Small talk may be the most maligned category of conversation. For many, it's a time-waster with no redeeming qualities other than mindless chatter. Yet, when properly understood and applied, small ...

Haupt is a health and wellness editor at TIME. Haupt is a health and wellness editor at TIME. When Gillian Sandstrom was a graduate student in Toronto more than a decade ago, she encountered a ...

Do you dread trading niceties with retail clerks and assorted other strangers when you are out in public? Do you go out of your way to avoid neighbors and co-workers so that you do not have to engage ...

Think about what it's like to be at a birthday dinner where you have to interact with your friend's neighbors for the first time, or what it's like to be waiting for a Zoom to begin with coworkers you ...