Dr. Alison Wood Brooks
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
But also, you cannot avoid small talk.
It's how every conversation starts between strangers, between people who haven't seen each other in a while.
Even people who've seen each other earlier in the day, you usually start when you see them at night and say, how was your day?
It is a well-worn social ritual, and it's important because it's the place where we search for better things.
Okay.
Okay?
It's the easy— It's the warm-up.
It's the warm-up.
It's where we are.
It's the pregame, right?
It's the warm-up.
And we're searching for ways to get to more meaningful talk.
Okay.
We talk about, in my course and in my book, we talk about a topic pyramid, okay?
The topic pyramid has three layers.
The bottom layer is small talk topics.
These are topics you can talk about with anyone.
It's the weather, it's the weekend, whatever you're eating, easy stuff that you could talk about with anybody.
Yep.
They're not evil.