Best of “How To”: Make Small Talk

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This episode, from our fourth season, called How to Talk to People, features host Julie Beck in conversation with hairstylists and self-described socially anxious people about how they overcome the barriers to starting conversations.

The following is a transcript of the episode:

[Music]

Megan Garber: Hey, it’s Megan Garber, one of the co-hosts of How to Know What’s Real. We’re excited to share with you a special series drawn from past seasons of the How To series. For the last six weeks, we’ve been revisiting episodes around the theme of winding down. This episode is our last in this series and one of my personal favorites. It’s from season four, How to Talk to People, and is called “How to Make Small Talk.” Take a listen as former host Julie Beck and producer Becca Rashid talk with experts, from hairstylists to self-described socially anxious people, about how they work on letting go of social anxiety.

[Music]

Julie Beck: Does this moment feel awkward to you?

Ty Tashiro: It doesn’t. So I don’t know if it should.

Beck: Great news, great news.

Erin Derosa: If I’m in a five-minute conversation, I’m like, What am I gonna say next? What’s the next thing that I should … Did I already talk about the weather? I get real panicked.

Beck: I feel like I can chat with anybody for, like, five minutes. Right? And then if I run out of things to say in the middle, that’s my fear—because we are trapped here for the duration of this haircut. I can’t just do it, like, “Well, it was so great to see you—got to run!” while you’re holding my hair.

Craft: We could stop talking, and I will try to put out a comfortable, chill vibe.

Tashiro: It’s, you know, pretty common. Someone might say something like: “Oh, there’s a really good vibe here.” And to me that is totally bewildering, how they discern that vibe within a few seconds.

[Music]

Beck: Hi. I’m Julie Beck, a senior editor at The Atlantic.

Rebecca Rashid: And I’m Rebecca Rashid, producer of the How To series.

Beck: This is How to Talk to People.

Beck: Here at The Atlantic, I oversee the Family section, and I’ve also been reporting on friendship for many years now. So I think a lot about relationships and community.

And I do see often that people struggle to find and form the close relationships that they really want. And I think one of the barriers to that is the dreaded small talk.

Rashid: So I think in this first episode, we have to figure out: How does one even make small talk? And what explains that tendency so many of us have to look down at our phones and avoid conversation, or hide in the corner at a party and only talk to the people we know? So where better to do some research on this than to talk to the ultimate small-talk experts: at the hair salon.

[Music]

Beck: I feel like, okay, the main thing that I need to ask you is: When I’m sitting in this chair, do you even want to talk to me?

Craft: Oh, yeah.

Beck: You can be honest. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if you didn’t want to.

Craft: I have to be here all day, so I do need some entertainment.

Beck: Okay.

Craft: So, I like talking to people. I like getting the hot goss.

Beck: Okay.

Craft: Yeah. Classic hairdresser situation.

Beck: I mean, it feels rude, but in my mind I’ve also wondered: Would you actually be relieved if I was just on my phone the whole time, and then you could have a break from being “on” all the time?

Craft: That is totally fine with me. Like, if you want to be on your phone, I do think of it that way. Okay, great, I’ll have a break. I’ll just, like, think about my own things that are going on, organize my brain. I’m just glad that you’re here. Most hairdressers are very much prepared to talk all day, I think. I don’t know. No?

Rashid: Julie, I can’t stop thinking about how much fun we had with Erin Derosa and Mimi Craft at Sense Salon in Washington, D.C.

Beck: Yeah, I mean, they are the women who actually do my hair. And it was very fun to get, like, a peek behind the scenes of what they’re thinking the whole time.

Derosa: I feel like if you want to talk, that’s amazing. It is really entertaining and fun to have a conversation and to have good conversation. But if you don’t want to talk, don’t try to talk. [Julie laughs.] Because then it’s really hard to have a conversation, and then it’s even more work to, like, keep it going and try to, like, fill the silence or whatever. And I’m very comfortable with silence and very comfortable just doing my thing and, you know, someone else doing their thing. But if you do want to have a conversation, that’s also always welcome.

[Hair-dryer sound]

Rashid: I’m curious; what is it about small talk that makes you so nervous?

Beck: Okay—to clarify, I don’t know that it makes me nervous all the time. I think what’s interesting about it is, it’s like you can’t really get around it. Like, any relationship that you’re going to have has to start with a conversation.

