“Friends literally get into the circuitry of your brain and in your cardiovascular system and help calm down what gets going when you’re stressed,” she explained. When alone, it appears steeper than it does when with a friend. Denworth says turning to our friends now is an evolutionary response, especially for women who respond to crisis by “tending and befriending.” “Friendship,” she said, “is designed to help us through the stresses of life.”ĭenworth describes a study done of people looking up at the slope of a hill. “Now we know it’s essential,” she said, on par with other fundamental needs like diet, exercise, and sleep.įriendship certainly feels critical at this moment of climate crisis, buoying many of us through grief and depression. For years, friendship has been largely ignored by scientists, considered nice but not essential.

It’s more important than we think,” she said. There’s this whole other side to the story about biology and evolutionary drive. “We know friendship is important, but we think it’s emotional. It contains plenty of studies and data for wonks, but also accessible personal stories of Denworth’s own friendships and family. It’s a scientific deep dive five years in the making, looking at the topic in a new way. I already had friendship on the brain reading these words I had just been interviewing journalist Lydia Denworth about her latest book, Friendship, which comes out January 28 th. We will prioritize our own psychological and emotional resilience. At the end of 2023, for example: “We will realize we have lost so much, but there is still so much worth fighting for. The article explains how we get this done, year by year - a pretty compelling roadmap, actually. For climate types, the ultimate click bait. There was an article pinging around on climate Twitter recently-in between retweeted photos of devastated Australian koalas and kangaroos-a fictional account of ending the climate emergency in 2030, written by a meteorologist, Eric Holthaus.

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Friendship lydia denworth