creating positive connections with others has been shown to be one of the most important things that we can do to live a fulfilling and joyful life. But those social connections also have other benefits. They've just been hundreds of studies now at the all point in the same direction, and that is that people who have more social connection, so high quality ties, you know, not just the number, but really that feeling of being understood by others, that they live longer, they're less susceptible to all kinds of diseases like Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular disease, you know, stroke, heart attack, you know, that's where some of the strongest evidence lies incidentally is with these really deadly heart diseases. And yet we are not always that good at creating and maintaining those connections, which is why we were so intrigued when one of our favorite former guests on the show, David Robson, released a new book on the subject called The Laws of Connection, the Scientific Secrets of Building a Strong Social Network. So, of course, we had to have it back on the show. Welcome to Behavioral Groups, the podcast that explores our human condition. I'm Kurt Nelson. And I'm Tim Hulahan. We talk with authors and researchers and other interesting people to uncover insights from behavioral science that will help us find our groove. And David is no different. He's a science communicator and a terrific writer who relies on great research to tell important stories about the human condition and what we can do to live happier, more fulfilling lives. We first met David in London at Abbey Road Studios back in October of 2022. And we recorded episode 327 with him about the expectation effect. Today's episode is one that reviews a lot of research about the challenges we face when it comes to making positive connections with others, as well as what we can do to change that. We talk with David about a number of important findings, including how we too often devalue compliments, how to build trust as well as how to find ways to trust other people's feelings toward us, the idea of egocentrism and how it complicates connecting with others. We also dive into the idea of building shared realities and effective communication strategies to help us build those connections. I was also very excited to talk about the Benjamin Franklin Effect, which is all about the Benjamin's, right, Tim? Maybe listeners are just going to have to check out our conversation with David to find out. I hope it's all about the Benjamin's. I mean, we could use some of those Benjamin's to support this podcast, you know? Well, we do not do advertising nor do we have any sponsors. We do have a Patreon site, though, that groupers can contribute to if they find our podcast of value. Yeah, they could add some Benjamin's, but we do have subscription options starting as low as $2 a month, less than a cup of Joe at Starbucks. So if you do find us a value, we would love your support listeners. You can find the link on our website or in the show notes of this episode. Okay, with that, please sit back with your empty hand, empty because that cup of Joe from Starbucks will be used to contribute to our Patreon site and enjoy our conversation with David Robson. David Robson, welcome back to Behavioral Grooves. Absolutely my pleasure, thanks for having me again. We would love to know, because we already had a little discussion about coffee and tea, we'd like to know a little bit more about some of your other drinking preferences. Would you prefer Coke, Pepsi, or something else? Something else? I'm probably just sparkling water, I think. Yeah, not a big fan of kind of soda in general, yeah. Well, that's good, that's good to know, but we won't be offering you, you know, hey, here's a Coke for you next time when we come in. So, okay, I have to ask, which is a better location for a podcast online or Abbey Road Studios? Oh, that's a really difficult one actually, but no, I mean, obviously Abbey Road Studios, yeah, it's iconic, it was an amazing pun. Yeah, so for listeners, if you haven't already listened to our prior interview with David about his other great book, The Expectation Effect, we did that one when we were in London a couple years ago and we met in person and we were lucky enough to do the interview at Abbey Road Studios and it was absolutely fantastic and it was absolutely great having David there as our guest and so kind of figured that way your answer. I know that was mine if I had to answer that one. Mine too, absolutely. Okay, David, third speedrun question, if I received a message from Jay Edgar Hoover and scrawled in the margins of a memo that said, watch the border, should I interpret that as a warning about our national borders or possibly something else? Well, yeah, I see you've been reading my book attentively. So, yeah, lots of people were considering that it was about his staff, assumed it was about the USA's borders, but no, it was about the margins of the paper, which they were the margins were too small and he was a real stickler for the presentation of his memos apparently. It's interesting and I'm sure we'll get into that because it's really, I find it fascinating the interpretation and again, the egocentrism that we have about how our communication is understood and that's there. My last question here and David, you have been such a great guest in the past and we love all of the work that you do, but I was just wondering, is it possible ever to give someone too many compliments? No, I don't think so. Sadly, if you want to compliment me, an endless limit is always welcome. All right, so that's the last of our speedrun questions and I know we'll get into talking about the book, but I want to dig into that one a little bit deeper because, and you mentioned this in the book, it's like, we have this feeling that, or there's this ethos out there too, that compliments need to be sparse. They need to, you can't just keep giving compliments over compliments. They lose their power in different things, but what you found and kind of some of what the research is saying kind of points differently to that. Could you expand on that a little bit? Yeah, sure. So, I mean, like Samuel Johnson had this beautiful quote, which I'm probably going to slaughter, but he said that praise gets its value from its scarcity, like diamonds. So, you really should be careful according to Johnson, you know, for how often you praise people, like really, like, hold it back until someone really has done something special to deserve it. But the research just doesn't back this up at all. And, you know, there are lots of reasons why we don't compliment people enough, besides our fear that those kind of words will become tired over time. We also, we worry that we're not confident enough to deliver the compliments elegantly. We think we might sound a bit kind of cringe-worthy. You know, there'll be clumsy, we might seem unctuous, but, you know, people don't seem to think of us that way when we do give compliments. And there's some beautiful work by Vanessa Bones and also by Nicholas Eppley that showed that actually just showing appreciation, you know, it's valued as much as it should be. People take those warm words that you've said, and it makes them feel appreciated and special and seen. So, yeah, we, you know, it's such a simple thing to enhance connection. You know, we're thinking good things about people all the time. We just have to actually say it to make it clear. I love that. I love that, too. I think that it's so great. One of the things that I love about what you just said is that Samuel Johnson got it wrong. I love the fact that you take a couple of times during the book to actually point out really, really great thinkers who were, who totally got it wrong by bringing up the research. And we're going to talk more about that. But we are speaking with David Robson today about his latest book, The Laws of Connection, The Scientific Secrets of Building a Strong Social Network. So let's start there. Let's start with, why is social networking and a social network important in our lives? I mean, I think most of us kind of, you know, we feel it very deeply when we feel excluded or lonely and a lot of us crave just more social support and understanding. You know, various surveys suggest that about around 50% of people feel lonely quite regularly in their lives. But what the research really shows us is it's not just important for our mental health, which it is, is also really important for our physical health. There've just been hundreds of studies now that all point in the same direction. And that is that people who have more social connection. So high quality ties, you know, not just the number, but really that feeling of being understood by others, that they live longer. They're less susceptible to all kinds of diseases like Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular disease, stroke, heart attack, you know, that's where some of the strongest evidence lies incidentally is with these really deadly heart diseases. And