Episode 28 - Max Gendelman & Making Friends
Making friends in college was easy. Lend someone your lecture notes, and you have an ally for life. So why is it so hard to make friends as adults? And how do we keep them?
More and more we have to rely on Facebook, Discord, Twitch, and Zoom to get our fix of friendship. On today’s episode, we want to ask the question; are Facebook friends real friends? Can you even count them? When you meet a friend at a bar and they finish their drink, lean in close, and nudge you to look at the attractive bartender...is that the same as getting a Facebook ‘poke’? We’ll try to answer these, as well as discuss how to feed and water your friendships throughout your adulthood years, and we’ll analyze exactly which types of friendships are important to your health; both mental and physical.
We’ll also discuss the most gutsy, and strange, friendship ever formed. The friendship between a Jewish American sniper captured in WWII, and the Nazi Luftwaffe Officer who was guarding the camp. Stranger still; these two didn’t kindle their friendship long after the war, like a buzzfeed article. Max Gendelman and Karl Kirschner met, and tried to escape the Nazi camp, together, during the war.
History Links:
https://bethjacobrwc.org/max-and-karl/
https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/times-past/article39461337.html
https://www.history.com/news/7-historical-odd-couples
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badge
Science Links:
https://www.healthline.com/health/benefits-of-friendship
https://www.livescience.com/53315-how-friendships-are-good-for-your-health.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-making-friends-as-an-adult.html
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/friendship-20/201605/10-ways-make-and-keep-friendships-adult
https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/social-media-affect-math-dunbar-number-friendships