The Art of Manliness - The Power of Talking to Strangers

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Now look around

00:00:11.100 a grocery store, airport lobby, or subway car. You'll see a bunch of people who are physically

00:00:14.980 together, but distinctly separate, each off in their own world, often looking at their phones.

00:00:19.740 In public environments like these, we rarely think to talk to others and hope no one talks

00:00:23.500 to us. But my guest today says that initiating these kinds of interactions will not only be

00:00:26.760 more edifying and enjoyable than we think, but holds a key to the sustaining of civilization.

00:00:31.440 His name is Joe Cohane, and he's the author of The Power of Strangers, The Benefits of

00:00:35.080 Connecting in a Suspicious World. Joe and I spend the first part of our conversation taking

00:00:38.460 a high-level look at how talking with strangers makes individuals happier and society more

00:00:42.140 connected, and why we so strenuously avoid these interactions, even though they almost

00:00:45.680 invariably go better than we anticipate. We discuss how interacting with strangers helped

00:00:49.040 expand human civilization, the codes that ancient cultures developed on how to treat strangers,

00:00:52.800 and a theory as to why people are more social in places like Brazil than in Nordic countries.

00:00:56.760 From there, we turn to the more practical side of things, and discuss how to develop or

00:01:00.020 redevelop your ability to talk to strangers. Joe shares how to ask people how they're doing

00:01:03.800 in a way that will get a real response, and a better question to ask people than what they

00:01:07.300 do for a living. We also talk about how to change a perspective on small talk, and move

00:01:10.760 it as quickly as possible into media or territory, and we end our conversation with how talking

00:01:14.860 to strangers can overcome division and polarization in society, and how it's changed Joe's own

00:01:18.980 life. After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash strangers.

00:01:26.760 All right, Joe Cohane, welcome to the show. Thanks so much, Brad. I'm happy to be here.

00:01:38.800 So you got a new book out called The Power of Strangers, The Benefits of Connecting a Suspicious

00:01:43.360 World, and it's all about talking to strangers. I'm curious, what kick-started this? And this

00:01:47.400 book's really in-depth. I mean, you go into the psychology, the anthropology, the sociology

00:01:51.320 of talking to strangers. What kick-started this journey? Yeah, I definitely ended up going

00:01:56.280 down a series of rabbit holes for this one. So basically, I was raised by people who talk

00:02:00.300 to strangers a lot. I grew up in Boston. My parents are super chatty. I grew up watching

00:02:05.820 them, watching the benefits of this to their lives, like watching them just having more

00:02:09.620 fun and making more friends and that sort of thing. So it was never weird to me in a way

00:02:13.540 that it's weird to a lot of people, I think. But I realized at a certain point that I had

00:02:16.960 kind of stopped doing it. I was never as good at it as they were. They're relentless.

00:02:21.580 They'll lean across a table in a crowded restaurant and start talking to people and somehow make

00:02:25.280 it work. It's amazing how deft they are at this stuff. They're just very social people.

00:02:30.580 And I was always pretty good about it. I would talk to people in bars. I would talk to people

00:02:33.340 in coffee shops and stuff like that on the subway sometimes, which I know is a big violation

00:02:38.000 of a long-standing social rule. But I realized one day as I was going into a CVS that I kept

00:02:44.700 choosing the self-checkout line. And then I realized that I had just been kind of avoiding

00:02:48.680 talking to strangers. I'd go to a bar and I wouldn't talk to anybody. I'd stare at my phone.

00:02:53.200 I was like, everything was automated to the extent possible. I would use my phone to accomplish

00:02:57.460 everything that I used to have to talk to strangers in order to do, like asking for directions and stuff

00:03:01.360 like that. So for me, I started wondering what changed because I certainly didn't make a decision

00:03:05.840 to stop doing this. In my past, I had had good experiences talking to people. Oftentimes, it would

00:03:10.740 be hilarious. It would be poignant. It would be interesting. It would be a good diversion.

00:03:14.340 So why did I stop? And for me, the reason was twofold. Number one, I had a young kid

00:03:19.460 and I had a demanding job. So I was tired. I was stretched thin. I was stressed out.

00:03:23.940 And so the prospect of just mustering the attentional resources to talk to someone,

00:03:28.620 which can be significant, it just weren't there. I was just burnt out. So I would go to a bar on the

00:03:32.700 rare occasion that I would go to a bar and I would just sit there quietly. But I would stare at

00:03:36.300 Twitter or something like that. Then I would come away feeling sort of bad about myself and about

00:03:40.380 humanity as one does after mainlining Twitter for a while. So that was a big part of it.

00:03:44.880 And then the other part for me was just the phone. When you have a smartphone and you're

00:03:48.680 of a certain position, you really don't have to ever talk to anyone again. That's what it comes down

00:03:53.080 to. So anything that you need to do from ordering pizza to asking for directions for stuff like that,

00:03:58.680 even just for entertainment and company, if you're in a public place, you never have to do any of that

00:04:03.760 anymore. And I felt that I had lost something. I felt that my life was a little less rich

00:04:08.440 and a little less surprising as a result of it. So after I asked questions about myself,

00:04:13.300 I started asking bigger questions about why don't other people talk to strangers? What are the

00:04:17.760 things that keep us from doing it? And what are some of the benefits that can come of choosing to

00:04:22.880 live a life this way? I'm sure everyone listening to this podcast has experienced that same sort of

00:04:27.840 thing. If given the choice between looking at their phone and talking to a stranger, most people

00:04:31.740 are going to look at their phone. Like we're not going to talk to a stranger.

00:04:34.620 Right. It's, it's, it's easier, you know, it's like the human, human wiring basically goes toward

00:04:40.060 whatever's more efficient, whatever's easier. The question is, is it, is it good for you? It

00:04:44.220 might be easier, but do you feel good after you do it? Do you feel more connected? Do you feel

00:04:47.300 healthy? That sort of thing. And you start off the book highlighting research that shows that talking

00:04:52.760 to strangers is good for us. I think oftentimes we think, ah, it's not going to be enjoyable. It's

00:04:56.360 going to be awkward, but there's a lot of research showing that once you talk to a stranger,

00:05:00.100 you actually feel great about the experience. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You know, it's, it's

00:05:04.360 interesting because, because strangers have been a part of the lives of humans for quite some time

00:05:08.240 now. Right. But only in the last 15 years or so have psychologists started to study what happens,

00:05:13.260 you know, what, what happens when we do talk to strangers and what might keep us from doing it.

00:05:17.400 And the consensus so far, and this has been replicated in studies from Toronto to Turkey involving,

00:05:22.520 you know, men, women, people of various ethnicities, you know, genders, races, nationalities,

00:05:28.340 is that even after a relatively passing interaction with the stranger. So like a nice little chat with

00:05:34.320 a kid at Starbucks or something makes people feel happier. It makes them feel more connected to the

00:05:39.340 place that they live. It makes them feel more optimistic about people. It makes them feel less

00:05:43.720 lonely, which is really important at a time of epidemic loneliness. And that was something that

00:05:47.880 existed before COVID. So that is obviously worse now. It makes them feel more trusting, you know,

00:05:52.540 done in a certain context and with a certain purpose, it can alleviate partisanship,

00:05:56.440 it can alleviate prejudice, things like that. It really is remarkably powerful. And, you know,

00:06:00.620 I stress that that can be a pleasant little interaction and that can range all the way to,

00:06:05.360 you know, one of those times when you just end up talking to someone on a plane and it's like

00:06:08.620 a pretty meaningful conversation. I think we've all had those from time to time too.

