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 ...

Small talk often gets a bad rap. It can feel awkward, superficial and pointless at times — if you're doing it wrong. But it's ...

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 ...

Making small talk can be hard—especially when you’re not sure whether you’re doing it well. But conversations are a central part of relationship-building. In this first episode of How to Talk to ...