Tomorrow is the UN’s International Day of Friendship.
This got me thinking about all the shows I watched featuring groups of them.
(To my actual friends, I promise I thought about you immediately after.)

Friends. Seinfeld. Sex and the City. How I Met Your Mother (the rubbish one).

Impossibly witty, well-dressed people with jobs that somehow allowed them to appear whenever the plot required a zinger.

Sitcom friendships sold us a fantasy.
Real adult friendship looks...different.

Work. Distance. Children. Exhaustion. Messages you fully intended to answer but apparently only answered inside your head (I can’t be the only one).

And men are now regularly described as facing a ‘loneliness epidemic’.

"We should grab a beer sometime”... the complete friendship maintenance programme™.

Close friendships keep you alive longer.
So what actually makes one solid?

Psychiatrist and neuroscientist Dr Amir Levine boils it down to five letters:

CARRP

No need to memorise it (although “badly-spelled fish” helps).
Just run a friendship through it, and somewhere in there’s a letter that's probably failing.

Found the weak spot?

Repair it.

Answer the message. Suggest an actual date. Follow up. Keep the promise. Say, “I miss seeing you.”

Friendship rarely depends on taking a bullet.

But not having them can be just as deadly.

“Friends are people who know you really well and like you anyway.”
(Greg Tamblyn, American songwriter and humourist)

👇 Answer at the end

My mum used to talk to herself constantly. Whenever I teased her, she’d say:

“At least I’m guaranteed a good conversation.”
(Always shut me up).

Biohacker Bryan Johnson has taken that logic further than anyone should by making...another Bryan Johnson.
His version won’t involve much chat, though.
He wants it for spare parts.

“I just cloned myself…as a newborn,” he announced on X.

Not quite.

No crib, crying, or constant Cocomelon on YouTube.

“Baby Bryan” isn’t a baby at all. It’s cells taken from his blood, reprogrammed in a dish to behave like stem cells.
Still, impressive science. He hopes it will supply him with organs, young cells and become his own "blood boy" as he fights an incurable autoimmune disease.

Maybe he’s accidentally solved male loneliness.
Grow your own conversation partner.

Yourself.

💡 PRO TIP: Science getting too technical? Ask about the implications instead.

💬 FOLLOW-UP: “What would you talk to your clone about?”

⛔ DON’T SAY: “Talk? Body parts only, thanks.”
(Kills the conversation. Possibly your clone.)

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I hate popcorn.

Smelly, noisy and somehow both cardboard and polystyrene at once.
In a dark room.
Next to a stranger’s elbow.

Turns out I’m the problem, because cinemas are now making buckets of money from the buckets.

Dune: Part Two gave us an unhinged sandworm.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 produced a red handbag, online resale $200.
The Odyssey has two: an IMAX camera and a Trojan horse with popcorn hidden inside its belly.
Beware Greeks bearing gifts, eh?
Especially when the gift contains popcorn and costs $40.

Cinema snacks have become collectable merchandise with food temporarily stored in them.
And people are lining up.

Does popcorn taste better from a plastic horse? Probably not.
But it proves you were part of the moment.

The souvenir shop has moved into your lap.

And covered it in butter.

💡 PRO TIP: Collectables carry stories. Ask what got them into it, then get comfortable.

💬 FOLLOW-UP: “Which film deserves its own popcorn bucket?”

⛔ DON’T SAY: “People will buy anything.”
(Yes. We all do, eventually.)

From Trojan-horse popcorn buckets to the man behind the film selling them.

The Odyssey is everywhere.

Unless you live in Japan, where it arrives on September 11. 😤

So while everyone else argues over IMAX screens and whether watching it on your phone counts as heresy, here’s some ammunition:

Big cameras. Bigger ideas.

Tiny phone.

💬 FOLLOW-UP: What’s his best film? (Inception all the way for me).

Before it meant a wildly successful film, a blockbuster was a huge WWII bomb designed to destroy an entire city block.

Hollywood borrowed it for films that made an equally massive impact.

Thankfully less rubble. More popcorn buckets.

Scientists built a drone that spins so fast it nearly disappears.
Impressive to the eyes. Less so to the ears.

Imagine the world’s angriest mosquito trapped inside a strangled bagpipe.

Now imagine adding razor blades.

Congratulations. You’ve created a horror film Nolan might admire.
Minus the IMAX cameras.

Though give it time.

💬 FOLLOW-UP: What would be worse: a silent drone or a deafening invisible one?

For when your brain needs a biscuit.

Four boys on a long walk looking for a dead body. Bullies, leeches and far more emotional damage than anyone packed for.

💬 YOUR TURN: What’s your favourite film about friendship?

🍞 Fresh bread – 33%
🌱 Cut grass - 8%
☕ Fresh coffee - 10%
🌊 Ocean breeze - 16%
🌧️ Rain on dry ground - 0%
🫘 Vanilla - 0%
❓ Something stranger – 33%

💬 Your Turn

S: “A struck match - has to be the non-safety ones with extra potassium.”
C: “Swimming pools, the more chlorinated the better.”
P: “If garlic is being cooked, I stop and sniff deep.”
B: “Onions frying.”
D: "Ocean breeze smells like holiday.”

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