[Cold open - the dock on a Tuesday afternoon] It's a Tuesday afternoon, warm and a little windy, and there's a woman on a dock with a net spread out around her. Her name is Ida, and she's a fisherman's daughter from the coast. She's not out on the water. She's sitting in the sun, running her fingers along the netting, checking every knot, mending the spots that are starting to pull loose. Nothing is wrong right now. No storm coming. No fish to catch tonight. Just a quiet afternoon and a net that needs looking after. Her father used to say: you never fix the net in the storm. You fix it on the calm days, so when the storm shows up you're already ready. Ida never forgot that. And when I think about what Book Four of the five books is really asking us to do, I keep coming back to her, on that dock, in that ordinary afternoon light. Because the book is doing the same thing with people that Ida is doing with netting. It's saying: the circle of people who'd hold you — you don't build that when everything's falling apart. You build it now, while it's quiet. And a quiet Tuesday is the best day there is to start.
[Meet Lola - she already knows this] Book Four has a woman in it named Lola. She's thirty-three. She moved here from a place where family and neighbors all lived close, where nobody had to explain what it meant to look after each other because it just happened, every day, without anyone keeping score. Here, things are different. People are busy. Streets are quieter. And one of the first things Lola noticed is that here, you're kind of expected to handle things alone — your own hard moments, your own hard days, your own falls. There's almost a rule against asking. Lola found that strange, because where she came from, letting someone help you was itself a kind of gift. It told them: I trust you. I see you as someone who can show up. She noticed something else, too. Back home, nobody waited for a hard moment to know who they were to each other. It was already understood, every ordinary day, who you'd call and who would come. You didn't build that in a crisis. It was just there, built quietly over time, out in the open, spoken out loud. And that's what the book is pointing at. You already know, somewhere inside you, how this works. You've seen it. Lola just hadn't lost it yet.
[The two moves - take stock, then say it out loud] So the book gives you two moves. Just two. And the first one is gentler than it sounds. It's called taking stock — quietly, for yourself, naming the people already in your life who you feel close to, who you'd want in your corner if a hard day showed up. Not building a list, not assigning roles, not planning anything. Just pausing and noticing who's there. Most of us move so fast that we've never actually stopped to see it clearly. And when you do, a couple of things usually happen. One: you notice the people who are already there, really there, and you feel a little less alone just from naming them. And two — and this is the honest part — you might notice that there are fewer than you thought. Not because you've done anything wrong. Just because modern life quietly separates people, and the net with the loose knots is a normal thing, not a shameful one. It just means there's a knot or two to mend. The second move is the one we almost always skip. It's saying it out loud. Not assuming your people know they're your people. Actually telling them. Turning to someone and saying, in plain words: you're someone I'd call. I want to be someone you'd call too. Just that. It sounds almost too simple. But here's the thing: most of us have never once said those words to the people we most rely on.
[Why the saying matters - what silence costs] Let me sit with that for a minute, because the silence is costing us something we don't see. Think about someone in your life right now — a friend, a neighbor, a cousin — that you feel close to. Someone you'd genuinely show up for. Chances are, they don't fully know that. Not because you've been cold. Just because you've never said it in plain words, and neither have they, and life keeps moving, and somehow the conversation never quite happened. Now here's what the silence does over time. Friendships that nobody ever names out loud tend to drift. Not through any falling-out, not through any hurt feelings — just through busy-ness and time. People move, routines change, and the bond that felt solid sort of loosens, quietly, and one day you realize you've lost someone you never meant to lose, without either of you knowing exactly when it happened. Researchers who have spent years studying what holds friendships together over time have found that the bonds people stay closest to are the ones they've actually talked about — out loud, on purpose, with each other. Not texted about. Not assumed. Talked about. The spoken thing holds. The unspoken thing drifts. That's not a moral judgment on either person. It's just how bonds work. And the good news is that it means one honest conversation can do more for a friendship than ten years of quiet assumption.
[The real citation - what friendship research found] I want to pause here and bring in something grounded, because I don't want this to feel like a nice story that only works in books. Researchers who study what holds friendships together over time — across cultures, across decades — keep finding the same thing: the friendships people describe as close and reliable are almost always ones where people have said, out loud, what they mean to each other. The bond that gets named survives moves, and busy years, and long stretches of not talking, because both people know what it is. The bond that stays assumed tends to fade without anyone meaning for it to. I want to be careful here — this is a general finding from a lot of work done over a long time, not a single number, not a single study. You can look into the research on friendship maintenance if you want the depth. But the main finding is something most of us already feel to be true in our own lives. The people you're closest to right now — somebody said something, at some point. Somebody named it. And now you both know.