then, you know, also even something as kind of relatively trivial as whether you catch the common cold, the researchers took a bunch of people into an isolated environment. And in fact, deliberately start like a, you know, sample of the cold virus that their nose is, and then waited to see how it developed. And people with stronger social networks outside of that isolated environment, people who already came into the lab feeling supported and connected with others were just less likely to develop the cold because their immune system seemed to be stronger. It's crazy. All of the values that social connections and part of that too, I think, and you talk about this a little bit is just quality of life, the happiness that people feel about their life. And I know the Harvard longevity study and various different pieces of talk to that as well. And so lots of different various pieces about why social connections are really important. How did you get interested in this topic? What was the impetus to say, this is the next book I'm going to write because you've written some really great books in the past. And that's not just a high-probriole compliment that I'm doing because I read about it in this book, but you've done some great books. So why pick this topic as your next topic for a book? Well, I mean, you know, so as a science writer, I kept on coming across this research showing how important social connection was. But you know, I like many other people hadn't always felt as socially connected as I wanted to. And that's not to say I didn't have like good friends, but you know, I would have still have those moments, you know, where I'd wake up in the middle of the night, feeling this sense of what scientists call existential isolation, where you just feel that maybe no one else does really understand me. And that's a really important distinction, actually, that we can have. It's not just about being surrounded by loads of people. It's also feeling that there is that kind of profound, what we call a shared reality between people, where you feel like you are understood and that other people see the world in the same way that you do. And, you know, I've been a very shy person. So actually making new friendships was, you know, always felt like quite a challenge. And even though I succeeded in doing it, I just never really felt comfortable in those situations like going to a party where you don't know anyone, you know, that had always been very daunting to me. And the science until recently hadn't really given much advice. But then, you know, about five years ago, I kept on saying new papers that actually were addressing this directly. And they suggested that, you know, a lot of the reasons why we don't, we have this kind of craving for connection that we're not meeting, can be traced to some psychological barriers, these kind of cognitive biases that prevent us from acting in the way that would bring about that connection. And, you know, what was so optimistic about that research for me was that often connecting to people is just much easier than we believe it's going to be. If we are just a little bit braver, if we're just a little bit ready to move out of our comfort zone, we'll find immediate rewards that people are often just much nicer and much more willing to give us what we need than we expect them to be. And, you know, once I came across this, it started changing the way I perceived my relationships. And I wanted to share that with other people. What is it that people get most wrong about their, you know, we have this intuition, you kind of bring up this idea that we have this intuition that sort of says, I'm going to be better off if I just don't take that risk. But what, what do you think that we most get wrong about the benefits of social connectivity? I mean, this is really common in so many different situations. But I think, you know, if we trace it right back to if we look just very specifically at those situations where you're meeting someone for the first time. So say you are at that party where you don't know anyone, and you feel very anxious about going up to a stranger and introducing yourself. And the research shows we just have loads of negative assumptions about what's going to happen. We kind of underestimate our own competence. We think we just are not going to find the right words to say. We think it's going to be really awkward, like, you know, there's going to be loads of silence and kind of a bit of confusion and that the other person is just not going to respond appropriately in the way that we would like that they're going to be judgmental, for example. And so we just underestimate also how pleasurable that's going to be. We think like once we get to the end of that exchange, we're not going to feel that great. And the research just shows all of those assumptions are wrong, like the those interactions are not nearly as difficult as we expect them to be, and they're much more pleasurable than we think they're going to be. And but we just don't do it enough. And I think this is the one of the things that kind of helped me the most was realizing that actually with practice, our expectations become better calibrated. So we actually, if you practice talking to strangers every day, by the end of a week, you already find that your expectations start to match the reality. You realize that it can be pleasurable. So you feel less feared doing it. But I think in most of our lives, we just don't actually look for those opportunities. So it might be weeks or even months between striking up conversation with someone that we don't know. And so we actually just forget how well it can go. I think that's the problem. The spectre of rejection looms large in our mind, and we don't have enough reminders that that is a very, very rare occurrence. What's most likely to happen is that people are going to be very warm to you because chances are they might be feeling a little bit lonely too in their craving connection. And so when you speak to them, you're almost doing them a favor as well as scratching your own itch. I love the idea of doing them a favor because I think that's a way of tricking our own selves into feeling a little bit braver. Oh, I'm not just doing this for me and making sure that I want to have my connection. But hey, I'm helping them out because they might be feeling the same way that I am. And I think that's a fantastic way, a lens of looking at this that can help people as we're going through. David, in the book, you identified 13 laws of connection. And I love this. And I love how actually in the book too. So for readers or listeners, excuse me, you should become readers of this book because it's a really good book. But I love how you also put those laws not always at the front of the chapter. We go all the way through the chapter until we get to the law. And it's kind of a really nice kind of like, what is this law? What is this law? And it comes up. But I'm going to ask you the favorite child question, or at least the top three child question here. It's a podcast, we want to leave some kind of mystery about the book. But do you have a favorite of the laws of connection or a top three maybe or one that, hey, this one is just kind of a little bit more of my little more special than the others? Yeah, I do. So I think like, it's almost like the law that kind of really got me going with all of this. And it's related to what we've just spoken about, but it's slightly different. And it is just to trust that other people probably liked you as much as you liked them. And this emerges from a phenomenon called the liking gap. And so, I've spoken about how those first interactions with people are often much better than we expect them to be. We enjoy the experience. But unfortunately, once we leave the conversations, we still have some kind of negativity when we think about how it went. We're too self-critical, basically. We assume that we didn't come across as well as we wanted to. And so, we think that even though we liked the other person and really enjoyed the conversation, we assume they didn't like ours as much as we liked them. That's the liking gap. And the research shows, you know, on average, it's a fallacy like people do like you as much as you like them. And we have every reason to think that. But we just get a little too caught up in the rumination of thinking of all the faux pas we might have said, worrying, you know, but all these are like errors that we blame on ourselves. But the other person is probably not thinking about that. In fact, they are likely worrying about the things that they said that might have been awkward that you have completely forgotten about. And that actually comes up when you look at even very specific situations. You know, like, if you imagine going to a dinner party and you're the only person who hasn't remembered to bring a bottle of wine, we just assume that other people are going to judge us far more harshly than we would judge someone who did the same trials. In fact, on average, we we spent the other person