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Good morning. This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

Today's tip is that if you want to liven up a conversation, ask for low stakes, hot takes.

Get people talking about things they feel passionate about, but that aren't all that important in the grand scheme of things. And you will probably

be chatting for hours. Now, when it comes to social gatherings, I do not promote hot takes in

general. A hot take is basically defined as a quick commentary on something that is designed to attract attention.

Content that is high on intensity and low on rigor, which a lot of immediate reactions are,

can quickly go awry. But I love the idea of a low-stakes hot take, as I heard someone recently

refer to this idea.

The concept is to talk about things you feel oddly passionate about, even though they don't really matter all that much.

These low stakes hot takes can add energy to conversations.

So if the conversation is at a lull or has been a bit heavy,

you can start going around the room to have people share a low-stakes, hot take.

Maybe one person will make the case for live versus artificial Christmas trees.

Another person might start asserting that sending a friendly reminder

about an upcoming deadline is annoying and unnecessary. One more reason that our inboxes are ridiculously

full. Someone might make the case that no one should ever start a toast by saying they are nervous

about public speaking.

None of these things really matter all that much, but it is fun to voice strong opinions, nonetheless.

I have even heard of using low-stakes hot takes as an icebreaker. This could be a lot more engaging than the usual fun fact icebreaker,

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