In the Company of Strangers
The new book The Power of Strangers makes the case for striking up conversations with people you don’t know — now more than ever.
New Yorkers chatting on the bus in 1976.
Photographer:Owen Franken/Corbis via Getty Images
Several years ago, Joe Keohane was out with friends in Nashville when the lot of them flagged down a cab one afternoon, got in, and saw that the inside was adorned with Christmas lights. (In June, mind you.) “Welcome to the Christmas cab,” the driver said.
Keohane’s journalistic instincts kicked in — he’s a former editor at Medium and Esquire — and he struck up what he recalls was a “very intense, very vivid” conversation with the driver. Turns out the man behind the wheel was Bart Sibrel, the moon-landing conspiracy theorist who was famously punched by Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Along with his ride, Keohane was treated to a memorable yarn about a former astronaut kicking ass.