Talking to Strangers with Joe Keohane

Do you talk to strangers?


When you think of the word ‘stranger’, does danger come to mind?


This week we talk to the insightful Joe Keohane, a veteran
journalist who has held high-level editing positions
at Medium, Esquire, Entrepreneur, and Hemispheres. His
writing—on everything from politics, to travel, to social
science, business, and technology—has appeared in New
York magazine, The Boston Globe, The New Yorker, Wired,
Boston magazine, The New Republic, and several
textbooks. An avid parallel parker and occasional working
musician, he also won a prestigious Screenwriters Colony
fellowship in 2017 for a comedy television pilot that remains,
sadly, unproduced.


In this episode we talk to him about his latest book; The Power
of Strangers; The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World -
An exploration of why we don’t talk to strangers, and the
wonderful things that would happen if we did.


As some of you might know we are very vocal advocates for ‘loose
social interactions’. We love talking to strangers, and any
acquaintances we may come across - we simply find people
fascinating! So naturally, this conversation was right up our
alley.


Joe is hilarious, he realised he wasn’t the best at striking up
conversations with random people so he thought he would challenge
himself by finding out why, and furthermore, is this is a common
thing with most people nowadays in our screen-watching world? So
he found a course on the topic (that’s right, a course on ‘how to
talk to strangers’) and set off to London to find out how!

“There is a really good technique I learned when I was
doing this which is, don’t ask people what they do, ask them what
they would like to do more of or less of, and that will get you a
really interesting answer. The person might say “I am a chartered
accountant” and you ask; “well what do you want to do more of”,
they might say “oh ballet”, and then you exclaim “oh that’s
interesting! A ballet dancing accountant, that’s unusual” … and
then you are off to the races! That gets you to understanding
peoples motivation and individuality. Thats the way you can break
the script of boring cocktail party chatter.”




From the psychology, to the history, to the practical. Joe takes
us through it all in this episode. We talk social studies,
individual experiences and for a pair of extrovert-chatty-twins,
we even managed to learn a lot!



“There wasn't much difference between introverts and
extroverts in the actual study. They seem to have the same
experience. The extroverts are more comfortable initiating the
interaction but the introverts got the same benefits from it once
they started doing it. And my theory is (based on my own research),
is that the skills you need to be really good at this are introvert
skills. It’s listening, it’s noticing, it’s paying attention, it’s
not stepping all over somebody, it’s not doing the thing that
everyone does in conversations where you are just looking for a way
in to talk about yourself. Those skills are
invaluable.So I feel that introverts can learn
from extroverts in the way that extroverts are good at going up to
people. But extroverts need to learn from introverts in the way
that you conduct the conversation, in the way that you learn to
listen to people, and you don’t make everything about you and you
ask them questions about their lives etc…”




Give the episode a listen, then go out and strike a conversation
with a stranger! Go and explore! Who knows where it may take you
;)





REFERENCE


Theodore Zeldin





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