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What a Ugandan Village Taught Tom Karrel About Belonging · Friendship IRL: Real Talk About Friendship, Community, and What It Actually Takes

• 0:00
  Podcast Intro/Outro: All right, gang. Here's to nights that turn into mornings and friends that turn into family. Cheers. Hello, hello, and welcome to the Friendship IRL podcast. I'm your host, Alex Alexander. Each week we talk about what is working(and what is not) in our friendships, community and connections. Have you ever wished you could sit down and have a conversation about what is really going on in your friendships? Well, you found your people. Join us as we dive into real life stories and explore new ways to approach these connections. Together, we're reimagining the rules of friendship
• 0:58
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: "Building a village" is everywhere right now. It's on your social media feed, or at least plastered all over mine. It's in the parenting forums, in the wellness content that you are scrolling at midnight, way past your bedtime.
• 1:13
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: Everyone is talking about it.
• 1:13
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: Everyone is talking about how to build it, how to find it, how to foster it, what you can do in your own neighborhood and your own communities, but here's what
• 1:24
  I keep thinking about: most of us who are scrolling social media have never actually been a part of one—not a real one, not a 350-person rural community in Uganda where everybody knows your name, where you do not get to walk past someone when they say hello and ignore them, where belonging is not a goal that you set for Q4, it's just the way life is. Today's guest is not someone who grew up in that world. He is someone who showed up as an outsider, worked hard to find a way in, fumbling sometimes, and spent five years paying attention to what was actually happening inside of a village community, and what we might be missing here. Tom Karrel is the author of *The Lost Art of Random Conversations*, and with over 10,000 hours of group facilitation across 45 countries, he has spent his career studying what actually makes people feel connected and what quietly gets in the way.
• 2:34
  I keep thinking about: This episode today—it's one of those ones where you're gonna listen to it today in your car, your AirPods, or while you're cleaning your kitchen, and it's probably going to leave you with some questions that are just tumbling around in there for the few days afterwards. So I'm not going to delay it anymore. Let's just—let's go listen to the conversation.
• 2:53
  Alex Alexander: Hi, Tom. Thank you so much for being here and hanging out with me on Friendship IRL today.
• 2:59
  Tom Karrel: Thank you for having me, Alex. It's good to be here.
• 3:01
  Alex Alexander: Oh, I was really inspired by your new book coming out, the lost art of—is it just conversations, random conversations? I was like, I know there's another word in there, *The Lost Art of Random Conversations*, and it's had me thinking. You know, I was scrolling through the very end of the book, where you have all these questions about like random questions to use to ask people.
• 3:28
  Tom Karrel: Yep.
• 3:29
  Alex Alexander: And I was just thinking to myself, what's something that's inspired you this week?
• 3:34
  Tom Karrel: Well done. Well done. Two things. One, officially launched the book this week. Again, it's called*The Lost Art of Random Conversations*, or LARC, as we like to call it. And I've made a point to essentially reach out from A to Z of every single person in my 600 plus person contact list. And as time intensive as that is, it just ends up in me having a catch up with tons of people from different corners of my life, and this reaction almost across the board from people of, "Very cool, really supportive, just bought my copy. What else can I do?" So it definitely has, more often than not, reinstilled my hope that we can take a chance and can follow our dreams and put something out there. I was super scared to start reaching out to people about it. The other thing that's inspired me is probably the resilience of my team at LARC. The three of us—we've been navigating a tricky season, and we just keep showing up for these pretty productive but really uncomfortable and challenging conversations about the future, and I leave with this sort of reassurance that no matter what happens, we're going to be able to figure it out and come back to the table. And for me, that creates a really strong sense of safety and belonging and village, like we're going to talk about. So I do feel like I'm part of a a little micro village remotely right now.
• 5:02
  Alex Alexander: What a beautiful and inspiring response! Because now you have me thinking. I also recently launched my book, and I had to send out similar messages. I sat down before I launched my book and wrote a list of I think it was eight ways that somebody could help me, and this wasn't something I was sending necessarily to like business contacts. I actually sent this list to my closest friends because almost none of them work in this world. None of them have published a book. Most of them don't work really in the online space. They work in corporate, and so this is a really big milestone for me, for you, and people just aren't always quite sure how to help.
• 5:47
  Alex Alexander: And I sent out this list, and I got a bunch of responses back, being like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so excited! This is easy. I can do a few of these." And I also got a bunch of responses being like,"Wow, asking for this so directly is vulnerable." I was like, but I don't know. I just like hadn't even thought about how vulnerable it was because I think I really trusted that everybody wanted to show up for me. Putting a book out in the world is wild. The things we do.
• 6:13
  Tom Karrel: it is, it is. You know, especially I can only imagine with your book, especially if it's something that you put even the minimum amount of time it takes to put a book out there or some comparable level kind of art piece. It takes a lot of your heart. It's I think for many of us it could be scary to get feedback, especially in the process. And yeah, it's also vulnerable to ask for what you want because people can say no, and that's also fair. And I think it's easy to stand on the sidelines with any big dream and give a bunch of reasons why it's a silly idea or not the best.
• 6:51
  Tom Karrel: And to just put something out there at all that's organic in this world and human made is a pretty vulnerable thing.
• 6:58
  Alex Alexander: Yeah, the reviews. I don't know if you have reviews coming in yet. It's a fascinating thing because it's very easy to tell whether the random person that picked up this book whether it was meant for them or not. You know, I get a lot of reviews that are like,"This is really basic stuff," and maybe, maybe. But I'm also like, I don't know if you really read this book as closely as I intended you to. So yeah, it's just it's an interesting thing.