to be about twice as harsh as we're going to be. And it doesn't make sense, really, because, you know, when you look at everyone, they're all doing this over estimation. And so yeah, just for me, just hearing about the liking gap and about this research, that shows that people just aren't as judgmental as we expect. And they are warmer, kinder than we expect. That just made connection so much easier for me. Because I used to be the kind of person who would, you know, really beat myself up after a social event, like just, you know, being plagued with all of these doubts about, like, you know, all the things that I thought I did wrong. And, you know, it's quite liberating. It really allows you to treat yourself with self compassion when you learn this. And that, I think, is really key then to building your stronger relationships. Because those doubts erode the quality of the connection. And they prevent you from doing those other behaviors that could build on that connection, you know, like calling someone, sending an email, asking a colleague to collaborate. Yeah, I had a friend who used to say, he said, you know, our feelings and the voices that we have in our head are really different. Listen to your feelings, but those voices inside your head don't listen to them. And this is, I think, a great example of where our intuitive beliefs are just so incredibly wrong. And, you know, you demonstrate that this is a robust finding. So I want to just emphasize this because it is such a common fallacy, right, that it is so common for us to feel that sense of, you know, I forgot the bottle line and everyone's going to judge me harshly. But the reality is the research is really robust on this. Is that correct? Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, what I love about this new research from social psychology is that a lot of the papers have multiple replications, you know, within the single paper, like they've been repeated many different times, you know, examining all the different possible explanations and, you know, the results still emerge again and again. So we can have a lot of confidence in these findings. And I find that very reassuring when I'm kind of putting my kind of skeptical hat on as a science writer. But yeah, it's very common, you know, like, you know, across all of these samples, they're finding the same thing, that the liking gap exists in people's perceptions, but it's not true in reality that other people are judging you as harshly as you're worried about. Yeah. Yeah. So this kind of ties in, but I found the section on ego-centrism to be particularly insightful, right? And you can tell from the speed around question with J. Edgar Hoover and different pieces that, you know, obviously, that was there for our listeners. Can you describe what ego-centrism is? And then how can it get in the way of forming these positive social connections? Right. So most neurotypical people have something called a theory of mind, which they develop, you know, around three to five years of age. And that is just the fact that you can put yourself in someone else's shoes. And you recognize the fact that they might not know what you know, believe what you believe, they might not be able to see what you see from your perspective. And so we have the capacity to do that. But what is often has been neglected, I think, in the past, is that it's not just like this kind of thing that you develop at five, and then you just use without, you know, you just use it time and time again, without making any errors. What the research really shows is that, actually, theory of mind is quite cognitively complex, it's tiring, it takes energy. And so often, we just don't use it. So we're still operating like a free or hold, who's not passing a theory of mind test. And we just do this all the time in lots of different situations. And it leads to a bunch of other kind of biases. So one of which is the illusion of understanding. So we expect that if we understand something that we've said, even if it's the wording is ambiguous, we just assume that the other person is going to understand that too. And that can lead to all kinds of cases of miscommunication, like the example with Jed Godova that we mentioned, you know, for him, it was totally obvious that when he said watch the borders, everyone would be thinking about the borders of the page, because he was, he didn't consider that his staff, who, you know, in the FBI, might actually be thinking about the international borders. And, you know, took days for them to, they were kind of scared to broach this weapon, because he had quite a short term, but so took days for them to work out what he actually meant. And you know, that kind of thing is happening all the time. And it's because we're just thinking egocentricly, we're too anchored in what's going on in our own minds. And we're not putting in that effort to try to, to think how other people might be interpreting what we're saying. I see that quite often in the organizations that I work in, particularly with leaders who have been maybe they've been thinking about something they've been working in a small group of people and talking about things and various different pieces. And then it's finally time to share that with the rest of the organization. And they just assume that everybody is on the same page with them and understanding all of the background information, all of the different, you know, viewpoints that they're taking that might be like a total shift in strategy for them and different pieces. And they don't take into account that they haven't come the other, though, the employees necessarily haven't come through that same journey and experience the same kind of insights that they have. And so it's always this, always is probably overstating it. But there is often this, this misunderstanding. And as exactly as you said, this, the shared view world isn't there. And I find that really, really powerful. So yeah, no, I think it's, you know, so fundamental to business whenever you're making a presentation, just to make sure that you're, you're not taking anything for granted, any understanding for granted. And you know, it's always good to kind of gauge the knowledge of your audience. But yeah, also, I think what we often overlook at the kind of emotional reasons, like why we feel excited about something. And that is very important. That's a related bias called the illusion of transparency. And we just assume that our emotions are more visible than they really are, because we're feeling in our heads, like excited or scared or anxious or, you know, all of these things, we kind of just assume that other people can read that. But actually, you know, they're often masked, like our faces just aren't as revealing as we believe they're going to be. And so just saying what you feel is often a very powerful way of making sure that there aren't these misunderstandings. So my smiling and shaking my head are not enough to just show like, Hey, I'm really excited about this, right? But tell us the love, Kurt, tell us the love. Yeah. I mean, that's exactly it. One of one of the things that I love about your writing, David, is that you're very intentional about the kinds of words that you use. We've we've had guests who are happy with a clever turn of phrase when it comes to chapter titles or things that they're discussing. And you are very intentional about it as a science writer. And it's something that I think I can speak for Carter. We both really deeply appreciate. So when you title the chapter, the art of conversation, it certainly got us thinking, okay, this is a science writer, why the art of conversation and not the science of conversation. Yeah, I mean, I guess so, I mean, I think this actually applies to lots of other chapters as well. And I think like its social connection is a science as well as an art. So the guidelines that I give absolutely, you know, are all evidence based and should be confident that they're good guiding principles. But I mean, we do also have to kind of, we have to be flexible in the way that we apply them. So for example, you know, when we were talking earlier about kind of paying compliments, you have to adapt that to each person is not enough to just superficially kind of think, Oh, I'm just getting, you know, like, you have to think, what is this person really what personal qualities are they showing that I can that I appreciate and I can then genuinely and honestly compliment them for. So I'm trying, I think I'm trying really to try to get people to think of these guidelines as something that they will direct their actions, but like it's not a kind of algorithm that you can apply, you know, without putting in a lot of thought and care and creativity as well. And that applies to the art of conversation, you know, I give these guidelines like we should be asking more follow up questions, we should be engaging in self disclosure, you know, all of these things are important, but you have to make sure it's personal and you can't just apply it as if you're some