So it’s more a situation where I am trapped on the train with an acquaintance I don’t know that well, and we have 20 minutes to fill, and I’ve got five minutes of material … If I’m getting my hair cut or anywhere where you’re just trapped with either an acquaintance or a stranger for a long time and you have to kind of navigate: How much are we going to talk to each other? What are we going to talk about? Would they rather I just left them alone, but we’re both too polite to say so?

I do get in my head a lot about that, and I find it very hard to relax sometimes if I am receiving a service. And probably if I was just normal and relaxed and enjoyed the situation, it would make them more comfortable. Like, I’m probably putting off a vibe.

Rashid: It can be extra challenging when the terms of that relationship are not really established in any way; like, just having a conversation with that person doesn’t necessarily mean you’re moving toward friendship.

Beck: Yeah, you’re right. Like, the kind of people that are in your life, but that relationship is not necessarily going to grow from what it already is, but you still need to interact with them and perhaps semi-regularly. And just, like, how do you approach that—like, the barista you see every day? And you know that she knows that you always get the iced vanilla latte and she knows that you know that she knows, but you still just order it freshly every time.

Rashid: Yes. Yes.

Beck: And you don’t ever acknowledge anything.

Beck: Do you both consider yourself extroverts?

Derosa/Craft: No. Oh, no, no, no. Hard no. Extreme no.

Beck: Well, then, how do you sit here and make small talk all day, every day? Does it exhaust you?

Craft: I once heard that introverts like to have a one-on-one, deeper conversations, whereas extroverts are more comfortable with typical small talk. I am not interested in small talk. I want to get right into the real talk immediately. And I definitely don’t want to go to, like, a party, honestly, basically ever, or be in a crowd where I have to make small talk with a lot of people, because that is exhausting to me. But having deep connections and one-on-one, deeper conversations with people is—I like that, and I’m good at it.

Beck: Well, how do you define small talk, then?

Craft: For me, small talk is like: “Oh, it’s cold out.” “Yeah, it’s cold out.” “Oh, do you like cold?” “No?” “Oh, yeah; me too.” And that’s really boring. “Oh, how was your weekend?” “Good.” “Oh, cool.” I want to know what happened.

Beck: Well, are you coming in hot with your clients? Like, “Do you believe in God?”

Craft: I mean, sometimes I’m coming in hot. Sometimes if I’m like, “Oh, how was your weekend?” “Great.” I will be like, “Did anything crazy happen? Did anybody go to the hospital?” Like, I want to get straight into it. If somebody was at a party, you can tell when somebody comes in on a Saturday morning and they were at a party the night before. And you really are like, “What happened last night? What went down?” I do like getting straight into the details.

Derosa: I guess I’ll also say, like, I don’t come in: “Hey, how’s your hair? Do you believe in God?” It’s more like, somehow it’ll come up somewhere in the conversation. You know, you’ll be talking about their family or like their parents or whatever. And then it’s like, “Oh, how were you raised? Were you raised religiously?” It sort of evolves. And then I will say: “Well, do you believe in God?” (Laughter.)

Beck: So that’s a real example that has happened?

Derosa: Oh, yeah; for sure. For sure. But I like to have conversations like that with people. And that’s one of my favorite things about this job, is having real conversations like that.

Craft: She gets the very most out of people because she is so genuinely curious that even if somebody maybe was not going into a conversation thinking they were going to reveal a detail, she will get it out of them because of her genuine curiosity.

Derosa: Yeah, ’cause a lot of people are sort of in denial about what is happening in their situation. And because we’ve heard so many stories that are similar, and we are like: “No, like, this is what’s really happening.”

Craft: We’re like, “Girl, no, this is what’s happening.” And then, like, come to find out maybe their next visit or their visit after that, they’re like, “That is what’s happening.” Because that is the value in good small talk and conversation; it’s that you learn from other people’s experiences. Everything repeats itself. Like, nothing’s really a new thing. So somebody comes in, and you’re like: I know what’s happening there.

Beck: I think small talk gets a lot of hate, but even if it’s a little boring, it serves a purpose. So those basic, neutral topics that people love to hate on, like “How’s the weather?” Like “Sure is a hot one out there”—those serve a purpose of being something neutral that can smooth the path of our interactions.

Rashid: But I think sometimes my producer brain wants to cut to the story, and I’m not always as delicate in the way I phrase my questions. And my intent is not to be offensive, but maybe just to connect with the person in the way I know best, or maybe be respectfully personal and try to bridge that gap.