• 7:29
  Alex Alexander: You're like, huh, interesting.
• 7:32
  Alex Alexander: That was your takeaway. Okay,
• 7:34
  Tom Karrel: yeah,
• 7:34
  Alex Alexander: feedback taken.
• 7:34
  Alex Alexander: But I wouldn't change anything about what I put out there. Feel pretty confident in the end product that it's what I wanted to create. You know, the other thing that inspired me this week was your work in general, your other book, the story we're about to talk about today. I've talked about this many times on the podcast, but I don't do this work for really any other reason other than I find this stuff truly fascinating, and my brain just takes off. So when I have been reading this week about your history, your stories, your experiences, spent five years living in a village in Uganda, I have so many questions today, and I'm so excited to be talking to you because not always do we get to read the book and then actually talk to the author and ask our questions.
• 8:30
  Tom Karrel: True.
• 8:31
  Alex Alexander: Can you tell everybody listening a little bit about your journey? You know, your background, what you went to school for, and how you ended up in East Africa.
• 8:41
  Tom Karrel: So I grew up in Westport, Connecticut. It's a town of about 30,000 people in southwestern Connecticut. I grew up here for the first 18 years of my life. Kind of had what I would consider like a very privileged, solid childhood. I had a very supporting, loving family, two parents and an older brother. Had everything I need to go to school, extracurriculars, chase my dreams-like just a very, like really good upbringing for all intents and purposes-and ended up moving to New Orleans to go to college. And when I was there, started really stretching my legs more socially. I've always been very social, but I've also often been quite anxious around people I don't know. What do I look like? Am I going to sound cool? I'm on this podcast with Alex. Are people going to like me? Am I going to be the best one? Is that clip really good? Like all that stuff comes in. I think that's normal to an extent. Public speaking was terrifying for me, and it's taken years to face that fear and keep standing out and keep sharing my story, regardless of all the thoughts in my head or reasons not to. Anyway, came into school for biomedical engineering. Very quickly realized absolutely not, and ended up finding public health and international development, which, if I were going to boil it down to like third grade level, I would say I was studying how and what make people and communities make healthy life choices, specifically around food, diet, exercise, sanitation, basic level, and is foreign aid doing more harm than it is good—were kind of the two main things I was learning about, and when I was in school, I started traveling in the summers, personally with family, with friends. I'd use bartending money I saved up over the year to buy plane tickets, and finding internships through school and through my public health program. And one of those places, I'd say the main place I found where the professional interest started connecting was an internship in Uganda the summer of 2015. This was between my sophomore and junior year of college. I'll pause there. I can get more into it, but that's what got me to Uganda the first time.
• 11:00
  Alex Alexander: But not the last time you did go back. So you went the first time summer after sophomore year. So you were only there for a short stint, finished school, and then what brought you back the second time?
• 11:11
  Tom Karrel: I was in Uganda for two months that first summer, and it was the most meaningful experience I've ever had, bar none. I've always been a very community-oriented person. I love my friends and family. I'm very loyal. I wear my heart on my sleeve. Super extroverted, and that was the most powerful community experience I'd ever been a part of. I was living in a 350 to 400 person village called Kasambika, which if you land in Entebbe, Uganda, go to Kampala, about a three and a half hour drive, you have to get on a tiny motorcycle to go out into a rural community. It's called the last mile of public health, sort of the furthest reaching rural villages you could imagine, in proximity to major hospitals and whatnot. And I had my phone in airplane mode for two months. I was pooping in a hole and doing my laundry by hand, and in a tiny home with three other American students and two Ugandan students, and we were doing door-to-door public health data collection and interviews of people, and we were also putting on health presentations and education sort of skits throughout the community for kids all the way up to elders. It was the most vibrant place I'd ever experienced, and this was in contrast to growing up in a corner of the U.S. that is, on average, one of the wealthiest places in America, let alone the world. Sort of the pinnacle of what we call development, and yet I didn't like feel comfortable going uninvited to other people's homes, and I wasn't welcomed with a chair and a cup of tea, and their kid climbing a tree to go get a mango. And I'm not saying we need all that literally to have a village belonging sense in a community. And yet, I grew up without a vibrant, like cohesive culture, and I experienced it there like viscerally. And so after that, a sort of difficult and amazing series of events over a couple years brought me into grad school, and then ended up working for that organization again for six months, and that turned into another job for over four years out in Uganda.
• 13:15
  Alex Alexander: That is, I was going to say a long time, but it probably, if that is the place, maybe you have a line in your book where you say, "I've never felt so much in a place." Then it probably felt like it was a blink of an eye. Like how do you go back from that?
• 14:39
  Tom Karrel: Yes, and that actually ended up being what I talked a lot more about and what I got more into about with my work, rather than you know I thought I'd be a public health worker in a traditional sense, which is a health educator, someone that educates on HIV and AIDS and how to use birth control and family planning or water and sanitation practices.
• 15:01
  Tom Karrel: And I've got that knowledge somewhere in this brain. And yet, what I started to become more interested in was the art of gathering, the group facilitation, public speaking, because when I went back, I have a funny story about the Peace Corps where I was supposed to be going, and naively was too honest about something on my application I shouldn't have been honest about, and got kicked out of my Peace Corps position before it started. Two weeks later, I get an opportunity to go back with Uganda Village Project, and my work then became running this cross-cultural program for Americans, Europeans, and Ugandans to all come together and try to sort of do good out in the world while also checking themselves and how to handle conflict amongst different communities. And the reason I bring that up is because a lot of what I was talking about was how do you go back to your home, so-called home, after a profound experience in a very different culture and community? And that's a difficult thing.
