Everything Is Content - Everything In Conversation: The Millennial Fear Of Phone Calls

Episode Date: September 23, 2026

Pick up, EICallers… It’s your favourite podcast calling!In this week’s Everything In Conversation, we’re asking: is cold calling your friends the answer to sustaining a healthy friendship?In response to a new Cut piece by Kathleen Walsh titled ‘I Should Be Allowed to Cold-Call My Friends’, we’re pondering how and why we seem to be so averse to calling our friends out of the blue to have a good old natter. We consider all the benefits of phone calls, what we might be missing on without them, and discuss some ways to make a cold-call less anxiety-inducing. This is an independent podcast and the best ways you can support us are giving us a follow on your podcast player, dropping a review and following us on Instagram, TikTok and now Substack. Thank you for being here, and we’ll see you next week. Love, O, R, B x LINKS: THE CUT - I Should Be Allowed to Cold-Call My FriendsFOLLOW US: INSTAGRAM TIKTOK SUBSTACK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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forward slash EIC dash podcast. That's Swift, SWYFT to unlock your exclusive discount code. Do not worry. We'll leave the link in the bio and you'll even get an email with the pieces we handpicked when you sign up. I'm Beth. I'm Ruchera. And this is everything in conversation. An extra scoop of content on the Friday brownie. This week we're asking, is cold calling your friends the answer to sustaining a healthy relationship? But before we get into that, remember if you want to take part in the conversation, just follow us on Instagram, TikTok and now substack at Everything is ContentPod. That's where we share topics and ask for your thoughts or wax lyrical about topic in even more detail. Beth, how would you feel if I randomly called you on a Thursday afternoon?

To my shame, I think you would be reaching the O2. No! Heartbreak! We'll get into this, but listen, I want to change. Can I? I don't know. Oh, okay. Well, that went way worse than I anticipated. This week, we're dissecting a new cut piece called I Should Be Allowed to Call My Friends

by Kathleen Walsh. In it, the writer opens with a scenario in which her close friend moved away after having a baby. They're now caught in a back-and-forth text exchange asking. how the other is doing. But before she moved away, they used to spend evenings together guzzling wine and laughing about everything. Walsh writes, quote, but last month on a random Thursday afternoon, she called me to just say, hi. Once I picked up the phone and was assured that no one was in danger, it was like she was suddenly in the room with me again. There was no wine and we only talked for an hour, but our friendship felt like it used to, back when we didn't

have to rely on, quote, ha ha, reaction buttons for communications. Quote, I have so many friendships like this with people whose lives have become too unmanageably busy or who live far away for casual meetups, but those relationships have suffered with only textual exchanges of information to sustain them. What if, instead, we were all cold-calling each other just to shoot the breeze. In 2026, the polite thing to do is text witty observations, major life updates, or I missus. At best, you can schedule an official cash-up call like a board meeting. Meanwhile, text-based friendships often devolve into a steady exchange of memes that can go on for years before eventually withering her way into nothingness.

Friendships cannot subsist on heart emojis alone, she adds. The writer brings in the cultural stereotypes of millennials fearing phone calls. She also notes that on a few occasions a recipient has jumped straight to, Is everything okay after assuming something catastrophic must have happened for her to phone out of the blue, which I will clarify. That is probably what I would think. I would answer your phone call, but I would immediately think, oh my God. I was going to say, what if I was dying?

canceled. This is it. My obligation, but I think my heart rate would be up. And then you'd be like, I'm to call a chat and I'd be like, brilliant. Let me lie down. Oh, no. Let me take a beta blocker quickly. Precisely. And I think that is the problem. We're so out of practice doing it. And that would be my issue. I'd be like, I don't have the muscle memory for this. And my brain is automatically gone. The fuck is going on. This is so unusual. And that is on me, but it's also on technology. Are you a cold caller of friends and family? I only do it to my parents.

