How to Talk to People: How to Know Your Neighbors

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A commitment to knowing our neighbors can help us feel more connectedand may allow us to experiment with the feeling of being known. In this episode of How to Talk to People, author Pete Davis makes the case for building relationships with your neighbors and offers some practical advice for how to take the first steps toward creating a wider community. This episode was produced by Rebecca Rashid and is hosted by Julie Beck. Editing by Jocelyn Frank. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Engineering by Rob Smerciak. Special thanks to A.C. Valdez. The executive producer of Audio is Claudine Ebeid. The managing editor of Audio is Andrea Valdez. We dont need you to bring along flowers or baked goods to be a part of the How to Talk to People neighborhood . Write to us at howtopodcast@theatlantic.com. To support this podcast, and get unlimited access to all of The Atlantic s journalism, become a subscriber . Music by Bomull (Latte), Tellsonic (The Whistle Funk), Arthur Benson (Organized Chaos, Charmed Encounter), and Alexandra Woodward (A Little Tip). Rebecca Rashid: Julie, tell me about your relationship with your neighbors. Julie Beck: In our apartment building, its a huge apartment building. Its basically the size of a whole city block. And there are tons of people there. The only people whose names I even know are my immediate neighbors, because we share a roof patio. Like, I can see them over the fence. And when they first moved in, I remember my partner and I were gardening on the roof, And I was like, Joe, we need to introduce ourselves to them. And he was like, Nope, were not going to. He was like, I dont want to. You can do that. We did exchange names and say hi, and that felt like a big victory. However, we immediately thereafter went back to ignoring each other. Every time we see each other on the roof, maybe theres a small wavebut like, thats it. Beck: Hi, Im Julie Beck, a senior editor at The Atlantic. Rashid: And Im Becca Rashid, producer of the How To series. Beck: This is How to Talk to People . Beck: Its really strange to think that neighbors are the people who are literally closest to you, and yet so many of us dont know them at all. Pete Davis: You know, Id walk around town, and Id walk around the neighborhood and Id be grumpy that everyone was so cold. And what are people like these days? They werent like this when I lived here 10 years ago. [ Julie: Laughter. ] But then I started practicing, you know? Well: Im kind of like them, too, because Im not reaching out to them. You know? Beck: Pete Davis is a civic advocate and the author of the book Dedicated: The Case for Commitment in an Age of Infinite Browsing . He thinks one reason that neighbors dont always bother to get to know one another is that our society has commitment issues. Davis: What I noticed was that all the people that were giving me hope and giving my peers hope had in common was that they were all people who decided to forego a life of keeping their options open and instead make a commitment to a particular thing over the long haul. Beck: So what does keeping our options open have to do with our sense of feeling like were connected to our community? What exactly about committing helps us feel connected? Davis: You know, I moved back to my hometown after school. And I was gliding on the surface of everything when I moved backjust trying to get a sense of the place againand I was feeling down on the place. Im like, Why did we move back? Maybe we shouldnt have moved back. Am I just moving back because I have this nostalgia? You know, all these things. You know, when you think about becoming friends with a neighbor, those fears that I mentioned of commitment are fears that are present with you. If I have to commit every Thursday at 7 p.m. to go to this meeting, who knows what Ill miss out on. Beck: I do feel like there is a common refrain these days that people just dont know their neighbors like they used to. Is that true? Was there ever a time when Americans were really good at getting to know their neighbors? Davis: Yeah; I think it is true. I think, you know, theres always been a spirit of nostalgia, but we actually have data to show that this type of nostalgia might be correct. The great cite here is Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam: the book that was kind of famous in the early 2000s about the decline of community in America. And he has data set after data set, graph after graph, that show that this is the case. So neighbors in the broad sense of the termyou know, people in your town. You look at any angle on it, and were seeing a decline. So between the 1970s and the 1990s, the amount of club meetings that we went to per year was cut in half. The amount of people serving as an officer in a club, the amount of people attending public meetings: all major declines. Membership in religious congregationsit was 75 percent of Americans at the mid-century mark, and now, in the last few years, it crossed under 50 percent, you know? You look at informal socializing: Putnam was able to find the national picnic data set. Where in the mid-70s, we went on an average of five picnics a year with our neighbors. Beck: Oh, my. [L aughter. ] Davis: And that was down to two by the 90s. Beck: Bring back picnics! Oh, my God. Davis: Bring back picnics, and people doing dinner parties. The amount of people that say they have no friendsyou know, in 1990, that was only 3 percent of Americans. In 2021, it was 12 percent. And so we do have numbers that show were in a neighboring crisis. Beck: And well, I know weve already been talking about this with the spicy picnic data, but can you give us kind of an overview of how Americans relationship with their neighbors has evolved