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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We will end today with a call-in on the question: what did you eat and what did you talk about at your Friendsgiving over the weekend? 212-433-WNYC. What was the vibe? What was the talk at the table? What was on the menu? Report on your 2025 Friendsgiving, and maybe you can say what makes a good Friendsgiving. Why do you have Friendsgiving? Maybe you'll inspire other listeners to have one. 212-433-WNYC. You can call or you can text, 212-433-9692.

Now, for those of you who don't know what that is, you're saying, "What, Friendsgiving?" The word kind of defines itself, but with Thanksgiving coming up next week for a lot of people, that means one thing on the weekend or two prior, and that is Friendsgiving. The unofficial warm-up, you might call it, the practice round, and also the chance to gather differently with the people who you may be most connected with voluntarily in your life or day-to-day in your life before everyone scatters to families, airports, long drives.

We are inviting you to say, what did you eat and what did you talk about at your Friendsgiving over the weekend? 212-433-WNYC. What was the vibe? What were people talking about around the table? What was on the menu, and what makes a good Friendsgiving in the first place? Maybe you'll inspire other listeners to have one. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can call or you can text.

Maybe your Friendsgiving got political, and that's one of the reasons we're asking, since we talk politics a lot on this show. Did Trump come up? Mayor-elect Mamdani? The Epstein files? New York City casinos, maybe? Perhaps no one touched politics with a 10-foot pole, and it was all cozy sweaters and second helpings, but I don't think so. Tell everyone how the political world played or didn't play into your Friendsgiving hang.

My guess would be that it's easier to talk politics at a Friendsgiving hangout than an actual Thanksgiving, because for better or worse, people tend to be friends these days with people with similar politics, whereas your family, by definition, is not a collection of people you've come to know by choice. If you have to decide at Thanksgiving how carefully you're going to tiptoe around your red state uncle or whichever direction the political divide may go among your relatives, probably not as much of a thing at Friendsgiving, I would imagine. You tell us. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

About those helpings, what did people actually cook? Was it a full turkey or something totally different, like the Samin Nosrat buttermilk baked chicken? Someone I know had at a Friendsgiving on Sunday. Someone else I know said they had the best ricotta pie of all time at a Friendsgiving on Saturday. Was there a dish that totally stole the show or totally flopped, or did you just order in? If your Friendsgiving is still coming up this weekend, tell us what you're planning. What's on your menu for then?

Are you trying something new this year, either as an interactive game or for food? Does food play a different role at Friendsgiving than at Thanksgiving? Whether yours already happened or it's still in the planning stage, how was your Friendsgiving, or how will it be? What was the talk of the table? What's cooking? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call in and talk to your Brian Lehrer Show friends, your fellow listeners. 212-433-9692. You can call or you can text. We'll take them right after this.

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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to your Friendsgiving calls. Oh, look, Fran in Queens is having Friendsgiving today. Fran, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Fran: Hi. I'm so excited. A first-time caller. I am calling from our company, RF Wilkins Consultants. We're having our Friendsgiving today. We're a local Jamaica, Queens company. We work on mega infrastructure work like JFK redevelopment. It's so amazing because we've been doing it every single year with the staff internally. Just our body of staff represent over 15 different cultures and nationalities and backgrounds. We call ourselves the United Nations, and everybody brings food from their culture. It's a really fun thing. I am the CEO, and this is my first year participating, so I'm excited.

Brian: Now, wait, is this really Friendsgiving, or is this your company holiday party?

Fran: Oh, no. [laughs] We call it the company potluck. No, it's not our holiday party. We do a holiday party every year in December. That's a whole other thing, and it's really fun. This is truly a Friendsgiving.

Brian: It sounds like you have a great culture at your company. Say again what it is.

Fran: RF Wilkins Consultants.

Brian: Fran, thank you very much. I hope it goes great. Erin in Montclair, who I think is going to make a segue from our Andy Kim segment with her Friendsgiving. Hi, Erin.

Erin: Hi there. The question, but not just Thanksgiving or Friendsgiving, it's what everyone's talking about in Montclair all the time, is a special election, which is happening on December 9th, to help solve a $20 million deficit that our Board of Education has gotten us into. It's all anybody talks about anywhere ever, including Friendsgiving.

Brian: You want to give me the 22nd version of why you think there is such a big deficit in Montclair schools, a town with a lot of fairly well-off people, I think.

Erin: I think it's mismanagement in a single word, mismanagement, misuse, malpractice. One word, I'll say mismanagement. It's just been run by people who have been brought in for unknown reasons, kept for even further unknown reasons, and then just kept digging us deeper into a hole. Mikie Sherrill endorsed it last night. She says we need a state monitor to get the heck out of it, and I couldn't agree more.