kind of AI that's just been given a set of rules to use without any creativity. And glad you brought up the follow up questions, because that was the part for that chapter that really stuck out for me, because in there you bring up a whole kind of categories, different categories of types of questions that we can ask. And follow up, I always knew were important and in a conversation, like checking in with something like following up on that question that somebody did. And I think partly because of the podcast, it's just, you know, one of the things that Tim and I focus in on listening and then saying, can you clarify that? Help me understand this? And, you know, in this situation, does it work here and there? But I also found it was really interesting because you had mirror questions, which I always thought were really kind of important, kind of like, oh, you, you like this? Well, I like that, you know, kind of different things, but it didn't have the same power. So what makes follow up questions so good for this type of connection? Right. I mean, I think it has become a kind of cliche. Oh, you know, like the key to connection is I ask more questions and like, but it just had been really, it hadn't been specific. I mean, even with that advice, people just don't ask enough of any types of questions, actually. So I mean, you know, I've heard these conversations with people where like, you can go for two hours and they won't ask you a single thing about what you think, what you've been doing. They just have no interest in your life. So asking more questions is a good general principle. But yeah, then the type of questions really matters. And I think like, so you have icebreakers, you know, like, Hey, how are you? Well, you're not really putting in much effort there. And it's, you know, it's almost more like a greeting than actually like showing any interest in the other person. I think also that's the problem with the mirror questions is it just looks like you're kind of just engaging in politeness that you know, you should ask, but it's not necessarily showing that you actually care. The thing about the follow up questions that's so good is that it really shows that you have been paying attention to what they're saying and that you want to know more. So you're entering a shared reality with that person by delving deeper. It shows you were listening and it shows that you value them that, you know, those are the ones that in say speed dating events, those are the ones that really predict how successful people are in getting that second date. Shared reality is an important part of of your thesis here. And I just want to think about sort of this very polarized political time that we're in. Of course, the United States, we're heading into it with a citizen election year, we're heading into an election. How are there some thoughts that you have about actually building a shared reality with with people? Are there some some tips you could give to grovers that might have to do with what can we do to actually help create that shared reality? Yeah, sure. And this kind of comes again, I think, to revealing a little bit more about ourselves really helps to create that shared reality. So kind of just to give a kind of a proper definition of shared reality is this sense that other people are viewing the world in the same way as you experiencing events in the same way as you. And the more intimate that kind of shared reality can be, the better. So it's not just like we're both Democrats or we're both Republicans, but it's also, you know, like we're both experiencing the same joy at the same sunset, or we're both laughing at the same joke, or we both have chills at the same point in a particular song. And actually, some of the research shows that, you know, those intimate forms of shared reality can be more important than those kind of basic similarities and beliefs. So you could have a Democrat and a Republican who, if they find like a particular joke, especially funny, in a way that kind of shows that they're processing the world in the same way, that overrides the kind of other differences of opinion that they might have, and will actually mean that they're more likely to form that sense of connection, it can, you know, make up for their political differences. But, you know, for shared reality to occur, we actually do have to let people know what's going on under the, under the hood, you know, like we have to let them know what we are thinking and feeling. And most of us just are too shy about that self disclosure. And the research shows that we shouldn't be because people tend to be more interested than we expect them to be in, you know, in our, in our lives, they want to know. And that research comes from this set up called the Fast Friends procedure where Arthur Aaron, who's this iconic psychologist, had studied kind of, you know, love in all its different forms, he just found that getting pairs of participants together and giving them 36 questions that encourage increased self disclosure. You know, some of these questions are quite bizarre, I find, but fascinating, you know, it's like, do you have an intuition about how you're going to die? Or if you had a crystal ball, what would you like it to tell you about your life and your future? Or if you could have the body of a 30 year old and the brain of a 90 year old, or the body of a 90 year old and the brain of a 30 year old, what would you prefer? You know, it's really making you think about some of the things you really value in life. And when when people talk about those things, when they share those inner thoughts and feelings, you know, things that might feel quite revealing, and you might almost be embarrassed about telling another person. But when two people do that, they create that shared reality and they feel much closer than when we engage in superficial small talk. So David, I have to tell you that I actually used some of those questions with my wife of 25 years over dinner the other night we were talking and I'm going, all right, just this is mind blowing for me. And here are some of these questions. And we had this conversation. And for the most part, it was like, Oh, yeah, I could anticipate them. But there were others where it's like, Oh, that was really interesting. And then we we got in and so that that understanding of the other person, even those people that we should or feel like we probably know really well, even asking some of those more intimate questions and sharing some of those lends itself into a deeper understanding. And I think of a better component of this. So it was really fascinating to just take some of those. And in the book, you have a, you list out some of them, but you also then have a connection, you can you point to where people can go and find all 36 of them. And it's really fascinating. So thank you for that. And just, I actually used it with both my life. You have a whole chapter on, on disagreements. And one of the pieces that I found interesting on this was that you state that the research shows that social isolation can push people to more extreme positions. And the disagreements, as you say, can exaggerate those feelings. So what can we do to overcome that? And you list out a couple of different things in the book. But just in general, what can we do to overcome those, those kinds of disagreements? And when we, when we face them. Yeah, it's, you know, a real danger that I think, you know, as partly as maybe as what was causing kind of the increased polarization, we see around us is that actually the way we argue is often so destructive, it's actually just pushing people further away. So, you know, it's my favorite chapter in the book is because I think it is, you know, real importance, like you say, in an election year, especially. But, you know, just to like the very basic thing that is forgotten is like the importance of civility. And this is called the Montague principle, named after Lady Mery, Lady Montague, a British aristocrat who said civility buys everything and costs nothing. And we forget that in our political disputes. I think we want to kind of show our passion, you know, maybe there's an element of virtue signaling that. And so often, we can get quite nasty. Even if we're not like personally abusive, I think we just, the tone can be very insulting. And it's really counterproductive. That's what all of these studies show is that you're never going to persuade someone by making them feel bad about themselves. And yet we still do it. You know, you see on all sides of these debates, so just keeping civil for one thing. And then we go back to the idea of shared reality and curiosity, you know, just showing curiosity and interest in the other person's point of view. So rather than just like immediately jumping to assumptions about what you think they're going to believe based on one thing that they've said, just asking them to expand on what they've said, and the reasons why they've said it, and look for the nuances in what they've said. And when you do that, and you show