CHAPTER SIX

CONVERSATION

Dinner is served, small talk has been exchanged, ice has been broken. You’ve moved on from the giddy buzz of cocktails to the mellow joy of wine. You and your guest are vibing as one. Now, as you eat, comes the part of the party where you really change the world.

It’s called “deep conversation”—a.k.a. what civilized people do when they’re not voting, giving money to public radio, or fantasizing about having kinky yet respectful sex. And speaking of civilization, if you’ve followed our instructions thus far, what you’ve done is create a miniature version thereof: You’ve lured all different kinds of folks into your dining room with the promise of sustenance, they’ve agreed to sit down peacefully and to behave with some amount of decorum, and now you’re all going to talk about everything that’s wrong and right with the world. It’s kind of like a UN summit, if the agenda included both Middle East crisis management and the social value of superhero movies. And if a couple of diplomats made out in the bathroom.¹

This is what dinner parties are for: The lively exchange of ideas, plus food and booze. It’s the most sensual setting for potentially groundbreaking debate and mutual discovery ever invented. If you do this correctly, everyone will end the evening enriched, they’ll go on to throw their own dinner parties, and so on and so on until society is saved from all the damage wrought by brunch.

It seems like conversing over dinner would be an easy thing for a modern human being to do. After all, you’ve been exposed to dinner table conversations since you were old enough to sit in a high chair without Mom’s hand on your neck to support your giant baby cranium.

Or have you? The sad fact is, fewer and fewer American families regularly eat meals together,² meaning millions have grown up deprived of dinner table conversations. We can’t help but suppose decades of this has brought us to the current sad state of affairs—whereby people feel compelled to read a book authored by two strangers from the radio just for advice about talking to other people.

The good news: We have written that book, and you hold it in your hands! Read on for some easy guidelines regarding making Big Talk… as well as strategies for dealing with those at your party who want to do all the talking for everybody.

PART 1: RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

A.K.A. THE EIGHT ESSENTIAL RULES OF CONVERSATION, COURTESY OF TWO PROFESSIONAL BLABBERMOUTHS

Confession: We don’t have dinner parties every day. To be honest, most nights are a tray of store-bought hummus, public radio on low, and tears.

But here is something we do most days: talk to people.

In fact, we’ve made careers out of talking to people. We know, we can’t believe it either.³ ⁴ Parades of interviewees come by to chat, and we’re expected to pull interesting conversations out of them. We need to get them talking, whether or not they want to. We need them to sound smart and engaging, whether or not they are. We need $2 million each, a pair of crimson Alfa Romeo Spiders, and people who love us even though we snore.

But we digress. The point is: During our almost-decade in the talk radio trenches, we have gleaned a set of conversational rules that may not guarantee sparkling repartee… but can certainly increase the likelihood it will occur. And these rules work for anyone! Even if you didn’t grow up a bird-chested asthmatic who had to learn, at a young age, how to charm bullies in order to avoid finding yourself on the wrong end of a knuckle croissant. Although that helps.

RULE 1: SHUT UP

The secret to conversation starting really boils down to this:

No one cares what you have to say; they care about what THEY have to say.

Our friends at the public radio show StoryCorps put a more positive spin on this: “Listening,” they say, “is an Act of Love.” Hippies.

But they’re right—ask any therapist. Deep down, what folks want more than their mother in a wedding dress is to feel they’ve been heard. And the best way to engender that feeling is to let them talk. Which they can’t do if you are talking. Therefore, when in doubt, be quiet and listen. This is a win-win, because listening not only makes guests feel appreciated, it also allows you to use your mouth for other things, like guzzling down a second helping of scalloped potatoes.

We know this isn’t as easy as it sounds. If you’re throwing a dinner party, you’re probably a social person who likes to share with other people. You like to talk. We ourselves don’t shut up nearly as much as we should, but since we do a pretaped radio show, we have the advantage of being able to edit out a lot of the stupid things we say. Also, since we’re on the radio, we don’t have to wear pants. Neither of these things will work well when hosting a dinner party. When hosting a dinner party, you should always try to shut up, and you should almost always wear pants.

