For most dinners, you’d be forgiven for not properly setting the table. But for holidays, dinner parties, and other special occasions, taking the time to set a table with the right utensils and dishes lends an air of significance to the occasion — something that feels particularly rare in our modern age.

On a practical level, though, most advice on this topic goes rather overboard with dinnerware, glassware, and silverware that 99% of households don’t have. Not to mention, the majority of tables simply don’t have space for each setting to have three plates and three glasses and a handful of flatware items. 

So in the guide above we sought to strike a balance between proper and practical. We’ve put the napkin under the forks to save space; we’ve not included dessert-specific items, as those things usually come out only after dinner has been cleared; and we’ve opted for just two beverage glasses, one for water and one for wine (or, really, whatever the special drink of choice is for the evening). Also note that spoons should technically only be placed if there’s a dish that requires it, but especially when kids (who often like using spoons more than forks) are included, they can be part of the place setting no matter what. 

Finally, it’s worth noting that this is a great job for kids to do in preparation for a party. It’s straightforward and helps keep them involved rather than just sitting around and asking when people are going to arrive or when dinner will be served.

Illustrated by Ted Slampyak

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Frank Sinatra had a word for tipping: duking.

And no one duked like Sinatra.

Tom Dreesen, his longtime opening act, said Frank would never make a show of it. Instead, folded bills were passed in an ordinary-seeming handshake. In fact, ol’ Blue Eyes rarely did the duking himself; instead, he handed his bodymen stacks of cash and issued his trademark directive: “Just duke ‘em for chrissakes!”

Besides frequently tipping, Sinatra handed out gratuities in Midas-like amounts. He almost always duked in C-notes — $100 bills. And this was in the 1950s and 60s! That’s more than $1,000 in today’s money. Sinatra’s friend Don Rickles joked that “whoever he tipped could go buy a mansion in Paris.”

To Sinatra, tipping wasn’t about multiplying the total of the bill by 15% at the bottom of the check; it was part of his code. Duking was his way of saying: I see you. I value what you do. And I want you to know it.

Even though Sinatra had far more money to spread around than the average joe, there are still lessons we can learn about tipping from the Chairman of the Board — guidelines that are especially relevant in a world where the cultural practice has gone awry.

The Trouble With Tipping Today

Tipping used to be simple. You tipped the waiter. The bartender. The shoeshine guy. The bellhop who lugged your Samsonite to your room.

Now, the touchscreen spins around at the fast-food counter and you’re asked to choose between 18%, 22%, and 25% . . . for someone who just handed you a value meal. The proliferation of digital tip prompts has created what economists and etiquette experts call tipping fatigue. When you’re asked to tip for transactions that don’t involve personal service, the whole thing starts to feel less like hospitality and more like a shakedown.

The Emily Post Institute and other etiquette experts draw a line here: you don’t need to tip for counter service or pre-packaged goods. Save it for situations where someone is personally attending to you; where their level of care or craft contributes to the overall quality of the experience.

A barber who takes twenty minutes to shape your mane? Tip.

The hotel concierge who gets you an umbrella? Tip.

The waitress who remembers you like your coffee black and your eggs over easy? Tip.

The cashier at the self-serve frozen yogurt place? No tip.

Sinatra’s Guide to Tipping

Sinatra’s tipping needn’t be imitated dollar for dollar. Few of us carry around wads of C-notes. And while I admire his generosity, Sinatra was definitely too much of a spendthrift. But the attitude he took about tipping is worth reviving. It’s generous. It’s big-hearted. It’s magnanimous. It’s fun.

Here are some Sinatra-inspired tipping rules for the modern world:

1. Tip big where it counts. The barber you see every month. The waitress who knows your kids’ names. The hotel staff who make your stay comfortable. These are the folks who elevate your life a bit. Elevate their life in return with a nice tip.

2. Don’t nickel and dime people. If you can afford the service, you can afford the tip.

3. Skip the tip when it doesn’t make sense. No one expects you to tip the cashier at the gas station. When every screen in America demands a gratuity, discernment keeps generosity from becoming meaningless.

4. Keep it discreet. Flashing cash for attention turns generosity into performance. Sinatra never tipped to be seen. He tipped to honor. His preferred method was folding a bill three times into a small square and subtly passing it in a handshake. Executed with maximum discreetness — just like a CIA brush pass.

5. Only duke on the way out. Sinatra never greased palms to jump the line or get premium service. He only duked as he was leaving — as an expression of appreciation for services rendered.

Duking as Hospitality

What I admire most about Sinatra’s prodigious tipping was that it was a micro-habit of his broader life stance of radical hospitality.

Friends recalled that when they stayed at his Palm Springs compound, they’d find the medicine cabinets in every guest bungalow were stocked with toothpaste, aspirin, and tampons. And they were usually personally stocked by him. Bracelets and watches sometimes appeared at breakfast, just because. If someone complimented his tie, the next day they’d find a package with that exact tie. It was important to Sinatra to make sure people felt welcome and cared for.

We’ve written before about the manly art of hospitality. In ancient cultures, hospitality was tied up with a man’s sense of honor. To be a man meant to take care of others. I reckon the Italian-American Sinatra still carried with him that Old World sense of honor and expressed it accordingly.

Besides strengthening one’s own honor, the hospitable stance lifts others up. Sinatra definitely harnessed the spirit that Old Fezziwig emanates in A Christmas Carol. Fezziwig was a baller. So was Sinatra.

Tipping was one extension of that hospitable ethos.

Just Duke ‘Em!

You don’t need to drop $500 a night in crisply folded one hundred dollar bills to tip like Frank. Just take the stance he did: Be generous, give big whenever it matters, keep it low-key, and mean it.

When you do, you’ll live with, and impart to others, a little more ring-a-ding-ding.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

It often seems like we live in a very inconsiderate, indifferent, and ill-mannered time and that the cure for what ails our abrasive and disjointed relations is a lot more politeness. But my guest would say that what we really need is a revival of civility.

Today on the show, Alexandra Hudson — author of The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves — explains the difference between politeness and civility, and how being civil can actually require being impolite. We discuss how civility ensures the health of democracy, and good government relies on citizens’ ability to govern themselves and check each other, which may require acting a little like . . . Larry David. We talk about what Homer’s Odyssey can teach us about the art of hospitality, the relationship between civility and integrity, and more.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• AoM Article: How Manners Made the World
• Class: A Guide Through the American Status System by Paul Fussell
• AoM Podcast #746: The Confucian Gentleman
• AoM Article: The Manly Art of Hospitality
• “Chat and cut” scene from Curb Your Enthusiasm 
• The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson

Connect With Alexandra Hudson

• Alexandra’s website
• Alexandra’s Substack: Civic Renaissance 

Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)

Listen to the episode on a separate page.

Download this episode.

Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice.

Read the Transcript

Brett McKay: Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness Podcast. It often seems like we live in a very inconsiderate, indifferent and ill-mannered time and that the cure for what ails our abrasive in disjointed relations is a lot more politeness. But my guest would say that what we really need is a revival of civility. Today on the show, Alexandra Hudson, author of “The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society & Ourselves” explains the difference between politeness and civility and how being civil can actually require being impolite. We discuss how civility ensures the health of democracy and good government requires citizens’ ability to govern themselves and check each other, which may require acting a little like Larry David. We talk about what Homer’s Odyssey can teach us about the art of hospitality, the relationship between civility and integrity and more. After the show’s over, check out our show notes at aom.is/civility.

All right. Alexandra Hudson, welcome to the show.

Alexandra Hudson: Thanks so much, Brett.

Brett McKay: You got a new book out called “The Soul of Civility” where you explore what it means to be civil. That’s a topic that a lot of people talk about when they see things get acrimonious online, and you started the book off with a story talking about your experience in Washington that led you to take this deep dive into civility. So walk us through that experience. What happened in Washington.

Alexandra Hudson: Thanks, Brett. So my book is about what I think is the most important question of our day, which is how do we flourish across deep difference? I think you’re right people see the rancor and divisiveness all around us and intuit that this is a serious problem. I have a unique background and familiarity with this topic. I was raised by Judi The Manners Lady. My mother is this internationally renowned expert in etiquette and manners and actually while writing this book, I discovered that my mother is only one of four women named Judi who are internationally renowned experts in manners and etiquettes. So my mother is a… Yeah, there’s Judith Martin of the Washington Post, who’s maybe the most famous. My mother is also one of these figures. So I was raised in this home that was attentive to social norms and expectations and in addition to teaching manners, my mother really embodied the spirit of grace and hospitality and other orientedness that is the hallmark of true civility as I define it, sacrifice of the self so that the social can flourish in ourselves in society.

And one thing my mother always said to me growing up was that manners mattered because they were an outward extension of our inward character. And I have this constitutional allergy to authority. I don’t like being told what to do for no reason and so I always kind of questioned these social norms, why do we use forks and not chopsticks? Why do we do things the way that we do them? But I always followed them. My mother promised that they would lead to success in work and school and life and she was generally right until I found myself at the United States Department of Education. So I took this role in government ’cause I love learning and I was raised in this intellectually omnivorous home and I was confronted with these two extremes in government.

On one hand, there were these people who had sharp elbows and who were hostile and willing to step on anyone to get ahead. And on the other hand, there were these people who at first I thought were my people. They were the ones with polish and they were poised and they were suave and they knew the rules of etiquette and propriety, but I quickly came to realize that these were the people who would smile and flatter me one moment and then stab me in the back the next. That their polish, their politeness was this tool to disarm me and others in order to get ahead. And at first I thought these were polar opposites but I realized that these two modes, the extreme hostility and the extreme politesse, were actually two sides of the same coin because both modes instrumentalized others. They saw others as a means to their selfish ends, to their goals, whatever they wanted.

And I saw them as tools to either manipulate or discard. So I left government very disillusioned for many reasons and one of which was… The main reason was this extreme hostility and rancor and divisiveness. And so I left government and reflected deeply on this question, what does it mean to be a human being and what is the bare minimum of respect that we are owed and owed others by virtue of being members of the human community and having equal moral worth as human beings? And why does that matter in practice? What does that mean for our deeply divided moment? And one thing that experience helped me realize was that there is this essential distinction between civility and politeness. That politeness is manners, it’s etiquette, it’s a technique, it’s behavioral, it’s external, superficial whereas civility is internal, it’s a disposition of the heart that sees others as our moral equals and sees them as worth respecting in light of that. And sometimes actually respecting someone, actually being civil requires being impolite.

It requires breaking the rules of etiquette and propriety and telling hard truths, engaging in robust debate. Brett, you had a great guest on a few weeks ago about the art of saying no to people. We’re deeply uncomfortable with saying no to people but actually saying no as a way that we can respect ourselves and our own humanity, our own dignity. And so there is this relationship between respecting others and respecting ourselves and that sometimes requires being impolite. It feels impolite to say no to people, it feels impolite to tell them hard truth but that’s a way of actually respecting ourselves and others.

Brett McKay: Yeah, I think that’s the big theme in your book, is the difference between civility and politeness. And your mom wasn’t wrong when she said that manners, these outward things are important.

Alexandra Hudson: Right.

Brett McKay: They work if the inner part, the civility part, lines up.

Alexandra Hudson: Right.

Brett McKay: And as you said, sometimes in order to be civil, you have to break the rules of etiquette. And I’ve often thought of being civil or even just etiquette, what it means to have etiquette, it’s all about making other people feel comfortable in whatever situation you find yourself in. And so for the most part, we have these etiquette rules that say you shake hands this way, you introduce people this way because it kind of helps smooth out our interaction with human beings. But sometimes, in order to make that person feel comfortable, you might have to break the rules of etiquette, right?

Alexandra Hudson: Right. Absolutely, absolutely. You’re right. There is this disconnect between inner and outer and that sometimes actually respecting people, actually supporting, facilitating friendship, requires breaking the rules. And the story I love that illustrates this is the story of Queen Victoria when she was hosting this grand state dinner at Buckingham Palace for the Queen of Sheba as her guest of honor. And the Queen of Sheba at this elegant state dinner did the unthinkable. She took the bowl in front of her and tipped it to her lips and sipped it. And of course, this was a finger bowl meant to wash your hands, so you don’t drink the finger bowl. But what did the Queen… So the room gasped and watched what the Queen did, and no one could believe what she did. Queen Victoria took the bowl and did the exact same thing and tipped the finger bowl to her lips. Why? She flouted these rules of propriety in her Victorian England that was very attentive and mindful of social norms and expectations, but she broke them because she wanted to make her guests feel at ease and comfortable, and she wanted to facilitate the friendship and facilitate the trust. That is the stuff of the good life, the life well lived.

And so you’re absolutely right that I think at their best manners can perfect and politeness can perfect the disposition of civility and facilitate social interactions, but on their own, they’re not enough. Politeness alone, just doing the act, going through the actions and following blindly the rules of etiquette and propriety, alone that’s not enough to heal our deep divisions and help us flourish. We need the disposition of civility that actually respects people as well.

Brett McKay: Yeah. And you mentioned that people can use politeness as a bludgeon, right, to…

Alexandra Hudson: That’s right.

Brett McKay: Knock people over the head and kind of put them in their place, like, oh, well, you don’t know the rules and I’m gonna like…

Alexandra Hudson: Exactly.

Brett McKay: Shove this in your face and make you feel bad.