that you actually care about them as a person, and that you want to create that mutual understanding, the defenses go down and people are more humble about their opinions then. So they're actually more likely to admit for themselves the potential holes in their arguments or the merits of your arguments. We don't do that enough, but we, you know, it's just such a simple way of having a more constructive argument and ultimately reaching some point where they move potentially towards your point of view. And if you showed the same humility, you might move a bit closer to their point of view as well. So it preserves the friendship. But if you're looking for persuasion, it's actually also one of the best techniques to actually change opinion. Yeah, we've had other guests on who have talked about that curiosity aspect and just in changing minds and different things, and on lots of those one that Tim and I constantly come back to is Kwame Christian, who just, he put it this way, he talked about compassionate curiosity. And it just that those two kind of put together kind of, I think, bring that Montague principle with this curiosity together into this component of saying, you know, let's have some curiosity, but let's be compassionate or at least, you know, civil about this. And there's really, you're doing it not just to ask a question, but you're really curious about what is going on, and there's some compassion behind like trying to, I want to understand why you are so wrong about what you think is basically how I say that. But, you know, you also bring up a component about Tachulski's principle, which I thought was really, again, this idea that, you know, the death of one is a tragedy, I'm going to miss this quote, death of one is a tragedy, a death of millions is a statistic. But can you expand on that for our listeners a little bit? Yeah, sure. So that quote is often attributed to Stalin, but it, you know, first came from this guy Tachulski, who was a satirist in the 1930s in Germany. And, you know, so that has become a bit of a cliche. But again, we have misplaced intuition. So even though you might hear that said, people don't just, they don't apply it in their own lives. They think it's much more convincing to give kind of facts and figures, rather than talking about personal experience. So your own experience and also experiences potentially of people that you know who you care about. It's been tested in lots of different situations. So, you know, like big campaigns in the US around different elections, I think one was for senators or for members of Congress. But, you know, when they were talking about issues like trans rights or the rights of immigrants, it just proved to be much more successful at persuading people if you did include these personal experiences. And I think, you know, again, it comes to this idea that like it brings out the emotion, but in a way that isn't, it's not all about the anger or the, you know, is maybe part of it is showing your passion. But I think it's also just letting people recognize the kind of lived experience that you're going through. And by revealing that, which is an act of courage, the other person can respect that has been courageous. And it also just helps them to understand better kind of why you care in the way that you say you do. It creates even just momentarily that shared reality that brings you closer together as people and makes them more willing to consider your point of view. Yeah. And I'm again, I go back to my work in in organizations. Once again, this is probably one of the biggest missed opportunities that I see leaders doing. They will put up statistics, you know, right. We have 32% increase. We do, you know, 12% decrease in this. And we're talking about this market and that market, but by just sharing some stories about individuals themselves or their customer, a customer, a, you know, something, they're missing a big opportunity as I see in, in being able to rally everybody and to convince people if they need to convince them. But even just kind of getting that general, creating that shared reality around what we're trying to do and why we're trying to do it, I think is really important. So right. Yeah, I totally agree. And it doesn't mean that you can't also use the kind of more rational, logical arguments as well. But the combination is what we need. And at the moment, most fuzzy just ignoring one essential part of this. There's a sort of a personal plea here. David, I know the courage is kind of sitting on some negative feedback for me. And I'm just pretty certain that he's just got some negative feedback for me. So I'm wondering if you would have any tips to Kurt in terms of how he delivers that negative feedback so that, you know, it's, it's received well on my end. Sure. Well, I mean, first of all, Kurt, I think like just expressing honest, true feedback is super important. I'm not something that the research again shows that people don't do enough. They kind of rely on those white lies, you know, to soften sugarcoat the truth. And people, you know, they don't want to actually hear that. Like, as soon as it becomes apparent that you haven't been completely honest, it can feel very insulting to someone. And, you know, honesty is kind of the basis for this shared reality that I'm talking about. So you just being more truthful is an excellent way of creating greater connection, even if that does sometimes mean that you're going to say things that unwanted in the moment that are not good news. And so giving bad feedback is just an inevitable part of any relationship, especially in the workplace. But obviously, the way that you do that is super important. Now, one strategy that hasn't worked very well when it's been tested is the, well, the shit sandwich is the way that I've always been told to call it, but it liked the feedback sandwich. So you offer a bit of praise, give the negative feedback, offer some more praise at the end. But no one's really fooled by that. The negative feedback, I think devalues the praise, even if it is genuine. It feels quite paternalistic as well. So I wouldn't necessarily advocate doing that. Instead, I think, like, you can just make sure that you're tactful and that you make sure that your criticisms are as precise as possible. So no overgeneralised statements, that's, you know, not going to be of any practical use. So make sure that all of the action points that you say, you know, are constructive and can be used for growth. I think that's what people are really looking for. And that's what they appreciate in this negative feedback is, you know, it can hurt to hear that you have done something wrong. But it's much better to know that there's always the possibility of improvement in the future. And finally, you can, you know, you can offer your own resources to help them achieve that growth. And that's something that we maybe don't do enough as well. So just saying like, if you want to talk about this more, I'm free for a coffee to kind of go through it in more detail. You know, if you've critiqued someone's report or article, you know, you can ask them if they'd like you to see another draft to provide more feedback to check that they're, you know, going about it in the right way, you can point them to other resources they can use. But yeah, just making sure that the bad news is a point of potential growth, rather than just being kind of something hurtful that is not really going to be of any practical use. Yeah. Well, Tim, eight years of little white lies, I'll have to overcome it in some like direct kind of conversation that we have off air, of course, as we as we go through this. No, there's no criticism on there. David, I am just really excited for people to read this book and just a number of different pieces of it. One of the pieces, and I'm sure Tim is aching to get to some music questions here, but the Benjamin Franklin effect is one that I have always appreciated. And you wrote about it, I think really eloquently and really nicely here. Can you explain for our listeners what the Benjamin Franklin effect is and why it works? Sure. Yeah. So Ben Franklin in his autobiography describes having this rival in Pennsylvania's General Assembly, someone who just like he didn't get on with and wanted him wanted Franklin to be removed from his position as a as a clerk. So Franklin considered, you know, could he use flattery? Well, as we've seen, you know, might have worked. But actually he thought there would just be better to ask for a favor instead. Yeah. As he did, he asked if he could borrow a book from this guy's extensive library. And then the guy agreed. And he found that forever after this guy had gone from being a rival to being an ally, the fact of him having helped Franklin seem to make him like Franklin more, which is quite remarkable. And then there's just been a bunch of research that has replicated this, you know, scientifically. Some from America, other studies from Japan, where there is a term called am I for this whole concept of how actually asking for support