#273: The Art of Doing Nothing Much, Together
Hanging out. All of us could probably stand to do more of it, especially if it doesn\u2019t come with a calendar invite. In her new book, Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time, Sheila Liming writes that she\u2019s found herself \u201can accidental witness to a growing crisis: people struggling to hang out, or else voicing concern and anxiety about how to hang out.\u201d The coronavirus may have heightened this struggle, but its root causes\u2014our increased obsession with our phones, the shrinking of public spaces, widening income inequality, American individualism\u2014predate the pandemic. Liming, a professor of communications at Champlain College, joins us on the podcast to discuss both what we have to lose by not spending unstructured time together and how we can get it back.
Go beyond the episode:
- Sheila Liming\u2019s Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time
- Liming learned a lot about the art of the hang through her time playing in the Catamount Pipe Band and the jam band The Armadillos
- Ray Oldenburg celebrated all the \u201cthird places\u201d where people hang out in The Great Good Place
- You know what would make hanging out a lot easier? The 15-minute city
- Practice doing nothing much with one of these great hangout films
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