00:06:12.720 Yeah. We've had one of the researchers, Jillian Sandstrom on the podcast talking about her research.

00:06:17.100 She's the best.

00:06:17.900 Yeah. And like her whole thing was like, she noticed she wasn't like talking to the hot dog

00:06:21.200 stand person anymore. And so she, why is that? And what happens when I start talking to people?

00:06:26.780 And what's interesting too, the research shows that, yeah, like I said, like most people,

00:06:29.880 they think they're going to hate it. Like if you ask them before, okay, you're going to go talk to

00:06:33.240 a stranger. How do you think it's going to go? And they're like, oh, that sounds terrible.

00:06:37.200 Right. They think it's going to be a disaster.

00:06:38.940 Right. Yeah.

00:06:39.500 But then it goes, it goes swimmingly. It's like, wow, that was fantastic.

00:06:43.100 Right. It's yeah. We've definitely been poisoned against it to a certain degree. You know,

00:06:47.460 Jillian's done a lot of good work on the pessimism that people feel. And other psychologists like

00:06:52.080 Nicholas Epley at the university of Chicago and Juliana Schroeder, who was a student for a while,

00:06:56.280 who's now in California. They were interested in that too. They were looking, they were on the

00:06:59.760 subway in Chicago and they were wondering why the subway was filled with people, members of a

00:07:04.580 hyper-social species, right? Like we're, we're a successful species because we're so good at being

00:07:08.860 social and no one would talk to each other. So they wanted to get into that too, but for sure,

00:07:13.100 like people worry that they're not going to know how to do it, that they're going to suck at it.

00:07:17.400 They're going to sound ridiculous. They're going to be rejected. They, you know, if they do start

00:07:21.580 the conversation, they're going to run out of things to say that people are going to think

00:07:24.500 they're boring. Like there were so many reasons why people are pessimistic about these interactions.

00:07:29.420 And you can go deeper too. You can look at, you know, generations of stranger danger propaganda

00:07:33.960 that, that has been directed at kids. You know, I grew up in the eighties. So like my entire

00:07:38.440 childhood was like cops coming into my class and telling me that everyone I didn't know in the

00:07:42.620 world was a threat to me. It turns out that's not a great thing to tell kids. And also it's not

00:07:46.660 based on any statistics. We're much more likely to be harmed by someone we know than by a stranger

00:07:51.700 by a long shot. So all these things, yeah, all these things amount to make people think that

00:07:55.880 this is going to go badly, that, that the stranger might be dangerous, that the stranger is going to

00:08:00.100 think that they're boring, all these things. And, you know, for a lot of people, these seem

00:08:03.680 insurmountable. The good news is that the research has found that when people do make the effort to do

00:08:08.120 it, they are surprised by how, how well it goes. And I think this is where the low expectations

00:08:12.660 actually help because the bar is so low that people are like, wow, I wasn't murdered. This

00:08:16.640 is fantastic. But, but it really does seem to go well. And we've seen that again and again and again

00:08:21.320 in the research. And, and, you know, I talked to so many people for this book and they all reported

00:08:25.220 the same thing back. And it's interesting too. It's not only people who want to initiate stranger

00:08:30.480 talk, small talk, I think it's going to go bad. People who, if you tell them like, Hey, a stranger's

00:08:34.520 going to come up and talk to you, how would that go? And they're like, I would hate that.

00:08:38.200 But even if they're the one who has the stranger talk foisted upon them, they love it too. Like,

00:08:43.020 this is great. I'm so glad someone took the time to talk to me. All right. So our, our idea or

00:08:48.020 perception of what stranger talk will be like completely off. Like we think it's going to be

00:08:52.080 terrible, but usually we end up enjoying it and it's all these benefits to it. So why, why does talking

00:08:58.120 to strangers make us feel so good? Like, why is it that we as human beings enjoy talking to people we

00:09:03.240 don't know? Yeah. It kind of cuts, you know, you got to go deeper into human history

00:09:08.040 for this and it's, you know, all this stuff is pretty complicated. So there's no real pat answer

00:09:12.880 to this question. It's a great question. I think it has to do with the fact that we're a social

00:09:17.540 species. We're a hyper social species. It's like we are the rare animal that can communicate and

00:09:22.820 cooperate with strangers relatively easily. Right. We certainly can be horrible to strangers too.

00:09:28.100 We have kind of a switch, right? We can be super xenophobic. We can be super dehumanizing

00:09:32.060 and violent, but we can also be remarkably cooperative and remarkably open to interacting

00:09:37.580 with and connecting with people that we don't know. And that's, you know, in many ways, the

00:09:41.340 secret of the success of human, of the human species is that, you know, the foundation of

00:09:45.620 civilization of human civilization of all societies is the ability or most many societies is the ability

00:09:51.180 to cooperate with strangers. And, you know, that was, we were so successful at that for so long

00:09:56.160 that through this process that, you know, evolutionary biologists refer to as culture,

00:10:00.740 gene co-evolution. It basically means that if you do something long enough, if a species does

00:10:05.700 something long enough that leads to its success, it will become encoded in the genes, right? And

00:10:10.000 there'll be like a certain pleasure that comes from it. There'll be an incentive to do that.

00:10:14.040 There is, there's an incentive to expand our social networks because expanding social networks is like

00:10:18.280 the key to human civilization. It's how you scale innovation. It's how you meet new mates. It's how you

00:10:22.200 diversify your gene pool, all these things that are really important. So the thinking is that it feels

00:10:27.380 good because it's good for us, right? Because we are hypersocial, because we need to do this in order

00:10:31.800 to continue the species, but also because on like a chemical level, this is good for us. We require

00:10:38.560 socializing. When we don't socialize, when we don't get enough social contact, we start to get

00:10:42.880 depressed. You start to see rising levels of social anxiety, mental illness, things like that. You start

00:10:47.560 to see fractures in society when people start to feel lonely. We're really wired for it in a really

00:10:52.540 profound way. And you paint this picture and you go into detail on it. So it's just sort of our

00:10:57.140 circle, social circles have just continually gotten bigger and bigger as the species has

00:11:02.220 progressed. And, you know, early on, it might've been just like your kin, but then our concept,

00:11:06.800 like what, what is kin? It expanded. It's like, well, if you're, you wear the same kind of jewelry as

00:11:12.300 me, then we might be related. So I might not know you, but we're kind of the same. And it just

00:11:17.200 copped on getting bigger and bigger until we'd started developing cultures and civilizations.

00:11:22.540 And you point out the fact that we often typically think of ancient civilizations or even

00:11:26.500 like hunter gatherers as fiercely tribals. They only care about their own, but you point out,

00:11:32.200 if you look closely enough, pretty much all ancient cultures, all ancient civilizations had very robust

00:11:38.740 moral laws about how to treat strangers. Can you walk through some of these stranger rules?

