When friends ask about a trip, I start with one of two things: what we ate or who we talked to.

I’m not alone. People who love to travel often share another important characteristic: they enjoy, maybe even thrive on, talking with strangers. The conversations happen on the train, in towns, at a coffee counter. Some go three minutes. Some go an hour. The level doesn’t matter as much as you’d think. Either way, you come away with something. You learn what the place values and how locals see the world. Sometimes, you learn how they see you.

What my wife, Diane, and I always come home with from a trip is the conversations. We don’t always agree on the highlights of the food or the lodging. We agree about who we talked with. The moments of real connection are the moments we keep remembering. Someone in a similar life phase, or traveling for the same reason, or with a worldview that lines up with ours just enough that a conversation can go somewhere.

Why we don’t

Some of you may know that, in addition to leading Nomadic Spirit, I am the host of Big Brains, the University of Chicago’s flagship video podcast. Every other week, we feature an interview with leading scientists, researchers, and academics whose thinking and discoveries are shaping our world. I recently interviewed Nicholas Epley, a behavioral scientist at UChicago’s Booth School of Business, who has spent twenty years studying why we don’t talk to strangers, and what we miss when we don’t. His findings will not surprise any experienced traveler. We’re wired for this. The hesitation is in our heads, and other people respond more positively than we expect.

What surprised me about his research was the size of the gap. Most of us assume other people aren’t interested in talking with us. The data show we are wrong about that, and we are wrong by a lot. Strangers we hesitate to approach are more open than we think. Epley has also begun to find evidence that strangers may be more willing to open up to us than the people who know us best.

That last part is worth sitting with. Travel puts you among strangers all the time. It also makes you a stranger to almost everyone you meet. Epley’s work suggests this is not an obstacle. It might be the whole point.

Over to you

I bet you’ve had a similar experience. Briefly, tell us about a conversation from a trip you still think about. Write to [email protected].