Opinion | Is Your Social Life Missing Something? This Conversation Is for You.

This episode was supposed to be our second episode of the year. We had taped it, and I loved taping it. It was one of my favorite in a while. It was all ready to go. And then the Trump administration attacked Venezuela and arrested the country’s president. And then the news cycle just accelerated and never stopped. It never felt like the right time for it. At the same time, I don’t think this episode, which is about gathering and community — I don’t think this is a break from politics. I think this is actually, in some ways, the core of politics. This is somehow both not about what we are going through and absolutely about what we are going through. My motivation for this episode was a little bit more personal. One of my resolutions this year is to spend more time hosting — to make those gatherings more meaningful. To be a better member of my own community. So the person I’d wanted to talk with about that is Priya Parker, who’s the author of this beautiful book, “The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters,” and the Substack Group Life. She just thinks about gathering and hosting and community in a different way than anyone I’ve met. The way that the Zohran Mamdani campaign thought about community and built community, which is one of its most beautiful aspects, was partially built on her work and her advice. 2026 is going to be a long year. These next years are going to be long years. I’m tempted to say we’re going to need to take breaks, and that is true. But we’re also just going to need each other. So thinking about how we pull the people we love closer and how we are more in community rather than less, more together rather than more alone is I think, as essential as any political or civic discipline — or personal discipline — could possibly be right now. So I wanted to share this episode now because it is both not at all the right time for it and absolutely the perfect time for it. As always, my email: ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. Priya Parker, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. So I wanted to begin with treating the decision not to gather as rational, not to host, as rational. What makes gathering hard intimidating. Why do people choose. Because we are choosing not to do it. We are busy. We are, many of us, overworked. We are constantly tethered to our phones. We are suffering from a childcare crisis. We no longer live with intergenerational families that allow us to also intergenerationally gather. We have beliefs about what we need to do or be in order to host other people. That, by the way, are very modern beliefs. Our ancestors, whichever community you come from, if you go long enough back, we’re gathering whether their cave was clean or whether they had a boil on their shoulder, or whether they had an overbearing mother-in-law, they were gathering. And so in modern life, there’s so many reasons that we choose not to gather or we feel like we can’t gather, and it is keeping us apart from one another. We also overemphasize the right and the space of the individual, and particularly in this country, this individualized context of self-care and self-help allows us to first focus on what the needs of the self are, or the perceived needs of the self are. Before we begin to even think about the group, say more about that idea of the perceived needs of the self. Well, we perceive that if I have my shit together, if I have the right step counts over the course of the day, if I have my right sugar intake, if I’m making sure that my hypoglycemic index is on the right count, and I walk 20 minutes after I eat, all of these decades of apps and books that help us optimize the self. We literally have a self-help revolution. But self-help doesn’t actually help us answer the questions of our shared life. And what we actually need is also tools for group help. I thought a lot about the rhetoric around boundaries. That feels like it became everywhere in the past five to 10 years, and how important good boundaries are. I’m curious, as somebody who thinks about mediation and gathering, how you have thought about the boundary revolution. So I’m a conflict resolution facilitator of groups. And in group life, a group and gatherings. People think it’s all about the we. It’s only the we. But that is a cult Alt right group life is actually about the dance between the E, we and the I. And so if you have too much, it’s a cult. And if you have too much, it’s a Federation. And so part of group life is the tools we have to make sure we have enough voices in individual. And then also the tools we have to choose to give up some amount of freedom to be part of something greater than ourselves. Even if that’s practically like, yeah, I don’t usually eat cheese, but I’m going to come over to your house and eat what you’re going to have me, have me, serve me. And boundaries at some level is the healthy line drawing for the space of the eye. But in particularly in therapy. And I love therapy. I’m in therapy. Therapy has helped many people in my family change their lives, and we are using therapy to draw boundaries over bridges. We are using therapy, the excuse of therapy to focus on separation rather than connection, and versus the tools of repair versus the tools of the mess of relationship versus the tools of thinking about how do we actually apologize and alter one another. By the way, most therapists would say this is not actually how we mean to use boundaries. So, so part of what is happening when we are overusing boundaries is we are isolating ourselves more and more and more. So we’re going to end up with DoorDash our food, sitting alone in our twin bed watching Netflix. And then you don’t have the messiness of actually being in relationship with really annoying other people, with the friction of other people. And by the way, this vision of DoorDash, Instagram scrolling, mindless Netflix watching is not really also a citizen. It’s a subject I’ve become obsessed with this quote over the past year from Bernard Crick. It’s in this book called In Defense of politics, and he says a politics involves genuine relationships with people who are genuinely other people, not objects for our philanthropy or tasks for our redemption. But contained in that is something that you’re getting at, which is other people are difficult and also other people are inherent to the interaction. When I listen to you, I think of Martin Buber — “I and Thou.” When I listen to that quote, I think of Martin Buber —— Not just in general? And this idea — I’m a conflict resolution facilitator. My mentor, Hal Saunders, the first book he ever made me read was Martin Buber’s writings and the relationship between I and thou and the entire and the idea in my field of dialogue, which is relationships get out of whack when relationships become an “I-It” — an object of my charity or a task for my redemption. And dialogue, which is the real consideration of other people, moves the relationship from an “I-It” to an “I-Thou.” It restores the relationship. It restores us to each other. For those of us asking for a friend who have never made it through Buber’s I-Thou, what is I-Thou versus I-It? so I-Thou is an idea that the relationship between you and me is sacred. It’s divine. That we each. And by the way, this is in many cultures, it’s the same. There’s a Hindu version of this that basically every interaction between us is a relationship. That and whether you believe in God or not, has the potential to be holy, to be sacred. And when I turn you into an it — into an object that basically we’ve broken that sacred interaction. What turns me into an it? Hosting a party where I need bodies in the room versus hosting a party where I deeply think about who I want to be there because I care about them. So it’s instrumentalizing other instrumentalizing it’s transactional, it’s making. It’s using people rather than making them of use. I’ll give a simple example. And I think right now and people are thinking about how do we gather. And a lot of the reasons I think people don’t gather because a lot of the gatherings are vague and diluted and you’d actually rather be home. Netflix netflixing and chilling. I saw this recently, actually on Instagram. There was a woman who was hosting a baby shower, but the baby shower was all of her friends coming over with sponges, listening to music, scrubbing her walls like having the best time. And they were actually feeling like they were of use to her. She needed a clean house. She was completely overwhelmed. They came over rocking and it went totally viral because it’s very moving. They weren’t being used. They were being of use. I want to be part I want to know how I can help you in this time of need. I want to know that I can help. A lot of people don’t even think anyone needs them. It’s so lonely. There’s so much I want to follow up on there, but I want to talk about cleanliness for a minute. You were talking about, we invited people over to the cave, whether the cave was clean or not. When I think about what stops me from hosting, what stops me from being more hospitable, what stops me from doing more gathering, and this podcast is somewhat motivated by my own New Year’s resolution to try to do more. More gathering, more gathering. It’s actually that the standards, not just that I have set, but that I feel like the culture around me sets the people around me believe and that I believe in. There is so much work in the House, in the schedule, in the cooking and whatever, just to get to the point where I feel like I can have anybody over that. It’s intimidating. It’s like I want to see and be with other human beings and play with kids. It’s hard to go out. But if the expectation is that everything has to be perfect before anybody arrives, you will never gather. I mean, I actually think we are living in an era where no one has the same expectations. People are confused. We all in traditional societies shared norms. If you go to a Southern Indian, you go to a brahminical red thread tying ceremony. Everyone knows what that means. Everyone cries because they understand and all of their previous generations did it in the exact same way, right. I remember reading around 2006, the UN said it was the first year in the history of humanity where more people lived in cities than villages. Which basically means that people are uprooted. I mean, I’m biracial, I’m bicultural, I’m BI religious. I grew up in two different households that were also both joint households. And I can tell you most families are making stuff up. Two of our best friends. Once we started becoming. I’ll give a simple example. Once we started becoming really close with each other years and years and years ago, it was the first time they ever invited us to their home for dinner, and my husband and I showed up, and we were dressed to the nines and we wanted to honor them. You guys intimidatingly often are. We wanted to honor them. We both come from cultures on both sides that feel like you dress for yourself. You dress for others as a sign of respect. There’s a boundary between in-house and out of house. We