Life Kit - How to build a village

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

Many of us crave stronger community, especially in the areas we live. Imagine how nice it would be to know all of your neighbors, have third spaces you're a regular at and plan routine gatherings with a wide circle of friends. But how do you actually make this dream a reality? Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering, shares her best tips for building community at the local level.Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekitSign up for our newsletter here.Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at [e-mail] the show and listen to it sponsor-free by signing up for Life Kit+ at plus.npr.org/lifekitLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey, it's Mariel. There's this saying, everybody wants a village, but no one wants to be a villager. I saw Priya Parker post about this online. She's a conflict resolution facilitator, an author of the Art of Gathering. So she thinks about community and relationships a lot. When I post on Instagram, doesn't of types of gatherings that other people are doing, in part to inspire people to host more

gatherings because we have a loneliness crisis. The majority of the comments I get, the DMs I get are, oh, I wish I was invited to something like that. One time she posted the obituary of a man in New Orleans who hosted these Monday night dinners where he'd cook red beans and rice and invite neighbors, friends, and strangers to his table. He hosted thousands of people over many years. And this post, it went viral. And what's interesting to me about it going viral, the majority of the comments were, I wish I was invited to a dinner like that. And I'm thinking, host one. Host one. Host it. Right? The best way to get a seat at the table is to host the table. And I think right now, everybody's longing for community. We long to be part of a village. We long to have

people come over and help us, but when's the last time you've hosted something? When's the last time you have helped somebody move? When's the last time you pick somebody up at the airport? When's the last time you, if you don't have kids, offered to babysit your friend's kids so that they can go out on a date night? It's almost like community has become consumption instead of production. It can also be hard to build community if you don't have places you go all the time besides your workplace. If you're geographically isolated, if your favorite people live far away? Hard, but not impossible. Hard, but worthwhile. On this episode of Life Kit, how to start building your village and being a villager. We'll talk about hosting events,

choosing who to invite, joining community spaces, and helping people connect. That's after the break. Okay, Priya, what's a good place to start when it comes to building community? One of the best ways to build a community first is to host something and host something that you are excited by. It shouldn't be a should. Host a gathering you want to attend. And it can be super simple. It can be super silly. Actually, honestly, the sillier, the better. There's a woman who wrote in, I have a subset called Group Life. and she wrote in and shared this example, she saw a tomato tart she wanted to make.

Like, you know, many of us see a recipe, you're like, oh, I want to make it that one day. She took the recipe, invited six friends to come over that week for dinner. She made the tomato tart. She had everyone dress up in red for the dinner. And then at the dinner, she asked, what made you feel like a tomato this week? Oh.

It was doing something that she deeply wanted to do. When you do something that's, like, exciting to you or energizes you, it's also contagious. So the first thing is, like, asking, like, how do I want to spend my time? Or what's one activity I've been wanting to do? What is one thing I've been longing for? It could be simply, like, I've been dying to go and check out the new bookshop across town. Maybe invite three friends to go and come with me. Let's go for a little field trip to go check out the bookshop.

So start with something that, like, you feel like, that sounds fun. Takeaway one. To build a village, start by hosting something. Anything. A group dinner, a clothing swap, tea time at your apartment. Tell people, I'm making a pie, and I need folks to come over and eat it. When it's tax time, invite everybody over to get their taxes done together and then celebrate your accomplishment. Just be creative. Think about what excites or delights you and start there. If you don't have a lot of people to invite, go small, one or two people, maybe a family member. or a neighbor. You can also start meeting new people to invite to things at community events and institutions. Attend things. Like look in your community. Go to a institution, a third place in your community, look at their calendar, start showing up, start becoming a regular. The idea of a regular is a really powerful idea. There's so many, first of all, third places that want to be this for people. So restaurants, bookshops, gyms, parks. that are wanting to bring people together.

So go to those, like, find one place. It can be trivia night at a local pub. And you keep going every Tuesday night over and over again. Find ways to take small social risks. And also, you can see if someone's not catching the vibe, that's fine. Keep trying in different places. But put yourself in places where other people are also looking for community. And there's some amount of shared interests,

which is why I keep saying, like, go to something where you are interested in what the activity is. If you don't drink alcohol and it's like a whiskey tasting night, that's probably not a good match, you know? Yeah. And I feel like a lot of folks, like you said, they'll say, well, none of my friends host anything like this, but then you can find these other spaces. And I feel like one way to find them is to follow the things that feel sparkly or glimmery for you, the things that feel warm. You might not know it off the bat, but you're like, hmm, soft. fall or drumming. Yes. Stop thinking about what you think it should look like and start noticing moments where you

feel more alive. I was invited a few months ago by a friend of mine who for like nine months talked about what she most missed from childhood was kickball. Like literally most missed from childhood. And all she longed to do was to get people together in a park and play a game of kickball. And she was talking about it and talking about it and talking about it. And I was finally like, do it. Just do it. I'll come. And like 20 people showed up.