Alexandra Hudson: Yeah. There’s this great book I read as part of this writing my own book called “Class” by a gentleman named Paul Fussell, a popular writer in the ’90s, it is the ’90s. And he says that America, we like to think of ourself as this classless society. We’re the society where all men are created equal, but he says that’s not true. Like we’re actually a perpetually class conscious society because we pretend that class doesn’t exist and we don’t have these inherited things like rank and status and rituals that accord rank and status. We’re socially mobile and always trying to get an upper hand and define ourselves by the other. And so he says that the middle class are the most status conscious and they’re the most insecure. And the most insecure are the greatest, biggest snobs, the ones that are most fastidious about the rules of others and the social infractions of others.

Why? Because if they know the rules, it breeds their self-righteousness, and if you break the rules, it allows them to feel good in comparison to others. And so I think that’s such a great insight that the people that are the most insecure are the ones that are most fastidious about the rules of propriety, and tone policing and always surveying, making sure that everyone’s doing the right thing, the proper thing. There’s this great line I’m paraphrasing from George Bernard Shaw. He says, if you only take the trouble to follow the rules, you can basically get away with murder. Like that people think that you can follow the rules, you can smile, you can have the proper facade, the proper persona. That that’s enough, but… And we see that a lot today, a lot of silencing, of tone policing, of people worrying about what people are saying and weaponizing what’s appropriate to say and what’s not as opposed to looking at people’s heart and we should not allow the rules of propriety to get in the way of actually having important conversations and actually respecting others.

Brett McKay: Yeah, you see that disconnect, I’ve read just articles in different magazines or newspapers of individuals who maybe came from lower class parts of America, working class and then they… Because they did well in the SAT, they end up at an elite college and they find like the fastidiousness about just what’s proper, it was mind-boggling for them. They couldn’t figure it out and they often felt out of step with everyone else. And then also its… What’s weird is like what they thought was proper as a working class person ’cause they kind of grew up by more of traditional idea maybe of what it meant to be properly mannered, that wasn’t the etiquette thing in the upper middle class. And so there’s this disconnect and no one really explained it to them. And so they had to spend a lot of time just trying to figure out how am I supposed to act? Even like the clothes you wear, you might… So a lot of working class people think, well, I’m at this elite school, or at this business, I should wear business attire. Well, now it’s more like well, that’s actually gauche if you wear a shirt and a tie and a suit. You need to wear athleisure wear that’s kind of like subtly shows that you have this distinction. So yeah, it’s a example of the stuff that it can be used… Manners, politeness propriety can be used to just make people feel terrible.

Alexandra Hudson: You’re absolutely right. It’s such a great point that people today who claim that civility and manners are a tool of people in positions of power to silence or to keep people who are powerless in society powerless, to some extent, they’re right. And I argue that they’re talking about politeness. They’re not talking about civility. And you made the great point that the rules of fashion and politeness like the norms du jour, the fashion du jour, those change with remarkable frequency. And we see that across history and across culture. Why do they change? Because the moment that the lower classes in society begin to adopt certain fashions or certain tastes and certain morals, then that the elites in society have to invent new ones to keep ahead. They have to always have ways of distinguishing themselves from everyone else in society. Two quick examples of this that I love from history.

One is the hidden history of the pineapple. So in England in the 1800s, the pineapple, this quotidian fruit that we see for 99 cents at Costco everywhere today, utterly ubiquitous today was this status symbol of like… Like we can’t even fathom how desirable the pineapple was. I read one article in the Guardian that estimated that a single pineapple in today’s dollars would have cost 150,000 pounds or something outrageously expensive. It was this elite status. So today the pineapple is like the symbol of hospitality and it has roots in this epoch in English history where the pineapple was just the status symbol of luxury. And so people would buy the pineapple and set at their dinner table and then have these lavish parties right up until the pineapple was like rotting on their table. But it was this thing that conferred incredible cachet and status on the people who own the pineapple.

And so some industrious merchants said, “Okay, I see an opportunity here.” And they started importing pineapples from other parts of the world relatively inexpensively and then they also started renting out pineapples. So if you’re a middle class person that couldn’t afford the exorbitant fee of having your own pineapple, that you could rent one for the evening, still paying out the nose, but you could have that status just for one dinner party to impress your guests. And then, of course, the moment that these very industrious merchants made the pineapple more accessible, then the pineapple went out of style. And so the pineapple became increasingly ubiquitous and it is what it is today, a delicious fruit, but just not the status symbol it was at its peak in English history. The other quick example I’ll share is this rule, this rule, Brett, of you can’t wear white after Labor Day. I personally hate that rule. I love monochrome. I wear white all year round. I love my neutrals. But this rule is from kind of the Emily Vanderbilt Gilded Age era of American history, where there were these increasingly baroque rules of etiquette and propriety because the old American money wanted to distinguish themselves from the new money of the robber barons, of the Gilded Age in American history.

So that’s one holdover today that that particular rule that is emblematic of this era in American history where rules were increasingly complex to confuse people, that it was a way to distinguish the insiders and the outsiders. So if you were caught wearing white after Labor Day, “Oh, we knew you were part of the out group. You’re not part of the old moneyed in group.” So you’re absolutely right that norms have been weaponized and they’ve been this tool to distinguish in group from out group for us to feel better about ourselves in comparison to others. And that’s part of my project in distinguishing between civility and politeness. How do we… How do we… Think about the norms that we actually want in society that contribute to the joint project of human flourishing and the good life and how do we disambiguate that from the norms that divide and that make people feel poorly and that do oppress, that do marginalize? ‘Cause there is a rich history of that the people who argue against politeness and civility are not wrong.

But my take on that is that we just have to distinguish between civility actually respecting others, seeing them as our moral equals and worthy of respect in light of that and mere politeness.

Brett McKay: So you argue that the source of our civility problem is that all of us, humans have this tension between self-love and wanting to be part of a group. So how do these competing forces lead to incivility?

Alexandra Hudson: So I love the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to kind of illustrate this. So Solzhenitsyn said that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart and the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde really embodies that. Dr. Jekyll is a very well respected physician and he’s repressed these darker aspects of self, these longings, these desires, and he creates this potion that allows him to transform into this insidious Mr. Hyde that goes out and creates mischief and does damage and hurts people at night. And the more he indulges his inner Mr. Hyde, the easier it becomes to transform into Mr. Hyde and then he finds himself spontaneously transforming into Mr. Hyde. So what became this outlet for him to indulge these baser desires consequence free while still maintaining his public persona and his great reputation as this prestigious physician ultimately comes to overwhelm him and overtake him.

And that’s a really interesting point that I talk about how we each in our nature we’re defined by a deep social impulse. We long to be in relationship, we long to be in friendship with others, in community. We become fully human in relationship with others. And yet we’re also defined by self-love and we’re morally and biologically driven to meet our own needs before others. An extreme manifestation of our self-love is what St. Augustine, one of my favorite thinkers, called the Libido Dominandi, the lust to dominate others and we see this idea in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde too, that the more we indulge that Libido Dominandi, that selfishness, that manifestation of selfishness within each of us, that the lust to dominate becomes the dominating lust and it dominates us as well. And that’s exactly what happened in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Mr. Hyde, the Mr. Hyde within Dr. Jekyll ended up overtaking him and killing him. And so Blaise Pascal, one of my other favorite thinkers, this French polymath and genius scientist, he said that the human condition is defined by the greatness and wretchedness of man, that we have this unbelievable benevolence and capability of doing wonderful things for the world, for humanity, for… But we’re also fallen and that these two aspects of self are equally part of who we are and what it means to be human. And so which aspect of ourself do we indulge, do we cultivate, do we refine and practice? ‘Cause that becomes our habits and our character over time.

Brett McKay: No. Yeah, I think you’re right. So all of us, we have this desire to be a part of a group. It feels good to be a part of a group. We’re wired for that. But at the same time, we also think about ourselves. And when we indulge too much in our wants and wanting to dominate others and put our needs first, that’s when incivility rises, that’s when the tension in a group starts to rise. So it’s this balancing act ’cause you don’t want to be completely submissive to the group. You want to still be a self, have boundaries, as people talk about these days, but the trick is trying to figure out like how much do I assert myself and then how much do I put others first so we maintain group harmony?

Alexandra Hudson: That’s right. So civility is the art of human flourishing. Politeness wants to reduce human interactions to a science, to a set of rules, but you’re absolutely right that human life, human relationships, human beings themselves, we’re far too complex. It’s too nuanced to just be reduced to a monolithic set of rules. That we need to have the inner disposition that gives us the wisdom to discern when to break the rules, when to say yes, when to say no, when to contravene norms, prevailing norms of the day in order to support the project, the joint project of human flourishing.

Brett McKay: So what you do in this book is you take readers on this sweeping tour of writings running from the dawn of civilization until the present age that grapple with this incivility causing tension. It’s like how can we be a self, but also belong in groups that everyone can flourish? What was the earliest civility manual that you found?

Alexandra Hudson: So the oldest book in the world, Brett, is a civility book. It’s called “The Teachings of Ptahhotep”, so Ptahhotep from ancient Egypt, and we get it from 2600, 2700 BC. And Ptahhotep was an Egyptian advisor, so an advisor to the Egyptian pharaoh, and he had reached the pinnacle of political life in Egypt and the civilized world at the time. And he was actually offered to become pharaoh himself. He turned down that offer to power. And after being in the room where it happens his entire life, he chose to retire and he reflected on the stuff of the good life. What are the timeless principles of human flourishing? And so he wrote down these 38 teachings, these maxims that we have today as the maxims of Ptahhotep. And what is so fun is that if you look these up, they are remarkably timeless. They could be in a Miss Manners column in the Washington Post today. They’re very basic and rudimentary things like be kind to your friends, not just when you need something, but just do it spontaneously.

Do it just because they’re your friends. Don’t be cruel to people who are less powerful than you. Like don’t abuse your power. This is a great one when I also saw time and time again when I was looking at these civility handbooks across history and culture. Ptahhotep several times in his maxims, has several maxims dedicated to, do not gossip. He says, don’t gossip, don’t do it. It undermines trust and undermines this fragile project of community and civilization. So it’s just remarkable how the continuity, he was just a thoughtful observer of the human experience and the human condition and saw that we were prone to act selfishly. And he said, don’t, that’s not the stuff of the good life. And it was fun to… So it’s fun in my chapter too. I start with Ptahhotep and then trace this kind of ethos of civility as I define it restraining the selfish aspects of who we are so that the social can flourish. And we see that time and time again to ancient Greece etiquette manuals there to the medieval period, to the Renaissance, to ancient Indian epics, to modern day American etiquette manuals. So human nature doesn’t change. It’s an important problem today, but it’s one we’ve been grappling with for a really long time.

Brett McKay: Yeah, so the Egyptians had the first one and basically it laid the groundwork. It’s all about putting others before yourself and kind of harnessing your selfish desires. And then you just see that throughout the rest. I mean, all of them, what they all have in common, whether it’s from ancient Greece, you particularly see this in ancient China with Confucianism where it’s all about the social order. What I love about Confucianism is yes, they have these like strict rituals that you’re supposed to follow in order to be a good person there, but the underlying principle was it’s Aristotelian. It’s really interesting. It’s very Aristotelian. You have to do the right thing for the right reason at the right time in whatever situation you find yourself in. So it’s all about just helping the social order flourish and that you see that in everything. It’s not, yeah, they have these guidelines and rules that are there to help you because they work in most situations, but the underlying thing is like just do the right thing for the situation you find yourself in in order to help that social gathering be its best.

Alexandra Hudson: That’s absolutely right. I’m so glad you brought up Confucianism, both the handbook of Confucius’ Analects and also the Chinese Book of Rites, which is are all these rituals and decorum of politeness. But central to Confucianism is this concept of ren, which is a sort of humaneness and benevolence and goodness and love. And so ren is central to Confucian philosophy and to Confucius’ idea of how do we… Of the good life, how do we thrive in community with others? And what’s key is that people like Ptahhotep, people like Confucius, people like Erasmus of Rotterdam, Daniel of Beccles, these other heroes of civility that I talk about throughout my book from different times and places, they would not have needed to take the time to write these works, these handbooks for their societies if people had been following them intuitively.

They wrote them down because they looked around them, saw that people were falling short of these ideals and said, “Okay, let’s think about what we need to… Let’s reassess and let’s put down in writing these principles that can guide us and help us flourish.” And it’s really easy for people to look around us and feel like we’re in the worst era of civility. And a lot of pundits and commentators, there’s a lot of apocalyptic rhetoric around this topic. But I love zooming out and looking to the past and looking across history and culture. People have been grappling with these questions for a very long time since the dawn of our species, which I think is comforting and humbling because it allows us to recognize there are no easy solutions to this. This is the problem of the human condition. It’s not a now problem, not an America problem. This is a problem of who we are. And so it’s never gonna be perfectly resolved, but we each have a role in making it a little bit better or if we choose to, a little bit worse.

Brett McKay: We’re gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. And now back to the show. So etiquette manuals really begin to proliferate during the Renaissance. And there’s this sociologist, his name is Norbert Elias, who had this theory about why that is. And we wrote about this years ago, and it’s still an idea that I think about all the time. What Elias said was that the emphasis on etiquette rose in parallel with the emergence of the idea and implementation of democracy because the citizens of democracy need to have self-control for democracy to function. They need to have it in the sense of using their reason to vote for candidates and not be swayed by propaganda or demagogues. And you have to have the self-control to be able to get along with your fellow citizens. Just because you disagree with someone, you can’t punch them in the face, right? And manners are the regular exercise that keep people’s self-control muscle in shape. So basically, if you want to have a well-functioning democracy, you have to have a well-functioning culture of manners.

