Sophie Lucido Johnson, cartoonist for The New Yorker and the author of Kin: The Future of Family.
Jill Riddell speaks with her colleague, Sophie Lucido Johson, about comedy, community, and the social science of friendship. In her new book, Kin: The Future of Family, Sophie encourages us to reenvision “family” as a much larger network — not just genetic relatives but also neighbors and friends.
We are living in an era that has the highest reported levels of loneliness, yet many forces encourage us to occupy more and more physical space and to spread out far apart from one another. In this episode, Sophie describes how taking up less physical space can be a radical act of restitution and care — both for ourselves and for the planet.
“Humor feels really good, and I think it’s important for people to do things that feel really good. Otherwise, you mess everything up for everybody else.”
– Sophie Lucido Johnson, cartoonist for The New Yorker and the author of Kin: The Future of Family
Learn More About Sophie
Buy and read Sophie’s books. The one most discussed in this Shape episode was Sophie’s most recent one, Kin: The Future of Family. That link will direct you to Amazon, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention how much more fun and aesthetically pleasing it will be for you to buy Kin at your local bookstore, or to ask them kindly to order a copy for you. (And if you do the latter—you get to have a social interaction! Bonus!)
Although those of us who make the Shape podcast all love Kin very much, Sophie’s new book didn’t showcase her funny cartoons and wonderful drawings quite as much as her other two previous books did. So here you go—links to those two:
And one more! Audible commissioned Sophie to write an Audible Original, an audiobook called Love Without Sex—that one is available only on their platform and is well worth it.
Sophie has an outstanding Instagram and a superb, thoughtful (and yes, funny!) Substack called “You’re Doing a Good Enough Job.” You can also see more of her work on her website.
