July 8, 2026 • 26 mins
Nicholas Epley, author of A Liltte More Social, shares how and why to talk with new people
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a slightly longer one part
of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
they take their days from great to awesome and any
advice they have for the rest of us. So today
I am delighted to welcome Nicholas Epley to Before Breakfast.
(00:30):
Nick is a professor at the University of Chicago. He
is the author of the brand new book A Little
More Social. So, Nick, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Laura, Yeah, excited to have you on. Why don't you
tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
So, I'm a professor of behavioral science at the University
of Chicago's Booth School of Business, and I study mind
reading for a living. My reading, I am I study
how we make inferences about each other's thoughts and beliefs
and attitudes, and mostly I am interested in how we
screw that up and misunderstand each other in all kinds
of ways. That compromises our social relationship and our happiness.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
All right, Well, that leads directly into your new book,
which is all about a misperception that people have about others.
Your new book is a little more social. What are
you trying to convince people to do with this book.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
To test their beliefs a little bit? That is, to
recognize that social connection is a choice we make, but
whether we reach out and engage with other people or
hold back and avoid them. And before we make that
choice to reach out or to hold back, we play
out thoughts in our heads about how this interaction might go,
Whether this stranger really wants to talk to me or
is scary, Whether you want to go deeper in this
(01:36):
conversation or not, whether you'll respond favorably if I reach
out and express gratitude you, or pass along a compliment
or ask for help. Social connections and just choice. And
what we find in our work is that often people's
beliefs are their expectations about social interaction are overly pessimistic.
And I would like readers to test some of those
beliefs to see if in fact they might be overly
(01:59):
pessimistic in their own lives in ways that are choosing
them to be less making them less social than they
might otherwise be.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
So it's interesting Nick.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
When I heard about your book and I came to
it first, I thought it was going to be that
you were going to convince me that I needed to
make plans more often with my existing friends, right like
that I needed to get out of the house and
go see them, like have the lunch date or whatever.
And we'll get to that in a minute, and making
time for that. But your book is largely about talking
to strangers.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
There's a big chunk about it. That's certainly the part
that I think hits people the most, because that's where
people are often the most pessimistic and anxious and nervous,
or they think it's not going to be very meaningful
or valuable. And it's also the place that we're where
we're most consistently wrong. I think about how well these
interactions torue.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah, well, what do we get out of talking to strangers?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Like, I mean, I've been told as a child not
to talk to strangers, So why should I talk to strangers?
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Yeah? Well, you get two things. One is you learn stuff,
so you sometimes be amazed about what you'll learn from
other people. I've been on a plane with one of
only a handful of people who been inside the North
Korean nuclear arsenal. For instance, I've been in a cab
with a guy who grew up a few miles from
where my two kids, who we adopted from Ethiopia grew up.
(03:13):
You know, you learn things when you have conversations with
other other people. So that's one. But the other thing
is that you create connections that just feel good in
that moment. You develop a brighter sense of what other
people are like. You learn that other people are mostly
kind and decent and interesting, and you make those moments,
you can make those moments that are otherwise dull and
(03:33):
kind of boring better. And it turns out your happiness
is really a function of how you're spending your moments.
Are those moments relatively good or bad, And so you
get better days, better weeks, better months, better years when
you choose to reach out and connect a little more often,
even with strangers.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Even with strangers.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
So that's true, even if I don't see these people again,
Like even if I have a conversation on the plane
with this gentleman, you never see them again, I'm still
going to be happier.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
You're happier in that moment, and that matters, right, That's
what happiness is is to keep doing that kind of
thing that if you think about psychologists have learned that
happiness is really a function of the frequency of positive
experiences you have, not the intensity of them. It's a
little like exercise, right, You kind of got to go
every day, and going one day isn't going to be
enough to keep you fit for a long time. Having
(04:19):
a nice meal with a friend isn't going to keep
you happy for a whole week or two. You need
to pay attention to those moments, and when you do,
it makes your days days better than they'd otherwise be.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
So, what are the biases that keep us from talking
to strangers? You go into this and sort of systematically
in your book.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Yeah. So, one is that we tend to think about
ourselves in terms of our competency, where other people care
about our warmth, and that means that we underestimate how
positively things will turn out when we just reach out
to other people in warm, friendly kind ways. That stranger
you turn to with a smile and a hello and
tell me a little bit about yourself, right, they tend
(05:00):
to react to that warmth and that makes that conversation
go well. But if we're focused on our competency, we'll
underestimate how well this is going to go. So that's
one bias. Another one is that we have a hard
time imagining how social interactions will actually play out. We're
too focused on the initial part, so we focus a
lot on who are we talking to, what are we
(05:21):
talking about. We're focused on kind of the core aspect
of the action itself, not so much on the reciprocal
back and forth that happens in social interaction. The reason
why conversations, for instance, tend to be pleasant is because
we go back and forth in conversation and that's what
creates connection. But our expectations miss that right. The other
bias that we have is that we don't learn from
(05:43):
choices we avoid. We don't learn when we avoid interactions,
and that means that if you're pessimistic upfront, that belief
can be self fulfilling, because if I think talking new
is going to be unpleasant, I won't try it and
I'll never find out I might be wrong. Optimism gets
calibrated because I try, pessimism doesn't. It stays, and it's
kind of pernicious that way. So those are three biases
(06:06):
that keep us I think overly pessimistic about how reaching
out will go.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
I wonder if there's any sort of way that, like
public spaces could be structured to encourage more sort of
random conversations.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
I know you mentioned in the.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
I mean obviously I love my quiet cars. By the way,
I just don't want to hear people's cell phone conversations.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Yeah, but nobody like the half a log Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
The half a log I will talk to it stranger.
