Why friendships stumble with Nina Badzin
90% of friendship problems are due to this one thing, the podcast host says
This Q&A is part of my mission to share and promote the exciting voices in the friendship space. I hope you enjoy our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity.
During the pandemic in summer 2021, writer Nina Badzin decided to adapt her long running advice column, Dear Nina, into a podcast format. Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship [Spotify] [iTunes] was born.
With nearly 100 episodes under her belt, Nina has explored all facets of friendship with notable community leaders, authors, journalists and more. I was a guest on her show in 2022 and we’ve been friends ever since. She’s hilarious, smart and equally fascinated with friendships too. She also taught me how to leave voice memos on my phone which delights me to no end as I get to have my favorite podcaster basically leave me my own Cameo message.
Enjoy our conversation below, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Why start a podcast focused on friendship?
Nina: I very purposely called the podcast “Conversations About Friendship” because I say all the time on the podcast that I am not an expert; I am somebody who is obsessed with the topic of friendship. I definitely know a lot of the research and I can talk about it intelligently. But I love to be in conversation about friendship. It's my favorite topic.
Even before I was writing about friendship, I was talking to people about friendship. And a lot of people like to talk about friendship! “Dear Nina” has moved away from giving straight up advice and has moved much more into pure conversation with a guest who is doing something interesting, maybe unrelated to friendship, but we will relate it to friendship, because anything could be related to friendships.
Do you think friendship as a topic is having a moment? Or does it just seem that way because we’re in that ~world~?
Nina: I just got a DM from someone on Instagram today saying, ‘I never see anybody talking about friendship.’ I've been writing about friendship for 10 years, but sometimes people aren't looking for that [content] until they have a personal issue. And then they fall into my podcasts or your articles or your upcoming book, other people's books, other people's podcasts, and they go, “Oh, wow, there's this whole world of friendship!”
For real! There’s a whole friendship content ecosystem bubbling underneath the surface. We also just had the world collectively reexamining their friendships in the pandemic, which has only made our work more relevant, I’d say. What have you learned speaking with so many different guests about friendships?
Nina: That 90% of friendship problems are due to someone making assumptions. I could read almost any advice letter I get and the person's making an assumption about the other person. Even if it's something about making friends, there's an assumption that people don't like you, or that you're too much, or just a lot of assumptions that get in our way. I do it too! It's human nature.
When I think someone's upset with me or maybe I'm upset with somebody, it's all based on things that we think we know. And we don't know because we all think about ourselves or our own insecurities so much. But the next person is usually not thinking about us as much.
I think that's a core problem in our friendships. We don’t have enough data about what our friends are thinking so we fill in the blanks with our own (likely wrong) story.
Nina: I just did a TikTok on this. And it comes up so much, there are tons of people on TikTok, or just regular people, complaining about their friends not liking their posts and stuff. So I got on there with my point of view, which was your friends are not your fans, followers, or customers. Just let your friends be your friends!
Which episodes of your podcast are you most proud of and why?
Nina: I'm very proud of the episodes where I have pitched a person I admire and just went for it. A couple examples are the Gretchen Rubin episode on using our senses in friendship and Dr. Lisa Damour on teen friend groups. Those are two examples of where I've admired their work for a long time.
Another episode I'm really proud of as well is with Will Schwalbe, who wrote a memoir called We Should Not Be Friends. It made me proud that he came to me and sent me that beautiful hardcover book and we had a wonderful conversation.
Do you have any upcoming guests that you're looking forward to?
Nina: Rhaina Cohen , author of The Other Significant Others! I just interviewed her and I will have that episode coming out closer to when her book comes out [which is in Feb. 13th - ed]. Her book and our conversation are both very different than any other conversation I've had about friendship. And that's saying a lot. She really did come up with a very original take.
Sometimes I wonder if people think, ‘How could there be this much to say about friendship 10 years in?’ And it's because the topic of friendship is ageless. Friends round out our lives, and God willing, we live a long time. My whole purpose is trying to make people's friendships easier. I know yours is too. We overlap there. And there's no shortage of problems. People get in their own way a lot. So I like friendships to just be easier because it's so important.
Where can people find you?
Nina: So there's three spots people can go:
Conversations About Friendship on Substack
Instagram: Dear.nina.b
TikTok: @DearNinaPodcast
My website has everything else.
I’m thrilled we got to geek out over our shared devotion to better friendships!