Alexandra Hudson: It’s the laws of nature, right? Like you steal from me, I steal from you, and it’s like survival of the fittest. And the whole story of human civilization is saying, okay, we’re gonna cooperate. We’re gonna define some rules that we’re all gonna abide by that’s like an early form of the rule of law and we’re going to see how we can… See if we can survive a little bit better, maybe flourish a little bit more. And so one thing I conceive in my book is we’re familiar with this idea of the social contract. The social contract is this relationship between citizen and sovereign in the history of political theory that we surrender a few of our rights. For example, someone takes from you, you punch them in the face. Okay, we agree that we surrender our right to punch someone in the face when they steal from us. We surrender that right to the sovereign. So sovereign’s going to be the arbiter of justice. They’re gonna take care of that. And in exchange for that, we get certain protections. Like for example, there’s an agreed upon rule, law, that we don’t steal from another in society.

So that’s the relationship between that traditional conception of the social contract, that vertical relationship between citizen and sovereign. But there is also this underappreciated horizontal social contract between citizens. It’s an unspoken, often unwritten social contract that governs these invisible bonds that are just as essential to supporting the vertical social contract. The vertical social contract, again, which enabled us to come away from this state of nature, whereas Hobbes said, it was this war of all against all. Like this free for all state of nature where we’re just constantly in survival mode that we move away from that so we can actually flourish and build institutions and build beautiful buildings and have art and survive and not just be at the level of survival. But that our horizontal, this horizontal social contract is sustained by our social norms, norms that respect one another, and that demand that we not just single-mindedly pursue our own interests at any given moment. That no, we live in society, and that means we voluntarily put a natural cap and limit and restrain our desires for the sake of this joint project of living well with others, that is society.

Brett McKay: Okay, so that’s interesting. That’s a big argument you make in the book. We do have this formal social contract. We have laws that establish, here is how we are going to behave in certain situations. So instead of you punching somebody in retaliation, you go to the courts, right?

Alexandra Hudson: That’s right, that’s right.

Brett McKay: You go to the state to mediate your conflict.

Alexandra Hudson: Yeah.

Brett McKay: But your arguing is that, and what Eliza’s arguing is that formal social contract relies on a horizontal, informal…

Alexandra Hudson: Exactly.

Brett McKay: Contract.

Alexandra Hudson: Yes.

Brett McKay: If you don’t have that sort of informal codes and manners of what it means to live well with others, then the formal one will just disintegrate.

Alexandra Hudson: So yeah, exactly. That’s exactly right. And so here’s a story that I’ve been reflecting on recently. So the earliest example of positive law that we have is from ancient Babylon called the Hammurabi Code. I was talking with a friend and my husband recently about the Hammurabi Code. So the king, Hammurabi, decided one day that he was going to enact on stone tablets 271 laws. And my question is, what was going on in ancient Babylon that caused Hammurabi to say, “Okay, now we need laws.” Right? Like, is it the case that norms, and the ancient Babylonian citizens’ decision to voluntarily comply with social norms, had that been sufficient up until that point and then the norms had degraded? And Hammurabi’s like, “Okay, society’s going to hell in a handbasket. Now we need laws with serious consequences, not just social sanctions and not mob violence too.” That’s another reason for the sovereign, that we’re not just ruled by mob violence, that we need these laws in place to protect the peace and tranquility of society. And my friend, her name is Stephanie Slade at Reason Magazine, so classical liberal libertarian. She’s like, maybe that’s the case or maybe Hammurabi said to himself, these laws, these norms are so widely followed, why not just put them into law? Why not just codify them and make sure that we’re all on the same page?

My husband offered a third idea that he had been reflecting on recently that positive law has, across history and culture, been a power play. It’s a way for a sovereign to say, even if there is no problem, no moral or norm degradation, to say, I am your sovereign and I’m gonna protect you from this possible potential threat. So for example, one of the laws in Hammurabi’s code is like, you steal from someone. It’s very lex talionis, very eye for an eye kind of theory of justice. Like, you steal from someone, you get your hand cut off. It’s pretty draconian. But so we don’t know if people stealing from one another was this rampant issue that Hammurabi decided to enact these laws to prevent against, but it’s possible that it was just a way for him to consolidate power. Like, okay, just in case anyone ever steals from you, know that I’ve got your back and we have these laws in place to make sure that they’re punished. So all that to say, yes, the norms that we have as a society, they are what allow a government to be limited in nature, which is a whole argument I make in my book about why civility supports freedom and limited government, democracy, and human flourishing.

Brett McKay: Yeah, you talk about how that civility and manners are often an informal code that exists outside the law and it’s up to individuals to keep each other in check. But there are times when governments make laws to enforce manners. Like when we don’t exercise, or like when we don’t have individual self-control, we can’t govern ourselves, then we open ourselves up to greater governance by external bodies.

Alexandra Hudson: Just a few years ago in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg instituted this whole politeness campaign. So if you’re a parent at your kid’s baseball game and you’re too loud and rambunctious, you get fined $50. If you are sitting in the movie theater and texting, fined $50. If you do something gross like spit in the street, like gross and rude, right, fined $50. If you put your feet on the subway, fined $50. On the subway seat next to you, fined $50. And New Yorkers were like, what? Like, they did not at all like being civilized by the local politeness police and their city government. So it was totally ineffectual and it didn’t last long. It was immediately revoked. But the point is the less that we restrain voluntarily our own conduct and interactions with others, autocrats past and present will and have been tempted to enforce propriety and decorum and basic courtesy for our fellow citizens and our fellow people by law, by fines. And that’s not an appropriate use of state action, in my opinion. And I think that most people would agree that we don’t wanna be micromanaged, have the horizontal invisible bonds between citizens. Those shouldn’t… The state should have nothing to do with that, but that does require that we each choose and volunteer to consider the needs and well-beings of others alongside of ourselves, which is the hallmark of true civility.

Brett McKay: But what do you do when no one else is doing it? Do we each enforce each other? Or are we just like, all we do is be an example of good civility hoping that’ll rub off on everyone else?

Alexandra Hudson: So this is where the Larry David’s of the world come in. Do you watch “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, Brett?

Brett McKay: Yes, yes, pretty good, pretty good, pretty, pretty good.

Alexandra Hudson: Pretty, pretty…

Brett McKay: Pretty good.

Alexandra Hudson: Pretty good. So I love “Curb Your Enthusiasm”. It’s one of our favorite shows and it’s a comedy of manners. And so Larry David, he calls himself… So the creator of Seinfeld, for those of you who don’t know, he calls himself in his own show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, he calls himself a social assassin. So he is this agent out there, always on the lookout for people who are committing social infractions. And he is everyone’s inner ego and inner id where like every day we’re out and about, we’re in society, we see people cutting people off, jumping in line, just doing thoughtless, selfish things. And normally, like most people, we roll our eyes, but we don’t say anything ’cause we’re like, you know what, I don’t want to deal with that. I don’t want that fight right now. But Larry David does all the time. That’s all he does.

He sees the social infractions, the petty selfishness around him all the time, and he calls people out. So I love the example of the chat and cut. Larry David’s in line at a buffet, and someone, a woman walks into the person in front of Larry David, and starts chatting up with this person, and said, “oh, remember we met at this place several years ago.” And Larry David goes, “Excuse me, ma’am. I know what you’re doing. This is a chat and cut. You’re trying to rekindle a very tangential relationship with a person that may not exist just so you can cut in line, but you see all these decent Americans behind us me included, we’re not gonna let you do this. Like, anyone else might let you commit the social infraction, the chat and cut, but not today, not here.” And so he makes her go to the back of the line. And so that’s where the Larry David’s of the world come in. Like, if we don’t want Michael Bloomberg and others… There are other stories I tell in the book of similar campaigns that happen in London and Paris, and so in the last two decades. So there is this temptation. It has happened in recent history where governments do get involved in politeness, in manners, if they get bad enough. But if we don’t want that, then a few Larry David’s of the world, keeping people in check, that’s where they come in. I call Larry David a foremost defender of civilization in that way.

Brett McKay: Okay, so we need some Larry Davids to call people out. But again, you talk about like, Larry David does it in a way that is incivil, uncivil sometimes. So again, it’s just figuring out how to encourage people to be better, but do it in a way that doesn’t bludgeon them, right? It maintains their dignity. And that’s a tough thing to balance.

Alexandra Hudson: It is.

Brett McKay: But okay, so if your kids are doing things that are not great, call them out. If you see a coworker, maybe take them aside and say, “Hey, this is probably not appropriate what you did.” Yeah, but it’s tricky. It’s always tricky to call someone out like that.

Alexandra Hudson: Yeah, but you’re right. Actually calling people out, especially calling your children out, that is a way of respecting them, that’s a way of loving them and not indulging them in harmful behavior that hurts others and that hurts themselves too.

Brett McKay: Okay, so civility can allow democracy to flourish without the state punishing us for being incivil. You also talk about how civility can allow us to live a life of integrity. So having a civil disposition means making sure your outward matches the inward, right.

Alexandra Hudson: Yes.

Brett McKay: I think sometimes people discount the role that outward actions can have on your inward actions, right? Sometimes people say, well, I might not be… I might not know all the rules of etiquette, but my heart is good and my intentions are good. That’s fine, but sometimes you gotta go a step further and be like, actually show what your inner disposition is by your outward actions. And then even if you don’t have that inward disposition yet, Aristotle talks about this, you can cultivate that inner disposition by doing the outward things and…

Alexandra Hudson: Exactly.

Brett McKay: The goal is by doing virtuous things, you become a virtuous person.

Alexandra Hudson: You’re absolutely right. So integrity is all parts of the self-making sense together, the inner and the outer co-hearing. We hear the word structural integrity in architecture, but we need a soul-ish integrity where we’re being held together. What we do and say externally is corroborated by ideally the disposition of civility of actually respecting others internally. And I thank you so much for bringing up Aristotle and his idea of habit cultivating the interior. So the story that I love about this is by an English writer named Max Beerbohm. It’s called “The Happy Hypocrite”. And he talks about this con artist who is vicious in every way and dishonest, but he falls in love with this beautiful woman and he decides that he’s going to marry her. But she says, “Nope, sorry, I can’t marry you because I will only marry a man with a virtuous face.” So what does this guy do? He goes to a mask shop and buys a mask of a man with a virtuous face, puts the mask on, and then goes and proposes and marries this woman, the woman he loves. And then something remarkable happens. After he put on this mask of a person with a virtuous face, he becomes more and more virtuous and being with the love of his life makes him better so he starts acting more virtuously. And then one of his rivals from his prior life comes onto the scene and exposes him to his beloved.

He says, “This man’s a fraud. He’s actually a con artist, he’s a vicious person. He’s not who he says he was.” And his beloved says, “Is this true? Like, show me your real self.” And she takes off the mask and what’s behind the mask is the face of a virtuous man. So he had initially put on the face of a virtuous man as a pretense, right? It was hypocritical ’cause internally he wasn’t virtuous, but over time, as he did the actions and practices of a virtuous person while he was married to his beloved, he actually became virtuous. And that interior quality, those external actions formed him internally and that made him actually a virtuous person. So that is a story I love that really illustrates your point that, yes, there is this disconnect where we can be hypocritical and do the right things, say the right things, and not actually be respecting of others. But the inverse is also true, where we can let our virtuous actions form us, form character for us internally, and that our character can be brought into alignment the more that we act selflessly and sacrificially to others.

Brett McKay: So talk about ways we can revitalize civility in ourselves and in our community. You offer different suggestions, civility education, bring that back in schools and also just amongst adults, you talk about Aristotelian magnanimity, but what I want to talk about, hone in on, is reviving the ancient art of hospitality. So how can reviving the ancient art of hospitality… Or maybe this is a better question. What can we learn from The Odyssey about reviving the ancient art of hospitality?

Alexandra Hudson: It’s disappointing today that so much when we hear the word hospitality, we often our minds immediately go to hotels and fine dining and trips like luxurious travel, but there is this rich tradition of hospitality as what I conceive of civility in practice, which is showing kindness to others, showing kindness to the strangers, just because they’re people in need. And so I love the story of Eumaeus in The Odyssey. I particularly love Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey. I’m excited just a tiny footnote of her translation of The Iliad is coming out in just a few weeks. I’m very excited about it, but in The Odyssey, when I read it a few years ago, Emily Wilson’s translation, it was all about hospitality. It’s all about manners, it’s all about Odysseus is constantly adapting his conduct to better put the people around him at ease and to survive. Like he’s very much in a survival mode and it’s all about the duties of host to guest and guest to host. But I love the story of Eumeaus that embodies what I love about hospitality, and ancient hospitality in particular, which is Odysseus comes home and he’s dressed as a beggar, a peasant, and he encounters his prior servant, Eumaeus.