We never schedule time to call, and they've always kind of, the onus has always been on me to give them a call whenever I'm free because they have this narrative that I'm always busy, which is not true, I do nothing. But I think it's like a parent thing

to be like, oh, they're always so busy to ring. You know, you just ring when you're free. I've not really done it to friends before, but reading this piece, I have a really black and white feeling, which is we're all losers and we have to start cold calling each other. I completely agree.

If this was Subway Takes, I would say 100% agree. No part of me is pushing back on this. I think we all need to start cold calling each other. I think texting is rubbish. I think it's low nutrient grade communication. I hate it. It also, and this is me problem, it also opens up so much anxiety for me in terms of misreading things,

how something is taken. and it creates all of these worries. And those are things that I should deal with and I am. But I've heard from loads of people that they feel exactly the same. So why are we putting ourselves through this? It is so true. And I do just feel like we've forgotten what phones were for, which was to be in contact, easy contact,

and to kind of streamline and be in touch. And we got so many great messages. I'm really heartened by how many people are like, fuck yes. Frere wrote, oh my God, yes. It's the only actually social thing you can use. use your phone for, which is really, it's an interesting way of putting it because, and I do think I sort of agree as much as I do love staying in touch with people on a really low stakes. Maybe we don't have much to give today, but I will send you this meme or I'll send you this nice message,

so you don't have to speak aloud or whatever. I think she's kind of right that in terms of actually socializing, hearing one another's voice or even seeing one another's face on FaceTime as well, that is the only crossover with like real socializing for a lot of people. I mean, there are caveats to that completely. But if you're a person that socializes in person at all or have built relationships in person, to sustain those, I do think it often does require a exchange of voice and taking the time. Maybe we're just obsessed with the convenience of like, I'll get to it when I want to, my phone is this demand on me and another thing. And actually it's like not another thing. This is what it's for. Yeah. It was funny just being reminded of that. I felt the same. When I read that

message, I thought, oh yeah, a phone is meant to call. And I know that sounds so stupid and so just like, okay, your brain cells have clearly left the building. But because texting has become such a dominant use for our phone and just the typing, it almost feels like using it to call, using it to FaceTime, all these other avenues or purposes for it have fallen so low down on the reasons why I pick it up that it's so easy to forget that that that used to. be the dominant point of a phone that used to be why we phone each other. So I just felt very, very dumb re-remembering that. I love the message from Claire, and it also made me think, I wonder if this is a gendered thing. She said, my husband is chronically offline and hates texting.

We have friends all over who we don't see all the time, so he does just phone them randomly. It's normally around maybe a birthday or an occasion, but he would rather do that than a message. while I'm the opposite and couldn't tell you the last time I spoke to anyone on the phone outside of work, maybe not a gendered thing, maybe more just if you're more likely to have tech in your life, I think you're more likely to kind of accept that people just message each other all the time, whereas I think the people who are really adamantly never on their phone, they just really never want to pick it up, they are the people I know in my life who are more likely to just call me out the blue. They don't really accept the texting back and forth. They would

much rather just either pick up the phone or send one text and say, are you free next week? And it's very straight to the point of spending time with me. I think Carl Corning is great because it does just make the phone a less frightening thing and also changes the narrative of like reminding us that's what it's for. That is what a phone is for. It's why millennials will do the sort of like the hand signal for phones like two like thumb and and pinkies to the ear. And then. then like younger people will do like the flat hand. We remember what a phone used to be for. You would hold it to it and you would talk. You'd be on that home phone. Your dad would be pissed off because you've run up the phone bill. Someone else couldn't go on the computer, the family

computer. I mean, it was a simpler time, which is maybe why I'm finding it's so interesting that millennials are getting singled out. And it's not because I disagree. I'm just like, what happened to us? We were the kind of last teenage generation that would have relied on a phone that lived in the living room or even was plugged into the wall to talk to friends just before the mobile phone boom. Is it that soon that we have been corrupted by the new way of doing things with smartphones? I mean, I say, is it that soon? It has been about 20 years. But still, I was really interested in that. And I thought, well, if it was just us, if Gen X are doing fine and boomers are doing fine, does that mean that maybe we're a standalone generation