I don't want to hear their half of their content
strators conversation. But like having a bar car or something
that's the chatty car, like people sit in that they
want to talk to people.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
I mean, what can you envision in public spaces?
Speaker 3 (06:40):
So the key for these public spaces that we find
at least and this is something that you know I've
talked to architects about that's easy to overlook, is when
we think about public spaces, we often think about creating
spaces where people can come together, right as if if
you just create those spaces, it will happen. What we
find is that you're willingness to reach out and engage
(07:01):
with other people is really a function of your beliefs
and your expectations about how interested other people are in
engaging with you. And if you don't overcome that part,
that sense that other people are willing to engage with you,
it's not going to be enough to keep people make
people connect. So I mean, how many times have you
been in a sporting event and you've never said anything
to the people sitting around you? Right, You talk to
(07:21):
the person you're with, but you don't talk to the
people in front of you or behind you. Imagine that
a public service announcer asked you, you know, during the
first halftime break or something, or during a timeout, ask
you to stand up and greet your neighbor a little bit, right,
or like you created a bar car where you go
where you understand that the norm is that we're going
(07:43):
to engage with each other a little bit. I was
having dinner in Kansas City last night. I was by myself.
I sat at the bar and there, you know, people
who come up and sit next to you are kind
of open to conversation because we're all kind of alone, right.
So it's overcoming those norms believing that other people don't
want to talk to you or engage with you. That's
also in these public spaces. So having things that signal
that is going to be important.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
So you'll be happy to learn my church just reinstated
the passing of the piece.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
A Lutheran church that did that as well, my favorite
moment of the whole service.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Right, we have some strong feelings about it. We're Presbyterians,
so you know.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
People aren't wild about it.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Or maybe not.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Maybe not.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Well, We're going to take a quick ad break and
then I'll be back with more from Nick Eppley.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Well, I am back talking with Nick Epley.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
So we've been talking about talking with strangers and random places,
and I wonder some bit about the safety aspect of it.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
You know, I certainly, like I.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Said, you know, as a child, don't talk to strangers
many years ago, when I was young and cute, I
did not like sitting in bars randomly because of.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
What would happen. So I wonder if you could address
that part of it.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Yeah. So, so our data suggests that not that reaching
out to engage with other people always turns out well,
or that it turns out the same way for everybody.
I'm a man, you're a woman. The ecologies that we
live in are a little bit different, right, and they
don't Then our data also don't suggest that you should
be reaching out all the time to engage with other
people right. What our data suggests is that when you're
(09:20):
in situations where you'd like to reach out and engage, right,
you're a little worried about whether the other person is
interested in engaging with you. Those are the cases where
we're misplaced. So we're not telling you to go out
and talk to people in back alleyways or you know,
things where you feel somehow unsafe. Although our data also
suggests that just like you know, we have a lot
(09:41):
of fears, like you know, fears of sharks in the
ocean and things like that that are exaggerated. I think
a lot of these fears stranger danger was a was
a wildly miscalibrated fear about what other people are like,
you know. But our data suggests that you should reach
out in places where you feel comfortable but you're just
unsure whether somebody would like to talk to you. So
(10:01):
I talked when I was writing this book to people
who talk to people a lot. A lot of the
women that I talk to said that they try to
talk to other women mostly, and that's great. So if
you just do that right, just engage with other women
more often where you feel a little more comfortable, that
would improve the quality of your life. So that's I
think what we're suggesting is to just test in the
(10:22):
context where you do feel safe and comfortable, but you
just think maybe now the time isn't right, or that
person doesn't seem interested. Check it. Check those beliefs in
those contexts. Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
So let's talk a little bit about in person conversations
versus the electronic communication that a lot of us rely
on these days. What is it about conversation itself that
is so inherently pleasant?
Speaker 3 (10:46):
So this is one of the things that our expectations
miss when we're interacting with people live that tends to
pull us together, in part because it essentially synchronizes our
thinking and our behavior with one another. So we often
think of conversationisted too. For a long time, think of
conversation as a back and forth, like a tennis match.
One person is speaking, then the other person responds, and
(11:07):
it goes on that way. When you actually look at
what social interaction is like, it's not that one person
is engaging while the other person is sitting there totally dead.
The other person is also very actively engaged it's more
like a band playing together. Right, one person's taking the lead,
the other person's playing the background rhythm, and that background
rhythm or things like backchanneling. Right, So when I'm talking,
(11:29):
somebody will be saying mmm, yeah, uh huh. Right. That's
signaling to us that they are interested in us, that
they are with us, that they are thinking with us together, right,
And that synchrony is what pulls us together. They're also
giving us constant feedback when we're talking to them. Sometimes
we can see it, right, like you're nodding at me
when I'm talking with you, or you're smiling, right, And
(11:52):
it's that stuff that pulls us together. Also, in conversation,
we go back and forth. We're like cooperating with each other,
and we get the people when we're cooperating with them.
Social interaction has this reciprocal back and forth component to it,
where not only is the way you reach back to
me determined by how I reach out to you. I
reach out to you in a positive way, you tend
to reach back to me in a positive way, but
(12:14):
the fact that you are reaching back and we're going
back and forth like that, that's what pulls us together.
When we're connecting typing to each other is dead almost
in that particular way. There are words there that we're
communicating to each other, and that matters, but it lacks
the rhythm and therefore the synchrony that you get in
live conversation, and therefore it doesn't connect us nearly the
(12:36):
same way that connecting live with each other does.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
It's interesting.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, when I learned to interview people for podcasts, I
had to learn to stop back channeling it in audio fast,
because if you have a ton of like me going
uh huh huh, that's great, Nick, it's horrible to listen to.