00:11:44.380 Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I went deep into the anthropological record to look into how hunter

00:11:49.460 gatherer groups dealt with strangers because, you know, our, our kind of popular conception of what

00:11:54.680 humans are like is that we're tribal. And there's this idea that we have just lived in our own groups

00:11:59.040 without strangers for, you know, 99% of our entire existence on earth. And it turns out that it's more

00:12:04.700 complicated than that. It turns out that, you know, according to field research that's been done,

00:12:09.100 and this is kind of best guess, right? Because we, you know, people, people weren't writing diaries a

00:12:13.840 million years ago, but based on the field research that's been done over the last 300 years or so,

00:12:18.760 that a lot of hunter gatherer groups did figure out ways to admit strangers to their groups.

00:12:23.540 And, you know, one way they would do it is by something called breeding rituals,

00:12:26.660 which is, it was like a ritualized way of interacting that allowed the stranger to demonstrate

00:12:31.960 that they weren't violent or crazy or dangerous. And, you know, there's, there's a lot of research into

00:12:36.620 this too, how we, we kind of, we have a very pessimistic reading of strangers. We tend to believe that

00:12:41.200 they might not have the willpower that we have, or the self-control that we have, or the internal

00:12:45.300 life that we have. And so the greeting rituals were a way to establish for strangers to show that they

00:12:50.560 have self-control, that they know the rules, that they're respectful, that they're curious,

00:12:54.080 that they're not going to be an agent of chaos. And as a result of the development of those greeting

00:12:58.160 rituals, it allowed for a great deal of traffic between hunter gatherer bands. And according to some

00:13:03.740 pretty good research on this by an anthropologist named Douglas Fry, it allowed, you know, that,

00:13:09.260 that traffic of people between hunter gatherer groups was like a hedge against violence, right?

00:13:14.000 So you think about it. So Brett, you're in one, you're in one band. I'm in another band.

00:13:17.340 My cousin leaves my band and goes to your band. Now there's maybe some sort of conflict or some

00:13:22.780 sort of tension between both of our bands. If I didn't know anyone in your band, I would be like,

00:13:26.880 those aren't even people. We can just kill them and take their water, take their food.

00:13:30.300 But because my cousin's over there, I will stop and be like, well, you know, my cousin's over there.

00:13:35.000 He's not a bad guy. Maybe we can talk. Maybe I can talk to my cousin and he can talk to the

00:13:39.040 rest of the people. So, you know, the idea there is that that's the basis of human civilization,

00:13:43.380 the ability to do that, you know, and they weren't, they weren't careless about it.

00:13:46.360 They knew what they were doing. They were very cautious about it, but it allowed them to expand

00:13:50.380 their groups and expand their social networks. And from there you see hunter gatherer bands expand

00:13:54.500 to whole cultures, like you said, where they're, they're developing language. They're developing

00:13:58.000 certain aesthetic, like certain headwear, certain beads, things that advertise that they are a member

00:14:02.980 of the group, even if you don't recognize them and you don't know who they are.

00:14:05.700 And then from there, you can go all the way up. You can go to chiefdoms, you can go to,

00:14:09.220 you know, nations, you can go to the EU, whatever it goes and goes and goes. This is obviously,

00:14:14.880 this is a bit of a stem winder of an answer. So if I'm going on too long, feel free to stop me.

00:14:18.700 But you see a lot of this sort of thing in Western religions and you see it in kind of,

00:14:24.020 you know, like ancient Greece where, you know, the, the ancient religions, the Western religions

00:14:29.780 were devised in a time of violence and war. So in many ways, like it's wartime literature,

00:14:34.620 which accounts for why it's often so violent, but there's a lot of rules in there about treating

00:14:39.960 strangers. Well, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that the formation of those religions

00:14:44.380 helped pave over some of the tribal differences to create a bigger we, right? A bigger us. So when

00:14:49.580 you had a, you know, kind of fractured world of a bunch of little warring tribes, it created a more

00:14:54.360 expansive sense of belonging for everyone. It made strangers less strange. You definitely saw a lot

00:14:59.540 of that. That was very important. And for me, like I'm a pretty secular guy. I tend to be skeptical

00:15:04.360 of religion, even though I was raised Catholic and I did 16 years of Catholic schools, but there's

00:15:08.140 something inspiring about a species that has the capacity to do that, right? To consider someone

00:15:13.320 that they've never met who lives a thousand miles away to consider them one of their group. You know,

00:15:18.160 for me, that's something that you can really build on. And clearly for the people who developed

00:15:22.120 the religion, or if you're a religious person, the deity that, that, you know, passed these messages

00:15:26.280 on, you saw a lot in the Old Testament and the New Testament and the Quran, like you have to be good

00:15:31.040 to strangers. You have to be good to strangers. You have to accept strangers. And there are mixed

00:15:34.620 messages in there too, because again, it's wartime literature. But, you know, for me, that was a

00:15:38.460 really inspiring thing. Ancient Greece was the same way, you know, to violate a stranger. If a stranger

00:15:43.300 came to your town and you harmed them, according to mythology, Zeus would represent the stranger and

00:15:48.700 Zeus would punish you. Like that's how important strangers were because they needed to create bigger

00:15:53.220 social networks and they needed to have alliances to be able to live in a pretty chaotic world.

00:15:57.980 So the idea of the stranger became really intertwined with like the divine in those kind of early

00:16:02.940 Western religions and through Greek mythology. Well, yeah. And the Greeks are interesting

00:16:06.740 because they had this whole, it was called Zania. It's basically an etiquette on how to treat

00:16:11.060 strangers. And the Odyssey, we typically think of as like, oh, it's a cool adventure story where

00:16:16.140 Odysseus kills a cyclops and does all this cool stuff. But it really, it's like the Bible of how to

00:16:21.600 treat strangers. I mean, if you look at it closely, it's all about like what happens when you treat

00:16:27.600 strangers poorly. And then what happens when you treat strangers correctly? Like, you know,

00:16:31.520 the cyclops, you know, the Odysseus goes in there and then the nice thing to do, the cyclops should

00:16:36.960 have just like, yeah, eat my goat cheese and I'm going to treat you well. Instead, he's like,

00:16:41.000 I'm going to eat you guys. You guys are terrible people. I don't care that if Zeus does anything to

00:16:45.280 me, you guys, I don't like you because you're strangers. Yeah. And Odysseus is like,

00:16:49.360 it's the funniest part in the Odyssey where Odysseus is like, what are you nuts? Like,

00:16:53.260 why would you eat it? Why would you harm a stranger? And you realize the reason why that

00:16:57.200 is so sacred that was so important to the Greeks is because it was a chaotic world. You know,

00:17:00.840 you didn't have central institutions. You didn't have like national armies or police or governments

00:17:05.200 or things like that necessarily. There was a great deal of conflict. And in order to travel in that

00:17:09.680 world and in order to flourish in that world and develop like trading relationships and all the

00:17:13.400 stuff you have to do, you needed to be able to make friends. You needed to make alliances.

