The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World

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Joe Keohane first saw interaction with strangers as the son of a funeral director. He has since practised talking with strangers as a journalist who has written and edited many types of stories for publications including Esquire, New York magazine, Wired, the Boston Globe and New Republic. He has also been the executive editor of Entrepreneur magazine. This is his first trade book.

An interrogation of why we don't talk to strangers, what happens when we do, and why it affects everything from the rise and fall of nations to personal health and wellbeing, in the tradition of Susan Cain's Quiet and Rutger Bregman's Humankind In our cities, we barely acknowledge one another on public transport, even as rates of loneliness skyrocket. Online, we carefully curate who we interact with. In our politics, we are increasingly consumed by a fear of people we've never met. But what if strangers, long believed to be the cause of many of our problems, were actually the solution? In The Power of Strangers, Joe Keohane discovers the surprising benefits that come from talking to strangers, examining how even passing interactions can enhance empathy, happiness and cognitive development, ease loneliness and isolation, and root us in the world, deepening our sense of belonging. Warm, witty, erudite and profound, this deeply researched book will make you reconsider how you perceive and approach strangers, showing you how talking to strangers isn't just not a way to live, it's a way to survive.

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