👯‍♀️ Friends and friendship (S03E10)

Vocabulary + Transcript

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This episode’s vocabulary

• Amiable (adj.) — friendly and pleasant.
• Inviting (adj.) — encouraging you to feel welcome.
• To mediate (verb) — to occupy a middle position between two sides.
• A gathering (noun) — a group of people meeting together.
• …with all that entails (phrase) —including all the things that logically follow from “that”.
• To bond (verb) — when people bond with each other, they form a relationship based on love or shared beliefs and experiences. You can also say that people bond or that something bonds them.
• Verbose (adj) — using or containing more words than are necessary.
• To push the envelope (idiom) — to behave in more extreme ways, or to try new things that have not been acceptable or tried before.
• To win over (phrasal verb) — to persuade someone to agree with you or to be friendly to you.
• To keep up with smth/smn (phrasal verb) — to continue to be informed about something or someone.
• To reminisce (verb) — to talk, think, or write about enjoyable experiences in your past.
• To cultivate (verb) — to develop a friendship or relationship with someone.

We have also added these words to a “Quizlet” set for you to study and revise in your free time: bit.ly/quizlets03e10

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Questions and Answers

Maria: Rory, do you have many friends?

Rory: Yeah, I think… I think so. I like to think I’m quite amiable and inviting.

Maria: How long have you known your friends?

Rory: Well, my childhood friends I’ve known since childhood, obviously. But I have friends that I’m quite close with in Moscow and I’ve known them for… Oh gosh… Five years now. Maybe more than five years!

Maria: How often do you see your friends.

Rory: Well, I suppose now probably not often enough, given that we have a quarantine and everything. But under normal circumstances I see my friends in Scotland once or twice a year and then I see my other friends regularly on Zoom, for example. Although I’m looking forward to seeing them in person again, and until then everything seems to be mediated by social media.

Maria: What do you and your friends do together?

Rory: Well, I think whenever we have a big gathering, it’s usually in a bar and all that entails. If it’s at someone else’s house, then we usually play video games and share stories with each other.

Maria: What kind of people do you like to make friends with?

Rory: I don’t have set criteria. It’s usually people I’m thrown into mad situations with, and we make the best of it and bond through the shared experience. And then after that, we usually refer back to it a lot. I also used to have a thing for making up songs and words with my friends. So probably I like people are quite verbose and creative. Oh, I also really like people who are friendly but politically incorrect. So they push the onvelope (is a British way of saying “envelope”), but they don’t push it too far. I hate lateness, so probably people who are punctual are more likely to win me over.

Maria: Do you think you are good friends to others?

Rory: I try to be... I think I’m quite reliable and organized and I’m usually quite fun to be around. I hope at least I make people’s lives interesting! So, I think that’s part of being a good friend, too.

Maria: Do you keep in touch with your childhood friends?

Rory: Not, as often as I’d like. Until recently, actually, I wasn’t very good at keeping up with people. But I’m trying to get better at that now that we’ve got quarantine and we have the time to do that. It’s also quite fun to reminisce about past deeds. So, that’s something about staying in touch touch as well that I’m keen to cultivate when I get back in touch with people.

Maria: Rory, do you think friendship is important?

Rory: Absolutely. I think I’ve seen quite a few articles about how loneliness harms your, well, mental and physical health about as much as smoking and alcoholism does. Maybe even more, actually. It’s probably not very good for you.

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