The Third Thing
A podcast Hosted by Michelle & Danyelle: a coach and a therapist, an interracial and queer best friend pair of 26 years. The Third Thing is where we are naming and confronting the topics that challenge us in platonic relationships. On friendship and race, money, sobriety, politics, when we drift or breakup, and the jealousy nobody admits to. Each week we spill the tea from our hurdles, and offer up the tools we’ve learned along the way.
Episodes
15 episodes
S2E14: Why Making Friends as an Adult Feels So Hard (And What Actually Helps)
You haven't had to walk into a room and introduce yourself in years, and then suddenly you do, and every old insecurity shows up at once. Making friends as an adult isn't just logistically harder than it was in middle school or college. It's a ...
S2E13: Chosen Family 101 - What Queer Culture Gets Right About Friendship
Season Two opens with the episode we've been wanting to make since day one. Queerness has been a thread running under every conversation on this show, and this time Michelle and Danyelle pull it into the center.Danyelle grew up with two ...
S1E12: Bonus Episode: Tarot Reading on Money, Scarcity, and Rest
Ever wondered what actually happens in a tarot reading? Not the vague, Instagram-caption version, but a real one, with real questions, real doubt, and cards that don't let you off easy.In this bonus episode, Danyelle gives Michelle a liv...
S1E11: Bonus Episode: On Becoming Podcasters and Going Viral
We finished Season 1. Ten episodes, recorded and released, exactly the way we said we would. In this bonus episode, we're pulling back the curtain on what that actually took to pull it off.This isn't our typical episode, it's a real-time...
S1E10: On Friendship and the Grief of Drifting
You know that friend you keep meaning to text back? The one where you scroll up in the thread and realize it's been six months, then a year, then you've lost track? There was no fight or blowup, just the silence that crept in until one day you ...
S1E9: Money Differences in Friendship - When Your Incomes Don't Match
You've never told your best friend what you actually make. Or you have, and you watched their face change. Money might be the last real taboo in friendship, more off-limits than sex, more off-limits than politics, and it's quietly shaping who f...
S1E8: How to Stay Friends When Life Pulls You Apart
📍 Content warning. This episode includes a discussion of a suicide attempt starting at 6:09 and running through 8:42. Please take care of yourself while listening. Skip ahead if you need to. If you or somebody you know is struggling, the 988 su...
S1E7: Boundaries Aren't Just for Romantic or Familial Relationships
Boundaries are everywhere in conversation right now, but almost no one talks about how tangled up they are with shame, especially in friendship. This week Michelle and Danyelle get into it: where their earliest boundary memories come from, why ...
S1E6: Friendship and Attachment Styles - Why You Keep Attracting the Same Kinds of Friends
Attachment style usually gets talked about in the context of dating and romance. Rarely do we turn that same lens on friendship, even though it shapes those relationships just as much.In this episode, Michelle and Danyelle break down the...
S1E5: The Breakup Nobody Talks About - When You Lose A Friend
Friendship breakups are one of the most painful experiences we can go through and one of the least talked about. There's no ceremony, no bereavement leave, no socially agreed-upon way to grieve someone who is still out there, still living their...
S1E4: What 25 Years of Friendship Across Race Has Taught Us
Race is something every interracial friendship encounters, but most of us were never given the tools or the language to talk about it honestly.In this episode, Michelle and Danyelle go somewhere they've been circling for 26 years: a real...
S1E3: When Your Best Friend Hurt You: How To Find Your Way Back
Conflict is something every relationship encounters, but most of us were never taught how to navigate it well.In this episode, Michelle and Danyelle explore the ways they learned conflict growing up, how those early experiences shaped th...
S1E2: What is "The Third Thing"?
What if friendship isn't the supporting character in your life story?What if it's one of the most important relationships you'll ever have?In this episode, Michelle and Danyelle explore the inspiration behind The Third Thing