RULE 2: TO EXTRACT A STORY, GO TO EXTREMES

Of course, part of listening does involve some talking… in controlled bursts we in the industry call “questions.”

The goal of asking questions is to get guests to abandon the Small Talk we were all making earlier and get them to share the important, insightful, or hilarious things that reside in their brainpan. Often in the form of a story.

Stories are how humans best process information and ideas.⁵ In fact, actor and writer Alan Alda told us that storytelling essentially allows human beings to mind meld.

“Well, what [stories] do—according to scientists I have interviewed who use functional MRIs to study the storytelling encounter—is they actually seem to sync up the brain in a real way. The brain of the person telling the story… when he tells it to someone else, her brain lights up or is activated in a very similar way to his brain as he tells the story. I think you could say we synchronize through stories.”

In other words, according to Hawkeye, when we read Zadie Smith, her brain touches ours. Ironically, when we realized that, we lost our minds.

Now, some guests will be natural storytellers—the type who can spontaneously spin compelling yarns about, like, shoe shopping. But others need their long-dormant storytelling gene activated. And we’ve found that one quick way to do it is to ask them questions about extremes in their lives.

These don’t have to be climbing-Everest-level extremes. While small-talking, did your guest tell you they work as a cement layer? Try asking them about the most dangerous thing that ever happened on the job. Or about the silliest thing they’ve seen scrawled in wet cement. Or some variation on “What most surprised you when you started the job?”

Did your guest mention they have a super precocious kid? Ask about the most surprising thing the kid ever said. Is the kid a new driver? “What’s the most afraid you’ve ever been as their passenger?”

Worst dates. Best dates. Most embarrassing thing ever. Proudest achievement ever. There tend to be interesting stories behind extreme moments, and everyone tends to have experienced a few. Your guests will tell you about them if you ask. And if for some reason they don’t and then throw their Manhattan in your face, well, you’ll have an extreme story of your own to tell.

RULE 3: THE TWO WS

So now you’ve got your guest telling a story. But they may need your help to make it entertaining or illuminating. If you were a movie producer you would add sex, explosions, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, but you’re a dinner party host, so we suggest a different approach.

For decades, a wonderful Canadian Broadcasting Corporation vet named David Candow ⁶ was paid good money to make the rounds of public radio shows, teaching us all—among many other things—how to pull revealing tales out of interviewees. And a cornerstone of David’s interviewing philosophy was The Two Ws.

It boils down to this: You know the six essential questions of journalism? Who, what, when, where, why, and how? To ensure that a guest’s story becomes truly interesting, just ask two of those questions over and over: WHAT and WHY.

WHAT exactly happened? Seek specifics. Ideally just enough to entertainingly paint a picture, set a scene, and convey emotion. If a guest gets stuck on unimportant details, you ask, WHAT happened next? And WHAT did that feel like?

And then, most important of all: WHY was this event important?

This is where the guest’s most thoughtful and emotional connection to a story lies. WHY did they behave the way they did? WHY does this event stand out in this person’s head? WHY does it matter to them? WHY does it motivate them, or make them laugh or cry?⁷

What’s amazing about “why” questions is that often the person telling the story doesn’t even know the answers until you ask them. They may be surprised themselves at what they come up with. Or, even better, they may wonder what you think is important about their tale. Indeed, the funny thing about asking questions is that you know you’re doing it right when your guest starts asking you questions back.⁸ Guess what? That means NOW YOU ARE HAVING A CONVERSATION.

RULE 4: ASK QUESTIONS, NOT “GUESSES”

Another Candow tip. The point of asking questions is to get a guest to reveal something fascinating about themselves. And a quick way to prevent that from happening is to give them possible answers to your own question.

You’d be surprised how much this happens, both in real life and on radio shows, including our own. It’s incredibly hard to avoid. And it goes something like this:

HOST: Why was this story about how your mom knits beer koozies important to you? Did it make you realize she loved you?

The first question is fine. The problem with the second, italicized question is twofold. First of all, the guest might—and probably does—have a better, more unique and personal answer to your first question than the one you’ve provided. But often they’ll feel obligated to at least consider your possible answer, rather than provide their own. And voilà, you’ve short-circuited what could’ve been a funny or surprising revelation.