Beck: So your approach to small talk is to try to get personal as quickly as possible.

Rashid: Not uncomfortably so. But I struggle with the repeated “How’s the weather?” with someone I see every day. It’s like, Let’s move this conversation along. We’ve seen each other. We have some basic context of who each other is.

Beck: I feel like I thrive on that surface level. Just the sort of Seinfeldian, observational comedy of, like, these are things that are happening around us that I can remark upon and do a little bit with you and then, like, tip my hat and walk away. Once we transition to something that is a little more personal, that is where I feel like a little bumpy. In our conversation with Erin and Mimi, it really wasn’t that awkward, surface-level kind of small talk that I think people fear.

Rashid: Right, and it seems like they were really naturally cognizant of people’s different comfort levels and what would be an appropriate story to share, and they were sort of able to read the room and read the space of the conversation and, you know, they’re experts at this. They do this every day.

Beck: Yeah, reading the room is a skill for sure, and I think for those of us who aren’t quite so practiced as they are, I want to understand more so what can cause a seemingly innocuous conversation to take a turn for the awkward, and how we navigate it when that happens and what the barriers are to getting out of our own heads and just chatting.

[Music]

Rashid: Ty Tashiro is a social scientist who writes about awkwardness, and his book called Awkward: The Science of Why We’re Socially Awkward and Why That’s Awesome explores a lot of these social and behavioral trends specific to adults in the United States. And he helps people think through how to be in social spaces and be in social spaces and feel just a bit more confident.

[Music]

Ty Tashiro: One of the great things about studying awkwardness is that everybody has had an awkward moment. For example, you’re giving a presentation, and you have an undone zipper. That’s super awkward, super embarrassing, but it’s actually not that big of a deal. It’s just an uncomfortable deviation from actually a small social expectation. If you had spinach in your teeth during a first date, same thing. It’s actually a really small kind of social expectation, but we have this really powerful emotional reaction to it.

Some of my close friends had moved to new cities and I would go visit them, and we’d go out to parties or go to a bar or something. And some of these friends were awkward. And, you know, I’d watch them in these social interactions meeting new people, and it was just heartbreaking. Because they would be their regular awkward self. And you could see the other folks losing interest and saying “I gotta go get another drink” or something.

Just that sad sort of excusing themselves for no good reason. And I thought to myself, like, Well, this is heartbreaking for my friend who’s trying to make new acquaintances or new friends in the city, but I thought, It’s also too bad for the other person because here’s this awkward person who has tremendous moral character, who’s super interesting, who’s been an amazing friend to me, but they ruled out any chance of future social interaction based on three or four minutes of chitchat. And so I had this thought, like, If the awkward person could skip the first five minutes of a social interaction, I actually think they’d be all right.

Beck: What exactly was it that your friend was doing that made people want to leave and go get another drink? What was so awkward about it?

Tashiro: This friend was, is, still, a space invader. So, in the U. S., the typical amount of space you give someone is about 18 inches.

Beck: Oh, I thought you meant like the video game. Okay.

Tashiro: Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. No, not that old-school. But he’s a space invader. So he’s probably about 10 inches, which is way too close. And that makes people feel uncomfortable. He also has trouble with voice modulation, which can certainly happen with awkward people. Speaks a little bit too loud, probably, for other people’s comfort. You know, I guess when you take a step back from it, my thought is, you know, Who cares? Like, if you can get past those little clumsy moments at the start, you find this really wonderful person.

So I wanted to see—are there ways that the awkward person can navigate those awkward moments a little bit more smoothly? On the other hand, for people who aren’t awkward, can they have a little more empathy for the awkward person’s situation?

Beck: So in your book you write that some people are more prone to awkwardness than others. Where do you think you fall?

Tashiro: Oh, boy. I’m pretty awkward. When I was a kid, I was very awkward. And I think in adulthood, I can pass for socially fluent in most situations. But I certainly still have my moments.

Beck: You’re doing great. I’m curious, can you just walk me through what goes through your mind when you, say, enter a party where you only know one or two people? What is the strategy that runs through your mind at that time?

Tashiro: So, you know, before the social event occurs, I do get some social anxiety. I think maybe the difference for someone who’s awkward is that these feelings of anxiety aren’t irrational. So I’ll give more thought to small details, like, What am I going to wear? What would be an appropriate thing to bring? What time am I gonna get there?