But we can see each other. Our audience is just
listening to us, but we can see each other. And
(13:01):
so I am nodding my head to my guests all
the time to encourage them in a sort of visual
back channeling.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
So podcasting has made you a worse conversationals. You have
to turn that off when you're out in the.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Real You don't have to shut up anymore, Laura. You
can let them, let them talk, and you can go
back and forth.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Although you know you mentioned so when we wereciprocate going
back and forth and even joke about it, this is
sort of like the oh, you've been in Cleveland.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
I was once in Cleveland.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
I mean, there's certain elements you're trying to find common ground,
but many of us are not that great at finding
common ground. I wonder you've developed a couple questions that
you found get people very engaged with their conversation partner.
I wonder if you can talk a few about those
and how you came up with them.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
So so let me just say first about these questions. Essentially,
what we're doing is we're testing what happens when we
have the kinds of conversations we'd actually like to be having.
When you ask people how deep are the conversations you're
typically having, they say, not that deep. How do you
the conversations you'd like to be having? They typically say
notably deeper? And the question is why aren't you having
those conversations? Right? I don't think it's actually because we
(14:05):
don't know how to have them. When we ask people
to generate deeper questions, they can do it, and when
they then have a conversation about those deeper questions that
they can generate, they have better conversations. They enjoy them
more than when they ask their typical ones. So I
think much of it is is we're not asking the
questions we could be asking. But in our experiments, what
(14:27):
we do is we pair people up randomly, tell them
you're going to have a conversation with somebody just a minute,
and we give them questions that are notably deeper and
more meaningful than they would typically talk about. And these
come from an experiment experimental procedure developed by Art in
the Lane Aaron known as the fast Friends procedure that
psychologists use to pull people together. They thought it took
(14:48):
thirty six questions, a ton of questions. It doesn't. You
can get deep really really quickly. The questions we have
people discuss are things like, what are you most grateful
for in your life? Please tell me about it? If
I was going to become a good friend of yours,
what would be most important for me to know about you?
Can you tell me one of the last times you
cried in front of another person. Going into these conversations,
people are pretty nervous. They're pretty anxious about how they're
(15:10):
going to go. They think it's going to be pretty awkward,
right jumping right into the deep end of the pool.
They think it's going to be kind of mediocre. They're
not going to have a whole lot in common with
the person. When they come out of these conversations, they
go way better than they thought, not nearly as awkward
as they imagined, and they feel much more connected. They
enjoy the other person a lot more than expect and
have more in common than they imagine, because we tend
to talk about things that we have in common. That's
(15:32):
the way conversation works. But I don't think the magic
is in the questions. My advice to folks to have
the kinds of conversation you'd like to be having is
to change your mindset a little bit when you're going
into these conversations, to actually allow yourself to think about
and then ask these kinds of meaningful questions that you
actually like to be discussing. So the way to do
(15:54):
that is to actually take an interest in getting to
know other people a little bit, even if it's only
for a moment, even it's just a single serving friendship.
Right you're just on a plane like I was this
morning coming in from Kansas City, or I'm on a
train r at home, I can find out, you know,
I can get deep pretty quickly, and I can ask people,
you know, what is it you do for a living,
And then I can ask do you love your job?
(16:16):
And right there on the second question, I've gotten to love. Right.
If you can work love into your second question, you're
on the right track, right, Or one thing that I
like to do when I'm taking interest in really getting
to know somebody is I'll often just start. You don't
even need a second question, you're just doing your first.
What's your story, Lauren? Tell me, what's your story? How
(16:36):
did you get here today? And typically when you ask
that question, people recognize that they're not talking about your
commute into work or whatever you're talking about kind of
you know, just tell me about your life and how
you got to where you are today. Right, And when
you take an interest in other people, then meaningful questions
about who they are, what they care about, what they
(16:58):
hope for in their future. That stuff, I think often
comes spontaneously to mind and more willing to ask for
it when you've when you've thought about these questions.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
So what is an illuminator?
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Because I imagine that people who are illuminators have good
intries into conversation.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Yeah, so this is David Brooks's term, which I rather
like you wrote a book called How to Know a
Person that was based to some extent on a lot
of research that I talked about my first book, mind Wise,
and David talks about. I don't think you want to
think about this as a personality trade. This is something
that we can all do in any given conversation, which
(17:35):
is to engage with people in ways that kind of
light them up, that allow you to see another person
for who they are. Ask meaningful questions that that they
care about, right, that that kind of shine a light
on who they are, rather than just talking about superficial
things that actually don't allow you to know or understand
(17:58):
somebody that's an illuminator. And you can adopt that approach,
that illuminating approach in conversation when you ask people about,
you know, what do you love to do, what are
your hopes for your future? What's tell me about one
of the most interesting things you've done in your life.
I'd love to hear about it. I know you've got
a story to tell me. That's what being an illuminator
looks like.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Excellent.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
All right, Well we're going to take a quick ad
break and we'll be back with more from Nick Epley.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Well, I'm back talking with Nick Epley, who is a
professor at the University of Chicago, the author of the
brand new book A Little More Social. So I want
to get to the topic of spending more time with friends,
which of course is where I initially thought that the
book called A Little More Social was going to tell
me I should go rather than talking with random people
on the A train.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
So do you have any thoughts on spending more time
with your actual friends? And I know that you are
also a busy dad. You have five kids. I also
have five kids. That's something you have in common. So
what do you think about finding time for that?
Speaker 3 (19:03):
So often we think too narrowly about what our situations involved,
like what we're doing in any given moment, Like I'm
going down to get my coffee down in the faculty
lounge here in my office today, Right, I think about
that as going down to get my coffee. Or I'm
driving home at the end of the day, and I
(19:23):
am you know, that's driving home at the end of
the day. There are often opportunities in our lives where
we can add other people to it. Right, So I've
now taken most times when I'm in the car, I'll
call up one of the kids, right who's not home,
our kids, some of our kids are a little older,
I'll call them up. I'll add a FaceTime moment, Like
when I'm traveling right alone, I'm getting ready in the
(19:46):
morning to do something, I'll FaceTime my daughter Lindsey and
just keep her there on the nightstand while we're talking
with each other a little bit when it works out
for her schedule. If you're watching a game, right so,
the World Cup is going on as we're talking right now.
