The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World
Recommended by: Jennifer Livingston
Posted in: Bridging Divides Social Psychology
Purchase →Veteran journalist Joe Keohane offers an antidote to today’s ‘epidemic of loneliness’ that is just outside our front doors – talking to strangers. These conversations pierce our demographic, geographic, and ideological bubbles, connecting us to each other and improving our own well-being in the process. He shares new research findings on the benefits of such interactions alongside his own stories from the field.
At the end of The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World, Joe Keohane provides invaluable tips on how to talk to strangers. But first, he takes us on a journey to help us understand why it’s both so important and so difficult to talk to strangers. We travel with him back to the Paleolithic era and to Biblical times. We visit other continents to meet stranger-friendly bobonos and stranger-phobic chimpanzees, as well as a woman who teaches how-to-talk-to-stranger classes in London. In the U.S., we learn about Conversations New York and Urban Confessional in Los Angeles, and listen as Keohane strikes up conversations on a train from Chicago to the west coast.
Keohane devotes an entire chapter to Braver Angels, including his happy experience at the Braver Angels 2019 convention in St. Louis. If you didn’t attend, it’s the next best thing. “I saw everyone start out a little anxious, but then once they got comfortable, it turned almost giddy. It was like summer camp. Lunchtime in the school cafeteria was practically deafening, and blues [liberals] were seeking out people in red lanyards [conservatives] to talk to, and vice versa.”
The journey Keohane takes us on is thought-provoking because the book is so well researched, and fun because of the author’s engaging writing style: “What’s next? Coffee? Of course, it’s coffee. What kind of question is that?” During the course of the journey, we find out what a Howdy Door is, and why we should make a beeline to Bryant Park next time we visit New York City.
I highly recommend this book. It convinced me. Yesterday, I went beyond “How are you?” when greeting fellow hikers, and commented on a stranger’s baseball cap at a concert. That made them smile, which made me smile, too…because the most important thing I learned is that when you engage with strangers, it makes both you and them feel happy.
Donna Murphy
As someone who, from a young age, has enjoyed people (even from my stroller, according to my Mama! 😄) I can attest to the interest and richness that “strangers”, if only for a moment, are capable of bringing to your day and, potentially, to your life.
Donna’s enthusiastic description and glowing review of Doug Keohane’s book, THE POWER OF STRANGERS: THE BENEFITS OF CONNECTING IN A SUSPICIOUS WORLD, has me convinced that this book will add even more evidence and interest to, what has been, my own personal experience.
The Paleolithic Era and Biblical Times!? I just had this delivered to my Kindle Reader and can’t wait to get started! I also look forward to the Braver Angels Book Discussion on Wednesday, September 15, 2021 from 7- 8:30pm CDT (5-6:30pm PDT/6-7:30pm MDT/8-9:30pm EDT) where Joe Keohane himself will answer some of our questions.
Hope to see you there!
What I liked most about this book (besides the interesting stories) was that the author gave me specific, concrete things to say and do to feel more relaxed and comfortable when talking to strangers. From the book I wrote down a list of 30 things I could say in response to what people said, or questions I could ask people, that would keep a conversation going and take it in interesting directions rather than shutting it down.