They were so delighted in part because she was so excited. And we like put up plastic chairs for the bases and cleared out a part of the park. And we played two hours of kickball. And it was so fun. And everyone thanked her after. And we met different people. And you actually didn't have to do anything but be part of one of the teams and cheer and chant and mess around. I love that.

I also have been thinking with hosting a regular routine event, I think it can really help to ask a friend or two who you know value community and are the kind of people who show up and commit to do it with you. Totally. I mean, what you're sort of getting into is what makes a healthy, vibrant group, right? What makes a group last? What's the infrastructure of groups that last over time? How often is the right rhythm for this group? I have a friend who's just started a Majong group and they're doing every Tuesday. For others, that may feel like, whoa, that's a huge time commitment, maybe once a month. So like, how often? Then who's hosting this? And is it actually helpful for that one person who has the space to host it? Very. important part of group life is reciprocity. Is that that person carrying the weight of hosting and then other people are doing other things? Or do you rotate? So I host a monthly community dinner with friends. There are five of us who are always there and then we invite a few plus ones every time. But one thing I love about it is the burden of hosting isn't entirely on any one of us, right? Like we're co-hosting. Yes. I mean, one of the things I often say to folks when particularly they're hosting something to say, you know, what's the best way to lower my anxiety

and like, you know, breathing practices, all that helps. But actually, the best way to lower your anxiety is to share the worry of hosting by having co-hosts or by having sometimes what I call even sub-hosts. So it's not that everyone even necessarily needs to play the same role, but this is a great trick to also just get people having buy-in and sort of feeling like they're all rolling their sleeves up. Like aside, I used to have a friend who had signed. as people walked in, like a minister of water. You tonight are the minister of water. Wow, what's that?

Well, whenever you see anyone's cup empty, you get to fill it. Wow. And you, my darling, are the chief minister of wine. Ooh, right? And you are the distributor of big red gum. Wow. Right? It's all of these tiny little sub-rolls, sub-hosts.

And also, like, we're not all raised the same way. We're not all raised in the same religious context or community or cultural context. And so the core of my work, I'm a biracial, bicultural, conflict resolution facilitator who wrote the art of gathering and now are exploring these ideas through group life on my substack. And so much of what I keep saying to myself as well is in modern life, we're not raised the same way. We don't have the same traditions. We don't have the same norms. And so by doing things like assigning sub hosts, you're also helping people understand how to participate when you don't all necessarily have the same mental model of what a quote unquote, night looks like.

Takeaway to share the joy and responsibility of hosting with friends. You could co-host something like a community dinner or just allow people to be of use when they show up. Give them some veggies to mince or tell them you're responsible for tonight's playlist. Throw a baby shower where folks come over to the couple's house and help them set up their nursery. I love the idea of making something together, especially because I don't drink alcohol. And I think that a lot of activities and a lot of group gatherings can become centered around alcohol by default. And it's just really nice to say, well, what else could we do? Like, that's why I love playing sports. But it's also, you know, you can make art

together. You could get some air-dry clay and be like, we're just going to make some stuff. We're just going to use our hands together. Absolutely. We can make things together. We can sing songs together. We can tell jokes together. I recently saw a gathering where I'm forgetting the name of the town, but they had a neighborhood service swap. Yeah. They got 18 neighbors together. They came together in like a community center from like 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on a Saturday. They had flyers all over the community and said, bring whatever is broken in your house and we'll fix it.

I love that. And people came and they were like fixing laundry machines. and tables with screwed out legs and a sewing machine and a camera. And like, it was a swap. Yeah. But it was also this deeper thing happening to be like, oh, I know my neighbors. And it allows people to have a shared context and a way in. We'll have more life kit after the break. Coming back to this idea that we started with, let's say that you want to try hosting something that you can then invite newer people to, have that cornerstone friend, like one or two cornerstone friends that maybe you meet them through a group activity. Like that's where you start or you meet them at work. you wherever and they are people who are reliable and who you love being around who like you know

will show up and you know our game to try something exactly my husband and i have a term for these people we call them yes friends they're friends who always say yes yes i'll do that thing with you yes i'll come over yes you know i'm down i love that and i the other thing i would say is if a group sounds scary or hosting something sounds scary which i totally get i think of you know i'm a conflict resolution facilitator of groups. And so so much of my work is thinking about how do you create meaningful connection in a group context despite obstacles. And I almost visualize these groups, whether it's six people, eight, 20, as a spider web. And everyone has a link to everyone else. But I as the facilitator need to be trusted by all. And so in like high stakes facilitation,

we never start by just entering the room and starting the conversation. It's months and months of preparation. And the first thing I do is make an individual connection with each participant. And then we start bringing people together. So if you want to bring together four people or six people, maybe start with like a one-on-one coffee or a walk or running errands with each one and kind of just feel the vibe. It can sometimes feel less scary when you also are kind of the link between each person. And then you can also introduce them in ways that allow them to know more about each other. Do you have any tips specifically for folks who are shy, like how they can bridge that gap and try to connect with people in these spaces. When I wrote The Art of Gathering years ago, I interviewed