The second problem with this question is, if your guest is shy or recalcitrant, it gives them a handy way to avoid revealing anything interesting about themselves—because it can easily be answered with a single word: “yes” or “no.”

So you want to ask questions that demand interesting, thoughtful answers. Which counterintuitively are often much shorter and simpler questions. In the above example, you just lop off the end:

HOST: Why was this story important to you?

Candow described this process as “bland in, interesting out.”⁹ A short, bland question (again, often preceded by the words “what” or “why”) is more likely to provoke the guest to reveal colorful details and anecdotes you wouldn’t otherwise know are inside them. It also puts them in a position to tell you the parts of a story they like the most, instead of the one you imagined.

Of course, the guest might still give you a super bland answer to your bland question. Like, “I dunno.” But at least then it’s not your fault for asking a bad question. It’s their fault for being lame.

RULE 5: YOU DON’T GET TO BE COOL

Many of us media types have trained our whole lives to seem cool. Nothing fazes us. We’ve heard it all. When we light up our Gauloises, the world goes slo-mo, turns black-and-white, and a Velvet Underground tune swells in the background.

As a host, try to forget all that.¹⁰ Your job is to create an atmosphere where people want to open up and share things they’re excited about with each other, and they’re not going to do that if they feel like you’re disaffected and unmoved by anything.

One of our audio mentors, Peter Clowney, once did a radio piece about the legendary photographer Robert Capa. According to Peter, when Capa was asked how to capture great images of folks, he replied, “Like people, and let them know it.” Same goes for making good conversation. Demonstrate that your goal is not to impress, but to be impressed. Through your questions, let them know you think their work or their interests or their experiences, commonplace though they may seem, are worthy of exploration—because they likely are.

If that proves difficult—if conversation turns to a topic you truly do know a ton about and have become bored with—well, we figure it’s polite for a host to at least feign interest for a while.¹¹ Practice saying “Wow!,” “Huh!,” and “Really!” until the subject changes. And if the subject refuses to change, skip to the end of this chapter (part three, “Avoiding Black Holes”).

RULE 6: REMEMBER YOUR AUDIENCE

A dinner party is a group affair. Whether or not everyone’s actually throwing their two cents’ worth into a conversation, all involved should be invested in what’s being discussed. Don’t leave some guests nodding their heads, pretending they know what’s going on when they’re actually clueless, yearning for the moment when they can hightail it home to their Netflix-and-ice-cream cocoon.

This means that constant clarification is required. If a guest is mumbling, restate a phrase or two for people who couldn’t hear what was said. (On our show, you’ll hear us do this constantly if we’re interviewing someone over a noisy phone line.) If a guest makes an inside joke that half the table won’t get, go ahead and laugh… and then put it in context for everyone. Add last names to first names so everyone knows who’s being referred to. Even, again, if it makes you look uncool.

EXAMPLE: Film and TV star Rashida Jones attends Brendan’s dinner party.

RASHIDA JONES: And that’s when my dad finally acknowledged that I wasn’t going to be a musician.

BRENDAN: Your dad—Quincy Jones.

GUEST #1: Duh.

RASHIDA JONES: Yes, Guest #1, my father is very well-known—but thank you, Brendan, for clarifying that for those who might not be aware. As a reward, I would now like to passionately make out with you.¹²

RULE 7: ARE YOU STILL SHUTTING UP?

We know: it’s next to impossible to stay all the way shut up. Keep trying.

RULE 8: BE A “LADYLIKE BROAD”

“I have a penchant for green underwear.”

This is something Anjelica Huston, Oscar-winning star of screen and stage, said whilst being interviewed on our show. Rico’s response: “Wow. I did not expect to learn that today.” If you could hear blushing on the radio, that’s what it would sound like.

Ms. Huston said lots of other things—about her hallowed father, John, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time; about her early days in the insane go-go fashion world of the seventies. But what we most vividly remember from that conversation is two things: that she totally wears green underwear, and how cool she was for having told us so.