And Eumaeus doesn’t recognize his master because his master has been gone for many, many years and Eumaeus is a very poor man and yet he encounters, he sees someone who’s even worse off than him, clearly wearied by the world and impoverished and in need. And Eumaeus welcomes him into his home, offers him a meal, offers him a shelter, offers him a bath, offers him new clothes, and only after doing all of those gracious, practical things for him, asks him who he is and invites him to tell his story. And Odysseus is overjoyed because he has determined his servant’s true character. His servant didn’t know that it was Odysseus. His servant was just being kind to someone who he thought was in need and clearly in greater need than he was. And so they have this beautiful, beautiful reunion, but there’s this trope across history of the strangers in disguise. It’s kind of a test. So someone who’s of a very high status is dressed as someone who’s a low status just to see, test the true character of the person. Are they going to be kind to me even if they don’t think I can ever repay them for their kindness? Or are they going to turn me away because it’s inconvenient for them to show hospitality to me? So this trope of the stranger in disguise and of hospitality to the stranger, hospitality to someone in need just because of who they are as human beings is this beautiful expression of civility and hospitality.

And again, civility is about what we owe to others, not just those who can do things for us, not just those who we like or who agree with us, but those who can’t do anything for us, and those who will never be able to repay us for these kindnesses, and the Homer’s Odyssey. And we see this again. This come up in “Thousand and One Nights”, this collection of Arabian folktales as well. We see the stranger in disguise trope and Sinbad the character is kind of like this Wily Odysseus type figure, and he’s always playing tricks and getting into it with strangers. But again, even in that distinct and foreign culture, that value of how you treat the other who you don’t know, who can’t repay you, who you may never see again, that’s just a value in and of its own sake by utility because at this point in history, we didn’t have affordable travel planes, trains and automobiles that could get us places safely, we didn’t have credit cards and easy modes of exchange to be able to survive. It’s like often cases, if someone didn’t take you in, you would die or brave the elements. And so it really was this sort of milk of human goodness, hospitality, this high expression of civility, of showing kindness to someone in need just because they were a human being like us.

Brett McKay: Yeah, I think reviving, so the Greeks called hospitality xenia.

Alexandra Hudson: Yes, exactly.

Brett McKay: And I think that is like the soul of civility because it’s all about putting the other first, right? So I like the idea of, I try to do this in my own life is in any situation, I try to think of myself as the host. Like, how can I make this person feel comfortable? But what’s nice about xenia, not only is there sort of an ethos required, a civil ethos required by the host, there’s a reciprocal ethos for the guest. And so if you are being treated by a host, there are certain things expected of you as a guest like you’re not going to take advantage of the host, you’re not going to overstay your welcome, you’re not going to… You’re going to say thank you, you’re going to show some decorum. So I think if we had that xenia attitude in all of our social interactions with people, it’s like, well, I’m going to think of myself as a host, and I’m going to make this person feel great, and then likewise, if we’re being the recipient of someone’s hospitality or civil behavior, reciprocate. Like say thank you, and don’t take advantage of them because they’re being civil to you. I think if people just read the Odyssey and followed xenia, things would be great.

Alexandra Hudson: I agree. And so it’s interesting though. Hospitality is this high expression, noble expression of civility, and it’s kind of this above and beyond act of generosity. We don’t necessarily owe everyone an invitation to dinner at our home, right? There are these gradations of response, but it’s really beautiful when we do do that, but there’s a reason why people today especially are skeptical. Well, I mean, people in all human history have been… There’s reason to be wary of letting strangers into your home. The root word of guest and host are etymologically linked in Greek, in German, in old French, because there’s a shared fate and a shared vulnerability that comes with the guest-host relationship. If you’re going into a stranger’s home, you’re vulnerable. You could be poisoned or killed in the night. If you’re a person letting a stranger into your home, you don’t know what they’re going to do in the night. You don’t know. It could be anyone. And so there is this mutual vulnerability. And so the Latin word for the root of hospitality is hospice, which is the root of hospitality and also hospital, but it’s also the root of hostility.

And I think that’s really interesting because it gets to this duality, this dual potential outcome of being hospitable to others. Like there is this mutual vulnerability. An act of hospitality could go really well, it could go really poorly. And there are lots of wonderful stories about and funny stories about hospitality going really poorly and if we have time, I’d love to tell one either between Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen or between David Hume and Rousseau. Do any of those interest you?

Brett McKay: Yeah.

Alexandra Hudson: Those are two different stories. Which one?

Brett McKay: Hume and Rousseau.

Alexandra Hudson: Okay, so Rousseau was kind of a mercurial figure. He was kind of known for having a short temper and for being very volatile. He basically had no friends because he would just turn on people on a moment’s notice. And David Hume was this Scottish philosopher, absolute genius and just universally beloved. Just a very good, very kind guy. The French loved David. They called him Le Bon David, the good David. He was just good and kind. And one of David Hume’s good friends in Paris said, “Look, Rousseau’s in trouble. The king wants to kill him. Can you take him in?” And everyone told Hume, don’t do it. Rousseau had fights with all of his friends and had basically alienated himself from everyone. Everyone said to David, “Do not touch Rousseau with a 10-foot pole. It doesn’t matter what anyone says. Don’t do it.” David Hume did not listen and he invited Rousseau as his guest in England because he was in trouble for his writings with the French king. And so he invites Rousseau to England and puts him up in a little cottage that he had outside of England, outside of London sorry. And pays for his food, pays for his travel, pays for his accommodation, gives him clothes, gives him books, whatever he needs, goes above and beyond to make Rousseau feel comfortable. And almost immediately upon getting to this little cottage, Rousseau starts creating these stories in his head about David Hume conspiring against him.

He says, “You know what, David Hume only brought me here to embarrass me. This is why he put me up outside of London and not in the heart of the city where I should be hobnobbing with the great luminaries of the day. He’s here to embarrass me. He’s plotting against me.” And so he accepts and tells himself this narrative and becomes so unhinged, and David Hume starts to panic. Rousseau is the most powerful intellect and writer, like, in the most powerful pen at the time. And so Rousseau turning on someone had consequences, and David was someone. He was a good person, and he valued his reputation. So he became increasingly concerned, increasingly worried. And Rousseau started writing these letters, these unhinged letters accusing David Hume of conspiring against him and wanting to embarrass him and this whole plot against him. And it became this whole international incident between the French and the English government because Rousseau was totally unhinged. And so that’s just a story that doesn’t really have a very happy ending. Like poor David Hume was brought to his knees by having this volatile guest that he had gone out of his way to make comfortable and brought into his home and tried to accommodate in every way.

But it goes to this duality and this mutual vulnerability in the guest-host relationship that doesn’t always go according to plan. When it goes well, it’s beautiful. It’s like you’re bonded by this shared experience, this shared moment in time that you’ll never get again, and you’re brought across differences. It’s beautiful, absolutely beautiful. But it also has the potential to not go well, which is why I outline in my book several timeless rules of the guest-host relationship that can ensure it does go well and that we do flourish in these kind of environments and it doesn’t go poorly as it did for poor David Hume.

Brett McKay: And then also it requires in order to be hospitable because there’s a vulnerability that your hospitality might be taken advantage of, you have to have the courage to do it anyways, right? ‘Cause I think that’s why a lot of people withhold, right?

Alexandra Hudson: That’s right. It does take courage.

Brett McKay: Because like, well, I’m just going to be a sucker. Someone’s going to take advantage of me, but you have to do it anyways and that’s where that Aristotelian magnanimity comes into play, right?

Alexandra Hudson: Yes.

Brett McKay: So you do do good because it is good. You do it because it’s good in of itself and then if someone returns that with what Rousseau did to Hume, you just kind of have to be like, well, that’s their problem, not mine. It’s going to sting, it’s going to hurt, but you just have to kind of be stoic about it.

Alexandra Hudson: Yes. I thank you so much for bringing up Aristotelian magnanimity. So in my book, I have this concept called the mellifluous echo of the magnanimous soul and this is the story of one person, one great souled-man, or great souled-woman. In my case, I talk about my grandmother, who was this magnanimous soul in my life. This potential of one person with their life, their goodness, their kindness, the seeds of life and joy that they sow to make a difference in the world, to make the world a better place, to create what I call a mellifluous echo across time and across place. So often in the news or in tell all memoirs, we hear these stories of generational trauma, of vicious cycles. I mean, we’re very familiar with those kind of stories of generational trauma and vicious cycles. But what about the inverse? What about the potential of one great soul, man or woman, to put in play virtuous cycles that reverberate across time and place? So in the example of my grandmother, she was this person for whom no human interaction was neutral. It was always a gift and it was always a joy for her to engage with anyone. Like the clerk at the grocery store, her taxi driver, like a stranger on the street. She was just someone that was so self-confident.

She was gorgeous, she was beautiful, but she forgot about herself that she could just totally focus on others. And my mother is the same way that she’s just utterly delighting in the relationship with others. She maximized every single human interaction and saw it as an opportunity to lighten and brighten someone’s day, that no interaction was neutral. Every exchange was an opportunity to make the world a better and brighter place. So she created this wherever she went, like left in her wake people brighter and better. She did… I will concede she left a lot of people very perplexed, very confused by her. We’re just not accustomed to people walking up and just being overjoyed to see us, but that is just who she was without any ulterior motive. She was just an ebullient, effervescent personality. She left a lot of people perplexed, but even more, she blessed and she elevated, she ennobled, she made their lives better and she… We’re familiar with the phrase, kicking the dog, right? So a dad has a bad day at work and then comes home, yells at his wife, who yells at the kids, and the kid kicks the dog, right?

But what is the inverse of that where one person’s beautiful interaction and kind word where that creates this ripple effect, this positive mellifluous echo that reverberates across time and place? And with people like my grandmother, magnanimous souls like her, we’ll never know this side of eternity, the good that they’ve done with their lives because it’s invisible, it’s unseen, but I trust that. And we each have the power to do that with our lives. Every single thing that we do can ennoble or debase. It can encourage people to want to be part of this joint project of civilization in a human community, or in the case of democracy, self governance, or we can through our thoughtlessness or our malice or our selfishness, we can choose to… Or our actions can cause people to want to give up on the joint project of living well with others altogether. And so my hope is that sharing the story of my grandmother that this concept of the mellifluous echo of the magnanimous soul can encourage people to really reclaim their sphere of influence, own what they can control, and be part of the solution in their everyday of making the world a better and brighter place.

Brett McKay: Well, Alexandra, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

Alexandra Hudson: So please do consider buying the book. I created $700 of free gifts to anyone who purchases the book, and you can get that on my website, alexandraohudson.com to claim those gifts. And my publication is called Civic Renaissance, and it’s about reviving the wisdom of the past to help us lead richer and better lives. So please do consider joining me over there.

Brett McKay: Fantastic. Well, Alexandra Hudson, thanks for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Alexandra Hudson: Thanks so much, Brett.

Brett McKay: My guest today was Alexandra Hudson. She’s the author of the book “The Soul of Civility”. It’s available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about her work at her website, alexandraohudson.com. Also, check out our show notes at aom.is/civility, where you can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.

Well, that wraps up another edition of the AoM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles that we’ve written over the years about pretty much anything you’d think of. And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate it if you take one minute to give us your view on Apple podcasts or Spotify. Helps out a lot. And if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think would get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support and until next time, this is Brett McKay reminding you to not only listen to AoM podcast, but put what you’ve heard into action.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

The charge to be well-mannered, to treat others with civility, kindness, and respect, is perennial. But the rules for how to carry those manners into action, the rules of good etiquette, change over time.

Given all the cultural and technological changes modern society has experienced, it’s not always easy to know the best practices for a contemporary gentleman. Here to offer some guidance on that front is Thomas Farley, also known as Mr. Manners. Today on the show, Thomas offers some answers to the frequently asked questions around modern etiquette, including when to send a handwritten thank you note, whether “no problem” is an appropriate response to “thank you,” if it’s okay to ghost someone, how to deal with our ever-proliferating and out-of-control tipping culture, whether it’s okay to exclude kids from your wedding, if you should still open a door for a woman, and more.

Related Resources From AoM’s Extensive Manners and Etiquette Archives

• How Manners Made the World
• The Importance of Good Manners
• How to Acquire Good Manners
• The Art of Thank You Note Writing
• The Unclassified Laws of Etiquette
• How to Accept a Compliment With Class
• The Ins and Outs of Opening a Door for a Woman
• A Primer on Wedding Etiquette
• How to Tame the Timing Anxiety Around Texting
• Podcast #718: How to Use Digital Body Language to Build Trust and Connection
• Podcast #162: Digital Manners & Etiquette For the Modern Man
• Podcast #422: Men & Manners — Tipping, Emojis, and Much More

Connect With Thomas Farley

• Thomas’ website

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Read the Transcript

Brett McKay: Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. The charge to be well-mannered. To treat others with civility, kindness, and respect is perennial. But the rules for how to carry those manners into action, the rules of good etiquette change over time. Given all the cultural and technological changes modern society has experienced, it’s not always easy to know the best practices for a contemporary gentleman. Here to offer some guidance on that front is Thomas Farley, also known as Mister Manners. Today on the show, Thomas offers some answers to the frequently asked questions around modern etiquette, including when to send a handwritten thank you note, whether “No problem” is an appropriate response to “Thank you,” if it’s okay to ghost someone, how to deal with our ever proliferating and out-of-control tipping culture, whether it’s okay to exclude kids from your wedding, if you should still open a door for a woman, and more. After show’s over, check out our show notes at aom.is/etiquetteFAQ.

Alright. Thomas Farley, welcome to the show.

Thomas Farley: Brett, thanks so much for having me. Great to be here.

