Two Peas on a Pod

What if the word "toxic" is actually getting in the way of understanding what's really going on in your friendship? Dr. Miriam Kirmayer explores why the term toxic has become a shorthand for any difficult friendship, and why this label might be obscuring the real work needed to heal or end a connection. She explains how the language of toxicity can provide a temporary sense of relief or false clar...

What if the key to a more connected life isn't deeper conversations with the people closest to you, but a little more chitchat with the people you barely know? Dr. Gillian Sandstrom is an associate professor in the psychology of kindness at the University of Sussex. Her research focuses on the benefits of minimal social interactions with weak ties and strangers, and on the barriers that stop us fr...

What happens when your best friend's life looks nothing like yours, and you spend a decade quietly admiring (and a little bit envying) each other? Meet Today's Peas: Brendan Chamberlain Simon is the guy who, by day, operates the Mars Rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. By night, he makes space-inspired music under the artist name Proud Father. Nick Perloff Giles is an indie pop artist known...

What if the friendship questions you'd never dare ask your group chat are the ones everyone is secretly wondering about? For our very first Two Peas Q&A, Dr. Miriam is answering your questions, sent in over Instagram, email, voice messages, her Friendly Advice newsletter, and conversations at events. Whether she's talking to college students, CEOs, or healthcare leaders, the same questions kee...

What does it take to stay best friends for twenty years, across three coasts, and a loss neither of you saw coming? Meet Today's Peas: Rory O'Malley is a Tony-nominated Broadway actor known for The Book of Mormon and Hamilton, and for co-founding the marriage equality nonprofit Broadway Impact. Jenny Kanelos co-founded Broadway Impact alongside Rory and the late Gavin Creel, mobilizing thousands o...

What if connection didn't have to be something you reinvent from scratch every single time? Gretchen Rubin has made a career out of asking one big question: what makes us happy? She's the bestselling author of The Happiness Project, Better Than Before, The Four Tendencies, Life in Five Senses, and most recently, Secrets of Adulthood, with millions of copies sold in over 30 languages. She hosts the...

What if that embarrassing thing you did as a teenager turned out to be exactly what brought your oldest friendships back to life? Meet Today's Peas: Jessica, Ayden, Janet, and Mary have been friends since they were kids, and even forming their own girl band as teenagers called X-Cetra. Ayden, now a professional actor, directed the group's reunion documentary, Summer 2000: The X-Cetra Story, which...

What if the friendship you needed most as a kid never showed up, so you built it for millions of others instead? Jaymes Black is the CEO of The Trevor Project, the leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ+ young people. Jaymes spent childhood and adolescence without a friend group who truly understood, including being outed in high school and ultimately deciding to...

What does real friendship look like beyond the highlight reel? Before they were two of the most recognizable faces in early YouTube pop culture coverage, Joslyn was a host at ClevverTV and Lily was her unpaid intern, commuting hours from Thousand Oaks and working restaurant shifts on the side just to be in the room. What started as an intern-and-boss dynamic dissolved almost immediately into somet...

Is it just me, or does making new friends as an adult feel so much harder than it used to? In this solo Office Ours, Dr. Miriam breaks down why the friendships that used to happen by accident stop happening once real life gets in the way. She walks through the three real reasons adult friendship gets harder (vanishing structure, the mere exposure effect, and follow through fatigue), then busts the...

What if the same instant spark you feel falling in love could happen with a friend? Meet Today's Peas: Constance Zimmer is an actress known for iconic, sharp-edged roles in Entourage, UnREAL, House of Cards, and Love Story. Heidi Clements is a television producer, writer, social media force, and pro-aging influencer. Constance and Heidi's friendship started, of all places, in a business meeting. H...

What if the busiest thing about your friendships isn't your calendar, but the story you're telling yourself? Dr. Jessica B. Stern is a licensed clinical psychologist, a faculty member at NYU Langone Health, and the host of Doctor Radio on SiriusXM. She's also the founder of Three Lemons, a firm that helps people and organizations reduce burnout and build more sustainable ways of working. Dr. Miria...