and then younger generations might pick it up and be better on for using phones for what they're meant to be for or what they were meant to be for. I can't really imagine it because I do think surely Gen Z and Jen Alpha are not calling each other up more than we are. I don't know. Meg Messaged and said I feel like it's starting up in my friend group, see who picks up vibe, more of it please. And maybe there's hope for the kids and maybe we're the lost generation. Maybe they will be peak socialising, will be. We'll be peak socialising. be the people just knocking, knocking on the door next door to see if somebody will talk to us for a second and then just hiding back in our hovels. I don't know. Like you said, Claire's message, I really was interested in the idea that men are quite good on the phone or some men, because maybe in my head I was being a bit down on them, but men definitely won't do this. But actually, they will. And I do think it's just that willingness to interrupt someone's day as the wrong way of saying it. But I'm really like, I can't do that. They're probably busy. And it's like, well, and they'll just say, oh, I'm busy. I'm busy. I'll call you back, is everything okay, or they'll send your text being like, I'm doing this, that and the other.

Or they'll answer and they'll be free. Like, no outcome there is a bad one. In no outcome will I have to lay down and die. I think maybe it's an anxious person's thing as well. And it's like, but you're talking to a friend, but anxiety obviously does not discriminate. It doesn't, it doesn't follow the logic. And I think I'm always thinking I am putting people out. Whereas when people call me and it is, I'd say it's my friend Bingo, EG, Mr. Bingo that continues to do it knowing I probably won't pick up. But also he knows that I might, or at least I might ring him back. He continues to do it. And he's, I guess, the generation above us. And maybe, again, it's a generational thing. It's such a lovely thing. And he never takes it personally.

He's not like, oh, well, I guess I'm hated. He's like, all right, I'll ring someone else. That is the attitude to have. I think that's exactly it. I think if anyone was going to welcome back this way of communicating, It has to be easy come, easy go. It has to be quite fluid. It can't be, I'm ringing this person.

There's so much expectation on their response because then it does become quite a pressured thing every time you do it. And then if you don't get a callback, then it becomes a big confirmation to your anxiety that, you know, this person doesn't want to spend time with me, blah, blah, blah. All these like the internal dialogue then get stronger.

I think it's more about reducing the pressure, just making it feel like the equivalent of breathing an air, oh, I'm just going to give somebody a ring on a rogue thought that you remember them and you want to check in with them. I think it has to be as casual as that. Yeah. We had so many messages from people who are parents or friends with new parents, and it seems like the cold call is particularly good for that relationship. We had a message from somebody anon who said, as a new parent, it was is voice notes that kept my friendships alive. Podcast length, voice notes. At some point, we all started taking notes during each other's voice notes to ensure we all replied to the relevant

topics, lull. And Philippa said, quote, was thinking of you, how are you? For a new mum can be the make or break of friends. And then Emma said, new parent and always doing the cold call now, don't be phased if no answer though. And I do think we've spoken about the kind of orchestrated discord between new mums and friends who don't have children. Some of it is very legitimate feelings of, you know, transition in friendships and others, I think, is very much a culture war that is being inflamed online. I think if you really want a tangible thing of how to bridge that connection, it is just changing communication styles and something like a cold call. We've just heard from several people saying it really is amazing for bridging that gap. So I really appreciated

people saying that actually. We didn't really have a lot of people that were like hugely anti, but just people going, it does make me worried. Same as me. It does alarm something in me and it makes me feel under pressure and like, oh God, what's going on? This is unusual. And that is a, it's very valid. But I also think it's just one of the things that will go away with practice, especially with the context of, oh, yes, a lot of people actually don't want to be on their phones all the time or they don't get a lot of time to physically leave the house. They're in a season of life where the demand on them from family or work is high. This is a way that I could maintain my friendship. I need to get over it. But, I do, I was reading our messages and Hannah said a call out of the blue does initially give me a