Brett McKay: So you are Mister Manners, you’re an etiquette expert, a communication expert, you do trainings for businesses around the world and around the country, and I wanted to bring you on to talk about manners and etiquette in general, but also hopefully we can answer some common questions that people have about etiquette and manners, ’cause it seems like it’s constantly changing, especially with the introduction of new technologies that we have. So I think this will be a fun conversation. Let’s talk about manners in general. I think a lot of people listening might think, well, manners, it’s contrived, it’s artificial, it’s phony, it’s not authentic. Why do you think it’s still important to know and follow rules of etiquette?

Thomas Farley: Sure. And I think just for the listener’s benefit, it’s really important for us to distinguish between manners and etiquette because they actually, they’re used often interchangeably but they do mean different things. So etiquette, it derives from the French word for ticket. So think about etiquette as your ticket to getting more and better interactions. So when you’re speaking with someone, when you’re in an unfamiliar situation, by following the rules of etiquette, you’re guaranteed less embarrassment and more satisfaction for both parties to the interaction. That’s etiquette. And etiquette changes. It evolves over time. So people think, oh, etiquette, they immediately go to someone drinking out of a teacup where they’ve got their pinky raised in the air or they think about dining etiquette. But the fact is there’s etiquette that governs just about everything we do throughout the day. So etiquette in an elevator, etiquette for who steps to the right when you’re on a sidewalk, and so on.

And so without rules of etiquette similar to the rules of driving, we’d have more accidents, we’d have more upsetting situations. So etiquette really is valuable and important, and it evolves. Manners on the other hand is a general sense of kindness and consideration toward others, which of course can incorporate etiquette. But manners doesn’t come so much with rules, it’s more just a general sense of empathy and kindness and consideration towards others around us. So they’re both important, and I’m so glad to be able to spend this time with you because this idea that etiquette is some crusty old thing that only your grandma still cares about, couldn’t be farther from the truth. Without etiquette, we would have no civilized society. So it’s really important.

Brett McKay: I like that distinction between manners and etiquette. So manners is just thinking about making the other person feel good and comfortable.

Thomas Farley: Yes.

Brett McKay: And that might require some, the Greeks will call it phronesis or practical wisdom, kind of judgment. It might differ from person to person. Etiquette is more like the rules of the road. I really like that analogy of traffic rules. If there were no traffic laws, there’d just be chaos. The same goes for our social interaction. If there aren’t any guidelines to follow, then it would just… Everything would just be friction filled and not fun.

Thomas Farley: That’s exactly right. And sometimes the rules of etiquette can seem a little bit arbitrary, and in fact, in some cases they are very arbitrary, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not important. So in the same way that in the US, we drive on the right-hand-side of the road, and in most situations that works quite well. Whereas in the UK, they drive on the left side of the road, and in most situations, that works perfectly well. The fact is that there is a set of guidelines that everyone is aware of so that we can all interact and focus on far more important things than what side of the road do you drive on or what side of the table setting your fork is. So etiquette really does play that vital role, although it can seem quite arbitrary.

Brett McKay: Well, I think everyone’s experienced social interactions where etiquette isn’t practiced. And you see these videos on the internet a lot now, just people just yelling at each other, and it’s like if they just would have practiced a little bit of etiquette, they could’ve avoided all that.

Thomas Farley: Yes, it’s true. And I think there are a lot of reasons for what we’re seeing, and literally seeing, and I think one of the primary drivers of it is the fact that we all have an independent television studio in our pockets wherever we go. So an interaction that might not have been caught on camera, that happens on an airplane between somebody who wants to take more than their share of an armrest can easily go viral in ways that it wouldn’t have before. So there’s definitely this perception that etiquette is worse than ever, that manners are worse than ever. But frankly you can read news accounts and textbooks from a hundred years ago, 600 years ago, where you hear people saying, “Gosh, people have no etiquette anymore, people have no manners anymore.” I think there were definitely throughout recorded history, there are times where if you think etiquette is bad today, boy, it was really horrific in the Middle Ages when for example, no one was able to afford their own napkin, and if you were at a banquet, there was a towel that hung on the wall, and that was the napkin for everyone to use for throughout the meal, so you didn’t even have an individual napkin.

Or where something as seemingly simple as a fork was seen as an affectation, and the only utensils that were used up until even pre-colonial times in the United States were a spoon and a knife, and anything else that required more dexterity than that, you were using your hands. So we might think etiquette is really at all-time lows right now, but the fact is we’re more refined than we sometimes give ourselves credit for, and history is certainly a guide to the fact that times have not always been so mannerly, despite what our memories or our history books might say otherwise.

Brett McKay: Alright. So let’s get into some specific etiquette and manners questions. Let’s talk about thank-you notes. When do you think a handwritten thank-you note is appropriate?

Thomas Farley: I would say a handwritten thank-you note is never inappropriate. So I get this question quite a lot. Is it okay if I send a thank-you note? And to that question, I say it is so much more than okay. In an age where everything is digital, we’re texting, we’re sending DMs on Snapchat or TikTok, the idea that someone actually took the time to remark on a courtesy or something that we did for them that was a kind gesture with a handwritten note that they licked the envelope and they put a stamp on it and put it in the mail, I think it’s a wonderful way of expressing thanks. So I would say there is… Frankly, there is no… The only occasion I would say a thank-you note is just kind of ridiculous is to send someone a thank-you note for sending you a thank-you note. But all other instances, the job interview, the dinner party that you were invited to, certainly the birthday gift or the holiday gift that someone gave you, I’m fond of saying, text messages don’t get pinned up to refrigerators or cork boards, thank-you notes do, they get saved. And if you wanna be that person who shows that you truly appreciated the gesture of the individual, no matter how small, a thank-you note is a wonderful way of doing so.

Brett McKay: So you still recommend a handwritten thank-you note after a job interview? ‘Cause I remember that was the advice that I got 15 years ago, but is that still applicable today, you think?

Thomas Farley: Yeah, I would highly recommend it if you care about getting the job. And here’s the reason. Think about it, you may be up against five, six, seven other candidates. If all things are equal, and one of those candidates actually sends a thank-you note, I guarantee you, it’s gonna help you to be set apart. The person is gonna see that you’re detail-oriented, especially if you send it out quickly. So for a job interview, what I recommend if you’re going for… And it’s harder, frankly, Brett in the age of virtual where you may not be interviewing with someone in person, that person may be a half-a-world away and they’re not even working in an office because they’re 100% remote. So there it gets trickier for a job interview thank-you note. But if you are going to a traditional job interview in a corporate office building, you have the address of the person who’s there five days a week or even three days a week, I would bring a thank-you note, blank one to the interview.

I would immediately after the interview, I’d write it out, have your stamp ready to go and pop it in the nearest mailbox. And fingers crossed, the USPS does what it’s supposed to do, that thank-you note is there with the person who interviewed you within a day or two of your interview. It shows you to be on top of your game, it shows you to be grateful, and it shows that you’re really passionate about getting the position. So I think it’s a great practice to have.

Brett McKay: So you mentioned the thank you to a thank you. You don’t wanna do that generally, but my wife and I, we do that ’cause sometimes readers and listeners, they send us nice notes thanking us for AoM’s content saying how it’s changed their life. And so we often… We just write back and just say, “Hey, we appreciate the appreciation.” We really do. It is nice to hear from our listeners that they’re getting something out of this stuff.

Thomas Farley: Yes, and I would draw the distinction. So I think if someone’s taken the trouble to send you, to write you a handwritten thank-you note, I would absolutely acknowledge the receipt of the thank-you note, but to write them a thank-you note as a thank you for them sending you a thank-you note, it starts this cascade effect of, okay, when do the thank-you notes end? It starts to get a little bit silly. But I would absolutely acknowledge it, and I think that’s a wonderful thing to do. Because if someone takes the time to write a thank-you note and they never hear from the recipient, “Oh my gosh, I just got your thank-you note. That was so thoughtful. Thank you,” then they may be discouraged from doing it the next time because they feel like their gesture didn’t really have any kind of an impact. So I would absolutely acknowledge it, but you don’t need to acknowledge it with a thank-you note.

Brett McKay: Okay, so it’s nice to acknowledge a thank-you note, but you don’t need to send a thank-you note, like an actual… Like a thank-you card in response to someone’s thank-you card. So you mentioned writing thank-you notes to the host at a party you attended. I know this was common a couple of decades ago. My parents still do this, my in-laws do this too, but you think yeah, that that’s still an appropriate gesture.

Thomas Farley: If you’re hoping to be invited back, I would highly recommend that. And not just a generic thank-you note that doesn’t really say anything of value, but truly something that remarks on perhaps a dish that you particularly enjoy, the conversation that you had with the host that you particularly enjoyed, something that doesn’t sound like your AI writing the thank-you note, but that it’s truly got that human touch. And I would say, so dinner party, absolutely. You think about the amount of time that goes into cleaning and curating the table and cooking, and from start to finish, anyone who’s ever hosted a dinner party knows the amount of work that goes into it and how exhausting it can be. If you can’t take… Five minutes really is all it should take to write a thoughtful thank-you note, I think that’s really unfortunate. And people say, I’m too busy, I don’t have time. Well, you know what, you had time to go to the dinner party, had time to enjoy the meal, you had time to enjoy the present someone gave you. Five minutes to write a thank-you note, no matter how busy we all are, I don’t ever buy that excuse.

Brett McKay: Well, let’s talk about just saying thank you in face-to-face interactions. What’s an appropriate response when someone says thank you? ‘Cause this causes a lot of debate, ’cause a lot of people, they say, “No problem,” and a lot of people do not like that. What’s your take on that?

Thomas Farley: So Brett, this is fun because there are… From the time we’re small, we’re taught, “What’s the magic word? Say the magic word. You want a lollipop, you’ve gotta say ‘Please’. If someone give something to you, you’ve gotta say, ‘Thank-you.'” And somewhere along the way, some of those magic words, both generationally and through time have lost a little bit of their original true intent. So, thank you, I think is a perfect thing to say, and that really… That’s unassailable, saying thank you as gratitude for something, as long as you’re saying it genuinely and not in a sarcastic way. Or if you’re texting and it’s, “Thank you, period.” Well, now, you know what? Now you don’t sound so gracious anymore, now you sound like you’re being sarcastic. So taking the benefit of the doubt that someone’s genuinely saying thank you to someone for something that another person has done kind to them. Saying ‘No problem’ is almost like you’re swatting away the thanks, which I think is unfortunate. So some of the finest hotels in the world, they know to instruct their staff that ‘No problem’ as a response to thank you is simply not acceptable. And this is not something that’s unique to the English language. So in Spanish, it’s de nada, which means it’s nothing.

In French, it’s de rien, which similarly is it’s nothing. And that’s really… That’s to belittle the gratitude that’s coming from the person. So rather than simply saying, “No problem,” or if you’re Canadian, “No worries,” or if you’re a child of the 1950s, maybe you say, “No sweat,” these phrases really take a thank you and they push it down, they subjugate it, which I think is important. So rather than saying, “No problem,” I highly recommend something instead like, “Happy to do it,” or, “Any time,” or, “It’s my pleasure.” There is also, of course, the standard response of, “You’re welcome,” but that one has taken on a little bit of a generational taint, where pretty much anyone from Millennial on down through Gen Z tends to look at you’re welcome as a little bit smug, almost as if to say, “You’re welcome for the nice thing that I did and I’m glad that you appreciated it.” Perhaps owning the gratitude a little bit too much. Now, this is not something that older generations see in that phrase ‘You’re welcome’ but the way it’s parsed by younger generations, it can often have that taint. So I recommend as a great alternative, no matter how old you are, is simply, “It’s my pleasure.”

And for anyone who’s traveled through Costa Rica, as I have, what really struck me upon my first visit there was they do not say that de facto Spanish response of de nada. Everything… If you say gracias, they respond immediately with con gusto, with pleasure. And I think it’s such a nicer way of acknowledging someone’s gratitude.

Brett McKay: I think that’s an important point about how language evolves with generations. So I think you’re welcome, maybe for younger generations, you might not wanna use that with them. Maybe with an older person, yes. But I think, yeah, I tentily go to the Chick-fil-A route and just say, “My pleasure,” after someone says, “Thank you.” And then you see the same sort of dynamic with compliments. So you go up to somebody and you give them this compliment like, “Hey, you did a great job on that,” and they kind of swat it away by saying, “Oh, no worries,” or, “It was nothing.”

Thomas Farley: Yes.

Brett McKay: I think if you receive a compliment, be grateful for the compliment. Like someone’s putting themselves out there to say you did a great job, so recognize that.

Thomas Farley: Recognize it, own it. And I think the reason that phenomenon exists is people can tend to be a little bit shy about receiving and accepting a compliment. They don’t know what to say. “Oh, oh, I love your shirt. That’s a great shirt.” “Oh, this old thing?” You immediately… Your reaction is to just swat it away as if it’s not something that’s important and you don’t wanna be seen as egotistical. So I think a great fix for that is someone who really wants to be hyper-aware of how to be able to give a compliment without getting that particular reaction you just described is to immediately follow-up the compliment with a question. So instead of saying, “Hey, great haircut,” or, “Hey, great… I love your shirt,” where the person is maybe put in the position of having to diminish the compliment, “Oh no, this shirt’s nothing. It was $5.” Instead, emit following up with a question. So, “Hey, great shirt. Is that a color that you wear often?” or, “Hey, great haircut. Where do you go to get your haircuts by the way?” So you’ve instead of putting them to that awkward position of having to somehow think of a way to respond to your compliment, you’re immediately following up with a question which gives them something to talk about that doesn’t entail having to diminish the compliment.

