Sheila Das investigates the role of silence, whether the pauses in conversation or of conversation. Why may we want to create them and linger? How do the faux silences that pepper our modern societies, like contactless groceries, affect us? If we are to create more deliberate spaces, like meditation or retreats, that allow for silience, what may emerge in conversation? Maybe greater togetherness.

Thinkers mentioned: David Henry Thoreau, Jenny O'Dell, Ian Williams, Michael Pollan, Richard Wagamese, Vanessa Vandergrift, and Sarah McLauchlan.

I recommend for meditation... Thupten Jinpa's A Fearless Heart.

In our first audio essay, Sheila Das reflects on the unique gains in conversing with old friends and how to keep making it better. Breaking with some of the current trends that push us to acquire social media "friends," find new friends or even AI companions, Sheila shows, through psychological studies and personal experience, a richness that infuses these conversations based on time, knowledge and intimacy. There lies the rub, if it really cannot be matched it can be undervalued.

Sheila recommends… Robin Dunbar's book (2021) Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships.

Megan Fritts guides us through the changes Large Language Models are making on our conversational skills, expression and content. LLMs (whether ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini) are wildly popular and widely used to lighten our workloads. But what about the effects on our connection with each other? We consider particular desires for more time for conversation (e.g. by reducing women's domestic labour) and more comfort (especially Gen Z). And if LLMs may help us with frictions and overcome isolation, on first dates or in our long term relationships. We then explore concrete changes in the material of conversation -- our speech patterns and memory or "ownership of ideas" -- as well as the potential social consequences, such as equity. Megan offers some cautions as she makes the case that we may want to rethink our usage.

We refer to Megan Fritts' publications "A Matter of Words," The Point Magazine (May 2025) and ⁠https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/talk-trust-and-trade-offs_2025_web.pdf⁠

Megan recommends... Re-Engineering Humanity, by Brett M. Frischmann and Evan Selinger. A comprehensive look at how emerging technology in general is affecting and undermining human agency. 

Megan Fritts is professor of philosophy at University of Arkansas at Little Rock, researching emerging technologies and human flourishing, and co-host of the podcast Philosophy on the Fringes.

Megan Fritts guides us through the changes Large Language Models are making on our conversational skills, expression and content -- and not for the better. LLMs (whether ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini) are widely used to outsource our written communication. But what are the effects on conversation? We consider desire for more time for conversation (e.g. by reducing women's domestic labour) and more comfort (especially Gen Z). And if LLMs may help us with frictions on first dates or communication conflict in our long term relationships. We then explore concrete changes in the material of conversation -- our speech patterns and "ownership of ideas" -- as well as the potential social consequences, such as equity.

We refer to Megan Fritts' publications "A Matter of Words," The Point Magazine (May 2025) and https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/talk-trust-and-trade-offs_2025_web.pdf

Megan recommends... Re-Engineering Humanity, by Brett M. Frischmann and Evan Selinger. A comprehensive look at how emerging technology in general is affecting and undermining human agency. 

Megan Fritts is professor of philosophy at University of Arkansas at Little Rock, researching emerging technologies and human flourishing, and co-host of the podcast Philosophy on the Fringes.

La conversation pour recréer l'espoir? Charles Clermont, membre fondateur de Kafou Lespwa (Carrefour de l'espoir), partage avec nous pourquoi et comment il a fait naître cette organisation qui a pour mandat de nourrir chez les Haïtiens le dialogue et la confiance pour travailler ensemble à un avenir de paix et de collaboration. Est-ce que c'est possible? A-t-il les pieds sur terre?

On s'interroge sur l'idée même d'espoir et sur une approche pour amener la conversation en petits groups jusqu’au niveau national. Aussi Charly parle de la tension entre la rêve et la réalité, comment il voit l'espoir sur le long chemin, et quelles valeurs sont souhaitables pour le créer.

Parmi les penseurs mentionnés, on trouve : Vaclac Havel, Beth Jandernoa et Peter Senge, Adam Kahane, Timothy Snyder, Joaquim Machado, et Margerite Yourcenar. 

Voir le site: kafoulespwa.org

Charly recommande... Change: How to Make Big Things Happen by Damon Centola.