sense of dread that it's an emergency because so few people call these days. I'd be so happy to have a random chat with people most of the time, the exception being at work cold calling me without any inclination of what they need for me beforehand. I think maybe it is that we all now locate our work on our phones and we do have, my brain does not know how to separate a call or an email or a message. Like people use to send each other lovely long emails, but now I'd go, work. Someone needs something from me. Something bad has happened. I'm, this is going to be pressure on me. This is going to be hard. This is going to be bad. I do think it is about mentally separating out what the tone of it is and being like, I'm allowed to reclaim my phone as something that is social, something that wins me

back a bit of the loveliness of being alive, which is talking shit with my friends, talking about nothing in particular or maybe everything in particular. And I just, I understand people that are like, no, never. Because I am in my heart of heart, someone's like, oh, I don't want to. I just, I think I'm realizing as I got older, the years pass quite quickly and you realize, fuck, I've not seen this person in a long time. And you exchange, like it says in the piece, like little, you know, happy birthdays, hello's big news that delivered via social media on text, but you never quite know the silly little things that have gone on, like the little fight or the breakthrough or the really funny thing they saw or the strange little dog or whatever it is that is like.

is made up of. And I do, I think, sadly, the only way we all live such dispersed lives is to get comfortable talking on the phone and also to get comfortable having the phone not answered or just like taking a deep breath and having someone go, oh God, who's died? And you're like, no one. But our friendship will if we don't talk to each other on the phone, just a little bit more. Yeah. It is, I think, a seemingly simple, maybe difficult in getting yourself to it, but a very simple answer to a lot of the feelings and a lot of the discussions that we always talk about, which is sustaining our friendship, managing transitional periods, managing people's busyness levels. It always feels like people are busy at different times in my experience.

And the minute that I'm really feeling like, oh, you know, I'm in a place where I really am missing these people, it always feels like you're never really aligning on when people are feeling in that place and then you're super busy. I think a phone call's just. the easiest thing. I also did put out the question, if people think that sex, sexting, oh my God, if people think, maybe, maybe that's the way to sustain a friendship. No, if texting, texting, can keep friendship going. And we had a few different answers. Most people seem to think that it's a stopgap between meeting up regularly. Michelle message and said, I think you can sustain friendships over text. I think this is just part of the new reality of how humans communicate.

Human social interactions have irrevocably changed due to technology, something I find myself thinking about often, and this is, fortunately or not, part of our new normal. I also believe nothing beats face-to-face interaction, and I don't think it ever will, as these are the kinds of social interactions we have evolved for and learned through role modelling and interaction for thousands of years. But at the end of the day, humans are storytellers, and we always find a way to tell stories to each other to create bonds, be that via text message, voice notes, or sharing memes and reels, that voice shared feelings. And I thought that was a really apt and also very smart way of looking at this scenario. I think I am really guilty, and I've done a bit of it in this chat,

of demonizing, texting, and I think it's just because of how it makes me personally feel. I don't think it has to be the demon, you know, low-grade communication that I said it was for everyone. That is just how I feel about it and how it makes me feel. I think if you're somebody who really has these deep bonds and you do send essay texts or you just send these, you know, one-liners when you're in a back and forth with somebody and you feel really fed. That is really beautiful and that's amazing. I do think this has to be kind of a not one rule for everyone, but at the same time, I know I'm pretty, black and white on it because I think I've been looking for an answer on how to have really healthy friendships and I've just found that texting, I really struggle with it. Something that I would think about as well is like we've got so many more connections than one might have had 100 years ago, 200 years ago that it's really difficult. We did have a, in our friendship episode, I'm sure we talked about this and just like we don't just have, it's not as clear now the tiers of friendship, but these are my closest friends. This is my, you know, my good friend. These are my, my good friend. These are

acquaintances, these people I really enjoy seeing, but we don't need to catch up in between when we might run into each other and maybe I won't see them for five years and that'll be fine. Now, because they're all just like people in my phone, people I follow, people whose lives I see updates of, maybe we're all getting a bit confused about who we should be prioritising and who deserves the phone call or who we should be kind of peppering our online interactions with more in real life interactions because everyone's so busy. And I think we've just gotten a little bit confused about where to allocate our time, especially as people have so little time. And you're just like, who do I owe a phone call to? Whereas I think more of what it should be is like,

