Conversational Psychology (CONNECTING WITH OTHERS) with Nicholas Epley

Social anxiety icebreakers. Third spaces. Slumber parties with old friends. Helping out strangers. And why primates are wired to be better connected than we are now. Dr. Nicholas Epley – a distinguished Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago and the author of “A Little More Social” – explains how important social activity is for physical and mental health, why people are experiencing a friendship recession, how texting affects your hormones, how seeing other cultures can shape your life, the world’s friendliest cities, and the low expectations keeping us feeling lonely. Also: don’t be afraid to pick up the phone.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alie Ward?

  So this is a very special bonus episode of Ologies brought to you by Verbo with limited interruptions. Thank you to Verbo. So today, we're talking about how the environment shapes the way we communicate and connect. And honestly, it's about getting out of the house and just connecting with human beings who are not on a screen, they're not in a comments section, they're in front of your face. Believe it or not, millions of years of evolution has prepared you to connect face to face with loved ones and with strangers. It's just what the doctor ordered. We're going to talk to an actual PhD who's written a book about it. And as it turns out, this is why shaking up your routine and seeing new places, being in new spaces, meeting new people, or connecting back with people in your life is so vital for our brains and our culture.

• 0:44Alie Ward?

  The spaces we're in can really change how we open up and how we share stories and how we bond with each other. It's a big reason why taking time away, especially traveling together, can feel so different. And Verbo makes it easy to bring your people together in one shared space. They work hard to get everything right before you arrive. And if something goes wrong, Verbo Care and their 24/7 support team are there to help. The people on your trip are full of surprises, not your Verbo. Book your next stay on the Verbo app. Oh, hey, it's the 79-year-old guy in the elevator who looks like 60, Ali Ward. Let's connect, you and me, you and your friends and your family, and potentially millions of people around the world. We're doing this little series on getting out of ruts and getting out to see the world and giving what matters most,

• 1:27Alie Ward?

  which is our connections with others, a little TLC that it deserves. So we're giving you some bonus episodes on that, and I've been loving them. Okay, so this time, it's with an ologist who came recommended to me by the Dr. Laurie Santos of Yale's Happiness Lab. And we had her on our Urology episode, All About Happiness. And dude, when Dr. Laurie Santos speaks, I'm all ears. And she was right. This guest is so worth listening to. So they got their PhD in psychology from Cornell University. They've been a professor at Harvard. They're now at the University of Chicago as a distinguished professor of behavioral science. They're the director of the Roman Family Center for Decision Research. They study-

• 2:10Alie Ward?

  The very things that we wonder about our friends and our brains and our relationships. It's so juicy and very in demand by media outlets because the research applies to every waking moment of our lives. So this ologist wrote the 2015 book, Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want, and just released a little more social, How Small Choices Create Unexpected Happiness, Health, and Connection, a new book. And we're going to be talking about how social interactions from either the comfort of your couch to unfamiliar surroundings in a new city can change how you live your whole life. It's a really interesting downstream psychological effects.

• 2:51Alie Ward?

  All right, let's chat about the golden handcuffs of being in a rut, how different cities and countries and cultures can help you shape how you see life, subway encounters, breaking the ice, adult slumber parties, how human beings bond, long meals, why relationships literally save your life, and how little passing connections can kind of ripple through the world with professor, researcher, and connection psychologist, Dr. Nick Epley.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm Nick Epley. I'm a professor of behavioral science, he/him, doctor/sir, whatever.

• 3:45Alie Ward?

  Dude, so you write a lot about connection and a lot about how people just don't have as much of it, which is affecting all of us. But when did you really start to notice this? Was it at the beginning of your research and career? Was it, when did this really hit you over the head?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  So I've been studying mind reading for my entire career. I study how we think about each other's thoughts and beliefs and attitudes and mostly how we screw that up. You know, if we misunderstand each other, we create these social frictions with each other. We don't connect as well as we could. And we found that people tended to overestimate how harshly they'll be judged by other people. So this kind of social misunderstanding is what my career was based on. But there really was a singular moment for me, sort of a what the hell are we all doing kind of moment that got me on a different research trajectory. And I have to say, changed my life too. Changed the way I live my life. And this was a really singular moment on a train ride one morning on my way into the University of Chicago.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  I'll just never forget this one, where I was writing a chapter from my first book, MindWise, describing how we have a brain uniquely equipped for connecting with the minds of others, how we're made happier and healthier by connecting with other people. And then I look around and I have this eureka moment that here we all were on this train, all alone, together, essentially, sitting hip to hip with each other, with brains uniquely equipped for connecting with the minds of others, made happier and healthier by connecting, and we were all being completely silent. We were treating each other like lampshades. I mean, and I wondered, like, does this make sense?

• 5:36Speaker 01

  So I had a woman sit down next to me that morning who was wearing this fabulous red hat that I'll just never forget. She's sitting down next to me, but she's dressed professionally for work, ready to go. And I worked up my courage a little bit. I was going to try something different this morning. I'm going to try to have a conversation with her, see how it went. I worked up my courage and I turned to her and I said, hi, my name's Nick. I love your hat. I have one just like it. And she, she kinda did that, right? She turned to me, kinda all lit up with a big smile. And we just kinda started talking, right? What was stark for me was the moment right before my mind started screaming at me all these doubts that I should, you know?

