from her nearly 40-year friendship with Aileen Tan

Zoe Tay revisits memorable places from her nearly 40-year friendship with Aileen Tan

Published by Sam Flores

But they weren’t immediately inseparable. “When we were younger, we were both very busy and didn’t really spend much time together,” Tan said. “It was only in the past 10 years or so that we gradually became closer.” One thing that helped? Mahjong. Tay said Tan’s home became a private space where their group of friends could relax away from their very public careers. “You can really see a person’s character through playing mahjong,” Tay said, adding that Tan was gracious and easy-going, regardless of whether she won or lost. Tan jokingly protested that her friend was revealing too much. “Don’t spill so many secrets!” she said. “Talking about mahjong might seem like we’re encouraging people to gamble.” The friendship extended to their families as well. Tay described Tan as thoughtful and respectful towards elders, recalling how she would visit Tay’s mother and bring her food. Tan is also close to Tay’s children and has travelled overseas with the family. “Through these small gestures, I felt her sincerity,” Tay said. BACK TO WHERE IT ALL …

Writing and living through friendship break-ups

Writing and living through friendship break-ups

Published by Jenni Sidey

Téa Mutonji is the author of My Person, out today from Putnam. Below, she discusses unexpectedly living through a friendship break-up after writing a novel about a friendship break-up. About two weeks after submitting the copyedits for my friendship break-up novel, I found myself suddenly experiencing one in real life. I was walking around my apartment cooling off from an argument with {best friend of thirteen years} when I sent a text I didn’t even realize was a break-up: I would like to move on from this version of our friendship. She called immediately, but considering our inability to effectively communicate, I thought texting from my apartment, from her townhouse with exactly 79.7 kilometers between us, would give us permission to reflect and self-regulate. Of course, I didn’t say that to her. Not in an “I want you to read my mind,” sort of way, but because we’d been down this road before. I stared at the missed call notification on my screen, feeling hot. I’d written a novel about something like this and, in …

Monkeys keep pets too – animal specialist on the world of interspecies friendship

Monkeys keep pets too – animal specialist on the world of interspecies friendship

Published by Miika Tikkanen

The first time I saw it, I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at. A northern white-cheeked gibbon at Shanghai Zoo was holding and caressing a mouse that had wandered into its enclosure. It wasn’t trying to eat it or chase it away. Instead, the gibbon treated the tiny rodent with remarkable gentleness. I couldn’t stop wondering why. Years later, while studying wild black-and-white snub-nosed monkeys in the mountains of south-west China, I watched playful juveniles repeatedly trying to climb onto the backs of domestic pigs. Again, these weren’t the kinds of interactions I expected to see between different species. A new study my colleagues and I conducted brings together 427 documented cases of primates interacting with other species, spanning several decades from the 1970s to 2025. Our findings reveal that these encounters are far more widespread than scientists had realised. Over the years, I had begun collecting reports of similar encounters from scientific journals, photographs, videos and observations shared by other primatologists. What initially seemed like a handful of quirky anecdotes gradually turned …

The friendship of Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand

The friendship of Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand

Published by Sam Flores

Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand are pictured in the Oval Office on Sept. 4, 1974, after Greenspan’s swearing in as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images/Hulton Archive hide caption toggle caption David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images/Hulton Archive One of the most important intellectual relationships in the life of Alan Greenspan, the prominent former central banker who died Monday, was with author Ayn Rand, whose 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged has become a perennial favorite among conservatives and which the Library of Congress named as one of the books that has shaped America. The two first met when he was in his mid-twenties and she was in her forties, and already well-established via her 1943 novel The Fountainhead, which had been a best-seller. They were introduced through Greenspan’s then-wife, the Canadian art historian Joan Mitchell. Mitchell was a close friend of the wife of Nathaniel Branden. Branden was Rand’s protege and longtime lover. Greenspan and Mitchell wed in 1952, but divorced within a year. By contrast, Greenspan’s relationship with Rand was far more …

Rik Mayall: Bottom co-star Ade Edmondson on the detail that ruined their friendship

Rik Mayall: Bottom co-star Ade Edmondson on the detail that ruined their friendship

Published by Daniella Wilson

Adrian “Ade” Edmondson has reflected on the events that affected his close friendship with Young Ones and Bottom co-star Rik Mayall, including the latter’s private alcoholism and a near-fatal quad bike accident. Mayall died aged 56 on 9 June 2014 after suffering a sudden heart attack. Edmondson, 69, has opened up about their friendship and working relationship in a new one-off special celebrating the late comedy star. In Rik Mayall: Magnificent B’stard, which airs on 25 June, Edmondson branded the chaotic 1990s sitcom Bottom, which followed two crude flatmates in London, “the best programme we ever made together”, and looked back on their successful run touring as their characters from the show. Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson in ‘Bottom’ (BBC) “The show was good, the second one,” Edmondson said. “By the third run, he was sort of secretly drinking. My little office was overlooking a pub, and then I’d start to see him going in for a quick couple of shorts before he came in to write. Strange, as we used to enjoy alcohol so …

YA Thrillers About Friendship

YA Thrillers About Friendship

Published by Jenni Sidey

Underlined Last year, Nan’s three best friends ventured into the canyons near their small town and never returned. Now, one of them is back, and Nan can’t believe it…because she’s the one who killed them. From the New York Times bestselling author of Wilder Girls comes another dark thriller about friendship, jealousy, desire, and revenge, with a twist ending that needs to be talked about. Teen friendships are intense, and they get even more high-stakes when you throw a murder into the mix. In these young adult thrillers, groups of old and new friends find themselves at the center of death investigations that are complicated by best friends, ex-friends, and enemies that might become friends, and all of them have secrets. In these books, you’ll find two high schoolers who, with the works of Agatha Christie as a guide, band together to find a classmate’s killer. You’ll also read about a friend group being tormented by an online gossip app, a body that turns up at a deserted resort, and a thriller that puts a …

The Psychiatrist’s Case for Downsizing a Friendship

The Psychiatrist’s Case for Downsizing a Friendship

Published by Daniella Wilson

A successful stock-market trader once went to therapy with a very specific request. He had been dating a woman he was really excited about—but now she wasn’t responding to his texts, and he was despondent. He was frustrated with her, but also with himself: with his own sensitivity to rejection, with his sensitivity to everything, with the blaring siren in his brain activated by the tiniest hint of danger. He knew some people would call such delicacy an “anxious attachment style.” So now he was asking to be fixed. The therapist was Amir Levine: a psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and co-author of the 2010 book Attached, which has sold more than 3 million copies. If anyone could excise your anxious attachment and sew you back up, it might be him. Levine had another idea, he told me on a recent call. He pointed out that the trader had made his fortune predicting trends in the market. His anxious style, Levine suggested, might be part of what gave him that edge: He was hyperaware of subtle indicators that …