John R. Miles

We're going to be talking about this brand new book.

I actually have an advanced reader's copy that I was so excited to get.

It's titled A Little More Social, How Small Choices Create Unexpected Happiness, Health, and Connection.

Congratulations on your second book.

What do you think is harder, writing the book or doing the publicity for it?

I've recently been trying to get ahold of Angela Duckworth who blurbed her book and her assistant told me she is in a writing dungeon and it's very difficult to find.

So I understand that analogy very much.

Nick, we began before we came on today, talking about your morning commute.

And I want to start with two moments that feel completely different, but I think are actually connected.

There's the story you tell in the book about a woman who died and no one noticed for two years.

And then there's something much more ordinary, which is sitting on a train next to someone and choosing not to say a word to them.

Or it could be a plane, which I experienced more frequently.

What are those two moments reveal about how we're living today?

Not sure if you're a fan of the band Alice in Chains or not.

Yeah.

When I think about the lead singer's demise, he wasn't discovered two years from the time he died, but it was like weeks.

And I just think you have someone here who is so famous and you would have thought so loved yet in such despair with this heroin addiction that in the last elements of his life, he was completely alone.

I was listening to your podcast episode that you did with Laurie Santos probably a year ago, might've been a little bit longer than that.

And you were talking about the famous train study you did, but one part of the conversation really piqued my interest.

You had said that the Chicago transportation people brought you in after you had done this, and they said that they were going to implement a quiet car.