Hello and welcome to The Upgrade, the podcast from the team at LifeHacker,

where we help you improve your life for one week at a time. I'm Alice Bradley, LifeHacker's deputy editor.

Sadly, Melissa is out sick today, so it's just me.

I'm drunk with power.

Let's see what happens.

Today we're talking about talking.

Look, we could all get better at conversing with our fellow humans.

It's just too easy these days to hide behind our screens,

and when we're finally face-to-face with actual people, we're often talking too much and not listening

enough. How could we make the most of those one-on-one face-to-face in real-life moments?

We'll hear from journalist Celeste Headley, whose career revolves around talking to people.

You're in that conversation to learn. If you haven't learned something from the other person,

you haven't had a real conversation. And LifeHackers' own Michelle Wu tells us how to talk to kids,

because do any of us really know how to do it? Don't change your voice. A lot of people,

when they meet a young kid, will go into this high-pitched

hello, oh my goodness, what a cutie you are. But before we get into how to improve our conversational

skills, let's address bad conversation habits first. What irks you the most? People who only talk

about themselves? Chronic

interruptors? Total bores? We sent our producer Casey out into the streets of New York to find out

what drives people crazy. Just standing outside the Church Avenue station. Do you want to answer

a question for a podcast?

Okay, awesome.

...