If you're watching a sporting event, lots of people will
sit in their homes and watch it alone. You can
invite a friend over to watch it with you. Right So,
(20:07):
I think that's the way to think about how to
add a little bit of what psychologists sometimes refer to
as vitamin s. This is social connection. Two moments you're
already having. You're going to walk the dog, See if
a neighbor can join you. Right you're sitting alone at
a bar, see if you can bring other people in
and have a conversation with them. You can often add
(20:28):
a little social element to things you're already doing in
ways that don't change it. Sometimes these can be little
things like I've developed a habit of practicing the ten
to five rule, particularly when I'm in the office. The
ten five rule comes from the world of hospitality. When
you're ten feet away from somebody, who smile at them.
When you're five feet away, you say hello to them. Right,
I'm walking around anyway, you know, I might as well
(20:50):
light people up, be an illuminator. Right. You'll get a
lot more hellos back and smiles back in your life.
If you do this, you get to know people a
little bit better without adding any extra time to what
you're doing. So I think those are the opportunities to
look for. When can I take something that I'm currently
doing that's not social and without any additional effort to
(21:11):
speak of, make it a little more social than it
would be otherwise.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
We are big fans of efficiency around here, so we'll
note that top that tip for sure. We're also big
fans of morning routines around here, obviously, with a show
called Before Breakfast.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
So what does your morning routine look like these days?
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Well, so we have a ten year old Lindsay who
if you read the book, you'll learn about Lindsay and
the opening preface, Lindsay likes to get up early in
the morning. She likes to get up around five thirty,
but she's not actually supposed to get up until six
or so. So I have a baby a mount an
next to the bed. I'll usually hear talking a little
bit earlier. Lindsay has down syndrome. She's an adopted daughter
from China, and so I hear getting up in the morning.
(21:52):
She's often singing the Wicked soundtrack, which is pretty darn
af I love that. Yeah, that's a great way to
wake up. It turns out to be okay, right, But
I usually I'm talking to her a little bit, asking
her to, you know, to wait till the green light
comes on then we can come. Six o'clock though, is
when I get up with her. Usually bring it down stairs.
She'll help me make coffee. She loves two eggs, so
I'll make four eggs. I get two, she gets two,
(22:13):
and then I'll eat breakfast with my daughter while my
wife gets a little bit of extra sleep in the
morning and actually gets to get herself ready without being
encumbered by the kids. So that's my morning routine, spending
it with Lindsay, with my daughter.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
I love it. That is a great way to spend
your morning.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
One question I ask all my guests, and we've been
talking a little bit about this, but what is something
you have done recently to take a day from great
to awesome?
Speaker 3 (22:38):
So I've been traveling a lot. I'll just tell you
what I did yesterday. Yesterday I was in Kansas City
speaking at a bookstore, and that day I would say
it was going to be kind of mediocre. When you're traveling,
it's not always so great. So I was driving over
from Saint Louis. So what I did was I reached
out to an old friend of mine. Todd Jones is
(23:00):
his name. He lives just north of Kansas City a
little bit. I've known him since I was in kindergarten,
but we haven't spent a lot of time together in
recent years. But it reached out to him as an
old friend, and turns out he's a few miles away
from another longtime friend of ours that we've known since kindergarten.
I spent the afternoon having lunch with Todd and Mercy
at Todd's house, and that made that day awesome.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
That is wonderful anytime you can connect with people that
you have a long history with. I find you still
have a lot to talk about.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
I mean, even if it's been a while.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Yeah, absolutely, Cat, I mean you almost those old friends.
What's interesting in research is that people anticipate that reaching
out and connecting to an old friend will go about
as well on average as talking with a stranger. But
I think there were wildly wrong about that too. We
haven't done research on this ourselves, but it is something
we are starting to work on. You instantly can get
(23:52):
back to things that you have in common, even if
it's not about old times, but even about current times.
There's a Ben Rector song that I love called old Friends,
which I recommend some of your listeners can listen to
before breakfast. One of his lyrics is you can't make
old friends. He's absolutely right about that, so true.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Only time can make old friends. Only time can make
old friends. Well, I think it's good to put yourself
in other people's shoes, I mean, to have your own
theory of mind here. Obviously, would you be upset, annoyed,
et cetera if an old friend reached out to you?
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Would you be like what on earth were they thinking? Like?
What loser would do that?
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Exactly? Of course? Not No, never would you think that right, absolutely,
But people when they we find in our work that
when they think about what's on the mind of another person,
they're often not doing that. They're just imagining another person's
mind without imagining how they would feel if they were
in the person's shoes. And in this case, yes, just
flip it around. Would you mind of a friend who
(24:50):
you knew since Kindergarten said reach out to you said
they were going to be in town and would love
to combine and say I you'd be delighted. We had
a wonderful day yesterday because it was awesome.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yeah, you took a day from great to awesome. Well, Nick,
where can people find you? So?
Speaker 3 (25:05):
My website is Nicholas Sepplely dot com. You can find
a little more social anywhere you buy books, including the
audiobook I did the narration. If you like the sound
of my voice, you can get eight hours of it
and then I have a ted talk you can look
for that. It's fourteen minutes and I'm also on LinkedIn
as well.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Awesome, Well, Nick, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback
about this or any other episode, you can always reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
In the meantime, this is Laura.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
(26:09):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a slightly longer one part
of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
they take their days from great to awesome and any
advice they have for the rest of us. So today
I am delighted to welcome Nicholas Epley to Before Breakfast.
