Sheila Das explores our personal and societal conversations so we all can get to better connections, that is to flow, in our world. Communication is an essential part of our human nature and fulfills a basic human need. It also has been the driving force of human society, allowing us to flourish. Yet talking to each other is not always easy and seems increasingly fraught with challenges. Structures and skills matter. In frank exchanges with guests from a wide spectrum of experience, we uncover the power and problems of our talk today .
Publisher
Sheila Das, conversation advocate and humanities professor
Sheila Das investigates the role of silence, whether in the pauses in conversation or of conversation. Why may we want to create them and linger? How do the faux silences that pepper our modern societies, like contactless groceries, affect us? If we are to create more deliberate spaces, like meditation or retreats, that allow for silience, what may emerge in conversation? Maybe greater togetherness.
Thinkers mentioned: David Henry Thoreau, Jenny O'Dell, Ian Williams, Michael Pollan, Richard Wagamese, Vanessa Vandergrift, and Sarah McLauchlan.
I recommend for meditation... Thupten Jinpa's A Fearless Heart.
4 Oct 2025
Conversations with Old Friends (With Music)
In our first audio essay, Sheila Das reflects on the unique gains in conversing with old friends and how to keep making it better. Breaking with some of the current trends that push us to acquire social media "friends," find new friends or even AI companions, Sheila shows, through her own personal experience, a richness, based on time, knowledge and intimacy, that infuses these conversations with longtime pals that cannot be matched. And should not be undervalued.
Sheila recommends… Robin Dunbar's book (2021) Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships.
30 Aug 2025
How LLMs Are Changing our Talk, video
Megan Fritts guides us through the changes Large Language Models are making on our conversational skills, expression and content. LLMs (whether ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini) are wildly popular and widely used to lighten our workloads. But what about the effects on our connection with each other? We consider particular desires for more time for conversation (e.g. by reducing women's domestic labour) and more comfort (especially Gen Z). And if LLMs may help us with frictions and overcome isolation, on first dates or in our long term relationships. We then explore concrete changes in the material of conversation -- our speech patterns and memory or "ownership of ideas" -- as well as the potential social consequences, such as equity. Megan offers some cautions as she makes the case that we may want to rethink our usage.
We refer to Megan Fritts' publications "A Matter of Words," The Point Magazine (May 2025) and https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/talk-trust-and-trade-offs_2025_web.pdf (https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/talk-trust-and-trade-offs_2025_web.pdf)
Megan recommends... Re-Engineering Humanity, by Brett M. Frischmann and Evan Selinger. A comprehensive look at how emerging technology in general is affecting and undermining human agency.
Megan Fritts is professor of philosophy at University of Arkansas at Little Rock, researching emerging technologies and human flourishing, and co-host of the podcast Philosophy on the Fringes.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
1 ratings
Spotify
4.6 / 5
9 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 21 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
28
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
32
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