Want to Be Happier? Try Talking to Strangers.

I'm Rufus Griscomb and this is the next big idea. Today, Nicholas Epley on the scientific case for being a little more social. My mother lives by herself in a four-bedroom house. She has many friends and a gift for connecting with people, but I don't think she would mind me saying that living alone can be hard. It sometimes hurts being alone.

And it's a hurt that far too many people feel. The percentage of Americans who live alone has risen from 7.7% in 1940 to almost 28% in 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. There's a strange irony here. Over the last century, tens of millions of Americans have migrated from rural areas to cities.

We've never lived closer together. We, supposedly the most social animals on the planet, sit inches apart. part in waiting rooms, doctors' offices, airports, subway cars, coffee shops, staring forward, avoiding each other's gaze, pretending that we're not surrounded by other human beings. Doctors' offices may be the right place to sit alone because that's where our social isolation is driving us.

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