• 15:56
  Alex Alexander: Yeah, I'm sure because when you arrived in Uganda, you've made it to this small village in the last mile.
• 16:05
  Alex Alexander: How long would you say it took you to feel connected, if that makes sense. You often arrive and everybody kind of looks at you sideways and has a lot of questions, a lot of curiosity.
• 16:21
  Alex Alexander: But in reading what I have read in your book, one of my questions was like, well, if people aren't approaching maybe strangers with so much hesitancy, I would wonder if it's actually kind of a fast entry because people just lean in. People assume goodwill.
• 16:40
  Alex Alexander: People assume like a positive interaction, which here in the States is quite often not how we approach anybody. So can you tell me a little bit about maybe those first few days and what it felt like?
• 16:55
  Tom Karrel: Definitely, and you know there's a number of factors here that I won't get into, but also coming to a foreign country where I'm so visibly different, even just being a white person, a muzungu, the local language in Uganda, you stand out a lot for better or worse. That comes with a lot of perceived expectations of how much money I have and what I'm about and why I'm there. In this situation, because we were connected to a local nonprofit, a Ugandan nonprofit that had a lot of relationship with this place, we were welcomed in like honored guests, which both felt uncomfortable and lovely. And within the first 24 hours, we're sitting down with essentially the mayor and the local government leaders around in plastic chairs underneath some trees outside our home, talking about what our plans are for the next couple months, how we're going to be welcomed in, and I talk about it in *The Lost Art of Random Conversations*, that within the first few days, we get invitations to come speak at schools, to come visit health centers, to attend a burial, to attend a wedding, and so on. Day five, we're going to our first wedding in Kasambika. My first taste of a Ugandan wedding, and yes, I felt extremely connected early on. Yes, there was a ton of like, what am I doing here?
• 18:17
  Tom Karrel: What did I really sign up for?
• 18:17
  Tom Karrel: This is way more vulnerable and intimate than I thought it was going to be. What do I do with myself? Where's my phone? And it was like it was a very immersive experience. Like you're in this tiny rural place where there's not a lot to do in terms of how I'd spend my time back in America. There's a lot of being present and sitting around talking to people and just taking care of the land and sustaining life. So anyway, very very connected, very like braced for impact. And it was that first wedding that we attended.
• 18:49
  Tom Karrel: I think on day five that I wrote a story about. That was probably the threshold moment for me of not just feeling connected there, but oh my gosh, this is going to be an experience to step out of my comfort zone and be courageous in a way I haven't really done before.
• 19:05
  Alex Alexander: Okay, so we make it through the wedding. You, I'm assuming at a wedding, you've met a lot of people. People now have some familiarity with you, and if people haven't met you, they've probably asked other people about you because that's how a community like that works, right? There's not this sense of privacy that we have here in the States. People don't hold back on asking.
• 19:28
  Tom Karrel: Correct. Personal space is not really a thing, both at a household level, certainly in our case, but also everyone knows everybody at a level that I never felt before.
• 19:39
  Alex Alexander: So then, even just walking around-not when you're working, not when you're going to present, or when you're going to meet with the mayor or you're going to do an education seminar, but you know you're just going on a walk or going to buy some mangoes or going to the market. Whatever you're doing, are you quickly being like approached and brought in by people, asked questions? What are people doing with their curiosity?
• 20:07
  Tom Karrel: It's both. There is a cautious curiosity and a very bubbly curiosity, and also just like neutral nonchalant. There's a few people who are like, these outsiders, these white people, and these Ugandans that are also clearly not from here, like whatever. Most people fall into two camps, in my experience, in Kasambika, were cautious. Like, what do these people want? What are they doing here? Something wrong? Are they bringing money?
• 20:35
  Tom Karrel: Is there strings attached?
• 20:35
  Tom Karrel: There's all these different things at play. If you're a kid, it's mostly running up and noticing how red my cheeks are, and they've never seen that before because it's really hot out. I'm getting sunburned. Hair on my arms. What language?
• 20:49
  Tom Karrel: Wanting to exchange words. How do you like practice their English? Me learning Lusoga, which was their language. That was a big interaction point of like, oh my gosh, I can't stop looking at you, which is very uncomfortable. Talk about being seen, and if you are able to sort of spin it, or you like children, then it can be this really heartwarming experience early on. As far as adults go, there's a big importance in that culture around language, around greeting. So one of the most helpful things we learned was enough of the local language of Lusoga and how to greet someone formally, which can take from 10 seconds to two minutes, to show people that we were making an effort. We were here on common ground, and that was probably the most important thing I learned actually early on. Is like how often can I go first here? And what I mean by that is I've got a line in the book which is if I want something, I have to go first, which I've adopted from my beloved mentor, which is essentially like in life, if I'm sitting there saying, "Oh, I wish people were nice to me. I wish I could have a cool conversation. I wish I felt welcomed," like we need to go first in that equation. That is like step one. So that means if we're sitting around a circle and people look uncomfortable, like be the person that goes to initiate the conversation. So I guess my bridge was taking the little bit of the Lusoga I was learning and practicing it as often as I could with as many people, and that resulted in me getting laughed at, hugged, and everything in between. That was kind of the bridge of the curiosity. Nine times out of 10, was just sharing a little bit of language and greeting, so people were saying, "Wow, okay, you're of this place. You're welcome here," for the most part.