love it and our best friends open the doors and they’re in their pajamas. And we both looked across this threshold and we all burst into laughter. But actually, both sides were honoring the other side for them. They would only be in their pajamas for whom they’re actually letting into their life. And so the good news is, we have totally different expectations of what a gathering should be. I actually don’t think everybody assumes that the room or the House should be totally clean. And part of the beauty and the power modern life is you get to decide. So there’s a woman who wrote into me. Her name is Ryan. She, she and her friends have a gathering that’s called the half assed potluck. They do it every week. She and her closest friends. There’s no holiday, there’s no birthday, there’s no milestone. They gather every week and the rules are simple bring whatever is in your fridge or pick something up on the way. Wear sweats. Don’t clean. Use paper plates. They eat what appears. They pile onto the couch. Talk laugh. Everyone’s home by 8:30. The most successful shift in my own community since moving to New York has been. There’s another couple that have kids around. Our kids age, and we spend a lot of time on the weekend co-chairing, and we have a name for it. But what emerged in it over time was a rule that you do not have to clean your house or put on real clothes before you all get together. It’s such a relief. And so then you can hang out at 8:00 AM when the kids are actually up percent before you’ve done anything, and it. Somehow in that we freed ourselves from expectations, it would have made this much harder. It’s a beautiful example, but how do you free yourself from those expectations. Exactly exactly what you’re doing, right. You’re feeling a need. You and your wife are feeling a need. Which is company, I imagine, in the weekend, which is people who aren’t going to be totally annoyed if your boys are running around and being loud. So you have a need. Then at some level, you invite someone with a shared need. Oh, this couple also has this. It sounds like you’ve given it a name. Names create structures, name, create stories. You’ve actually given it a wardrobe, right. No real clothes. That actually creates context. It creates permission. You’re creating this permission around you. And so often. And then what was the other rule. No cleaning, no cleaning, no cleaning. So part of what you’re doing is just you’re doing it intuitively, this is not rocket science. Every gathering I think of as a temporary, tiny social contract, but the part of the modern life that’s both beautiful and terrifying is we create the social contract. One thing you focus on in the book that felt very real to me is the discomfort many of us have imposing structure on others. It feels somehow inhospitable for me to invite people over to my house and then tell them what to do. I would not recommend doing that, don’t you. I think you need to prime them well before. Got it. Tell them what to do before they come to my house. Yes I’m serious. I’m serious. Like, part modern life is like. We are so confused, right about your question of most people don’t want structure to tell people what to do when they get in their home, right. A woman wrote me a few years ago, her name was Robin, and she and her husband moved to a block outside of Chicago. And she wanted to be part of a neighborhood that hung out. And as she got there a few weeks in, she realized that this was not a neighborhood that hung out, and she wanted to get people together. But if she had just invited eight strangers to never met to come over and then talk to each other, it may not work. So she started priming them. See, she sent her 6 and 8-year-old girls out on scooters to hang a paper coffee cup on their door. Save the coffee date. Then a week later, they went around again on scooters and she went to vistaprint. She told me she was like this. She really thought about this, and there’s invitations. And it was like, come to our house for bagel and Brou. And if you’d like to comment and there’s three questions, please tell us your email, the number of years you’ve lived on this block, and two interesting facts about you or three interesting facts about you. She practiced what I call and response. That’s actually she’s creating buy in and then these cards start coming back. My dream is to go to Poland to visit my people. I once delivered a baby, not ours. And when they came, they were given name tags with the number of years they lived on the block. And then a second name tag with three interesting facts. But it was of someone else another neighbor. So they all as casual as in the morning, as coffee and bagels, and then write about people are about to leave. She brings out a cake with the number 342 on it, and someone says, that’s the collective years we’ve all lived on this block. And years later, she changed the culture of that block. But if she had just said, come over and I’m going to make you go around and tell three interesting facts about yourself. I’d be like Buzz her off. Who are you to do that. I had two reactions listening to that. One was I felt myself clench up with the amount of work. And the other was what an incredible act of generosity. Like, what a gift to put that much work and intentionality into connecting other people. It’s a deeply generous act, and I would say what clenches you up did not clench Robin up. She loved doing it. She loved sending her girls out there on those scooters. She loved designing those invitations. So you shouldn’t do that. You shouldn’t do something that clenches you up. Host a gathering that you want to attend. Simple examples. Again, this can look so many ways. It’s like easing the barrier of entry, of hosting. Pablo Johnson he passed away almost exactly a year ago January 26, 2025. And somebody who from my group life community sent me this, sent me an email and a video of these dinners that he had hosted around his table in New Orleans for 20 years. These were simple dinners that happened every Monday night. It was the same menu every Monday night. Red beans and cornbread. He would literally he did it around the table that his grandmother left him. It would literally there was no table was ever the same people twice. And it was everybody from his neighbors to maybe visiting actors, filming a TV to somebody. He literally ran into the coffee shop. And I posted this on Instagram and it went totally viral. It the most viral post I ever posted at that time. And what was so interesting to me was when people posted it, the majority of the people said, I wish someone would invite me to something like this. And I’m thinking. Hostess host it. You host the dinner, right. Why this assumption. It’s like, why. Why aren’t I getting these invitations. It’s like, no, no, no no no, you host the red beans and cornbread dinner like it’s enough. Just start, just start. We’re all sitting there being like, I wish I was invited. It’s like host. One of the most powerful ways to even especially if you’ve moved to a New place to begin to feel like you belong to a place is to host when people move to other countries. My biggest advice to them host something in the first week. What if you’re terrified to start. You’re a very graceful person. I’ve known you a while. I really the art of gathering. It’s like the movie ratatouille. Anyone can cook, anyone can gather and start. I really feel strongly that as much as ratatouille pretends, that is its message, that is not its message. Exactly, exactly. Anybody with incredible gifts can cook. Any generationally talented rat can cook. O.K, you’ve watched and analyze that movie, and I don’t disagree with you, but at some deep level, we’re almost overcomplicating it. Like our ancestors in any community that we went to did this. And so start like, first of all, I feel fear every time I feel nervous, every time I feel like is anyone going to show up. I feel sick to my stomach. I start snapping at my most beloveds, it’s really normal to feel. It’s that being willing to hold that anxiety and be like, oh, I must care about this. So the first is to say like, hey, if you’re feeling some amount of fear, that’s because you care about this. How interesting and build the ability to hold some of that anxiety. But the second is literally start with a start with something you think would be delightful, because that’s going to give you some energy. Co-host something with people. You have AI know of a guy who got a champagne magnum. He worked at an ad agency like years ago. His boss didn’t drink, and so inherited this massive bottle of champagne. He like, what the heck am I going to do with this. And he invited eight friends and the bottle to share it. And the year of the bottle was 2004, and the price of entry to the party was to bring a story from your life from the year 2004. That’s cool. It makes the night. Michelle Lepre I read about this in the book. He travels a lot for his work and he wanted to trim his tree, dress his tree for the holidays, for Christmas. And he invited 12 friends who didn’t all know each other to send, to come to send two moments of happiness to photos, moments of happiness from their year ahead of time. When they arrived on the table was like scissors, ornaments and their photos, their moments of happiness and inherent oh wow, you sold a house this year. Wow I didn’t know you looked so great in those tights. Oh my goodness, I didn’t know you went underwater scuba diving. It created the context and the conversation for the whole night. He can disappear and the rest of the night ornament making. Then conversations about the past year. It’s like a play. It goes itself, it goes its own way. And people then feel like they’re also part of it. We’ve been talking with respective of your hosting or attending a gathering, which implies you’ve been invited to 1, or you have the people to invite to one. It’s a pretty notorious statistic that in 2021, almost half of Americans reported having three or fewer close friends. There are many people, maybe, who would like to be invited to things who aren’t. What do you recommend to people who Yeah, this would be great if they were invited. This would be great if they felt like they had the people to invite, but they are first have to cross a chasm of social connection to go into your. First of all, yes, absolutely. If you feel a need and a desire to have connection or community, first of all protect that. Don’t be embarrassed of it. You’re not weird or it’s not because you’re not strong enough. Like, that is a yearning that is a beautiful yearning to protect and to feed and to grow and then look into your community. I mean, by the way, this is what public spaces are for. This is what libraries are for. Palaces for the people. Eric kleinenberg’s beautiful book about how libraries serve as this really important social third space. Most libraries have public programming. Again, go meet up. By the way, there are many institutions that have free programming where I’m not talking about going to a museum, going to a class. And so looking at places where there’s pre-existing community, but that’s open to the public. The whole purpose is