00:17:18.380 So when a stranger came to town, it was a big deal. It was an opportunity, right? It was an

00:17:23.440 opportunity to make a friend, to learn something about the world, to get news, to maybe gain access

00:17:27.980 to an innovation. And it was reciprocal, right? So you would host the stranger who, you know,

00:17:32.580 to you is literally Zeus. Like Zeus is watching you as you did this. This was the belief. It's just

00:17:37.320 like, you know, with, with Christianity, it's kind of the same thing. Jesus is entwined with the

00:17:40.980 stranger, protects the stranger that you would, you would host this person. You'd give them lots of food.

00:17:45.740 You'd be really good to them. Maybe they stay a couple of days, whatever, but now you have an

00:17:49.480 ally later. So if you need a favor, if you're traveling through this unstable and dangerous

00:17:53.480 world, like there's a person that you can go crash with. And the idea is the more people who

00:17:58.140 did that, the bigger their social networks became and the easier it became for them to move and for

00:18:02.520 them to live in the world. Right. It's hospitality. It's how it's usually translated.

00:18:06.960 Yeah. Hospitality. Yeah. And what's interesting, it's like, it's two ways. So like you had to treat,

00:18:10.820 you know, the guest a certain way, but like the guests had to act a certain way or else they would

00:18:14.800 be, there would be consequences for that. Like if you look at the Odyssey, you know, the suitors

00:18:19.220 were, you know, Odysseus just slaughters all the suitors. Well, like the suitors were just violating

00:18:23.260 Zanir. They were just freeloading off of Odysseus, didn't care. And there were consequences for that

00:18:29.220 grave consequences. Yeah. It's, it's exactly right. Yeah. You had to be, everybody had to be on their

00:18:34.500 best behavior. And this ended up being a big, big part of the book is the, you know, humans are,

00:18:39.660 they can be very cooperative. They can be xenophilic, which is the word, which means they

00:18:42.800 actually favor strangers in a way under the right circumstances. Right. But I don't mean to pass it

00:18:47.820 off as being like, people are great. Like people are, people can be good. People can be bad. It

00:18:51.260 depends on the circumstances. But the thing that I kept coming upon from like everything from

00:18:55.920 anthropological research to theology, to philosophy, to governance was the need to reconcile the

00:19:01.860 opportunity that the stranger presented with the threat that they might've posed. And the way you did

00:19:06.540 that is through this sort of ritualized behavior. So you do it through hospitality where you both had

00:19:10.640 to demonstrate that like, you're not going to kill each other, right? Like you can, you can be trusted

00:19:14.240 to a certain degree. You're going to host the person, but you're going to host them knowing that

00:19:18.620 they're going to behave themselves too. And when the time comes, they're going to reciprocate.

00:19:22.280 But a lot of it is, you know, from hunter gatherers to, to the rise of hospitality was that,

00:19:27.440 you know, it doesn't mean that people are being hospitable because they think all people are good

00:19:30.940 and lovely and wonderful and interesting. And they want to talk to them. It was very practical.

00:19:34.620 It was a way of winnowing threat from opportunity. And it worked phenomenally well. Cause again,

00:19:38.920 this is like, this is the cornerstone of human civilization.

00:19:41.680 Well, that's okay. This idea that the reason why we were hospitable and treat strangers nice is

00:19:45.920 because we're kind of afraid of them. Yeah. You, you highlight research. This kind of explains,

00:19:49.980 I think the Nordic people, we typically think of them as like unfriendly. They're kind of known for

00:19:54.600 just like keeping to themselves, but like, they're actually some of the nicest, kindest people.

00:19:58.760 So like, why is it that like, they're really kind of nice, but like, they're not friendly.

00:20:02.580 Yeah. Because being friendly is being social in a way. And, and the research that I found,

00:20:08.640 you know, I was wondering, you know, I, for a while, I thought that as I was trying to figure

00:20:13.040 out why cultures became friendly versus unfriendly to strangers, which is turns out to be a pretty

00:20:17.460 big question. Why places that are unstable tended to be considered more friendly. So like Brazil,

00:20:23.900 for example, like Brazilians are amazingly social. A lot of Latin American peoples are super social,

00:20:27.940 but those places don't have really strong governments. They have a lot of corruption. They have a lot of,

00:20:31.620 you know, often a lot of crime. And so you would think that being in an unstable place like that

00:20:36.140 would make you more wary of people. And you would think that in Norway, where nothing bad ever

00:20:40.400 happens, basically, or Finland or the Nordic countries, you would think that because people

00:20:45.200 trust each other, they trust the system and there are really high levels of social trust,

00:20:49.080 which basically means like you trust strangers to not kill you. You would think that'd be friendly

00:20:52.540 because people aren't a threat. And it turns out to be the opposite in places where

00:20:55.640 there is instability and there is a little more, it could be more danger. People end up being more

00:21:01.380 friendly because again, like you need each other. You need to make those connections in order to live

00:21:05.700 in an unstable place. And also you need to winnow the threat from the opportunity. So you need to

00:21:09.800 talk to people to understand what their intentions are. And you want to demonstrate to them that you're

00:21:13.940 not a threat, right? That you mean them no harm. And that means, you know, maybe you can work

00:21:17.820 together on something. Maybe you can exchange information. Maybe you can be friends, whatever. You expand your

00:21:21.380 social networks. Whereas you go to a Nordic country, there's very little social friction. There's very little

00:21:26.580 need to be social because the state takes care of everything and the state's phenomenally efficient and

00:21:31.600 runs really well. And there are very low rates of teen pregnancy and poverty and illiteracy and crime and all

00:21:36.380 that stuff. So people don't have to be social. And as a result, they're just not. Like I spent a decent amount of

00:21:41.940 time in Finland trying to figure this out. And the Finns are really sweet people. They're really nice. It's a

00:21:46.800 lovely place. Helsinki is a really nice town. But no one ever talks to strangers because they don't

00:21:51.300 have to because they don't need to rely on other citizens in order to get their business done.

00:21:55.740 They just rely on the state. So you end up with a really introverted culture, whereas you go to

00:21:59.520 Brazil and it's a very extroverted culture. I thought that was fascinating. And it really is

00:22:03.440 like friction makes us social. Friction, like socializing is a, you know, you don't think that

00:22:08.420 friction makes us super xenophobic and it can, but it also creates a very practical need to be social,

00:22:13.820 to be more social with people. We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.

00:22:17.160 And now back to the show.

00:22:21.320 Okay. So if talking to strangers makes us feel great and we've developed cultures over

00:22:27.860 thousands of years that have facilitated stranger interaction, like why don't we like to talk to

00:22:33.280 strangers? I guess the Nordics would be like, well, they're, they have a stable, high trust

00:22:36.660 government that takes care of everything. So that would be the answer then. But like, why

00:22:39.700 in America? Like, why don't we like to talk to strangers anymore? Like what's going on in us

00:22:44.400 individually? And then also as a culture that makes talking to strangers not seem very pleasant.

