One of the things that makes humans unique is our ability to talk about a wide range of topics, from the mundane to the complex. But that doesn’t mean conversations are always easy. Some of us are naturally gifted verbal communicators, while others have to work at it. Conversation is a skill that can be honed and improved like any other. Even the introverted or socially anxious among us can improve in this area with some specific tools. That’s why people are loving the “F.O.R.M.” framework shared by a TikTok creator, which he says helps him always keep a conversation flowing. The man, who goes by Dyllionaire, said that conversations don’t usually die because people run out of things to say, but because they run out of things to ask. Here are his four “elite questions” he says you can ask at any point in a conversation. @dyllionaire321 ♬ original sound – Dyllionaire The F.O.R.M. framework for asking questions in conversation FEELING Dyllionaire says he asks questions like, “What was that like?” “How did that feel?” “Cool. How was that?” to move conversations along. When someone shares something that they’ve done or that happened to them, ask them how they felt or feel about it. Some people might think asking about feelings feels too personal, but unless it’s a really sensitive topic, it’s a perfectly reasonable—and human—question to ask. ORIGIN “If someone tells you that they paint, play pickleball, they got a new job, or something that they do, instead of moving past it, you say, ‘What got you into that? How long have you been doing that for? What did you do before? Have you always done that?'” Dyllionaire says. “Almost no one asks the question, and the people that do become way more interesting to talk to, I promise.” REFLECT Dyllionaire calls this one “a little bit sneaky,” but basically all you’re doing is taking the last part of what someone says and reflecting it back to them as a question. He gives the example of someone saying, “My mom was a little bit weird about it.” You’d follow up with, “Your mom was a little weird about it?” “Nobody wants to be misunderstood, and everyone is excited to be able to open up to people, but most people don’t pry anymore,” he says. “This is a really good way to get people to continue to open up without being too nosy.” MORE “Tell me more,” might be the simplest and most effective way to keep a conversation going. It’s an easy way of expressing interest in what someone is talking about, which makes them feel good. "Tell me more" is 3 powerful words in any conversation— Zach Homol (@zachhomol_) September 13, 2021 “I use at least one of these in every single conversation I have,” Dyllionaire says. Asking questions also helps you form bonds with people Studies show that asking the right questions can help people form closer bonds between loved ones and strangers alike. The key to the “right questions” appears to be self-disclosure, or sharing things about ourselves. People sometimes fear getting “too personal” when chatting with people, but talking about personal things is what brings people closer together. And that feeling of being closer to people releases feel-good endorphins in our brains, similiar to the effects of opioids. So, not only can using the F.O.R.M framework help you feel less awkward in conversations, but the questions you ask may ultimately make you feel happier about talking with people in the first place. You can follow Dyllionaire on TikTok for more conversation tips. The post Man shares the four words he uses to keep conversations flowing effortlessly appeared first on Upworthy.

An 18-year-old was out with friends when he noticed a unhoused woman at a store who was 10 cents short of buying a piece of candy. He offered to cover it. He checked his wallet. Nothing useful. So he walked back to his car to dig around for spare change. It took a few minutes, but he eventually found a dime, handed it over, and got back in the car with his friends to continue on to a popular dessert shop nearby. By the time they got close, traffic had completely stopped. Police cars were racing past them. An ambulance races down the freeway. Photo credit: Canva A violent fight had broken out near the dessert shop and escalated into gunfire. Bystanders had been injured. The teenager, Reddit user (u/Old_Collar6232), shared the story on April 27, did the math in his head and felt his stomach drop. If he hadn’t spent those few minutes hunting for a dime, he and his friends would have arrived right on time. They’d have been inside the shop or standing in the packed line outside when things turned violent. He also noted that his friends had been drinking and probably wouldn’t have reacted quickly if panic broke out. Paying for a homeless persons candy may have saved my life byu/Old_Collar6232 inTrueOffMyChest A small delay over a piece of candy may have kept all of them out of the line of fire. As the adrenaline wore off, he kept replaying the night. Part of him genuinely believed it was karma, that helping someone over something as trivial as 10 cents had somehow circled back to protect him minutes later. Whether you read it that way or just as a coincidence of timing, the experience clearly stuck with him. The comments filled up with people sharing their own brushes with timing and chance. One person wrote, “I feel like instances like this, with people you’ll probably never see again, are just God intervening in your life.” Another said, “What a cool story. It’s true, doing the right thing at the right time, who knows how it will radiate out into the world?” Someone else shared a darker version of the same idea: “My uncle begged his girlfriend to stay home from her job in the first tower on 9/11 and he reminded her of it constantly until she left him.” There’s no way to know for certain what would have happened if the teen had skipped the dime and driven straight to the dessert shop. Maybe nothing. Maybe something terrible. That uncertainty is exactly what makes these moments stick. You rarely get to see how one tiny, almost meaningless decision quietly reroutes your entire night. He stopped to help a stranger buy candy. A few minutes later, that detour might have been the most important thing he did all night. The post Teen spent minutes hunting for a dime to help a stranger. The delay may have saved him. appeared first on Upworthy.