in the last 50 years? Davis: Yeah. There was a famous essay even written back in the 70s about the early rise of back patios. It was by Richard Thomas. And, you know, the front porch used to be the iconic appendage to a house. And starting in the 70s and 80s, interest in back patios started growing and then exploded in the 90s and 2000s. And now when youre watching HGTV, or being toured in a new house or a new build by a realtor, theyre going to talk more about the back patio than the front porch. And both of those are socializing. The difference is the back patio is friends you already know, whereas the front porch is an opportunity to meet the people that start as strangers who live around you and turn them into friends that you know. Which is much less likely if the main socializing area is in the back of your house than in the front of your house. And because its a front porchmaybe you dont know this person yet. You dont feel comfortable having them in your house. But we used to design our houses in a way that had this liminal space between kind of stranger and intimate privacy where community is built. Beck: Maybe also a part of the barrier to talking to our neighbors is that we dont have a lot of context for them beyond their geographical proximity. Maybe we know that they walk their dog at 8:00 every morning, but we dont know what kind of person they are a lot of the time. One thing thats not given me a great ton of faith in my neighbors is I joined Nextdoor, perhaps misguidedly. And its a really tough spacejust of peoples fears and worst sides really being on display. Its just post after post about crime: Im afraid of this. Watch out for these two young boys that were looking at my house the other day. And I think people are often very reasonably wary of interacting with their neighbors in the sense that those people might be coming to those interactions with a lot of biases, unwarranted fears, and assumptions. And racism or sexism, or any of the things that can make our interactions with strangers in public ranging from extremely uncomfortable to dangerous. Rashid: Right. Beck: And so I do want to acknowledge that if people have that wariness of their neighbors not treating them as fully human, that is very fair. Simply getting better at talking to people is not going to dissolve racism or sexism or street harassment, or any of those deep-rooted societal problems that infect our relationships with our neighbors. Thats a much bigger problem than just Do I know my neighbors name? Davis: I dont want to be naive with all this messaging that every neighbor is going to be nice. And even among nice neighbors, theres going to be this layerjust because of the culture that were living inof seeing more, you know, I call it the Ring-camera culture of 2020s America. Where everyone outside your door is someone whos out to get you, whether its a politician trying to get your vote or a door-to-door salesperson. If thats your experience of the outside world, because we live in such a low community time, its harder to form a community now than it is in a higher-trust society or a higher-trust era. I dont think its something we all have to do alone. If youre the type of person that knows three other people in the apartment complex and youre all friends, youve been there a long time and youre more confident and outgoing and you have less to lose, and youre less scared of this thingwhich doesnt make you any better, but its just like a quality you haveyou need to give a little bit of that to everyone else. By being the person who has a little bit more wiggle room to have the vulnerability to lead in breaking the ice. Beck: Yeah. As it becomes less common for anyone even to knock on your door, then its more alarming when someone does. Or youre just expecting that when youre at home, youre going to be left alone. So how can you build relationships with your neighbors that are as respectfully distant as they need to be, but also can be intimate enough to provide some support? Davis: Theres a lot of ways to invite people to come be part of your life. So, you know, one of them isnt knockingit could be leaving an invitation. That will make them feel comfortable to receive this message and then make an affirmative choice to join or not. No one wants that person who immediately is way too vulnerable and intimate with you. Beck: You know, Becca, sometimes I feel like theres this sort of invisible barrier that feels almost physically effortful to push through before you can just say something to a neighbor. There was a sociologist named Erving Goffman who called that barrier civil inattention. And its essentially, you know, the default polite posture that we have toward strangers in public. Its essentially saying I see that you exist , and then you completely withdraw your attention from them and look away and look at your phone and leave them alone. Rashid: So this is what always happens in the bathroom when youre both washing your hands. Beck: Yes, thats right. The brief eye contact in the mirror, the tight smile. And then you look down and youre washing your hands very, very solitarily. And that is exactly what happens in my building. Right. You know, were walking down the hall toward each other. Were looking down. And then theres a little smile. And then we pass each other, and we dont speak. That makes me feel like it would be invasive to try to strike up a conversation with them, like were both signaling that we want to be left alone. Rashid: Im going to tell you a little story about my neighbor who did invade my space. Beck: Okay. [ Laughter .] Rashid : Im fine, Im safe. I was getting into one of two elevators in my building. We have our big moving-your-couch-from-floor-to-floor elevator. And then the small elevator that not more than one person should be getting into at a