00:22:50.480 Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. I mean, I would preface it by saying that the U S

00:22:54.660 is probably better at talking to strangers than a lot of other places. And the theory behind that

00:22:59.360 is that it was done out of utility. So like that kind of freestyle socializing that you get in

00:23:04.520 Americans that, you know, that Europeans always kind of roll their eyes at, you know, that probably

00:23:08.760 happened as a result of diversity. So over the entirety of our time here, at least like post

00:23:13.280 colonization, there've been a ton of immigrants in America. There've been a lot of different cultures

00:23:17.540 represented, different languages spoken. And there's this theory that when you have a situation

00:23:21.920 like that, where people can't rely on one another, knowing the same language or having the same social

00:23:26.600 norms, they tend to be friendly, right? Because they need to work a little harder to convey to the

00:23:30.960 other people that they're cooperative, but also to try to like get a sense of where the other person

00:23:34.940 is coming from so they can work together, you know, again, so they can function, so they can expand

00:23:39.820 their social network. So America is pretty friendly generally, you know, certainly compared to

00:23:44.540 pretty pro-social. I'll say social. They're pretty social because I found Finns totally friendly too.

00:23:49.440 They're just very quiet. But some of the things that would keep you from doing it, I think, like I

00:23:54.000 said, the stranger danger propaganda definitely gave us a pretty warped conception or warped

00:23:58.560 perception of what people are like by literally teaching children that every stranger in the world

00:24:02.640 is a threat to them. That's bad for trust. That's bad. That gives you like a pretty inaccurate view of

00:24:06.920 what the world is. And it makes it more difficult for you to maybe grow your social networks and meet

00:24:11.400 people. I think, you know, cities versus small towns is a big thing. People talk to strangers

00:24:16.360 more in small towns, maybe less in cities, just because of overload. There are so many people

00:24:21.200 around that it's almost disorienting. Like, where do you even begin? And a lot of people are respectful

00:24:25.520 of one another, knowing that we have limited personal space in a city. And as a result, like we might be

00:24:30.660 outside, we might be wanting to get a moment to ourselves. But I think over the last few years,

00:24:35.500 I think it's just been the phone, you know, to be honest. I'm not a Luddite. I love my phone. I text

00:24:40.320 people all the time. But I think it's that. I think a mix of the sort of social norms against

00:24:46.260 talking to strangers, the stranger danger stuff, and the phone has combined to kind of take us out

00:24:52.840 of the public realm to a certain degree. And I think the less frequently we interact with strangers,

00:24:59.160 the more daunting it seems to be. And that drives up the pessimism, right? So you stop, it's like

00:25:03.560 exercise. You stop exercising for a while, you're not just going to get off the couch and run 26 miles.

00:25:07.160 You need to build yourself back up again. I feel like we're really out of shape socially. And so

00:25:11.800 we really underestimate our social skills. And I think our social skills have probably eroded to

00:25:17.080 a certain degree. I felt like mine certainly did. I think we need to practice up a little bit.

00:25:20.760 But the research found this, and I found this, and a lot of people I talked to found this,

00:25:24.800 that when you do make an effort to do it again, you'll find that it comes pretty naturally.

00:25:28.920 It'll take a minute to get used to it again, to readjust to being that alert, which is what you have

00:25:34.720 to do when you talk to a stranger. You have to pay attention to so many different parts,

00:25:37.440 so many different moving parts of the interaction from body language, to what they're saying,

00:25:40.680 to what you're going to say, and all this stuff. But yeah, it's just getting people over that hump.

00:25:44.660 It's a mix of these people worrying that they're going to be bad at it, and that keeps them from

00:25:49.040 doing it. And the less they do it, the worse they think they're going to do. And it's just this cycle

00:25:53.300 until they just withdraw from the public.

00:25:56.800 Yeah. I mean, humans are lazy. We like to take the path of least resistance.

00:26:00.360 And yeah, like you said, talking, just social interaction is a very, it's very complex. It's

00:26:06.080 very engaging. It's one of the most complex things we do. And so given the choice between doing this

00:26:10.560 really kind of hard, engaged, complex activity, I'll just look at Twitter. And that's pretty much

00:26:16.560 anything. As opposed to the choices between exercising and watching Netflix, we're going to

00:26:20.640 choose Netflix. So you have to be intentional about this.

00:26:24.040 Yeah, you really do. And just because it's easier, our bias toward efficiency was probably

00:26:29.720 really useful at a certain point. But it's not useful now if it's keeping us from getting

00:26:33.780 what we need, which is we need social contact. We really do need social contact.

00:26:37.800 So Jillian Sanstrom, one of the things she argues is that the reason that people don't

00:26:41.220 talk to strangers, they just don't know how to do it. And they've forgotten how to do it,

00:26:44.940 like you said, because we have the phone. And I think one of the things too about the phone

00:26:47.660 that people like, it gives you this incredible sense of control, right? You can phrase what

00:26:52.840 you're going to say perfectly, and you can workshop it with friends. Is this the right thing

00:26:57.880 to say? You can't do that on the fly conversation face-to-face. So you decided, okay, look, you

00:27:03.540 recognize my skills in talking to people, to strangers has degraded. I need to take a class

00:27:09.260 on how to get better at this. And there's lots of classes, surprisingly, that you'd be thinking

00:27:13.580 like, wow, why is there classes to teach people how to do this very basic, very human thing?

00:27:18.520 But you went to several. I'm curious, what were some tips that you picked up on how to initiate

00:27:23.140 conversations with strangers? Yeah, I got a lot. I took a class in London with a woman named Georgie

00:27:28.980 Nightingale, which is like the greatest English name I've ever heard that didn't come from a

00:27:32.380 Dickens novel. But Georgie runs an organization called Trigger Conversations. And Jillian Sandstrom

00:27:37.440 referred me to Georgie. And I talked to Georgie and said, she told me she was going to do a class on

00:27:41.480 talking to strangers. So I bought a plane ticket and I flew to London and I took this class.

00:27:45.100 And what I wanted to do with the book is I wanted to create a roadmap for people who are just

00:27:48.440 out of circulation. So we're going to start from zero. To use the marathon analogy again,

00:27:54.060 we're going to start at the couch and we're going to rebuild ourselves. My assumption for a lot of

00:27:58.040 people is that they're not doing this. They're out of shape. They need to get back in shape.

00:28:03.300 So according to Georgie, who created circuit training for becoming a social animal again,

00:28:08.900 she would start small and get used to it and get used to confronting the discomfort and questioning

00:28:13.700 the discomfort you feel and observing what people's reactions are. So Georgie had to start

00:28:19.520 by making eye contact with people. Now, I think in a small town, this is probably a little different,

00:28:23.620 but in a city, there's not a lot of eye contact, right? When you're walking down the street,

00:28:27.940 you're not pausing to make eye contact with everyone in Fifth Avenue in New York City.

00:28:32.120 So Georgie was like, just make eye contact. People you walk by, just make eye contact and monitor how

00:28:38.040 that feels. And how it felt was super weird because I wasn't doing that and I live in New York,

00:28:41.920 right? This is not how people usually engage. But I did it for a few days and it started to feel

00:28:46.160 normal. And I started to notice that people were actually pretty receptive to it. The ones who

00:28:49.800 noticed kind of lit up at being seen, at being greeted. And from there, Georgie had us just start

00:28:55.300 greeting people. Say good morning. I hope you have a good day. Like wishing people well, which again,

00:28:58.840 feels really weird and forward, but people really lit up when you did that. I mean, I got kind of

00:29:03.360 avant-garde with it. I started just telling people to like, give them hell out there today and stuff like

00:29:07.320 that. And they really liked that. And you'd get a laugh and you'd feel good. You felt this little connection.

