Adam Grant Organizational psychologist at Wharton, #1 NYT bestselling author of THINK AGAIN, host of the Re:Thinking podcast.

“If there's one thing that we could all do that will both strengthen our bonds, build better communities, and boost happiness, it's introducing our friends to each other. It turns out that building bridges is actually more rewarding than deepening bonds.”

Plain English with Derek Thompson · US Politics · October 2026

Grant calls this the most important practical takeaway from writing his book Vibe. It came up while he and Derek Thompson discussed the risk of handing social tasks to chatbots, which would let us lose the skill of connecting people ourselves.

Plain English with Derek Thompson · 2026-10-13 Listen to the episode → More from Adam Grant → More US Politics quotes →

Transcript

Plain English with Derek Thompson Around 54:21 into the episode

Adam Grant

…look, you know, basically AI tools are there to provide information. They're like a superpowered search engine. They can synthesize information more quickly, sometimes at the expense of accuracy. But ultimately, they are not a substitute for thinking and they are not a substitute for interacting.

Derek Thompson

…a world where the bicycle shape of our social networks is really frozen in place. You can't have webbed relationships with AI. That's something that scares me, especially given what you said about the significance of the power of a more web-shaped social network for providing community to people.

Adam Grant

…the social awareness to check in with each of them first and do the double opt-in introduction because I don't want to barge into one person's life and dump somebody in who's not wanted there. And if we're just outsourcing those decisions to a chatbot, we're going to lose the skill ourselves to middle. And Derek, I think one of the most important practical takeaways for me of writing vibe was: if there's one thing that we could all do that will both strengthen our bonds, build better communities, and boost happiness, it's introducing our friends to each other. It turns out that building bridges is actually more rewarding than deepening bonds. The sheer joy that we get out of just connecting two people and saying, hey, I can't wait to watch the sparks fly, is much more satisfying than sitting down to people who have met 19 times before and saying, okay, I really want to work on bringing the two of you closer. And so I think the art of the introduction might be one of the most important social skills that we have not invested enough in.

Derek Thompson

Well, I think the Larry David solution to the crisis of social connection in the 21st century is the perfect place to stop. Adam Grant you so much. This is great.

Adam Grant

Thank you, Derek. As always, I've learned a lot. And I did not expect Larry David to be telling us how to have better interactions. Like the Larry David theory of connection was not on my bingo card for today.

Derek Thompson

It's a great bookend. It's a great bookend.

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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