And so I just have a little self-talk before I go into these situations. I call it my mental preparation, and I’ll just say, Hey, you don’t know anybody; you’re nervous about that. And that’s okay. You’ve been in these situations before, and you can do it. But I need to have a more assertive attitude than would be natural for me. When I get there, there’s kind of this funny thing that happens.

So let’s say we walk into the party, and it’s in full swing. It’s pretty common; someone might say something like, “Oh, there’s a really good vibe here.” And to me, that is totally bewildering how they discern that vibe within a few seconds.

So awkward people, when they enter a social situation, they’re not all at once kind of evaluating what’s going on. Instead, what they’re doing is looking at individual pieces of information and then kind of putting it together, almost like a puzzle, to figure out what the situation is like, and how they should behave.

So it takes longer for me to read the room, I guess, and then feel comfortable enough to get in there and interact smoothly with other people. And then when I get into it, I just try to be honest, actually. And so I would approach people—if you had the uncomfortable situation where you’ve talked to somebody and they’ve moved on to something else, and you’re standing there by yourself—I’ll just approach a group, and I’ll say, “Hey, I’m Ty. I’m new here. Do you mind if I join you?” And that might sound a little daunting to some folks, but I always find that people are really receptive to that. It took a little bit of boldness, maybe, to say something like that, and I think people appreciate that.

Beck: So why do people feel awkward in that awkward moment where they’ve broken one minor expectation? Is it the same thing as social anxiety, or is it a unique feeling?

Tashiro: So, social anxiety is more of a forward-looking kind of emotion. So when we feel social anxiety, the core of that is we have some irrational fear that we’re going to mess up, or we’re going to make a fool of ourselves in a social situation.

With awkwardness, it’s more of this just in-the-moment, very present kind of feeling. And it even comes along with things like a racing heart, or your muscles might tense. Of course, one of the hallmarks is that you might blush, right? And people usually feel horrible about that. They think, I’ve just made this awkward moment worse by blushing.

So blushing actually sends a signal: Hey, I just did something awkward. I feel bad about that, and I’m blushing. I’m sending you this social signal. And people actually really appreciate that. And actually just being honest about the awkward moment that just took place can actually be beneficial for building some trust with another person.

Beck: So do you think that you’ve gotten more comfortable with socializing over time, or do you just feel like you’ve learned strategies?

Tashiro: I think it’s that I’ve learned strategies first, and then the social comfort came after that. So let me give you a quick example, maybe from childhood, about some of these strategies I had to learn.

So when we would go to Wendy’s to get a hamburger, my parents would park the car. And they would turn around, and they’d say, “Ty, it’s time to mentally prepare.” And I would shake my head: Yes. I knew exactly what this meant.

And what it was was this kind of Socratic dialogue where they would ask me a series of questions. And it would help me prepare for what the expectations would be in the social situation, and also help me think about what I needed to do with my social behaviors to handle it well and appropriately.

So they’d say things like, “Well, where are we?” And I’d say, “Well, we’re at Wendy’s!” And “What’s the first thing you need to look for when you step inside the door?”

And I would say, “Well, I need to look and see if there’s a line.” And that’s because sometimes I would go in and just shoot straight to the front, and not because I was trying to cut or cheat.

And this is hard for some non-awkward people to believe, but because I didn’t see the line, or it didn’t register with me. I was so narrowly focused on the hamburger and the fries that I would just not see all of the social information off to the side.

So once I was in line, you know, I need to figure out what to order; I need to look the cashier in the eye, say please, say thank you, not whip around on my tray and spill my drink all over the people behind me like I had done a couple times previously.

So this would happen not just once. This would happen dozens of times for various kinds of social situations. And my folks would need me to get into the habit of thinking about, Hey, what’s the goal in this situation? What are the small expectations you’re going to encounter? And then, what are the behaviors that you need to execute to be socially fluent in the situation?

So I think with, you know, most kids you could say, “Hey, make sure you’re polite when you’re ordering” or something like that, and they would think of all the little behaviors that go into that. But for the awkward kid, that’s not intuitive. And so you just need to break it down into component parts. I mean, if you walked with me into a Wendy’s now, I’m pretty smooth. (Julie laughs.)

[Music]

Craft: Like, I didn’t always know how to get into a conversation and connect with somebody. I just learned it when I started doing hair. And for people who don’t really know how to do it, I kind of was thinking, Is there a go-to question, or something? But it really depends on the setting.

Beck: So do you actually want to or feel comfortable talking about yourself with clients? Or do you actively, like, keep the focus on them in their stories, because you maybe don’t want to share?