(00:30):
Nick is a professor at the University of Chicago. He
is the author of the brand new book A Little
More Social. So, Nick, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Laura, Yeah, excited to have you on. Why don't you
tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
So, I'm a professor of behavioral science at the University
of Chicago's Booth School of Business, and I study mind
reading for a living. My reading, I am I study
how we make inferences about each other's thoughts and beliefs
and attitudes, and mostly I am interested in how we
screw that up and misunderstand each other in all kinds
of ways. That compromises our social relationship and our happiness.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
All right, Well, that leads directly into your new book,
which is all about a misperception that people have about others.
Your new book is a little more social. What are
you trying to convince people to do with this book.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
To test their beliefs a little bit? That is, to
recognize that social connection is a choice we make, but
whether we reach out and engage with other people or
hold back and avoid them. And before we make that
choice to reach out or to hold back, we play
out thoughts in our heads about how this interaction might go,
Whether this stranger really wants to talk to me or
is scary, Whether you want to go deeper in this
(01:36):
conversation or not, whether you'll respond favorably if I reach
out and express gratitude you, or pass along a compliment
or ask for help. Social connections and just choice. And
what we find in our work is that often people's
beliefs are their expectations about social interaction are overly pessimistic.
And I would like readers to test some of those
beliefs to see if in fact they might be overly
(01:59):
pessimistic in their own lives in ways that are choosing
them to be less making them less social than they
might otherwise be.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
So it's interesting Nick.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
When I heard about your book and I came to
it first, I thought it was going to be that
you were going to convince me that I needed to
make plans more often with my existing friends, right like
that I needed to get out of the house and
go see them, like have the lunch date or whatever.
And we'll get to that in a minute, and making
time for that. But your book is largely about talking
to strangers.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
There's a big chunk about it. That's certainly the part
that I think hits people the most, because that's where
people are often the most pessimistic and anxious and nervous,
or they think it's not going to be very meaningful
or valuable. And it's also the place that we're where
we're most consistently wrong. I think about how well these
interactions torue.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yeah, well, what do we get out of talking to strangers?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Like, I mean, I've been told as a child not
to talk to strangers, So why should I talk to strangers?
Speaker 3 (02:49):
Yeah? Well, you get two things. One is you learn stuff,
so you sometimes be amazed about what you'll learn from
other people. I've been on a plane with one of
only a handful of people who been inside the North
Korean nuclear arsenal. For instance, I've been in a cab
with a guy who grew up a few miles from
where my two kids, who we adopted from Ethiopia grew up.
(03:13):
You know, you learn things when you have conversations with
other other people. So that's one. But the other thing
is that you create connections that just feel good in
that moment. You develop a brighter sense of what other
people are like. You learn that other people are mostly
kind and decent and interesting, and you make those moments,
you can make those moments that are otherwise dull and
(03:33):
kind of boring better. And it turns out your happiness
is really a function of how you're spending your moments.
Are those moments relatively good or bad, And so you
get better days, better weeks, better months, better years when
you choose to reach out and connect a little more often,
even with strangers.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Even with strangers.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
So that's true, even if I don't see these people again,
Like even if I have a conversation on the plane
with this gentleman, you never see them again, I'm still
going to be happier.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
You're happier in that moment, and that matters, right, That's
what happiness is is to keep doing that kind of
thing that if you think about psychologists have learned that
happiness is really a function of the frequency of positive
experiences you have, not the intensity of them. It's a
little like exercise, right, You kind of got to go
every day, and going one day isn't going to be
enough to keep you fit for a long time. Having
(04:19):
a nice meal with a friend isn't going to keep
you happy for a whole week or two. You need
to pay attention to those moments, and when you do,
it makes your days days better than they'd otherwise be.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
So, what are the biases that keep us from talking
to strangers? You go into this and sort of systematically
in your book.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Yeah. So, one is that we tend to think about
ourselves in terms of our competency, where other people care
about our warmth, and that means that we underestimate how
positively things will turn out when we just reach out
to other people in warm, friendly kind ways. That stranger
you turn to with a smile and a hello and
tell me a little bit about yourself, right, they tend
(05:00):
to react to that warmth and that makes that conversation
go well. But if we're focused on our competency, we'll
underestimate how well this is going to go. So that's
one bias. Another one is that we have a hard
time imagining how social interactions will actually play out. We're
too focused on the initial part, so we focus a
lot on who are we talking to, what are we
(05:21):
talking about. We're focused on kind of the core aspect
of the action itself, not so much on the reciprocal
back and forth that happens in social interaction. The reason
why conversations, for instance, tend to be pleasant is because
we go back and forth in conversation and that's what
creates connection. But our expectations miss that right. The other
bias that we have is that we don't learn from
(05:43):
choices we avoid. We don't learn when we avoid interactions,
and that means that if you're pessimistic upfront, that belief
can be self fulfilling, because if I think talking new
is going to be unpleasant, I won't try it and
I'll never find out I might be wrong. Optimism gets
calibrated because I try, pessimism doesn't. It stays, and it's
kind of pernicious that way. So those are three biases
(06:06):
that keep us I think overly pessimistic about how reaching
out will go.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
I wonder if there's any sort of way that, like
public spaces could be structured to encourage more sort of
random conversations.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
I know you mentioned in the.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
I mean obviously I love my quiet cars. By the way,
I just don't want to hear people's cell phone conversations.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Yeah, but nobody like the half a log Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
The half a log I will talk to it stranger.
I don't want to hear their half of their content
strators conversation. But like having a bar car or something
that's the chatty car, like people sit in that they
want to talk to people.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
I mean, what can you envision in public spaces?
