Nadira Goffe: Jenny! I'm so excited to gab about this episode for a bit, because woof-or should I say hoof?-what an episode it was. I would call it egg-cellent, because most of it is about Egg, the adorable, mysteriously bald stable boy who becomes Dunk's squire. It's 30 minutes of the unlikely friends just hangin' out, really living up to the title of the George R.R. Martin novellas that the show is based on, Tales of Dunk and Egg. Dunk teaches Egg how to mend a patch in clothing, they cheer over the day's jousts, and there's a scene in which the two role-play a conversation about eating salt beef that is so stinkin' cute I had a lopsided smile on my face the whole time. At one point, the gentle giant cooks his tiny squire a meal with goose eggs that have yolks so large I instantly sensed that there was some sort of subtext going on as they sizzled in the pan.
'You know, my friend Nathan's coming over and he's bringing our friend Pam,'', Ferguson recalled telling his sons. 'You know Nathan, of course. You've listened to him, you know his voice from [Timon in] The Lion King.' So I played 'Hakuna Matata' and on my way to school they were singing 'Hakuna Matata' and I was like, 'This is Nathan who is coming to dinner!'
All the swiping, chatting, and meeting up on Thursday nights - even when you're super tired or not in the mood to go out. Now imagine putting that same effort into seeing your friends. On TikTok, people are talking about the importance of friendship and how easy it is to deprioritize your besties. While you might love your friends, it's not uncommon to go weeks, and sometimes even months, without seeing them.
I wish this was a one-off blip in my regimented friendship schedule, but all through 2025 I played the world's slowest game of message tennis. I'd invite a pal for dinner, only for the world to turn, the seasons pass, grey hairs gather at my temples, before a date was finally locked in. This sentiment seems to be common among my circle.
From the 1950s until his death in 1987, Hujar documented the creative lodestars of downtown New York, many of whom were his friends, lovers, or sometimes both. He photographed the likes of Susan Sontag and John Waters stretched in repose, or the Warholian legend Candy Darling, encircled by flowers and solemn chiaroscuro on her deathbed. He often photographed himself, too, but the rarest shots of Hujar are those taken by others, candid glimpses that divulge some secret relation.
Matt and I started from the same place. Same middle-class neighborhood, same public schools, same dreams of making it big someday. We'd spend hours in his garage talking about the companies we'd build, the problems we'd solve, the money we'd make. The difference? He actually did it. Last month, I scrolled through Instagram and saw him closing on his third investment property. Three months before that, it was the Tesla. Six months before that, the startup exit that set him up for life.
In any given relationship or group, there is always one person who makes things happen. Everyone says "hey, we should get together!" but this person finds a date and makes the restaurant reservation. After a family meet-up in a park, everyone says "we should do this again!" but this person suggests meeting next Saturday at the children's museum at 10 a.m. since the forecast calls for rain.
Alan was my best friend, my brother and my everything. I don't stop thinking about him. For me, there's no replacement; I just have a void. If I could speak to him I'd say: Come back, because I can't really bear being without you. We saw each other or spoke every day since 1980. I was a third party in the marriage, but Rima was never jealous.
Translator who broke the rules to become decades-long friend of Guido Nasi tells of their relationship and the lives destroyed by one brutal act
Dear Eric: I recently pet-sat for somewhat new friends. I had been invited on a weekend trip with them but had a work commitment that meant I couldn't go. I offered to pet-sit for them, which is something I've done for other friends from time to time. During the weekend there was an incident which wasn't really anyone's fault that resulted in some minor property damage. I let them know via text what happened and explained the situation and offered to cover any damages.
Ein Freund, ein guter Freund, ist das Beste was es gibt auf der Welt [A friend, a good friend, is the best thing you can have in this world].―The Comedian Harmonists I dedicate this essay to my friend Gerhard Almstedt, who was taken from us in 2023. Friendship is an underappreciated topic in psychological research, although having good friends is one of the cornerstones of a successful and rewarding social life. It is a source of happiness (Pezirkianidis et al., 2023).
Two best friends in Alabama became pregnant with twins and triplets at the same time. Their shared experience of parenting multiples created a strong support system for both families. Living close together, they help each other manage the challenges of raising five young children. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation Madison Knight. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Dozens of women who considered me their gay best friend sounded great until it was time to exchange presents with all of them during the holidays. I was too cheap to buy all my friends expensive Christmas gifts but too classy to give them something, well, cheap. I had also grown tired of spending $50 on something pointless in bulk, usually a criminally overpriced novelty item.
Nestled within that outrageousness was swift promotion of her beautiful new short film, A Friend of Dorothy. In it, she plays Dorothy, an elderly widow with limited mobility who meets young, closeted queer man JJ (played with startling fragility by newcomer Alistair Nwachukwu) after he accidentally kicks his football into her garden. A friendship blossoms, as they provide a sense of belonging and stability to one another at a time when, despite their different life stages, both are feeling cast adrift.
A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles, as travel writer Tim Cahill said. As a Pacific Northwest writer who frequently travels to Canada, I couldn't agree more. Living barely an hour south of the Canadian border, I've had the pleasure of hopping the 49th parallel countless times. The real magic of crossing that line is not just the immediate sense of spaciousness, but the feeling of a familiar, open-hearted welcome.
Dictators like to move people around. Stalin, for instance. From the summer of 1941 through the fall of 1942, with the Russian front facing massive bombardment and Nazi troops on the ground, he decided to relocate civilians, and entire industries, to safer regions in the eastern Soviet Union. The Urals, Siberia, the middle Volga, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan eventually received sixteen million evacuees, perhaps the most ever moved across land by a single directive.
The friendship breakup has become a feature of modern life: Online, advice abounds on "how to aggressively confront, or even abandon, friends who disappoint us," Olga noted. But what if another solution exists? Instead of firing your friends, psychologists told her, it helps to expand your circle, allowing more people to provide you with different types of support or camaraderie: "Rather than resting on one pillar, healthy friendship is better imagined as crowd-surfing-many hands holding you up," Olga writes.
I was 28 and fed up with the dating scene. Swiping had become a ritual of ghosting, small talk, and scheduling conflicts. I work in business development for a US law firm in Hong Kong and was chasing a promotion, so it was easy to tell myself romance could wait. Then, one night, a casual scroll on Instagram inspired me to try something different.
