Talk to strangers
5/25/202653 min
Sean talks with University of Chicago psychologist Nicholas Epley about the strange gap between our need to be social and how social we choose to be. They explore why we underestimate how good conversations will feel, why awkwardness looms so large in our minds, and how small acts of connection can make us happier, less lonely, and more open to the people around us. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling) Guest: Nicholas Epley We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at thegrayarea@vox.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And you can watch new episodes of The Gray Area on YouTube. New episodes drop every Monday and Friday.Listen to The Gray Area ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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This episode is brought to you by Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Hosted by Katy Milkman, an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the bestselling book How to Change, Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Hear true stories from Nobel laureates, historians, authors, athletes, and more about why people do the things they do and how to make better ones to help avoid costly mistakes. Listen to Choiceology at schwab.com/podcast or wherever you listen. Support for the show comes from ServiceNow. AI is moving fast across the enterprise, but without visibility, it's just chaos. Different tools, different models, different teams using AI in completely different ways. ServiceNow turns that chaos into control. With the AI control tower, you see all your AI across the business in one place, what it's doing, what it's done, and what it's about to do, so you stay in control. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. There's a familiar drama that plays out all the time in ordinary life. You're sitting next to someone on a train or standing in line at a coffee shop or thinking about calling an old friend, and for a second, there's an opening.