• 6:18Speaker 01

  But when, when I said hello to her, she turned to me just with this huge smile, right? And so then, well, you know, we had a lovely conversation for the next 30 minutes. The time just disappeared in no time. You know, we ended up talking about her job, what she did for a living. She kinda felt stuck in her job. She had some kids that she needed to take care of, so she couldn't just leave her job. We talked a little bit about what her dream job would be. I told her about the experiment I had unwittingly enrolled her in. And she thought, maybe we don't talk to each other as much as we used to, because we all carry around these phones that distract us from each other. And when I got up to leave, she stopped me for a second. I remember she held my wrist for a second and she said, "Thank you so much for talking with me this morning."

• 7:00Alie Ward?

  Oh, I'm gonna cry.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Well, like, I mean, it was, look, this wasn't a life change. Well, actually, this kinda was a life changing moment of its own for me.

• 7:08Alie Ward?

  I was gonna say.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Because of this realization I had. But it wasn't like, it wasn't, you know, the most positive conversation you've ever had, but it was nice, right? And that 30 minutes, when I otherwise would have ignored somebody, was made better because I reached out and connected. And I was struck by two things. One was the contrast, the notable contrast between my beliefs about how this conversation would go and how it actually went. That was stark, right? And then the second kind of realization I had getting off the train was, this seems like it could be a phenomenon that's showing up over and over again. It reminded me a little bit of the work that we'd done in graduate school, where we found that people overestimate how harshly they'll be judged by other people when they do something embarrassing, right?

• 7:54Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  And I think that's one thing that researchers really can notice that are easy to overlook are the things we're not doing.

• 8:02Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  The conversations we're not having.

• 8:04Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Right? And I decided that, you know, I need, I need to pitch the idea for running an experiment to one of my PhD students, Juliana Schroeder, who's this fabulous PhD student, uh, working with me at the time, who was up for any experiment. You know, an anecdote isn't evidence. It's just, you know, so a guy has a nice conversation on a train, like, who cares?

• 8:25Alie Ward?

  Yeah, you gotta get those spreadsheets rolling.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Exactly. We need spreadsheets. That's what we need.

• 8:30Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  And in those spreadsheets, we need lots of data points from lots of different people to see if this is a general tendency. And so that morning sparked an experiment that led just really to an avalanche of research that I've been studying over the last 15 or so years of my career. We sure do appreciate it.

• 8:46Alie Ward?

  I went to Madrid recently and my husband and I were struck by how many people were sitting in parks and talking and how few people even sitting alone were looking at their phones. And I'm wondering environmentally and culturally if there's a difference. And I feel like anytime we pull out our phones, if we have a moment of silence, it usually feels like we want connection and we get it through looking at videos of other people, you know, usually by themselves, you know, vlogging, whatever they're doing. And so what is it about our environment where it's difficult these days to connect with each other or strangers?

• 9:29Alie Ward?

  Is it because we're kind of replacing that with phones instead of just being in the same space?

• 9:34Speaker 01

  I think some of that is going on, but I'd be a little careful about thinking that this is just something that's happening these days.

• 9:42Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  I mean, for decades, people have been nervous and anxious about reaching out and engaging with strangers. Stanley Milgram went into the subways of New York City in 1973, then noticed two norms of subway behavior. One is that seats are taken on a first come, first served basis, which is still true today. Then the other is nobody talks to each other, which is also still true today, right?

• 10:04Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Spain happens to be one of the friendlier places on the planet.

• 10:07Alie Ward?

  And the professor who conducted that subway study, Dr. Stanley Milgram, explained that the subway is an extreme micro situation.

• 10:17Alie Ward?

  It's also, in my opinion, its own microclimate. It's full of expelled breath and boxed leftovers and unrepentant farters, as well as smiles and hearts and brains, who, in nature, our hearts and brains would not be ignoring each other while our bodies are literally pressed together. It's weird. Modern life is weird. But if you're looking for the friendliest city, like you can't even risk encountering one bitchy stranger. According to Time Out, which polled nearly 19,000 people to compile a 2025 list of the world's most friendly cities, they said Madrid does rank in top 10, number 7. Chicago, which is where Dr. Epley lives, number 9. I'm not going to list all 20.

• 11:02Alie Ward?

  Nobody needs me to do that. But Medellin, Colombia is number 3. Bilbao, Spain is runner up. And the most friendly city in the world, according to this article, is Porto, Portugal. But none of that really matters if your courage and your bravery are portable.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Nick DiMaggio, one of my PhD students, working with me at Booth now. And I just completed an experiment in China, where we find that people in China underestimate how much they'll enjoy having a deep conversation with a stranger, or even just any conversation with a stranger, to the same extent that Americans do. We're just starting that worldly exploration. But we have looked at different cultures within the US. So culture is just a set of norms in a given environment, the way we act around here. And the culture on the train that I ride in is one particular context, right? Nobody talks there. But if you go to a networking event or a party, everybody's talking, right?

• 12:00Alie Ward?

  Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  And we can ask, what explains the variability across those different contexts? And what our research is really highlighting, I think, is the importance of our expectations or our beliefs about what's appropriate in a given setting and how others will respond to us if we reach out to them, right? On the train, nobody's talking, at least in part, because you can't be sure how interested somebody else is in talking with you. If they're not talking to you, you might infr- That they're not interested. Even if you are interested, if they're not talking to you, you might infer they're not as interested as you are.

• 12:32Alie Ward?

  Mm hmm. So people do tend to underestimate how reciprocal the interest in a chat is. But of course, try to read the room or keep it to a brief exchange and see if they seem like they want to engage. In New York, some people might beg you with their eyes to shut up and mind your business. But it really depends on the person. And also, of course, I'm going to acknowledge that as a white guy, Dr. Epley does enjoy statistically the privilege of being one of the least vulnerable demographics to be in public. Do not go out on a limb if that does not make you comfortable. You don't need to write me to say, I don't want to do that. You can just think that, and that's fine.

• 13:16Alie Ward?

  But getting to know your neighbors, reconnecting with a childhood friend, asking your hairstylist how their kids are. These are, of course, different than turning to the person next to you on a Tokyo rush hour train, but.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  So people's beliefs about how these social interactions are going to unfold powerfully predict their choices about whether they actually do this or not, whether they actually engage with other people or not.

• 13:43Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  It's the folks who don't normally talk who are most mistaken. We find that across personality types, too, in general, that folks who are more extroverted and more optimistic about how social interactions will unfold, folks who are more introverted tend to be a little less optimistic. They don't actually vary that much in their experiences.

• 14:02Alie Ward?

  Oh, wow.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  So again, folks who are more avoidant, folks who are less likely, more pessimistic about how others will respond to them are also, in these cases, typically the most miscalibrated. So we think people's beliefs are explaining a lot of this.

• 14:17Alie Ward?

  I'm wondering, too, about relationships that you've already established. One thing I thought was really interesting in your writing was that. We send texts instead of talking on the phone or meeting up in person. And we use these sort of proxies for connections that don't really do it for us as animals. And, you know, I have two super close girlfriends I've known since I was 12. I can text them for, you know, a month and just get little snippets of their life and little, you know, polite windows into what's going on. Everyone's, you know, busy carpooling their kids and stuff like that and, you know, deadlines and stuff. But what happens when we are doing more than a text catch up?

• 15:00Alie Ward?

  Or even more than a 45 minute coffee meetup? Is there a sort of like ice that needs to melt even with people that you already know?

• 15:09Speaker 01

  So when people reconnect with old friends, they tend to enjoy it more than they expect they will. I think we're overly reluctant to reach out to old friends, just like we're overly reluctant to talk with strangers.

• 15:21Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  What happens, though, in live conversation are a bunch of things that are kind of magical. Magical in the sense that we don't seem to anticipate it beforehand. At least we find in our data. People tend not to think that how they interact with someone is going to matter for the outcome of their interaction as much as it actually does. Like when I'm talking to my kids, for instance, they say, you know, I talked to so and so. I have to clarify with them, were you using your mouth parts? Or just using your fingers to talk? Right? Because they kind of equate those things, like typing with someone is the same as talking. But it's not the same. It's meaningfully not the same. So turns out when you talk with someone, particularly using your voice,

• 16:05Speaker 01

  or if you use sign language, sign language actually shows many of the same phenomena. Your voice contains a lot of features that pull us together in conversation. And the live synchronous interaction also contains a lot of information that pulls us together that's just stripped out or missing in text alone. So for one, your voice clarifies what you're trying to communicate. So we understand each other's emotions and intentions. You can communicate sarcasm and sincerity, for instance, with your voice in a way you can't when you're just typing. Right?

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Is that a fact?

• 16:43Speaker 01

  But your voice conveys that you have a mind and that it is thinking and processing. And then the third thing is that our voice connects us with other people. People feel more connected when they talk to each other than when they type to each other. The other thing that happens in live conversations, you just gave me one right there, Ali. Uh, mm hmm, right?

• 17:01Alie Ward?

  Yes.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Yes, there you go. Yes, right? You're laughing, right? You're also looking at me and nodding. That comes through the, through the, through visual cues. But you're doing what's called back channeling, right? Back channeling is what the listener is contributing to a conversation when they're not taking the lead. And all of that stuff conveys that you're paying attention, that you're listening to what somebody's saying, that you're interested in what they're saying, that you're affirming them, or that you're confused, mm, what? And you have to clarify that, right? All of that back channeling, that stuff that happens in live conversation, that responsiveness, that's what really pulls us together because it tells us that somebody else is interested in us. And that is just missing when you're typing to each other.

• 17:47Alie Ward?