And yet revealing (pun intended) such intimate secrets flies in the face of what the etiquette pros call “polite conversation.” We know this because we’ve had our regular etiquette pros Lizzie Post and Daniel Post Senning straight-up tell us: Sex, religion, and politics are potentially dangerous conversational territories through which one should tread carefully.

Lizzie and Dan are our pals, which is why we’re comfortable saying that in our opinion, a quick way to turn your party dull is to worry too much about dangerous conversational territory. For us, actually, the most memorable conversations are the product of guests and hosts who dare to provoke, titillate, argue, and otherwise dance right into that territory. Indeed, when done right, being provocative can counterintuitively set fellow partygoers more at ease. Because they know they’re not entering the social equivalent of Sunday school, where a misplaced cuss word—or stating a strong political opinion—will result in a knuckle beating from Sister Mary.

The trick is to create a permissive atmosphere with civility and style. The late, great Broadway star Elaine Stritch put it best while answering etiquette questions on our show. “The goal,” she said, “is to be a ladylike broad.” Half civilized charmer, half wisecracking bomb thrower. The kind of person who should be able, Elaine suggested, “to lean across a table with a martini and say, ‘What the hell are you talking about?!’”

For a historical example of a “ladylike broad,” take Dorothy Parker—who’d probably not only tell you the color of her underwear, but would blithely let you know whether or not she was wearing it at the moment. On our own show, we’d probably point to Dick Cavett ¹³—who managed to crack a joke about Grace Kelly’s sex life and disparaged a pope without coming off as a jerkweed.

So how does he—and how can you—pull it off? It’s not easy, but try this.

a) Copping to your own flaws: Pointing out your own foibles can give you some license to point out others’. This is why comedians usually begin their set with a string of jokes about their own receding hairline, expanding waistline, or sorry sex life. After that, they’re allowed to say whatever they want about anything.¹⁴

b) Be willing to GO THERE: Letting slip a spicy detail or two about yourself signals to others that it’s okay for them to do the same. Perhaps mention, in passing, the summer you juggled a few boyfriends… and a girlfriend, who happened to be a juggler.¹⁵

c) Smile/laugh: A comedic lilt and a twinkle in one’s eye can soften an otherwise caustic observation—your own or someone else’s.

d) Remain calm: If you’re on the receiving end of someone’s wit, accept it with humor. In other words, to encourage folks to dish it out, demonstrate how they should take it: with a cool head.

e) Know when to ice the conversation: Eventually someone will cross a conversational line even your tipsy and garrulous crew doesn’t want crossed. This will usually be audibly denoted by everyone simultaneously groaning “Whooooaa.” This is a good time to swap out the offender’s wine for water, get up to put a new LP on the turntable (see chapter three), and change the subject.

f) Be Anjelica Huston, Elaine Stritch, Dorothy Parker, or Dick Cavett.

“Don’t behave. Misbehave.”

—PEACHES

PART 2: TALKING POLITICS

When we solicit questions for our etiquette segment, some of the most common emails ¹⁶ we get are from listeners desperate to know how to engage in political conversations that won’t result in a murder-suicide.

This gives us hope. Because if the world’s increasing inability to get along is evidence of anything, it’s that people with opposing views aren’t talking to each other enough. Forget politeness—they’re barely conversing at all.¹⁷

And why would they be? In a polarized political world, there seems less and less reason to talk with the other side. It feels like an exercise in futility that can at best result in a screaming fight, and at worst in a climactic scene from a Quentin Tarantino film. Neither is an awesome dinner party scenario.

Problem is, we don’t have any choice. It’s like a highway: The only way for people to safely share the road is to use turn signals. To share a country, we have to hear each other out.¹⁸ ¹⁹ And if we can’t talk in an atmosphere as warm and low-stakes as a dinner party, we’re certainly not going to pull it off in the kiln of assholery that is national politics.

We don’t have the perfect solution to engender bipartisan chitchat. If we did, at this moment our planet would be awash in way less fear and rage, and way more good vibes, understanding, calypso music, and pie-judging contests. But we’ve got a few strategies that might allow you to have a political conversation with your friend’s husband Owen in a way that lets you walk away respecting each other. Or at least without cutting his ear off with the electric carving knife. And that’s a good start.

