Okay, so we'll sit here.
We'll start like usual and talk about what you want to do with your hands.
Right, yeah, like I do need to...
Risees, you have a haircut!
Does this moment feel awkward to you?
It doesn't, so I don't know if it should.
Great news, great news.
If I'm in a five minute conversation, I am like, what am I going to say next?
What's the next thing that I should did I already talk about the weather?
Did I? And then I got real panic.
No, I feel like I can chat with anybody for like five minutes, right?
And then if I run out of things to say in the middle, that's my fear.
Because we are trapped here.
Yes. For the duration of this haircut, I can't just do it like,
well, it was so great to see you, got to run while you're holding my hair.
Yeah.
We could stop talking and I will try to put out like a comfortable chill vibe.
It's, you know, pretty common, so one might say something like,
oh, there's a really good vibe here.
And to me, that is totally bewildering.
How they discern that vibe within a few seconds.
Hi, I'm Julie Beck, a senior editor at The Atlantic.
And I'm Rebecca Rashid, producer of the How-To series.
This is How-To Talk to People.
Here at The Atlantic, I oversee the family section.
And I've also been reporting on friendship for many years now.
So I think a lot about relationships and community.
And I do see often that people struggle to form the close relationships that they really want.
And I think one of the barriers to that is the dreaded small talk.
So I think in this first episode, we have to figure out,
how does one even make small talk?
How indeed.
And what holds us back from the chit chat, from the conversations that help us build relationships.
And what explains that tendency so many of us have to look down at our phones and avoid conversation.
Or hide in the corner at a party and only talk to the people we know.
So we're better to do some research on this than to talk to the ultimate small talk experts at The Hairsalon.
Oh, how are you guys?
Good.
Hi.
Hi, hi, hi.
I just see you.
I feel like, okay, the main thing that I need to ask you is when I'm sitting in this chair.
Okay.
Do you even want to talk to me?
Oh, yeah.
I do.
You can be honest.
I wouldn't hurt my feelings if you didn't want to.
I want to talk to, I have to be here all day.
Right.
So I do need some entertainment.
Okay.
I can't.
So I like talking to people.
I like getting the hot goss.
Okay.
Classic hairdresser situation.
I mean, it feels rude, but in my mind, I've also wondered, like, would you actually be relieved if I was just on my phone the whole time?
And then you could have a break from like being on all the time, you know?
That is totally fine with me.
Like, if you want to be on your phone, I do think of it that way.
Okay, great.
I'm just going to have a break.
I'll just like think about my own things that are going on, organize my brain.
I'm just glad that you're here.
Most hairdressers are very much prepared to talk all day.
I think.
I don't know.
No?
Julie, I can't stop thinking about how much fun we had with Erin Derosa and Mimi Kraft at Senselon in Washington, DC.
I think the women who actually do my hair and it was very fun to get like a peek behind the scenes of what they're thinking the whole time.
I feel like if you want to talk, that's amazing.
It is really entertaining and fun to have conversation and to have like good conversation.
But if you don't want to talk, don't try to talk.
It's like really hard to have a conversation and then it's even more work to like keep it going and try to like fill the silence or whatever.
I'm very comfortable with silence and very comfortable just like doing my thing and you know, someone else doing their thing.
But if you do want to have a conversation, that's also always welcome.
I'm curious, what is it about small talk that makes you so nervous?
I don't, okay, to clarify. I don't know that it makes me nervous all the time.
I think what's interesting about it is it's like you can't really get around it.
Any relationship that you're going to have like has to start with a conversation and you usually start with like the safe topics, the small talk, the this, the that.
So it's more a situation where I am trapped on the train within acquaintance. I don't know that well and we have 20 minutes to fill and I got five minutes of material.
If I'm getting my hair cut or anywhere where you're just trapped with either an acquaintance or a stranger for a long time.
Pulling the shape up a little bit.
You like the layers longer.
Long is, but you still like to have enough.
You have to kind of navigate like how much are we going to talk to each other? What are we going to talk about? Would they rather I just left them alone, but we're both too polite to say so.
I do get in my head a lot about that and I find it very hard to relax sometimes if I am receiving a service.
And like probably if I was just normal and like relaxed and enjoyed the situation, it would make them more comfortable. Like I'm probably putting off a vibe.