00:29:12.260 Maybe they felt that someone noticed them, right? Because I think a lot of people don't

00:29:15.780 really feel noticed all that much. But some of the really good tips beyond that, once you get

00:29:20.040 comfortable with that really rudimentary form of social contact, you can start to do things like,

00:29:26.160 you know, Georgie had this brilliant idea of when you're in a situation where someone's asking you

00:29:31.600 how you are, but they don't care and you don't care either, right? So you're buying something in a

00:29:35.080 store and the person's like, how are you doing? And you're like, fine. How are you? I'm fine. But no

00:29:38.820 information has been exchanged and no one's really paying attention. To answer those scripted

00:29:43.040 questions with specificity, right? And honesty. And that doesn't mean like, you know, I have this

00:29:48.420 boil that's been bothering me. Like, you know, you want to be appropriate about it. But Georgie

00:29:52.680 always did this thing where someone would ask how they're doing, how she's doing at a coffee shop or

00:29:56.240 something. And she would, she would answer numerically. She would say, I'm about a seven out

00:30:00.560 of 10, I would say. And then she would say, how are you? And so what does this do? This shows the

00:30:04.880 person that something else is happening. This is a different sort of interaction and it's going to

00:30:08.460 require their attention. This person is actually engaging with them. And more often than not,

00:30:13.620 the person Georgie was talking to would answer numerically too. I'm an eight out of a 10.

00:30:17.940 And then Georgie would say, what will it take to get you to a nine? And, you know, in two seconds,

00:30:22.220 you're having a conversation and this doesn't have to go on forever. This is just a little connection,

00:30:26.720 right? You get a little, they get a little taste of what it's like to be you. You get a little taste of

00:30:30.660 what it's like to be them. If it goes for a bit, if you have a little bit of time, it can go into some pretty

00:30:34.740 profound places. But as the research shows, even if it's a little thing, it'll make us feel better.

00:30:39.840 It'll make the world feel a little less chaotic. It'll make us feel better about people. It really

00:30:43.520 is like kind of a magic trick in a way. You can do this stuff with like the cashier,

00:30:48.260 the barista. It doesn't have to be just like random people you walk up to, which you could if you wanted

00:30:52.400 to. Yeah. It's like they're great to practice on, right? Because it's finite. You can't stand at that

00:31:00.300 cash register for like a half an hour, right? You're going to have to do it quick. And it's

00:31:04.420 just like a good way to practice. It's in a public environment. There's not going to be any suspicion

00:31:08.620 or anything because it's like, it's clear what your roles are. You're a customer, they work in the store

00:31:12.420 or they're a waiter or whatever it is. So a lot of the uncertainty that people have about a stranger

00:31:16.700 is kind of eliminated when you're in that sort of context. So it makes it a really good place to

00:31:20.860 practice, you know? So you start with the eye contact and things like that, and then you can start

00:31:24.220 practicing in a service context. And then the better you get at it, the quicker you get at it,

00:31:28.560 and the more attentive you get, then you can start doing it in other places too,

00:31:32.540 where the interactions are going to be much more complicated.

00:31:35.140 Another tip I liked that she had was that you start with statements, not questions.

00:31:39.620 If you're doing it in a public place where it's not the norm to talk to strangers. So a good example

00:31:43.460 is like a subway, right? Where people don't really talk to strangers. You can alleviate the fear that

00:31:49.340 you are unhinged, right? Which is everybody's fear when you're talking to strangers, that there's

00:31:53.960 something wrong because why else would they be talking to someone on the subway, right? Why else would

00:31:58.320 they be violating a social norm? You can alleviate that just by acknowledging that you're violating

00:32:03.480 the social norm. So Georgie's, it's called a pre-frame basically, and it's a way of establishing

00:32:08.360 what the interaction is right out of the gate. So instead of like you're on the train with someone

00:32:13.560 and you just say, where'd you get your hat? That's going to put people on the defensive.

00:32:17.100 They're not going to know who you are. Now you're asking them questions. Do I have to answer this

00:32:20.120 question? Like when you ask someone a question, you're basically demanding that they do something,

00:32:24.820 right? You're asking something. Instead of doing that, you can pre-frame it by just saying,

00:32:30.680 look, I know we're not supposed to talk to people on the subway, but I really like your hat. And then

00:32:34.840 leave it there. And they'll probably respond. People are flattered when you notice something

00:32:38.700 about them, as long as it's appropriate. And maybe they tell you about the hat. And maybe in telling you

00:32:42.260 about the hat, you learn about a trip they took. And then you can talk about a trip, like these little

00:32:45.840 things. But to start with that, to start with a statement, to use a pre-frame just to demonstrate out of

00:32:51.500 the gate that there's not something wrong with you, that you are like of sound mind, that you are like

00:32:55.420 a human with self-control and self-awareness. And then they tell you about the hat and you just

00:33:01.960 listen, right? You don't immediately barge in and start talking about your hat. You just ask questions,

00:33:07.660 ask basic questions. Like once they're comfortable, oh, okay. Like you got this hat in New Hampshire.

00:33:12.280 Do you go to New Hampshire often? Like, oh yeah, I used to go there as a kid, like blah, blah, blah.

00:33:15.760 And then you can go from there. But you do need to kind of leave it in their court a little bit and be

00:33:20.280 very respectful. And if they're not interested in talking, you have to respect that and just thank

00:33:24.000 them and pull away. So one argument I've heard why people wouldn't want to do this, they'd be like,

00:33:28.580 well, that's sort of stranger talk. It's very shallow and superficial. It's small talk. It's

00:33:33.280 not meaningful. So it's a waste of time. What would you say to those people?

00:33:38.160 Yeah. I mean, I was definitely one of those people. I die inside every time someone asked me what I do

00:33:42.580 for a living. And I really like what I do for a living. People don't understand what small talk is.

00:33:45.980 So there's a social anthropologist named Kate Fox in the UK who studied this. She studied weather

00:33:51.160 talk in England, right? And the English are like notorious for this. They always talk about weather

00:33:55.280 and people make fun of them for it because they think it's an indication that they don't have

00:33:59.300 anything else to talk about. But Fox's finding was that it's not a conversation. It's a bonding ritual,

00:34:05.240 right? So small talk isn't about the exchange of information. It's not supposed to be the state of the

00:34:10.900 entire interaction. What it does is that it shows that you're both of sound mind and that you're

00:34:15.980 experiencing something together. So when you talk about the rain, it's raining out. Okay. I know

00:34:19.920 this person at least understands that it's raining outside, right? So maybe we can talk, but it's a way

00:34:25.540 of just like getting people comfortable with one another, establishing that you're in the presence of

00:34:29.380 this other person, that maybe you're experiencing something together. Maybe you're watching a street

00:34:33.040 performer. Maybe there's a snowstorm, whatever it is. And then going from there. So the trick with

00:34:37.460 small talk is to use it just to have that initial engagement and just to make yourself more

00:34:42.460 comfortable and make them more comfortable. And then from there, you can have a real interaction.