like we want more people presence and showing up and being consistent and going over and over and over again actually just builds trust. Proximity builds trust. And so going and treating it, highlighting it, making it like you are with this gathering resolution, making it a priority and something that is not a nice to have. That’s something that is fundamentally crucial to your life. So keeping two levels of this conversation in mind, one is my own interest in gathering, and the other is a civic interest I have in gathering. Something that you have mentioned a few times here is individuals and individualism. And everybody talks about late capitalism, which I don’t think is a concept that makes a lot of sense. But I do think we live in late individualism that we have gotten to an almost terminal point. I agree with you in how much we understand ourselves as individuals and our purpose here as individual expression and fulfillment. I’m curious in with the cultures, and the gatherings you’ve explored, how you think about the way we form our individualism now and the tensions that creates for us then living in, being in or creating community. I mean, you may be listening to this and thinking, well, isn’t that the only way to be. Like, how else would you structure society. And I think of so many examples in which again, whether you think of it religiously or whether you think of it as the pursuit of purpose, where the design of the philosophy or of the society is based on each other. I remember Rena Cohen, who you’ve had on the show. I know her beautiful book, the other significant others. One of the things I loved about that book was she went back, in lots of different societies, and I remember many religious traditions where attain oneness of God was actually through the other person. I’m half Indian, and there are many, many different cultures and religions that inform India and a huge in almost every context, whether it’s bahaism, whether it’s Hinduism, whether it’s Sikhism, whether it’s Islam, life and attainment of God is through the others, through community. And there’s a saying in Hindi, mehmaan Bhagwan guest is God. And so there are so many traditions in which the sacredness, the sense of our purpose on Earth is the orientation to the other. By the way, many of these societies are oppressive to the individual. There’s also a reason why so many immigrants come to America. It’s to escape the group is to escape the oppressive community. It’s to have multigenerational household. Absolutely the multigenerational household. I mean, my mother came here in the 70s. She secretly applied to PhD programs. She got into one in Iowa and one in Virginia, had no idea what the difference was begged her parents to go. She’s the third of five children. She was supposed to have an arranged marriage. They were theosophists, and to their credit, her father let her go, and she came to this country in part to think about what a self could look like for an Indian woman, Hindu middle child person, and so much and so many people who come to this country are delighted, are so relieved to have a space, literally just a space to think. There are beautiful, beautiful parts of the protection of the individual. Western Western civilization is based on the right of the individual. The individual deeply matters. But we have gone to late stage individualism, where we’ve fallen off the cliff and completely forgot that the individual also needs group life, that what if we are not also through and with one another. It’s also boring. Something that I see around me, something that I even see in my own family sometimes, is parents who immigrated here in part to find more freedom and more space for individual expression they are surprised or taken aback or disappointed on some level, when to see how far their children take it Yeah, right. But you move from not wanting to have the entire multigenerational family under one roof, and then you’re here and you realize none of the families outside of the nuclear families live under one roof, and often they don’t even live in the same states. And I’ve watched and including my own to some degree. My father came here from Brazil, and we have much more family in Brazil than we have here. And I think actually, among all of us, to some degree, there is a yearning here for the closeness of the family. They’re deeply like I live across the continent from the rest of my family. And you feel that we got what we wanted good and hard. Absolutely, I’m biracial. So my mother’s Indian, my father’s white American. And I remember when my earliest memories of my father. I wonder if he would remember. This was I went to shut my door. I was really annoyed with him. And I shut my door and I yelled out and he goes, what are you doing. And I said, I want privacy. And my father loved being enveloped by my mother’s Indian extended family. This multi-generational and he always longs for it. And this idea do I want privacy and not do I want privacy. What is the right role of privacy in a family, in a relationship to our in-laws? What do we share or not. That actual moment I’ve come back to over and over and over again. Now with my children, because it’s actually a deep question, which is like, where is the right balance between the I and between the self and the other. How do we actually do this. But I think it’s important to ask the question. One of my favorite books by far this year was the loneliness of Sonny and Sonya. It’s so beautiful. So I mean, it sits in my heart like I think about it a couple times a week. Me too. But it’s all about it. Is this dance. Oh, I’m so happy you’re bringing this up. The pride of the parent on sending kids out into America where they can find these destinies and fulfill them. And then the disappointment and the distance, knowing that in some ways you caused it. And then on the part of the kids and again, I feel this, I’m across the country from my parents’ age, and we’re partially here to be near to my wife’s family. But that just speaks to how impossible now the choices are Yeah right. We can’t live near both families. They live on opposite sides of the country. And so you feel the loss. And I think one of the reasons, I love that book and she’s so brilliant. It’s by Kiran Desai and the opening scene is the grandparents are sitting on this balcony and they’re worrying in the morning in Allahabad, in Northern Uttar Pradesh in India in the 90s, and they’re worrying about what the cook will make over lunch and a phone rings and it’s their granddaughter, Sonia, studying in Vermont crying. And the grandmother was like, but why is she crying. And he says, I don’t know. She says she’s lonely, but why would she be lonely. And she. And the grandmother was like, she has Mexican food at that school cafeteria. She has something called Tex-Mex at, can’t imagine after all they’ve done. Like the spoiled brat. I’m saying that in quotes. Sonia is like, lonely in Vermont, and that’s the opening of the entire novel. And I think what is so beautiful about what Kiran Desai does is she basically, puts a jackhammer to this myth that the East is connected and that the West is lonely. To me, the loneliness of Sonya and Sonny is actually that the East is lonely because they are unknown within their own families, and that their roles are stuck and that there’s no way to actually be an individual or to actually have an I-thou relationship, to use our early language. And the West is lonely because it’s the hyperindividualism. And it’s a beautiful book where she actually, through her characters, looks at the entire journey, journey between the oppressive we to the oppressive I. So your read of that book is so much deeper than mine, so I’m so glad I got to. I have a lot related I could really relate to that. Well, I’m so glad I actually got to hear that from you. It’s funny because you brought up something else. I think that’s interesting and speaks in a strange way to the economics of it. All right. You just mentioned how much of the book is it revolves around the cooks and the housekeepers and the. And in America, where the cost of Labor is high, which is wonderful. It’s how we’re rich. You don’t have that which circles back to the. And then you’re doing everything yourself. You’re cooking and you’re caring for the kids and you’re not in an intergenerational household where the weight can be distributed among different people, some of whom are working full time, some of whom are not. And you have stay at home usually women and it has got to give. Something’s got to give. And it seems to me that what gives is community. What gives is hosting percent. It is easier to be alone. Well, we say that, but it’s actually devastating. I should say shorter. It is easier on the question of the day to be alone. Yes like if Americans don’t gather more, if we and there’s so many ways to do it, we will slide even more into authoritarianism because we actually don’t know each other. Every legal expert in authoritarianism basically says the antidote to authoritarianism is connection. It’s knowing your neighbors. It’s knowing that, hey, how bad could they be. Their first concert was a Toni Braxton concert, right. It’s these tiny little social bridges. And part modern life, I think, is not assuming that there’s a way to host. Not assuming. I almost want to go over there and get this framework of a fancy dinner party or whatever your mental model is of what it means to gather out of your head. So there’s a long running argument that authoritarianism or totalitarianism is built on loneliness. It’s a very famous quote from Hannah Arendt’s the origins of totalitarianism, which when I read it out on the show, I got a bunch of emails from political scientists like, we’ve disproven that and can’t wait for the hate mail and whatever. People like to argue about it Yeah but I’ve been thinking about this from a different perspective, because I can come up with lots of examples of communities in America that have been let’s say, very pro-trump and are much more communally structured than mine is. Evangelical churches are overwhelmingly pro-trump and better at much of the gathering and structure of community than Brooklyn creative class, by the way. Trump is a great gatherer. He’s a great host. So what you mean by that, Trump. When I first started, there was a show that was called I forget what it was called, but these reporters would go around and go to all the rallies. This was in 2016, and they went to a Trump rally and I watched maybe it was called the circus. I watched I saw the line, I saw it was a party outside the rally. I went in, they experienced it. It is a temporary alternative world. He’s creating the world you wish you were a part of. There is. There is merch. It felt fun. It felt vibrant. It’s alive. I mean, I’m just looking sociologically. You may not like anything he stands for. He is an excellent host. This I think gets to something that you say that is one we’re more interesting premises for being a good host, which is that the reason for a gathering should be disputable. It’s not just hey, we’re all getting together in a room. In a way, a Trump gathering is very disputable. You have to