  So imagine reading like a wall of text and you don't have any space to send any response cues as they're writing, obviously, or for them to be putting out any intention cues. And all the way back in the year 2012 A.D., scientists knew that text messages can mess up your relationships. And there was a paper published in the journal Evolutionary Human Behavior titled, "Instant Messages Versus Speech: Hormones and Why We Still Need to Hear Each Other." And that paper needs you to hear that speech between trusted individuals is capable of reducing levels of salivary cortisol, which is a biomarker of stress,

• 18:28Alie Ward?

  and of upping oxytocin, which is a hormone involved in the formation and the maintenance of good relationships. And this paper continues saying that written language, while rich in nuance and emotional tone, may simply be incapable of producing this type of hormonal signal in humans. They continue that writing is a relatively recent form of human communication. Only about 6,000 years old. Human beings are 300,000 years old. But they say it is perhaps unsurprising that despite the power of the written word, auditory signals are better potentiators of the release of those hormones necessary for bonding and the suppression

• 19:10Alie Ward?

  of stress and mating and other behaviors critical to fitness in many species. So you're not making it happen on the apps? Don't blame yourself. You are a sentient lump of goo who was not made to work like that, let alone bone as a result. But Nick co-authored a paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology titled, "It's Surprisingly Nice to Hear You: Misunderstanding the Impact of Communication Media Can Lead to Suboptimal Choices of How to Connect With Others", which found that choices for how to connect with others may be based on miscalibrated expectations about awkwardness and that these fears could push people toward less intimate

• 19:54Alie Ward?

  communication media like text. And with that in mind, they write, "Understanding that can help people make better choices about how to interact with others to maximize both their well-being and the other's well-being and that relationship." Now, if you're still feeling too weirded out by a phone call, I get it. I understand. Take a piece of advice from the recent Time Magazine article, "Why Voice Notes Are a Small Act of Love", in which Communication Studies Professor Dr. Natalie Pennington explained that a voice note allows the richness of spoken word with the understanding that we can't always talk right at the moment. Now, of course, disabilities can hamper communication methods for some people, but I'm specifically addressing

• 20:38Alie Ward?

  the rest of you cowards.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  All of those interjections are communicating that you're with me, that you're paying attention to me. It's sort of the verbal equivalent of holding my hand, right? That you're connected, you're in sync with me in some way. And those cues to synchrony between us, to responsiveness and reciprocity, are what make me kind of like you more and think you're interested. That's what connects us. And what does that do for us? I mean, in terms of creating social connection, social connection itself is hugely important for mental health. It is a massive predictor of how happy you report being, how satisfied you are with your life, how connected you are to other people. It's a predictor of your physical health, right? And in fact, isolation is known causally

• 21:24Speaker 01

  to compromise your health because loneliness or isolation, conflict with other people, right? A sense that you're not getting along well with others and that you're disconnected. That turns out to be a social stressor. For most of human history, isolation was a death sentence. So we've got a neural architecture that is equipped with a reward system that tells us, get out there and connect. This is bad when things are going poorly, right? And yes, please do this more often when you're connecting well with people, right? So that kind of pit in your stomach or that angst that you feel, that kind of blah feeling when you're feeling disconnected, that's a physiological stress response. That's cortisol in your bloodstream.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  Cortisol in your bloodstream compromises immune system functioning, compromises your cardiovascular functioning, makes you more likely then to do things like catch the cold or pneumonia or maybe COVID. And also compromises your cardiovascular functioning. So you're more likely to have a heart attack or a stroke. And as a result, those things are bad for you. They also shorten the amount of life you have to live. So they're also a risk factor for mortality as well, not just morbidity, but mortality. And these things are cumulative, right? So loneliness and isolation really becomes a health problem when it's something that happens over time. In any given moment, being disconnected from other people kind of feels crummy. But the long run, health effects come from being in this state for a long time.

• 22:50Alie Ward?

  You do get by with a little help from your friends. It's not just psychology or sociology. It's also evolutionary biology and a lyric from an old song and primatology and somenology, which is sleep science. So a 2011 paper titled, "Stepwise Evolution of Stable Sociality in Primates", published in the journal Nature. Explains that sociality is followed by a shift to bonded groups. And the researchers found strong support for the co-evolution of social living with a change from nocturnal to diurnal activity patterns. So as we got more social, we went from skulking around at night to being morning people who hang out in the daytime.

• 23:35Alie Ward?

  And they say that this suggests that social living may have arisen to keep us safe from predators while we're out looking for lunch to share with each other and led to other cooperative behaviors as well as larger brains. Hanging out with pals in the olden days made you have the big throbbing ganglia you have now. Okay, so that was way, way long ago. And as time moves on and this sociality develops in humans more, it leads to semi-sedentary or agrarian lifestyles. So less wandering around during the seasons. But the bonds are still really important. And there was a 2023 study titled Mobility and Kinship in the World's First Village Societies.

• 24:19Alie Ward?

  And it looked at isotopes in the teeth of humans over 7,000 years ago and found that as communities grew, more people immigrated among them. And there were bonds and there were close living between people who were not sexually paired or blood relatives, just hanging out like friends and neighbors. What does that have to do with you, you're asking? Well, cool your jets, I'm getting there. It's in your evolutionary trajectory to need and trust others. So we evolved to need company to keep us safe. And nighttime is the scariest for our little relatively hairless, clawless, snub-toothed, bare-butt species, without each other, that is.

• 25:02Alie Ward?