can sometimes be the best route to cementing a relationship and creating connection. And I think it's something that we can just all use in our own lives. Because so far too often we struggle by ourselves, because we assume other people don't want to help us, that asking for help will make us seem weak or that will be a burden on that other person. But more often than not, people are genuinely happy to help you. And actually, again, they can receive this well-being boost themselves when people act kindly, they actually feel happier themselves, and it can even do things like, you know, reduce their own blood pressure. And so going back to this point of like the art and the science of connection, we have to use our common sense that like sometimes we're going to see that people are already kind of overburdened, and we don't want to add to that. So we have to be sensible. We have to give people the plenty of opportunities to say no, as well, when we ask for help, especially if it's, you know, quite a, it's going to take quite a commitment from them. So giving them a bit of time to deliberate, you know, maybe even sending the requesters an email, rather than putting them on the spot in a face-to-face encounter, you know, all of those things can make people more comfortable about saying no. But the optimistic truth is that, you know, if people can help, they're quite likely to do so. And the fact that you asked them is a mark of respect, and then they're more likely to appreciate you afterwards as well. So it's just another way of strengthening that bond. David, let's talk a little bit about music. Last time we met, we were at Abbey Road Studios, and you expressed your love for '60s and '70s music, which was a delightful surprise to me, by the way. We talked about Judy Collins, which I hope we can get back to if we have time. But in the book, you talk about a beautiful collaboration, an important connectivity between Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, and Stephen Sondheim in the creation of West Side Story. And I was wondering if you could just spend a minute on that. What made that connectivity so meaningful, and why you chose to include it in the book? Yeah, sure. So, I mean, we've spoken about the health benefits of connection, but actually, it's a real boost for creativity. And there were some beautiful studies performed about 10 to 15 years ago that looked at the social connectivity between different people working on Broadway throughout the 20th century, through periods of boom, as well as periods that kind of were bust periods, basically, where a lot of musicals were failing at an alarming rate. And what the researchers found was that the social connectivity of the individual producers, choreographers, librettists, composers, really seemed to predict which musicals would be successful and which wouldn't. And West Side Story is obviously the best example of a great success. And what you found with the social network there was just that it included these members that had some kind of old hands, some newcomers. It had a couple of people who had worked together, some who had come in from different groups. And it just seemed to be the ideal combination. What the less successful musicals always seemed to be created by just a group of people who had worked together repeatedly in the past without having any new connections coming in. But actually, with West Side Story, what happened is that, you know, we had, like Stephen Sondheim, was part of our thing as well. And it was just like this amazing mix of like people who are all bringing their own individual takes. It's like creative cross pollination, I call it, because it's like they'd worked in different groups. They're bringing that experience together. And they're mixing all of those ingredients into something that had never been seen before. And that's what really seems to be crucial for creativity is that cross pollination of ideas from people with all different backgrounds. So you can break the existing norms of the genre and produce something truly groundbreaking. I feel like I don't have anything else to say about that. I'm so so happy that that you you address that because it resonates with my own experience. And the importance of working with a variety of different people in creative forms and to bring in those new ideas. And it's so true in business, of course, as well. That is so true. Just real quickly, a last question here for you. Again, when we were at Abbey Road, you talked about Judy Collins and her then recently released album Spellbound that she created in her 80s. What are you listening to now? I'm afraid I've become just a really obsessive Taylor Swift fan. So I'm listening to the torture and the poets department. I just really love her songwriting on that album. You know, I love the anthology edition as well. I think some of those tracks like The Prophecy easily are strong as the original songs on the first edition of the album. So I have a lot of respect for her craft, how prolific she is. I think it's amazing her creativity that she just writing so many songs and I think touching on so many different ideas. You and my daughter would get along just absolutely. Yes. Every new, they did a listening party when it came out with her friends online and then realized that, oh, it was a double album and they had to get up for school the next day. That was not good. So they hadn't encountered that part of it. And David, thank you. This has been, as always, is absolutely wonderful talking with you. We so appreciate your work, your ability to communicate these scientific principles in a way that not only make them understandable but they're actionable. And so thank you very much for writing the book and for joining us on behavioral groups. It's a pleasure, as always. Yeah. Thanks so much for the interesting conversation. Welcome to our Grooving session where Tim and I share ideas on what we learned from our discussion with David, have a free-flowing conversation and groove on whatever else comes into our weekly connected brains. Yeah. Yeah. We have a lot of opportunity there, don't we, on building our weak connections? Well, we have an opportunity to just increase and expand and deepen the connections that we have. We are, in general, as a human species, probably not as good as we should be given all of the research that David points out because we know that that connection, those weak ones, as well as those deep ones, help us live a better life. Well, I think that this is a great tea up. That's a great comment that tees up the idea that connections are vital to our well-being. Absolutely central, foundational, really the stuff that we humans are made of our connectivity. It's our connective tissue. I think that David brings up a lot of great research in the book, especially from the medical field. There's a lot of new stuff in there. It's a great read. Yeah. I love it. One of the things that David brings us up in the book, and I don't think we really talked a lot about it, but it was the Harvard study of adult development, the longest running scientific study of adult life ever conducted, folks, ever. It started in 1938, started with 724 men split between Harvard grads and Boston juvenile delinquents. Isn't that interesting? There's another interesting factoid. The W.T. Grant Foundation was the original funder of this. W.T. Grant was a retailer in the United States, like a five-in-dime, kind of a mercantile-type store from the turn of the century. Their foundation was the original funder of it and got it going for dozens of years. They kept going for dozens of years with this particular project. Then, obviously, it has continued to go on. Currently, they've been adding people throughout. I think there are 13 people now in the study, including offspring from some of them. Yeah. 1,300 people in the study. You said 13, which would go quite a bit smaller. I met 1,300. In my head, I said 1,300. I guess in my mouth, it did not come out as 1,300. It just came out as 13, forgot the whole 100 part. What I love about this is that it's expanded. They're including some of the offspring, some of the children of the original participants. It is continuing. It is ongoing as today, and it's currently run by Dr. Robert Waldinger. If anybody knows him as any connection, we would love to have Professor Waldinger as a guest on the show. If you could make that connection, we would love it. But I think, Tim, I think this is the real piece and this ties back into what David is talking about, is that the study found that the people who stayed healthiest and lived the longest weren't necessarily the richest people. They weren't the ones who did exercise all the time. They didn't necessarily eat any better or worse. It was people who had the strongest connections to others. Say that again. Say that again. This is so important. The people who have lived the longest and stayed the healthiest were the people who had the strongest connections to others. So part of this is that they hypothesized that the warmth of