over 100 types of gatherers who other people credited with consistently creating amazing gatherings of all types. And one of the things I thought was super interesting was how many of them identified as introverts. And I asked one of them why they thought that was. And she said, I don't know about others, but I know for me, I'm so uncomfortable at so many of the gatherings I go to. So I decided to host gatherings based on ones I would want to attend. And it's doing things like thinking about the structure or the design of the gathering rather than sort of winging it based on, you know, your sparkling personality. It's finding ways to have release valves or escape hatches like, you know, little nooks with chess tables or game of cards or something

on the side. It's understanding also things like noise and music and thinking intentionally about how loud or softest spaces. It's finding ways to give people in to each other that don't feel totally awkward. It's finding ways to have shared meaning without having to have conversation be the only way through. Like so much of connection, it's a skill and it's a learnable skill. The good news is these are learnable skills and the good news is we can practice. Takeaway three. When you're planning a gathering, look for your yes friends.

The ones who are game, who show up, who initiate and treat your shared time with reverence and respect. These are also great folks to start with if you're trying to build a group of friends. And you don't have to start with a big or routine event. Invite one or two of these friends to a low-stakes hang and see how they vibe. What's a way you could give people ins with each other, like help them connect? People love to argue and banter. I'm a conflict resolution facilitator, and like one of the deep problems of so many of our gatherings is like we vacillate between unhealthy peace and unhealthy conflict. Two weeks ago on group life, I did a webinar called How to Hold Healthy Heat at your family gathering and when to cool it down.

And one of my tips was fight, but about other things. Right. People love to banter, like strong opinions about low-stakes. issues, right? Low stakes, hot takes. I know a manager who wanted to bond her team didn't have much of a budget. So she hosted a hot takes party. And everyone had to bring a two-minute PowerPoint presentation. She had hot dog and beer and they presented their hot take to the group of eight. It's like there should only be one type of pasta or like winter is the best season or wireless headphones are the worst invention ever and people defend their opinion and everyone's

laughing and then you're like arguing with one another but there's a lot of warmth and banter and it creates a lot of stickiness and trust in a group yeah i like that idea it also seems important to me to consider building community with people who are different ages than you yes i was actually going to say that earlier, 100%. The loss of intergenerational gatherings is a huge loss all around. I mean, even if you think about parenting groups, I remember when I first had a child went, go to parenting groups, someone pointed out to me, a European, older European friend was like, why do you think the best advice would be from eight other women who gave birth the same month who live in your zip code? Like, this makes no sense. Yeah. And maybe a good support group,

because you're all having a shared experience. But that shouldn't then collapse into the guidance group. Yeah. Right? And so intergenerational gatherings, yes, yes, yes. I even with some folks from my softball team, we went out to get pizza recently, and we realized going around the table there's four of us. And it was like, one is 14.

She's the daughter of one of the other people who were there. 14, 23, 36, 45. And we had a great time. Absolutely. I recently read on Substack, a woman who said, you know, it's my 12-year-old, recently, like, someone brought over a two-year-old. And it was the first time he'd spent time with a two-year-old. And he was so delighted. And it gave him a chance to, like, be an elder. Like, it's good for everyone. And so, and yes, it can be awkward or you may have to negotiate. You have to figure out what time is bedtime or not bedtime. But we've privatized and individualized so deeply. that we, it is very difficult to connect across generations. Okay, Priya, what's your number one community building tip for folks in the coming year? Be a proactive, intentional, kind, thoughtful guest. That could be at a pub.

That could be at a bookshop. That could be at a reading series. That could be at a friend's house. I'm a much better guest than I am host. I love being a guest. There's actually less pressure because the host is so delighted to have a great guest. And my number two is to go back to the identity part of hosting is host something. Host something in the next month.

It can be tiny. It should scare you a little. Do something that at the essence of the activity, whatever it is, makes you giggle. Makes you like, yeah, I want to spend time that way. Host one thing and think of it as an experiment. Priya Parker, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. All right, time for a recap.

Takeaway one, host something, anything. Think about what excites or delights you and start there. If you don't have a lot of people to invite, go small. One or two people, maybe a family member, a neighbor. You can also meet people to invite to things at community events and institutions. Takeaway two, share the joy and responsibility of hosting with your friends. You could co-host a community dinner or just allow people to be of use when they show up. Takeaway three, look for your yes friends, the ones who are game, who initiate and who

treat your shared time with reverence and with respect. All right, a couple other tips. Playlists are a fun way to help people connect. You can ask everyone to send you a couple songs ahead of time and create a group playlist. Also, make friends with people of different ages and backgrounds. You want your village to include lots of different folks, as Priya says, the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. That's our show. If you liked this episode, do us a quick favor. Make sure to tap the follow button in your podcast app.

That way, you'll never miss an episode. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Margaret Serino. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan, and our digital editor is Malaga Gereeb. Megan Kane is our senior supervising editor, and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagle, Claire Marie Schneider, Lenin Sherburn, and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Quasi Lee. I'm Mariel Segarra. Thanks for listening.