  So this, to me, all of this is a great argument for hangouts. Sure. Meet up for a patio brewski, get a coffee on a Sunday morning. But there's nothing quite like little cohabitations. The sun falling and rising together. So researcher Dr. Jamie Aronakrems is the director at UCLA's Center for Friendship Research, and they're publishing a new study titled "Friendship: The Most Overlooked Public Health Asset." And this was published in Behavioral and Brain Scientists. But Dr. Krems and her lab have also looked into research on slumber parties. Slumber parties, dude. There's a science of slumber parties.

• 25:43Alie Ward?

  In the November 2025 Vox article titled "You Should Be Having More Slumber Parties With Your Friends", Dr. Krems explains that these longer nocturnal hangs, where friends can just settle into a less performative hangout. You're brushing your teeth, you're washing your face, you're watching a movie till you fall asleep. That lets stress from the external world relax a little bit, and then vulnerability and comfort have room to appear. And that strengthens the social bonds that are critical for your mental health, as well as your physical health, they say. So is now a good time to go do that, to have a slumber party? It sure is.

• 26:22Alie Ward?

  The 2021 Survey for American Life published "The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss", and it showed that despite our rise in so-called social media, the number of close friends people have has fallen by 2/3 since the 1990s. And people are talking to their friends less often. They're relying less on their friends for personal support. And it continues, not surprisingly, as folks accumulate additional close friends, their level of satisfaction grows. And yeah, we are in a friendship recession. So how do we strengthen these bonds? If these are existing relationships,

• 27:02Alie Ward?

  one 2026 Psychology Today article says that when people navigate unfamiliar environments together, like figuring out transportation, or wandering through a new city, or sharing meals in places they've never been, they experience novelty and vulnerability. At the same time, and researchers have found, this article explains that these experiences activate positive emotions and reward systems in the brain. So that's weird to examine, but it literally explains why fun is fun. I'm wondering if the topic of third spaces ever comes up or the lack of it. You know, I feel like when you see like old guys in the park playing bocce ball, you go, nice. You know, it seems like it's harder to find places to gather.

• 27:47Alie Ward?

  I live in LA, so.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're in a car.

• 27:50Alie Ward?

  Weeping, weeping. You know, alone in a car. But yeah, like, where are those places environmentally where we can connect? And kind of break the cycle that we're in?

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you asked whether the third spaces come up. In fact, last night I was giving a talk last night and one of the questions from the audience was was about this. So a lot of these third spaces are kind of structural. Right? Do you have a park in a given space where you go to routinely? Dog parks can sometimes serve like this. Churches can serve this function, right? Places where people gather to communicate, connect, sports can serve this. From my research, I think what I would say is that you also have the power to create third spaces.

• 28:36Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  That you're probably not taking. So for instance, let's take your commute. Let's take your car ride. I have recognized that I will sit in my car if I'm driving from downtown Chicago back home after teaching or something. I don't do that very often, but sometimes I do. I can use that time in my car to call someone and talk with them. So I use it to call my kids usually. I mean, I've got a few sons who are out of the home now, and so I'll call them up. I've got a son who's a PhD student at Oregon State. And so I'll call him up and talk with him. And so I create that otherwise isolated car experience. I turn it into talking time or I'll call my dad, for instance, right? So. I think from my perspective, at least from my research, I can't create third spaces

• 29:18Speaker 01

  out there in the world for everybody else, but I can create them for myself by noticing conversations or interactions that I'm otherwise not having and choosing to have them a little more, testing those beliefs that are holding me back from thinking, I can't do this here. You might be surprised.

• 29:34Alie Ward?

  Do you have tips on how to be a better conversationalist or listener? I mean, I'm a, it's my job to converse, but for people who are more introverted or, you know, mind wander sometimes.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:50Alie Ward?

  Any tips on kind of getting back into that rhythm, especially even, you know, since quarantine, I feel like more and more people have maybe lost that skill.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  So let me give you an example. What do you talk about in a conversation? Most of us claim to hate small talk, right? And yet we do it, right? We do it all the time. We find because people think others aren't that interested in having deeper conversations. And so we stick kind of to small talk. But when we asked people in an experiment to generate the questions they would normally ask somebody else in a conversation, okay, set those aside. Now, generate a few more questions that you could ask somebody if you wanted to have a deeper or more meaningful conversation with them. Now write those down. People could do it. And those questions were good, right?

• 30:40Alie Ward?

  Like what?

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Well, things like, you know, what's your dream job? Is this where you've always wanted to live? Right? If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you want to go right now? Right? Stuff that's kind of about hopes and dreams and aspirations and values. You know, what's the most important thing to you in life? People, now that was one of the questions, if I remember correctly. And when we then randomly assigned them to either have a conversation with a stranger about their, you know, questions they normally ask, or the deeper ones, people themselves reported enjoying the conversation more when they asked about the deeper ones than the shallower ones. So you might imagine here that if you just see people having small talk, you know, engaging in small talk, that they don't know how to have deeper conversations. That wouldn't be true here.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  They're choosing, we are choosing not to have deeper conversations more often, and you could choose differently. So.

• 31:33Alie Ward?