00:34:47.260 The problem is when people get stuck in that stage, it's brutal. It's horrible. Like there's

00:34:51.320 research that shows that small talk, like if you do it enough, it's just bad for you. It just rots

00:34:55.300 your insides. And I certainly feel that way as like a pathologically impatient person that I hate it.

00:35:00.960 But now I understand what it is. And there are certain tweaks that you can do to get out of the

00:35:05.220 small talk. So say you're talking to someone at like a networking event or something like that.

00:35:11.080 You know, the first question is always, what do you do? What you can do instead of saying,

00:35:14.860 what do you do? Which is usually interpreted as a signal that you don't care and you have

00:35:18.680 nothing to offer. And this is going to be another like soul deadening small talk conversation.

00:35:22.800 Flip it, flip the question and ask, what would you like to do more of? You know what I mean?

00:35:26.200 So you can ask someone what they do and they can tell you and then say, okay, let me ask you

00:35:29.220 another question. Like, what would you like to do more of? And that gets you right into a real

00:35:32.580 conversation, right? So the small talk part establishes the hint of a connection. It starts

00:35:37.780 the conversation. The goal is to get out of there as quick as possible. And for me, what would you

00:35:42.240 like to do more of is one of the best ways to do it. When you started doing this or talking to

00:35:46.560 strangers, beginning with small talk, like a lot of times I imagined like the conversation maybe

00:35:51.540 stopped after two or three minutes. It was very on the surface and that's fine. You still felt good

00:35:56.520 after your experience. Like how often did your small talk with a stranger switch over to more about

00:36:01.700 like a deep conversation? It depended on the context. If you're waiting in line or something,

00:36:06.980 it's not going to go that long. You have to, you do have to be sitting with a person for quite some

00:36:11.260 time on planes. And I know like this tends to drive people crazy too, or at least people have

00:36:16.260 very pessimistic, pessimistic idea of like conversations with strangers on planes because

00:36:19.880 you're, you're captive. So I would caution people who do want to initiate conversations on planes or

00:36:24.480 buses, be very mindful of the reaction that the person is giving you. Don't be oblivious to like the

00:36:29.600 social cues that they're giving off that they don't want to talk to you. But yeah, I mean, I mean,

00:36:33.340 I literally took a 48 hour train trip across the country just to see what kind of conversations I

00:36:37.300 would have. And I had extraordinarily good conversations. People were fascinating, right?

00:36:41.500 I took this, this Amtrak train from Chicago to LA. Those went really well. And almost every single

00:36:46.240 conversation I had was like an hour long conversation, right? Cause we were there, we were in

00:36:50.200 the same space. We had all the time in the world. If I'm talking to someone on the subway,

00:36:54.380 it kind of depends on when I'm getting off, but you know, I've had 20 minute conversations on the

00:36:58.620 subway too, that, that were great, that were really interesting and illuminating. And that I still

00:37:03.100 think about today, it just has to do with the context. And you do have to be really aware of

00:37:06.820 like what else is going on. So you can't be the chatterbox in line at the supermarket when there

00:37:11.260 are 10 people waiting behind you. Like you gotta be very alert to everything, to the conversation

00:37:15.460 you're having, but also the effect that you might be having on the people around you.

00:37:18.920 Well, speaking of, you know, being aware of context, like how do you deal with rejection? Let's say

00:37:23.220 you try to initiate a conversation and you're getting the vibe, like this person doesn't want anything to do

00:37:27.220 with you. Like, how do you deal with that without, you know, deciding, oh, humanity's terrible. I'm

00:37:31.780 going to stop doing this. Yeah. The, you know, Georgie Nightingale's idea is that most of the time,

00:37:38.220 what we interpret as rejection isn't even rejection. It might be confusion because this is, this can be

00:37:43.780 unusual. If you, if you initiate a conversation on the subway or something or on a sidewalk in a city,

00:37:49.520 people just aren't going to understand what it is because they're not waiting for it. They're not

00:37:53.660 expecting it. And so sometimes people might walk away or they might turn away and it's not because

00:37:58.880 they've rejected you. It's because they're just sort of confused. Right. And so, you know, Georgie's,

00:38:04.740 Georgie's advice on this, that she told us is, is, you know, if you say something and people don't

00:38:09.280 seem to get it, you can just say it again. That's okay. If people are like rejecting you,

00:38:13.480 if people are fleeing from you, if people are, I mean, God forbid, someone's like alarmed by you,

00:38:18.360 then you have to pull away. I didn't have any experiences like that. Certainly there was,

00:38:22.840 there was a great deal of confusion when I would start talking to people, but once you got adept

00:38:27.160 enough at this, you could re you could make it clear what, what this was like, what you're

00:38:31.500 interested in or what you were asking about or what you were saying. And people would go along

00:38:34.980 for the ride. I think once you get past that initial hump, people were amazingly receptive.

00:38:39.140 And I can't say, you know, some people weren't really game, but it was still kind of fun to do.

00:38:44.800 I can't say that I was rejected at any point. And, you know, the, the research by Nicholas Epley

00:38:49.620 and Juliana Schroeder, and they've done this in Chicago and in London found that the chance of

00:38:53.660 actual rejection was very, very low, but it really is like, just, you know, making it clear to the

00:38:58.700 person what's happening here and making them feel comfortable. And then, you know, the research shows

00:39:03.740 that these conversations can even go like three times longer than people anticipated they would go.

00:39:08.720 So here in America, there's a lot of polarization politically. And this idea of talking to a stranger

00:39:13.880 who might be like completely different from us, see the world different from us is it's fraught.

00:39:18.820 You're like, I don't know if I want to do that. There's been a lot of research saying how we're

00:39:22.200 starting to sort politically into different neighborhoods, zip codes, et cetera. So we're

00:39:26.260 sort of segregating ourselves. How can talking to strangers overcome the polarization that we're

00:39:31.600 seeing in our country? Yeah. So, so polarization is basically like when it gets extreme, like it has

00:39:36.880 now, it's a form of dehumanization. And the way people talk about their opponents on the other side

00:39:41.680 of the aisle is that they aren't like us culturally, but also just, we tend to believe that our

00:39:47.380 political opponents in times like this, they don't have the same willpower we have. They're just like

00:39:52.140 obedient cogs in a machine. They're not individuals. Like we are like, we're the snowflakes. Like we're

00:39:56.780 so much smarter and we're savvy and we're subtle. We have nuanced thoughts and everything. And those

00:40:01.340 people over there are just like a witless machine that's dehumanization. And it can, it can turn very

00:40:05.880 bad, obviously. I mean, it's turning very bad right now, but what talking to strangers does is that it

00:40:10.380 makes it virtually impossible to maintain a really simplistic idea of what a person is,

00:40:15.140 of who a person is and who a representative of a group is. So I spent a decent amount of time with

00:40:20.380 a group called Braver Angels at their convention in St. Louis, which is just a group that literally

00:40:24.980 teaches Democrats and Republicans to sit across from each other and have a conversation. And it

