Today on the show: Angela talks to Mike Maughan, senior executive at Qualtrics, about how to make friends as an adult. This idea of making close friends, even in mid-adulthood, it kind of is us. I mean, look, I feel very lucky to count you as among my dearest friends. Is that fair? What I recall is that I was coming out to Utah where the headquarters of Qualtrics is.
And I think there was an annual meeting. And we had these conversations. All I can say is that, like, and then suddenly we were good friends. Can you remind me of what actually happened? And so the fact that you came and spoke at ours and somehow we ended up very close friends, to me, is pretty amazing at this point. I was being strategic and shrewd. Look at that. I think a lot of things led to the friendship. One was that you were coming to speak.
Two, obviously you wanted Ryan on your advisory board. Three, Character Lab and Qualtrics work together. And then as fate would have it, you and I both got to know Stephen Dubner individually and then the three of us started going around the country doing Freakonomics live shows for a few years. And so I think all of those things led together. But then for some reason, amidst all your busy schedule, we had a weekly one-on-one, where we talked every morning.
And you scheduled it for a. I scheduled a. So you would call me on your way home from Pilates and we would talk once a week, but at a.
You must have just read some research that we needed to do it at a random time. I do believe in that, by the way. So I probably was drawing on that research. Did we really do that for years? This is so hurtful. Who are you? And so it was good. And so I think maybe what we can talk about is some of the ways to make it easier. We know that perhaps the strongest predictor of whether you are a happy person overall with your life is the quality of your relationships, and of course that includes family, and it may include for some a romantic relationship, but friendships are a huge part of our social existence and our overall happiness.