What does it mean to care deeply for someone else without losing yourself in the process? Meet Today's Peas: You'll recognize Lise Smith and Nicci Smith from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum, but behind the cameras, they've built a remarkable friendship of their own. What started with raising their sons, Connor and Tanner, together grew into Talk To Me Sis, the podcast where honesty, humor, and sist...

When was the last time you had a moment? Not a vacation, not even an afternoon off, just a moment to breathe before you react, to notice what you're feeling before it spills onto the people you love most. Dr. Cassidy Freitas is a licensed marriage and family therapist, the author of Mom Needs a Moment , and the host and creator of the Holding Space podcast. She's also a mom of three, a bird enthus...

What happens when the friendship that got you through growing up on a hit TV show has to survive real life once the cameras stop rolling? That's the story of Eden Sher and Brock Ciarlelli... Eden and Brock met as teenagers on the set of The Middle, playing Sue Heck and Brad Bottig for nine seasons before it became something more than a job. These days, Eden's debut comedy special, I Was On a Sitco...

What if the letter that saved your closest relationship started with "I hate you"? Meet today's Peas: Tembi Locke is a New York Times bestselling author whose memoir From Scratch inspired the popular Netflix series. Attica Locke is an acclaimed novelist (Black Water Rising, Heaven, My Home, Guide Me Home) who also helped bring her sister's memoir to the screen as showrunner on From Scratch. They'r...

There's no right way to end a friendship, but there is a wrong one. Dr. Miriam closes out the two-part Office Ours series on friendship breakups with the part nobody teaches us: how to actually let go of a friend. She starts with the five questions to ask yourself before deciding whether a friendship is worth saving. From there, the four ways friendships really end: the slow fade, the compartmenta...

What if the hardest breakup you ever go through isn't romantic at all? If you've ever felt more heartbroken over losing a friend than a romantic partner, you are not alone, and you're definitely not overreacting. Friendship breakups don't come with a script. No agreed-upon custody battle for mutual friends, no ritual to eat ice cream and listen to a sad playlist. Just silence, and a grief most of...

What makes a friendship feel different from a networking lunch? Jamison Lange and Alaire Thomas know the answer, and it starts with a DM about an uncredited video, a brunch that ran four hours, and a vibe that neither of them could fully explain, but both of them immediately felt. Meet Today's Peas: Jamison is a content creator known for his viral transition videos and boundary-pushing c...

What if grief didn't have to be something you move through alone even when it feels like no one else could possibly understand what you're carrying?  On this episode of Office Ours, Dr. Miriam sits down with Rebecca Soffer to talk about what it really means to show up for someone who's grieving and what it means to let people show up for you....

What does it take to keep a friendship alive across different cities, different countries, and every version of who you're becoming? Pauline Chalamet, Lily Sondik, and Zoe Mylonas have been figuring that out since they were teenagers.  Meet Today’s Peas: Pauline is an American-French actress and writer, best known for her role as Kimberly Finkle on HBO Max's The Sex L...

What if the most underrated career move you could make was... making a friend?  In this Office Ours episode, Dr. Miriam sits down with Fahd Alhattab, startup workplace expert, leadership strategist, and founder of Unicorn Labs, for a conversation about why connection at work isn't a distraction from the job. It is the job. From Halloween culture shock on his first night in Canada to nearly ge...

The real love story from Bachelor in Paradise? Ashley I and Naz.   This week on Two Peas on a Pod, Dr. Miriam sits down with longtime best friends Ashley Iaconetti and Naz Perez to unpack the friendship that began behind the scenes of Bachelor in Paradise and lasted long after the cameras stopped rolling.  From bonding over MAC’s Ruby Woo lipstick and navigating heartbreak together, to s...

What happens when a director tells you you're falling flat, and you become inseparable anyway? That's the story of Tabitha Brown and Nic Few, and it's one for the books.  Tab is the internet's best friend: two-time Emmy Award-winning TV host, bestselling author, and warm voice millions turn to every day. Nic is an NAACP Award-winning actor, producer, an...

What if stepping back was actually your next big step forward? Neha Ruch is an author, researcher, and the founder of The Power Pause, a movement that is quietly dismantling one of the most outdated stories we tell about ambition: that if you slow down, you're falling behind.  On this episode of Office Ours, Dr. Miriam sits down with Neha to unpack what it really means to take a pause and to...