Brett McKay: I was gonna say on the ‘No problem’ response to thank you, the other thing that I don’t like about that, it makes the person feel like, “Oh, what I asked you for was a problem, like I’m a problem for you.” So yeah, that’s another reason I don’t like the ‘No problem’. So let’s shift our focus to digital communication. Texting. A lot of our communication is done via text. What’s your take? Is there an appropriate timeframe for answering a text?

Thomas Farley: Sure. So this is gonna vary widely. First of all, do you have read receipts on, on your phone? So if the other individual can see that you’ve received and read the text, then waiting hours to respond is not acceptable. If you have an established kind of unspoken time for responding amongst whether it’s your significant other, whether it’s your best friend, whether it’s your boss, whether it’s people who work for you, if you are someone who as a practice, generally responds within five minutes, within an hour, suddenly taking hours or days to respond, it’s out of character and out of practice for you, the other person is gonna think, “Oh no, what happened? Did I offend the person? Did I say something wrong?” So I think there are certainly conversations that are not best had over text by the same token. If this is a quick question, somebody needs a quick answer, and you traditionally respond quickly, you should follow suit.

Now, that being said… And I love texting because it is absence of so much of the formality that an email might require. It is asynchronous communication, so it can happen when it’s convenient for me and the recipient can respond when it’s perhaps more convenient for them, unlike a phone call or unlike a face-to-face conversation. But there are definitely conversations that are not appropriate for a text message. If you really want a thorough, detailed answer that has multiple layers.

Let’s face it, texting is not your friend, but if you say, what time are we meeting again, what’s the address of where the restaurant is, these are perfect opportunities for us to be able to text, so I would say, all things being equal, you should be certainly responding to a text within the hour, if it’s not a very nuanced conversation, and if it is, I would simply respond back, Hey, let’s catch up about this by phone, or it’s a little bit too much for text. When can we talk? And I think that would be the better way, but to wait hours or forget it, days not acceptable.

Brett McKay: Yeah, we had a digital communications expert on the show, Erica Dowan, and her recommendation for text is if you get a text and you can’t get to it right away, like within an hour, she recommends doing what she calls a manual read receipt. So if someone asks you something and it requires you to look into something, it’s a sensitive subject, and you don’t have the time to give them a full response at the moment, you just respond right away saying, Hey, I got your message, I’m really slammed right now, but I’ll check into it and let you know by tomorrow morning or something else can be like, Hey, it’s really crazy for me today, I wanna give your question some thought, I’ll get back to you tonight, and what that can do is it can help people who are… I don’t know, I think some people don’t care when they get their text answered, but for some people, an unanswered text, it creates this open loop in their mind and they’re wondering about what’s going on, or they worry that they said something wrong, so we can sit on their bandwidth, and you can help them with that by saying, Hey, I got your message, I’ll get back to you soon, so I’ve used that before. And it seems to be appreciated. So I like that one.

Thomas Farley: Very much. The idea of acknowledgement. It’s the same thing, brett we walk into a department store or a shop, a boutique, and we’re waiting to be waited upon by the person who is the sales clerk there, and they’re chatting with their co-worker, maybe they get a phone call from a customer and you’re thinking, here I am, a live person standing in your store wanting to transact business with you, and I haven’t even been acknowledged, you’ve made no eye contact with me, you haven’t given me the, I’ll be there in one second, finger gesture, this makes us feel like we’re not being seen, we’re not being acknowledged. And it can be annoying.

And so the same with whether it’s a text message that just goes unanswered, or frankly even email, which I think email is the larger culprit for feeling like our communications are being ignored, how many emails do we receive a day and send a day where there’s just simply no response, where response is being asked for, and because we’re swamped because we don’t have all the answers, we don’t respond or we take days or sometimes weeks to respond, I think that simple acknowledgement, if it’s something you can’t work on in that moment, Got it. I’ll have an answer for you by Friday, is far better than just not responding at all, we’re forcing the person to have to be constantly checking in with that infamous line, Hey, Brett, just checking in on such and such, which… How many of those emails do we write a week So I think the bit of acknowledgement really does go a long way, texting or emailing.

Brett McKay: We’re gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors. And now back to the show.

Well, this kind of goes to my next question, what do you think about ghosting someone? So this happens in dating, it’s where you go on a date and the date wasn’t great and the person text you and you just ignore them, but this can happen also professionally or in other instances where someone emails you a request or something like that, and you just ignore them. It’s kind of ghosting. What’s your take on that?

Thomas Farley: I think there are certain instances where I would say ghosting is defensible. So maybe someone has even a good friend has done something to you that is highly offensive or highly insulting and they’re simply not apologizing for it, or they don’t see err of their ways, or you had a date with someone who was just someone who really frightened you in a lot of ways, and you’re not looking for any further engagement with that individual, I think in those cases, just for the sake of personal safety, if not your own sanity, ghosting might be the best way to go, or maybe it’s someone who just gets a little bit too text happy and is constantly texting you or maybe you’re on a group text thread, and every little thing is being said, Oh hey, everybody, here’s what I had for lunch this afternoon. And you’re thinking, My gosh, I’ve got work to do. So not responding to each and every interaction, I think in those instances is perfectly fine, if someone needs your feedback on something and there’s someone that you care about and you are the only stakeholder in this interaction who holds the cards, who holds the answer and they’re seeking an answer from you, whether it’s a co-worker, whether it’s a loved one, a sister or a parent, or a prospective spouse or significant other, to just completely ignore them for no explicable reason that I would not say is acceptable, like maybe you had a date and the date was just awful.

And someone texts you and says, Hey, I had a great time last night. Would love to see you again. I think if need be… I would still send that person a gentle text without being too harsh, in the way you phrase it, if someone is a sane individual who is looking to have an interaction with you that for some reason, you’re just not interested in continuing, far better to shut it down politely, rather than let the person wonder, Oh, did the person fall off a boat is maybe they lost their phone, maybe they’re traveling, they don’t have signal, they go through all these crazy scenarios, far better to dispel all of those conspiracy scenarios about why someone’s not responding to you and just be straight forward with an answer, but if it’s a question of personal safety or you’ve been genuinely aggrieved or offended by someone and they know it, then in those cases, I think ghosting would be completely acceptable and defensible, ettiquetewise.

Brett McKay: Okay, so ghosting, it depends. I think it’s interesting about The ghosting thing is hinge, the dating app, they did a survey and they found that 85% of dating app users say they like to be rejected directly, but I think sometimes people just say that I don’t oftentimes, I think people don’t really actually wanna be rejected directly, ’cause it hurts, but I think it’s gonna just depend on the person.

Thomas Farley: I think there are ways to make it sting less. And I think if this is a dating situation and you’ve had one date and there was not a love connection, ideally both parties feel the lack of love connection, and in that case, maybe you just ghost each other and that’s the best of all worlds, but of course, sometimes you do have those situations where one person is really into the other person and the other person is just not… I’d far rather as hurtful as it probably is in those initial days, that sting will subside versus just not hearing from the individual at all. I think it’s really… And especially if you’ve had multiple dates, then… I’m sorry, ghosting is not acceptable.

If this was a single date and in your eyes it was a complete disaster, but for some unknown reason to the other party, it was a roaring success. Well, that person maybe needs a reality check, but I still think that they would be deserving of if they’re really earnestly coming back to you. I had such a wonderful time, I can’t wait to see you again. That was terrific. To not respond at all, I think is really inconsiderate, so then it’s really all about how you respond and what do you say? And I think there are ways of letting someone down easy, and I think it could even be something as simple as, Hey, I enjoyed meeting you, I just don’t feel there’s a love connection, or I just… I can’t really commit to anything right now, wishing you the best. Will hurt. Sure. For someone who’s really into you, but far nicer to do that, than just disappear.

Brett McKay: Okay, let’s talk about continue this idea of technology, phones, everyone’s got a phone with them all the time, and a lot of people when they go to eat, they leave their phone on the table during dinner. Okay, not okay.

Thomas Farley: Not a fan. So whether you’re at dinner with your family in your kitchen or your dining room, or whether you’re out to dinner in a restaurant, when you think of how difficult it is to coordinate schedules for a family to sit down to dinner, to coordinate schedules for a family to be in a restaurant or a group of friends to be in a restaurant, it’s not easy, the fact that then we spend at least even a small percentage of our time looking at our phones, Instagramming our food, checking text messages, I think it takes us out of the moment. And I think it’s really unfortunate. So I think certainly there are times and they’re rare where you need to be contacted because there’s some impending massive news that you need to be available for, you’re at a business lunch, but your wife may be going into labor. You are a real estate agent who’s on the verge of closing a big, big deal that could be happening within the hour, in those cases, if you’re out to lunch with someone in a restaurant, I would own that information upfront. Brett, I’m so sorry, I’m not gonna be on my phone, I just do need to say, You know, there’s a chance my wife may be going into labor. The office is closing a huge deal, I may need to briefly step away from the table to take a quick call.

This is the way to handle that, but putting the phone out on the table has actually been proven in studies to create anxiety just literally the sight of a phone on the table makes us anxious, makes us distracted and takes us out of the moment, so I’d put that phone away if you’re wearing a blazer put it in the pocket, put it in the pocket of your pants, but keep it away from the table, absolutely on vibrate. And if you must must take a call, do so away from the table, not with all of your table mates sitting around, kept hostage to your conversation.

Brett McKay: Okay, so if you plan on receiving a text, let people know upfront, I have a friend who’s a anesthesiologist, so when he’s on call, he’ll let us know like, Hey guys, I’m on call, so I might have to text, I might get a text I might have to go away and that’s always appreciated. Another interesting dynamic I’ve noticed in the past couple of years is the smartwatch, so you might have the phone in your pocket, but you got this device on your wrist where you get notifications on your watch, is it okay to check the notifications that buzz on your smart watch during dinner.

Thomas Farley: What I like about the smart watch, in one sense, it’s a little bit more discrete than actually pulling out a cell phone and scrolling, by the same token, it’s still the same concept, you’re still being, your attention and your energy is being pulled away from the dynamic of the folks that you’re dining with and being directed towards your device, and so for that reason, whether it’s haptic feedback where it’s vibrating on your arm or pulsating or flashing, it’s still a distraction, and unless you’re an anesthesiologist, I would not recommend if you wanna be polite to your table mates I’d not recommend acknowledging, so I’d silence those notifications, or if you’re wearing a long sleeve shirt, maybe it’s even as simple as pulling the sleeve down so you’re not tempted to look at the watch.

Brett McKay: Gotcha, alright. Let’s talk about tipping. So there’s been a lot of articles over the last year about how tipping is out of control, every restaurant and service provider seems to ask for a tip these days, even when they’re just doing straight up, like it’s the cashier job and they just flip the screen around and you get that prompt asking if you wanna leave a tip and you feel like there’s pressure to do so, ’cause they turn around, they’re gonna see whether you gave them a tip or not, so what’s the state of tipping today? When Should you tip? And when should you not?

Thomas Farley: Sure, so this is something that there has been a sea change in our culture in the way we are interacting with service individuals, not only in that kind of what’s known as a quick serve restaurant type interaction, where you’re picking something up at a counter as opposed to sitting down in a restaurant. But the last couple of weeks, I’ve been reading about airports where you were being prompted for a tip at a self-serve kiosk, where you’re getting food or you’re getting some sort of an airport Trinket where you’re actually being asked for a tip, so it’s exploded beyond our worst nightmares. And I think it’s a very concerning trend for me, it’s known in the popular press as either tip creep or Tipflation are the two terms you’ll hear quite a lot, I’m taking to calling this the tipping invasion, because I really feel that when we are living in a culture, we’re living in a society where you’re being expected to tip at absolutely every turn for absolutely every interaction, there’s really… The genie’s out of the bottle, and there is no line that’s being drawn any longer.

And I think that is really… It’s frightening because we’re rapidly marching toward a culture where I think you’ll be expected to tip your dental hygienist, you’ll be expected to tip your auto mechanic, and it’s diluted what a tip is really designed to do, which is to reward an individual who works in a service industry where, by the structure of the industry, their pay is actually less than minimum wage, so for example, a server in a sit-down restaurant often is being paid $2 and change an hour, not a livable wage, by any stretch, it’s only through the use of tips, which is part of the compact, we know when we enter a restaurant, we know when we sit down in a restaurant that we are going to be tipping, and that is something that we happily accept and happily do, but the idea that you picked up a bag of potato chips on a convenience store shelf at a gas station, and suddenly you’re being faced with a tip screen, how much would you like to tip for this interaction? It’s something… Because simply because the technology allows this to happen does not mean that culturally it is acceptable.

And so that feeling that people get when they suddenly see that screen and those amounts that are also increasing, so it’s not even that they’re asking for a 5% tip they might be asking for a 25% or 30% tip for these very basic interactions with individuals who are being paid a minimum wage or more, people are feeling what is called the guilt tip, so you’re tipping simply because you feel guilty, not just because they’re gonna see it when they flip the screen around, but everybody in line behind you is gonna be seeing how much you tip, you know they’re looking over your shoulder to see which box you tap, so it’s confusing. In a time of high inflation, consumers are really feeling their pocket books are being pinched at every turn, and this is a big part of that, and I find it to be a very, very concerning trend.

Brett McKay: So I think this is an interesting dynamic because I think a decade ago, the concern that people had was, maybe I’m not tipping enough, maybe I need to tip more. Because people were kinda confused about, Well, do I tip this person? Or that person. Now, it seems like the concern is like, I should tip less, I need to be tipping less because I’m being asked to tip in inappropriate situations.

