This conversation with Joe Keohane, author of The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World, takes us beyond the usual question about social skills and anxiety management. His book is about the joy of talking to strangers. Joe offers his own stories about talking to strangers as he explains some of the research that has been done on social interaction and recounts efforts to encourage people to talk across political or regional divides.
In the podcast, Joe and I first talk about the idea that strangers are dangerous, and that they pose great danger to children. Joe debunks this common notion. (For more on that subject, I also recommend Free-range Kids.1)
It was Joe’s emphasis on the pleasure of talking to people outside your usual home and work circles is what led me to him, because conversation is central at a third place, the subject of the original, and the forthcoming sequel to, The Great Good Place.
You’ll hear that Joe relishes conversations with taxi drivers and enjoys listening to other people’s stories. Indeed, as a journalist he’s especially adept at listening. But listening well is an essential human skill. Being fully alive means being curious, interested in other people, ready to talk and ready to listen. (This kind of attitude keeps a person young. I once tried to figure out what my oldest friends, Sophia Mumford and Bill (William H) McNeill, both in their late nineties, had in common. It was their insatiable curiosity about the world and other people.)
But it is possible, indeed all too easy, to get out of practice, as we all did during the lockdowns. It’s even worse for many young people. Growing up in atomized suburban neighborhoods and with social life confined to a glass rectangle the size of your palm means that talking to anyone face to face can become a scary prospect.
Joe tells a story about an experiment in which people were asked to overcome their fears and go out and talk to a stranger. They were consistently surprised by how well it went and how pleasurable it was, and at the discovery that they could do actually do it and survive the experience. The researcher then asked if they would keep on doing it.
“Hell, no,” was the general response.
This led us to talk about how our behavior is affected by those around us, even when the result means choosing loneliness: turning our backs on other people and not breaking out of the box that so-called social media puts us in.
Whether you called this peer pressure, social contagion, or collective delusion, it’s a force to be reckoned with, and a major problem to solve when it comes to mobile phones, simply because they are always present.
I think the solution lies in third places, where you can enter as a stranger and feel welcome, and where there is enough going on to keep you from pulling out a phone. The best third places have beautiful or at least interesting things to look at. (Think of a French café where you can sip coffee and watch the people passing by.) But I find that even a TV screen is better than a blank wall. Last night, for example, I managed to talk about baseball - briefly, thank goodness, since my knowledge is awfully thin - with a Red Sox fan.
In a third place, you don’t have to look busy, and you don’t have to talk to anyone straight off. You can lurk a little, get a feel for the place, listen to other people talking, work up some courage, and gradually become a regular.
This is a crucial part of any effort to deal with what’s being called the “loneliness epidemic.” We can’t let its simplicity let us underestimate the power of a third place.
Here’s a passage from The Power of Strangers:
Oldenburg was lamenting the disappearance of these places as many Americans retreated to the suburbs in the 1980s, resulting in lifestyles that, "for all the material acquisition and the seeking after comforts and pleasures, are plagued by boredom, loneliness, alienation, and a high price tag."
Suffice to say, this trend created a less than ideal situation, "as public life is populated with strangers more than ever before [and] as strangers frighten us more than ever before," Oldenburg wrote. In the intervening years, many people have moved back to cities, but technology is still denying them the critical benefits of third places.
Over drinks one night, I asked Joaquin Simo, a renowned mixologist and the owner of a cocktail bar called Pouring Ribbons, located in New York's Alphabet City neighborhood, what had changed about the business since he started out. It was simple, he said: People don't talk anymore— specifically young people. "It's generational," he says. "Twentysomething kids will sit down, order something, and then retreat back to the safety of their phones. They're lost. And it's weird because I used to go to bars to meet people."
There’s no doubt that politics has made talking to strangers more challenging. In his book, Joe recounts many efforts to encourage strangers to talk across political or regional divides. (This would be hard, perhaps impossible, to organize across class and economic divides, which makes the informal connections that third places foster especially important.) I have signed up for a 1-1 conversation with the US organization, Braver Angels, which Joe writes about.2
And I am doing a little participant observation. Last weekend I went down to Berkshire Busk (a remarkable street festival held every Friday and Saturday night, unless it’s pouring rain) and then sat at the bar at The Miller, watched Olympics ping pong, and drank a beer. A man moved over to talk to me and we chatted a bit. That’s really all it takes.
A lesson from Jack Reacher
Here’s a passage from one of Lee Child’s thrillers, featuring Jack Reacher. I find it especially amusing because the author is English but his hero is American and in this scene trying to fit in in a country pub in England:
Reacher said, "We should act normally. We should buy a drink."
Pauling said, "I guess I'll try the local beer. You know, when in Rome."
So Reacher got up again and stepped over to the bar and tried to think back ten years to when he had last been in a similar situation. It was important to get the dialect right. He leaned between two of the farmers and put his knuckles on the bar and said, "A pint of best, please, and a half for the lady." It was important to get the manners right too, so he turned left and right to the four farmers and added: "And will you gentlemen join us?" Then he glanced at the bartender and said: "And can I get yours?"
Then the whole dynamic in the room funneled toward Taylor as the only patron as yet uninvited. Taylor turned and looked up from his table as if compelled to and Reacher mimed a drinking action and called, "what can I get you?" Taylor looked back at him and said, "Thanks, but I've got to go." A flat British accent, a little like Gregory's. Calculation in his eyes. But nothing in his face. No suspicion. Maybe a little awkwardness. Maybe even a hint of dour amiability. A guileless half-smile, a flash of the bad teeth. Then he drained his glass and set it back on the table and got up and headed for the door.
"Goodnight," he said, as he passed by.
The bartender pulled six and a half pints of best bitter and lined them up like sentries. Reacher paid for them and pushed them around a little as a gesture toward distribution. Then he picked his own up and said, "Cheers," and took a sip. He carried Pauling's half-sized glass over to her, and the four farmers and the bartender all turned toward their table and toasted them. Reacher thought: Instant social acceptance for less than thirty bucks. Cheap at twice the price. But he said, "I hope I didn't offend that other fellow somehow. " "Don't know him," one of the farmers said. "Never saw him before."
The podcast with Joe Keohane is also available at Spotify, Apple, and YouTube. Joe’s book, The Power of Strangers, is available at all the usual places and is packed with all kinds of fascinating details as well as advice on talking to strangers. Joe also cowrote a novel, The Lemon, which is now being adapted for television. I was glad, incidentally, to hear that he is now being asked to speak to college students and faculty around the US about talking to strangers and dealing with people who have other beliefs and values.
Free-Range Kids: “Fighting the belief that our children are in constant danger from creeps, kidnapping, germs, grades, flashers, frustration, failure, baby snatchers, bugs, bullies, men, sleepovers and/or the perils of a non-organic grape.”
Braver Angels is a citizens’ organization uniting red and blue Americans in a working alliance to depolarize America. Their 1:1 program has these areas to choose from (I chose Rural-Urban, because that’s been my focus at the Train Campaign.)
Golden Rule
Red/Blue
Rural/Urban
Conversation Across Generations
Conversation About Race, Ethnicity and Culture
Conversation about Israeli-Palestinian Relations
The power (and joy) of talking to strangers