who would I love to speak to? Who would I love to see in person, but maybe can't? Okay, maybe the phone calls the next best thing. And it's not absolutely everyone in your phone book, but it is that like top tier, best friends, people that you would be devastated to reach the end of life and be like, we drifted versus every Tom, Dick and Simon that you may. met and like, those people, you don't have to cold call them, but do maybe make a list of like, maybe this is an episode where we come away with homework. And I know that that's not why people listen to the podcast, but maybe it's the kind of thing where we don't go fully cold, but each of us who is a bit intrigued by this idea and goes, yeah, I do miss a few people in my life,

go like, okay, who can I lukewarm call? Who can I say, do have a call this week for 15 minutes when you're walking somewhere or when I am? If I ring you this week, will you not panic? And if you can answer, do, I won't, you know, it's not that I'm calling to talk career off for like one million minutes. But it's like I have got this drive coming up or I have got don't phone and drive. Use your hands free. Or I've got this walk that I need to do. I've got this boring errand. Can I put you in my headphones and talk to you for this amount of time? Are you free? I think that maybe mine, I'll try Mr. Bingo because I've got so many miss calls from him. And I know he's such. He is just not even remotely. He's fantastic a phone calls. Maybe I'll say to him,

okay, brace yourself. This is not a drill. I'm going to call you this week. I don't know, I think that could be quite good I mean, I am seeing him this week but maybe that's a nice thing maybe I'll call him on the way to seeing him and that is a nice little practice run. Oh, that's so cute. I think that's good.

If you do that, then I'll do one two this week and we can report back next week. And if we haven't, what's the punishment? Oh. We have to call two people and it goes on and on like that Oh, not interest rates. Oh, God.

The punishment for being uncommunicative is more communication. Okay, we have to do it then. Listeners, you too. We also had a few messages from people who maybe, if they don't do cold calling, did have some very sweet ways that they connect with friends or they kind of do halfway points, much like you just said now about, you know, soft launching a call. Claire said, we send short update videos every Wednesday as it's nice to hear their voice

without the pressure of the call. I thought that was so, so cute and so sweet. Rachel said, my best friend and I send voice notes, Marco Polos, whenever we're in a car alone, roughly five to six a week. We can't call if she has four teens and I have two toddlers, so we're never free at the same time. And Alice said, my friend moved to Australia almost a year ago and we send weekly video memos on WhatsApp. I think that is so cute. It's like a date. You're scheduling at a routine date with your friend like you would if you were, you know, searching for a romantic partner or if you have a romantic partner. And I think I've said

this before, the lines between what you do for a partner and what you do for a friend or the ways you prioritise partner should, I think, be basically 100% the same way you treat a friend, apart from all the sexual stuff, unless you want to do that. I think everything else should be the same. I think having slightly romantic, you know, acts of service, thoughtful text, I'm thinking of you, how are you doing? Or just like, I don't know, like mementos, things like that. I think it's really nice to incorporate those things into friendships. And I think more people are doing that. I think women do that more. But I also think we maybe don't talk about it being romance. But I think it's also nice to use that language as well, you know?

This is it. I mean, it's the village starts or the village should start way before people have children. And the lack of village is for non-mothers and parents and single people. And it really does begin a lot sooner than that. And I do, I think this is a way to give two people. It's a way to signal, I like you, and I like hearing about you, and the little daily machinations of your life are interesting to me, and I'm someone you can share your life with. Because at the end of the day, like, is friendship just a feeling of like,

I really like that person? Or is it in action? And I do say this, knowing how busy modern life is and how intentionally busy it is. We are all very atomized and we are separated. But in those little breakthrough moments, I think that is how we show someone that we love them. And there were so many great little lines in this piece. But one that I loved, it was, quote, but imagine you happen to call your friend while she's in the middle of a boring chore or a mind of scroll. Now, instead of deepening your parasycial relationship with whatever podcaster or TikTok influencer, you would otherwise be listening to, you're nurturing your relationship with a real live human who you know.