It can be extra challenging when the terms of that relationship are not really established in any way.
Like just having a conversation with that person doesn't necessarily mean you're moving towards friendship.
Yeah, you're right. Like the kind of people that are in your life, but that relationship is not necessarily going to grow from what it already is.
But you still need to interact with them and perhaps am I regularly and just like how do you approach that?
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If you walked with me until Wendy's now, I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I'm pretty smooth. I
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will share anything. Sometimes I feel like I don't have anything that interesting to share. Sometimes I feel like I don't have anything that interesting to share. And so then I don't want to talk about myself because like or your T-cations. No. Okay. Cool. That's a lot of people really are that is their number one personal question. Do you have any trips? Yeah. That is a lot of people go to that. I'm so go to that because it's like it's not too personal. Right. But it maybe it gives us something to talk about. Yeah. I'm so go to that because it's like it's not too personal. Right. But it maybe it gives us something to talk about. Yeah. I'm so go to that because it's like it's not too personal. Right. But it maybe it gives us something to talk about. Yeah. I'm so go to that because it's like it's not too personal. Right. But it maybe it gives us something to talk about. Yeah. I'm so go to
that. I say do you have any trips planned? Because I like we got to like we got to dream something up here. It could really go somewhere where you're talking about a trip and like fun things. But the potential for a dead end is it's high. That's how you know you're scraping the bottom of the barrel. Yeah. Sort of like talking about the weather. Yeah. Okay. That's how I feel. I'm going to be self-conscious about that question from now. Sorry. I have no no. It's mean to make you feel like I feel like I'm also going to be like yeah.
That does remind me of something I wanted to ask too because I feel like a lot of what we've been talking about is like ways that the small talk manifests like very uniquely to your job. And so how much do you feel like the skills that you all have here translate into the real world versus what is pretty specific to like this interaction in this relationship? I feel like it translates exactly the same like immediately. For I think you're really good at that.
I struggle with that because sometimes being in the hair salon I'm really in my comfort zone in this weird way and I'll see the same person at like the coffee shop or something and I sort of stumble on my words and I sort of stumped. I don't I think I get like a little awkward. And I think that's more of my I get some social anxiety going on. If it's people I don't know and this goes back to your introvert versus extrovert question.
If it's people I don't know I can do that like small talk thing to an extent, but then I I can't go all the I can't get all the way because it's a bigger setting. There's more people. I'm really good in that like sort of one on one.
Yeah moment.
Like even the hair salon. It really is I think like a safe space in the community because who am I going to tell? I'm not so invested that telling me is going to have like any major impact in their personal life.
They can get things off their chest and feel safe that it's it's not like a risk. Right. Right. And I do agree if you're not having those relationships in your community.
You are missing out on just sort of like it's it's personal but it's casual and there's. Yeah I don't know I don't know how we get to a place where we just accept that feeling awkward won't kill us.
But I'm not there yet.
I'm curious of part of the stress too is that once you start a conversation with someone and if you do start to feel awkward and maybe you're not comfortable being honest right away about the fact that you're feeling awkward and you want to dip out of the conversation it can be hard to do that.
For me a situation that can cause some anxiety is if I am trapped with say like an acquaintance on a train and maybe that train ride is half an hour long and what are we going to do.
And I would love to tell you about a man that I once knew an acquaintance of mine from college who I truly would not remember at all were it not for this moment.
He was a friend of a friend and one day we were both on the same train going down to Chicago together went to school outside of Chicago and so this was like a good 40 45 minute train ride and he pulled the most like amazing Uno reverse ninja trick I've ever seen in conversation to this day.
Which is you know we got on the train and I'm like oh god okay I have to talk to him because we know each other and so we did the very classic like hey how's it going how's the one thing that I know about you it's still good how's the one thing that I know about you it's fine and then we ran out of material.
And he just said it's been so great talking to you I'm going to go read my book now and then we both sat down on opposite sides of the train and we read our books and we took that half hour train ride down to Chicago and when I got off the train we did like a friendly wave and I actually don't think we ever saw each other again.
But I've thought about this man so regularly for the past like 10 years because he just handled that interaction in such a smooth way that you almost never see.
I think we feel kind of more awkward than ever about these kinds of things meeting new people or the conversation elevator and it seems to stop people.
