You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.

I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Think about the last time you were on a train or in a waiting room or at a coffee shop, someone sitting right next to you. What did you do? Most of us probably said nothing. Humans are wired for

connection, and yet somehow most of us spend our days avoiding it. We avoid talking to strangers.

We lean back and type to each other rather than leaning in and talking to each other.

Once talking, we stick to shallow talk to small talk rather than going deeper. We feel grateful but don't express it.

That's behavioral scientist Nicholas Epley.

He has spent decades studying why the gap between what's good for us and what we actually do is so wide and what it would take to close it.

Connecting with other people is one of the most consistently enjoyable, enlightening, and enriching experiences we'll ever have.

And yet all too often, our choice to reach out and connect with somebody's thwarted

by overly pessimistic fears about how other people might respond.

For Nicholas, it all starts with the story of a red hat on a train.

It's coming up right after a short break.

Thank you. It's coming up right after a short break. And now our TED Talk of the Day.

There's a fundamental paradox right at the core of human life.

On the one hand, decades of research

has shown that we are highly social creatures who are made happier and healthier by reaching

out and connecting with other people in the moments, the days, the weeks, the months, and the years

of our lives. And yet, on the other hand, just look around a little bit.

It's not clear that all of us have gotten this memo.

Every day, there are opportunities big and small to reach out and connect with other people that we choose not to take.

We avoid talking to strangers.

We lean back and type to each other rather than leaning in and talking to each other.

...