Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

The Ezra Klein Show

Feb. 3, 2026, 5:02 a.m. ET

Video

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

Priya Parker, the author of “The Art of Gathering,” shares her advice for orchestrating more meaningful gatherings and why that matters for our civic life, as well as our social lives.CreditCredit...The New York Times

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

Priya Parker, the author of “The Art of Gathering,” shares her advice for orchestrating more meaningful gatherings and why that matters for our civic life, as well as our social lives.

This is an edited transcript of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the episode wherever you get your podcasts.

This episode was supposed to be our second of the year. I loved taping it. It was one of my favorite conversations.

But then the news cycle accelerated and never stopped. The Trump administration attacked Venezuela and arrested the country’s president. There were shootings in the streets of Minneapolis. It never felt like the right moment for the discussion.

At the same time, I don’t think this episode, which is about gathering and community and what it means to be more deeply together — within both similarities and alliances and differences and disagreements — is a break from politics. I think this is actually, in some ways, the core of politics.

My motivation for this episode was also more personal. One of my resolutions this year is to spend more time hosting and to make those gatherings more meaningful — to be a better member of my own community. And the person with whom I wanted to talk about that is Priya Parker, the author of the book “The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters” and the Substack Group Life.

Priya thinks about gathering, hosting and community differently than anyone I’ve met. The way that Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign created community, which was one of its most beautiful aspects, was partially built on her work and her advice.

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.

These next few years are going to be long. I am 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.

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 as essential as any political, civic or personal discipline could possibly be right now.

Ezra Klein: Priya Parker, welcome to the show.

Priya Parker: Thank you for having me.

I wanted to begin with treating the decision not to gather, not to host, as rational.

What makes gathering hard and intimidating? Why do people choose — because they are choosing — not to do it?

We are busy. Many of us are overworked. We are constantly tethered to our phones. We are suffering from a child care crisis. We no longer live with intergenerational families that also allow us to gather intergenerationally. We have beliefs about what we need to do or be in order to host other people — which, by the way, are very modern beliefs.

Our ancestors, whichever community you come from, if you go back long enough, were 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 are 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, the hyper-individualized context of self-care and self-help allows us to first focus on what the needs — or 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 [expletive] 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, right?

We literally have a self-help revolution. But self-help doesn’t actually help us answer the questions of our shared life. What we actually need are also tools for group help.

I’ve thought a lot about the rhetoric around boundaries that has been 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. In group life, in a group and gatherings, people think it’s all about the “we,” right? It’s only the “we.” But that is a cult.

Group life is actually about the dance between the “We” and the “I.” So if you have too much “we,” it’s a cult, and if you have too much “I,” it’s a federation.

And so part of group life is the tools we have to make sure we have enough voice as an individual, and 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 serve me.

Boundaries, at some level, are the healthy line drawings for the space of the “I.” But particularly in therapy — and I love therapy, I’m in therapy, therapy has helped many people in my family change their lives — we are using therapy to draw boundaries over bridges. We are using therapy — the excuse of therapy — to focus on separation rather than connection, versus the tools of repair, versus the tools of the mess of relationship, versus the tools of thinking about how 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 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 DoorDashing our food, sitting alone in our twin bed, watching Netflix. Then you don’t have the messiness of actually being in relationship with other really annoying people, with the friction of other people.

I became obsessed with this quote over the past year from Bernard Crick. It’s in his book “In Defense of Politics.” He says: “Politics involves genuine relationships with people who are genuinely other people, not tasks set for our redemption or objects for our philanthropy.”

Whew!

Contained in that is something that you’re getting at, which is that other people are difficult.

And also: Other people are inherent to the interaction. When I listen to you, I think of Martin Buber.

Thank you. [Laughs.]

When I listen to that quote, I think of Martin Buber. [Chuckles.]

Oh, not just me. [Chuckles.]

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 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 and who have never made it through Buber’s “I and 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. And by the way, this is in many cultures. There’s a Hindu version of this. Basically, every interaction between us is a relationship that, whether or not you believe in God, has the potential to be holy, to be sacred.

And when “I” turn you into an “It” — into an object — we’ve basically broken that sacred interaction.

What turns me into an “It” for you?

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 people.

It’s transactionalizing. It’s using people rather than making them of use.

I’ll give a simple example. Right now, when people are thinking about how to gather, a lot of the reasons I think people don’t gather is because a lot of the gatherings are vague and diluted, and you would actually rather be home Netflixing and chilling.

