This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning.
Conversation has become optimized—but not always for the better. We send a quick text instead of making a call, react with an emoji instead of a laugh, and turn catching up into a series of efficient updates. Although staying in touch with people is easier than ever, we spend surprisingly little time talking to one another.
“No one picks up the phone anymore,” Alexis C. Madrigal wrote in 2018. That’s in part because too many faceless telemarketers have our number, and in part because more people have come to treat phone calls as something to reserve for emergencies or bad news or major life events. However, in many cases they’re the easiest way to have conversations that texting can’t quite convey—ones that meander, surprise you, and leave you feeling a little more connected than before.
Texting has made communication faster and more efficient, but not necessarily more conversational. Today’s newsletter is a reminder that you don’t need a reason or an agenda to call someone you’ve been thinking about.
On Conversation
Talk to People on the Telephone
By Amanda Mull
It’s time to start calling your friends again. (From 2019)
Why No One Answers Their Phone Anymore
By Alexis C. Madrigal
Telephone culture is disappearing. (From 2018)
Another Symptom of Growing Isolation
By Olga Khazan
A recent study found that people spoke fewer words a day in 2019 than in 2005.
Still Curious?
- The tension that defines modern life: Most people have a smartphone. But many want to use it less, Julie Beck writes.
- Maybe don’t send that voice note. The audio messages can encourage selfishness—unless you use them gracefully, Jacob Sweet argued in 2024.
Other Diversions
PS
My colleague Isabel Fattal recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “My sense of awe for this world comes from my backyard, where a family of barred owls nests each year and produces angelic chicks that begin their lives playing among the trees,” Bonnie B. from Cordova, Tennessee, shared. “They make me believe in the magic of life.”
We’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.
— Rafaela