Craft: I feel comfortable. I will share anything. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have anything that interesting to share, and so then I don’t want to talk about myself, because, like, “Oh, are you taking vacations?” “No.” “Okay, cool.” A lot of people, really—that is their No. 1 personal question: “Do you have any trips planned?”

Beck: Oh, I’m very guilty of that. Because it’s like, it’s not too personal. But maybe it gives us something to talk about.

Derosa: That is my conversation filler when I have pretty much nothing left. I say, “Do you have any trips planned?” Because we gotta, like, drum something up here.

Craft: It could really go somewhere, where you’re talking about a trip and like fun things, but the potential for a dead end is high.

Beck: That’s how you know you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, I guess.

Craft: Sort of like talking about the weather, you know?

Beck: I’m going to be self-conscious about that question from now on.

Craft: Sorry, I did not mean to make you feel that way.

Beck: No, no, no, it’s good. But that does remind me of something I wanted to ask too, because I feel like a lot of what we’ve been talking about is, like, ways that the small talk manifests very uniquely to your job. And so, how much do you feel like the skills that y’all have here translate into the real world versus what is pretty specific to, like, this interaction and this relationship?

Craft: I feel like it translates exactly the same, like, immediately.

Derosa: I think you’re really good at that. I struggle with that. Because sometimes being in the hair salon, I’m really in my comfort zone in this weird way, and I’ll see the same person at the coffee shop or something and I sort of stumble on my words and I get sort of stumped. I get a little awkward and I think that’s more of my—I get some social anxiety going on if it’s people I don’t know. And this goes back to your introvert-versus-extrovert question. If it’s people I don’t know, I can do that small-talk thing to an extent, but then I can’t go all the way ’cause it’s a bigger setting. There’s more people. I’m really good in that sort of one-on-one moment.

Craft: Like, even the hair salon, it really is, I think, a safe space in the community, because who am I going to tell? I’m not so invested that telling me is going to have, like any major impact in their personal life. So they can get things off their chest and feel safe; that it’s not, like, a risk.

Derosa: And I do agree, if you’re not having those relationships in your community, you are missing out on just, like, It’s personal, but it’s casual.

Beck: Yeah. I don’t know how we get to a place where we just accept that feeling awkward won’t kill us. But I’m not there yet.

[Music]

Rashid: I’m curious if part of the stress, too, is that once you start a conversation with someone—and if you do start to feel awkward, and maybe you’re not comfortable being honest right away about the fact that you’re feeling awkward—and you want to dip out of the conversation, it can be hard to do that.

Beck: For me, a situation that can cause some anxiety is if I am trapped with, say, like, an acquaintance on a train, and maybe that train ride is half an hour long, and what are we going to do? And I would love to tell you about a man that I once knew, an acquaintance of mine from college, who I truly would not remember at all were it not for this moment.

He was a friend of a friend. And one day we were both on the same train going down to Chicago together. I went to school outside of Chicago, and so this was like a good 40-, 45-minute train ride. And he pulled the most, like, amazing Uno-reverse ninja trick I’ve ever seen in conversation.

And so we did the very classic, like: “Hey, how’s it going? How’s the one thing that I know about you?” “It’s still good. How’s the one thing that I know about you?” “It’s fine.” And then we ran out of material. And he just said: “It’s been so great talking to you. I’m going to go read my book now.” And then we both sat down on opposite sides of the train, and we read our books, and we took that half-hour train ride down to Chicago. And when I got off the train, we did like a friendly wave.

And I actually don’t think we ever saw each other again. But I’ve thought about this man so regularly for the past, like, 10 years, because he just handled that interaction in such a smooth way that you almost never see.

Tashiro: I think we feel kind of more awkward than ever about these kinds of things: meeting new people, or the conversation in the elevator. It seems to stop people.

Beck: Why do you say you think that we’re more fearful of awkwardness than we used to be?

Tashiro: I think maybe some of it has to do with the fact that we don’t have to interact with people as much as we used to. We can do it through our social media, or we can get absorbed in our phones or stay in the comfort of our home and stream some show.

There’s all these outs from, you know, actually being face-to-face with people and going through those uncomfortable moments of trying to get to know somebody for the first time or dealing with the prospect that they might reject us, that maybe they don’t want to hang out. And that’s a scary thing as well. So I think there’s these alternatives about how we can spend our time that are kind of semi-social or faux social, but I think that’s actually damaging, because it keeps us from doing the hard work of getting face-to-face and actually working to build a friendship.