I saw this recently 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, having the best time. 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, but I want to talk about cleanliness for a minute.

You were talking about how 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 the culture around me sets, that the people around me believe in, 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.

I want to see and be with other human beings, but with the 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.

But I remember reading in 2008 that the U.N. said it was the first year in the history of humanity when more people lived in cities than villages. Which means that people are uprooted.

I mean, I’m biracial, I’m bicultural, I’m bireligious. I grew up in two different households that were also both joint households, and I can tell you that most families are making stuff up.

I’ll give a simple example. Two of our best friends, 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.

You guys are intimidating.

[Klein and Parker chuckle.]

We wanted to honor them. We come from cultures on both sides that feel like you dress for yourself and 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 people whom they’re actually letting into their life.

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 of modern life is you get to decide.

There’s a woman who wrote to me. Her name is Ryan. She and her closet friends have a gathering that’s called the Half-Assed Potluck. They do it every week. 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 up something on the way. Wear sweats. Don’t clean. Use paper plates. They eat what appears, they pile onto the couch, talk, laugh. Everyone is home by 8:30.

The most successful shift in my own community since moving to New York has been that there’s another couple who have kids around our kids’ age, and we spend a lot of time on the weekend co-caring — and we have a name for it. But what emerged then over time was a rule that you do not have to clean your house or put on real clothes before you all get together.

That’s very good. It’s such a relief!

So then you can hang out at 8:00 a.m., when the kids are actually up and before you’ve done anything.

One hundred percent.

Somehow in that, we freed ourselves from expectations that would have made this much harder.

Yes. It’s a beautiful example.

But how do you free yourself from those expectations?

Exactly what you’re doing. You and your wife are feeling a need, right? Which is company, I imagine, on the weekend — 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. Names create stories.

You’ve actually given it a wardrobe — no real clothes. That actually creates context. It creates permission. You’re creating this permission around you. And what was the other rule?

No cleaning.

Yes, no cleaning. So part of what you’re doing — 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 modern life that’s both beautiful and terrifying is that 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? [Laughs.]

Yes, I’m serious. Part of modern life is that we are so confused. Most people don’t want structure to tell people what to do when they get in their home.

A woman wrote me a few years ago. Her name was Robin. She and her husband moved to a block outside of Chicago, and she wanted to be part of a neighborhood where people hung out. 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 who had never met to come over and talk to each other, it might not work.

So she started priming them. 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. She went to VistaPrint — she told me she really thought about this — and there were invitations, and it was like: Come to our house for bagels and brew. And if you’d like to come, there are three questions: Please tell us your email, the number of years you’ve lived on this block and two or three interesting facts about you.

She practiced what I call “call and response.” She’s actually creating buy-in.

And then these cards start coming back: My dream is to go to Poland to visit my people. And: I once delivered a baby — not ours.

When they came, they were given name tags with the number of years they had lived on the block, and then a second name tag with three interesting facts, but it was someone else’s — another neighbor’s.

So they all mingle. It’s casual, it’s in the morning, it’s coffee and bagels. And then right when people are about to leave, she brings out a cake with “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 — they’d be like: Buzzer 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.

[Chuckles.] OK.

And the other was: What an incredible act of generosity. 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 up Robin. She loved doing it. She loved sending her girls out 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 easing the barrier of entry of hosting.

Pableaux Johnson passed away almost exactly a year ago. And somebody from my Group Life community 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. They happened every Monday night. It was the same menu every Monday night: red beans and cornbread. He did it around the table that his grandmother left him. No table was ever the same people twice, and it was everybody from his neighbors to visiting actors filming a TV show to somebody whom he literally ran into in the coffee shop.

I posted this on Instagram, and it went totally viral. It was the most viral post I had ever posted at that time. And what was so interesting to me was when people posted it, the majority of the people said [feigns crying]: I wish someone would invite me to something like this.

And I’m thinking: Host it. You host the dinner. This assumption of: Why aren’t I getting these invitations? It’s like: No, no, no, no — you host the red beans and cornbread dinner. It’s enough.

Just start. Just start. We’re all sort of sitting there being like: I wish I were invited. Host! One of the most powerful ways to begin to feel like you belong to a place, especially if you’ve moved to a new 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.

The art of gathering is like in the movie “Ratatouille”: “Anyone can cook.” Anyone can gather.

I really feel strongly that as much as “Ratatouille” pretends that is its message, that is not its message.