[The pushback - 'this feels morbid. or too heavy.'] Now, I want to take a real objection seriously, because I hear it when people first read Book Four, and it's a fair one. Talking about who'd show up for you in a hard time — doesn't that feel morbid? Or too heavy? Like you're expecting the worst, or planning for a disaster, or making things weird with people you're just supposed to be normal friends with? I get it. There's something about saying 'I want you in my corner when life gets hard' that can feel like you're bringing a dark cloud into a sunny afternoon. It feels like too much. But here's what I want you to hold next to that feeling. You already do this for everything else in your life, and it doesn't feel morbid at all. You buy car insurance before you crash. You make sure your phone is charged before you go somewhere new. You keep a first-aid kit even when nobody in the house is hurt. None of that feels like expecting the worst. It feels like being a grown-up who takes care of things. What Ida did on that dock — fixing the net in the sunshine — wasn't sad. It was wise. And the conversation Book Four is asking you to have isn't heavy, either. It's exactly as heavy as you want to make it. You can say it lightly: you're someone I really count on, you know that? In most friendships, that line doesn't land with dread. It lands with a smile. And then something shifts.
[The aha - asking IS a gift] Here's the turn, and it's the one that changes everything for Lola. She went to her friend Marta — a woman she'd been close to for four years — and she said: I want you to know that if something hard happened to you, I would be there. No question. And I'd love to know I'm someone you'd call. She said it felt risky, saying it that plainly. But Marta went very still for a second, and then she said: I've wanted to say that to you for two years. I didn't know how to bring it up. That's the thing about an unspoken bond. Both people are often already holding it. One person just has to say it first. And when you do — when you turn to someone and offer that out loud — you're not asking for a favor. You're handing them something. You're giving them the gift of knowing they matter to you, on a plain Tuesday afternoon when nothing is wrong and there's no reason they would have guessed it today. You're also giving yourself something: the relief of knowing that the net is there, and it's been checked, and the knots are holding. That's not a burden you're putting on someone. That's warmth you're making real. And you do it in the calm, because the calm is when you can mean it without any panic in the words.
[What the quiet build looks like - not a project, just a habit] Now, I want to make sure this doesn't start to sound like a project. Because Book Four isn't asking you to sit down one evening and build a five-person circle plan with check-in schedules. That's not how people work, and it's not how bonds grow. What it's asking for is a shift in how you treat the ordinary moments. You're already talking to people you care about. You're already having the small conversations, the catching-up, the checking-in. Book Four is just asking you to let one or two of those moments go a little deeper than usual. To say the thing you meant to say but didn't. To name it. And then let it go back to being ordinary. The building happens that way — not in one big move, but in a handful of small spoken ones, spread across the quiet months. Lola says the hardest part wasn't the talking. It was giving herself permission to do it without waiting for a reason. She'd been waiting for a big moment that would make the conversation feel allowed. A crisis that would justify the depth. And the whole point of the book is that the big moment is the worst time to build. You build now, when there's no pressure and the words can come out easy, and then when the storm shows up the net is already there, already whole, already checked. You don't build it in the water. You build it on the dock.
[Turn it inward - who is already in your net?] Alright — let's bring this to you, for real. Because the whole point of any of this is what it does to your actual life, not to Lola's. So I want you to sit still for just a second, and I'm going to ask you three questions. Not as a quiz. Just as a mirror. First: if a genuinely hard thing happened in the next month — not a disaster you're planning for, just something hard, the kind that happens in any ordinary life — who would you call? Take a second and actually let a face or two come to mind. Second: do those people know they're your people? Have you told them out loud — not assumed it, but actually said it? Third: is there someone in your life who has been quietly showing up for you, the kind of person you'd want to keep close — and you've never quite told them so? There's almost always someone. A face just came to you, maybe. That face is where this starts. Not in a crisis. Not in a reason. Just in you, on a quiet afternoon, deciding that the bond is worth saying out loud. Because the net holds what's been tied. The rest just drifts along.
[This week - offer first] So here's your one thing this week — and notice how it starts. It starts with what you're going to give, not what you're going to ask for. Find one person in your life — someone you feel close to, someone you'd want in your corner — and this week, say the offering half first. Don't lead with 'would you be there for me.' Lead with: I want you to know I'm here for you. No matter what. I mean that. And then, lightly, let them know the door swings both ways: I'd love the same, if you ever need it. That's the whole move. Say what you mean to them. Say it out loud. Say the offering half first, because that's the give — and this whole book is built on the idea that a promise made in the calm, with a full heart and no panic behind it, is the kind that holds. You're not doing this because something is wrong. You're doing it because something is good, and you want to make sure it stays that way. That's Ida on the dock. That's the net in the sunshine. And one conversation like that — just one — changes the whole shape of the bond.
[Outro] So that's Book Four, and it's the most doable of all five. You don't build your circle in the storm. You build it here, in the quiet, one spoken thing at a time — starting with the offer, not the ask. The net holds when the knots have been tied. The bonds hold when the words have been said. You already know who matters to you. You just might not have told them yet. This week, tell one. And next time — the last episode in this run — we follow the whole thread all the way down to its center. The one closest bond. The first person you'd call. What actually makes a tie that strong enough to hold when everything else is shaking. Don't miss it. Watched over, as always, by Daisy. I'll see you there.