Brian: Talking about deficit over the stuffing in the cranberry sauce. Doug in Manhattan had a Friendsgiving. Hey, Doug, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Doug: Hi, Brian. Long time, second or third time calling. Actually, it was in Queens this year, because one friend moved in with his partner in Queens. We've been there the last two years, but this is something that we started a few years ago, originally on Thanksgiving. Now, it doesn't always work out to do it on the day, so we do it before. Anyway, had all the traditional things, turkey, fantastic stuffing. My friend makes this great cranberry chutney with port wine, fantastic. We had four different pies, [chuckles] and it was a food fest.

With a lot of politics, especially everybody's excited about Mamdani coming in, we were all very hopeful about what he's going to be able to accomplish. Some discussion of our current situation with our current president, who I won't name, and then a lot of discussion. We're all very much into music and theater and the arts in general. Just discussing everything.

Brian: Was there any one cultural offering that was especially the buzz?

Doug: No, we're just different theater things that people had seen lately, and that was it.

Brian: Doug, thank you. Thank you very much. Here's the text. "My best friend hosts Friendsgiving in Brooklyn every year, and it has become my favorite hang that our friend group has all year. We all love to cook, and there's an array of non-traditional dishes. This year's highlight was short rib, broccoli, and a fantastic sweet potato dish. She made a speech at the start of the meal about how each of us has grown over the past year. It's a grounding reminder of chosen family before we all break off into our semi-dysfunctional," with a smiley face, "family units."

Another one questions one of the phrases I used in the talk up. It says, "Since when is Friendsgiving a practice round? It's for people who can't or don't want to go home on Thanksgiving. For queer people, it's a safe place to be yourself on the holiday. Harry in Long Branch, on WNYC. Hi, Harry.

Harry: Hi, Brian. First-time caller, a proud sustaining member.

Brian: Thank you.

Harry: I'm having a Friendsgiving this weekend with-- It's kind of an international flair. My husband's an immigrant from Germany, and our neighbors down here in the Jersey Shore are from France and Australia, respectively. We get together. We've done it a number of years and introduced them, for the first time, to some of the American traditions, and we really enjoy it. Some of the things that we have in the menu are this pineapple stuffing that my aunt, Doris, always makes, and something that's really unique and kind of weird is enjoying cranberry sauce out of the can with the ridges on it.

Brian: Out of the can with the ridges on it. Why?

Harry: Because that's how my mother always served it. [laughs]

Brian: Oh, I see. Oh, you don't eat it right out of the can. It just comes out in that mold.

Harry: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. It has the shape of the can when you dump it out, and you just slice it up.

Brian: [chuckles] Harry, thank you very much. Reswama in Syracuse, you're on WNYC. Hello, Reswama.

Reswama: Hi. This is my first time on the radio, so I'm really excited.

Brian: I am excited to have you. I see you had your first Friendsgiving.

Reswama: I did. I hosted my first Friendsgiving, which was really exciting. I was very anxious and nervous, but it all turned out very well. It was a combination of my partner and my family and friends, so it was really great having a gathering of two different groups of people.

Brian: Why did you do it? If you've never done it in the past, what motivated you to host the first Friendsgiving?

Reswama: We're living in a very different and divisive time, so I wanted to bring in two different groups of people and have more conversations. I think now more than ever, we need community, and we need to build community, so I wanted to build my own community and bring in everyone that I know and my partner knows, and continue building on that community. It was really great. Also, it was catered by Wegmans, so shout out to Wegmans, and so I didn't have to do as much work.

In Syracuse, I don't know if you know, but we have our first Black woman mayor, and it's so exciting. We were talking about representation and how important it is, especially with Zohran Mamdani in the city, and as a South Asian myself. It's so exciting, and representation is so important, community is so important.

Brian: Funny, Albany, too, where I used to live, first Black woman mayor just elected this year. Reswama, thank you. Call us again. One more, Kathy in Port Jefferson, we've got 30 seconds for your upcoming, I see, Friendsgiving story. Hi.

Kathy: Coming this Saturday, I met three friends, and my husband and I, we're supporting a very small barbecue place out here in Long Island called Struggletown. As soon as there was a problem with the SNAP things and all, Struggletown offered free sandwiches and a drink to anyone who had a problem with SNAP, and we'd like to support them. That's what we're going to do.

Brian: That is so neat, patronizing the place that helped people out during the troubles, which aren't totally over, but at least they're over on paper. Kathy, thank you very much. Thanks to all of you for your Friendsgiving calls. That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen produces our daily politics podcast. We had Juliana Fonda and Milton Ruiz at the audio controls. Amanda DeJesus and Miranda Santos are our interns this term. Stay tuned for Alison.

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