Friendship
What anthropology, gothic horror, SNL, and public health have to say about it. And what it's role could be in 2026.
A gift is… the truest expression of love. It doesn’t matter whether it’s home-made or bought for a year’s salary. It’s thinking of someone else. It’s telling that person that they matter. And you matter so much. (Shaky exhale.) You never stole my eyes, John. (He sniffs.) I gifted them to you.
- Arthur Lester to his friend John, from Malevolent, Part 56 The Parting Glass (Guthrie 2020-present).
Most of the podcasts I listen to are non-fiction, but a few fiction podcasts are regulars among my favorites. One of these is Malevolent, a Lovecraftian styled gothic horror serial spanning multiple seasons. But the genre really just serves as the backdrop to a story of friendship and what it means to be human.
The above quote was spoken during an episode from the latest season, the last season - season 6. A few lines later John responds…
I owe you… so much, I… I owe you everything. You taught me… to care for people. For humanity. You taught me that it’s okay to be… frail, to love. To… to be afraid. You’ve taught me… to love poetry. (They both laugh.)
Over these six seasons the relationship between Arthur and John evolves - from antagonists, if not outright enemies, to (with monstrous hiccups, dark and despairing setbacks, and god-like leaps forward along the way) friends with a bond so strong it becomes impervious to death itself.
Friendship has been on my mind a lot lately. And so I did what I always do when my brain fixates on something - I dig into the details of what makes that something part of the human condition.
The Anthropology of Friendship
We are a social species, and friendship is one of humanity’s most powerful social adaptations. It’s not just a warm fuzzy feeling between two or more people; it’s not just a source of free labor when you need to move. It’s a dynamic and highly adaptive part of our social toolkit - one that’s evolved across cultures and ecologies to help us survive, grow, thrive, and make meaning in a world that’s often unpredictable, sometimes hostile, and always complex. And the story of Arthur and John, fictional as it is, demonstrates this in the most extreme circumstances.
Anthropologists recognize that friendship, while seemingly universal, is anything but uniform (Bell and Coleman 1999; Desai and Killick 2010). Daniel Hruschka’s (2010) cross-cultural work shows that friendship serves different functions depending on ecological constraints, kinship structures, and political organization. In some societies, it’s formalized through ritual (think blood brotherhoods or co-godparenting), while in others it’s indistinguishable from economic exchange. But underlying all of this variation is a mechanism for navigating uncertainty - a way to build trust, share resources, and create social resilience.
Functionalist thinkers like Malinowski and Durkheim can be interpreted as framing friendship as a stabilizing force - a glue that helps hold communities together (Allan 1989; Radcliffe-Brown 1952). Durkheim’s (1893/1997) theory of social solidarity emphasized how interpersonal bonds create cohesion through shared values and interdependence, while Malinowski’s (1922) ethnographic work demonstrated how reciprocal relationships in the Kula exchange system reinforced alliances and social hierarchies, creating obligations essential to community stability. Marcel Mauss’s (1925) classic work on gift exchange revealed how reciprocity isn’t just transactional; it’s symbolic, moral, and deeply human. It really isn’t just the thought that counts. Friendship, in this sense, is a form of social capital - a network of obligations and support that helps us weather life’s storms.
And sometimes those storms are pretty traumatic. As the first episode of Malevolent unfolds, Arthur - a private investigator - wakes up newly blind, with a fractured memory and, even more disturbingly, the voice of a disembodied entity sharing his body. While Arthur is now blind, the entity (who eventually takes the name John) is able to see through Arthur’s eyes. The beginning of their relationship is all about mutual survival. Arthur needs John to see for him; John needs Arthur to act, as he has very limited control over Arthur’s body. It’s a forced partnership, but over time, through shared trauma and mutual sacrifice, it evolves into something more - a friendship forged in fire (sometimes literally). Their arc mirrors what anthropologists observe in real-world contexts: trust built through repeated interactions, emotional vulnerability, and the slow shift from strategic cooperation to genuine care.
Symbolic anthropology adds another layer. Clifford Geertz (1966; 1973) and others (Boon 1982; Ortner 1973; Shankman 1984) have emphasized how meaning (including the many meanings of friendship) is made through shared symbols. Geertz has argued that symbols - through rituals, narratives, and sacred objects - establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations by formulating conceptions of order and meaning that feel uniquely real to those who practice them. In many cultures, naming itself is a sacred act — a signal of trust, belonging, and personhood. When the Entity in Malevolent chooses the name John, it’s not just a plot point. It’s a symbolic gesture - a move toward humanity, toward relationship, toward becoming someone who can be known and cared for - a move that Arthur recognizes. And that recognition is critical for the development and evolution of their friendship.
