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You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey, it's Mariel.

I think we've all been to a gathering where we were bored out of our skulls,

or where the conversation felt stiff and awkward, where we found ourselves daydreaming about being anywhere else, really, but

preferably at home, tucked into bed. But what about the reverse? The dinner party where people

are actually connecting, where folks are interesting and interested,

where the room sparkles with possibility.

How do we get there?

Start by throwing a gathering you want to attend.

Host something that literally makes you giggle, makes you be like, yeah, I want to do that.

Priya Parker is a conflict resolution facilitator, an author of the book The Art of Gathering.

In it, she says, it's important to be intentional about gathering and to understand why we're

actually bringing a particular group of people together. Now, she says the sky's the limit when it comes to gathering,

because most of us are bored with the same old thing.

And so when you get invited to, like, Anne's party,

where she, her, like, rug that she bought in Istanbul

and her solo vacation post-divorce finally arrived and she wants to like roll it out and is

...