The mental health benefit of striking up conversations with strangers

Published on May 27, 2026

Nicholas Epley, Booth's John Templeton Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Neubauer Family Faculty Fellow, joins the Washington Post to offer commentary on his experience in forcing conversations with strangers, and the various benefits he encountered throughout his field based trial. 

Learn about his experience and the payoffs of this experiment at the Washington Post website. 

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Tanking is ruining NBA basketball. Can math save it?

May 18, 2026
Evan Munro, Assistant Professor of Econometrics and Statistics, joins Scientific American to explore how the NBA can alleviate tanking in a season where numerous teams seemed to purposefully lose in hopes of having a better spot in the next draft. Munro believes that using a draft to foster a more competitive league for worse teams will always lead to some amount of tanking. Despite this, there is