  The answers are more interesting, too. I would rather hear about what someone's dream Oh, yeah. trip or, you know, where they see themselves. You know, I would rather hear those stories. Stories are more interesting than facts. Yes. Typically. So in a moment, Nick will give us some tips to lower social anxiety and add some connection to your lives via quality conversation, not bullshit conversation. He's going to tell us how that works. But first, we are thrilled to donate to a charity of Dr. Epley's Choice, and he selected Ruby's Rainbow. And he and his wife, Jen, have five kids, including Lindsay, who has Down Syndrome. And Nick told me that Ruby's Rainbow is doing really wonderful things, including spreading awareness, granting higher

• 32:16Alie Ward?

  education scholarships to students with Down Syndrome, and helping them achieve their dreams. And rubiesrainbow.org says, want to help students rock in that extra chromosome, go for their college dreams? Donate today. So we will be doing so, thanks to the sponsors of Ologies, always. And thank you so much to Verbo for sponsoring today's episode. Verbo has really been inspiring me to take more trips with friends. I mentioned this on a previous episode, but my girlfriend was having a birthday. She's a big bird watcher. I found the perfect spot to birdwatch. And seeing all these great places to gather and kind of share a vacation has really changed the way I look at having time off. It's not something that you earn siloed to go take pictures of somewhere nice.

• 33:00Alie Ward?

  It's something that you can share with people you love. And that's really what we remember, is gathering those people in your life that you don't get to see face to face as much, or you don't get to see in a new environment. And it's not so much just about what you're doing. It's what you talk about and share. And that's what makes group trips so memorable. We tend to be more present, we're more open, and have those conversations that matter more, instead of just a quick catch up over a dinner every few months. We work too hard, and this notion that we're all saving up money to go have our own individual vacations, when really getting to hang out with the people that you love is why we work in the first place. And Verbo is designed for that kind of shared experience. You have a whole space to gather, whether that's over meals, or late night conversations, or just hanging out.

• 33:44Alie Ward?

  They take a lot of the friction out of planning those trips. They focus on just getting everything right ahead of time. And if something unexpected happens, Verbo care and 24/7 support are there to step in. So you can stay in the moment, which is what it's all about. So you can plan your next trip on the Verbo app. I have. Okay, so usually we're going to dive into your questions from the bag of patrons, but since this is a shorter bonus episode, we're just going to resume our quick conversation where we were just discussing how to start a conversation.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  And so I would suggest two things.

• 34:18Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  So one is I would focus a lot more on the mindset you have when you're approaching other people. Other people are super interesting. Bill Nye, famous science guy, once noted that everyone you ever meet knows something you don't. And that's true. They've been to places you've never been. They've done interesting things. Just find out what it is, right? If you approach other people with interest and curiosity, you will just start having better conversations with them. You'll notice opportunities to engage. You'll notice things to compliment people on that make the conversation fun. You'll ask more meaningful questions. This morning, when I was talking with Ian in my Uber ride from LaGuardia here to Manhattan, I asked him to tell me a story, right? What's your story?

• 35:03Alie Ward?

  This is so touching. I keep being like, oh. But it's like, people are so interesting. Everyone has a favorite birthday or the worst birthday they've ever had. Everyone has, you know, a first love. Everyone has something that they lost that they maybe are hoping that they find, whether it's a, you know, long lost bracelet or brother or something.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Everyone's got it. Yeah. And you can ask them about it. We just choose not to. We choose not to. Ian grew up in the Dominican Republic. Super interesting. He moved to New York and then moved out to the suburbs, was desperately lonely, hardest time in his life, he told me. And then he moved back into New York. It was lovely conversation. It was very interesting, right? But if you approach people with interest. That helps. So that mindset, I think, is really important.

• 35:51Alie Ward?

  So think about this in your personal life, catching up versus actually connecting and making new memories that are just going to delight you for years.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Second, if you're going to think about specific things to ask about, note that you can go deeper than you might imagine. And if another person is not interested in having a conversation, that's fine. But I have to say, I can't think of a time when I've asked somebody about something meaningful, you know, tell me about your life, you know, what was, what's a high point in your life? Can you tell me about a low point in your life? Right? I can't think of a time, you know, what's your story? Somebody has said, it's none of your business, leave me alone, right? That never happens. That just never happens, that people always have something to say.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  And they're often interested that somebody has taken an interest in them. And you know, if you can get a question about what somebody loves right away, that's helpful.

• 36:51Alie Ward?

  Oh, for sure.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. You love your job.

• 36:55Alie Ward?

  Yeah, that's an interview secret that helps so much is think what might light someone up? And you immediately, there's a self-consciousness that disappears because suddenly they're in a world of their own, where they step into their own identity and they kind of stop performing an identity that they think they should.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:17Alie Ward?

  And it's a really beautiful moment to watch. And I also feel like if you're with a couple or even a pair of friends and you ask, how did you guys meet? There's always one or both of them go, oh, boy. Okay, so, you know.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  I love to tell that story, right? I love it. And it's fun.

• 37:36Alie Ward?

  Always interesting, you know? And I think that one thing I love about your work is it does point out that everyone has a valuable story and everyone has something that can kind of stick with you. I think your book too, A Little More Social is such a good on-ramp, you know, like a little more social and you go, I.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  It's gentle.