[Laughs.] Exactly. Exactly.

Anybody with incredible gifts can cook? Any generationally talented rat can cook? [Chuckles.]

[Laughs.] OK, you watched and analyzed that movie, and I don’t disagree with you. But at some deep level, we’re almost overcomplicating it. Our ancestors in any community that we moved to did this.

And so 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 being willing to hold that anxiety and be like: Oh, I must care about this.

So first is to say: 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.

Second is to start with something you think would be delightful, because that’s going to give you some energy. Co-host something with people. I know of a guy who got a champagne magnum. He worked at an ad agency years ago. His boss didn’t drink, and so he inherited this massive bottle of champagne. He was like: What the heck am I going to do with this?

He invited eight friends to share the bottle. 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.

Michel Laprise — I wrote about this in the book — he travels a lot for his work, and he wanted to dress his tree for the holidays, for Christmas. He invited 12 friends who didn’t all know each other to send two photos ahead of time of two moments of happiness from their year. When they arrived, on the table were scissors, ornaments and their photos, their moments of happiness. And he heard: Oh, wow, you sold a house this year? And: Wow. I didn’t know you looked so great in those tights. And: Oh, my goodness, I didn’t know you went underwater scuba diving.

It created the context and the conversation for the whole night. He could kind of disappear. And the rest of the night, ornament making, then conversations about the past year — it’s like a play. It goes its own way. And people then feel like they’re also part of it.

We have been talking from the perspective of hosting or attending a gathering, which implies you’ve been invited to one or you have people to invite to one. But it’s a pretty notorious statistic that in 2021, almost half of Americans reported having three or fewer close friends.

There are many people who perhaps would like to be invited to things who are not. What do you recommend to people who first have to cross a chasm of social connection?

Yes, absolutely. If you feel a need and a desire to have connection with community, first of all, protect that. Don’t be embarrassed by it. You’re not weird; it’s not because you’re not strong enough. That is a beautiful yearning to protect and to feed and to grow.

And then: Look into your community. This is what public spaces are for. This is what libraries are for — “Palaces for the People,” Eric Klinenberg’s beautiful book about how libraries serve as this really important social third space. Most libraries have public programming. Go meet up. There are many institutions that have free programming. Go to a museum, go to a class. Look at places where there’s pre-existing community but that’s open to the public.

The whole purpose is: We want more people, presence and showing up.

Being consistent — going over and over and over again — actually builds trust. Proximity builds trust. So go and make it a priority, something that is not only nice to have but that’s fundamentally crucial to your life.

I want to keep 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.

You have mentioned individuals and individualism a few times here. 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.

Interesting. I agree with you.

And that we have gotten to an almost terminal point in how much we understand ourselves as individuals and our purpose here as individual expression and fulfillment.

With the cultures you know and the gatherings you’ve explored, I’m curious 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.

You may be listening to this and thinking: Well, isn’t that the only way to be? How else would you structure society?

And I think of so many examples — 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.

Rhaina Cohen, whom 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 that she went back and looked at lots of different societies and many religious traditions where the attainment of God was actually through the other person.

I’m half-Indian, and there are many, many different cultures and religions that form India. And in almost every context — whether it’s Baha’i, whether it’s Hinduism, whether it’s Sikhism, whether it’s Islam — virtue and attainment of God is through the other, through community.

There’s a saying in Hindi: “Atithi devo bhava”: “The 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.

And by the way, many of these societies are oppressive to the individual. There’s also a reason so many immigrants come to America. It’s sort of to escape the group. It’s to escape the oppressive community. It’s to have a self ——

The multigenerational household.

Absolutely. I mean, my mother came here in the 1970s. She secretly applied to Ph.D. 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’re theosophists, and to their credit, her father let her go.

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 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 civilization is based on the rights 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.

What are we 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 are then surprised or taken aback or disappointed on some level to see how far their children take it.

Yes.

You move from not wanting to have the entire multigenerational family under one roof, and then you’re here, and you realize that none of the families outside of the nuclear families live under one roof. Often they don’t even live in the same states — including my own.

My father came here from Brazil, and we have much more family in Brazil than we have here. And I think among all of us, to some degree, there’s a yearning here for the closeness of the family there.

Deeply.

I live across the continent from the rest of my family, and you feel that we got what we wanted, good and hard. [Laughs.]

Absolutely. I’m biracial — my mother is Indian, and my father is white American. I remember one of my earliest memories of my father — I wonder if he would remember this — was when I went to shut my door. I was really annoyed with him, and I shut my door, and I yelled out, and he said: What are you doing?

