If someone asked you which of the following choices would make for the most pleasant train ride possible which would you choose—spending your commute keeping to yourself or striking up a conversation with one of the unpredictable strangers in the seat next to you?
Many of us would choose to sit back with our headphones in because the thought of having to converse with someone we don't know is scary. We assume the worst, Dr. Robert Waldinger, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School at Massachusetts General Hospital and co-author of the new book The Good Life, tells Fortune.