Anthropologists have documented the diversity of friendship across societies (Adams 2005; Hruschka 2010; Lu et al. 2021). For example, in Ghana, friendships are fewer but deeper when compared to the U.S. where they’re more numerous but often more superficial (Adams and Plaut 2003). This reflects broader patterns where individualistic cultures promote extensive but bounded friendships, while collectivistic cultures emphasize fewer but more deeply integrated friendships embedded within kinship and community networks. Michele Gelfand’s (2018) work on tight vs. loose cultures adds an additional layer to this. Tight cultures (such as Japan and Singapore) have strong norms and formalized friendships. Loose cultures (such as the U.S. and Brazil) allow more flexibility (like a pair of loose fitting jeans) - but also more fragility.
The work of other researchers, including Joseph Henrich (2015; 2020), Peter Richerson, and Robert Boyd (Richerson and Boyd 2005; Boyd and Richerson 2009), can be interpreted to show how friendship is part of our evolutionary toolkit - one of our survival strategies. Their work reveals how humans developed prosocial emotions like empathy and shame to support cooperation (which can lead to or deepen friendships). Tooby and Cosmides (1996) argue that friendship evolved as a solution to the banker’s paradox - the problem of finding reliable partners who will help during unpredictable crises. Just as banks paradoxically want to lend money only to those who don’t need it, individuals facing emergencies need help from those who have surplus resources at that moment. Friendship adaptations, the argument goes, evolved to identify and maintain relationships with individuals who would provide crucial assistance during times of need. And David Sloan Wilson (2015; Wilson et al. 2008) argues that groups with strong internal cooperation - often facilitated by friendship and/or leading to or deepening friendships - outcompete those without it. In the case of Arthur and John, the forced cooperation is one of the factors that lead to their eventual friendship (and the prosocial emotions they eventually felt for one another).
The Fragility and Opportunities of Friendship
These varying reasons for, and manifestations of, friendship, unique to regions, environments, and cultures as a result of varying combinations of adaptability and historical accident, are subject to stresses when conditions change. As stated above, in loose cultures (like the U.S.) friendship can be more fragile as a result of it’s contextual flexibility. And in the U.S., we’re seeing cracks in our abilities to form and maintain friendships. Researchers like Daniel Cox (2021) have documented what’s been dubbed a friendship recession. Over the past three decades, the number of close friends Americans report having has plummeted. Men, in particular, are struggling. Pew Research (Parker and Goddard 2025) found that while men and women report similar levels of loneliness, men are far less likely to seek emotional support from friends.
Middle-aged and older men face additional challenges (Adams and Ueno 2006). A longitudinal study (Petrova et al. 2024) followed 235 men over 71 years and found that their emotional support networks declined by nearly 50% between ages 30 and 90. Life transitions - marriage, retirement, relocation, health decline - all contributed to shrinking social and friendship circles. And unlike women, who are more likely to maintain emotionally rich friendships, men often rely heavily on a spouse for emotional support (or to maintain some degree of a social network for them - see the SNL Man Park take on this below). When that relationship ends - through divorce or widowhood - many find themselves without a safety net. Even those with a few close friends aren’t necessarily better off. Americans with three or fewer close friends report high levels of loneliness and isolation. And for men, the emotional depth of those friendships is often lacking.
Unfortunately, I recognize a lot of this in my own life. For me, moving across multiple states twenty years ago at the same time I underwent a major shift in my career trajectory contributed to an erosion of multiple circles of friends, along with difficulties in building new circles, something that I still struggle with to this day. Many of my current friends are really driven by my wife’s friendships, or they’re relationships that have developed through my employment or community involvement. While a few of these friendships have moved beyond the superficial (or at least did for a time as a result of close collaboration) none are really as deep as I would like some of them to be. And this has been particularly a struggle relative to male friendships.
A metasynthesis (Vierra 2023) of multiple qualitative research studies found that certain masculine norms - toughness, stoicism, homophobia - make it harder for men to form deep friendships. A recent scoping review (Nordin et al. 2024) echoed this, showing how self-reliance and emotional restraint increase vulnerability to loneliness (and I think this probably rings true for me to a degree). Nor are these findings just academic. They’re public health concerns. The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 advisory (Murthy 2023) labeled loneliness and isolation as an epidemic - one with real consequences for cardiovascular health, cognitive decline, and mortality - for anyone experiencing chronic loneliness and isolation.
Returning to Malevolent, Arthur and John’s relationship exemplifies many patterns observed in male friendships: initial emotional guardedness, difficulty expressing vulnerability, conflict avoidance alternating with explosive arguments, and communication focused on shared tasks rather than feelings. Their journey toward deeper emotional intimacy - with John learning to express care and Arthur learning to accept support - mirrors the developmental work many men must undertake to form truly intimate friendships. It’s only in Parts 40 and 44 that we hear them first talk about their love for one another and at the end of Part 56 and the beginning of Part 57 that we hear them say the actual words I love you to one another. The podcast’s popularity may also reflect a longing for narratives that model emotional vulnerability and male friendships. I honestly think their evolving friendship is the main reason I kept listening (though the writing, production, and voice acting are excellent).
