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By luck or fate or some other reason, you’ve found yourself reading an email from Thinking Is Cool, *the* podcast to listen to if you want to have better conversations. If this email was forwarded to you, sign up for regular correspondence from me, Kinsey, right here:
Good morning! Y’all know I’m a water sign, right? Like I’m deeply emotional and passionate and easily moved? Clearly, you do given what you sent me over the weekend.
I wrote on Friday about my dog, Stella, and the responses were tremendous—so many of you generously shared about your own experiences with life and death and companionship. More than one of those stories moved me to tears on my Delta flight over the midwest. Thank you for always being down to hear what’s knocking around in between my ears. I can’t believe my luck that this is my life. Also, dogs should live forever. @ science what gives?
Okay, to today: Season 2 finale out now. Thought-provoking piece reflecting on a season’s worth of content out Friday. Let’s take it anywhere.
This Week on Thinking Is Cool
This is my final episode of Season 2 of Thinking Is Cool. Throughout the 17 episodes I’ve published so far, I’ve always endeavored to ask big questions. Sometimes, I have answers to those questions. Most of the time I do not. But the constant has always been a heavy dose of “what might the world look like if…”
If we abolished Greek life. If we could find common ground politically. If we recognized the power of and appropriately regulated Big Tech. If we ended homelessness. What might the world look like if we did what we needed to do to make it better?
A lot would change. We might have to rejigger our tax season expectations. We might have to get used to voting because it’s the right thing to do and not because Instagram made an I Voted sticker for stories. We might have to question our own assumptions more regularly.
But I think the biggest change of all might be the change that doing the right thing would shepherd into our relationships with one another. Good and bad, moral and immoral—they’re rarely black and white and they’re never obvious. But I really do think that all of us can agree that it’s always best to try to do the right thing for the most people.
Perhaps we’ve lost sight of that common aim—that drive to do good by our fellow man—in a world that moves too fast. I’ve been guilty of it, getting so wrapped up in the fight over what’s good and what’s not that I forget...most of us are all working toward the same goal. We might have differences in opinion on how we get there, but humanity isn’t lost yet. I’m at times discouraged, but I’ve never fully lost hope that by and large, we want what’s best for each other.
And by centering ourselves on that one commonality instead of our vast differences, we might be able to more than just talk about making the world a better place.
So that’s why today, I want to spend some time thinking about a topic that’s nebulous and unspecific and incredibly important: the very idea of friendships
What does it mean to be a friend? What does it mean to keep a friend? What does it mean to feel connected by that one aim to leave this place better than we found it?
Online friends. Friends whose relationship changed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Peripheral friends. The closest of friends. Friends who disagree. We need them all, but today it’s sometimes difficult to ensure each and every one of those groups gets priority.
But doing so is integral, and this episode will explain why.
Listen to the episode now: Apple // Spotify // everywhere else
And now for a word from our Season 2 presenting sponsor, Fundrise:
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Thank you for reading! Whether you’ve been here for 17 weeks or 17 minutes, I’m grateful for the opportunity to bring you some good old-fashioned content. I’ll be back in your inbox Friday with some fun. Have a great week—do something kind for yourself.
-Kinsey