For the Road Trip: for long drives and anyone worth talking to

Somewhere around hour two, every long drive runs out of things to say. You've covered the plans, the people you both know, the thing that happened at work. The music goes back on. And next to you is a person you'd genuinely like to know better, with three hours of nothing but not finding out.

Here's the research part: psychologists found people consistently expect deeper questions to feel awkward, and they're consistently wrong. In study after study, the conversations people were dreading turned out less awkward, more connecting, and more fun than predicted, because the other person cares about your answer far more than you think. The awkwardness is a prediction error. The silence was never the better ride.

These questions fix the drive: the most trouble you ever got into that was completely worth it, the pettiest reason you've ever written someone off, the turn you took that nobody would have guessed, the story you've told so many times you're not sure it's still true, and the closer, what have you wanted to ask me that you never have. They run light to deep in order, the passenger reads them out loud, and both of you answer everything.

It works on whoever's in the seat next to you: your best friend, your person, your kid on the drive back to school, the coworker you carpool with (one question per commute counts), your mother visiting for the summer. No eye contact, nowhere to be, miles before anyone has to move. The car does half the work.

Digital download, yours instantly after checkout. Lives on the passenger's phone.

One of the questions inside:
"What's a story about yourself you've told so many times you're not sure it's still true?"

Where to go next:

• For the deeper version of this conversation: Over a Glass of Wine
• For the person, parent, or sibling specifically: The Firesides