Holly says she thinks I’m a witty and insightful person. I think the same of her! She also makes some really amazing costumes (which you can see on the Web site if you know where to look). But is that why we’re friends? Why are any of us friends, really? We talk about the question of why people can — or can’t — be friends, in a variety of scenarios, from pop culture to politics.

Some discussions and tangents that came up along the way:

• Holly’s Chairy costume from “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” (really)
• The awesome event that made me start thinking about the question of what makes people friends: MaxFunCon, a celebration of all things awesome (and Maximum Fun)
• John Roderick of The Long Winters, and a story he told at MaxFunCon that culminated in the exclamation, “Why are we friends?!?”
• “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-minded America Is Tearing Us Apart,” by Bill Bishop with Robert G. Cushing
• Joan Holloway’s husband in “Mad Men” (thanks, my jet lagged brain, for not allowing me to remember her name as we were recording)
• “Roderick on the Line,” a (flagged as explicit) podcast by Merlin Mann and John Roderick
• GeekGirlCon and the idea of an inclusive convention vs. an exclusive convention
• “What Peter Jackson did to Faramir,” and how continuing to harp on that became one of my deal-breakers
• Sloganism vs. informed debate, and separating the people you like from the ones you love
• Holly’s love of accuracy in historical films’ costumes (which reminds me of 10 Historically Inaccurate Movies)
• Holly’s eagle-eyed spotting of some apparently inaccurate foundation garments in movie stills
• “High Fidelity” and the idea that it’s what you like, not what you are like
• “What is friendship?“

We raise more questions than we answer with this one, I think. We’d love to hear what you think in comments, on our Facebook page, on Twitter, or at popstuff (at) howstuffworks (dot) com.

Link to the episode: Why are we friends?

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