Thomas Farley: Well, it’s true, and the simple fact is there’s only so much discretionary budget any one individual has no matter how well off they are, and if every single interaction… I live in New York City, and there is… We call this the departure tax, that every time you literally walk out your door in New York, there’s a $20 departure tax, there’s $20 that you simply don’t know where it went, it went somewhere, but you know you started $20 Richer before you walked out the door. I think it’s the same now happening across the country with tipping, you’re suddenly being asked to tip for just about everything you buy in every service store and shop and restaurant you walk into, and I think what’s going to happen, I really think it’s going to diminish the amount of money that any one individual has to tip to people who really rely on tipping income because they’re being asked to tip in so many other establishments.

And that, I think is really unfortunate. Let’s face it, stores restaurants had a very difficult time during the pandemic, and I think most consumers felt the need, and it was a wonderful thing to be extra generous, knowing that these individuals, these first responders in the service industries, were out there doing their thing while so many of us were working from home, the pandemic is over, and yet those tipping levels, those expectations and that guilt has remained and is even being amplified, and I think consumers are feeling rightfully resentful, and as I say, there is a limit to the discretionary income, any one individual has. So I see servers in sit down restaurants actually having their tips suffering because there’s simply not enough tipping income, tipping money to go around to everyone, if that’s the culture that we’re headed toward.

Brett McKay: Okay, so what would you say keep your tips for people in the food service industry, bartenders, these are the traditional staff, you would usually tip for 10 years ago, maybe keep tipping for that.

Thomas Farley: Sure, and we know what those are, where… Any consumer has tipped enough in their lifetime to know if you go for a haircut, you’re tipping on that, if you go for a massage, you’re tipping on that, if you get a cocktail in a bar, of course you’re tipping on that, and yes, the sit-down restaurant experiences. It’s all these new things tipping in those interactions, it’s discretionary. If you feel you are blessed and you feel you’ve had a wonderful experience and you wanna share that, that joy with the person who’s waited on you, all the power to you, nothing to say that you can’t do it, but you should not feel obligated. Etiquette does not dictate that you should be tipping those interactions, those individuals are being paid a minimum wage plus, and what really should be happening if the owners of the establishments feel that they can’t attract good employees without offering this as an option they really need to be doing, in my estimation, is paying higher wages, and in turn, if needed, charging higher prices in restaurants and quick serve establishments, but this idea that the burden is being shifted to the consumer and this very awkward, uncomfortable, clumsy interaction. I don’t like it, and I think it really, it bodes not good things for the service industry.

Brett McKay: And I think we should point out, this is probably just an American problem. Other countries, they don’t have the tipping culture that we do.

Thomas Farley: It’s true, and that extends not just for this type of quick serve tip where you have the tablet in front of you, but even a sit-down restaurant in various countries around the world, throughout Europe and Asia, some countries, they would actually look at you quite askance, maybe pleasantly surprised, but even shocked if you gave them a tip. So it’s baked into the equation in the United States. We do have this tradition of tipping. But you’re absolutely right, this is not a global situation, and I do hear from Europeans, but then they come to the United States, they are absolutely stupefied by the number of places where they’re being asked to tip and in the amounts that they’re being asked.

Brett McKay: When you do tip, what do you think should be the standard tip amount? Or does it depend?

Thomas Farley: So if we are in a restaurant and we’re sitting down and we’re having a meal, this old standard of 15% being kind of your nice little baseline, that has gotten pretty antiquated at this point. And I read these studies very regularly, the average tip across the United States in a sit-down restaurant is hovering just above 19% as your baseline tip. So if you wanna walk out of there feeling like you were Daddy Warbucks, super generous, and boy are they gonna be clicking their heels with joy at how much you gave them in a tip, 20% is not going to do that. 20% really is about the baseline that you’re looking to tip. And frankly, I like the math better with 20% tip. If you’re calculating it in your head, which you may not be but if you are, 20% is a lot easier to calculate than 15%. But if you want to be generous, you’re really looking at more in the neighborhood of 25%-30% on a tip, but if you wanna be doing the bare minimum, 20% so that… Will ensure you’re not getting dirty looks as you walk out of the restaurant, which you would likely get if you tip 10% or 15%.

Brett McKay: Let’s shift topics to weddings. Wedding season is upon us. I’m sure there’s lots of different questions we could discuss about weddings. But in general, what’s an area of wedding-related etiquette that people often neglect?

Thomas Farley: One of the biggest gripes I hear about is people who don’t RSVP. And if you think about it, Brett, could it be any easier? Not only do you get the invitation in the mail, but you get a reply card with a return address, reply envelope with a stamp already on it, all you have to do literally is filling your name and check a box that you are attending, and pop it in the mail and you are good to go. So if you’re lucky enough to be invited to a wedding and you want to attend, you’re able to attend, get that RSVP and quickly, and no unpleasant surprises by doing a write-in ballot of someone’s name that you’re bringing when there was no guests invited. And certainly, you’re not doing any gorilla attack by bringing a guest on the day of. That’s gonna just cause havoc at the wedding. We don’t want that.

Brett McKay: That’s a good point about RSVPs. That’s for anything, whether wedding or any other type of… If there’s an RSVP, make sure you do, ’cause people are trying to figure out how much stuff they need to buy, and it makes it hard when you don’t do that.

Thomas Farley: We’re living in the age of maybe. I think it’s really unfortunate, but I think sites such as Evite and Facebook invitations, we’re now in this kind of funny time period where people feel like, well, they’ve got enough invitations that they don’t know if they can commit or don’t want to commit, so the response is either no response at all until the very last minute, or a “maybe” response. And I think that’s really unhelpful to anyone who’s hosting. It doesn’t have to be a wedding. As you say, it could be any sort of occasion. So if you’re invited to something waiting until you see if you get better offers, not acceptable. Simply not replying at all and then showing up, not acceptable. Or saying yes and then not showing up and not letting the host know you’re not coming, also not acceptable. So think about when the shoe is on the other foot, when you’re a host and you’re trying to plan something and you have no idea on numbers, it can really be very… It can convince you never wanna throw a party again. So if you’re lucky enough to be invited to something, let the host know. Even if it’s “No,” “No” is better than nothing, and “No” is better than an interminable “Maybe” that never turns into a “Yes” or a “No.”

Brett McKay: Let’s say it’s your wedding and you don’t wanna have kids there. Is it okay to say, you don’t want kids? This is a touchy, touchy one.

Thomas Farley: This is touchy. And it’s a question I get quite a lot. And what I’d say to that is, there are a lot of reasons why you might wanna have a wedding with no kids. It could be budget, it could be, this is a wedding in some kind of a night time, night-club-y type setting where it’s just not really a child-friendly environment, or simply you feel like the adults deserve and want a night off from their kids. And even parents who have two or three or four or five kids, I often hear from them, “Oh gosh, what a relief we’re able to tell our kids, ‘We’d love to bring you but we can’t. This is a wedding where children aren’t invited.'” Those parents get a night off. So I think that can be a wonderful thing.

The key as the couple, remember, this is your wedding, your rules. Whatever it is that you decide you wanna do, you follow that, but you’ve got to follow it consistently. So don’t say “No kids,” and then start making exceptions here and there, because then suddenly it looks like you’re playing favorites, and some of your guests who do have children who don’t get to bring their children, they’re gonna feel resentful. And so the only exception that you might consider if you are going to do a no-child policy at your wedding is perhaps there is a member of the bridal party like a junior bridesmaid or the ring bearer or the flower girl who typically are a close family member or relative. There you might make the exception, but if just ordinary guests you start making the exception because they couldn’t find a babysitter that night, you’re really gonna have some very other guests who are quite unhappy that they were told they couldn’t bring theirs, whereas others did.

Brett McKay: So destination weddings are becoming more popular. So you fly off to some exotic locale to get married. And they invite people and for the guest, that can be a lot of money to get to these places. If you get invited to a destination wedding, are you still obliged to get the couple a gift?

Thomas Farley: You are absolutely obliged. So your decision to attend a destination wedding, it’s based on a couple of factors, primarily, your budget. Can you afford to attend this destination wedding? Can you afford to fly there? Can you afford the babysitting perhaps that you need? Can you afford the hotel accommodations, the outfit that you might need that you don’t have, because it’s in a climate that you don’t normally have dress clothes for? All of those are factors that you need to consider. However, the travel budget, the cost that it takes for you to actually be there, that is not your gift. So your presence is not your present in this case. That needs to come from your own discretionary annual travel budget, not from your budget for wedding gifts. So you don’t scrimp on a gift for the couple simply because you feel you’ve spent a lot of money to be there. And if you feel you can’t afford both, then I would far rather see you decline the wedding invitation but still send a gift, particularly if this is someone who’s important to you.

Brett McKay: Let’s talk about another topic I think a lot of men have questions about. Should you still hold the door open for a woman?

Thomas Farley: Sure. So this is gonna vary depending on the situation. And what I like to recommend to a man who strives to be a gentleman, which I think is a noble goal and something that’s still important in today’s culture, is that you’ve got to remember there’s a distinction between being out on a date and opening a door for a woman, holding a chair for a woman, standing at a table when a woman comes back to the table, gestures that many women, although not all, will find very gallant and chivalrous and very much appreciate. So know your audience. So if you’re on a date with a woman who is very progressive and feels that that sort of gesture is demeaning and insulting, then obviously you’re not going to do it. But I would say in my conversations with women who are all ages and modern to old-fashioned, most will at least appreciate the gesture behind that, the motivation behind that is a good one.

Where you’ve got to be a little bit more wary is this is now a business setting. So in a business setting, the idea that you’d be holding a door for a woman or holding a chair out for a woman, this is not something that would be traditionally done in the American workplace. We don’t recognize gender in workplace, ideally. What we do recognize is seniority, so if you’re gonna let someone go through the door first, let that be because that person is the boss, is the senior person, it’s the client, not because it’s a woman. However, I think a nice workaround for anyone who really… For a man who really strives to be a gentleman in all interactions is you just simply in those cases, you don’t make a distinguishing decision between, “Okay, this is a woman I work with, so I’m gonna hold the door for her, but here comes Charlie, my male colleague, and I’m gonna let the door slam in his face because he’s not a woman.” If you’re a gentleman, you hold the door for everyone. It doesn’t matter what gender they are.

You don’t rush to take the best seat in the restaurant when you’re going to a business dinner because that’s who you are. You let other people take the better seat. You are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to put other people before yourself, that’s truly what a gentleman does. And in a business setting, you don’t have to be worrying, “Is this a man or a woman?” You simply do it for everyone. In that way, if anyone ever accused you, “Well, gosh, why are you holding the door for me? I find that offensive and belittling,” you say, “This is simply who I am. I do this for everyone. I’m sorry to have offended you, but I assure you it’s not a gender-based decision, it’s something that I do as a matter of practice.” And I think there you’re on the best ground of all.

Brett McKay: Well, Thomas, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your work?

Thomas Farley: Brett, thank you so much, I’ve enjoyed it. And congrats on the podcast. I know you’re rapidly approaching your 1000th episode, so I can’t wait to see you achieve that milestone, but it’s been a great conversation. I am at on all social media, I’m Mister Manners, and that’s “mister” spelled out. And the website is mister-manners.com. And I pop up on TV and radio and newspaper around the country on a regular basis. I do a column for the NBC Today Show called “Mealtime with Mr. Manners” where I tackle everyday dining etiquette issues, so always happy to receive questions or if any of your listeners have a quandary, it would be my pleasure to fill it for them and answer it in a way that will help them be as mannerly and manly in the case of your listeners as possible.

Brett McKay: Well, Thomas Farley, thanks for your time. It has been a pleasure.

Thomas Farley: Thank you, Brett.

Brett McKay: My guest today was Thomas Farley, also known as Mister Manners. You can find more information about his work at his website mister-manners.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is/etiquetteFAQ where you can find links to resources where we delve deeper into this topic.

dWell, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at ArtOfManliness.com where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that we’ve written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you’d like to enjoy ad-free episodes of the AOM Podcast, you can do so on Stitcher Premium. Head over to stitcherpremium.com, sign up, use code Manliness to check out for a free month trial. Once you’re signed up, download the Stitcher app on Android iOS and you can start enjoying ad-free episodes of the AOM Podcast. And if you haven’t done so already, I’d appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps out a lot. And if you’ve done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think will get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay, reminding you to not only listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you’ve heard into action.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

A few years ago, I became the happy owner of a barrel sauna. Sauna-ing offers a ton of physical and mental benefits, and the purchase has been one of the best investments I’ve ever made.

Before I had my own sauna, I’d use public saunas at gyms to get my fix of intense heat.

During those years of public sauna use, I saw some infuriating instances of poor sauna etiquette. In fact, the driving force that pushed me to buy my own sauna was becoming fed up with the thoughtless chuds I had to roast myself alongside.

If you’re out there frequenting public saunas, below I highlight some rules of etiquette to make the experience more pleasant for everyone.

Basically, these guidelines are directed by this categorical imperative: don’t be an annoying chooch in the sauna.

1. Enter and leave quickly and quietly. Heat flows to cold. It’s one of those fundamental laws of thermodynamics. That’s why it’s important to minimize how long you leave the door to the sauna open; you don’t want to let the hot air escape!

