What actually gets neighbors talking and are there physical settings that make those encounters more likely? This is a

great question too.

One of the things that the research shows when it's describing neighborly relationships and their power, it uses the word trust a lot.

So it's almost like that sense of connection, the belonging that you build by knowing your neighbors isn't even necessarily about like we're hanging out together all the time or we're having game night or potlucks, even though I think those things are valuable and really fun.

But it's about this sense of trust.

Can I rely on my neighbors when I need them? I tell the story in the book.

about, you know, taking banana bread to my neighbors just to try and get to know them a little bit and open up these conversations with them.

in if you could live anywhere you help people choose a place on purpose with values instead of a job if a score like that existed would you want people using it to choose where to live or could a score steer people away from places they might have learned to love

But her early experiments didn't go so well.

One of the things that I tried is to develop a third place because there's a lot of research about this concept of a third place that's not work and it's not home.

But it's, you know, it's like the bar in Cheers where you go and everyone yells your name when you walk in.

And I thought, I'm going to become a regular at a local restaurant.

And, you know, we can only afford to go there once, you know, like once a week.

And every time it was a different waitress.

And so no one ever even picked up on the fact that we had been there before.

Will you tell us a little bit more about sort of what the research tells us about digging in and trying to become attached to our place instead of moving on? What do we know about sort of the better sense of life satisfaction if we do these experiments?

On the top, put your 10 must haves, the place qualities you can't live without.

Those are things that we've talked about.

Walkability, cost of living, proximity to an airport, weather, things like that.

And then down the left side, you add the cities that you're considering.

You mentioned that you have a long list of places that you're thinking about.

And so for each category that you've decided is important to you, you're just going to sort of rate the city based on your research.

And that, at the end of this process, should give you sort of a score for each place.

Like when, how many, what should you do while you're there?