Friday, October 16th, 2026
Every week I pick these things for different reasons, and every week they end up talking to each other anyway. This week the conversation was about one thing. Who are you actually connected to, and what are you letting stand in for the real thing?
The book came out Tuesday and it's about building strong relationships in a world that keeps making it harder. The first article found that a lot of people now say a chatbot understands them better than most humans do. The second says going back to the office didn't fix loneliness at work, but one specific kind of manager did. The third is about a bunch of strangers in Florida who decided the cure for that was to go running together and then grab a beer.
The podcast is a guy who read hundreds of self help books so you don't have to. The song is a victory lap set to a bouncy beat. And the show is about a man who left the family business, took a new job, and found out his old life follows you wherever you go.
Pour something. Let's go.
Book of the Week
This one came out Tuesday from Viking, and it's the book I'm reading this week.
If you've read Adam Grant before, you know his move. He takes something everybody thinks they understand, collects a pile of research and strange real world stories, and shows you that what you thought was true is only half true. He did it with giving in Give and Take, with original thinking in Originals, and with changing your mind in Think Again. This time he's pointed it at relationships.
The setup is the part every business owner should hear. Grant argues that close relationships drive both happiness and success, and that building them is getting harder. Face to face time keeps losing ground to screens. We hand more and more of our communication off to AI. People are more polarized and more lonely than they've been in a long time.
Then he goes after three beliefs most of us carry around without ever checking them.
The first is that you have to be similar to someone to be close to them. Grant says no. Solidarity doesn't require similarity. One of the stories he uses is about astronauts who learned to trust people they didn't particularly like. If you can do that in a tin can orbiting the planet, you can probably do it with the guy in accounting.
The second is that chemistry happens fast or not at all. You either click or you don't. Grant says chemistry doesn't always show up quickly, and some of the best relationships start out lukewarm. I think about how many potential friends, partners, and clients I've written off after one flat conversation, and it's not a small number.
The third is that closeness takes a lot of time. If you can't see someone every week, you can't really be close. He pushes back on that too. There's a story about a comedy troupe that treats time apart as part of how they stay together, and another about a band that got closer by learning to fight better. Not less. Better.
There's also a journalist who designed a gathering that led to 78 marriages. I want to know exactly how that dinner party worked, and I suspect you do too.
The thread running through it is the part I find most hopeful. Turns out connection is a skill. You can get better at it, same as closing. Grant describes his own path from a shy introvert to someone who loves bringing people together, which is not where I'd have guessed he started.
Here's why it's this week's pick. I moved to a new city in March and I've been rebuilding a business and a life at the same time. Tuesday's letter was about the tactical side of this, reconnecting with the people who already know you. This book is the why behind it. If you've ever felt like everybody else got the instruction manual for making friends as an adult, this might be the manual.
Get it here: Vibe on Amazon
Three Articles Worth Your Time This Week
Article 1: The Rise of AI Companions
Source: Elon University, Imagining the Digital Future Center
I want you to read this one even if it makes you uncomfortable. Especially if it does.
Elon University surveyed a thousand Americans who use AI for social or emotional conversations. Not people using it to write emails. People talking to it.
The numbers are wild. They estimate that 27 percent of adult internet users in the US have significant emotional or social interactions with AI. Among the companion users they surveyed, 31 percent consider their chatbot a friend. Thirty eight percent sometimes chat with AI just to feel less alone. And 39 percent said AI understands them better than most people do.
That last one stopped me. And honestly? I get it. A chatbot is never tired. It's never distracted by its own phone. It never makes the conversation about itself. Of course it feels understanding. It has nothing else going on.
But here's the number I'd hang on the fridge. Even among people who use AI this way, 59 percent would still rather talk with friends or family. Most people aren't choosing the machine over humans. They're using the machine when the humans aren't there.
Which leaves me wondering where all the humans went. Grant's book is chasing that same question from the other direction.
If you're in business, there's a second read. Your customers are lonely. A lot of them are getting their sense of being heard from software. The brands and businesses that actually make people feel known, by a person, are going to stand out more every year.
Read it here: The Rise of AI Companions
Article 2: Office attendance doesn't reduce loneliness at work, study of 1,000 employees finds
Source: People Matters
A lot of companies spent the last two years dragging people back to the office with a quiet assumption underneath it. Being in the same building would fix the disconnection.
This piece covers new research from Constance Noonan Hadley and Sarah Wright, published in Harvard Business Review, and it pokes a big hole in that assumption. They surveyed a thousand US knowledge workers. The loneliest employees were already spending about half their work time in person. Two days a week in the office versus five made little difference.
Sitting near somebody isn't the same as knowing them. You can sit ten feet from someone for a year and never find out one thing that actually matters to them. Anybody who's worked in an open office knows this.
So what did make a difference? Managers. Among the employees who felt connected, 77 percent said their manager actively helped them build relationships. Among the loneliest, only 18 percent said their manager did enough. The article also mentions a separate survey from Reward Gateway finding nearly 40 percent of US workers feel lonely at work, and about one in four have thought about quitting over it.
And there's a detail I loved. The most isolated people are often the least likely to show up to a general team event. So the happy hour invite in the group chat doesn't reach the person who needs it most. The personal invite does.
If you have a team, even a team of two, read this one. The fix is you, noticing who's on the edge and pulling them in.
