The Friendship Files (2019- 2022)
Over the course of three years, I did 100 interviews with friends about their friendships.
I had conversations with congressmen, astronauts, activists, and contestants on The Great British Bake-Off, as well as a wide array of regular people who spoke with me about how their friendships were shaped by religion, American masculinity, being trapped at sea, fanfiction, surfing, a sweatshirt, a kidney donation, buying a house together, one friend losing his memory, surrogacy, a coup in Turkey, Dungeons & Dragons, and so much more.
When the series ended, I wrote an essay about what it taught me:
The Six Forces That Fuel Friendship
Family & Relationships
The Comic Strip That Explains the Evolution of American Parenting (2023)
Why Did We All Have the Same Childhood? (2022)
Naming a Kid for a Fictional Character Is High Stakes (2020)
It's 10 P.M. Do You Know Where Your Friends Are? (2019)
'For-Now Parents' and 'Big Feelings': How Sesame Street Talks About Trauma (2019)
What Does It Mean to Be 'Ready' for a Relationship? (2019)
Faced With an Ongoing Sexual Abuse Crisis, What Are Catholic Parents To Do? (2019)
Facebook: Where Friendships Go to Never Quite Die (2019)
The Terrible Stereotypes of Mother's and Father's Day Cards (2018)
The 'Unfortunate Family' of American Shooting Survivors (2017)
Love in the Time of Individualism (2017)
The Rise of Dating-App Fatigue (2016)
How Friendships Change in Adulthood (2015)
A (Straight, Male) History of Sex Dolls (2014)
Culture
What the Suburb Haters Don't Understand (2024)
How Hobbies Infiltrated American Life (2022)
The Adults Who Treat Reading Like Homework (2019)
The Concept Creep of 'Emotional Labor' (2018)
When Pop Culture Sells Dangerous Myths About Romance (2018)
The New Age of Astrology (2018)
The Voice's Empty Promise of the American Dream (2017)
All the Other Julie Becks and Me (2017)
Charles Manson, the Girls, and the Banality of Desire (2016)
Dashboard Confessional, or When It Was Cool to Have Feelings (2015)
The Grisly, All-American Appeal of Serial Killers (2014)
Health & Science
How Skin Care Became an At-Home Science Experiment (2018)
This Article Won’t Change Your Mind (2017)
Can This App Make Me Happier? (2016)
Coincidences and the Meaning of Life (2016)
The Linguistics of 'YouTube Voice' (2015)
Hard Feelings: Science’s Struggle to Define Emotions (2015)
The Private Lives of Public Bathrooms (2014)
The Town That's Building Life Around Sleep (2014)
How I Survived A Week Without Food (2013)
Just for Fun
Nothing Says Midwest Like a Well-Dressed Porch Goose (2018)
'It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers' Will Never Die (2017)
The Turkey in the Left Turn Lane (2017)
How Elementary School Kids (Plan To) Do Money (2013)
Taylor Swift's Analogies, In Order Of Incomprehensibility (2012)
Subject Lines of Obama Campaign Emails That Sound Like a Stalker Wrote Them (2012)
Over the course of three years, I did 100 interviews with friends about their friendships.
I had conversations with congressmen, astronauts, activists, and contestants on The Great British Bake-Off, as well as a wide array of regular people who spoke with me about how their friendships were shaped by religion, American masculinity, being trapped at sea, fanfiction, surfing, a sweatshirt, a kidney donation, buying a house together, one friend losing his memory, surrogacy, a coup in Turkey, Dungeons & Dragons, and so much more.
When the series ended, I wrote an essay about what it taught me:
The Six Forces That Fuel Friendship
Family & Relationships
The Comic Strip That Explains the Evolution of American Parenting (2023)
Why Did We All Have the Same Childhood? (2022)
Naming a Kid for a Fictional Character Is High Stakes (2020)
It's 10 P.M. Do You Know Where Your Friends Are? (2019)
'For-Now Parents' and 'Big Feelings': How Sesame Street Talks About Trauma (2019)
What Does It Mean to Be 'Ready' for a Relationship? (2019)
Faced With an Ongoing Sexual Abuse Crisis, What Are Catholic Parents To Do? (2019)
Facebook: Where Friendships Go to Never Quite Die (2019)
The Terrible Stereotypes of Mother's and Father's Day Cards (2018)
The 'Unfortunate Family' of American Shooting Survivors (2017)
Love in the Time of Individualism (2017)
The Rise of Dating-App Fatigue (2016)
How Friendships Change in Adulthood (2015)
A (Straight, Male) History of Sex Dolls (2014)
Culture
What the Suburb Haters Don't Understand (2024)
How Hobbies Infiltrated American Life (2022)
The Adults Who Treat Reading Like Homework (2019)
The Concept Creep of 'Emotional Labor' (2018)
When Pop Culture Sells Dangerous Myths About Romance (2018)
The New Age of Astrology (2018)
The Voice's Empty Promise of the American Dream (2017)
All the Other Julie Becks and Me (2017)
Charles Manson, the Girls, and the Banality of Desire (2016)
Dashboard Confessional, or When It Was Cool to Have Feelings (2015)
The Grisly, All-American Appeal of Serial Killers (2014)
Health & Science
How Skin Care Became an At-Home Science Experiment (2018)
This Article Won’t Change Your Mind (2017)
Can This App Make Me Happier? (2016)
Coincidences and the Meaning of Life (2016)
The Linguistics of 'YouTube Voice' (2015)
Hard Feelings: Science’s Struggle to Define Emotions (2015)
The Private Lives of Public Bathrooms (2014)
The Town That's Building Life Around Sleep (2014)
How I Survived A Week Without Food (2013)
Just for Fun
Nothing Says Midwest Like a Well-Dressed Porch Goose (2018)
'It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers' Will Never Die (2017)
The Turkey in the Left Turn Lane (2017)
How Elementary School Kids (Plan To) Do Money (2013)
Taylor Swift's Analogies, In Order Of Incomprehensibility (2012)
Subject Lines of Obama Campaign Emails That Sound Like a Stalker Wrote Them (2012)