They may be young, but first graders have a surprising amount of life wisdom to share. And for a newly engaged first grade teacher Kaylee Abernatha, their insights on what a happy, healthy and loving marriage looks like blew her mind. Abernatha made a simple classroom request of her students: to share their best marriage advice with her and her future husband. It led to some profound feedback. She had her students write answers to a number of different marriage advice prompts on white cards. “I’m getting married June 13 of this year and I wanted to find a way to incorporate my students into my wedding,” she tells Upworthy. “I plan to have these on the guest tables as centerpieces so everyone can enjoy looking at them!” @kaylee_abernatha this was the best idea ever ♬ original sound – € First graders share marriage advice Many students’ responses were influenced by what they see in their parents’ marriages or how they show personally show love. Abernatha shared all of their responses in a sweet three-part response that has the Internet in tears. “The response online has been great and I’m so happy I got to share this with others because it really is the little things that mean the most and it’s easy to forget that when life gets tough and problems become bigger than ‘who stole who’s crayon’,” she tells Upworthy. “I’m glad others are loving my students as much as I did this year.” In the first of three videos, Abernatha began with a mirror selfie, telling her followers to “enjoy this marriage advice from my first graders ,” before adding: “This was the best idea ever.” “I helped them with spelling words since this will be displayed as part of the centerpieces!” she shared in the comments, adding, “It’s their actual handwriting.” @kaylee_abernatha Part 2! ♬ sonido original –

In 1976, Stamatis Moraitis was 60 years old living in the United States when doctors found lung cancer and gave him just months to live. He made what seemed like a practical, slightly grim decision: he moved back to his hometown on the Greek island of Ikaria so his family wouldn’t be stuck with expensive American funeral costs. “Let me be buried beside my family, by the sea, and where it’ll only cost my relatives a few hundred dollars,” he said. The island had other ideas. Ikaria happens to be one of the world’s five “blue zones,” regions where people reliably live longer than almost anywhere else on Earth. Once Moraitis settled back in, something started to shift. The fresh air, the clean water, and constant time with old friends and family seemed to be doing what chemotherapy and medication couldn’t. He took up gardening. He started building a vineyard, not because he expected to taste the wine, but so his wife would have something to remember him by. Instead of counting down his remaining months, he found himself catching up with friends over glasses of that wine. And somewhere in there, without really noticing, his body got better. Crediting the wine, the herb-heavy diet, and a thoroughly stress-free existence, Moraitis didn’t live a few more months. He lived a few more decades. He died peacefully on Ikaria in 2013, at the age of 102. That’s roughly 37 years after doctors told him to get his affairs in order. View this post on Instagram Ikaria specializes in what locals affectionately call the “art of doing nothing,” the kind of unhurried existence that sounds almost foreign to anyone trained to feel guilty the second they’re not being productive. People sit with cups of coffee and talk for hours. The guiding philosophy is “Siga Siga,” which roughly means “slowly, slowly.” Don’t rush. Don’t optimize your morning routine. Just take it easy. The food is a traditional plant-based Mediterranean diet, heavy on vegetables, legumes, herbs, and olive oil. Meat shows up mostly on Sundays. There are hot springs (mildly radioactive, but the locals don’t seem worried about it) and frequent village festivals that keep everyone socially connected well into old age. View this post on Instagram And it works. It’s common to see people in their 90s and beyond still breeding goats, tending herds, cleaning their homes, and taking long walks. Research published by Harvard Health confirms that blue zones have far higher numbers of centenarians, with residents living up to 10 years longer than the average American and showing markedly lower rates of dementia, cancer, and diabetes. View this post on Instagram The blue zone concept comes from journalist Dan Buettner, who identified five of them: Okinawa, Japan; Ikaria, Greece; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; and Loma Linda, California. He wrote about them in his book and later his Netflix documentary, Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones. When Buettner interviewed Moraitis for that documentary and asked him how, exactly, he’d beaten a terminal cancer diagnosis by roughly four decades, Moraitis didn’t have a scientific explanation. He just shrugged. “I don’t know!” he said. “I guess I just forgot to die.” Follow Dan Buettner (@danbuettner) on Instagram for more lifestyle and entertainment content. The post Greek man went home to die of cancer. The island had different plans. appeared first on Upworthy.

Tatiana Schlossberg, the daughter of Caroline Kennedy and granddaughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, passed away in December 2025 at age 35. Tatiana shared her leukemia diagnosis just weeks before in an essay for The New Yorker. “For my whole life, I have tried to be good,” Tatiana wrote, “to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry. Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family’s life, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.” Tatiana Schlossberg’s Death Broke Caroline Kennedy’s Heart Though the death of Tatiana devastated her family, Caroline Kennedy didn’t speak about her daughter’s passing in public for months. According to The Independent, Caroline Kennedy made a speech at the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award ceremony, held at his library in Boston on May 31, 2026. Caroline courageously opened up about the love and loss of her youngest daughter. “Politics is a family endeavor, and I am so grateful to the members of my family who are here tonight and whose support over many years has kept my father’s spirit alive and made this institution a living memorial,” Caroline said. “Most of all, we remember Tatiana, who served on the board of this library, and represented everything my parents stood for in her beautiful, amazing, and too-short life.” The room reportedly erupted with applause as those close to Caroline Kennedy showed their support and encouragement. As the crowd roared, the 68-year-old smiled proudly and mouthed, “Thank you.” Though her daughter is no longer with her in body, it’s clear that Caroline still feels Tatiana’s spirit with her wherever she goes. This story’s featured image is by Mel Musto/Bloomberg via Getty Images