A quick back and forth with the cashier at the grocery store. A friendly hello to someone on the elevator. A laugh with a taxi driver. These are all examples of "small talk." Some of us live for 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 ...