Speaker 3 (06:40):
So the key for these public spaces that we find
at least and this is something that you know I've
talked to architects about that's easy to overlook, is when
we think about public spaces, we often think about creating
spaces where people can come together, right as if if
you just create those spaces, it will happen. What we
find is that you're willingness to reach out and engage
(07:01):
with other people is really a function of your beliefs
and your expectations about how interested other people are in
engaging with you. And if you don't overcome that part,
that sense that other people are willing to engage with you,
it's not going to be enough to keep people make
people connect. So I mean, how many times have you
been in a sporting event and you've never said anything
to the people sitting around you? Right, You talk to
(07:21):
the person you're with, but you don't talk to the
people in front of you or behind you. Imagine that
a public service announcer asked you, you know, during the
first halftime break or something, or during a timeout, ask
you to stand up and greet your neighbor a little bit, right,
or like you created a bar car where you go
where you understand that the norm is that we're going
(07:43):
to engage with each other a little bit. I was
having dinner in Kansas City last night. I was by myself.
I sat at the bar and there, you know, people
who come up and sit next to you are kind
of open to conversation because we're all kind of alone, right.
So it's overcoming those norms believing that other people don't
want to talk to you or engage with you. That's
also in these public spaces. So having things that signal
that is going to be important.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
So you'll be happy to learn my church just reinstated
the passing of the piece.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
A Lutheran church that did that as well, my favorite
moment of the whole service.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Right, we have some strong feelings about it. We're Presbyterians,
so you know.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
People aren't wild about it.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Or maybe not.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Maybe not.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Well, We're going to take a quick ad break and
then I'll be back with more from Nick Eppley.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Well, I am back talking with Nick Epley.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
So we've been talking about talking with strangers and random places,
and I wonder some bit about the safety aspect of it.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
You know, I certainly, like I.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Said, you know, as a child, don't talk to strangers
many years ago, when I was young and cute, I
did not like sitting in bars randomly because of.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
What would happen. So I wonder if you could address
that part of it.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Yeah. So, so our data suggests that not that reaching
out to engage with other people always turns out well,
or that it turns out the same way for everybody.
I'm a man, you're a woman. The ecologies that we
live in are a little bit different, right, and they
don't Then our data also don't suggest that you should
be reaching out all the time to engage with other
people right. What our data suggests is that when you're
(09:20):
in situations where you'd like to reach out and engage, right,
you're a little worried about whether the other person is
interested in engaging with you. Those are the cases where
we're misplaced. So we're not telling you to go out
and talk to people in back alleyways or you know,
things where you feel somehow unsafe. Although our data also
suggests that just like you know, we have a lot
(09:41):
of fears, like you know, fears of sharks in the
ocean and things like that that are exaggerated. I think
a lot of these fears stranger danger was a was
a wildly miscalibrated fear about what other people are like,
you know. But our data suggests that you should reach
out in places where you feel comfortable but you're just
unsure whether somebody would like to talk to you. So
(10:01):
I talked when I was writing this book to people
who talk to people a lot. A lot of the
women that I talk to said that they try to
talk to other women mostly, and that's great. So if
you just do that right, just engage with other women
more often where you feel a little more comfortable, that
would improve the quality of your life. So that's I
think what we're suggesting is to just test in the
(10:22):
context where you do feel safe and comfortable, but you
just think maybe now the time isn't right, or that
person doesn't seem interested. Check it. Check those beliefs in
those contexts. Gotcha.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
So let's talk a little bit about in person conversations
versus the electronic communication that a lot of us rely
on these days. What is it about conversation itself that
is so inherently pleasant?
Speaker 3 (10:46):
So this is one of the things that our expectations
miss when we're interacting with people live that tends to
pull us together, in part because it essentially synchronizes our
thinking and our behavior with one another. So we often
think of conversationisted too. For a long time, think of
conversation as a back and forth, like a tennis match.
One person is speaking, then the other person responds, and
(11:07):
it goes on that way. When you actually look at
what social interaction is like, it's not that one person
is engaging while the other person is sitting there totally dead.
The other person is also very actively engaged it's more
like a band playing together. Right, one person's taking the lead,
the other person's playing the background rhythm, and that background
rhythm or things like backchanneling. Right, So when I'm talking,
(11:29):
somebody will be saying mmm, yeah, uh huh. Right. That's
signaling to us that they are interested in us, that
they are with us, that they are thinking with us together, right,
And that synchrony is what pulls us together. They're also
giving us constant feedback when we're talking to them. Sometimes
we can see it, right, like you're nodding at me
when I'm talking with you, or you're smiling, right, And
(11:52):
it's that stuff that pulls us together. Also, in conversation,
we go back and forth. We're like cooperating with each other,
and we get the people when we're cooperating with them.
Social interaction has this reciprocal back and forth component to it,
where not only is the way you reach back to
me determined by how I reach out to you. I
reach out to you in a positive way, you tend
to reach back to me in a positive way, but
(12:14):
the fact that you are reaching back and we're going
back and forth like that, that's what pulls us together.
When we're connecting typing to each other is dead almost
in that particular way. There are words there that we're
communicating to each other, and that matters, but it lacks
the rhythm and therefore the synchrony that you get in
live conversation, and therefore it doesn't connect us nearly the
(12:36):
same way that connecting live with each other does.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
It's interesting.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, when I learned to interview people for podcasts, I
had to learn to stop back channeling it in audio fast,
because if you have a ton of like me going
uh huh huh, that's great, Nick, it's horrible to listen to.