time. Beck: And it was the small one, Im sure. Rashid: It was, of course, the small one. And he just slightly turned his body and said, So, youre a singer. [ Laughter .] Beck: Which you are, for the record. Rashid: I think I am. And I just started profusely apologizing. I was like, Im so sorry. I had no idea that my YouTube karaoke was playing that loud, and I was singing over it. But it made me extremely self-aware. As you said, someone popped that invisible bubble between us of never acknowledging that we have this relationship, whatever it may be. Beck: So, do you wish he had just never said anything and continued the sort of fiction that you are just two strangers who know nothing about each other? Rashid : I mean as much as it was a bit jarring, in the end it was actually kind of nice. Beck: There is a weird intimacy that we do have with our neighbors, like he can hear what youre playing through the walls. You share a wall. But if we pass each other, we sort of dont acknowledge that weird intimacy, or we just pretend that were complete strangers with no context of each other. Davis: Totally. And in some ways, sometimes people are relieved when the intimacy is admitted to, because it pops the tension of it all. You know, I can hear you. I can see you. I saw that you didnt bring your trash out. Or something, you know, without being nosy. Theres always thewe dont want uber conformity, and we dont want invasions of privacy. But theres something in the middle. Beck: Yeah. My building, God bless them, theyre always trying to host these community events. So, you know, itll be like Its Valentines Day, come down and get some free drinks and cookies. And people will go. And then theyll just take the food and leave, or theyll just talk to whoever they live with that they already came down there with. Theres no mixing. Theyre not getting people to mix. What are they doing wrong? Davis: Yeah. You know, we need to have some of these events run by the people themselves. You also have to have an aggressive host , where even though it seems like its really annoying to be the host that says, Hey, I got to know you and I got to know you, so you should talk because youre both nurses and you both have third-graders. You guys should talk. You know, that is the type of thing that brings people together. Its not just automatic of You lay out Valentines Day cookies and everyones going to talk, because you have to have someone that breaks the ice and brings people together. Beck: Well, this is where I struggle, right? Because I can see how when you first move somewhere, that seems like a natural opportunity to introduce yourself to the people who live next to you or something. But Ive lived in my building for two and a half years now. Ive lived in my neighborhood for almost 10 years, and I feel like its too late. I dont have that excuse of being new anymore. Now so much time has passed that it just feels really weird to randomly try to get something going now. Davis: You know, it is nice when you just move somewhere that you have this excuse like, Hi, I just moved here. And people are going to give you the honeymoon period of thats not a weird thing to say. That get out of awkwardness free card is gone when youre not. Beck: Oh yeah, its long gone. Davis: But you know, Ive always believed that this isnt something that we need to overthink. You have to just walk up to a neighbor in some way and invite them to be closer to you, which is obviously really awkward. Its so awkward. Thats the reason were all not neighborly with each other. Beck: Right. Davis: But everyone is waiting for someone to do that to them. You know, thats the funny thing. And in some ways, were all playing a prisoners dilemma with each other where its like, I dont trust them or I dont trust them to trust me . And theyre thinking in their head, I dont trust them or I dont trust them to trust me , or Maybe they dont trust me or whatever. And the way to break that prisoners dilemma with each other is for someone to go a little bit above and beyond, to have an act of vulnerability. And so a gift is one example of that, which isI went out of my way to show you an act of goodwill, to show you not only that Im trustworthy a little bit more, but also that I think youre trustworthy a little bit more. Mention the concert you went to last weekend when youre passing in the hallway. Mention something about your family. It doesnt need to be totally too much information. It can just be the next level of personality. Beck: You know Becca, even at the most sort of super-benign and cliched neighbor interaction of going over to borrow something, Ive actually had a negative experience with that myself. Rashid: Can you tell me what happened? Beck: Yeah; it was a really simple interaction. I had moved into my current apartment building, and we had all of our taped-up boxes, but I realized that I had packed the scissors inside one of the taped-up boxes, and that I needed scissors to open the taped-up box to get the scissors. I thought, You know; thats fine. Ill just go ask a neighbor. Everybody has scissors. Thats an opportunity to introduce myself and also get something that I need . So I went down the hall and I knocked on the door that had a light on under it or something, where it seemed like somebody was home. And this very harried woman came to the door, and she had her phone at her ear. And she was like, What?! What do you need? And I was like, Oh my God, Im so sorry. I just moved in. I just needed to borrow some scissors. Like, I didnt mean to interrupt you, but do you have scissors? And she kind of huffed, and then went off and got the scissors. She did give them to me, but in a very annoyed way. She probably wasnt expecting a rando to knock on her door in the middle of the day, but I just went and used her scissors and then silently