#1
DON’T EXPECT MIRACLES

You’re not going to convince a lifelong liberal, over Chablis and tikka masala, that it’s perfectly okay to own an arsenal of AR15s. The perfect retort will not instantly convince a conservative that we should all be taxed in order to fund performance art.

Think about the last time you truly changed your mind about something important.²⁰ It probably happened over the course of years. Or after something crazily momentous happened, like a health scare, or your sibling suddenly being genuinely nice to you. It almost certainly didn’t happen over one discussion at a party.

This is especially true of political beliefs. According to a study by economists Ethan Kaplan and Sharun Mukand, political affiliations are one of the hardest habits to break. Once you declare yourself a member of a political party—often as a teenager—you end up on that party’s mailing lists and get exposed to a steady diet of their agenda/propaganda, and thus a certain set of beliefs gets reinforced over and over again. For decades.

So, our advice? Accept this. It’s amazing how much chiller a political argument becomes when you understand you don’t have to, and in fact won’t, “win” it tonight. State your best case, and when you find yourself restating it over and over, declare a truce and move on to talking about the new Star Wars.²¹

#2
ATTACK A POLICY, NOT A PERSON

True or false: A great way to get someone to take your ideas seriously is to call them an idiot fascist racist backward uneducated dumbass redneck hypocrite who votes against their own best interests because they are a mindless sheep.²²

False, right? The correct answer is “false,” guys.

And yet this is a tactic that folks of all political persuasions resort to an awful lot. Don’t do it. It will not change someone’s mind. It will reinforce their belief that folks who disagree with them are mean and bad. And they will have a point.

By the way, the same goes for personally insulting politicians with whom your rival politically aligns. That tactic can backfire, actually generating sympathy²³ for the corrupt despotic cretin you believe should be removed from office and indicted on federal charges of being an idiot.

Instead, take a cue from Gandhi. Not his fashion sense—few among us are cool enough to pull off attending a dinner party wearing a homemade sheet—but his political tactics. Gandhi’s most galvanizing protest action wasn’t directed against any specific British politician. It was a protest against the Brits’ draconian salt tax.

In other words, dispute the value of a political policy. Not the value of the human being who supports it.

#3
DETAILS, PLEASE

Of course, even if you avoid personal attacks, you can’t always count on your guests to exercise similar restraint. Luckily, acclaimed author George Saunders—who according to the MacArthur Foundation is a genius—once told us about his favorite tactic for maintaining civility: asking for specifics.

In writing workshops, he said, “someone will say something kind of hurtful, and the only way out of that is to keep asking the person to be more and more specific. So, you know, ‘Your story sucks, I hate it!’ can get talked down to ‘Page four lags a bit in energy.’ And the latter is very easy to hear.”

The same device can be deployed in political conversations:

“The mayor is a bum!” shouts your overexcited guest.

“What specifically did he do?” you ask calmly.

“He increased parking fines!”

Poof! Now you’re talking about parking fines. You are discussing a policy, not a person. Your guest should thank you for making the conversation way less likely to result in a screaming match. But don’t count on it.

#4
MAKE THIS ALL ABOUT YOU

Bummer news for those who embrace Enlightenment principles: A growing body of psychological data indicates that trying to reason with people using logic, truth, and facts might be fruitless.²⁴ Getting someone to change a fiercely held belief can be like trying to convince a cat to drop a dead mouse from its jaws: They will cling to it even more intensely.

Luckily, there’s more data that indicates there may be an antidote: empathy.²⁵ If you can get someone to empathize with you—showing how a political issue affects you personally—you can potentially alter their outlook, or at least get them to hear you out. Comedian Cristela Alonzo put it to us like this: “There is no point in name-calling people that don’t agree with you. But it’s actually hard for them to negate your experience of what you’ve lived” [italics ours].

That means: Try leading with a personal story, instead of data or statistics. It’s easy for someone to say the government should get out of the health insurance business. But it’s hard for them to disregard your story about the time you couldn’t afford insurance, got an infected finger from a hangnail, and the trip to the emergency room nearly bankrupted your family. (Although be prepared for them to tell you to just stop picking your nails, dude.)

