The power of giving & receiving advice
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What is the “Please Advise” pop‑up show and when can listeners tune in?
This week on the NPR politics podcast, Republicans are on their heels and about to spend a lot of money on ads.
Some of these uh ads are gonna be ugly and it's gonna be a pretty negative campaign. That's the nature of a midterm when you've got a an environment like the one that the Republicans are facing.
We look at the Republican money machine with less than forty days until the midterms this week on the NPR politics podcast.
Raina, what is the most unhinged thing that you sincerely believe?
I can just be annoying about grammar. I like can't not get annoyed by certain kinds of grammatical errors. Um and I I think it's like not a great thing about me and but I can't fix it. But it would be nice if people knew how to use like I and me and when to say like she versus her. Um so yeah I guess the internet come at me.
Got dating trouble? Maybe your family's getting on your last nerve. Or maybe you want some insight on some friendship drama. Don't worry, you're in luck. Starting on Monday, September 28th through Wednesday, September 30th, from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern each day, I'll be giving advice live at WNYC hosting a pop-up show called Please Advise. I am so excited to hear from listeners like you. But first, it is my turn to get some advice. Today, NPR embedded producer and author Raina Cohen joins the show. She wrote The Other Significant Others, Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center. And she's giving me some advice on giving advice. When to ask for it, how to handle it when it's given unsolicited, and how opening up about our problems brings us closer.
Raina, welcome back to It's been a Minute. So happy to be here. Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
So, Raina, you have written extensively and reported extensively on the value and importance of friendship and and all sorts of things that pertain to friendship. How important is advice to building or maintaining friendships?
I think advice is often a really potent way for people to connect. You know, if you're having uh something going on in your life where you Feel like you don't know the answers and a friend has has gone through that kind of experience that that really is a form of closeness. Um I mean there there can be ways that it can be disconnecting, um or create ruptures if you're getting unsolicited advice and that feels like judgment. Um, but it does feel like a a pretty huge part of a role that that a lot of friends play for each other. And, you know, maybe not everybody that's important, but I I think probably for for quite a a lot of people, it's kind of um you know, one of the most significant things that they're bringing to friendships.
How have you seen like advice giving um affect the relationships that you've like examined in in your reporting or your writing
or even in your own life? I think that when people talk about growing uh because of their friendships, it's often because their friends helped challenge something for them in maybe the way that they were living um or their values. And sometimes that can come in the form of direct advice or just asking questions that you might not feel as open to hearing from a stranger. I was thinking about how you can get the same piece of information and depending on who is giving it to you, you might respond really differently. Um, you know, I I think about if I'm getting advice from A s from somebody who doesn't maybe share my values or doesn't know me well or is in my family and feels like they can, you know, they therefore have a right to t to tell me uh how to live, versus um, you know, somebody who I have chosen as a friend and
who might be different from me, but who I have like really, really deep respect for, um, that I might take in that information really differently. And I think I have um certainly found uh in my friendships and then and then the people that I've reported on that if they have a trusted friend in their life, that that person is um or those people are really kind of capable of moving the needle in the kind of decisions that they make in their lives.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the “Please Advise” pop‑up show and when can listeners tune in?
0:00–6:11
2
How does Raina Cohen define the role of advice in friendship?
6:11–12:32
3
When can advice strengthen a friendship versus create a rupture?
12:32–17:58
4
What are the best practices for giving advice only when it’s asked for?
17:58–21:48