Read it here: Office attendance doesn't reduce loneliness at work
Article 3: Run clubs are gaining popularity in South Florida as community spaces for fitness
Source: WFLX FOX 29, Eleanor Sheahan
After two articles about loneliness, I wanted one about people actually fixing it. And this one's from my own state.
It's a short local piece about run clubs in the West Palm Beach area. One of them, West Palm Beach Pacers, started with the founder, Christina Damis, and a couple of friends and cousins. Now group events pull in more than fifty people. She says it comes down to people needing third spaces, somewhere that's not home and not work.
The co founder of another club, Runners Xscape, says the most important step for a newcomer is simply showing up. The clubs offer different distances and paces so nobody gets left behind, and a lot of the runs end at a bar or restaurant afterward.
That's the whole formula, and it's almost embarrassingly simple. A regular time. A regular place. A shared thing to do so nobody has to carry the conversation alone. And a low bar to join.
I've been running again since September, almost always alone. Reading this made me wonder what I'm missing out there.
If you've been waiting for a friend group to form on its own, it won't. Somebody has to start the club. The good news is that it apparently only takes three people and a Saturday morning.
Read it here: Run clubs are gaining popularity in South Florida
Podcast of the Week
The Only 12 Lessons Buried In Every Self Help Book, Spencer Greenberg on Modern Wisdom #1161
Yes. Modern Wisdom. Again. At this point I've stopped apologizing. Chris Williamson keeps booking the exact guest I need, and I'm not going to skip a great episode just to keep the variety stats looking nice.
Spencer Greenberg is a mathematician and the founder of ClearerThinking.org, which builds free tools and studies on decision making and habits. The pitch for this episode is basically a cheat code. He's gone through hundreds of personal development books and pulled out what actually holds up and what doesn't.
What I appreciate about him is that he's skeptical without being cynical. He's not here to tell you self help is all garbage. He's here to sort the useful from the repackaged.
Here's where I'd point you if you don't have the full hour and a half.
The opening stretch on why so many of us got disillusioned with self help, and whether it's all just old advice in new covers. Short answer, a lot of it is. But the good stuff is old for a reason.
The section on working out what you actually value, and the idea of intrinsic values, things you care about for their own sake rather than because they get you something else. If you've ever hit a goal and felt weirdly empty, this part is for you.
And the segment on why everybody needs what he calls "glad you did it" activities. This is the one I keep coming back to, and I'll have more to say about it on Sunday.
There's also a good chunk on overthinking, and why smart people seem especially prone to it. I felt personally attacked. You might too.
Track on Repeat
Wow., Post Malone
Not new. Not even close. It came out as a single right at the end of 2018 and landed on Hollywood's Bleeding in 2019. But it's been on repeat for me this week, and I'm not going to pretend I have a deep reason.
Actually, I do have one. But first, the song.
It's short. Two and a half minutes. A bouncy beat, a hook that's basically one word, and Post doing what Post does, which is sound completely relaxed while bragging about everything. It's not trying to be profound. It's a victory lap. A guy looking around at where he ended up and saying the only reasonable thing. Wow.
Here's why it's on repeat. I'm not great at noticing my own wins. I'll hit something I worked for months to get to and immediately move on to the next problem. No pause. No celebration. Straight to the next fire. I've been doing that for most of my career.
So I'm turning this song into a rule. When something good happens, even something small, I put it on and let myself have the two and a half minutes. A new client says yes. A call goes better than expected. A run feels easy for once. Wow. Then back to work.
It sounds silly. It is a little silly. But you can't build momentum on wins you never let yourself notice, and I've skipped noticing for long enough.
Turn it up. Go find something worth saying wow about.
Listen here: Wow. on Spotify
Show of the Week
Marshals, Season 2, on CBS and Paramount+
If you were a Yellowstone fan, you already know Kayce Dutton. Luke Grimes plays him. Former Navy SEAL, son of John Dutton, the one who always seemed to be trying to get out of the family's mess and never quite managing it.
Marshals is the spinoff where he finally takes a different job. Season 1 put Kayce in an elite unit of US Marshals working to curb violence across Montana. He brings everything he learned as a rancher and a SEAL, and he lands in cases where local crime, land fights, and private interests all crash into each other.
Season 2 premiered on CBS on Sunday, October 4th, and settled into its regular Sunday night slot on the 11th. New episodes stream on Paramount+ the day after they air. The season opens with Kayce racing to save his son, Tate, who's been taken hostage. So, a calm, low stakes week at the office.
Logan Marshall-Green, Arielle Kebbel, Ash Santos, Tatanka Means, and Brecken Merrill are all back, and Mo Brings Plenty returns as Mo. Jefferson White shows up again as Jimmy, which made me happier than it probably should have. Taylor Sheridan is still on as an executive producer, so you know the tone. Big sky, hard men, quiet loyalty, and somebody always getting shot.
Here's why it's this week's pick. Kayce left the ranch to start fresh, and the show keeps proving he can change the job without changing who he is. The skills come with him. So do the relationships. His son, his old friends on the reservation, the people who've been in the trenches with him. The new life only works because of the people who came along.
That felt like the right note to end a week about connection on. Whatever kind of fresh start you're in the middle of, you don't have to pull it off alone. You shouldn't try to.
Watch it here: Marshals on Paramount+
Resources
Podcast: The Only 12 Lessons Buried In Every Self Help Book, Spencer Greenberg, Modern Wisdom #1161 (Spotify)
Track: Wow., Post Malone (Spotify)
One step, one day. Grace over guilt. — Dan Kaufman
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