Hello and welcome to The Upgrade, the podcast from the team of Lifehacker, where we help you improve your life one week at a time.

I'm Alice Bradley, editor-in-chief of Lifehacker, and today I'm joined by our video producer Abu Zafar.

Hi, Abu.

Hi, Alice.

Abu, today we're tackling online communication.

We're all online now more than ever before, thanks to the pandemic.

And if we're not slacking all day with our coworkers, we're checking in with our friends and social media and through texts and also, of course, through Zoom.

So the chances for miscommunication are that much greater.

Yeah, I totally agree, Alice.

I cannot count the number of times I've had communication mishaps with my family because

they all text so weirdly.

Well, hopefully we're going to be clearing all of that up today.

Thanks to our guest, linguist, Gretchen McCulloch.

There doesn't have to be one right way of doing things.

You could adapt the way we talk to each other in different context,

depending on who we're talking to.

And if we all try to do that a little bit,

then we can make each other more comfortable

without trying to insist on one way as

being right. Gretchen is a resident linguist at Wired and is the author of the New York Times

bestseller, because internet, understanding the new rules of language. She's also the co-creator of

the podcast Lingthusiasm. So, Abo, tell me about your communications with your family. What's, what's going on over there? I mean, this is a classic one, Abu, tell me about your communications with your family. What's going on over there?

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