Isabella Casale 

Professor Ferrara

ENGL 1001

8 April 2022

Why you should talk to strangers

What if the rule you’ve most likely been told your whole life, “don’t talk to strangers,”

was actually keeping you from having important, meaningful conversations? Everyone has a

different view on strangers, but the usual response is to look down, keep walking, and avoid

conversation. Kio Stark, however, gives a very persuasive TED Talk on “Why we should talk to

strangers.” Throughout the TED Talk Stark talks about all the benefits that come from talking to

strangers and the best way to go about it. Stark was enlightened to give this talk based on a

conversation she had with a stranger who was looking out for her safety. Her purpose of the talk

is to encourage people to talk to strangers as real individual people and not just a person they

pass and scold at. She discusses what can come out of talking to strangers, and how it can be a

meaningful experience for each person.  She explains how it can be a way for people to express

feelings they are too uncomfortable sharing with closer friends and family. Stark gave this talk in

order to convince people to break the barriers that we as society put up between civility and

privacy. Certain people and cultures go to extremes to avoid talking to strangers, but she argues

that it has many benefits. Cultures that value hospitality will ask strangers for water or offer

strangers coffee. She challenges us to act more like this; break the “rules” of society that keep us

from interacting with strangers because it can make us more open minded and helps us to break

the habit of being prejudiced. Throughout the talk, Stark used the rhetoric devices, ethos, pathos,
and logos, to effectively help listeners to stay engaged in the talk and really persuade the

audience to talk to strangers. 

Stark does a very good job at using ethos to give herself credibility, therefore

strengthening her argument. She appears confident and sure of herself and she backs this up by

giving examples of her real life experiences and conversations she has had with strangers. These

conversations and examples make her more credible so I trust her. She also talks about different

cultures and their typical “rules” when it comes to interactions with strangers. She explains how

some cultures are very open and hospitable to strangers, while others do anything they can to

avoid people they don’t know. Our culture in America leans more to the side of avoiding

strangers. This is how most of us are taught to act from a young age by our parents and how we

see others act. These facts and personal examples show the research she’s done on this topic

making her a credible source. 

She uses pathos to pull the listeners in by their emotions. She tells the story of her dad

dying, which is a very personal and sad piece of information. This is information that we tend to

only talk about with close friends and family. However, she says that when strangers ask her

about her father, she is honest and tells them what happened. She explains that strangers will

typically reciprocate this with stories of their own losses. This is a bonding moment that makes

each person feel less alone with their feelings and experiences. It makes her feel understood. She

knows all people want is to feel noticed and appreciated even if it is from a stranger. She

explains that when she documented her experiences of talking to strangers, she found these were

“genuine emotional connections,” and “unexpected pleasures” (“Stark 1:04-10).  She uses these

facts to persuade people into being more open to talking to strangers by explaining that these

conversations will help to feel noticed and cause them to make others feel the same way. Most
people have lost someone close to them and will relate to this story. This makes the listeners feel

more tied to the argument she is making because bonding over loss is a great way to feel less

upset or alone. The listeners will be much more likely to talk to strangers after hearing this.  She

also explains how conversations with strangers can make yourself and others feel important, and

that people often realize; that people “often feel more understood by strangers,” or emotions with

strangers more easily than with people they are close with (“Stark” 5:25-28). She even adds that

this is a special form of closeness that “we need just as much as we need our friends and

families” (“Stark 5:52-57). She says that after a stranger told her to be careful when standing on

a storm grate, she felt happy knowing someone she didn’t know was worried about her safety.

She says “for a minute I felt like my existence as a person had been noticed. And I was worth

saving” (“Stark” 2:06-12). She uses the common human emotions of loss and the desire to feel a

connection with others and make others feel happy, to further persuade her listeners to talk to

strangers. 

She uses logos to convince the listeners that talking to strangers has more benefits than

we would expect and that it is not dangerous as most people are taught. People can get a good

perception of others at a first glance and can usually trust their instincts to what strangers are

willing to have a conversation and are ok to talk to. She explains that “we should use our

perceptions rather than our fears,” and to “think of people as individuals” rather than put

strangers in a box of people we don’t know. We also know how to interact with people without

giving too much information and in a safe area so there is really no danger in talking to strangers.

She also says that these conversations are “quick conversations so they have no real

consequences” (“Stark” 6:05-09). This is a great point to persuade the audience because it will

make them more likely to talk to a stranger knowing that it won’t take long, and they probably
won’t see that person again so there's really no reason to be afraid of how the conversation goes.

She convinces the readers that there really is not any danger or reason to worry because we can

determine who and when to talk to a stranger, and the conversation will be short and fleeting.

In general, I think she did a really good job using all of the rhetorical devices. She used

ethos to show she is a credible source and create a convincing argument. She used pathos to

effectively persuade the audience that talking to strangers is a good thing because it can create an

emotional bond and help people feel understood and appreciated and make others feel good.

Finally, she used logos to convince the audience that this is not a dangerous task because people

have enough sense to know who, when, and where they can safely talk to strangers. She presents

her argument to the audience as if she was a friend giving them good advice on how to improve

ours and others’ day to day lives in a simple and easy way. This exercise helped me to realize

that using any of these rhetorical devices, especially all three, can help me to make a convincing

and strong argument. If I watched this Ted Talk before learning about these, I would have been

persuaded that talking to strangers is a good thing without realizing how she makes this

argument strong. Watching this with these rhetorical devices in mind, I understand how she did

this and how I can do the same with any arguments I want to make.

 
 Work Cited

“Why you should talk to strangers,” TED, February 2016, Ted.com

https://www.ted.com/talks/kio_stark_why_you_should_talk_to_strangers?language=en