But we can see each other. Our audience is just
listening to us, but we can see each other. And
(13:01):
so I am nodding my head to my guests all
the time to encourage them in a sort of visual
back channeling.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
So podcasting has made you a worse conversationals. You have
to turn that off when you're out in the.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Real You don't have to shut up anymore, Laura. You
can let them, let them talk, and you can go
back and forth.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Although you know you mentioned so when we wereciprocate going
back and forth and even joke about it, this is
sort of like the oh, you've been in Cleveland.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
I was once in Cleveland.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
I mean, there's certain elements you're trying to find common ground,
but many of us are not that great at finding
common ground. I wonder you've developed a couple questions that
you found get people very engaged with their conversation partner.
I wonder if you can talk a few about those
and how you came up with them.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
So so let me just say first about these questions. Essentially,
what we're doing is we're testing what happens when we
have the kinds of conversations we'd actually like to be having.
When you ask people how deep are the conversations you're
typically having, they say, not that deep. How do you
the conversations you'd like to be having? They typically say
notably deeper? And the question is why aren't you having
those conversations? Right? I don't think it's actually because we
(14:05):
don't know how to have them. When we ask people
to generate deeper questions, they can do it, and when
they then have a conversation about those deeper questions that
they can generate, they have better conversations. They enjoy them
more than when they ask their typical ones. So I
think much of it is is we're not asking the
questions we could be asking. But in our experiments, what
(14:27):
we do is we pair people up randomly, tell them
you're going to have a conversation with somebody just a minute,
and we give them questions that are notably deeper and
more meaningful than they would typically talk about. And these
come from an experiment experimental procedure developed by Art in
the Lane Aaron known as the fast Friends procedure that
psychologists use to pull people together. They thought it took
(14:48):
thirty six questions, a ton of questions. It doesn't. You
can get deep really really quickly. The questions we have
people discuss are things like, what are you most grateful
for in your life? Please tell me about it? If
I was going to become a good friend of yours,
what would be most important for me to know about you?
Can you tell me one of the last times you
cried in front of another person. Going into these conversations,
people are pretty nervous. They're pretty anxious about how they're
(15:10):
going to go. They think it's going to be pretty awkward,
right jumping right into the deep end of the pool.
They think it's going to be kind of mediocre. They're
not going to have a whole lot in common with
the person. When they come out of these conversations, they
go way better than they thought, not nearly as awkward
as they imagined, and they feel much more connected. They
enjoy the other person a lot more than expect and
have more in common than they imagine, because we tend
to talk about things that we have in common. That's
(15:32):
the way conversation works. But I don't think the magic
is in the questions. My advice to folks to have
the kinds of conversation you'd like to be having is
to change your mindset a little bit when you're going
into these conversations, to actually allow yourself to think about
and then ask these kinds of meaningful questions that you
actually like to be discussing. So the way to do
(15:54):
that is to actually take an interest in getting to
know other people a little bit, even if it's only
for a moment, even it's just a single serving friendship.
Right you're just on a plane like I was this
morning coming in from Kansas City, or I'm on a
train r at home, I can find out, you know,
I can get deep pretty quickly, and I can ask people,
you know, what is it you do for a living,
And then I can ask do you love your job?
(16:16):
And right there on the second question, I've gotten to love. Right.
If you can work love into your second question, you're
on the right track, right, Or one thing that I
like to do when I'm taking interest in really getting
to know somebody is I'll often just start. You don't
even need a second question, you're just doing your first.
What's your story, Lauren? Tell me, what's your story? How
(16:36):
did you get here today? And typically when you ask
that question, people recognize that they're not talking about your
commute into work or whatever you're talking about kind of
you know, just tell me about your life and how
you got to where you are today. Right, And when
you take an interest in other people, then meaningful questions
about who they are, what they care about, what they
(16:58):
hope for in their future. That stuff, I think often
comes spontaneously to mind and more willing to ask for
it when you've when you've thought about these questions.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
So what is an illuminator?
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Because I imagine that people who are illuminators have good
intries into conversation.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Yeah, so this is David Brooks's term, which I rather
like you wrote a book called How to Know a
Person that was based to some extent on a lot
of research that I talked about my first book, mind Wise,
and David talks about. I don't think you want to
think about this as a personality trade. This is something
that we can all do in any given conversation, which
(17:35):
is to engage with people in ways that kind of
light them up, that allow you to see another person
for who they are. Ask meaningful questions that that they
care about, right, that that kind of shine a light
on who they are, rather than just talking about superficial
things that actually don't allow you to know or understand
(17:58):
somebody that's an illuminator. And you can adopt that approach,
that illuminating approach in conversation when you ask people about,
you know, what do you love to do, what are
your hopes for your future? What's tell me about one
of the most interesting things you've done in your life.
I'd love to hear about it. I know you've got
a story to tell me. That's what being an illuminator
looks like.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Excellent.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
All right, Well we're going to take a quick ad
break and we'll be back with more from Nick Epley.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Well, I'm back talking with Nick Epley, who is a
professor at the University of Chicago, the author of the
brand new book A Little More Social. So I want
to get to the topic of spending more time with friends,
which of course is where I initially thought that the
book called A Little More Social was going to tell
me I should go rather than talking with random people
on the A train.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
So do you have any thoughts on spending more time
with your actual friends? And I know that you are
also a busy dad. You have five kids. I also
have five kids. That's something you have in common. So
what do you think about finding time for that?
Speaker 3 (19:03):
So often we think too narrowly about what our situations involved,
like what we're doing in any given moment, Like I'm
going down to get my coffee down in the faculty
lounge here in my office today, Right, I think about
that as going down to get my coffee. Or I'm
driving home at the end of the day, and I
(19:23):
am you know, that's driving home at the end of
the day. There are often opportunities in our lives where
we can add other people to it. Right, So I've
now taken most times when I'm in the car, I'll
call up one of the kids, right who's not home,
our kids, some of our kids are a little older,
I'll call them up. I'll add a FaceTime moment, Like
when I'm traveling right alone, I'm getting ready in the
(19:46):
morning to do something, I'll FaceTime my daughter Lindsey and
just keep her there on the nightstand while we're talking
with each other a little bit when it works out
for her schedule. If you're watching a game, right so,
the World Cup is going on as we're talking right now.
