🌱 Missing Detroit Teen In GR + World of Winter Festival Begins

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About me: Erica Zenn is a Masters Student in Applied Psychology at the University of Southern California who originally hails from Chapel Hill, NC. With a bachelors degree from Cornell University, Erica is an expert verbal and written communicator who brings extensive experience in employee engagement and customer experience of companies. Erica is passionate about community building, and loves using her writing and communication skills to bring people together.

Andy Miele reacts to making it on Olympic hockey team

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‘One of a kind’: Former AP reporter Mike Cochran dies at 85

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DALLAS (AP) — Mike Cochran, who during a nearly 40-year career with The Associated Press told the stories of Texas’ larger-than-life characters with his rich and detailed writing, and who ended up serving as a pallbearer for Lee Harvey Oswald while covering the presidential assassin’s funeral, has died. He was 85.

Cochran died late Tuesday night after a long battle with cancer, said longtime friend and former AP executive John O. Lumpkin.

“He made journalism a calling and, more often than not, fun,” said Lumpkin, the AP’s former vice president for newspaper markets and a former Dallas chief of bureau.

Lumpkin said Cochran was “no one-trick pony,” noting he covered everything from sports to politics to natural disasters. “One of a kind, for sure. A legend, no question,” Lumpkin said.

As part of the AP’s coverage of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963, Cochran wrote a first-person account of how he came to be a pallbearer for Oswald. With no mourners present aside from a few of Oswald’s family members, the task of carrying his coffin fell to the reporters covering the funeral.

“I was among the first they asked, my reply not just ‘No!’ but ‘Hell no!” he wrote in the 2013 story. “Then Preston McGraw of United Press International stepped forward and volunteered, and with my top competition for scoops accepting the duty, I realized my error and joined McGraw and other reporters.”

Cochran, who had covered Kennedy’s visit to Fort Worth just before Kennedy was killed in Dallas, wrote that his reporting on the assassination continued for years as he interviewed Oswald’s widow and mother, investigated conspiracy theories and wrote anniversary stories.

On one anniversary, he recalled approaching Oswald’s widow, Marina, at her house. She told him she was “no longer news” but he mentioned his role as a pallbearer and she invited him in. Several hours later, they were “still talking and smoking,” he wrote.

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“He was so likable and he had that quality that a good reporter has, where he was not intimidating at all,” said Barry Bedlan, AP’s director of text and new markets products. “In fact, he brought down your guard, he brought down everyone’s guard with his own kind of sense of humor and his warm presence that he could get anyone to tell him about anything,”

Over the years, his subjects included Cullen Davis, an oil tycoon acquitted at trial after being accused in a shooting at his mansion that killed his 12-year-old stepdaughter and his estranged wife’s boyfriend.

Cochran, known for his descriptive writing, began his 1996 story marking the 20th anniversary of the killings at the Davis mansion with this line: “The murderous ‘man in black’ appeared at the remote Cullen Davis mansion that steamy summer night wearing a woman’s black wig and carrying a .38 revolver.”

He covered flamboyant swindler Billie Sol Estes throughout the 1970s and 1980s, writing about how Estes made millions of dollars in phony fertilizer tanks. Cochran noted in the AP obituary for Estes in 2013, “how many city slickers from New York or Chicago can make a fortune selling phantom cow manure?”

“Billie Sol was a character’s character,” Cochran told The AP. “I spent literally years chasing him in and out of prison and around the state as he pulled off all kinds of memorable shenanigans.”

Born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, Cochran grew up in the West Texas town of Stamford and graduated from what is now the University of North Texas in Denton.

He began his career at newspapers in Denton and Abilene before joining the AP in 1960 in Dallas and opening the AP’s Fort Worth bureau the next year. He retired from AP in 1999 and then went on to work for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram for five more years.

He also wrote several books, including “Texas vs. Davis,” about the murder case against Davis, and “Claytie,” which details the life of Clayton Williams, a colorful Texas oilman and philanthropist whose 1990 run for governor was derailed after joking about rape and acknowledging he went a year without paying income taxes.

Cochran was inducted into the Texas Newspaper Foundation Hall of Fame in 2018. He won numerous awards over his career, including Star Reporter of the Year from the Headliners Foundation, the top individual award given annually to a Texas journalist.

“He won a trunk load of journalism awards but he cared more about his readers, his sources and his friends,” Lumpkin said.

He’s survived by his wife, Sondra, son, John Shannon Cochran, daughter, Kendyl Arnold, four grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

His funeral will be held Jan. 29 in Fort Worth.

This story has been updated to correct the first name of Billie Sol Estes to Billie instead of Billy.

When meeting someone new, try skirting the small talk and digging a little deeper

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Even as the COVID-19 pandemic persists, there’s hope that life will return to some level of normalcy in 2022.

This includes more opportunities to meet new people and build friendships, a process that’s critical for mental and physical well-being.

This does not, however, mean that everyone will take advantage of these new chances to connect.

Even before fears of a virus compelled most people to stay physically distant, our research suggests that people were already keeping too much social distance from one another.

In particular, our forthcoming behavioral science research suggests that people tend to be overly pessimistic about how conversations with new acquaintances will play out.

Across a dozen experiments, participants consistently underestimated how much they would enjoy talking with strangers. This was especially true when we asked them to have the kinds of substantive conversations that actually foster friendships.

Because of these mistaken beliefs, it seems as though people reach out and connect with others less often and in less meaningful ways than they probably should.

Moving beyond water cooler talk

People usually only disclose their deepest disappointments, proudest accomplishments and simmering anxieties to close friends and family.