these connections had a direct positive impact on their health and well-being. The fact that you have these close connections or these connections in your lives, you have people looking out for you who can notice things about you, can take you to your doctor's appointment when you might not be able to do it on your own. All of those other factors as well as just the social connection aspect of it itself. And so I think this is fascinating when we think about this. It's really similar for me to the research that's being done by the Blue Zones. And the Blue Zones is an organization run by Dan Butner. I have some fun personal stories about Dan. But their work at Blue Zones reinforces this idea that our social connections are vital to living a healthy life, not just a longer life. But Blue Zones tracks people who are living north of a hundred years all around the world. And it's conclusive that one of the foundational elements is that they have good social connections. I think what's also interesting, at least what the Harvard study found is that as we become older, we become happier. So I think that is really cool. Okay, so what I'm getting happier as I get older. So there you go. I like that. I like that. Okay, so how can we use that to help us find our group? What is it that we need to do to make these social connections better and more functional? Well, David brings up a number of different things, which we'll get into. But I think just realizing, and again, I know, knowing is not doing right, but at least an understanding that we are social creatures and that we want these connections and that those connections have the added benefit of health, happiness, and longevity. Boom. So that should mean I should be more motivated to go out and to purposefully try to build my social connections, to expand and deepen the ones that I already have. I should instead of watching the next episode of The House of Dragons, I should probably invite somebody out to go grab a drink or go watch a twins game or do something as opposed to just sitting in my house and doom strolling on my doom scrolling on my phone. Well, we could also use some behavioral science tricks like time blocking in your calendar to say at five o'clock on Thursday afternoon, I'm going to go to where people are. I'm going to go to a park. I'm going to go to a bar or a restaurant or going to hit the hiking trails or a gym or some kind of community space. I'm going to time block something and say, I'm just going to go and do this because this is going to be in my schedule. It's on my diary in my calendar and that's going to be my commitment to go and do this because in my current state of my cool state, I don't have to worry about it. I'm going to go ahead and just schedule some time for me to go and build up my social connections. Well, and using that time block thing, set up meetings with a colleague for a coffee break, reach out to somebody to do an informational interview with them. Find out strangers that you admire. Some people, you might get refused, granted, but you might also get a chance to just say, hey, spend 30 minutes on a Zoom call with me and talk about your work. I'd love to find out more about how you do that in different pieces or somebody in your organization that you don't necessarily talk to. Not only does that help in building the connections, it can help in your job as you move forward. Don't underestimate our human instinct to just have a conversation too, which brings me to the second part of what I wanted to talk about is that we often make wrong assumptions about connections. And one of the big pieces of that wrong assumptions is that we have this idea of difficulty of meeting new people and striking up conversation that's scary for us and that it won't be pleasurable and that we are going to mess it up and somebody else is going to go, wow, that's a weird person. And yet we know from Nick Eppley's work that talking to strangers is actually a net positive, almost all of the time. So I could just come up to you and say, wow, that's a beautiful rhinestone tier you're wearing there. For all of the listeners who can't see me, I am wearing a beautiful rhinestone tier. And yes, you could. And I would be very happy to talk about why I'm wearing this rhinestone tier. But yeah, but your point is well taken that we have this myth. We have this self-consciousness that says, well, I'm not that kind of person. This is too difficult for me. I don't just talk to people in the street or I don't reach out to friends. They reach out to me. You're going to find a happier life by making those, by reaching out. We even heard about this in regret when we talk to Dan Pink. And he tells this fantastic story about people who are two women who were close friends, roommates in college. And then something happens. And he interviews the one who says, I thought about that friend of mine all these years and felt like it was such a terrible rift that we had. And I never reached out. And then Dan just said, but how would she feel? Maybe this friend of yours might actually like to hear from you. And she did. She makes the connection and it's peace and happiness and paradise on the other side. Like they had a fantastic reconnection. They did. And I think that story is wonderful to say, take that risk and do it. I'm going to go back to the episode we had when we interviewed Nick Eppley and about talking with strangers on the train and different things. And I'm going to quote from that podcast. He said, and I quote, "A lot of our happiness and well-being in life comes from the quality of our connections with other people, both weak ties, strangers and acquaintances, as well as deep ties, family, close friends and spouses. Again, a lot of our happiness and well-being in life come from the quality of our connections with other people, weak and strong. And so, reach out to that old college roommate, send them a text, do talk to the people in line at Starbucks or Caribou or in the waiting line as you're ready to board the airplane or the person sitting next to you on that airplane or on the train as you're going into commute or make a happy hour connection with people at work. I don't know, do something to just put a pin in this idea of making connections. I just want to reference a 1972 television ad for AlkaSeltzer. And the theme, I know this is straight. Check this out, you guys. It looked 1972 TV ad for AlkaSeltzer. And the message was, "Try it, you'll like it." That's the message I want to give to people. I thought that was life-serial. I thought, "Hey, Mikey likes it. That was Mikey likes it. No, but Mikey, no, this is different. This is try it, you'll like it." Yeah. So, just real quick, I want to touch on a couple other things that David brings up, both in the book and in our interview, this idea of false assumptions that we have about connections. One is that we feel that others don't like us, but they do. There is this liking gap, but we're pessimistic about how other people perceive us, not only about liking us, but about our intelligence and others. And that is false. The research points to the idea that is false, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So, I also, just from a creativity perspective, I really loved how he brought West Side Story into the whole discussion and this idea of bringing these three incredibly powerfully creative, but very different and diverse men to write and create West Side Story. So, if you're in a creative role, if your job is to be creative, think about engaging someone who will share the same dream as you, but come from a different perspective, who could share in your goals to connect on something and connect with them to create something new and vital and different for the world. Great. And then the last, not the last piece, but what's it? Penantulant? What's the word? Penultimate? Penultimate component. Yes, the one before the last, right? Okay. Yeah. Is this idea, so we talked about this a little bit about how do we take this to find your groove? Well, it's about improving connections. And David brings up a lot of really great work on how to improve those connections. And again, as we think about this from finding your groove, going out there and taking life by the horns and just making it the best that you can, one of the things that I found really fascinating in our conversation as well as in the book is this focus on building a shared reality with the other person. That small talk, while wonderful, is not enough. It's the real things that have meaning. And he brings up some really good ways. It's about asking questions of the other person, particularly follow-up questions, as we like to say all the time, be compassionately curious. Tell me more about how did you get here? How did you get on this train? What is it that you're doing in life that gives you passion? Those types of questions, which feel really weird to ask sometimes? But people love them, and we are more likely to share than not. Are we going to owe a royalty to Kwame Christian for compassionate