An independent nonprofit news source, giving you the context to understand complicated issues. Articles are written by experts, assisted by journalists, to clearly explain events in the news and the ...

What happens when we become too dependent on our mobile phones? According to MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle, author of the new book Reclaiming Conversation, we lose our ability to have deeper, more ...

We need to start an important conversation about all of the important conversations we need to have. Our backlog of important conversations seems to be growing at a much faster rate than these actual ...

Think about the last time you told a story to a friend. You probably adjusted it halfway through. You saw their eyebrows lift. You noticed them lean in, or glance away. You clarified a detail. You ...

Back in the late aughts, someone down the hall from my office shut a metal door, and in my head, it made more noise than it should have. Something was wrong with my ears, and after a month of bouncing ...

There was once a time when strangers talked to one another, sometimes eagerly. “In past eras, daily life made it necessary for individuals to engage with others different from themselves,” Paula ...

You’ve been chatting with someone for 20 minutes, but the conversation grew stale halfway through. You look around the room, desperate to find an escape from this tedious monologue but can’t come up ...

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The Conversation began publishing in the U.S. in 2014 and is an independent, nonprofit publisher of news written by academic experts and researchers. All of our stories are written by faculty from U.S ...

That awkward silence. We’ve all been there. Maybe it’s when you’re meeting someone for the first time. On a date, even. Or in a job interview. Have you ever felt afraid that you would run out of ...