#5
KEEP MIXING IT UP

If you ask us, the most important thing is to continue doing what you’re doing: seeking out new conversations. Keep hosting and attending gatherings where one or two of the guests are people you don’t 1,000 percent agree with. Even if politics isn’t discussed, you have shown by example that those of your political persuasion do not hate or fear those of opposing views. Eventually, if talk does turn to politics, they’ll be a lot more likely to listen.

And in the long term, we firmly believe this sort of thing can lead to real change. Barney Frank, the first congressman to voluntarily come out of the closet, told us that when he entered Congress in the early eighties, working in government was considered noble, but being openly gay was verboten. When he retired a few decades later? Working in government was frowned upon, but being openly gay was acceptable. He said that by the time he married his male partner, his Republican colleagues’ biggest problem with it was that many of them weren’t invited to the wedding.

If that can happen in Congress, it can happen over a series of nice dinners.

“We have hierarchies of all different kinds in this country, and I find that [… ] if you just listen, you discover that those hierarchies don’t mean too much. That your expectations are almost always wrong.”

—GLORIA STEINEM

PART 3: AVOIDING BLACK HOLES

Despite your best efforts, certain guests can dominate a conversation, draining all the fun and energy from it, like a black hole consuming a nearby star.²⁶ Here are a few examples, along with strategies for shepherding the party through these dark times.

THE AGGRESSIVE BORE

The guest who has A LOT to say, about nothing. Stories which merit a single sentence, like “I wanted to return a razor to Walgreens, but I lost the receipt,” become Greek epics. Each detail of purchasing the razor, its eventual malfunction, and the search for the receipt are recounted, loudly and dramatically. And yet the story has no drama. There is no surprise twist, no insightful resolution to the Aggressive Bore’s tales. There is only misplaced passion and volume.

This guest is usually also friendly and gregarious, so people feel bad about wanting to shut them up. On their behalf, you must try.

Containment Strategy: Lie/Interrupt/Deflect

The moment an Aggressive Bore launches into an anecdote,

a) FEIGN INTEREST in it for a few seconds.

b) DISINGENUOUSLY INTERRUPT by uttering the magic phrase “I don’t mean to interrupt.” Then explain that the Bore just said something that reminds you of a story another guest recently told you.

c) DEFLECT: Point to said guest and insist they tell that story, immediately. Choose a guest you know has a rich backlog of anecdotes. Note: The story you encourage them to tell needn’t have anything to do with the story the Bore was telling.

EXAMPLE:

BORE

Oh my God, the other day I ate some yogurt!

YOU

(feigning interest)

Hmm!

BORE

It was crazy! First off, I went to the drugstore, the

one down the street next to the taco truck. And then—

YOU

(disingenuously interrupting)

Oooh, I don’t mean to interrupt! But Jayden, you were telling me

an amazing story earlier about taco trucks, weren’t you?

JAYDEN

No, I was telling you about a pregnant woman I met who

was walking the Pacific Crest Trail.

YOU

Oh right, right. Tell everyone about it!

Note: After Jayden has told this interesting tale, the Aggressive Bore will attempt to tell their boring tale again. Just repeat the above steps as necessary.

THE MUSIC SNOB

The Music Snob is not to be confused with your standard-issue Hipster Music Geek. The Music Snob has entered a whole different, deeply jaded geek realm.

The Snob collects music and music trivia not so he ²⁷ can share it with others, but because he doesn’t have much else going on in his sad life. He seeks the most esoteric music possible because it is the only thing that makes him unique. The Music Snob isn’t a big fan of the Rolling Stones… but he’s really been digging the Ronnie Wood “Guitar-Restringing Tapes” bootleg from Nepal.

No one else at the party has heard the music the Music Snob talks incessantly about. They’re not having fun listening to the Music Snob talk about it. Hell, he’s not having fun either—the only reason the dude’s still talking is because if he stops, the conversation might turn to another subject, and he knows no other subject. Pity the poor Music Snob. Pity him, and then put a stop to him.

