About
Friendship,
the third kind of love.
Two best friends, 26 years deep, making the case that platonic love deserves investment and care.
The thesis
A love letter to the friendships that raised us.
There are endless resources for romantic relationships: couples therapy, date nights, love languages, vacations. And with family, there's an expectation of shared holidays and relationships that last forever. But platonic love — the friendships that have carried us through everything — rarely gets that same care and investment.
The Third Thing says: it should.
We're Michelle and Danyelle, best friends for 26 years, and this podcast is where we name and confront the topics that challenge us in platonic relationships. Friendship and race, money, sobriety, politics, when we drift or break up, and the jealousy nobody admits to. Here is where we spill the tea from our hurdles, and offer up the tools we've learned along the way.
This is all about the other love. Pull up a chair — we saved you a seat.
We name the hard things
Race, money, sobriety, politics, drifting, jealousy — the conversations friendships usually avoid.
We bring the tools
Therapist-informed, spirit-led, and lived-in. Practical ways to tend the relationships that hold you.
We save you a seat
This is a table, not a stage. Pull up a chair — there's room, and we mean it.
Co-host · Co-founder · Co-conspirator
Danyelle Caruthers, ASW, MPA
she/they
Danyelle is co-host, co-founder, and co-conspirator of The Third Thing — a podcast about friendship, chosen family, and the love stories nobody centers but everyone needs. A psychotherapist, professional cartomancer, Hoodoo, witch, and magical being with over 20 years of community work behind her, their practice integrates the clinical, the spiritual, and the ancestral.
She holds a Master of Social Work from Simmons University and a Master of Public Administration from CSU Long Beach. They see clients in the Bay Area through Kinship Counseling Collective, where their work centers trauma-informed care, identity exploration, and healing as an act of self-love and resistance. Her spiritual practice lives at Tides Healing, offering coaching, divination, and readings rooted in ancestor veneration and finding the way back to self through lineage repair.
Danyelle has spent her life thinking about how we love each other and what we owe the people who hold us. When she's not recording, you'll find her with her plants, furbabies, the ocean, or the moon.
Co-host · Co-founder · Co-conspirator
Michelle Koffler, MBA
she/hers
Michelle is co-host, co-founder, and co-conspirator of The Third Thing. She's a queer Bay Area native, wife to Ashley, mother to a spirited young daughter, executive coach, and strategist with enough Aries placements to keep life interesting. She leads at the intersection of strategy and heart, with more than two decades across nonprofit leadership, people operations, business strategy, coaching, and organizational development.
Like many people, her path shifted during the pandemic, when the busyness and achievement that had long defined her life suddenly fell away. Faced with who she was beyond productivity, she began a deeper journey into coaching, mindfulness, nervous system regulation, and healing, work that continues today and informs both her coaching practice and the way she moves through the world. She holds an Executive MBA from UC Berkeley Haas and is a graduate of the Elementum Coaching Institute.
Friendship has uplifted Michelle throughout her life, her friends have been family, guides, mirrors, and pillars who carried her through every chapter. When she's not coaching or recording, you'll find her traveling, taking photographs, hunting for a great cup of coffee, or lost in a long conversation.
The receipts
A whole life, side by side.
From prom to podcast — 26 years and counting.
Come sit with us.
A podcast honoring friendship, conflict, and intimacy.
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