agree on Donald Trump and a lot of people don’t agree on him. So I’d like you to talk a bit about dispute ability and why you think it’s so important for gatherings when you’re gathering about everything, you’re kind of gathering about nothing and so much. When I actually started researching for the art of gathering, I wanted to basically demystify how anyone can create a meaningful, transformative gathering. You don’t need a fancy house. You don’t need the right silverware. You don’t need to be an extrovert. And I interviewed over 100 types of gatherers who other people always credited with creating transformative gatherings a hockey coach, a choir conductor. And they all had two things in common. One was they didn’t have a mental model in their head of what a hockey practice has to look like, or what a choir practice has to look like. But the second thing is they were O.K not being for everybody. They were O.K for having a disputable purpose that not everyone would agree with. When you are actually thinking about bringing people together to start by asking, why do I want to do this. Or what is the need in this community or in this workplace. And when you actually think about what your specific, disputable purposes, it helps you all the way downstream to figure out who should be there. Where should this be. And a disputable purpose just basically allows people to understand what this is for. Let’s do this in real time. I want to host Shabbat dinners this year. That if I was to name the main kind of gathering I want to do, it’s that what would be the disputable version of that. What would not be. So I’d first step, take a step back and say, why do you want to host a Shabbat dinner. What is your purpose. What is your need. What is it that you’re seeking. Well, I want to build a Shabbat practice. I want to do that for a long time. I get closer and further at the same time, but I’ve gotten better at it for myself. Staying off electronics, building some structures, having the intention not to act upon the world in the way I normally do. But I also recognize that cannot be a real practice if it does not have community around it. And what do you mean by a Shabbat practice. Give me your boundaries. What does that mean to you. I want a 24 hour period in the week when I rest, actually rest in the Jewish spiritual sense. The thing I find very moving about Shabbat, among other things, is the idea that what decides what you can and can’t do is whether you are trying to undertake that action with the intention of creating, of changing, of manipulating, of acting upon the world versus accepting the world as perfect or holy the way it is and simply living in it for a day. And do you have a sense of who you would like to do that with. No because and this has actually been a problem for me, I have a much more specific sense of this and the people than my sense of what I want here is in some ways too disputable. It is not what my children want. They would like to act upon the world at all times. I don’t want to speak for my wife’s interest, but she has her own schedule and needs. Then, you’re inviting people over and they’ve not spent as much time reading Abraham Joshua Heschel as you have. And I don’t want it to just be necessarily a thing that I only invite other Jewish people to. And even most Jewish people I know don’t necessarily have the relationship to this. They’ve one that is either much more intense than mine or less so. So no, that has actually been one thing that has stopped me because I don’t want to impose this weird search I’m on everyone else. I mean, this to me, it’s a beautiful question because it kind of gets to in many religious traditions. People have left the church, synagogue, Temple and in some ways, try to create their own collective practice and then realize why there’s a church in a temple. It’s like the infrastructure, the institutions actually matter. It’s a forced, shared collective. I mean, I would. And if you’re all listening and thinking about starting a gathering that you do regularly, whether it’s a week or every month, here are some of here are elements that allow groups to take off. The first is there’s a beautiful book called. It’s something called the dynamics of small groups. I mean, it’s very nerdy, but basically that does sound beautiful. It’s beautiful to me. Welcome to my brain. One of one of the core elements of that book is they look at what allows for nurturing long term group commitment. And there’s what I consider a magical equation. A group that has long term commitment to it has two things true about it that every member feels like they’re valuably contributing to the group, and that the group feels like it’s valuing valuably contributing to the member. That’s it. And part of what I think for you to think about this Shabbat dinner is, I would create a container, I would experiment, I would think about what you most need. I would start with the invitation. I would think about who you most would want to be part of this. I would think about if you are wanting the same people the same night, which is a huge commitment. And in that case, if the question is, what would allow them to meaningfully contribute to it, it’s probably six or eight or maybe 14 people that you do a lot of work ahead of time to think about Would you like to have this shared collective resolution with me. And so that’s one version where it’s actually building community intentionally boil that down to what makes that the disputable purpose, because the disputable purpose is such an important part of your book that I want to find it. I mean, I think the tangibly here I think actually inherently the category of Shabbat. I’m not Jewish, but so from my understanding of it is Shabbat is in and of itself has a specific, disputable purpose. There is an edge. The Shabbat creates the negative space in the week. It is a specific and disputable purpose to turn off your phone. It is a specific and disputable purpose to be at in modern life, to be at the same place the same week, no matter what may come. It is a specific and disputable purpose to go to the same house over and over and over again, and it’s not for everybody. And so I think you could create if you wanted to. There’s one version where you create a really thick and strong boundary. And you say, actually, I’m going to see are there other people. And there probably are in your community who feel a similar tug. Do they need to be Jewish. Do they not. Do you have specific non-negotiables? I’m basically giving you your social contract. That needs to be true for people to show up. Do they need to show up on time. Does the 8 o’clock PM. Does the lighting of the candles. If you’re going to light candles, does that matter that everyone is there. Can they come when they want. This is when I’m starting to say that boundaries are specific and disputable and you feel uncomfortable creating structures, but actually structures are such clarity because then people understand where and how do I show up. Or is this a Shabbat like experience where you are inviting whoever that you’ve ever met Pablo Johnson, you met somebody in the coffee shop in the morning to come, but you’re creating this temporary alternative world where this is, if you’re going to come into my home, this is what we do here and across cultures. It’s such a relief to be told. I think and I want to be talking about this both. It’s like a good specific example, but I mean it for me to be illustrative because not everybody wants to do a Shabbat dinner. But one thing that I do hear you tracing here that I think is tricky in hosting often is the discomfort between making your vision and your needs, the group’s vision and demands upon the group. So yes, I want something that feels like time out of time Yeah, right. What makes Shabbat a disputatious, to use your term for me, is actually whether or not I make it a dinner or make it a Shabbat. You’re not supposed to be working. One One thing I could do is say ban all conversation of work and politics at this dinner. Great example. And that would make it something different than it would otherwise be. And I feel as a host in any respect, a discomfort with that kind of stricture and structure. I on other people. So this is where it comes to be a social contract. People think invitations are like a carrier of logistics. Date, time and place. Invitations are your opening Salvo of your mini Constitution. I’m serious. It’s your opening Salvo to say I’m going to create this temporary alternative world. Even in that you feel how aggressive that is. No the opening Salvo language Yeah I mean, the first line of your opera use whatever metaphor you want, which this is something I’m trying to do. And by the way, if you are uncomfortable with this, my advice is to actually find a co-host or find two co-hosts that would love to do this with you. And by the way, as anybody who runs any group will tell you anybody who is really passionate about it, you’re going to bump up and think about New norms. You’re going to see what works and what doesn’t work. And so there is a part of you that may need to grow this muscle of like practicing what I call generous authority, which is using your power of the host to protect the guests from each other, to enforce these pop up rules, to connect them. And then if they’re the right structure, this beauty arises and people may realize like, oh my gosh, this is the first time in three years that I haven’t looked at my phone in three hours. Thank you. I love the term used generous authority. Can you talk through what that is so generous authority. People think gathering is all about connection and love, but gathering is also about power because all relationships are also about power. It’s about decision making. And so one of the challenges modern gathering is in part because we’re trying not to impose or. And it comes from a good place. Like, who am I to say how we’re supposed to gather what culture we. What God we pray to. But often in modern life, we under host and a host has power. If you choose to host and part of practicing what I call your generous authority is to use your power for the good of the group to help it achieve its purpose, for the good of the gathering, to help it achieve its purpose. And in part because you are suggesting a thing, you’re creating a thing. Tell them ahead of time. So that they’re not coming in and saying, what do you mean, these pop up rules. What do you mean. I didn’t sign up for this because they didn’t sign up for it. When my husband and I first moved to New York, I read this book. I think it was called. Maybe it was called literary Brooklyn. Very nerdy. And it was where different writers had lived in Brooklyn over 300 years. And I loved the tracing, the geographic tracing of that book. And we came up with this idea because I realized, I don’t really I’m not a native New Yorker. I don’t really know the city. I said, what if we once a month went and spent 12 hours in a neighborhood on foot and didn’t look at our phones. And he was like, great. We moved to the city. Did you have kids at this point. I did not have kids, and we moved to the city and I happened to tell a friend about it, and she was like, that sounds great. Can I join. And we’re like, sure. And again, we weren’t. We were. It was organic. There was a real need. She also was an immigrant to the city, and she was like, yeah, I’ve lived here for four years and I’ve never been anywhere except where I live and where I work. So then she brought a friend. And long story short, over five years we hosted what ended up being called I am here days and there were 12 hours. If you were going to join, you had to come at 8:00 AM or 10 o’clock o’clock o’clock AM, join us for the meal and be there the entire time. No leaving early, no micro coordinating with people who wanted to pop in and out in part. Again, it wasn’t controlling because we were trying to be off our phones. So if your micro coordinating with someone who’s dropping in for the two o’clock PM walk or whatever. And we spent 12 hours in East Harlem, 12 hours in Inwood, 12 hours in Staten Island, 12 hours in Red Hook. And part of what was really interesting about these days is first we learned and we created these boundaries as we started bumping against what was working and what wasn’t working. But the second thing that was super interesting was I get and we didn’t call it Shabbat, but the first four hours and different people would come. Sometimes people would bring friends. It was always a group of about six to 12. 