returned them. And then we never spoke again. Rashid: Did she apologize when you returned the scissors? Beck: No . She just took them back and just was like, thanks. I think she probably felt sort of interrupted and having her privacy impeded upon. But also I had a very benign request and was met with open hostility. So it did not make me want to knock on more doors, thats for sure. It was just a reminder: Just because somebody lives near you doesnt mean theyre going to be neighborly. Beck: How can you ask a next-door neighbor for help without feeling like youre an inconvenience? Davis: You know, the amazing thing is that, with relationships, it all works the opposite of what our fears are telling us, the way that they work. So, you know, you think giving something away means you lose something. But actually, giving something is a gain. You think that when you reveal something about yourself, itll make you hated because people will disagree with the particularities of you., But it actually makes you loved more, and being generic is what alienates you from people. Beck: One of the things thats been relieving, but also tough, is that on the one hand, the idea that having that kind of community you want feels so hard is not just your fault for not trying hard enough. Because theres a lot of institutional things at work. But then it also feels discouraging, because theres only so much I as one person can do to change any of that. Davis: It is none of our faults, and we shouldnt be accountable. This is not a finger-wagging at individuals to solve this alone. Like, the answers just going to be all of us deciding to be nicer and reach out more. It needs to be a mix of us individually doing that, and rebuilding the civic infrastructure that helps us do it. You know, its not just reaching out to your neighbors. Its reaching out to your neighbors to talk about how we can reach out to our neighbors. Beck: And what are some things that youve done in your life to be committed and stay committed to your neighbors? Do you bring them cookies? What do you do? Davis : Yeah. You know, we are increasing our gift game. Beck: Okay, [ Laughter .] Whats your best gift? Davis : Were mostly doing baked goods and flowers now. And actually, the flowers is a double commitmentwhich is our local farmers market. Weve become friends with the florist there, and were going to go visit the florist at their flower farm soon because weve decided to not just treat them as, you know, the person we buy flowers from. And then we bring those flowers to our neighbors and try to have a connection there. The book that changed my life more than any other is called I and Thou by Martin Buber, who is a Jewish theologian from the early 20th century. He lays out these two ways of relating to the world. He calls them I and it and I and thou, or I and you. And what I and it is: You see everything around you. You see other people, but also the whole world. You see them as objectsitsthat have served purposes in your life. Only reflecting what they are to you, how they bother you, or how they help you, how theyre different from you, out there, similar to you. I and you relates to all the rest of the world as you. They are fellow subjects. They are also players in the video game of life. They are full of life. They have a depth that you cant understand. When you really are engaging with them, and you let all of the ways that they measure up or help you or facilitate you or bother you or compare with everything else. When you let that fall away, youre bathed in the light of their shared reality with you. Theyre also there. And even just a small victory in that fight by building a tiny relationship with one other person isnt a small thing. Its everything. Beck: Thats amazing. [ Laughter. ] Pete, thank you so much. It was really, really great talking to you and having you on the show. Davis: Thank you so much. So appreciate what youre doing with this. Beck: Yeah, Becca: I appreciated Pete talking about tiny steps and the importance of small relationships. I think I can get stuck in black-and-white thinking sometimes, where Im like, Oh, the stakes are really high. Because either my neighbor is going to hate me like the Scissor Lady, or if I just do all the right things, then were going to be best buds and well share beers on the roof in the evening. And, as with most things, I think the truth is often somewhere more in the middle. Rashid: And theres this concept called Dunbars number. The psychologist Robin Dunbar has theorized that people are only able to actually cognitively handle maintaining so many relationships at onceabout five deep, intimate friendships at a time. But you can actually handle about 150 or so friendships total in your sort of larger web of the friends of friends, and college friends. So I feel like neighbors maybe fall into one of those outer rings, where its okay that you just sort of know their name and the name of their dog. And, you know, that type of relationship is enough. Beck: So my very small update on my own neighbor relationship is: The other day I saw those same roof neighbors who we introduced ourselves to like a year ago and then never spoke to again. And I sort of made myself go over there and say, Hey, youre so and so and so and so, right? Like, I remember your names . I just said, I wanted to offer, since we share a roof, and it would be really easy if youre ever out of town and you need us to water your plants, we would be happy to. And they were like, Oh great! Like, same! We would be happy to do that, too. So, we did make that tiny step toward a very small plant-watering relationship. Beck: Its actually a lot more than nothing to have someone right next door whos a little something more than a stranger. Rashid: I mean, now every time I sing, I know someone is listening. [ Laughter .]