Why do some spaces make you want to stay while others make you want to disappear? The answer often comes down to one overlooked design principle: choice. In this episode, Erin explores how variety, flexibility, and control over our environment shape our willingness to connect — with real examples from offices, cafes, and healthcare spaces.

A cancer diagnosis isolates in ways that go far beyond the physical. Environmental psychologist Kati Peditto joins Erin to examine how the design of care environments shapes the social experience of young adults facing serious illness — what spatial justice means in healthcare, and why the people using a space need to be part of designing it.

Her research established that loneliness carries health risks equivalent to smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. Now Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad — one of the world's leading scientists on social connection — joins Erin to explore how the built environment shapes our social lives, and why fighting loneliness requires looking beyond the personal to the places we inhabit.

The pandemic forced a question designers had been avoiding: how do you create conditions for genuine human connection when proximity itself feels dangerous? Patricia Gruits of MASS Design joins Erin to explore the surprising overlap between designing for infection control and designing for social health — with a special focus on what senior living spaces get right and wrong about belonging.

We evolved in spaces sized to the human body — spaces where we could see across a room, hear a conversation, sense the presence of others without being overwhelmed. When architecture forgets human scale, the body notices. In this episode, Erin explores how designing at human scale creates the conditions for comfort, safety, and social connection — with a real-world example from UC San Diego.

The built environment has been used to exclude as deliberately as it has been used to welcome. Architect and activist Maya Bird-Murphy joins Erin to explore how design can become a force for justice and equity — through community engagement, diversifying the profession, and asking whose experience the space was built around in the first place.

Accessibility is often treated as a compliance checkbox. But when we design spaces that are genuinely safe, walkable, and inclusive for all bodies, something else happens: everyone feels more welcome. In this episode, Erin explores how universal design principles create not just accessible spaces but more socially connected ones — with examples from her own practice.

Small changes in how a space is arranged can measurably shift how much we want to connect with the people in it. In the second half of their conversation, environmental psychologist Colin Ellard shares the surprising research on what actually makes us happy in our home environments — and what it would take to design spaces that support our social lives rather than quietly undermine them.

What can evolutionary psychology teach us about the spaces where human connection actually happens? Environmental psychologist and author Colin Ellard joins Erin in this first of two episodes to explore how our ancient social instincts shape what we need from the places we gather — and how COVID-19 revealed just how much those needs had been designed away.

Before we lost them, most of us barely noticed they were there — the coffee shop, the park, the corner library. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg called these informal gathering places third places, and the research on what we lose when they disappear is striking. This episode explores the social health case for protecting and designing spaces where community happens without an invitation.

Three in five working Americans report feeling lonely. Most of us look inward for the cause. But what if the design of our cities — the streets we can't walk, the stores that closed, the parks that were never built — is one of the least-examined contributors to that loneliness? This episode explores the built environment's role in the loneliness epidemic.

Loneliness isn't just an emotional experience. It's a physiological one — with measurable effects on sleep, immunity, cognitive function, and lifespan. This episode lays out the surprising science of what chronic disconnection does to the human body, and why addressing loneliness requires looking beyond individual effort to the environments we move through every day.

Why does the design of a room affect whether people connect inside it? How do our streets, schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods shape our social lives — often without our awareness? In this introduction to Shared Space, Erin Peavey lays out the case for why architecture and design are among the most powerful and least-discussed levers we have for addressing loneliness and building social health.