| Trump re-ups pressure on Greenland A general assassinated in Moscow Iceland’s scary Yule cat |
Where have all the deep male friendships gone?
By Sam Graham-Felsen
The last problem I ever thought I would have was loneliness. From grade school through my late 20s, I had a wide circle of friends, and many of them were guys I’d hang with on a near-daily basis. One of these friends was Rob.
I never had sexual feelings for Rob, but there was an intensity to our connection that can only be described as love. I thought about him all the time, and cared, deeply, about what he thought of me. We got jealous and mad at each other, and often argued like a bitter married couple — but eventually, like a successful married couple, we’d always find a way to talk things out.
I’ve been going through emails Rob and I exchanged in our early 20s, and I’ve been amazed at how seriously we took our friendship. Even in the heat of acrimony, we found the space to not only acknowledge the other’s pain and point of view, but also to openly affirm our admiration for each other.
This was how close I used to be with my male friends. Not just with Rob, but with nearly a dozen other dudes — dudes I spent thousands of accumulated hours with; dudes I shared my most shame-inducing secrets with; dudes I built incredibly intricate, ever-evolving inside jokes with; dudes I loved and needed, and who loved and needed me — and whom, now, I almost never talk to.
I know I’m not the only guy with this problem. The notion that men in this country suck at friendship is so widespread that it has become a truism, a punchline. “Your dad has no friends,” John Mulaney said during an opening monologue on “Saturday Night Live.” “If you think your dad has friends, you’re wrong. Your mom has friends, and they have husbands. Those are not your dad’s friends.”
What I didn’t know is that American men are becoming significantly worse at friendship. A study in 2024 by the Survey Center on American Life found that only 26 percent of men reported having six or more close friends. Polling a similar question in 1990, Gallup had put this figure at 55 percent. The same Survey Center study found that 17 percent of men have zero close friends, more than a fivefold increase since 1990.
| OTHER NEWS |
| A senior Russian general was killed in a car bombing in Moscow, in what appeared to be the latest high-profile assassination of Ukraine’s opponents inside Russia.President Trump named a special envoy to Greenland, intensifying his efforts to take over the semiautonomous territory.The Trump administration has ordered nearly 30 ambassadors in embassies around the world to return to the U.S.The Oracle founder Larry Ellison said he would personally guarantee more than $40 billion in his son’s hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros.The lynching of a Hindu garment-factory worker in Bangladesh raised fears of rising intolerance.First the Louvre, now the Élysée: Precious copper pots, porcelain and champagne glasses were stolen from France’s presidential palace. |
| WORLD OF THE DAY |
| An artist’s impression of the lemon-shaped world, which astronomers say would be red because of dust and soot from the carbon in its atmosphere. NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI) |
The lemon planet
— NASA Webb Telescope recently studied an unusual Jupiter-size body orbiting a rapidly spinning star. This planet’s equatorial diameter is much wider than its polar diameter, giving the world the appearance of a lemon. “It’s the stretchiest planet that we’ve confirmed the stretchiness of,” one scientist said.
| AROUND THE WORLD |
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| A statue of the Yule Cat in Reykjavik in 2021. Halldor Kolbeins/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
What they’re hiding from … in Iceland
Bowl-Licker scrounges around kitchens looking for leftovers. Door-Slammer wakes people up in the middle of the night. And Sausage-Snatcher, well, you can probably guess. These are some of Iceland’s 13 Yule Lads, who sneak into homes night after night, like an Advent calendar of chaos.
On Christmas Eve, mischief becomes mayhem: That’s when the real monster of the Icelandic holiday season arrives.
The Yule Cat, or Jólakötturinn in Icelandic, stalks towns, looking for children who have not received warm new clothes for the winter. If it finds a poorly outfitted youngster, it may well eat the unfortunate child.
“We don’t know the sex of the cat,” said Terry Gunnell, who studies folklore at the University of Iceland. “No one’s dared to check. And I wouldn’t suggest it.”
For more: Listen to “Jólakötturinn” by Björk, the Icelandic pop star. “She sings it in a really nasty, creepy voice,” said Carolyne Larrington, an emeritus professor of medieval European literature at the University of Oxford. “You really get the sense of the cat slinking into town, that it’s looking around with its green eyes, licking its whiskers and looking for the kids.” — Amelia Nierenberg, who covers the Nordics and once spent four days in Iceland unsuccessfully looking for the northern lights.
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Read: These books explore the promises and pitfalls of the U.S. economy.
| RECIPE |
Isidudu is a sweet and salty creamy corn porridge that’s a classic in Xhosa and Zulu households in South Africa and its diaspora. Though it’s usually enjoyed first thing in the morning, the dish can be eaten anytime. Top with sugar, cold butter, milk or nut butter to create a colorful mosaic in your bowl — and in every bite.