• 22:38
  Alex Alexander: Well, and you're trying, right? There's—you mentioned the vulnerability and people laughing at you, and all I can think about is in such a tight-knit community where everybody knows everybody, and you're living in such a communal culture, it's vulnerable to have an outsider enter, and so they are just constantly living in vulnerability with you around.
• 23:03
  Alex Alexander: So for you to show also some small vulnerability, and then like how you react to being laughed at, to somebody grabbing you and hugging you.
• 23:12
  Tom Karrel: Yes,
• 23:13
  Alex Alexander: that is kind of the great equalizer of okay, I am vulnerable by you just even being here. You're being vulnerable. Now we're going back and forth with this, and like let's continue to build on it.
• 23:29
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: Here's the funny thing. I talk about this all the time about putting yourself out there, about going first, about being a little bit vulnerable, doing something outside your comfort zone, and yet, why is it that it is so much more obvious when the example is this far outside of our daily norms. Listening to Tom talk about how he fumbled his way through speaking the language in this Ugandan village, I am just sitting here thinking, well, duh. Of course he had to try. Of course he had to look a little silly. Of course he had to fail and try again. What else was he going to do? And I want you to sit with that for a second, because you do the same thing. I do the same thing. We join a new gym. We move to a new neighborhood. We try to make a new friend as an adult, and we feel like the outsider. We have to go first.
• 24:28
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: We're going to be a little awkward. The only difference is that Tom is halfway across the world, and we're in our everyday lives. But no matter what, we need to be giving ourselves a little bit of grace. Listening to Tom's story, it is so obvious. But in your life and my life, suddenly it feels like a character flaw. Suddenly we're frustrated that it's not easier.
• 24:54
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: We should know how to do this.
• 24:54
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: It should feel natural.
• 24:57
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: Suddenly, one awkward attempt feels like proof that we're bad at this. I'm here to tell you, hey, you're not bad at this.
• 25:07
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: You're doing the exact same thing that Tom did in that village, so give yourself the same permission that he gave himself. Try, look a little silly, and try again.
• 25:19
  Tom Karrel: And all the while respecting the fact that I am objectively such an outsider here. So, what's common for a lot of people who are experiencing a new culture, traveling, and especially like deeper immersion. Someone from Kansas who moves to Karachi, Pakistan, for a year, let's say, there's going to be a lot of cultural differences that put them off, that upset them, that stress them, that feel rude.
• 25:45
  Tom Karrel: It's important to remember, like we chose, assuming we chose to be there. So I'm an outsider here. Let me give folks the benefit of the doubt. Let me not take myself too seriously. Like as you said, like it's going to be uncomfortable a lot. We're taking a very foreign object and putting it in a very tight-knit organism and ecosystem that beautifully is welcoming to a lot of those things, and there's going to be a lot of people that don't trust it, that test it, or just by being themselves in their natural way is going to feel so uncomfortable to me that I get to choose whether or not I embrace it or reject it in any given moment.
• 26:25
  Alex Alexander: As you were there, like the longer you got there, are there any things that stand out as maybe like the biggest differentiators from like Western culture? And I mean that in kind of a communal sense, like things that over time you got used to that in the beginning you were just like, wait, what? And that could be anything. Like let me give you
• 26:44
  an example: walking by a shop and somebody yelling out your name, and the expectation is that you sit down and you don't keep walking, even if you have things to do, or lending a hand, or just like any other behaviors that at home you maybe could have gotten away with just walking past, and now that's not really acceptable anymore. Yes,
• 27:06
  Tom Karrel: yes, great question.
• 27:06
  Tom Karrel: So before I start, I just want to correct the record. So of my five years, I was in this village of Kasambika off and on for about eight months, and for the latter half, I would commute between a small town of about 10, 15,000 people to the village, and then actually for several years I lived in the capital city of Kampala, and a lot of my work brought me into small villages all around Uganda and Rwanda, as well as other cities. So I bring that up because this question changes over that time. Speaking specifically for that you know first almost year, really being in that village lifestyle, that micro community of three to 400 people, let's say, biggest difference that comes up is time perception of time applies to your example, Alex, where I walk by and a shop owner says, "Oh, hey, Tom," or Ngobi, as they would call me, which is a local name for a man from the royal lineage in the Busoga Kingdom that they gave me at the beginning. So I was Ngobi for two months and then beyond.
• 28:06
  Tom Karrel: There is generally a more like an expectation of if you ignore them or run by or just hastily say, like, "Yeah, what's up," and then keep going, or, like,"I've got to run," something might be wrong. There might be an issue if you don't come up and just like greet someone and be with them for a moment and spend even a little time like a few minutes with them. Biggest example of the time difference that we experience, we would host these community events. So let's say on Tuesday, we're going to do a presentation on how to utilize a mosquito net properly to prevent malaria, and we can only advertise for this using paying someone in a truck to carry around a megaphone, or giant pieces of paper, or word of mouth, and we're going to be there at 2 p.m. So we get there and we are briefed of this. Most often, that would probably start at 3:30, 4:30, if we wanted a 2 p.m. presentation. Incredibly frustrating for someone that where time and being on time is extremely important. Myself included, who grew up in a culture where keeping to the time and showing up on time or even early is a big—it's something we value. There's a different value system in this village where being present with the task at hand, family, the land, the food, is the priority.
• 29:24
  Tom Karrel: So people will show up for that gathering after the kids are cared for, after the land is hoed, after lunch is made, after they wash up, and then it's time to go to the presentation. Time is a much more fluid thing in this village compared to the time I'm used to here, where it's bound to a schedule and a watch, whereas there, they move like one activity after the other, and time is more spacious. It's slower. It's a lot slower than the life I grew up with and am accustomed to in the States.