curiosity? If we do, we're already poor. We're going to be in debt. We're going to go file bankruptcy here because, man, it's Kwame's component on that compassionate curious. The thing in this whole idea of improving connections, the thing that really struck me was the need to escape our egocentrism, to focus on how other people see things, not just how you see things. Gosh, this just hit me over the weekend. I was traveling. I was actually doing a show in St. Louis and ran into a bunch of people. There was so much language by one person that was like, "Well, that's just the way it is." This very definitive black and white, it's basically kind of saying, "I know." I'm letting you know that this is the way it is and not the way that you want it to be. She also said things like, "Well, that's just impossible." What I just said is true, and what you're saying is not true. That egocentrism comes from an inner voice. I think that we have to really be careful to kind of silence our inner critic when it comes to writing off other people and say, "Well, wait a minute. Maybe there's something about what that other person is going through that could be valuable or meaningful and reduce the volume of "I'm right" all the time. Going beyond that, even, Tim, I see this in organizations where leaders are looking at things from their perspective, partly because they have more information. They have been in these meetings talking about these things for maybe months at end, and then they try to explain them or tell them to others, and the egocentrism of having all of this information or where they're coming from or what's important to them, as opposed to taking a step back and going, "What would it feel like to hear this or to have this conversation from their perspective, from where they're sitting?" Again, David uses a great example of looking at this cabinet that has some open pieces and some closed, kind of covered areas in the book, a great visual in the book, by the way. If I'm looking at one side and trying to describe to somebody what I'm seeing versus somebody looking at it at the other side, we have a really hard time to put ourselves and reverse it and look at it from the other way. I think leaders need to practice this. I think we all need to practice this, but I think leaders need to practice this particularly strongly and make sure that they are really focused on pushing the other piece. Yeah, I'm just reminded of John Dunn, the great poet, the 16th-century poet, said, "No man is an island." I mean, corporations don't exist on one person. They exist on teams, so go there. I would also like to say it's really important, especially for leaders to express gratitude, express appreciation, right? Yes, yes. Here's the other thing that I loved is civility, the Montague principle. Lady Mary Wertley, Montague of British aristocrat who said, "Sevility buys everything and costs nothing." And she said that in the early 1700s. But that was something that David brought up, and I thought that was really, really interesting because, again, it is so much that we can express disapproval but do it in a civil manner because that maintains the relationship. It maintains the connection. It can even enhance the connection as opposed to being rude and uncivil in that situation. And that will help you find your groove. Yes. You will find a greater degree of happiness in your own life by increasing civility with the other people in the world around you. All right, the last piece, and I know we're going in at this. What is the last piece you're never in the last piece? All right, all right. Benjamin Franklin, a fact. Oh, yes, asking a favor. I love this. This is such a cool way to build a relationship. And it's not what we would expect. We always think, "Oh, I need to do something for them." And then they will reciprocate and all this other kind of pieces. But no, actually, this idea of asking somebody else to do a favor for you, then builds that connection. And I don't ask for, you know, give me 500 Benjamin's, right? Although we might ask that of our listeners. But no, this idea of asking a small favor, can you help me with this? Can you provide me with some information that I don't have, or it's hard for me to get an easier for you to do? Benjamin Franklin talking about, you know, borrowing the book. Can you borrow something from somebody? Your neighbors. Go out and, like, how many people have met their neighbors? Well, borrow that lawnmower or... A cup of sugar? A cup of damn sugar, right? I'm making something, and I need this to complete my recipe. And do you have a cup of sugar or a cup of flour or something? That's just fantastic. I thought Robert Cheldini actually created the Benjamin Franklin effect. Creating it. I guess that couldn't have happened. I think he might have named it that. He might have done that, right? Yeah. And there were studies from Japan, which I thought were really interesting too, where there's this term called "me," which is this whole concept of how actually asking for support can sometimes be the best route to cementing a relationship and creating connection. Yeah, that's practice of me. Yeah, so culturally, it makes more sense in Japan. I feel like that's something that the West needs to do a better job of adopting. Baro pen, baro shovel, baro some sugar. There you go. All right. Now comes to the last element. Is this the ultimate? The ultimate. The zenith, the the chris de rio. Oh, love rounds. I can't do that. Okay. Okay. So we are going to try something new. We are going to, because we're going to take our own advice. Yes. And we are going to implement this idea that, hey, strong connections and weak connections help us live a happier, healthier, longer, more fulfilling life and help us get into the groove. Right? So with that, we are going to hold a happy groove hour coming up on September 26, 2024. And we are inviting all of you listeners to join in. And we will have two of these because, because Tim, why? 55% of our listeners are outside the United States. So we don't want to exclude anybody. Now, we're only doing two. So we're going to exclude somebody because that's not a data that the hours of the day don't necessarily work out for everybody. But we're going to do it September 26, 2024. We're going to hold our first one at noon Eastern time US calendar. So at 12 Eastern, hopefully we can, that's still early enough in the evening for many people in Europe and Africa. And we can have them join in. And then that same day, we are going to hold a second, a second happy groove hour to at 7 p.m. Eastern time. And again, hopefully people from North and South America can join in. And if you're in Australia, you can get up really early and join in. I don't know, maybe. Yeah. So September 26, 2024, that's a Thursday. So it's not the end of the week, but it's a good happy hour day. It is great. Happy hour day. And it's just going to be for an hour. And we just love to just get together and chat. We're going to have some conversation. We're going to have our own grooving session with everybody. And hopefully we will have opportunity to get to meet you. Have you meet each other? We'll get to talk about fun things and we'll have some, not just small talk to him, we're going to talk some shared reality components that we're going to get in there. And we're going to have fun conversations. So, wow. All right. And we'll have more information coming out to come and in the different upcoming episodes. And we'll have links and all sorts of fun stuff. So look for those links coming out. All right. Think that wraps it up. Do you think that probably is what we have? Yeah. Yeah. Even though we could go on for more because I can go on and on and on and on. You know that you've always got more ad lib in you. Yes, you do. Okay. I want to express a big thank you to David for writing the book and bringing all this great science to the world as well as just joining us again. It's always fun to see him and talk to him. And I know that it wasn't as cool as meeting his Abbey Road studios, but it was still really fun to get together with them and have this conversation. Yeah. And I agree 100%. And actually, David is such a great writer. He has a column now in New Scientist. If you don't subscribe to that, do that and write that it was because of David's column. By this book, it is fantastically written. It's really good. I love his writing style. It integrates the science in a way that just makes it really approachable. I think it's going to be on my top 10 list for this year, for sure, as we move forward. And as always, if you enjoyed this episode or any of our other shows, please share the love, leave a review on Apple or Spotify, share this episode, link with a friend or even give up a cup of coffee each month and support us on Patreon. That'd be okay. That would be okay. With that, grovers, we encourage you to go out and talk to a stranger, make a deeper connection with someone you love with a friend with an acquaintance, and use those this week to help you find your groove. [Music]