I said: I want privacy! And he opened the door, and he said: In India, there’s no such thing as privacy! [Laughs.]

My father loved being enveloped by my mother’s Indian extended, multigenerational family. He always longs for it.

And this idea of: 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: Where is the right balance between the “I” and the “We”? Between the self and the other? How do we actually do this?

I think it’s important to ask the question.

One of my favorite books by far this year was “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sonny,” by Kiran Desai.

Ah! It’s so beautiful.

It sits in my heart. I think about it a couple of times a week.

Me, too. Oh, I’m so happy you’re bringing this up.

But it’s all about this dance of 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 as they 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. We can’t live near both families. They live on opposite sides of the country.

Yes, one has to choose.

And so you feel the loss.

I love that book. Desai is so brilliant. The opening scene is of the grandparents sitting on this balcony 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. A phone rings, and it’s their granddaughter Sonia, studying in Vermont, crying.

And the grandmother is 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 the grandmother is like: She has Mexican food at that school cafeteria. She has something called Tex-Mex. They can’t imagine, after all they’ve done, the “spoiled brat” — I’m saying that in quotes — that Sonia is lonely in Vermont. And that’s the opening of the entire novel.

I think what is so beautiful about what Kiran Desai does is she puts a jackhammer to this myth that the East is connected and that the West is lonely. To me, “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny” is actually that the East is lonely because they are unknown within their own families, and their roles are stuck, and there’s no way to actually be an individual or to actually have an “I–Thou” relationship, to use our earlier language. And the West is lonely because of the hyper-individualism.

It’s a beautiful book where she actually, through her characters, looks at the entire journey between the oppressive “We” to the oppressive “I.”

So your read of that book is so much deeper than mine.

[Klein and Parker laugh.]

I could really relate to that book.

Well, I’m so glad I actually got to hear that from you.

It’s funny, because you brought up something else that’s interesting and speaks, in a strange way, to the economics of it all. You just mentioned how much of that book revolves around the cooks and the housekeepers. 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: 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. You have to stay at home — women, usually.

Yes, something has got to give.

And it seems to me that what gives is community. What gives is hosting.

One hundred percent.

It is easier to be alone. Or I should say: It is easier on any given day to be alone.

Well, we say that, but it’s actually devastating. If Americans don’t gather more — and there are 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: Hey, how bad could they be? Their first concert was a Toni Braxton concert! It’s these tiny little social bridges.

And part of modern life, I think, is not assuming that there’s a way to host. 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. There’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 being like: We’ve disproved that.

[Klein and Parker laugh.]

Can’t wait for the hate mail.

Whatever — people like to argue about it. 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 structured community than the Brooklyn creative class. [Laughs.]

Absolutely. By the way, Trump is a great gatherer. He’s a great host.

Say what you mean by that.

When I first started, there was a show, I forget what it was called — maybe it was called “The Circus” — but these reporters would go around to all the rallies. This was in 2016. And they went to a Trump rally, and I saw the line and saw it was a party outside the rally. They went in, they experienced it.

It is a temporary, alternative world. Trump is creating the world you wish you were a part of. There is merch. It felt fun. It felt vibrant. It’s alive.

Sociologically, you may not like anything he stands for — but he is an excellent host.

This, I think, gets to something that you say is one of the 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.

One hundred percent.

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 disputability and why you think it’s so important for gatherings.

When you’re gathering about everything, you’re kind of gathering about nothing. When I actually started researching for “The Art of Gathering,” I wanted to 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.

I interviewed over 100 types of gatherers whom other people always credit 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. The second thing is they were OK not being for everybody. They were OK having a disputable purpose that not everyone would agree with.

When you are actually thinking about bringing people together, 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 purpose is, it helps you all the way downstream to figure out: Who should be there? Who should not 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. If I were 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 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’ve wanted 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. [Laughs.] Because — and this has actually been a problem for me — I have a much more specific sense of this, and 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. [Laughs.] I don’t want to speak for my wife’s interests, 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. 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 had something much more intense in mind, 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 on everyone else.

Yeah, absolutely. This to me is a beautiful question because it kind of gets to how, 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 and a temple. The infrastructure, the institutions, actually matter. It’s a forced shared collective.

If you’re all listening and thinking about starting a gathering that you do regularly, whether it’s every week or every month, here are elements that allow groups to take off: There’s a beautiful book called “Small Groups as Complex Systems.” It’s very nerdy.