12 was a bit big because we couldn’t find a table, but we would nap in parks, weed, weed, weed, weed, do all sorts of things. And the first four hours everyone was in a great mood and on their best behavior. Then the next four hours they’d start. People would often split off into different side groups and talk. And then by our 8, people started getting cranky, tired, not on their best behavior. Someone might burst into tears because all of their guards are down and we would have these beautiful conversations that were so real, and the timbre of that third of the day was fundamentally different. It felt like what it used to feel like to talk till o’clock in the morning in college room or to hang out as friends. And so much of what ended up happening as this experiment was, we created some structures. Some people were like, I can’t leave. I was like, yeah, but you don’t have to come. This is a very specific thing. I’m not asking you to come, but this is a category that worked for a specific period of time. And then we had kids and we stopped it, and that was O.K too. What you just said about the way the I am here gatherings ended, I think is very real for a lot of people, which is that people maybe had kids and kids having kids, many kids, not that we had a powerful ritual at midnight. No, no, no. Although that would be fun too. Absolutely I think there are a lot of people out there who had a structure of their social life, of their gathering, of their hosting before they had kids and then kids broke it and that now they don’t really know what to do. They know how to do a play date, maybe, but the kids have to go to bed. How do you think about. Like gatherings after becoming parents and making things open to kids, but not completely about the kids. I think people really struggle here. They really struggle, I really struggle. It is a landmine. I will first say like, it might seem like, oh, this is child’s play. Parenting has become political. Parenting styles has become incredibly, incredibly divided, including judgment, judging of one another. And it’s crazymaking. I mean, the surgeon general issued parenting as the latest mental health crisis. And so I would say a couple of things. The first is I think that 0 to 3 is a fundamentally different phase versus 3 and up. So let me take 0 to three first. The first is we keep hearing so much about everybody. Everybody wants a village, but no one wants to be a villager. Like there was this awesome piece in the cut maybe a year ago, and I can’t remember the exact title, but it was something like, can people with kids and people without kids still be friends. One one of the elements of saying yes, they can is first, if you is to choose to still want to be part of a person changing. So becoming a parent is also in New identity. And so part of that is also it’s a relationship across difference. Being a parent and being a non-parent and relationship across difference needs conversation and it also needs reciprocity. So what does that look like. Reciprocity could be like again, if you want to be part of this family life, that’s a big if offering your friends to babysit their kid for a night and letting them go on a date, and if and then the parents being like trusting and teaching the person without a kid how to roll a diaper. So some of that is an intercultural relationship to teach both sides and to ask. So this goes a little bit to the way a society that becomes very individualistic. Yes, changes, but a society that becomes lower fertility changes. When I am in societies, countries where people have many more kids the number of kids like Americans used to just see that the expectation is children just running around underfoot everywhere. Yes, yes. And then here it becomes this very hey, is it O.K if I bring my kids and they which I actually think is O.K, it’s O.K. But it is but also the ways in which in a lot of these, places in which kids are allowed, there’s also kids benefit from being part of around adults. And so they behave differently at a table than often. Many American children behave at a table. And around older kids and around older kids. Take care of them. I did a piece about how to include kids without centering them. And how do you do it. So I’ll give a couple of examples. Again, the age matters. So you. So let’s say over three. We’re just trying to survive until they’re three. I mean this is a real example person who invited us to a New Year’s party and couldn’t get a sitter because it’s New Year’s Eve. And our kids, I think at that point were maybe like 5 and 8 and so they were she was like, just bring them. And so we brought them and there weren’t other kids there. And we wanted to have a good time. We wanted to talk to adults. We didn’t want to be with our kids the whole time, but we also wanted them to have a good time. And so in this case, what my husband did was he my son is really good at foil like foil art, and my daughter at the time loved to draw. And so we took up a foil of aluminum with us. And my son spent the Evening going and asking people what their favorite animal was. And then he’d go away and for five minutes create that animal and then go and hand it to an adult. And the adults were just like amazed. And my daughter would ask if they could sketch, if she could sketch them. And people would sit and just quietly look at her and she’d sketch them. I mean, it was more Picasso than what if your kids lack an unusually party friendly talent. I know it’s not. So forget the talent. A woman wrote me in on Instagram. She said she read this piece and she said, I often take my daughter to the National charity league meetings and she sits and just does her homework and she’s just so bored. She’s on her phone and she said, but then after reading this piece. And again, I forget the exact details, she gave her a little reporter’s notebook and she went around, went and met different members at that meeting and said. Why do you come to the Jr. League. And they left. And she was so excited. The 12-year-old, she had conversations. It wasn’t gratuitous. It was asking about the actual thing. It was scaffolding. And so I think parenting is like providing seeing your kid, knowing who your kid is, setting them up for some amount of success. This is why the age also matters. But then also again, this is not if other kids aren’t there, but actually finding ways to give them scaffolding to based on the way they actually want to spend time, and then to also just know that it’s O.K to be around and to listen to conversation that isn’t for them or about them, but how adults talk. Something you’ve touched on here a few times that I think is worth pulling out, is the idea of gatherings where you are asking people to help you. You talked about the baby shower where people sponge down the House. You’ve talked about kids and inviting people to come learn how to babysit your kid. And this has been a strange lesson for me in my own life. It is so much easier to help than to ask for help. And oftentimes very deep relationships for me are forged when people will ask for help in a way that almost makes me uncomfortable. I had a friend who went through a divorce and just really leaned on me throughout it, and it was a great gift to me because we ended up much closer on the other side of that. And I think in some ways inverts some of what we’re talking about, the idea of the host, making this offering. You making everything perfect and then bringing somebody in to experience the perfection and the structure. There’s something very much else about the host asking for something. And the gift is a vulnerability and the opportunity to be of use. I’d be curious to hear you talk about and at some deeper level, it’s a deep and generous ask, particularly when it’s in a group context, to be the vessel for the question. So what do I mean by that. I had a friend years ago who really, really wanted to quit her job. She was at one of a consulting firm that the moment, they can smell, you’re about to leave. They’re like, here’s a bonus, here’s a raise. And she finally hosted a quitting party. But she hadn’t quit yet. She was scared and she invited eight of us. And she said, I need your courage. Would you come and would you bring. I’m really scared to leave this job. Would you come. And would you bring one piece of art or poetry or a song. Anything that gives you courage. And I was like, wow, what an interesting gathering. And we went and we all she then had us, she told us about she’s really stuck. She knows she’s super prestigious like everyone else. Many people in her life, you’re so lucky and she just needs to jump and leave this job. And we each shared moments where we took risks that no one understood, and we then shared to her like it was for her, ostensibly. And then she said, I’ve invited each of you here because you each are people who I think of as courageous. And I wanted you to thank you for blowing courage my way. And part of what she did there was we all then got this beautiful gift of everyone else’s ways that they are courageous. We also she reified our own identity or sense of self. Like wow, she thinks of me as courageous. I still think about that thing. The poems that were read at that gathering 15 years ago, when I’m terrified of making a decision that feels really scary, I think about. And so part of this is it’s a general it was also need to think about how to make it fun and interesting for folks at some level. But people want to be of use, not used, and most of us share common conundrums. And so instead of being isolated in these tiny little fragments where we’re all like, sadly wondering the same thing when one person of takes a risk, it’s also a Robin. For 30 years, her neighbor told her, we’re not a block that hangs out. And she found with care. A way that with