Mark Kingwell is one of the most prominent voices in Canada calling for the openness of civil conversation. He shows how our discourse has been changing and why key gains, like justice, need a fresh consideration. And we examine some of the modes of conversation today that steer us off course, like addiction to conviction, community identities, and slogans. It’s not just MAGA! But the risks loom large when we don't communicate with each other with civility, from empty thoughts to physical harms, and even fostering conditions for tyranny.

Mark Kingwell is professer of philosophy at University of Toronto.

We refer to his works: A Civil Tongue (1995) and Question Authority (2024).

Mark recommends... the novel Love Always by Anne Beattie, set in the eighties with references to ‘The Second Coming’ by William Butler Yeats.

Photo credit: Claire Foran

Mystery writer Sophie Hannah turns to untangle the mystery of self-talk behind grudge creation in her acclaimed book How to Hold a Grudge (2018). Sophie and I return to grudges to lay out how at least some of us can be happier by making good grudge stories. We compare Ekhart Tolle's version of story-telling, and consider the roles of memory and boundary setting. Finally we segue to inner dialogues about loss and worst-case scenarios that enable better decisions and happier lives. And we discuss murder in fiction and the fiction of tea. She is a British crime writer after all!

We draw on three of her books: How to hold a Grudge, The Double-Best Method, and Happiness, a Mystery.

Sophie recommends... The Life Coach School podcast. 'The biggest and best repository of wisdom I've ever discovered. Brooke Castillo is a genius whose philosophy of life has been transformative for me - I love her!' 

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-life-coach-school-podcast/id870239631

Check out my Instagram for more video and poll: flowwithSheilaDas

Hairstylists deal with a lot when they are talking with us. Having clients from all walks of life, they manage wide-ranging relationships, through our highs and lows, all the while channelling their artistry to create our desired look. How do they perform this balancing act between the work they are paid for and the talk that is expected? Two of my favourite hairdressers, Shawn Keith MacDonald and Shai Dahlia, share their side of the story for impossible asks, intimate reveals and even racist comments to the authentic friendships that can develop standing behind the chair. Find them on Instagram: @shai.hair.heart.soul and @shawnkeithmacdonald_stylist.

Works mentioned:

The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, by Lewis Hyde (2007).

https://news.northeastern.edu/2024/05/23/silent-appointments-salon-trend/

Shai recommends... The (very funny) pencil haircut clip from Fleabag:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKZMCuppTeo

Shawn recommends... the song (of the moment) "Beautiful Things" by Benson Boone

Send comments to: flowwithsheiladas.com/

Kazu Haga explores conflict and how we can talk it out… so we can change the world. Kazu dreams big. And so do I. We delve into why these conversations are so hard, and how shifts in attitude and approach -  with a fierce vulnerability - may make them less confrontational and more of an invitation. Starting from personal harm we move to consider responses to larger scale harm in political divisiveness and false claims (like Trump’s about Canada), and finally environmental disaster. His latest book, Fierce Vulnerability, healing from trauma, emerging through collapse is an inspiration to anyone who wants to keep hope alive about reconciling our differences and making a difference in these dark days.

Having been mentored by Bernard Layfayette Jr. in the Martin Luther King tradition of nonviolent direct action, Kazu Haga has been active in social justice for over 25 years. 

For more see: kazuhaga.com

Kazu recommends... Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism (2021) by Vanessa Machado de Oliviera, “who talks about change at the scale  I am doing.” 

If spoken language is the essence of conversation, linguist Julie Sedivy reveals how we grapple with it to make sense of the world, each other and ourselves.

From babies to chatbots, Julie unspools its singular importance by explaining language sounds that bond us, meanings that push us apart, and filler words and the unsaid ambiguities that we regularly navigate in between to chart feeling and thought.

We draw on a lifetime of learning and her latest book, Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love (2024). 

Julie Sedivy is professor of Linguistics at the University of Calgary.

Julie recommends…Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal. ‘I re-read it about once a year, and I take it as a manual for how to keep one’s mind and selfhood alive in the face of dehumanizing circumstances.’

Work mentioned:The Power of the Powerless by Václav Havel.