Part of the struggle for developing and maintaining friendships (that I also relate to) is the lack of, or decreased normalization of, physical spaces in the community that facilitate friendships. Third spaces (Littman 2021; Oldenburg 1989) - bars, gyms, churches, places for hobby groups - have historically served as incubators for friendship. But these spaces are disappearing, especially in rural and marginalized communities, exacerbated by the pandemic. Research from CU Boulder (Sun et al. 2025) found that closures of third places between 2019 and 2021 were most severe in socially vulnerable areas. Without these spaces, with decreasing normalization of the use of these spaces, opportunities for spontaneous connection dwindle. And in a culture already steeped in individualism, this just increases isolation.
Generational shifts compound the issue. Gen Z reports lower well-being than any previous generation (also I think exacerbated by the pandemic). Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki’s work (Zaki and Pei 2025) shows that young adults underestimate how kind and open others are - a cognitive bias that leads to social withdrawal. His interventions - simple nudges that reveal peers’ warmth - have helped students form more friendships. It’s a reminder that sometimes all it takes is a little data, a reminder that your fears aren’t unique, and a little hope.
And Arthur and John’s friendship, fictional as it is, should, as an example of building trust across radical differences, give us hope - if they can build a friendship surely the rest of us can. Arthur and John begin as adversaries literally from different worlds - one human, one an eldritch entity. But through shared experiences, mutual dependence (their existence literally depends on one another), and emotional risk, they become something more. John’s desire to become a better version of himself - to be human, to be known - is a narrative arc that resonates because it reflects our own struggles. To be a friend is to be vulnerable. To be vulnerable is to be human. Friendship is a defining human trait.
I’ve previously written about an interaction I had during the last Kansas legislative session with a Republican legislator regarding a particular piece of transphobic legislation. While our interactions started out as antagonistic, because we eventually both chose to show some vulnerability and recognize our shared humanity, those interactions turned respectful and curious. I wouldn’t say we’re friends at this point, but these are certainly steps along the way towards some kind of friendship if things were to progress. And it gives me hope, not just for myself, but for our contentious, divided, hyper-partisan society in 2026.
This is the last season of Malevolent, with the last Part (60) coming out in late January 2026, ending this story of Arthur and John. While I’m looking forward to hearing how the story ends, I really don’t want to say goodbye to these two characters I’ve grown to love. But maybe it’s time to stop living vicariously through their story, time to stop making excuses and putting things off, time to stop relying on my wife or waiting for a Man Park, and actually try deepening some existing friendships, building new ones, and rekindling a few old ones.
If we all spent more time focusing on friendships - their building, maintenance, and restoration - we not only would increase our own emotional support networks, health, and resiliency, we would also strengthen our ability to see others as fellow humans who share the same basic needs, vulnerabilities, and fears. I think this is something we very much need in our ever growing fragmented world, as we struggle against everything from oligarchy and authoritarianism to bigotry and othering.
And we should definitely be investing more in third spaces - normalizing them, creating them, building them - physical and social environments that foster inclusion, interaction, and connection instead of isolation. And we should keep telling stories - like Malevolent - that model friendship as a process, not a given. As a choice, not a default. As emotional, not just task-focused. As a part of the human condition.
So, in 2026, let’s all create more of our own stories of friendship.
References
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Adams, G., and Plaut, V. C. (2003). The cultural grounding of personal relationship: Friendship in North American and West African worlds. Personal Relationships, 10(3), 333-347.
Adams, R. G., & Ueno, K. (2006). Middle-aged and older adult men’s friendships. In V. H. Bedford & B. Formaniak Turner (Eds.), Men in relationships: A new look from a life course perspective (pp. 103–124). Springer Publishing Company.
Allan, G. (1989). Friendship: Developing a Sociological Perspective. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
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Sun, Y., et al. (2025). As community spaces disappear, new CU Boulder research warns of health and equity risks. Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado Boulder. Retrieved from https://ibs.colorado.edu/new-research-on-disappearing-third-places-warns-of-risks/
Tooby, J., and Cosmides, L. (1996). Friendship and the banker’s paradox: Other pathways to the evolution of adaptations for altruism. Proceedings of the British Academy, 88, 119-143.
Vierra, K. D., Beltran, D. R., & Robnett, R. D. (2023). A metasynthesis exploring the role of masculinities in close male friendships. Psychology of Men & Masculinities, 24(4), 311–324.
Wilson, D. S. (2015). Does Altruism Exist? Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others. Yale University Press.
Wilson, D. S., Van Vugt, M., and O’Gorman, R. (2008). Multilevel selection theory and major evolutionary transitions: Implications for psychological science. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(1), 6-9.
Zaki, J., and Pei, R. (2025). Why is social connection so hard for young adults? Greater Good Magazine. Retrieved from https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_is_social_connection_so_hard_for_young_adults
Nicely done, old friend...
Also see the following for a bit more on the importance of friendships and connections to aging: https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/how-to-be-a-super-ager-1/