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Small talk topics at dinner parties should be banned | WIRED UK

According to a 2010 study by social anthropologist Kate Fox, in Britain, more than nine in ten people admit to having talked about the weather in the last six hours. Around 38 per cent say they've talked about it in the past hour. (And when was the last time you heard someone say, "I wish we had another 45 minutes to get into the weather in more depth"?)
In the winter of 1976-77, they point out, the temperature in Chicago stayed below freezing for 43 days straight, and in 1985 the city had a below-freezing stretch of 40 days. The longest stretch so far this winter was 11 days. Similarly, New York’s longest stretch below freezing this year has been six days, less than half as long as the freezing periods in the 1970s.Perhaps this is the real reason everyone is panicking about the cold: Winters have become so mild over the past 20 to 30 years that a blast of Arctic air feels extraordinary. “If you were 10 years old when this last happened and now you’re 40, that’s quite a chunk of your life,” Mr. Henson said.