• 30:03
  Alex Alexander: Yeah, I mean, in the States, right? Time is a privilege. Time is something that, when you have enough money, status, help, whatever it is, then you gain time. And I think about that a lot because now that I work for myself and I do this, I really have structured my life around flexibility of time, and that's not just for me though. So, like an example of this actually is that I'm going to visit a friend who is recently a single mom, and I'm going to go there. I think two weekends from now. My husband last night was asking me when I was coming home, and I stared at him, and I was kind of like, "What do you mean?" He was like, "Well, I don't know. Are you leaving Sunday night? Are you leaving Monday morning?" And in my head, I was just like, "I don't know. I'm leaving when I feel like she's settled again." And that is a privilege in Western culture.
• 31:03
  Tom Karrel: Yes,
• 31:04
  Alex Alexander: like the fact that I could just work that Monday there. I could work that Tuesday there. I could only work a half day and work later that week. Is very much something we see as like a pinnacle, something we earn or like a milestone we reach, right?
• 31:19
  Alex Alexander: Retirement.
• 31:22
  Tom Karrel: Yes.
• 31:23
  Alex Alexander: When you finally have the time to show up that way.
• 31:26
  Tom Karrel: Yes, exactly. I couldn't agree more. I'm going to attempt to share this story in 30 seconds. It's called the Mexican Fisherman. This story has probably been told a lot of different ways. It's one of my favorite stories ever. I'm going to paraphrase. So let's say we're in a rural village in the coast of Mexico, and there's a Harvard MBA graduate who is there, really pristine businessman from New York, who's visiting there on vacation, and he goes in this canoe with this old Mexican fisherman, and they go out fishing, and they catch a fish, they catch two fish, and they come back, and it's probably still not even lunch time yet. And the Harvard MBA is confused, and he starts essentially pitching this fisherman on the ways he could expand his business. He said,"Why do you come back so early?" The Mexican fisherman essentially says, "Well, I got enough food for me, and I got enough food for my family, and now I get to spend the rest of the day." He asks him, "How do you spend the rest of the day?" Then he says, "I'm going to go home, probably have a siesta, make lunch, play guitar, sit by the fire with my family." He's like, "Yeah, but what if you stayed out an extra hour and got more fish, and you could sell it to people? He's like, why would I want to do that? And he says, because then if you sell it to other people, you can get a bigger boat. What do I do with a bigger boat? It's like then you could get more fish and keep growing your fish, so you could hire other fishermen with that money. Like, what do I do after that? It's like one day you can get so big that you'll need to move to Mexico City so you can expand the business further.
• 32:51
  Tom Karrel: After that, you can move to Miami and then eventually New York once it really scales and do something called going public and you can sell the stocks.
• 33:00
  Tom Karrel: He's like, what happens after all that? He's like, so one day you could retire with all that money and settle down in a small village and take a siesta whenever you want, and make food for your family, and play guitar on the fire. And I've always—that story has been this sort of crossroads I've found myself in ever since I was in that village, because no, I'm not the Mexican fisherman through and through, and I'm also not the Harvard MBA guy through and through, but I'm constantly oscillating between the two because, as an entrepreneur in the American culture, where a lot of us are going to skew towards the Harvard MBA guy and vice versa, and there's no right or wrong, but it's kind of ironic when we are efforting so hard to create causes and conditions that might actually be right in front of us the whole time.
• 33:52
  Alex Alexander: I think about this on a daily basis, very, very regularly. You know, people. It's similar to when people tell me, like, "Well, when I retire, I'll have all this time to spend with my people." I'm like, "Okay, okay." You know, or we could figure out how to even carve out like a couple more hours a week now, and how that adds up in the next 20 years till you retire. I want to talk about what you brought back to the States, but I have one more observation from your two books that I would love for us just to riff on a little bit.
• 34:26
  Tom Karrel: Absolutely, thank you for reading about them.
• 34:28
  Alex Alexander: Yeah. Well, I was reading something that kept coming back to me was how in Western culture, how much we focus on certainty and like control. And the reason this came up for me is one time. So I'm so happy you brought that up. Right. We think we can control every minute of our day, optimize it. Have every minute meaningful or impactful for our like long term goals. I feel like in Western culture, it's very common where it's like, okay, if I walk 30 minutes every day, two years from now, I will hit that thing, and I appreciate that to some extent, right? But if you're so rigid in those things, it doesn't leave a lot of room for moments when maybe somebody needs your help or you pass somebody who you should have a random conversation with.
• 35:19
  Tom Karrel: Yes. The
• 35:19
  Alex Alexander: The other piece of certainty that kept coming up for me was when you were talking about arriving in Uganda and you know walking through the village and just a random person wanting to chat with you, needing to stop for a few minutes and how people would worry if you moved on. It had me thinking about how when I was younger, I'm not that old. It was very normal for somebody to just come to your door and knock on your door, and looking back, I actually think I liked it when somebody knocked on the door. Right, our day was going in a way that I thought it was going to go, and then suddenly—what's going to happen now? Is somebody going to invite me outside to play? Are we going to go over to the neighbor's house? Is my dad going to end up talking to the salesperson for an hour? Right, like something's different, and I always loved that. But now, it is very not common in a lot of America for somebody to knock on your door, and then to take it even a layer further. I was thinking about how I was at a friend's house recently. Somebody knocked on the door, and instead of getting up, she goes, "Don't answer it, hold on," and pulls out her phone and looks at her Ring app, and she was like, "Oh, I'm going to get caught in that conversation for a long time," and didn't answer the door. Be quiet, everyone! Don't, don't answer the door. And this just kept bringing me back to certainty and how much it is impacting all of us. And I know that wasn't like an exact thing that we had agreed to talk about, but I would love your perspective on that.