Containment Strategy: The “Track Five” Pivot

a) Proudly DECLARE your latest musical obsession: the fifth song off a favorite album of your childhood, ideally by a popular but not critically celebrated act. For Brendan that would be George Michael’s “Cowboys and Angels.” For Rico it’s “Carmella” by Taco.

Neither song is actually that great. Indeed, Track Fives are generally unmemorable. Perfect—even if the Snob’s heard it, he won’t remember a thing about it.

b) ASSURE the Snob that this track is an underappreciated find of immense musical importance.

c) ACKNOWLEDGE that this seems impossible. But say the British music magazine Mojo recently did a whole article about it.

d) Now quickly PIVOT and open the conversation to the other guests: What childhood music have they revisited lately?

EXAMPLE:

YOU

(declaring)

You know what I’ve been getting back into?

Great White’s “Mista Bone.” Off their album

Twice Shy?

SNOB

(confused)

“Mista Bone”?

YOU

Yes. I assure you that it bridged the gap between

eighties baroque New Wave and nineties downtown

squonkcore jazz.

SNOB

(in disbelief)

Seriously? Great White?

YOU

Yes. Mojo magazine just did a whole article about it.

(pivoting to other guests)

What’d you guys listen to growing up?

DEEPLY UNHIP GUEST

Oh, I’ve never stopped loving Richard Marx!

Poof! You have now successfully turned the Snob’s monologue about obscure music into a group conversation about mediocre music. Hey, small victories.

THE BUSINESS DUDE

We’re all for talking about money around the dinner table. That old taboo forbidding us from discussing each other’s salaries? We suspect that’s just a conspiracy by The Man to keep us in the dark about fair wages, and to protect our friend Stacey who always claims she’s too broke to buy us a round.

But Business Dude doesn’t have equality on his mind. He’s just obsessed with deal making and cash. And especially with how much of the latter you used to obtain various items in your home.

“You paid a ton for the roast, amiright?” bellows Business Dude from across the kitchen.

“Great wine!” he exclaims at the dinner table. “Tastes like a forty-buck Chuck to me!”

“Hahaha!” you hear him chuckling from the garage, which you thought you locked but he’s somehow found a way into. “I bet my watch is more expensive than your Subaru!”

Business Dude can turn a night of leisure into an episode of The Price Is Right—Sadist Edition. Neutralize him.

Containment Strategy: Send Out the Clown

a) Praise Business Dude’s acumen. Clearly, he knows quality and value when he sees it! Tell him that is why…

b) You want to enlist him to go buy something you suddenly desperately need for the party. Or, to use language he’ll understand, you want to EMPOWER him to LEVERAGE HIS CORE COMPETENCIES by TASKING him with a wine run.

c) Promise you’ll pay him back later. This will earn you his respect—since he knows that you know a proper guest would never ask a host to pay him back for a bottle of wine.

Note: This will separate Business Dude from the party for only the duration of his wine run. Thus, for best results, tell him that the most exclusive and expensive liquor store in town is ten miles away down a busy freeway.

THE OUTRAGED POLITICAL JUNKIE

As outlined above, we’re big fans of political conversation at the dinner table. But Outraged Political Junkies (OPJs) are not fans of conversation. They’re fans of being outraged. About everything. And blaming people for it. At length.

The OPJ is often an elderly person who spends way too much time watching a politically polarized cable news channel. By the time they arrive at your party, they want nothing more than to express their frustration at the evils they’ve been told are all around them.

The problem is, even if everyone at the table shares this guest’s political views, they probably aren’t eager to hear a thirty-minute rant about them. After a while, the OPJ is just someone screaming about really depressing things while everyone’s trying to enjoy some coffee cake. Make it stop.

Containment Strategy: The WWII Defense

Many OPJs lived through—or had parents who lived through—World War II. Gently remind them that during that war, thirty countries engaged in six years of “total warfare” during which upwards of fifty million people were killed, including the systematic genocide of six million Jews and the flattening of two Japanese cities with atomic bombs.

Things are bad these days, respected elder, but they ain’t that bad.²⁸

Alternative Strategy: The Digital Surrender

If that doesn’t work, break out the smartphone and divert everyone’s attention with the cutest cat video you can find. We know, we know. But desperate times demand desperate measures.