That does sound beautiful. [Laughs.]

It’s beautiful to me. Welcome to my brain.

One of the core elements of that book is that it looks 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 valuably contributing to the member. OK? That’s it.

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 whether you want 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 you do a lot of work ahead of time to think about: Would you like to have this shared collective resolution with me?

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 tangibly here.

I think, inherently, the category of Shabbat — I’m not Jewish, but from my understanding, Shabbat in and of itself has a specific disputable purpose. There is an edge. 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, in modern life, to be at the same place, the same day of the 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.

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 if there are 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, which needs to be true for people to show up. Do they need to show up on time? If you’re going to light candles, does it 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 whomever you’ve met? Like Pableaux Johnson: You met somebody in the coffee shop in the morning, invited them to come, but you’re creating this temporary alternative world where 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 want to be talking about this both because it’s a good specific example, but I also mean it to be illustrative, because not everybody wants to do a Shabbat dinner. One thing that I do hear you tracing here that I think is often tricky in hosting 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. What makes Shabbat “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 thing I could do is, say, ban all conversation of work and politics at this dinner, and that would make it something different than it would otherwise be.

Great example.

And I feel as a host, in any respect, a discomfort with that kind of stricture and structure on other people.

So this is where it comes to be a social contract. People think invitations are 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. [Chuckles.]

No, I don’t.

The “opening salvo” language.

Yes. Well, I mean, the first line of your opera — use whatever metaphor you want — which is: This is something I’m trying to do.

And by the way, if you are uncomfortable with this, my advice is to find a co-host, or two co-hosts, who would love to do this with you. And 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 see what doesn’t work.

And so there is a part of you that may need to grow this muscle of 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: 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 you use — “generous authority.” Can you talk through what that is?

So generous authority: People think gathering is all about connection and love. Gathering is also about power, because all relationships are also about power. It’s about decision-making. One of the challenges of modern gathering is in part because we’re trying not to impose — and it comes from a good place. Like: Who am I to say how we’re supposed to gather or what God we pray to?

But often in modern life, we underhost. And a host has power, if you choose to host. And part of practicing your generous authority is to use your power for the good of the group — 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 being like: What do you mean these “pop-up rules”? 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 “Literary Brooklyn” — very nerdy — about different writers who lived in Brooklyn. I loved the geographic tracing of that book.

And we came up with this idea — because I realized I’m not a native New Yorker, I don’t really know the city: What if once a month we went and spent 12 hours in a neighborhood on foot and didn’t look at our phones? And my husband was like: Great.

Did you have kids at this point?

I did not have kids. And we moved to the city and happened to tell a friend about it. And she was like: That sounds great. Can I join? And we said sure. And again, it was organic. There was a real need. She also was an immigrant to the city. And she said: 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.

There were 12 hours. If you were going to join, you had to come at 8 a.m. or 10 a.m., join us for the meal and be there the entire time. No leaving early. No microcoordinating 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, and you’re microcoordinating with someone who’s dropping in for the 2 p.m. walk or whatever. We spent 12 hours in East Harlem, 12 hours in Inwood, 12 hours in Staten Island, 12 hours in Red Hook.

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.

The second thing that was super-interesting was the first four hours, everyone was in a great mood and on their best behavior. 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 — and we would nap in parks and do all sorts of things.

Then the next four hours, people would often split off into different side groups and talk. And by Hour 8, people started getting cranky, tired, not on their best behavior. Someone might burst into tears because all of their guard was down. And we would have these beautiful conversations that were so real. The timbre of that third of the day was fundamentally different. It felt like what it used to feel like to talk until 2 a.m. in a college room or to hang out as friends.

So much of what ended up happening with this experiment as we created some structures was some people were like: I can’t leave? And I was like: Yeah, but you don’t have to come. This is a very specific thing. I’m not asking you to come.

This is a category that worked for a specific period of time. And then we had kids, and we stopped it. And that was OK, 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 ——

They had kids.

Yes. Meaning kids ended up ——

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 now they don’t really know what to do. Maybe they do a play date, but the kids have to go to bed.

How do you think about 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 land mine, I’ll first say. It might seem like this is child’s play. Parenting has become political. Parenting styles have become incredibly, incredibly divided — including judging one another. And it’s crazy making. I mean, the surgeon general issued parenting as the latest mental health crisis.

I would say a couple of things. Th