• 36:50
  Tom Karrel: Yeah, it's a great point. Love the Ring doorbell story. I had a moment the other day where we were actually going to the post office to mail the books, and I went on to Google Gemini, the AI search tool, to search if this post office had the thing we needed, and turns out we couldn't do it there. And my partner Taylor walks out. She was doing, we were doing it together, and she was kind of bummed that I found that answer before we got there. Even though I saved us time, it was just this moment indicative of we have all the answers at our fingertips. It kind of takes away a little bit of the in between moments of life of where we just need to figure it out and fall on our face, and that's actually lovely sometimes. To your question, so I go off this belief that we have these six core human needs, four of which are key to survival. The first one is certainty. We, as human beings, at a biological level, we need some level of certainty to just survive, and that is take whatever framework, Maslow, whoever you want to subscribe to. We generally could use a roof over our head. We need water for a certain amount of days. If you're into fasting, you know you can go without it for a while. But you need food.
• 37:59
  Tom Karrel: You need to know that you have enough people around you so you can survive. Essentially, we also need uncertainty, and that's our essential need number two. Because a life that is completely bound on certainty will be so boring that we will essentially cease to need to do anything. It's like a plant.
• 38:14
  Tom Karrel: There's no real in between. Like we're either growing or we're dying. It's a bit aggressive, but there's sort of two directions we can move in. And if we're not growing, then we're actually receding in a sense, if we're clinging on to certainty at all costs in every point in life, because nothing about life is certain, we are on a spinning globe through space, through infinite expanding existence. We have these nervous systems that we're all talking about now that we actually don't even understand how they really work when you boil down the science, like there is nothing certain about our existence, regardless of any spiritual inclination. So I bring that up is because a certain level of uncertainty and variety is essential as well.
• 38:57
  Tom Karrel: Like we want something. I've heard a great example. Like it's why we rewatch movies we like because we're certain we're going to like it, but there's also enough uncertainty that it's going to be different this time because it's a new setting, and we've changed it. We've grown older, so maybe we'll respond to it differently. So, different people have different dispositions, family background, lifestyle to be more uncertainty driven. Like I would say, someone that a post office driver of 50 years in the same job that lives in a small town probably has a lower threshold for uncertainty than a skydive instructor, and yet clinging on to certainty is like as meeting certainty in every area of our life is a recipe for unhappiness, because nothing about life is completely certain. We just need enough of it so we can kind of relax and rest, take a deep breath and then see what happens.
• 39:49
  Alex Alexander: Yeah, I mean, when I'm listening to you talk, it's like, right? I firmly believe that we need a few people we all feel like we can call. That if one person is busy, we're not having that panic uncertainty of I really need help. I'm in a dangerous situation. I do not know who to call, right? They're like innate needs. Where am I going to get my next meal? Where am I going to sleep that is safe? Like there are certain things, but those of us in the U.S. that are like you and I who are living a pretty privileged, certain, stable life, and that is not everyone. It's definitely not everyone, but if you are, and then we have the added, it's like how much certainty can we build in? If your life is already so certain that now we're just adding ring cameras and monitors and trackers, and it's getting pretty wild out there, and then these same people, I'm gonna go out on a limb here. I have a lot of people who message me about how they feel, and they're like,"Well, I don't want to leave my house to go to that party. I don't want to, you know. You said in that podcast episode to go sit in a cafe and say hello to someone. Who is that person?
• 41:03
  Alex Alexander: I'm like, I don't know. That's the entire point. You have too much certainty.
• 41:10
  Tom Karrel: Yes.
• 41:11
  Alex Alexander: At this point, we have—you've gotten so comfortable in the certainty.
• 41:14
  Alex Alexander: You got to mix it up for me.
• 41:18
  Tom Karrel: Exactly.
• 41:19
  Alex Alexander: And I can't do that for you. You can listen to my podcast day in and day out.
• 41:21
  Alex Alexander: You actually got to go get out into the world in a little uncertainty and talk to somebody new.
• 41:29
  Tom Karrel: Exactly. Well said.
• 41:29
  Tom Karrel: And part of that, for a lot of people listening, maybe feel like a leap of faith because those other two needs out of those four is significance and then love and connection. And in order to like, we all need to feel significant on some level.
• 41:41
  Tom Karrel: That's not a bad thing. Bring it down to the most basic level, like the village level. It's like we all have a need to play some key role in our community.
• 41:52
  Tom Karrel: The weird thing is today is we're all able to live our lives essentially void of any human connection if we really wanted it, and that puts us in a really difficult position to be genuinely significant in our lives. And then love and connection, which is I imagine from the bits of your work I've checked out, Alex is a lot of what you talk about is in order to get that love and connection with other people that we're really desiring, we need to sort of forego and risk some level of certainty to get out there and go first and open up with people and take a chance. I think a lot of that speaks to the level of social trust that we do or don't feel in our communities today.
• 42:27
  Tom Karrel: Just to make a general blanket statement,
• 42:29
  Alex Alexander: yeah,
• 42:29
  Tom Karrel: that's a big piece of it. Like with a Ring doorbell, I could hear someone listening to this, like, yeah, it's a safety thing. There's always break-ins in my community, statistics, blah blah, which makes sense. But then the other side is, if that's the story we have about something coming up to our door, how are we ever gonna want to go sort of uninvited to someone's house, if we think we're going to be in danger, or we just stop trusting people slowly and slowly. And you're right; it seems maybe simple or small, but to go sit in a coffee shop and start saying hello to people with a smile, whether or not they actually engage, starts to show people like, "Hey, I trust you over
• 43:06
  Unknown: hmmm
• 43:07
  Tom Karrel: even if I have reasons that I shouldn't, and that can at times I think feel at odds with a life of complete certainty, of control.
