The Beauty of Doing Nothing Together

This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.There are times you meet friends for a long-planned dinner. And then there are times you invite them over just to hang out while you fold laundry. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate the second option.Friendship in adulthood can feel like a feat of organization. We meet for brunch, make dinner reservations weeks in advance, or spend days trying to find a time that works for everyone. The activity itself becomes the point. Julie Beck recently wrote about the other kind of social life: one built around doing nothing in particular. Maybe you’re sitting on a couch while a friend answers emails, talking while someone packs for a trip, helping prep dinner. What you’re doing hardly matters. What matters is inviting someone into the ordinary parts of your life instead of waiting for an occasion that feels worthy of an invitation.Today’s newsletter explores how some of the best time we spend with other people happens not when we’ve planned something special, but when we simply make room for them in the middle of an ordinary day.On TogethernessFold Laundry With Me!By Julie Beck The case for a lower-stakes social life Read the article.Americans Need to Party MoreBy Ellen Cushing We’re not doing it as much as we used to. You can be the change we need. (From 2025) Read the article.The Friendship ParadoxBy Olga Khazan We all want more time with our friends, but we’re spending more time alone. (From 2024) Read the article.Still Curious? The anti-social century: Americans are now spending more time alone than ever, Derek Thompson wrote last year. It’s changing our personalities, our politics, and even our relationship to reality. The friend-group fallacy: Many people yearn for a crew, but having one is not actually the norm, Jenny Singer writes. Other Diversions The Americans