for her that was delightful to begin to shift that start something that you’re getting at there, which I think has you’ve touched on a few times, is the importance of discomfort for something that is going to be really deep and to me that’s important and actually gets us back a little bit weirdly to authoritarianism. So you were saying earlier that if we can’t gather, we’re not going to be a democracy. And I would say that there’s plenty of people gathering in this country who are perfectly happy with at least the turn Donald Trump has been wanting us to take. I recently got I did an episode of search engine, PJ Vought’s podcast, and he had asked me to come on to talk about how do you talk to your family about politics at Thanksgiving. And you remember there was this period in which there was all this content on the internet about how to argue with your uncle at Thanksgiving. And, and in doing that show with him, something that I began to think about was the way that all of that content was actually not about winning arguments, it was about really things. You’re going to win an argument. Thanksgiving it was about protecting people from the Fear of being in a social situation where there was going to be difference that they could not control, because what we’ve been talking about here are gatherings that the host has an enormous amount of control over. And what I have thought is interesting about all of the content and the fear of being home with your families over the holidays is it reveals a way in which we have long lost the comfort and maybe the capacity to be in social situations where we cannot control, where we don’t feel we can just walk out, where we’ve not carefully curated everybody there to make sure we agree on all the fundamental things deeply. And when I think what is going to break our democracy. It’s not that we don’t gather enough, although maybe it’s that too, but that actually we’ve lost the skills not to be in a gathering that we control, but in one that we don’t. I love that. And so I’d be curious to talk a bit about gathering amidst discomfort. Something that I thought was really interesting is you talk about being in college in the book and finding that the kinds of cross-cultural and cross-ideological gatherings that worked best were ones where there was actually an incredibly specific dispute between the people there, not just disputable a relationship, a relationship. Do you want to talk a bit about that and what you learned from that. Because I’m interested not just in your gathering side, but in your conflict facilitation side. I went to the University of Virginia. I’m biracial, as I’ve said. I was very frustrated by the unhealthy racial climate there. The first question people would often ask me is, what are you. And I literally didn’t understand what the question meant. I realized I was supposed to answer racially, what am I. And I learned very quickly that, O.K, race really matters here. O.K got it. And I learned about a process actually through my mother called sustained dialogue. And the University of Virginia has a really strong sense of student self-governance, which means if you have this is your community, if you have a problem with it, do something about it. And so rather than complaining about race, go and figure out do something about it. And so I learned about this process. I was able fortunately this former diplomat Harold Saunders actually helped write the Camp David Accords, retired, was interested in college campuses and race. And he came down and he trained us and we launched these dialogue groups called sustained dialogue. We learned to become moderators. There would be two moderators assigned for the first year, student groups of 10 to 12 students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, to come together with the intention for the entire school year to meet every. I think it was every other week for three hours at a time to deepen relationships, to be able to have trusting relationships, to begin to see across race, to bring the conversations that often happen behind closed doors into this group, to moderate them, and then to begin to see if you can change your relationships, to begin to change the culture. We launched it September 10, 2001, so 9/11 happened in the next day. Wow in part because of the timing, it became a very popular student group. One of the things we found was in the beginning, we didn’t know what we were doing. We were throwing stuff on the wall, and many of the groups were diverse. And while it was kind of interesting and beautiful, as soon as we would come up to a very interesting conversation around Black and white dynamics on the college campus after about 20 or 30 minutes, always, and for good reason. The Latino person, the South Asian person would be like, gosh, this drama again, what about the rest of us. There were two groups that were started by two students that were different. One, if I remember correctly, was college Republicans and LGBTQ student group. And the other group, if I remember correctly, was I think it was Jewish American and Arab American students. And in our moderator groups, basically every single time the other groups, the moderators would come and be like, yeah, it was a fine conversation. And the facilitators of these two very specific groups were electric. We had incredible conversation. We went into territory that we barely ever get to go in. We also don’t know how to handle those groups were transformative because there was a specific and disputable line. Everyone knew why they were there. They were also willing to be together in that. This is 2001, 2002, 2003, and that actually having the boundary of the relationship was so helpful. Is that why you became a conflict facilitator. I think I became a conflict facilitator are in part I actually I’m conflict averse. And when my parents divorced, when they separated, everyone was shocked because they never fought. And I learned from an early day that human connection can be as threatened by unhealthy peace as it is by unhealthy conflict. So then you are a conflict facilitator in the let’s call it the 2014 15 to 2022 2023 period. You have had this outlook and been in these worlds during what people now call wokeness or there was a huge period of social ferment. And we began talking about things that we did not talk about. We being American society very much before that and me too. And, and it felt like everything was changing. And what we could talk about is changing what we could and could not say was changing. And then you watched with 2024 and Trump’s return that shatter into a million pieces. And I think there’s a tendency for actually a lot of people on left to just move on. Like, let’s just not do whatever that was again, whatever it was. I’m curious if you have reflections of somebody who thinks about these questions is what was done well there and what lessons need to be learned if we are going to not just avoid everything that got talked about or pretend it was all wrong, because I think would also be a mistake. How have you reflected on it. I mean, that’s a beautiful question. I think that. The movements like me too. The movements like Black Lives Matter unearthed. Deep empowering power imbalances. They revealed the collective treatment powerfully revealed the collective treatment of Black people in this country. And with me to the cultural if we go back, I feel so long ago to this very simple invitation to put online and to verbalize elements that before, as a woman, one would never talk about these radical radical movements. And I think I would say a couple of things. I think first, structurally, there was not enough focus in actually creating laws to change what had been revealed rather than trying to change workplace culture. The second is, I remember reading this beautiful, beautiful, surprising piece. It was in BuzzFeed back when they had an investigative journalist Department, and it was by Catie Baker. It was a female journalist who went around and actually interviewed college students, men who had been accused of sexual assault. And I remember a quote, and it was something like it was. And they had maybe in some cases been expelled, been suspended, kind gone through all of the structural movements. And the quote was there is no place for me to go. There is no place for me to come back to. I don’t understand what you want me to do. Do you want me to commit suicide. And I remember the quote just struck me in my being. And I think part of what in all of these social there’s the social movement and then there’s what needs to actually shift. What do we actually need to create space for. And then where and how do we repair and allow people to collectively, socially, structurally make amends to come back reformed if they want to. We have no again, it goes back. I know I sound like a broken record. We are. We have so many tools for self-help. We are so impoverished for our tools of group help. And one of the books that I think is a powerful book in this New bookshelf that we’re going to call group help, is Danya ruttenberg on repair and repentance. It’s a beautiful book. She’s a rabbi, and she basically says American culture is pretty bad. Overemphasizes forgiveness, the Christian notion of forgiveness and underemphasizes the Jewish notion of repair and repentance, she says. We don’t have meaningful mechanisms to actually repair with one another. And she says, by the way, everybody causes harm. It shouldn’t be this big scary thing. Everybody, all of us in our friendships and our relationships, everybody causes harm. Everybody has been harmed and everyone has witnessed harm. And we don’t actually we don’t have the tools to actually even understand how to apologize in our interrelationships. And she looks towards the 12th century. Do you know this book or this work, this 12th century Jewish philosopher Maimonides, and through the entire book basically says, these are the steps to think about if I did something, what does it look like to first just understand a name, what I did without even beginning to look to see if you forgive me or not. How do I then begin to understand. How do I change to be a different person. So I would not do that again. And so I think so much of what has happened structurally is like we don’t have tools to help people who used to have power, whether they’re men or whether they’re white people to integrate, to have a New way of being a man in the world, to have a New way to be a white person in the world and a multiracial, multicultural context. I think one thing that went awry is exactly the right word here. But I think about now, as I’ve watched what it has all come to is that there was often an assumption that we knew who was oppressed or oppressor, wrong or right, should be listened to or should be discounted, had too much power, had too little. And my point isn’t even that those judgments were wrong or always wrong. But I think that’s a very political way of thinking about things that our judicial way in some ways that there’s going to be clarity and then you need to figure out what the reparation is. I guess the thing I’m getting at is that we want this period where