Hey, it's Anne here.

We've never met, except for here in the digital world,

which is where so many of us meet these days, online instead of in person.

Well, in this episode, we're going to make the case for spending more time getting together with people in real life.

And yes, I know, that means getting up off your couch, but I promise we'll make it worthwhile.

It's to the best of our knowledge.

Wisconsin Public Radio It's to the best of our knowledge, I'm Anne Strange Champs.

How do you turn an ordinary get-together into something deeper, maybe even transformative?

My husband and I, when we first moved to the city, we wanted to explore it. We started this experiment where one Saturday a month we would spend 12 hours off our phones in a neighborhood.

12 hours.

This is Priya Parker.

Friends started to join and we kind of organically came up with some rules that worked.

You have to show up on time and stay the whole time, commit to one conversation over meals with everybody else,

and be willing to submit to the host.

And the host would rotate and would plan the day. How much how are you?

Walking around in a city, getting bagels or bringing your lunch,

there are ways to have beautiful, meaningful experiences that are not extraordinarily expensive.

Spending 12 hours together as a group was fundamentally different than spending three hours together four times.

Groups warm up together, you cool down together, and every time around 2 p.m. people would start getting tired or cranky or run out of things to say.

60. And actually that's when the real conversation would start.

What I said? What the hell? Thank you so much. Have my great. And actually, that's when the real conversation would start. I mean, we gather all the time, right?

I mean, we gather all the time, right?

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