Ideas

A public speaking coach figured out why everyone keeps cutting you off

There's a fix, and it takes about three seconds to learn.

Sorry, I'm gonna have to cut you off real quick. The reason you keep getting interrupted is sort of your fault. Not in a mean way, but in a "your body language is screaming 'I'm done talking' while your mouth is still going" kind of way. That's the uncomfortable finding at the center of this piece by Erik Barnes, and once you catch yourself doing it, you’ll notice it all the time.

Public speaking coach Vinh Giang has a name for the fix: pause mid-gesture. Hands drop, energy flattens, and everyone around you reads it as a green light to pounce. Keep the gesture alive, and you're holding up a "still talking" sign without saying a word. Simple, a little embarrassing to learn late, wildly effective.

But Giang doesn't stop at body mechanics. He's got a full toolkit for after someone's already cut you off, including a phrase so civil it practically disarms people, and a counter-intuitive move for when the interrupter actually makes a good point.

Worth a read before your next meeting, dinner, or just for any time you’d like to make it to the end of a sentence.

Do you have a GOOD picture to share?

Send us your best images, and we may feature them as the image of the day. Be sure to tell us a bit about your pic.

Who’s a GOOD-sized dog? That’s right, it’s you!

Science, as we covered yesterday, is working to keep our biggest best friends around longer. What, dear GOOD readers, is the best size for a dog? About half of you like a good dog-sized dog, which isn’t a scientific unit of measure, but I think we all sort of know what we mean when we say it. Sorry, teensy pups, your share of the vote wasn’t much bigger than you are.

• Tiny but mighty: I want a dog I can carry with one arm. (5.9%)

• Small but sturdy: Lap-friendly, errand-ready, and easy to tote. (26.1%)

• Right in the sweet spot: Give me a proper dog dog, cuddly and fun. (46.2%)

• Absolute unit: I want a gentle giant with main-character energy. (21.8%)

Reader K. J. Bradley had this to say, “I’ve always loved big dogs but I’m 75 now and could not train a retriever again.“ It’s a sweet sentiment, but I have to take issue with it. Having had a retriever of the Labrador variety, I would argue your age is not a factor; they’re delightfully untrainable goofballs!

Internet

Gen Z's most important value, according to Gen Z, is being genuine

Turns out "just be yourself" has been a whole philosophical crisis for centuries.

A recent Ernst & Young survey found that over 9 in 10 Gen Z respondents say authenticity is their most important personal value. More than kindness. More than ambition. More than anything else. They filled out a form to tell us this.

To be fair, the anxiety is real. We live in an age of curated feeds, AI-generated everything, and an internet that rewards performance over presence. The pressure to be "real" has never been higher. But as Kenneth Andrew Andres Leonardo explains, the authenticity crisis isn't new. Two philosophers who died long before the front-facing camera was invented had already mapped the whole problem and weren't optimistic.

One argued that modern society turns everyone into an actor, wearing polite masks to get what they want while calling it civilization. The other said most of us are just living as a "they-self," doing what "they" do, thinking what "they" think, without ever stopping to ask who's actually home. Neither had a solution that fits on a tote bag.

What they did agree on is where the pursuit of authenticity starts to go sideways, and it's a tension that hits differently when you're reading it on the same phone you use to post about being unbothered.

Ideas

Aristotle had a word for what good people do when the rules run out

It's a 2,400-year-old idea. It's also exactly what you did last Tuesday.

A student cheated on an exam. His professor caught him. And then, instead of throwing the book at him, he didn't even bother to open it. What the professor did was call the kid's mom, a move so specifically human that there's actually a 2,400-year-old Greek word for it.

That word is phronesis, practical wisdom, and as psychologist Tim Hulsey explains, Aristotle considered it the one virtue that makes all your other virtues actually work. Courage without it becomes recklessness. Justice without it becomes cruelty. Rules tell you what's right in theory.

Here's the thing: you've probably used phronesis without knowing it. Every time you bent a rule for a good reason, let something slide because the moment called for it, or made a call that was hard to explain but obviously correct, that was it. You were doing ancient Greek philosophy in real time and didn't even get credit.

What the professor did in that office is the kind of story that's hard to forget. And it might change how you think about the next tough call you're tempted to look up in a manual.

On April 8, 1820, a Greek farmer named Yorgos Kentrotas was digging around the ruins near an ancient theater on the island of Milos, hunting for stones to build a wall. What his pickax struck instead was one of the most famous statues in the world. The first "exhibition" of the Venus de Milo took place not in a grand gallery, but in a barn, where French naval officers filed in to decide whether it was worth the fuss.

The behind-the-scenes scramble to acquire her is wilder than most people know. The Louvre had recently lost several major works following the Napoleonic Wars, as objects Napoleon had seized were returned to their countries of origin, leaving the museum bare and desperate for a centerpiece. France moved fast, outmaneuvering Ottoman officials who had their own plans for her in a series of rapid negotiations that nearly turned violent on the island's shore.

The statue is believed to be the work of Alexandros of Antioch, carved sometime around 130–100 BCE, based on an inscription found near the site at the time of discovery. That inscription was lost in the chaotic handoff, and beyond the name, almost nothing is known about him. A lesser-known craft detail: Venus was carved not from one piece of marble, but two, with the join hidden brilliantly beneath the draped fabric at her hips. Her arms were already missing when Kentrotas found her, and that mystery has only deepened her allure. Today she draws over seven million visitors a year to the Louvre, all because one farmer needed a few extra rocks for a fence.

Do you have something GOOD to share?

We’re always on the lookout for uplifting, enlightening, and engaging content to share with readers like you. If you have something you think should be featured in the Daily GOOD, let me know!

💬 From the group text…

All my neighbors do is complain when the bears scare their dog. I don’t know what to tell you, neighbor, I don’t control the bears! Sorry, what were we talking about? Oh, yeah! This super-blissful reveal video. So good.

Join the Group Text! Send us your social media gold.