<em>How to Talk to People</em>: The Infrastructure of Community
Listen and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google | Pocket Casts
Coffee shops, churches, libraries, and concert venues are all shared spaces where mingling can take place. Yet the hustle and bustle of modern social life can pose challenges to relationship-building—even in spaces designed for exactly that.
In this episode of How to Talk to People, we analyze how American efficiency culture holds us back from connecting in public, whether social spaces create a culture of interaction, and what it takes to actively participate in a community.
Hosted by Julie Beck, produced by Rebecca Rashid, edited by Jocelyn Frank and Claudine Ebeid. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado, and engineering by Rob Smierciak.
Build community with us via email! Write to us at howtopodcast@theatlantic.com. To support this podcast, and get unlimited access to all of The Atlantic’s journalism, become a subscriber.
Music by Alexandra Woodward (“A Little Tip”); Arthur Benson (“Charmed Encounter,” “She Is Whimsical,” “Organized Chaos”); Gavin Luke (“Nadir”); Ryan James Carr (“Botanist Boogie Breakdown”); Tellsonic (“The Whistle Funk”); Dust Follows (“Willet”); Auxjack (“Mellow Soul”).
Click here to listen to additional seasons in The Atlantic’s How To series.
Host Julie Beck: I think what I’ve observed in public spaces, especially in my neighborhood, is really just a hustle and bustle. And people are going somewhere specific to do something specific with specific people. They’re sort of on a mission.
Eric Klinenberg: Efficiency is the enemy of social life. What kind of place would allow us to enjoy our lives and enjoy each other more than we do today? What kinds of things would we need to reorient our society around?
Kellie Carter Jackson: You know, people say, like, misery loves company. I don’t think that is true. I think that misery in a lot of ways requires company; it requires kinship. It requires community. So that you are not isolated in your pain.
Klinenberg: What kinds of things would we need to reorient our society around?
__
Beck: I’m Julie Beck, senior editor at The Atlantic.
Rebecca Rashid: And I’m Becca Rashid, producer of the How To series.
Beck: This is How to Talk to People.
Rashid: Though I normally am not making a friend at the café, recently there was a girl that was working on her laptop. She noticed I was, too. We started chittin’ and chattin’, and after a few weeks of running into each other so many times at the café, she finally—slightly awkwardly—asked yesterday, “Hey, do you mind if I get your number if you maybe wanted to get a drink?” Very friendly, sweet sort of way of fighting through the awkward.
I’m so impressed! Of course, people do connect at cafés like you literally just did. And, you know, in Paris or whatever, they may be happy for people to linger and chat all day. But I think the connection that’s happening in those spaces, like, that’s not the purpose of the space; that’s a by-product. Perhaps a