If you're watching a sporting event, lots of people will
sit in their homes and watch it alone. You can
invite a friend over to watch it with you. Right So,
(20:07):
I think that's the way to think about how to
add a little bit of what psychologists sometimes refer to
as vitamin s. This is social connection. Two moments you're
already having. You're going to walk the dog, See if
a neighbor can join you. Right you're sitting alone at
a bar, see if you can bring other people in
and have a conversation with them. You can often add
(20:28):
a little social element to things you're already doing in
ways that don't change it. Sometimes these can be little
things like I've developed a habit of practicing the ten
to five rule, particularly when I'm in the office. The
ten five rule comes from the world of hospitality. When
you're ten feet away from somebody, who smile at them.
When you're five feet away, you say hello to them. Right,
I'm walking around anyway, you know, I might as well
(20:50):
light people up, be an illuminator. Right. You'll get a
lot more hellos back and smiles back in your life.
If you do this, you get to know people a
little bit better without adding any extra time to what
you're doing. So I think those are the opportunities to
look for. When can I take something that I'm currently
doing that's not social and without any additional effort to
(21:11):
speak of, make it a little more social than it
would be otherwise.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
We are big fans of efficiency around here, so we'll
note that top that tip for sure. We're also big
fans of morning routines around here, obviously, with a show
called Before Breakfast.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
So what does your morning routine look like these days?
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Well, so we have a ten year old Lindsay who
if you read the book, you'll learn about Lindsay and
the opening preface, Lindsay likes to get up early in
the morning. She likes to get up around five thirty,
but she's not actually supposed to get up until six
or so. So I have a baby a mount an
next to the bed. I'll usually hear talking a little
bit earlier. Lindsay has down syndrome. She's an adopted daughter
from China, and so I hear getting up in the morning.
(21:52):
She's often singing the Wicked soundtrack, which is pretty darn
af I love that. Yeah, that's a great way to
wake up. It turns out to be okay, right, But
I usually I'm talking to her a little bit, asking
her to, you know, to wait till the green light
comes on then we can come. Six o'clock though, is
when I get up with her. Usually bring it down stairs.
She'll help me make coffee. She loves two eggs, so
I'll make four eggs. I get two, she gets two,
(22:13):
and then I'll eat breakfast with my daughter while my
wife gets a little bit of extra sleep in the
morning and actually gets to get herself ready without being
encumbered by the kids. So that's my morning routine, spending
it with Lindsay, with my daughter.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
I love it. That is a great way to spend
your morning.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
One question I ask all my guests, and we've been
talking a little bit about this, but what is something
you have done recently to take a day from great
to awesome?
Speaker 3 (22:38):
So I've been traveling a lot. I'll just tell you
what I did yesterday. Yesterday I was in Kansas City
speaking at a bookstore, and that day I would say
it was going to be kind of mediocre. When you're traveling,
it's not always so great. So I was driving over
from Saint Louis. So what I did was I reached
out to an old friend of mine. Todd Jones is
(23:00):
his name. He lives just north of Kansas City a
little bit. I've known him since I was in kindergarten,
but we haven't spent a lot of time together in
recent years. But it reached out to him as an
old friend, and turns out he's a few miles away
from another longtime friend of ours that we've known since kindergarten.
I spent the afternoon having lunch with Todd and Mercy
at Todd's house, and that made that day awesome.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
That is wonderful anytime you can connect with people that
you have a long history with. I find you still
have a lot to talk about.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
I mean, even if it's been a while.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
Yeah, absolutely, Cat, I mean you almost those old friends.
What's interesting in research is that people anticipate that reaching
out and connecting to an old friend will go about
as well on average as talking with a stranger. But
I think there were wildly wrong about that too. We
haven't done research on this ourselves, but it is something
we are starting to work on. You instantly can get
(23:52):
back to things that you have in common, even if
it's not about old times, but even about current times.
There's a Ben Rector song that I love called old Friends,
which I recommend some of your listeners can listen to
before breakfast. One of his lyrics is you can't make
old friends. He's absolutely right about that, so true.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Only time can make old friends. Only time can make
old friends. Well, I think it's good to put yourself
in other people's shoes, I mean, to have your own
theory of mind here. Obviously, would you be upset, annoyed,
et cetera if an old friend reached out to you?
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Would you be like what on earth were they thinking? Like?
What loser would do that?
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Exactly? Of course? Not No, never would you think that right, absolutely,
But people when they we find in our work that
when they think about what's on the mind of another person,
they're often not doing that. They're just imagining another person's
mind without imagining how they would feel if they were
in the person's shoes. And in this case, yes, just
flip it around. Would you mind of a friend who
(24:50):
you knew since Kindergarten said reach out to you said
they were going to be in town and would love
to combine and say I you'd be delighted. We had
a wonderful day yesterday because it was awesome.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yeah, you took a day from great to awesome. Well, Nick,
where can people find you? So?
Speaker 3 (25:05):
My website is Nicholas Sepplely dot com. You can find
a little more social anywhere you buy books, including the
audiobook I did the narration. If you like the sound
of my voice, you can get eight hours of it
and then I have a ted talk you can look
for that. It's fourteen minutes and I'm also on LinkedIn
as well.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Awesome, Well, Nick, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you to everyone for listening. If you have feedback
about this or any other episode, you can always reach
me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
In the meantime, this is Laura.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
(26:09):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Before Breakfast News
Host
Laura Vanderkam
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