the point was to understand each other better, and it is very hard for me to not believe we understand each other much worse. And I don’t think that was just a failure of the left or something. I mean, the left has its own failures, I have my failures. But something went profoundly wrong in our ability to sit-in just conflict, but diverse narratives. Uncertainty I mean, I think part of this. And by the way, I think that what the MeToo movement revealed, what the Black Lives Matter revealed was true. Like, it was deep and profound generational cultural work. And, and it’s not always the job of the organizers leading that movement to be the people, then integrating it and doing the work in those communities. And so these are complex questions. But I think one of the elements that goes actually back to our gathering in modern life, which is like we each can think about where and how do we want to shape and help based on where we are. And I’ll give an example. There’s a black facilitator. She’s biracial called Alicia Walters. I’ve worked with her for years. And before the Black Lives Matter matters hit. She had this kind of art project called the Black thought project. And when you walked into Oakland Museum, you would go in and see this maybe 10 foot by 30 foot wall. Huge, huge wall. And it said something like, this wall is for Black thought. Black thought is sacred. And then it was like, what are your dreams. And they had multicultural trained facilitators. I think non-black non-white, if I remember correctly. And if there was a white person who went to reach for a chalk and went to write on the wall, would like with care, interrupt them and say, do you see that this wall is for Black people. And always or often the person would kind of recoil and be like, oh, sorry. Like, what am I supposed to do here. And then they would. And so you don’t want me here. And then the facilitator would say, no, no, no, no. You have an incredibly important role. Your role is and it was also written there to use your power to witness and to honor and to protect. Oh, you mean I’m of use here. Again, you may be listening and be like, oh my gosh, you may be really triggered by this project. It’s one project. It’s one experiment. It’s one person who had seen in her own life. How do you help white people readjust when they’re not the only ones in the room, when maybe for a moment, another community, for whatever reason, is centered and part of this project and why it’s so radical is you’re literally like retraining and holding that moment of rejection. They’re slowing down that moment of like, well, what am I supposed to do here. They’re slowing down their role and they’re just practicing. They’re giving them practice with a different stance, a slightly different stance. And I think I’m biracial, I’m half white. And I was actually raised by a white biological family because of the strange, configuration of my family. My father is white. He remarried a white person. And so in a lot of ways, I was raised both Indian and then white in every two weeks. And so I have deep empathy for being a white person. And I think part of these projects like Alicia’s are interesting because they allow us to just turn the heat down a bit, turn the volume down a little bit. Not putting it on social media for everyone to judge and to literally practice like lambs. Learning New steps. It is a radical thing to be trying to be part of a multiracial democracy. It is a radical thing. Anand giridharadas, my husband always says this no history in the country, no country in the history of the world has tried it. And Anand giridharadas often says, we are falling on our faces because we were trying to leap so high. It’s Alicia’s specific and disputable purpose as a gathering. If you don’t want to go to it, don’t go to it. But I think that Inter stitching and the ability to practice these New roles when you have lost some amount of power is a deeply important way to actually integrate and still feel like we all belong here. One of my worries in this post 2020 period that we’re in very, very post has been the throwing of the baby out with the bathwater. The tendency for people to say, well, the lesson of losing politically is to not try, right. Turns out, maybe talking about systemic racism isn’t good for winning elections. Don’t talk about it, or even begin to persuade yourself it isn’t there. Which is I think, factually wrong. And at the same time, when you’re in a conflictual, multiracial democracy, you have to find ways, at least within the political construct, the construct of political gatherings to bring people in and to make people who have very deep disagreements and differences with each other feel welcome. You were involved with the gathering side of the tsar on Mamdani campaign and the Mamdani campaign in terms of its in-person, actually, its vibes all the way through. It is vibes all the way through. But from him himself and of omnipresent smile your husband wrote a beautiful piece about the rhetoric of his smile, but then all the way down to the ways people gathered together, which I understand you advise him on. Tell me about the thinking behind that, because it’s about a successful social movement with the underlying social, actual in-person socializing, as I have seen in a long time. Absolutely I mean, if Donald Trump is a great host and a great gatherer, Zohran Mamdani is a great gatherer. Like I’m the right place at the right time. I 14 months ago, I have permission to share this publicly. I got an email saying, hey, I took your art of gathering digital class. I’ve read The Art of gathering multiple times. Can we. This is from Mamdani’s. No, this is from Catie Riley, the deputy campaign manager. Could you come. And I want to infuse joy and meaning into politics. And we want to do what we believe in, which is be and love and be part of New York City, not New York City politics. I would argue New Yorkers didn’t vote for Zohran Mamdani because they all became social Democrats overnight. They voted for Zohran Mamdani because he was throwing a party. They wanted to attend. He was throwing a party over and over and over again, whether it was a 1,000 person scavenger hunt across the city or whether it was his early day house parties, and he hosts and his team, and the campaign gathers in a way that has two things which I know you believe also creates a great vibe at a party, which is great vibes and serious policy ideas. Every single time. Absolutely not what I think. It’s a great vibe at a party. I want to defend myself from this slander. But part of one of my parties I didn’t make any talk about. But like, serious ideas. You’re seriously arguing about stuff. You’re serious. I have been to your parties. They’re awesome. Like, the vibes are awesome and people are arguing about all high and low. Like Zohran Mamdani, they hosted a shredding party, meaning literally, they went around in trucks where people would come together and bring all of the paper that they had in their home to shred. And it was like Catie Riley, the deputy campaign manager, is in charge of a lot of these different gatherings. And she kept on saying to me, I actually interviewed her on my group life Substack, and she said, people kept asking me, why are you doing this. And they’re like, because it’s fun. And at those shredding parties, there’d be a DJ, there’d be a dance party. People would also then interestingly get rid of this weight Yeah why shredding. Well, Zohran loves it apparently. Again, I’m telling you host the gathering. You want to attend. He loves shredding. He just enjoys the feeling of shredding paper like it’s such a relief. It’s where are you in New York City. Where are you going to take who has a shredder, right. And so literally go around and have these shredding parties. But by the way, while you’re having all this fun, while you’re like, this is kind of random, oh, government can help me. Government can provide services. They from the very beginning threw this party. And whether it’s how they did a scavenger hunt, they announced it on Instagram and so many people showed up. They ran out of supplies. But then it wasn’t the scavenger hunt was. They got hints and all of the hints were based on past mayors. Even though we don’t agree with this former mayor we really loved what they said about public transit. Oh, the David Dinkins Memorial building, right. And so New Yorkers were running around taking public transport. And so every single party, every single gathering was want to be there, you want to be part of it. And every single rally, they deeply knew what they were for. They knew what they were trying to transform. And it felt the merch is amazing, but it’s not a trick. It is serious vibes and serious policy. And at some level again, New Yorkers didn’t all of a sudden overnight become social Democrats in the same way. Honestly, you said earlier you have to Trump to beat one of his rallies. I actually if you look at some of those exit interviews, people are like, I can’t really believe I’m here. I don’t really think the guy is this. I don’t really agree with all this, but it feels good. It’s created and wrote this in the persuaders. These gatherings can create a sense of home, belonging. I have been to probably more political rallies than your average person, than your average bear, and I have been to some that you leave feeling a sense of communion, a sense of almost spiritual unity with the other people who were in that mass of human beings who became one body with you. I’ve been to many that you leave feeling like. What was that exactly. And it gets me to a question I had while reading the book. People always say that, and I feel that there is nowhere you can be lonelier than inside of a crowd. So from there, what is the opposite of a gathering if it is not simply being alone. What is the opposite of a gathering that nevertheless has a lot of people in a room. I don’t assume gatherings are all good. I actually think you can have a terrible gathering. I think you can have a gathering that leads to exclusion. That leads to people feeling deeply alone. I think of a gathering as anytime three or more people are coming together for a purpose, for a reason, for an intent with a beginning, middle, and end. And so for me, I actually think you can feel deeply lonely at a gathering, and you can also feel deeply content alone. You can feel deeply content at a gathering, so I might frame it slightly differently. I would just say, I think, gather, there’s a healthy relationship to an antidote to being together with other people, which is also being contentedly alone. And I spent a lot of time alone. I refuel alone, actually, one of the interesting things about the art of gathering when I was interviewing all these hundreds people how many people identified as introverts. How many of the hosts who other people had credited with creating these transformative gatherings, identified as people who are often their language loners, slightly on the outside of things, don’t really like people. And I asked one of them, you’re so many of the people I’m interviewing identify as introverts. Why do you think this is. And she said, I am so