It looks nice and I really want to engage with the page further but since my time is limited today and I'll have forgotten about this by tomorrow: What's the tl;dr?

tl;dr the journey is the destination

Claude to the rescue: This is an interactive data story from The Pudding about research showing that talking to strangers makes us feel better, despite our expectations.

The piece follows conversations from a study of nearly 1,700 video calls between strangers with different backgrounds (age, race, politics, etc.). While people predicted they'd have negative experiences talking to strangers, the vast majority actually felt better by the end of their 30-minute conversations - regardless of how different they were from each other.The story argues that we've lost "bridging social capital" (connections with people unlike us) and explores how this contributes to declining social trust.

It ends with a personal reflection on helping a bleeding teenager on the subway, suggesting that despite our fears, most people will help strangers when needed - and that these connections are crucial for tackling big societal challenges.