Do you dread making small talk or getting drawn into a dull conversation about the weather?

• 🤠 Buck up! Conversations about topics people think are boring typically wind up being enjoyable, Axios' Emily Peck writes from an intriguing study recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
• The findings might provide a bit of encouragement to do more yapping.

Why it matters: Social interaction is good for you — plenty of research finds it enhances well-being and makes people feel happy.

Zoom in: 1,800 people, a mix of students and working adults, participated in nine experiments conducted in person and over Zoom by researchers from the University of Michigan, Cornell University and global business school INSEAD.

• 🧅 They were asked to rank their interest in different topics — sports, movies, history. They were also asked to identify subjects they thought were boring — responses included math, onions(!) and Pokemon.
• Participants were paired up to have conversations. In some, one person thought the topic was interesting and the other did not. In others, both believed the topic was boring.

What they found: People underestimated how fun it was to talk about something boring.

• The findings held up in conversations where the people were already friends and ones where they were strangers.

💬 "Talking with another person is engaging, regardless of the topic," the study's authors write.

• "Feeling heard, responding to each other and discovering unexpected details about someone's life can make even a mundane topic meaningful," Elizabeth Trinh, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan, said in a press release from the American Psychological Association, which published the study.

📺 Case in point: "Seinfeld" fans know that a show about nothing — where an episode centers around friends waiting for a table at a Chinese restaurant — can be hilarious.

• 🍔 And a conversation about what the French call a Quarter Pounder with cheese — ostensibly boring — can be similarly iconic. ("Pulp Fiction" diehards get it.)

💭 Emily's thought bubble: As someone who's co-hosted a podcast about business and finance for nearly a decade, I'm experienced in having enjoyable conversations about subjects that seem dull on their face.

• We recently talked about the right mix of spices to keep in your spice cabinet — and got a decent amount of listener feedback!

Between the lines: The research lands in the midst of a loneliness epidemic, where people are now connecting less with others in real life.

• People are literally saying fewer words out loud. One recent study found that in each year, between 2005 and 2019, people in the U.S., Europe and Australia spoke about 300 fewer words per day than the previous year.
• "Speaking less means spending less time connecting with others," the study's author said recently.

🗣️The bottom line: Get talking!

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Bogie the Chihuahua showed up as singer-songwriter Sam Smith at the 2026 Pet Gala in New York, and the look was immaculate.

• The annual event, created by pet couturier Anthony Rubio, is the canine answer to the Met Gala.

More photos.