00:40:29.960 turns out that that's like a really complicated, difficult thing to do. That's how far gone we are

00:40:34.060 that we need to be trained to do something that we've been doing since we were, you know, in nursery

00:40:38.300 school. And a big part of it is making sure that these people talk as individuals before they talk

00:40:45.000 as members of their cliques, of their parties. And so they sit them down and they just give them

00:40:50.320 questions. They say, where are you from? You know, what brought you here? Why are you interested in

00:40:53.740 this? Do you have kids? Do you, are you married? You know, do you have any pets? Like just small talk,

00:40:58.740 small talk stuff. And again, this is the importance of small talk is that it demonstrates

00:41:02.460 across party lines that the other person is an individual, that the other person is complex,

00:41:07.420 that the other person is intelligent and respectful. And they, they kind of hang out

00:41:12.020 there for a while. And then the, the questions get a little more heavy as they go through,

00:41:17.040 but they've established this connection. They've established that they both believe one another

00:41:20.860 are like full human beings. And only once you've secured that bond, can you move on to more difficult

00:41:26.560 things? And this is basically the opposite of how political discussion happens in America,

00:41:30.880 which is always just like, you know, okay, abortion, gun control, go. And then people fight and no one

00:41:36.220 talks and no one listens and nothing ever gets done. And it just keeps getting worse.

00:41:40.040 So you need to foster those connections, those personal connections, and you need to reinforce

00:41:44.100 the idea that the other people, the other block, it consists of individuals that have thoughts of

00:41:49.500 their own. And maybe those people are interesting and maybe, you know, you talk enough, maybe there's

00:41:52.820 something you can agree on. You're not going to solve all of the big problems this way. You're

00:41:56.220 probably not going to solve any of the big problems this way, but it's a start.

00:41:59.740 The thinking with Braver Angels is that if you can get show me enough and comfortable enough

00:42:04.100 with one another, that you live in a town together and you can fix some potholes,

00:42:07.720 then that's great. That's a start. That builds up a little bit of trust. It demonstrates that

00:42:11.680 we can work together, that we are reasonable, and then you can scale it from there. That's the idea.

00:42:16.520 But it really is like, you have to make an effort to deny yourself the idea that other people are

00:42:21.740 simpler than you are. That's a really important thing. And a time like this, it's critical.

00:42:26.700 And I imagine that's why conversations about politics online, like particularly Twitter,

00:42:30.740 are so fraught because it's so easy to dehumanize because you don't even see anybody. It's like,

00:42:35.220 it's just an app, digital avatar.

00:42:37.240 Yeah. It's like you take a view and then you invent a fictitious person based on that view.

00:42:42.600 And then you rage against that person. You know, you don't see the entirety of the person.

00:42:46.480 And, you know, you can certainly do that if you use, if you go online with a certain discipline

00:42:50.160 and a certain intent, you can have extraordinarily good exchanges with strangers online,

00:42:55.000 but you just have to resist the temptation to dismiss and be contemptuous of people.

00:42:58.720 You really have to ask questions. You have to be curious. You know, I had a guy from Texas who

00:43:02.280 threatened to kill me one time over a story I wrote and sent me a threatening email saying,

00:43:06.500 you would kill me if I ever came to Texas. And I didn't have a lot to do that day. This was a few

00:43:10.860 years ago. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to, I'm going to write back to this guy.

00:43:14.160 I'm going to push back and demonstrate to him that, look, I'm a guy, you know, I'm a person like you

00:43:17.920 are. Maybe we can talk about this. And, and it worked, worked great. By the end of it,

00:43:21.520 he was inviting me to Texas to drink with him, but that sort of stuff, like resisting the temptation,

00:43:26.240 the self-righteous thrill of dismissing and being contemptuous of someone else is really important

00:43:31.020 if we're going to repair some of the political damage that's been done in this country. But I

00:43:34.420 do think it's not, you know, it's not a silver bullet. It's going to take 20 years to fix this

00:43:37.360 damage, but this is, this is where it starts. So how has your life changed since writing this

00:43:41.600 book and starting to talk to strangers on the regular? It made me weirdly optimistic in a way

00:43:46.600 that I wasn't before. You know, I work in a cynical business. I work in journalism. I was raised

00:43:50.840 by funeral directors and a family of funeral directors. So like, I'm not by nature, a super

00:43:56.000 sunny minded person. I am skeptical. I can be cynical. I can be pessimistic. But what I found

00:44:01.240 was that talking to as many people as I could made me feel better about humanity at a time when

00:44:06.020 everybody felt worse about humanity. And this is, you know, this is a thought I had after I finished

00:44:10.520 the book. I think it comes down to the data that you get when you make a habit of talking to more

00:44:16.360 people you don't know. I think when your perception of the world is fueled by social media and by the

00:44:22.800 media, which is overwhelmingly negative, that's, you know, that's the incentive structure. That's

00:44:26.620 the business. You get a really warm perception of what everyone is like. You know, you see some

00:44:30.720 jerk on Twitter and you're like, oh, people are disgusting. That's, you know, there are certainly

00:44:34.860 some, some terrible things happening. There's certain people, some people who can be really awful,

00:44:38.520 but when that's like, when that's coloring your perception of humans, that's really unhealthy.

00:44:43.680 When you do go out and you interact with people in person and you find, and the research found this

00:44:48.140 and I found it and a lot of other people found it, that it goes well, that people are receptive and

00:44:52.020 people are interesting and people are pretty good. It gives you better data. It gives you more complete

00:44:56.380 data and it allows you to create maybe a more accurate perception of what people are like.

00:45:01.680 So for me, I think that was the case. I just got so good at talking to people all the time that it

00:45:05.680 became part of my life. And I literally made new friends. Like I actually made new friends while doing

00:45:10.000 this book, but I feel a little bit better. I feel a little bit more secure in the world.

00:45:14.400 And I find that, especially when I have interactions with people from different groups

00:45:17.940 than me, I find that that's a hedge against generalization. And I think it's really,

00:45:23.000 it's really valuable. And I think, you know, gaining perspective into the lives of people who

00:45:26.800 are different than we are is the road to wisdom. I think it's the road to good citizenship. I think

00:45:31.060 it's really, really, really valuable. Well, Joe, this has been a great conversation. Where can people

00:45:35.200 go to learn more about the book and your work? The book is called The Power of Strangers. It's

00:45:39.280 available anywhere books are sold. I'm on Twitter at Joe Cohane. I have a fairly bare bones website,

00:45:45.760 joecohane.net. But yeah, that's about it. But yeah, you can get the book anywhere.

00:45:49.700 Fantastic. Well, Joe Cohane, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:45:51.880 Thanks, Brett. Thanks so much for having me on.

00:45:53.860 My guest today was Joe Cohane. He's the author of the book, The Power of Strangers,

00:45:57.340 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more information about his work at

00:46:01.000 his website, joecohane.net. That's J-O-E-K-E-O-H-A-N-E.net. Also check out our show notes at

00:46:07.400 aom.is slash strangers where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this

00:46:10.960 topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Check out our website at

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00:46:51.900 Remind you to only listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

The Power of Talking to Strangers

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