But our experiments tested the seemingly radical idea that deep conversations between strangers can end up being surprisingly satisfying.

In several experiments, the participants first reported how they expected to feel after discussing relatively weighty questions like, “what are you most grateful for in your life?” and “when is the last time you cried in front of another person?”

These participants believed they would feel somewhat awkward and only moderately happy discussing these topics with a stranger. But after we prompted them to actually do so, they reported that their conversations were less awkward than they had anticipated. Furthermore, they felt happier and more connected to the other person than they had assumed.

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In other experiments, we asked people to write down questions they would normally discuss when first getting to know someone – “weird weather we’re having these days, isn’t it?” – and then to write down deeper and more intimate questions than they would normally discuss, like asking whether the other person was happy with their life.

Again, we found that the participants were especially likely to overestimate how awkward the ensuing conversations about the more meaningful topics would be, while underestimating how happy those conversations would make them.

These mistaken beliefs matter because they can create a barrier to human connection. If you mistakenly think a substantive conversation will feel uncomfortable, you’re going to probably avoid it. And then you might never realize that your expectations are off the mark.

Yes, others do care

Misconceptions over the outcomes of deeper conversations may happen, in part, because we also underestimate how interested other people are in what we have to share. This makes us more reluctant to open up.

It turns out that, more often than not, strangers do want to hear you talk about more than the weather; they really do care about your fears, feelings, opinions and experiences.

The results were strikingly consistent. For the experiments, we recruited college students, online samples, strangers in a public park and even executives at financial services firms, and similar patterns played out within each group. Whether you’re an extrovert or an introvert, a man or a woman, you’re likely to underestimate how good you’ll feel after having a deep conversation with a stranger. The same results even occurred in conversations over Zoom.

Aligning beliefs with reality

In one telling demonstration, we had some people engage in both a relatively shallow and comparatively deeper conversation. People expected that they would prefer a shallow conversation to the deeper one before they took place. After the interactions occurred, they reported the opposite.

Moreover, the participants consistently told us that they wished they could have deeper conversations more often in their everyday lives.

The problem, then, is not a lack of interest in having more meaningful conversations. It’s the misguided pessimism about how these interactions will play out.

It’s possible, though, to learn from these positive experiences.

Think of the trepidation kids have of diving into the deep end of a swimming pool. The uneasiness is often unwarranted: Once they take the plunge, they end up having a lot more fun than they did in shallower waters.

Our data suggests that something similar can happen when it comes to topics of conversation. You might feel nervous before starting a deeper conversation with someone you barely know; yet once you do, you might actually enjoy digging a little deeper than you typically do.

[Over 140,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world. Sign up today.]

The broader takeaway of our work is that these miscalibrated expectations can lead many people to be not quite social enough for their own good and the well-being of others.

Having deeper conversations joins a growing list of opportunities for social engagement – including expressing gratitude, sharing compliments and reaching out and talking to an old friend – that end up feeling a lot better than we might think.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Amit Kumar, University of Texas at Austin; Michael Kardas, Northwestern University, and Nicholas Epley, University of Chicago.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Doorbell camera records heartwarming moment between mother and son: ‘This conversation is everything’

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(@thebennettgang / TikTok)

A mother has shared a sweet moment between herself and her five-year-old after it was accidentally captured by her home’s security camera.

TikTok user Destiny Bennett, @thebennettgang, often shares parenting and marriage tips on the platform, along with clips of her children.

However, this past December, Bennett shared a video on TikTok of one conversation with her son that she had no idea was being documented by her doorbell camera.

“Can’t believe I caught this on camera,” she wrote in the caption.

The touching video, which was captured as the pair were leaving their home, began with Bennett bent down and looking at her son.

“My five year old really struggles with big feelings and regulating his emotions,” the text over the video reads. “This morning he was dealing with a lot of anger and I felt myself getting triggered by his behaviour so I decided we should take a walk.”

In the video, Bennett could be seen telling her son how much she loves him, but also explaining that she wanted him to learn how to manage and regulate his feelings.

“I love you very much,” she said to him. “Do you know how much I love you?” After he shook his head, Bennett opened her arms wide and said: “I love you this much.”

“I can see how angry you are, and I want you to feel better,” Bennett then told her child. “I want you to love yourself to see how angry you are and want to feel better. “

“Sometimes feeling better is getting the things that we want,” she added. “But sometimes you can’t get the things that you want, and it’s okay to be angry. But then we have to be able to let it go, and understand that we’re not going to get it.”

She explained to her son that he has to “find another way to make [his] body feel better” and emphasised the importance of self-love.

“I need you to love you,” she said. “I love you. Let’s have a good day today, okay.”

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The TikTok video has more than 7m views so far, with viewers noting how heartwarming the moment was and applauding Bennett’s parenting skills.

“My inner child is crying. Thank you for being an amazing parent,” one person wrote, while another said: “This generation is gonna raise some emotionally intelligent people and I love it so much.”

Other viewers said they wished they had been raised the same way, while expressing their hopes that Bennett’s parenting style be passed on.

“This conversation right here, while it seems simple, is everything,” a TikTok user wrote. “I wish someone could have done that for me. Keep up the good work!”

Another person said: “We are going to be the best parents, because of our deep understanding of being so small and having no words, while someone else wrote: “This is the type of mom I wanna be.”

On Bennett’s TikTok account, the video has been labelled a form of “gentle parenting.” According to Verywell Family, this style is designed to raise “happy, confident children” using “four main elements: empathy, respect, understanding, and boundaries.” It also focuses on parents encouraging the qualities that they want from their children with age-appropriate discipline.

The Independent has reached out to Bennett for comment.