When it comes to dinner parties, the conversation is one thing that can’t be set up in advance. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be prepared. With the holiday season imminent, we asked Rico Gagliano and Brendan Francis Newnam, hosts of the podcast “The Dinner Party Download,” for some dos and don’ts on how to spark memorable conversation during your dinner party.
These tips are part of the magazine’s latest food issue all about the art of the dinner party. Check it out for more inspiration and recipes to help you host your own dinner parties this season.
Warm Up the Crowd
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Small talk gives guests a chance to get to know one another, and to take one another’s measure, before the conversation turns to weightier matters — e.g., sex, the lonely meaninglessness of existence and Trump’s latest tweet. It’s like stretching before a jog.
Every week our public-radio show, the Dinner Party Download (www.dinnerpartydownload.org), opens with a celebrity telling a joke. It usually blows. Comedians are the worst at telling jokes.
- Knock knock jokes, yo’ mamma jokes, Chuck Norris jokes – some categories seem to hang on for long periods of time regardless of how silly they may be. Listen to the types of jokes being told by children, teenagers, and around the office water cooler.
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- The downloadable Dinner Party Download, with Rico Gagliano and Brendan Newnam, always features an 'icebreaker,' the joke that will help you on your way to becoming the life of the dinner party.
Be a Conversation Conduit
Don’t leave some guests nodding their heads and pretending they know what’s going on. Often, clarification is required. If a guest is mumbling, restate a phrase for people who couldn’t hear what was said. If a guest makes an inside joke, go ahead and laugh — and then put it in context for everyone.
Less Talking, More Listening
The sad truth is, no one cares what you have to say; they care about what they have to say. Deep down, people want to feel they’ve been heard. They will if you let them talk.
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Embrace Complicated Topics
We all know what society says we’re not supposed to talk about at a dinner party. Religion. Politics. Salaries. And yet these topics should be fair game. What’s a dinner party if not a laboratory of ideas, plus permission to eat cheese?
Provocation With Style
Don’t worry about dangerous conversational territory. The most memorable conversations are a product of guests who dare to provoke, titillate and argue. The trick is to create a permissive atmosphere with civility and style. The goal, Elaine Stritch once told us, is to be a “ladylike broad”: half civilized charmer, half wisecracking bomb-thrower.
Keep Arguments Low-Key
A single conversation will not convince a lifelong liberal that it’s O.K. to own an arsenal of assault rifles. The perfect retort will not convince a conservative that we should be taxed to fund performance art. Accept this. It’s amazing how much more relaxed a political argument becomes when you understand that you don’t have to — and in fact won’t — “win.”
Personalize Your Politics
Go for empathy when you talk politics. Showing how a political issue affects you intimately is more important than data and statistics. Try leading with a personal story.
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The Two W’s: What and Why
To ensure that a guest’s story becomes truly interesting, just ask two questions over and over: what and why. What exactly happened? What did that feel like? Seek emotional specifics. And then: Why? https://verticalyellow373.weebly.com/the-sims-3-serial-code.html. Why is this anecdote important? This is where the guest’s most thoughtful connection to a story lies.
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Venture Into the Unconventional
Small talk need not be soporific. Before the dinner party, try to find some recent news items or weird science stories that people most likely haven’t heard about. Did you know that music is beneficial to cats undergoing surgery? Or that there is a library in Norway that is amassing 100 never-before-read books that no one can check out for 100 years?
Don’t Assume
Asking questions can get a guest to reveal something fascinating about herself. But a quick way to prevent that is to give her possible answers. “Why did you quit law school — was it too boring?” Leave out the guess. A short question is more likely to provoke details.