• 38:01Alie Ward?

  Yeah, I could do, I could do that.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Baby steps. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:05Alie Ward?

  Yeah. And that it's, that it's this unexpected happiness that. A lot of our expectations are so much lower. You know, last question, what are you hoping to accomplish? You know, with the book and your research? How do you hope it changes people or culture? You know?

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think the fundamental message of our research is empowering. It has changed the way I live my life because I realized lots of opportunities for social connection. I wasn't taking because I thought other people weren't interested or that it wouldn't matter. Right that reaching out to an old friend I hadn't talked to in a long time will be awkward or weird. Reaching out to express gratitude to someone who I really appreciate, but never shared it to. Commenting this morning when I was on the flight, the flight attendant's awesome red glasses. Telling her, you're killing it with those glasses. Right, thinking that that wouldn't, that that wouldn't matter very much. Those just turn out to be wrong.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  And when you realize the power that you have to create connection that you're otherwise avoiding, you just start living your life differently. You see opportunities to reach out and engage with people, lift people up, see them, be in conversation with them, be pro-social and kind towards them, build relationships that you are otherwise avoiding. We have all these beliefs about how other people respond to us when we reach out to them. And if they're pessimistic, overly pessimistic, they're like prison bars. Right, they're keeping us from engaging with people when it would otherwise perhaps be pleasant. Two, and if they're mistaken, but we never test them. Right, that's what we do in our research. We test people's beliefs. We don't take people's beliefs as given facts.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  We treat them as bets, as guesses. And you can guess incorrectly, right? And so we can keep ourselves behind these prison bars that turn out to be pasta noodles if we just press on them a little bit, right?

• 40:03Alie Ward?

  What a visual.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  So my hope for this is that it's empowering for people to realize that you can engage or connect with people, you can lift other people up more than you might imagine that you would be able to. And once you start testing those, you can start building habits that create a little more connection in your life that makes both your life and the lives of the people you reach out to a little bit better. And what else is a good life other than that?

• 40:31Alie Ward?

  You know, this is so inspiring for the rest of my day, you know, as someone who works at home alone a lot. And I do find I get more work done when I'm out at a cafe or a library, even having small conversations. I will say having a small fluffy dog helps a lot.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  That can help.

• 40:52Alie Ward?

  Nick told me not to rely on the charms of my hairy daughter to get me by, though. She is a cop out, he said. It's too easy. And who's going to tell me about their divorce just because my dog is the best one? Okay.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  And you, look, you never know where you're going to meet people in their lives, too. I mean, I have passed along compliments to people or had meaningful conversations with them at times when they needed it. And I like didn't know it. I had a woman who I've gotten to know on the train over the years. We reconnected some handful of years ago after not seeing her for a while. And we had a really nice conversation on the way to the train. And she was going through some hard times with some kids and at work a little bit. And we just had a very nice, you know, five block conversation. And we get to the back of the business school building, and she stops me and she says, can I get a hug before we go? So we get a hug. And she

• 41:44Speaker 01

  says, I think God sent you to me today. And I'm not going to go that far. But it was clearly a moment when a conversation was helpful to her that would have been otherwise easy to avoid. And then she asked me for a second hug before she, before she left. And now every, now every time we see each other, there's this sort of, like, you know, we've had lots of conversations since, but there's just kind of this uplifting resonance between the two of us, which is, which is nice. And so sometimes you'll meet folks. Just where they need to be. I remember this years ago, and I will never forget this. My, my good friend, Justin Krueger, I was in my fourth year of graduate school. I was interviewing at Princeton University, which is a place I felt I didn't belong 100

• 42:29Speaker 01

  miles from. But there I was interviewing in the psych department and I was nervous. I was just as terrified as I could possibly be laying in my hotel room the night before, just sweating it out. I hadn't eaten for like a couple of weeks. I'd lost 20 pounds. I was so nervous. And Justin called me up out of the blue just to check in on how I was doing and give me some encouragement. And it was like throwing a life raft to me when I was really feeling terrible. Right? And that was what 30 years ago, you know, 20 some years ago. Never forgotten that. You just never know when you're gonna, where you're gonna meet people in their lives. The thing that you think might be small

• 43:10Speaker 01

  tends to be received as much bigger by the recipients when we reach out to connect with them. So I find the work empowering. I hope readers do too. I wrote it because the book, because it changed the way I live my life. And I think the research that we've done might help other folks to change the way they live their life as well.

• 43:29Alie Ward?

  A little more social.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Just baby steps. We're baby stepping it.

• 43:38Alie Ward?

  Thank you for talking to me and changing

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 43:41Alie Ward?

  literally not only my day, but my life.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Well, you gotta practice it a little bit. You gotta practice it some.

• 43:48Alie Ward?

  Yes, of course.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  I hope you do. I hope you do.

• 43:53Alie Ward?

  So once again, ask a friend or a stranger sincere or fun questions. And thank you to Dr. Nick Epley for using your life's work to help humans understand each other, which is honestly our only hope for survival on the planet. We can't do anything if people hate each other. And I truly think that love comes in a ton of forms, from big, giant, life-changing romance, to friends who become like family, to like little acts of just recognizing the humanity of others. Jared actually wrote a poem. About 30 new words for love, and it's all these different kinds of loves. I will link his YouTube reading of it in the show notes. It makes me cry every time. We will also link Nick's 2026 book.

