Valentine’s Day Isn’t Just for Romance—The Science of Deep Friendships

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.3 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2025

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Love isn’t just about romance. This Valentine’s Day, we’re exploring the power of deep nonromantic bonds. Host Rachel Feltman sits down with Rhaina Cohen, a producer and editor for NPR’s podcast Embedded and author of The Other Significant Others, to discuss the history and psychology of friendship—and the reasons these connections deserve just as much celebration as romantic partnerships. Recommended reading: —The Evolutionary Origins of Friendship —How to Reconnect with Old Friends Who Have Become Strangers Subscribe to Rhaina Cohen’s newsletter. E-mail us at [email protected] if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Madison Goldberg, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is edited by Madison Goldberg with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:30.6	Happy Valentine's Day, listeners. For Scientific American Science quickly, I'm Rachel Feldman.
0:37.2	For many people, today is all about scrambling to get last-minute dinner reservations and
0:42.0	spending lots of money.
0:43.6	I mean, showing your significant other how much you care about them.
0:47.4	But what about your other significant others?
0:50.0	What about Galentine's Day and Palantines Day?
0:53.4	Today's guest wants to help us understand that non-romantic love and partnership can change our lives for the better.
1:00.3	Raina Cohen is a producer and editor for NPR's Embedded Podcast, and she's also the author of the book The Other Significant Others, Reimagining life with friendship at the center.
1:10.6	She's here today to share what she's learned about the history and psychology of human
1:14.8	friendship.
1:19.8	Raina, thanks so much for joining us today.
1:22.1	Glad to get to talk about this.
1:24.3	So what inspired you to write this book?
1:26.8	I fell into a friendship that for me really
1:29.8	defied even what the definition of friendship was. My friend who I refer to as M, she and I became
1:38.6	much more like partners pretty quickly. I felt a kind of excitement about our friendship that
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