Beck: What do you mean by semi-social, faux social?

Tashiro: Well, you know, if you’re texting back and forth with somebody, that’s fine. But it’s obviously not as good, right, as sitting down with them for a long dinner and getting into just a deep conversation. And same thing with social media: We’ve kind of put our best foot forward on social media and we might have some nice interactions, but they’re not as gratifying as a face-to-face interaction with somebody.

Beck: Is the texting and the faux social interactions to some degree maybe our way of preparing to go to Wendy’s?

Tashiro: Yeah, definitely. That’s a good point. In online dating, for example, you might send messages back and forth or whatever. And that kind of gives you a sense of the person; gets the interaction rolling a little bit before you actually meet up. When all you really want to do is get face-to-face and figure out if there might be some kind of chemistry here, but even in platonic situations, it’s the same thing. We can get stuck mentally preparing for something that should have happened a long time ago.

Beck: Yeah, well one consequence of this fear of awkwardness is people go to parties, or they go to bars, and they only talk to people they already know. Have you noticed that in your life?

Tashiro: Oh, for sure. You know, it’s another thing, kind of, that makes me just want to go over and say things I have no business saying to other people.

Beck: Like what?

Tashiro: I just want to say, like, “Go meet other people. You know, you’re standing here in your group of three you came in with, and you look semi-sad. Go talk to these other people you want to talk to.”

Beck: So how can we break out of that? Do we really need to break out of that, or is it fine to just embrace the safety of hanging out with my existing friends at a party?

Tashiro: My bias would be: I don’t think that’s okay. You know, there’s all this disconnection going on. So the average person could benefit from more friends, and certainly benefit from more friends that they’ve built some quality intimacy with and they feel they can go to in a time of need.

So if we go with that perspective, then we should break out of our shell, and we should cross that junior-high dance floor of sorts and go talk to somebody new—knowing that this person might reject us, or knowing that the interaction might be a little bit awkward. But that’s okay.

[Music]

Beck: I mean, to some degree it’s a justified fear, right? Like, you probably will feel awkward. Like, you actually aren’t going to make it through this life without being awkward in social situations.

But I think, like, Ty made me realize that part of what makes things so awkward sometimes is trying to pretend that they’re not. Like, all of his advice would boil down to: Just be honest.

Like, just go up to those people that you don’t know at the party and say, “I don’t know anyone at the party. Can I hang out with you?” And like, I would never in a million years have thought to say that to somebody. Like, I would probably try to be nonchalant by the punch bowl and, like, sidle my way into a conversation and hope it was just cool and nobody noticed that I didn’t really belong there. You know?

Some of what is really challenging about small talk is: It’s so situational. Small talk with someone you admire on a train is different than small talk on a first date. And then there’s also each individual person’s reactions, and whether they want to be left alone, and how open they are to conversation. And how awkward you feel, and how awkward they feel.

But I think there can be a middle path where you read the room a bit. Maybe you have some questions in your back pocket, and you know, there’s certainly times where I leave my headphones in and I’m looking at my phone and I don’t really want to be spoken to either, but I think we have to bear in mind what we miss out on if we do that all the time.

Rashid: Yes. And I think that’s exactly what I wonder—if what gets lost is all of us getting used to not trying to start up a conversation with anyone. Out of fear, or out of fear that it won’t lead anywhere, or it doesn’t mean anything.

Beck: Yeah. I remember Mimi and Erin talking a lot about how fueled they actually are by all the conversations that they have at work. And, like, not just purely for entertainment value, but also like feeling like these conversations are meaningful, and they are bringing something unique and special into their lives. They were just interested in people. And just, like, having a genuine curiosity for the person that’s in front of you fuels conversation.

Rashid: As meta as that is, we got to talk about it. (Laughs.)

Beck: On that note, Becca, it’s been so great making a podcast with you. And I’m going to go read my book now.

[Music]

Rashid: That’s all for this week’s episode of How to Talk to People. This episode was produced by me, Rebecca Rashid, and hosted by Julie Beck. Editing by Jocelyn Frank and Claudine Ebeid. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Our engineer is Rob Smierciak.

[Music]

Garber: This was the final episode in our special collection How to Slow Down. If you enjoyed this episode, take a listen to our fourth season, How to Talk to People. You can find all seven episodes wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll be back with a new season of How To soon!