• 44:36Alie Ward?

  Once again, it's called A Little More Social: How Small Choices Create Unexpected Happiness, Health, and Connection. And you can also check out his previous book, Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want. And for more on him and his work, check the links in the show notes. Look up Nicholas Epley. His stuff is everywhere. I am at @AllyWard. Ally has one L on it. On Instagram and Blue Sky, Ologies is on both platforms, just as Ologies. Smallologies are shorter, classroom-safe episodes that live in their own feed for free, wherever you get podcasts. Also, they're linked in the show notes, and we have merch at ologiesmerch.com. You can join our Patreon at patreon.com/ologies and submit questions ahead of time for the guests.

• 45:18Alie Ward?

  Bonus episodes, we're trying to keep shorter, which is hard, so we're doing quicker chats. But also, real quick, longtime bestie Erin Talbert admins the Ologies podcast Facebook group and has been my friend since we were in kindergarten. I love you, Ernie. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Callie Ardewire does the website. Spending Quality Time is scheduling producer Noelle Dilworth. Susan Hale maintains it all as managing director and has also fulfilled the role of a bestie for over 20 years, since I met her in front of UCB Theater on Franklin Avenue in LA when I was a waitress. She's the best. And connecting, all the edits are Jake Chaffee and lead editor Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn did the theme music.

• 46:01Alie Ward?

  And if you stick around till the very end, you know I may tell you a secret. And this week, it's that, honestly, this conversation with Nick has changed a lot of interactions I've had in the last few weeks. I'm much more open to just chilling and chatting with people and not avoiding conversations worried that they won't go well. And it's been lovely. My neighbor walked past me at a cafe today. I was like, hey, lady. She sat down. We had a great convo. So it's really made me realize that you can't yearn for a more compassionate society if you're not willing to literally look at the person next to you as a human being and not just an orn. That is set decoration in your main character life, even though being in your head can make you feel that way. Oh, but the secret. So right after I had this chat with Nick,

• 46:46Alie Ward?

  I headed to New Mexico for some interviews. And in the parking garage on the way to meet bio-musicology guest, Dr. David Bashwoner, there was this sweet, older gentleman trying to figure out parking rates in the garage for the disabled spots.

• 46:58Speaker 03

  I've got a quick question. Do you know what to do? There's no numbers on any of the handicaps.

• 47:04Alie Ward?

  Oh, maybe they don't charge then. It might be free then. And he mentioned he was heading into the building to get a passport for the first time.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  Passports are handed over to the

• 47:18Alie Ward?

  Oh, you have to get a passport done? Ah, those are fun. Do you get a photo shoot?

• 47:22Speaker 03

  They do it there.

• 47:26Alie Ward?

  Where are you going?

• 47:28Speaker 03

  Glacier Park in Montana. And Glacier is actually the only international park in the world. It goes, there's a boat you can take from Glacier into a park in Canada.

• 47:41Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 47:42Speaker 03

  And of course now, you didn't need a passport then.

• 47:46Alie Ward?

  He told me about how beautiful Glacier was and how he loved it up there. And it was just a quick talk. But honestly, getting out of my everyday routine and seeing new places and that little exchange and thinking of him getting his first passport and going to a lake is a highlight of the year and a highlight of that trip. I just, it was such a cute moment. But since then, I've given more compliments to strangers. I talked to a guy in an elevator at the doctor's office, who I could have sworn was maybe 60, but he said he was 79. He was so spry and I was like, I gotta lift more weights. I chatted to a woman at the tire store, who ended up telling me about her mom in hospice. I gave her a big hug and we both teared up when my tire was ready and I was leaving. I've planned two getaways with friends.

• 48:31Alie Ward?

  I've hosted two dinner parties at home for more sobra mesa, which is just hanging out after a meal at home and just talking and bonding and goofing with the people who mean a lot to me. I'm just less afraid of making those connections. And I see how important it is for people to remember that we're just in this life together and that people want to connect with you more than you realize. So thank you, Nick, for that. We have two more upcoming bonus episodes on rituals and seasons and holidays and laughing and bonding. They're real life changers. They're just what I've been needing. So, okay. Go tell someone that you like their style and mean it, right? Bye bye.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  I like you.

• 49:30Alie Ward?

  Thank you again so much to Verbo for sponsoring today's special bonus episode with these limited interruptions and also for inspiring me to really look at how I take time off differently. Because at the end of the day, connection just comes down to the conversations we have. And getting out of our routine and the environment we're in plays a huge role in that. How comfortable you are? Are you getting out of the daily stresses that you have in your normal life? Are you having some time to just decompress and unwind and have more than just a quick catch up with friends and loved ones? Traveling together really creates space for those moments. And I love it. Verbo helps make that easier with a reliable place to stay and support if anything goes wrong. The people on your trip are full of surprises.

• 50:14Alie Ward?

  But not your Verbo. Book your next day on the Verbo app.