Earlier this week I chatted on the phone with the author of The Advice Goddess, an award-winning, syndicated column that runs in more than one hundred newspapers across the United States and Canada. In June she published Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck and is also the author of I See Rude People: One woman's battle to beat some manners into impolite society. She has been on Good Morning America, The Today Show, NPR, CNN, MTV, and Entertainment Tonight and has a weekly radio show called Advice Goddess Radio. She has also written for Psychology Today, Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Times Magazine, among others.You can learn a lot more about her, including reading all her columns here. We had a lot of fun gabbing on the phone, but I boiled down our conversation somewhat for you here.

I know your answers are research-based. What do you use as your sources?
I'm just a lifelong nerd. I'm always reading studies, and I go to conferences -- I was, in fact, just elected president of the Applied Evolutionary Psychology Society. Because I'm reading, I have all this in mind. I would love to just go to school forever, not school where you're just whipped with a ruler by a nun, but the kind where you could look at science and everything.

Being trans-disciplinary, not having a PhD or being in a program, it means I can read a really broad swath of science, and that's what I do. I'll draw from behavioral economics, evolutionary psychology -- I'll read all their journals, go to all their conferences, I know all their professors. And then I do this weekly radio show, "Nerd Your Way to a Better Life", and I have on the luminaries of behavioral science.

So when you read a science book a week, and you have to digest the whole thing and take notes on it, it is sort of like school, but better because it's stuff you're excited by. That gives me a really great background, which I don't really get credit for because of the humor in my column. You know, advice columns are like the fluff of the paper, so people sometimes think that you're light. But I try to make science really fun, accessible and practical; I translate really serious science, which is sometimes in that "professorease", I translate that into "normal" language (which, by the way, they should have done to begin with), and I create something new out of it, which is practical advice to solve the problem that someone wrote me about.

Sounds like Freakanomics but for etiquette.
Not etiquette. I do dating, love, sex and relationships, and manners; I divide etiquette and manners. Etiquette is "where do you put the fork?" and "when can I wear white?", and I couldn't care less; those rules were created to keep a lower caste out of society, and I'm not up for that.

My book, Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F**k, that's about the science of why we're rude. I looked at anthropology, figured out why we experience so much rudeness now, and then figured out how we can behave less counterproductively ourselves, and looking at behavioral sciences, how we can avoid letting people walk all over us, and finally, looking at ourselves, what we can do to not make the world such a rude place.

What is the best ways for me to teach my kids manners and make them polite people?
Showing empathy to your child is really important, being responsive to their needs but appropriately responsive; you don't want to be a helicopter parent because then you raise the 45 year old who's going to come back and be doing bong hits on your couch. And you want to model empathy because kids look at you for how they should act; explain why it's important to be kind. Have kids look at people in the world and think about what they're feeling. "Empathy" comes from the German "Einfühlung", that's "feeling-in", wondering "what is that person feeling?"  This is a good way to get kids in the habit of thinking about other people.

But one thing that's really important: Emphasize that you don't do just anything for just anybody. You need to be judiciously helpful, not be a doormat. Kids need to have boundaries, you need to explain to your kids that it's okay to say "no". It's really, really important to explain this to kids. And that's a thing to test them on, "When is it okay to say no? Do you say "no" to this? Do you say "no" to that?" And you'll be tempted to tell kids the right answer, but just let them talk about it, let them be wrong and then give your opinion instead of immediately jumping on them and correcting them, because you want them to think.

What's your philosophy about responding to internet comments that can be personal, wrong or misinformed?
Sometimes it's important to do that, but you have to look and see what kind of person they are. There are some people who only want you to respond because it's going to give them a platform.

I wrote an article for the New York Observer about where I used the term "einfühlung", and this guy was like, "well, really, the word comes from the Greek, you're wrong!" And I responded to him -- I wrote a whole book on this, and empathy is at the root of manners. I, too, have Google, and believe me, I looked up the Latin, the Greek meanings, to see what was the root. The way we see empathy is closest to "einfühlung", which is "feeling in", and that's why I used the German definition. And he kept trying to hammer me and I just didn't back down because I'm not going to let somebody try to hammer me when they're just insisting they're right to feel good about themselves.

What is something big, and something small, that's pissed you off in the last few days?
Big? The Charlie Hebdo thing in France, that's just horrible. I'm a free speecher, and the fact that you're disturbed by what someone says does not give you the right to kill them. It's disturbing to see these countries, including ours, that are coming down against free speech. I'm a big supporter of The Fire.org -- you see these amazing cases where you think, "You're an administrator at a college, have you not read the Constitution? You're at a public institution, and you're trying to restrict speech?" And it's so unhealthy, because restricting hate speech doesn't make the hate go away, it just makes you not really realize what it is. [Restricting] is much more dangerous than letting people be hateful, because then you can't challenge them if they're made to shut up. Americans are so complacent about our civil liberties: Nobody cares that a TSA is violating our 4th amendment right at the airport for no reason!

Small? People who do not pull up at the left turn lane so you can get through the light!  Or people who you let in, and then you get stuck behind because they didn't care enough that you would get through too. Guess what: You're on Earth, it's not the moon. Many of us on the street are people who have places to be.

Do you read other advice columns?
Not really, because most don't base their advice on anything. I have opinions, but I base my advice on science, ethics and reason. I take this really seriously; I'm terrified of giving advice that's not well-founded or giving the wrong advice, so this makes me not be a hack, I hope. I'm very very careful, and it's why I only answer one question a week.

Is it polite to ask what people do for a living?
It's about your motivation. I always ask people what they do because I see somebody, and they may look interesting, and I want to know. I'm not a Hollywood person: I'm not asking because I want to steal their car. I think when you're just interested in someone, it comes out.

My mother talks to everyone -- Patricia Montemurri did a sort of "Detroit girl makes good" article about me in the Detroit Free Press after my book came out by, and she calls my mother to interview her. She's like two  minutes in to the call, and my mom is like, "Montemurri, that's an interesting name: Where's your family from?" My mother is interviewing the reporter!

When I ask people, they usually don't seem freaked out by the question -- I'm not asking them, "Can I get your zip code so I can find your house on Zillow?" I know people perceive this as a rude question, so I try to talk to them first before asking, but I tend to go to parties with a lot of nerdy people there, a rocket scientist or a pundit or an author. It's actually nice to ask people that question.

How did you get the Elmore Leonard blurb your first book?
Oh, I know him.  He loved my Rambler story, especially. My boyfriend (Gregg Sutter) was his researcher for 33 years; he edited and did this amazing chronology of Elmore's life in this Library of America version of Elmore's novels from the 70s. I hung out with Elmore Leonard all the time! He's awesome, and really fun, a nice person, and so talented, so I'm influenced by some of the elements of his writing, and the advice he gave; there's a great book, "Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing:, based off a talk that he gave at Bouchercon, a mystery writers conference.

What are you reading right now?
I'm reading science and I'm reading fiction, because it keeps my writing alive. I'm reading Self Esteem and Positive Psychology by Christopher J. Mruk.

The other book I'm reading -- I get them out of The Little Free Library, so I just pick what's there and I read things I wouldn't pick otherwise -- is The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. I like to read literary fiction. A fascinating book I just finished that I loved is One of Us by Alice Dreger -- she's a bioethicist, and it's about conjoined twins. It's not a book I would normally read, but she's such a great writer and thinker, and I just found it so compelling.

How does it feel to be the 402^nd person interviewed for Zulkey.com?
I loved talking to you! You asked really interesting questions, and you sound like a cool person. It was exciting!