Why do you say you think that we're more fearful of awkwardness than we used to be.
I think maybe some of it has to do with the fact that you know we don't have to interact with people as much as we used to we can do it through our social media or we can get absorbed in our phones or.
Stay in the comfort of our home and stream some show there's all these outs from actually being face to face with people and going through those uncomfortable moments of trying to get to know somebody for the first time or dealing with the prospect that they might reject us that maybe they don't want to hang out and that's a scary thing as well.
So I think there's these alternatives about how we can spend our time that are kind of semi social or faux social.
But I think that's actually damaging because it keeps us from doing the hard work of getting face to face and actually working to build a friendship.
What do you mean by semi social, faux social?
Well, you know, if you're texting back and forth with somebody that's fine, but it's obviously not as good right is sitting down with them for a long dinner and getting into just a deep conversation and same thing with social media.
We've kind of put our best foot forward on social media and we might have some nice interactions but they're not as gratifying as a face to face interaction with somebody.
Is the texting and the faux social interactions to some degree maybe like our way of preparing to go to Wendy's?
Yeah, definitely. That's a good point. The non-line dating, for example, you might send messages back and forth or whatever and that kind of gives you a sense of the person gets the interaction rolling a little bit before you actually meet up when all you really want to do is get face to face and figure out if there might be some kind of chemistry here.
But even in platonic situations it's the same thing we can get stuck mentally preparing for something that sort of happened a long time ago.
One consequence of this fear of awkwardness is people go to parties or they go to bars and they only talk to people they already know.
Have you noticed that in your life?
Oh for sure. Another thing makes me just want to go over and say things I have no business saying to other people.
I just want to say like go meet other people. You're standing here in your group of three you came in with and you look semi-sad.
Go talk to these other people you want to talk to.
So how can we break out of that? Do we really need to break out of that or is it fine to just embrace the safety of hanging out with my existing friends at a party?
My bias would be I don't think that's okay. You know there's all this disconnection going on. So the average person could benefit from more friends and certainly benefit from more friends that they've built some quality intimacy with and they feel they can go to in a time of need.
So if we go with that perspective then yeah you know we should break out of our shell and we should cross that junior high dance floor of sorts and go talk to somebody new knowing that this person might reject us or knowing that the interaction might be a little bit awkward but that's okay.
I mean to some degree it's a justified fear. You probably will feel awkward like you actually aren't going to make it through this life like without being awkward in social situations.
But I think like time made me realize that part of what makes things so awkward sometimes is trying to pretend that they're not.
Like all of his advice would boil down to just be honest. Just go up to those people that you don't know at the party and say I don't know anyone at the party.
And I hang out with you and like I would never in a million years have thought to say that to somebody like I would probably try to be like nonchalant by the punch bowl and like sidle my way into a conversation and hope it was just cool and nobody noticed that I didn't really belong there.
So some of what is really challenging about small talk is it's so situational small talk with someone you admire on a train is different than small talk on a first date. And then there's also each individual person's reactions and like whether they want to be left alone and how open they are to conversation and how awkward you feel and how awkward they feel.
But I think there can be a middle path where you read the room a bit maybe you have some questions in your back pocket and you know there's certainly times where I live my headphones in and I'm looking at my phone and I don't really want to be spoken to either but I think we have to bear in mind what we miss out on if we do that all the time.
Yes, and I think that's exactly what I wonder is if what gets lost is all of us getting used to not trying to start up a conversation with anyone.
Yeah, out of out of fear or out of fear that it won't lead anywhere it doesn't mean anything.
Yeah, I remember me and Aaron talking a lot about how fueled they actually are by all the conversations that they have at work and like not just purely for entertainment value but also like feeling like these conversations are meaningful and they are bringing something unique and special into their lives.
Although it was reassuring for me to hear that they struggle with it sometimes too. I was surprised by that. Yeah, I know. It's just that they were interested in people and just like having a genuine curiosity for the person that's in front of you feels conversation as meta as that is we got to talk about it.
We got to talk on that note but it's so great making a podcast with you and I'm going to go read my book now.
That's all for this week's episode of How to Talk to People. This episode was produced by me Rebecca Rashid and hosted by Julie Beck editing by Joss Lynn Frank and Claudine Bade.
Fact check by Anna Alvarado. Our engineer is Rob Smersiac.