• 43:15
  Alex Alexander: So I live in Seattle, which is known for the Seattle Freeze. I don't know if you've ever heard of this. Okay,
• 43:21
  Tom Karrel: I have.
• 43:21
  Alex Alexander: Yeah, one of my favorite activities is to go on a walk in a new neighborhood and smile at people in Seattle.
• 43:29
  Alex Alexander: That's not normal. People just pass each other, looking down.
• 43:33
  Alex Alexander: And so I'm telling that story because it could really be as simple as that. Because my favorite thing about doing those walks is some people ignore me.
• 43:38
  Alex Alexander: Some people are a little bewildered. But quite honestly, the people who smile back and you can tell the significance of what I have done, are generally elderly people, and I would assume they live alone, and that could be the only interaction they've really had that day. But they light up; they are so excited to be seen. They say hello. Sometimes they stop, and you know, oh, the weather's so nice today. So, for anybody who's out there wanting to add a little bit of uncertainty, I'm telling that story just because, like, it could be that simple.
• 44:14
  Tom Karrel: Yes,
• 44:15
  Alex Alexander: and that's again like a cultural thing.
• 44:17
  Alex Alexander: Another—in New Orleans, everybody's saying hello to everybody every time I'm down there. Everybody's making eye contact on the streets, but in Seattle, it's not necessarily what we do.
• 44:27
  Tom Karrel: Fascinating, and it's shifting. I won't. Maybe we don't go through this thread too much longer. But I think about New Orleans. Like we talk to New Orleanians, and if every one in three houses is now an Airbnb, people are getting their food from DoorDash. Like it's not that those technological advancements are bad per se, but whether or not we realize that over time, they start to kind of slowly erode social trust, or even less so. They erode the inclination and momentum that we feel to like. Let me go out and just like and just go get some food, talk to the person, or go ask that person who lives next door what they think I should do this weekend. That's a more uncomfortable proposition than searching for it online. It takes a chance to go out there and do what you do, and just and even smile at people. There's, it may seem like a strange, like a completely strange act to do in Seattle, and I think my concern and the reason I'm so passionate talking about this is because I think I worry that the Seattle Freeze has become the baseline for a lot more places, without whether or not it's intended to. I think that's going to become more and more the baseline.
• 45:34
  Alex Alexander: Yes, unless we actively choose otherwise.
• 45:38
  Tom Karrel: Correct.
• 45:39
  Alex Alexander: I agree with you on that. So when we talked before, I asked you a question, and I want to close out with
• 45:46
  this: that I was like, I don't want to know your full answer.
• 45:50
  this: Just tell me yes or no. And it was after living in Uganda for five years, after experiencing this community where you've never felt more in a place with a sense of belonging. I asked you, do you think that is possible here in the States?
• 46:06
  this: When it feels like we are so far on the opposite end of the spectrum, and you said yes, and I have been waiting ever since to talk more about that. So, can you tell me a little bit of why you think that is maybe possible here, even to some degree? I guess.
• 46:26
  Tom Karrel: So, my answer is yes to that question. I do think it's possible to create the sense of belonging on par with the rural village I lived in in Uganda. I guess to take it literally, one because you know belonging at its core is a sustained feeling. I would boil it down to like belonging is being wanted or needed by the people around us consistently, day in and day out, to know that we are needed to play a role in our community in some way. It can be a fleeting thing. I'm not saying like when I came back to the States, I was on a mission to okay, great. How do I build a commune village in America? I was on this whole kick of like, let's get some land, let's put everyone there in tiny houses.
• 47:04
  Tom Karrel: I've done lots of deep dives, talked to a lot of people about it. That's one way. I also know people who have lived in village type settings, you know, spatially who are actually not that connected or have a lot of conflict. So the reason I say yes is because there's a lot of gray area here. I think that the simple answer is that if I in five years or less, can move to Uganda and have a group of friends and community around me at all different levels of depth that would do just about anything to support me and see me happy and help the same way I would for them, that's when I think we start to really have some belonging, and that is reaffirmed regularly based on the things we say to each other, the things we do to each other, the way we make each other feel.
• 47:54
  Tom Karrel: And so, as much as we're in our own homes and we're not sitting around the fire every night, I think the more consistently we can be performing acts of service, helping and reaching out to the people around us, the more it creates this sense that, like, I'm home, like this is my place, and I think we notice this sense of village more when we actually realize, like, I would give a lot for the people around me. I'd even die for the people around me. And the truth is, that is something that I would say in a lot of American communities, especially cities, it takes a lot of effort and work to recreate because our buildings and our behaviors and our jobs and our workplaces are not built to face each other, to gather, to be around each other with unstructured time to really get to know one another. It can feel taboo, so it can take a lot of effort, and I do believe that a lot of us have found that sense, if not like a very close version of it. And I suppose at the end, it's also got to be a yes; otherwise, my hope would start to wither away.
• 49:02
  Alex Alexander: I get that. I get that on a deep level. I've had people ask me before, kind of a similar question, and say something to the effect of, "I mean, what am I waking up and doing every day if I don't have some belief about that?" You know, to tie your other work together with *The Lost Art of Random Conversations*, something through this entire conversation that maybe has stuck with me is just like the choice we all have—the choice to leave our homes, the choice to assume positive intent, the choice to acknowledge small moments of significance in somebody's life.
