Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com.

I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn why talking to strangers basically built human civilization, with author Joe Kohane.

Then you'll learn about a new AI-generated map revealing hidden dark matter

bridges that connect galaxies.

Let's satisfy some curiosity.

If I told you to strike up a conversation

with the first stranger you saw,

how would you react?

If you're like a lot of people, you'd feel nervous, scared even.

But according to today's guest, there's really no reason to be scared.

In fact, talking to strangers is so good for us that it's basically the reason we have

civilization in the first place. Seriously. Joe Coehan is a veteran journalist

and the author of the new book The Power of Strangers,

the benefits of connecting in a suspicious world.

And he says that your fear of talking to strangers is really common,

and totally unfounded.

What's been really interesting in a lot of the studies that have been common and totally unfounded.

What's been really interesting in a lot of the studies that have been done over the last 15 years

is that everybody worries that they're going to be rejected and they're going to be bad at this.

And according to a couple of really famous studies by Nicholas Eppley and

Juliana Schroeder, two American psychologist, none of the hundreds of people

have sent out to do this on like mass transit in Chicago and London had

...