Society

The secret to better workplace relationships might be a cat walking across your keyboard

A surprising discovery about what happens when we let our coworkers see our real lives.

For years, we've heard that remote work is killing workplace camaraderie. No more watercooler conversations, spontaneous lunches, or awkward birthday celebrations in the break room. How can you possibly bond with coworkers when the closest you get to them is a little rectangle on Zoom?

Full disclosure: This newsletter is produced from a home office overrun with animals, so we may have a dog in this fight. And two cats. But that doesn’t skew the data collected by a researcher who followed a company as its employees transitioned from office life to working from home, conducting 275 interviews along the way. And as Boston College professor Vanessa M. Conzon explains, what she discovered was pretty much the opposite of what she expected.

Those interruptions we've all learned to apologize for might be doing something wonderful. Barking dogs, kids wandering into frame, a spouse shouting a question from the kitchen. All those little intrusions into our carefully curated professional lives might actually be bringing us closer together.

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Last Week's Results

In Friday's issue, our GOOD Ol' Days look at Adolphe Sax and his famous invention inspired a little musical trivia.

We asked: What family of instruments does the saxophone belong to? Despite being made of brass, the saxophone is actually a woodwind instrument, and 65.9% of you knew it! The 31.8% who picked brass can hardly be blamed.

• Brass (31.8%)

• Woodwind (65.9%) 🏆

• Percussion (2.4%)

• Strings (0.0%)

Generations | Courtesy of Upworthy

Health

Making friends as an adult doesn’t have to be cringe

A TikTok friendship coach says it only takes 3 small shifts to get back in the friend game.

Making new friends as a grown-up? Somehow way harder than taxes. Remote work killed off casual watercooler chats. People move, marry, have kids, or just… drift. In their place? A buffet of digital substitutes: TikTok giggles, Reddit debates, and maybe a little oversharing with your AI chatbot.

It feels like connection. But to your brain, it's more like fast food: convenient, addictive, and hollow.

We’re wired for real, in-person connection. The kind where someone actually shows up, not just sends a heart emoji. But how do you meet new people without it feeling forced or painfully awkward?

Enter TikTok friendship coach Mary. In this story by Erik Barnes, she offers three surprisingly doable ways to break out of the friend drought, no cringe, no gimmicks, just small shifts that actually work.

On November 9, 1967, the first issue of Rolling Stone magazine hit newsstands, featuring John Lennon on the cover and a price tag of just 35 cents. Founded by 21-year-old Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J. Gleason, the San Francisco publication set out to take rock music seriously at a time when much of the mainstream press considered it a passing fad.

Its first issue sold modestly, but Rolling Stone quickly became a cultural institution, covering everything from music and movies to politics and counterculture. Along the way, it helped launch the careers of countless writers, photographers, and critics, and proved that a magazine about rock and roll could have plenty to say about the world.

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