• 49:41
  Alex Alexander: Right? When I can tell maybe I'm the only person that has spoken to my elderly neighbor this week, just choosing to see the little things, and if more people did that in my work, I wonder what is the greater impact.
• 50:00
  Tom Karrel: Yes, and that is the unmeasurable piece that I hope and I implore us all to trust to not underestimate the impact of one or two meaningful conversations with people in our communities. The opening story I have in my book was a story back in 2019. I was flying back from Uganda, landed in New York City.
• 50:22
  Tom Karrel: My dad was driving me back. Our ritual has always been get Chipotle on the way back.
• 50:24
  Tom Karrel: Welcome back to America. And as we're walking out, there's an old man who's walking in the door, and he's got a medical mask on and latex gloves. And this is a year before COVID, so this is totally strange to see in public. And I'm standing there, and because I was just on a plane and came from Uganda and kind of have that energy going on, I was like, I'm not gonna look at my phone right now. It's just gonna be away. So instead, I look up. Action one: put your phone away three times today and look up instead. Notice things.
• 50:53
  Tom Karrel: That's where you get the stuff to talk about is what's around you. And I feel this pang in my gut, and I look at him. God, I wonder what's going on with this guy. He looks concerned. He looks bewildered. I say, "Excuse me, sir. Can I ask how your day is going?" And he pauses, and he takes off his mask, and he has the gloves crumpled up, and he has to think about it. And he looks at my dad and I, and says,"You know what? I think this is the best day of my life." He had just left the hospital and had become a grandfather for the first time. And no, not every conversation and stranger you meet is going to have that moment, but the fact that that is possible, I think, should tell us everything about why we should keep getting out there and going first and initiating conversations, even if it's a simple "How are you?" and just showing someone we are genuinely curious in what they have to say. We never know what's on the other side of that, and we actually probably underestimate how much that means to the person we're talking to.
• 51:50
  Alex Alexander: I love that story, and I did read that in the book, and it really stuck with me. Just that you never know, right? Again, that uncertainty, and maybe you assumed he was going to have some bad news to share, and then how delightful to actually hear it's the best day of his life.
• 52:06
  Alex Alexander: Yes,
• 52:06
  Tom Karrel: Yes, exactly. Yeah, because that became an opportunity for my dad and I to talk about family and children in a way we hadn't before. The bridge concept of LARC and the book I'll say in closing is that those conversations with strangers, the skills we're practicing out in the world, it's not just because we want the barista or our mail person to feel more connected. It's so we can take that same inclination and bring it home to our friends and family, and also go first and spontaneously call our people. And so, if you're listening to this, my invitation for you today is to close your eyes just for a moment and think about someone in your life that you'd love to see a random phone call come in from. So you can maybe see your phone screen or you hear a ring. Who would you love to hear from for no other reason than just to hear from them? And when you've got that person in mind, I would love it if by the end of today or tomorrow, depending on when you're listening to this, call them up and tell them about this, tell them about that exercise, even and spread the word because that ripple effect can be so much bigger than we ever imagined.
• 53:10
  Alex Alexander: Oh, huge! And if we all feel a little more comfortable picking up the phone and just calling someone, and we're all doing that once a month, that's 12 more connection points that you had for people that really matter to you over the course of the year. One call a month in all the hours of the month. Yeah, I love that challenge, Tom. Thank you so much for being here today and sharing this random conversation with me. Look at us go!
• 53:38
  Tom Karrel: Thank you, Alex.
• 53:38
  Tom Karrel: It's really been a privilege being here. Thanks for all the time and effort you put into like getting to know my books and my work. It was very apparent from the moment I met you, and thank you for creating the space to be interested in me and what I have going on. It means a lot, and to everyone listening to this, thanks for taking the time to do so.
• 53:55
  Alex Alexander [Narration]: I don't want to give away too much of Tom's book, but he does have—I don't know—an invitation or a challenge, whatever way you want to look at it. In his book, he says that you should put your phone away three times a day, and just look up, notice what is around you, because that is where the stuff worth talking about actually lives. Like we
• 54:21
  think back to the story he told: flying back from Uganda, landing in New York, walking into a Chipotle, and a man in a medical mask and gloves. Tom just happens to notice him because he's not looking at his phone.
• 54:32
  think back to the story he told: He felt something, and he followed that urge. He said,"Excuse me, and asked how his day was going. That man, best day of his life. I love it. You never know what is on the other side of going first. You never know what someone is carrying or celebrating or desperately hoping someone will ask about, and most of the time we'll never find out because we don't look up. It's been such a pleasure to talk with Tom to talk about his work, not just about the random conversations with a stranger, but just this practice of staying open, seeing what connection will actually find you in your day to day. If this episode got you thinking, go pick up a copy of Tom's book,*The Lost Art of Random Conversations*. I have it linked in the show notes, and don't forget, put down your phone.
• 55:24
  think back to the story he told: Let's all see how our week might change, how our day might change, how the next few hours might be different if we just notice what's happening around us and follow those pings. And with that, I'll see you next week.
• 55:51
  Podcast Intro/Outro: Thank you for listening to this episode of Friendship IRL. I am so honored to have these conversations with you. But don't let the chat die here. Send me a voice message. I created a special website just to chat with you. You can find it at alexalex.chat. You can also find me on Instagram. My handle, @itsalexalexander. Or go ahead and leave a review wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts. Now if you want to take this conversation a step further, send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting. And use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out. No need for a teary goodbye. I'll be back with a new episode next week.