That's the magic of the spontaneous phone call. It's liberating not to have to wait for Sunday brunch or long scheduled after work drinks to gossip about co-worker, vent about family or recap an entire episode of Real Housewives of Rhode Island with amateur accent work, end quote. Which I think that was so beautiful. And I just thought, oh, that's right, actually. I'm so often thinking of my life as here's a work day. But in two weeks, I've got this lovely, you know, I'm in the desert of work in modern life. But then I've got this oasis coming up where I'm going to be with my friends for 24 hours or four hours.

or whatever. And I do think maybe we pepper in some of those little oases into our lives. And we just don't feel guilty about it. We don't feel shittier they don't answer. We don't feel shitty if they are too busy or they are just like at their limit and we have to text. But we just open. It's just like opening the door. That is how to badly phrase Leonard Cohen. That's how the light gets in through those little cracks. Oh, I love that. And I guess one point on being on the receiving end, if you see your phone light up and you're, apart for being worried that somebody's got some bad news, apart from that, if you have that sinking feeling of just feeling like, oh, I don't know if I have a conversation in me right now, I'm quite tired, it's been a exhausting week. I will say,

genuinely 10 out of 10 times I've ever had a call. I've never felt, oh, that's left me depleted by the end of it. I've only ever felt energized. I've only ever felt closer to the person. I've only ever felt like, oh, God, there was a secret option C that would make my bad mood feel better and I would never have gone for it myself, but look how it's landed in my lap. It always happens. I always feel like, when I feel in a really bad mood, seeing somebody or having a plan that I really want to cancel, but I don't, I turn up, I come back and I'm like, thank God. You know, thank goodness for connection. Thank goodness for that. It's always the answer to everything, even if it feels like the last thing. I think we could do a whole episode on cancelling plans.

And actually, I think we should. On the idea of like you, it actually was always worth doing, It reminds me of that advice. I read it somewhere once that someone said, if ever you, there's someone at your door you don't want to talk to, just put on a coat and a hat. And then you can go, oh, I'm just going out, but I've got a few minutes. Maybe have that mindset of like, you want the phone, you go, oh, lovely shit, I've only got 10 minutes, but should we,

or I've only got five minutes, but we love to you to fill that. That way you're not, you're soaking in every moment. You've got the outs. You've got the hard out, but you can be, you can make that connection, even when you're in the mood of like, I just don't want to talk to anyone. Things are really hard. I'm just not feeling social.

it's kind of like you have to be a bit social. You actually have to make yourself uncomfortable sometimes. That is the cost of community, etc, etc. Maybe you put the metaphorical hat on. Or if you ring someone and go, I've got five minutes, do you have five minutes? Everyone knows they're on the same page. Most people do have five minutes and you both leave the conversation being like, either it goes on longer and that's wonderful or you've actually just made contact.

Five minutes is so much better than nothing. And loads of us, I think, are going a long stretch on our life with nothing. And we could. And again, it's like a tally sheet. at the end of your life, imagine all those five-minute phone conversations. And you're like, God, I got 45 extra hours with someone I loved and not to be all doom and gloom and like, you'll die one day. But like, most of us will.

It's like the seasoning on life. God, I'm actually for someone that opened this conversation. We brought you to the upside. Ask me the question again. Ask me the question from the top. Okay, okay. Beth, how would you feel if I wrung you on a random Thursday? I would answer the phone, terrified, but happy.

to talk to you because that is what life is all about. Oh, we got there. We did it, Joe. My intervention has worked. You still won't get a voice note though. That's fine. Thank you so much for listening and for all of your opinions and takes on this topic. We love being in cold, call conversation with you all. We've got a podcast. It is basically a cold call, but the other person's on mute. Remember to go back and listen to our last episode, which was about the adultification of Northwest. We'll see you as always on Friday. Bye! Bye!