Better Friendships

Our last episode of season one! We talk about loneliness and its impact on our health.  We discuss how humans are social creatures and why loneliness is so hard for us. We get ready for season 2 by talking about different ways that we can both find and create Better Friendships in our lives.   

Our final episode in our series on the history of women's friendships. We recap the series and think about where we can go from here.  

In celebration of International Women's Day and Women's History Month Katie shares a poem she wrote to honor women everywhere. 

Friendships between women have been evolving with the changes in society.  In this episode, we look at Riot Girl bands, the Spice Girls, Mean Girls, Taylor Swift, PTO moms, and the Bechdel Test.  We look at how women and friendships among women have been portrayed in the media since the mid-1980s, how those media portrayals impact and influence our friendships as well as, how we view, and subsequently treat, other women. NB*  There is a brief mention of Demi Lovato who announced they are nonbinary since the recording of this podcast.   

In this episode, we are looking at women's friendships from the 1950s through the 1980s. We had a  lovely interview with a  special guest that helped us shine a spotlight on the impact of Women's Lib in the 1960s and helped debunk some myths on women's friendships. Join us as we chat with Meg, a flight attendant in the 1960s, about female friendships- the paths they take us on, the way they hold us up, and how they help us defy expectations. 

Today we are looking at the experiences and friendships of women in the early 20th century. We look at how the world wars brought women together and created new spaces and opportunities for them.  We also explore the tactics and the arguments society used to push back against those women and their new roles. 

We dive into the Victorian world to look at how society, as well as, the roles of women shifted during this era and what that meant for female friendships.  We see how women challenged their roles in society and how they sought to make changes, sometimes for themselves and sometimes for all women.  We discuss Florence Nightingale, Edith Wharton, girl's trips, and newspapers for women. For any listeners who may be sensitive to the topic, please be aware that we do discuss domestic abuse briefly in this episode.

Starting in the medieval period through the Renaissance and into the witch trials of early modern Europe and America we explore how women were portrayed and what that meant for their friendships. We examine how those narratives bring us into today and how they color the ways in which we see other women. In this episode we are asking to look at the what society tells us the “right way to be a woman” is and what that means for our friendships and relationships with other women, especially ones who don’t or chose not to fit those criteria.

A poem written and read by Katie to celebrate the women who have come before for International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month.

This episode will be the first in a series of episodes exploring women's friendships throughout history.  In this episode we are digging into friendships in Ancient Greece and the Bible.  We examine the source material, or lack there of, for women's friendships in history and discuss how these cultures depicted interactions between women in their stories and myths and what that can tell us about how these societies viewed women and their friendships.