uncomfortable. At most of the gatherings I go I finally decided to host a gathering that I would be uncomfortable, that I would be comfortable at, that I like, and other people seem to it too. So I also identify increasingly now as an introvert, and I have this. And the thing I particularly dislike is small talk and unstructured conversation. Not because I don’t think people should do it or it’s boring, but I actually find it unclear and stressful. I actually have found a lot of podcast hosts identify that way because podcasting creates structured conversations percent like somebody walks in the door and you’d be like, what do you think about death Yeah and it’s a relief Yeah you have a context for them. You’ve prepared on them. And I do think there’s some dimension of that in gathering two hugely. I mean, podcasts are rituals and you I walked into this studio. There’s a red mug here that I can pick up and hold. You enter where both wearing the equivalent not real clothes in our case is we’re both wearing matching headphones. There are norms. I was primed and briefed ahead of time, but not too much. This is a virtual distributed asynchronous gathering. And so absolutely, it’s a ritual in which you feel very comfortable using your power. And so I would harness some of that. I would harness some of that. And I would take that same resonance and permission and apply it to your Shabbat dinner. I’m going to end on actually something maybe that relates to Chabot dinner, but relates to something that you had talked about earlier, which is the way older societies thought about treating strangers, thought about hosting, but specifically thought about hospitality. And this has been on my mind. I did a show a year or two ago now with Marilynne Robinson, the amazing writer, but she had written a book about the book of Genesis. And so I was preparing for that. I was rereading Genesis and I was so struck by how central hospitality was to the Bible. I mean, so much else that you see in the Old Testament and the New Testament we talk about kindness and compassion, but the idea of welcoming in the stranger, of feeding them of washing their feet, of clothing them. It is constant. And we don’t talk about it now actually, that often. And then I was doing reporting work in Israel and Palestine, and I was so struck by among people from the absolute poorest people who had almost everything was being taken from them, and said they would not talk to me without trying to feed me all the way up to the wealthiest people. And it was very different than doing reporting here, which I’ve had those experiences too. It’s just the hospitality is working in a different way in both of those cultures. I’m curious how you think about not gathering as a purpose, but hospitality as a virtue or part of a human being. I mean, you go into our old books, it is in judeo-christianity at least, and it is all over what you are commanded to do. It is a virtue. What is it. What is hospitality to you. I mean, hospitality is treating the others as you would be treated. Hospitality is loving on the Stranger. Hospitality is opening your heart and your home to somebody who might be in need. And again, I said earlier, gathering is about connection, but it’s also about power. Hospitality is also about defanging the enemy. Hospitality is also a structure to assess and to defang a threat. Hospitality is the ability to first be humans together. Also, when you gather, when you bring people together, it’s not always great, it’s not even just always friction. Like all groups, to become groups have to fight, they have to fight. And so part and so no group is without conflict. I actually the first book is called The Art of gathering, and I just it’s the first time I’m allowed to talk about it publicly I’ve spent the last five years looking at what happens when people come together and when they fall apart. And so I’m, I’m writing a book called The Art of fighting the transformative power of conflict, because so much of what actually that hospitality does and what the gathering does is it actually it’s like water on a garden to allow us to actually grow the muscles so that when we do have difference, when we do have conflict, when we do have to think about whose land this is, we have pre-existing ties in which we’ve drunk the same water and we’ve broken the same bread. And we think yes, we have these different identities and yes, we need to this out, but we’re also proverbially standing on the ground holding hands first and saying, we too are here. What are some of these intention is having heard this and having heard maybe the second half of our conversation is not just to host people like them, their friends, but actually to move beyond themselves and their circles to be in difference, not in sameness. As somebody who thinks a lot about community. What options of that are open to people. I mean, so many. I think first is think about what it depends on where you live. But what pre-existing communities in which there’s shared interests or shared activities that you could join, where there’s actually a lot of different people interested in that. Mahjong is apparently all the rage. And yes, there may be some Brooklyn hipsters playing mahjong, but also Chinese grandmothers and elders are all playing it. Where and how. Whether you go to trivia night and meet people who you would never otherwise meet outside of your social circles, outside of your age group. I think we are deeply, deeply like bifurcated across age. It’s like we are. We are. We assume that to be friends, we need to have the same life experiences at the same moment. Also my husband says, he’s like you. Why would all of the advice I get be from other mothers who have given birth on, in April 2015? It’s versus looking up and looking down and having different generational cohorts. So first is think about what your shared interests are. But the second is if you were wanting to intentionally do this, think about one person in your life or at work or for whatever reason, who might also either be interested in this or be different from you in one vector. And again the Shabbat dinner, start to think with care. Where and how might we want to bring people together. And here’s my last piece of advice is I would not talk about your differences. Pause sometimes a community needs it’s actually talk less sometimes. What a community need is a soccer game. They need to stop talking. They need to play together. They need to have a dance party. They need to have a kickball team. And so much of it is like, don’t be humble about what it might take what form it might take. But if you feel this need and it’s a very important need right now, I mean, Americans have fallen out of love with each other. Find someone else, ideally that might hold a different identity than you. Start building trust and relationship there, and then start asking the question, what would really bring us joy. And what would others want to do with us. Or find a local shared project in your community that everyone can agree on and start organizing around cleaning up the park or building the waterway? I once heard David Brooks say at a conference, no question worthy of pursuit as answerable in a lifetime. And I think gathering is a question, and group life is a question worthy of pursuit. That’s not answerable in a lifetime gathering. And part of gathering underneath is we are gathering all the time in our classrooms and yes, dinner parties in our rallies. And, these are human beings. These are human beings that are dynamic and are going to not always going to what it is. And this is so fascinating. And so part of that is it’s O.K, look learn we’re alive. We’re trying to figure this out. We’re bumbling through this together. Like how interesting. Then always our final question. What are three books you’d recommend to the audience. Well, we actually went over a couple of them, so I was going to say so “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sonny.” But I’ll take the opportunity to actually talk about “The Politics of Ritual” by Molly Farneth. It is a book that came out a few years ago, and she from, I think, Princeton University Press. And she looks at — we think about ritual as a way to basically keep solidifying older values. And she looks at ritual and says, ritual is a tool. And she and looks at all of the different ways where rituals can be also used to change communities. So I love that book. I think it’s a beautiful book that looks at actually the rituals and its relationship to power. My second book was going to be Danya Ruttenberg’s “On Repentance and Repair,” So clearly, we’ve had the conversation we’re supposed to have. You can recommend books you talked about in the conversation. OK, great. So I would really recommend “On Repentance and Repair” by Danya Ruttenberg. It’s a beautiful, careful book in which she takes she basically lays out these five steps of repair from this 12th century philosopher, but she demystifies them and looks at what does this look like interpersonally? What does this look like between organizations and within organizations, and what does it look at the state level. What does it actually look like structurally to repair. It’s a beautiful, beautiful book. And then I would recommend“BoyMom” by Ruth Whippman. The book is called “BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity.” I’m a parent of a boy and a girl. And this is a book — Ruth Whippman is a journalist. Do you know this book? Not well, I’ve heard of it, but —— So Ruth Whippman is a journalist. She was raised by — she says this in the book — a feminist mother who — second-wave generation — put her in gender neutral clothing, and she wasn’t allowed to have Barbies at home. And then she got married and had three boys. And the mental models and the structural framework of how she was parented was simply not working for her, what she was doing. So she went out and basically looked at what are our mental models. And as the feminist revolution expanded, what women can be — not just in the home, not just connection, vulnerability, but power and being out in the world — it didn’t have an answer for men to also be able to equally expand. And if that’s the shot, I would have a chaser of the book “Talk to Your Boys,” which recently came out. It’s by Christopher Pepper and Joanna Schroeder. “16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow into Confident, Caring Young Men.” This is a brilliant book that literally is like, these are the conversations to actually talk to your boys. This is how to have the conversation, whether it’s porn, whether it’s sports, whether it’s bullying, whether it’s power, whether it’s dating. It’s a brilliant and beautiful book. I actually pair both of them together. And the reason I love both of these books is because I think to go back to our earlier conversation, these are ways to help deeply think about how to equip all people with the tools, with group help tools, with the tools of connection across parenting and children, and across also helping boys and young men have thick and connected relational lives. Priya Parker, thank you for gathering with me. Thank you for hosting me.