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A professor assigned friendship. Literally.
A friendship class, vintage Crock-Pot recipes, and some rules you’re allowed to break.
Greg Sullivan
October 23, 2026 • Est. Reading Time: 4 minutes
“Friendship is born at the moment when one man says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought that no one but myself ...’”
― C.S. Lewis
Happy Friday! Professor Justin Vaughn has an unusual assignment for his students: make a friend. Emily Shiffer cracks open a vintage Crock-Pot cookbook, and Ryan Reed questions a few rules we’ve been following without asking why. Add a feathered reader favorite and some little blue birthday creatures, and we’ve got ourselves a weekend.
Health
Friendship 101 is officially in session.
If you're of a certain age, your memory of the start of a college class might involve a poor professor hollering for everyone to sit down and shut up. Today, I'm told, you're more likely to find a silent room full of students glued to their phones. Somewhere along the way, getting students to stop talking became getting them to start.
Professor Justin Vaughn noticed the change, and it worried him. With loneliness becoming an increasingly common part of college life, he wondered whether students were missing out on something much bigger than classroom chatter. So he created a college course devoted entirely to friendship.
Vaughn describes a class where students go on friendship safaris, share meals with classmates, and receive actual assignments designed to help them connect. (Imagine getting homework for your social life.) But behind the unconventional curriculum is a surprisingly simple insight into how friendships are formed, and why so many of us struggle to make new ones.
These winds have forced the witchy crowd to improvise, as this spooky shot by GOOD reader Kathy McMahon shows.
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Which activity sounds like the best way to make a new friend?Assume everyone involved is nice and nobody's trying to sell you anything. |
And what did we learn?
In yesterday's issue, we shared a story about world maps and how they can distort our understanding of geography.
And we asked: Which country has the longest coastline in the world?
Only 32.6% of you knew the answer was Canada! With its enormous Arctic archipelago and thousands of islands, our neighbors to the north have more coastline than any other country. Australia was the most popular wrong answer.
Australia (35.8%)
Indonesia (16.8%)
Canada (32.6%) ✅✅
Russia (14.7%)
Nostalgia | Courtesy of Upworthy
 | ||
The Rival Crock-Pot debuted in 1971, along with its original cookbook. | ||
The Crock-Pot debuted in 1971. These 8 original recipes are nostalgic American classics. | ||
From roasts to ham and scalloped potatoes, these ’70s recipes will fill you up. | ||
By Emily Shiffer | ||
Slow cooker season officially arrives as temperatures drop. It’s the signal for Americans to dig out their beloved Crock-Pots. | ||
The branded slow cookerdebuted in 1971 at the National Housewares Show in Chicago. Previous versions of the modern-day model have been in use since the 19th century, according to Smithsonian Magazine. But an inventor named Irving (Nachumsohn) Naxon patented his slow cooker in 1940. He called it the Naxon Beanery. | ||
When he retired, he sold his company, Naxon Utilities, to Rival Manufacturing in Kansas City. Rival then hard-launched its Rival Crock-Pot in 1971. | ||
The Crock-Pot craze took off, and Rival released a Crock-Pot cookbook for users to enjoy. Below are eight original recipes that became American classics and are still appreciated today. | ||
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Culture
These tiny acts of rebellion unlock shocking amounts of freedom.
When we’re kids and don’t understand why something is the way it is, the grownups often just say “because” and expect us to take it. And we do. It’s the way it is, get used to it, kid. We get trained out of asking “why,” but according to this story by Ryan Reed, we might want to get back into the habit.
Why do I have to explain why I’m not coming into work today? Why do I have to sit through the rest of this movie I’m hating? Why do I have to drink coffee every morning? Well… you don’t. One commenter summed it up perfectly: quitting something that sucks is “maximum freedom.”
The common thread isn’t laziness or selfishness. It’s boundaries. And once you see how many so-called rules are optional, it’s hard to unsee.
Who’s a GOOD boy/girl?
Image of the Day has its own lane, but the pet pics keep arriving, and I am not made of stone. So every Friday, I’ll share one reader-submitted photo of a favorite pet. Want yours featured? Send it along.
A week or so back, I lamented that dogs were getting all the love in this space. The cats just weren’t showing up. (That has been rectified; my inbox overfloweth with feline photos.) GOOD reader Debbie, however, made an excellent point: Not every fur baby has fur, and she sent this colorful critter to make her case. Point taken, Debbie, and heartily agreed.
On this day in 1958, the Smurfs made their debut in the Belgian comics magazine Spirou, playing supporting roles in cartoonist Peyo’s medieval adventure series Johan and Peewit. The little blue scene-stealers had their own stories by the following year, beginning a journey that would eventually take them into toy boxes and Saturday-morning cartoons around the world.
Their peculiar language had an equally modest beginning: according to Peyo, he once forgot the French word for salt while eating with fellow cartoonist André Franquin and asked him to pass the “schtroumpf.” The two kept substituting the nonsense word into their conversation, and a running joke became a defining feature of Peyo’s creations. The Dutch translation gave us “Smurf,” a considerable kindness to English-speaking children.
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Until next week, remember you don’t have to be enrolled in a class to do a little work on your friendships!