Added 9.25.18. When Rachel Bertsche moved to Chicago to be with her boyfriend (soon to be husband) she left behind her “besties,” or best girlfriends, in New York. So, using digital and analog means she intentionally set out to meet – once a week for a whole year – with candidates to take their place. She chronicled the outcomes in an engaging memoir titled “MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search For A New Best Friend.” Milt in this 2012 episode engages Bertsche about what she learned along the way. They explore the nature of friendship, research on the topic, and more.

As many of you know, Milt is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Chicago. Having spent so many decades in the field, he’s often hesitant to discuss it. But this fascinating new book by the highly regarded Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman proved too much to ignore. Listen to these two amazing minds discuss the mind itself along with the history of psychology and psychiatry. You’ll hear a brand new take on the legacy of Sigmund Freud that could change the way that we view the field. Also discussed: Are psychiatrists in the 21st century too quick to prescribe psychotropic drugs?

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts joined us in 2006 to discuss his then just-published book “Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood.” He deals here with problems which have persisted: how to prepare a black child for contacts with police; the effects of feminist theory upon black fatherhood; absent-father black families as a source of social pathology and as a source of suffering for the father himself. Strong stuff, strongly articulated!

…that swept the country for 10 or so years was at its height when we did this program. Thousands of female “patients” were persuaded by stupid or incompetent “psychologists” that they had been sexually abused by their fathers or by others when in fact nothing of the sort had happened. The psychological injuries to those who had these false memories implanted and to those they accused still persist though the social panic has by now died out. In the middle of that period of panic we did a close analysis of what was happening. Our guests were three valuable debunkers, one a psychiatrist, another a psychologist and one a lawyer who helped the nation to put this harmful myth aside.

Robert Putnam did the book (yes, “Bowling Alone”) which argued that we were losing our “connectedness” to one another and becoming isolated and selfish individuals. But then, in 2003, he discovered that we were reconnecting in new ways. Here, with a colleague, he explains why and how. As you listen, you might ask yourself whether he described you and yours accurately in his then-new book “Better Together.”