When Strangers Meet

By: Kio Stark

Narrated by: Kio Stark

Discover the unexpected pleasures and exciting possibilities of talking to people you don’t know—how these beautiful interruptions can change you, and the world we share.

When Strangers Meet argues for the pleasures and transformative possibilities of talking to people you don’t know. Our lives are increasingly insular. We are in a hurry, our heads are down, minds elsewhere, we hear only the voices we already recognize and rarely take the effort to experience something or someone new. Talking to strangers pulls you into experiences of shared humanity and creates genuine emotional connections. It opens your world. Passing interactions cement your relationship to the places you live and work and play, they’re beautiful interruptions in the steady routines of our lives. In luminous prose, Stark shows how talking to strangers wakes you up.

Threaded throughout are powerful vignettes from Stark’s own lifelong practice of talking to strangers and documenting brief encounters, along with a deep exploration of the dynamics of where, how, and why strangers come together. Ultimately, When Strangers Meet explores the rich emotional and political meanings that are conjured up in even the briefest conversations and unexpected connections with strangers. Stark renders visible the hidden processes by which we decide who to greet and trust in passing, and the unwritten rules by which these encounters operate. When Strangers Meet teaches readers how to start talking to strangers and includes adventurous challenges for those who dare.

Implementati substance in the last three chapters

Major part of book is context and practice skills are discussed in the end. Context helps understand why the skills would work. However if you know a bit of psychology from other sources and you have lack of time, you could directly tune into last chapters to get the crux of message. Worthwhile read :)

Why rather than how

The book goes on for too long on why talking to strangers is important rather than how.

I'd still recommend it, but I wasn't interested in the first half of the book

Very interesting..made me take notice !

Interesting material. Made me much more aware of my interactions with people and helped make me more social.

Insight into unspoken social rules of interaction

This book has some really interesting insights about the unspoken rules of social interactions and how to break through these rules and hopefully get into a meaningful conversation or exchange with a stranger

No relevance for me...

I was looking for a book that would help me start conversations with people I don't know - something I am very uncomfortable doing. This book started with promise, but every example seems to be from New York, and often on a subway. Many of the examples were the author's encounters with people she met on the streets in New York that might have initially been preceived as a threat to her safety. None of that applies to my situation, or to the reason I bought the book. Then she told me I was (actually all of us are) the product of institutional racism and white privelege, That did it for me. I would have returned the book, but that option wasn't offered.