We're getting parasocial

Hey friends,

If your algorithm looks anything like ours, the parasocial conversation has been loud for months. Between Love Island, The Summer I Turned Pretty, Dancing with the Stars, Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, the current political landscape, and high profile cases like Karen Read, our feeds keep holding up a mirror to the fractures in how we relate to one another. It’s all blurring together — entertainment, connection, and the feelings we carry into both.

And sometimes the content we can’t stop watching is the same content that tells on us. It shows us who we’re growing into, and who we might be afraid of becoming again.

What happens online doesn’t stay online. It threads its way into our tone, our assumptions, our reactions. Polarization starts on our screens, but it lands in our relationships — in the moments we stop listening, or start defending, or feel misunderstood. Echo chambers hand us different versions of the truth, and before we know it, we’re not standing on shared ground anymore. Everything feels a little more fragile, even with the people closest to us.

This week’s episode asks how we rebuild connection when the worlds shaping us are no longer shared.

In this episode, we sit down with two people who help us understand why connection feels so difficult right now and what it takes to repair it.

Sophie Beren is the founder of The Conversationalist, a platform and community dedicated to helping people communicate across difference. Her work focuses on creating spaces where discomfort is allowed, curiosity is encouraged, and honesty can take root.

Matt Klein is a cultural strategist who studies how our digital environments influence identity, behavior, and the way we interpret one another. His research helps us see how technology shapes our emotional lives, our expectations of others, and the narratives we create about the world.

Together, we talk about why so many of our relationships feel strained, how polarization creates distance long before we are in the same room, and what happens when we assume a shared reality that does not actually exist. We explore the emotional stories we carry into our conversations, the role of discomfort in growth, and the systems that pull us into separate worlds without our consent.

Here is what we explore:
✨ how to relate to others when shared understanding cannot be assumed
🪴 the emotional stories and past experiences that shape our reactions
💗 what creates real safety in conversation and how to stay with tension
🔗 how co creation opens a path back to trust, curiosity, and shared ground

It is a generous, clarifying conversation that invites you to slow down, notice the patterns that shape your relationships, and imagine what becomes possible when connection is rebuilt with intention.

🎧 Listen here

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Take care,
Tori & Olivia