When you enter and exit a sauna, do so quickly. Don’t be the guy who opens the door all the way, steps halfway into the sauna, and then proceeds to have a conversation with his bud who’s still in the locker room while the sauna door hangs open.

Also, make sure you shut the sauna door all the way when you enter and exit. Sometimes you need to give a sauna door an extra tug to completely close it.

While you’re at it, be quiet as you come and go. Saunas are about relaxing. Don’t kill the vibe by making a ruckus when you enter and exit.

2. Respect the dress code (or lack-of-dress code). In Finland, people sauna in the buff. It’s part of the culture. Here in the States, public nudity, even in saunas, isn’t normally a thing. Most public saunas in gyms will ask that you wear gym shorts or swim trunks while sauna-ing or at least wrap a towel around your waist. Respect the prevailing mores of your particular public sauna.

3. Use a towel. Whether you sauna in shorts or in the buff, bring a towel with you. Use the towel to sit or lie down on. It’s hygienic and will also put a comfortable buffer between your skin and the hot wood. You’ll also want a towel for sponging off your dripping sweat.

4. Ask before you pour water on the rocks. When you pour water on the sauna’s heated rocks, it creates a powerful burst of hot and soothing steam. It feels amazing. But some people don’t like it.

So before you pour water on the sauna rocks, ask everyone in the sauna if that’s okay. You need unanimous consent for this one.

On a related note, some people like to drizzle essential oils on the sauna rocks to give themselves some aromatherapy. Ask before you do this too. This one guy at my old gym had a wife who sold essential oils. He was the sauna’s serial essential oil drizzler. Never asked permission, and the stuff was potent and often didn’t smell great. This dude would also inform everyone in the sauna as to all the things the fragrances were healing. No one liked that guy. Don’t be that guy.

5. Ask before you adjust the temperature. Most public saunas set the temperature at 180 degrees. At least, that’s been the temp at all the public saunas I’ve been to. Patrons usually can’t adjust the temperature on the sauna, but there’s a hack. You can cover the temperature sensor with a cold, damp paper towel. That will trick the sauna’s furnace into “thinking” that the temp is cooler than it really is, consequently causing it to continue to heat up.

The essential oils chooch did this. Never asked anybody if it was okay. I don’t mind a sweltering sauna, but a lot of people don’t want to sit in one that’s 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ask before you adjust the temperature.

6. Don’t listen to music on your smartphone. This drove me absolutely bonkers. I’d be in the sauna relaxing after a workout, and some dude-bro comes in blaring music from his smartphone’s speakers. He’d then just sit there, music still blasting, and scroll through Instagram, oblivious to everyone else around him.

Bro, no one wants to listen to your crappy Drake playlist while they’re in the sauna. As they say in Mexico, “¡Sácate con esta basura, chunte!” “Get that trash out of here, dummy!”

I had to ask several different dude-bros to turn off their music or to at least put earbuds in while they were in the sauna. They always looked at me like I was growing a horn out of my head. It’s like it never crossed their mind that someone else might not want to listen to their music.

Don’t be a chunte and listen to music in the sauna.

7. In fact, just leave your smartphone out of the sauna. The sauna is about relaxing and getting away from the world, so why bring the distraction of a smartphone into such a sanctuary? I’ve had to deal with sauna scalawags who carry on 20-minute phone conversations while I’m sitting next to them.

Leave the smartphone in your locker. Besides, the heat of the sauna isn’t good for your phone.

8. Make room for others. If there’s no one else in the sauna, feel free to lay down on the bench. It’s relaxing. But as more people enter the sauna, sit up and make room for others.

I walked into the sauna one time, and it was pretty full. There would have been room for me if this one dude just sat up from lying down. Guy just looked at me while I stood there eyeing the potential seat. When I asked him if he could sit up so I could take a seat, he acted all put out. What a chooch!

9. Don’t exercise in the sauna. Saunas are for relaxing. It’s not a hot yoga room. Don’t go in there to stretch and do push-ups before your workout. No one wants to see that.

10. No grooming. True story: I walked into the gym sauna one time, and a dude was cutting his toenails. Even left the clippings behind when he was done. Disgusting.

Follow these guidelines, and it’ll make for a pleasant sauna session for yourself and others.

Happy sauna-ing! Don’t be a chooch!

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

We don’t typically think of hospitality as a manly thing. And indeed, it is typically the women in our lives who more often take charge of throwing parties, cooking meals, and preparing the guest room for visitors.

But for thousands of years, offering hospitality was considered an essential part of being a man and living with honor.

While many ancient cultures had a code of honor which required the practice of hospitality, this code was especially typified by the form it took amongst the Greeks.

The Ancient Greek Idea of Hospitality

In the 1970s, anthropologist Michael Herzfeld studied the culture of masculinity in a small mountainous village on the island of Crete that he dubbed “Glendi” (the name was a pseudonym, to protect the confidentiality of its residents). The Glendiots were a pastoral people who, because of the remoteness and hardscrabble nature of their village, had retained much of the traditional code of manhood that had marked cultures around the world since ancient times. One of the things Herzfeld discovered about that culture was “that the height of eghoismos, self-regard, is a lavish display of hospitality.”

The Glendiots’ emphasis on hospitality traces all the way back to ancient Greece, when it was called xenia. Xenia was an honor-based code of etiquette that concerned the relationship between hosts and guests, especially between hosts and guests who were strangers to each other.

So what did good xenia look like in ancient Greece?

Well, a host was expected to welcome into his home anyone who came knocking. Before a host could even ask a guest his name or where he was from, he was to offer the stranger food, drink, and a bath. Only after the guest finished his meal could the host inquire about the visitor’s identity. After the guest ate, the host was expected to offer him a place to sleep. When he was ready to leave, the host was obligated to give his guest gifts and provide him safe escort to his next destination.

Guests in turn were expected to be courteous and respectful towards their hosts. During their stay, visitors were not to make demands or be a burden. Guests were expected to ply the host and his household with stories from the outside world. The most important expectation was that the guest would offer his host the same hospitable treatment if he ever found himself journeying in the guest’s homeland.

Once you understand the ancient Greek concept of xenia, you’ll start to see it everywhere in ancient Greek texts. The Odyssey is basically the Greek bible on xenia. Pretty much every story in it has something to teach about either neglecting or upholding the tenets of xenia.

Circe turning Odysseus’ men into pigs? Bad xenia.

The cyclops eating Odysseus’ men? Bad xenia.

The Phaeacians giving Odysseus a banquet and gifts? Good xenia.

The suitors mooching off Odysseus while he was gone? Bad xenia.

Why Was Hospitality an Important Part of Male Honor?

While xenia particularly emphasized the importance of treating strangers well, the Greek concept of hospitality encompassed one’s treatment of friends, family, and neighbors as well. And the reason the ancient Greeks (and other ancient peoples) elevated hospitality to a prominent place in the manly code of honor range from the social to the practical to the religious:

Earning/showing status. Manhood has always been a hierarchical dynamic. Men look for ways to raise their status, and for the ancients, one of those ways was through what historian Nigel M. Kennell calls “displays of competitive generosity.”

In setting out ample spreads for strangers and throwing lavish parties and weddings for family and friends, men demonstrated that they had resources, that, among the 3 P’s that traditionally marked the code of manhood — protect, procreate, and provide — they possessed plenty of skill and prowess in that latter category.

“Glendiot hosts not only vie with each other to treat strangers,” Herzfeld observes in The Poetics of Manhood, “they are also engaged in continual competition with one another”:

In the village houses of the Glendiots, meat is often served out of a large cauldron (tsikali) in which it has been cooked by women. Its preparation, however, is again often begun by men, who do the initial cutting of meat with their personal knives.

. . .

A host who serves only a small amount of meat feels embarrassed since a meal without meat is not considered a meal at all. At wedding and baptismal feasts, huge amounts of boiled and roast lamb and mutton, roast pork, and sometimes also chicken and organ meat are consumed.

In serving a smorgasbord of meat, Glendiot men showed they knew how to hunt, how to steal sheep (which was a big deal amongst this shepherding people), and how to care for and obtain other animals. And in slicing the meat up, they showed they were adept in wielding a knife.

A similar dynamic of competitive generosity can be seen in the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta. Each Spartan man was required to eat all his meals with his syssitia — his dining club or mess. Once the members of each syssitia had eaten their standard rations, members treated their messmates to foods that had to be, as the rules of the syssitia dictated, either raised/grown on their land or hunted themselves, and which could have included wild game, fruits, vegetables, herbs, nuts, eggs, milk, cheese, butter, and bread. “Before serving,” Kennell explains, “the cooks announced the name of the day’s donor to his grateful companions so that they might appreciate his hunting prowess and diligence for them.”

Among the Glendiots, even a situation where a man didn’t have a lot to offer his guests could still be an opportunity to display a different kind of status-elevating skillfulness:

even when large amounts of meat cannot be found quickly enough, the host may be able to emphasize his generosity, and above all his manhood, in another way. He may apologize for the poverty of his table, pointing out that the guests would have to be content with ‘whatever can be found’ (to vriskoumeno). This phrase invokes a crucial principle. Ability to improvise, to make the most of whatever chance offers, is the mark of a true man. It is unthinkable for a Glendiot to refuse to entertain extra guests; on the contrary, he is expected to make the most of what he has.

Building alliances. In being a generous host, a man elevates his status and, as Herzfeld observes, places the guest in a position of symbolic dependence. The host provides; the guest receives. And yet ironically, by treating someone, the host also initiates an egalitarian relationship:

the treat (kerasna or trattarisma) establishes a fleeting advantage for the giver, an advantage which the latter is expected to redress in the ordinary course of village interaction. Yet the same act of establishing a temporary obligation (ipokhreosi) between host and guest also equalizes the relationship between the newcomer and the rest of the company. Once he has sat down and accepted his treat, he is on an equal footing with the others.

When a host offers hospitality, he creates an obligation in the guest to return the favor. This creates a dynamic of back-and-forth treating, of reciprocity, and thus of equality. It ensures future interactions, the development of increasing familiarity, and ultimately, the building of trust.

Offering hospitality was thus a central way for ancient men to build alliances and enhance their social network. As Joe Keohane, author of The Power of Strangers explained on the AoM podcast, having this kind of network was crucial in a period and landscape that was less organized and secure:

the reason why [hospitality] is so sacred, that it was so important to the Greeks, is because it was a chaotic world; you didn’t have central institutions; you didn’t have national armies or police or governments or things like that, necessarily. There was a great deal of conflict. And in order to travel in that world, and in order to flourish in that world and develop trading relationships and all the stuff you have to do, you needed to be able to make friends, you needed to make alliances. So when a stranger came to town, it was a big deal, it was an opportunity, right? It was an opportunity to make a friend, to learn something about the world, to get news, to maybe gain access to an innovation, and it was reciprocal . . . you would host this person, you’d give them lots of food, you’d be really good to them, maybe they stay a couple of days, whatever, but now you have an ally later.

So if you need a favor, if you’re traveling through this unstable and dangerous world, there’s a person that you can go crash with. And the idea is the more people who did that, the bigger their social networks became and the easier it became for them to move and for them to live in the world.

Reverencing the gods. Hospitality was so important to the ancient Greeks that they made Zeus its patron god. In myths and stories, Zeus took up the guise of a wandering beggar to see if mortals were practicing xenia. It was kind of like Undercover Boss. If a mortal treated a disguised Zeus poorly, that mortal would receive the divine wrath of a vengeful deity. So a lot of ancient Greeks just assumed all strangers were potentially the king of the gods himself and treated them with generous hospitality.

In one of Ovid’s fables, Zeus and Hermes, in the form of ordinary peasants, knock on the doors of home after home in a Greek village, asking for a place to stay. But all the townspeople, even the rich ones with plenty of resources to spare, reject these strangers. All except for Baucis and Philemon, an old couple who, despite their poverty, invite the disguised gods in, and offer them their best food and drink. As a reward for their sacred gesture of generosity, Zeus and Hermes spare Baucis and Philemon from the flood they unleash on the rest of the village to punish the pair’s “wicked” neighbors, and turn the couple’s homely cottage into a beautiful temple, for which they will serve as guardians.

While the ancient code of hospitality wasn’t practiced for purely altruistic reasons, and was instead propagated by a mix of self-interest and piety, neither are our own actions — no matter how lofty and virtuous the cause — ever entirely unselfish. Yet as with all plays for status and such, acts of hospitality end up benefiting both the host and the guest, and even society as a whole. For while we may no longer be navigating a landscape that’s as chaotic and unstable as it was two thousand years ago, being human remains a stubbornly difficult enterprise. Everyone could use more way stations along their journey — people who are willing to literally or metaphorically take us in. Everyone could use a good rest, whether from a day of effortful travel or from a seemingly hopeless barrage of news. Everyone could use some nourishing repast, whether in the form of real food or a word of encouragement. Everyone could use a gift, whether it’s a new winter coat or some sincere attention.

Being a host means not only sheltering a guest or throwing a party, but being the person who takes the initiative in reaching out to others, who starts the conversation, and makes others feel comfortable within it. It’s a role you can adopt in any situation, wherever you are — even when you are, in fact, technically the guest. Whether you’re on the subway or a plane, or at work, church, or someone’s else’s party, you can serve as an oasis of warmth; you can help make other people feel “at-home.” In reviving the ancient code of hospitality, you can aid strangers, friends, and family in their sojourn, create a domino effect of good deeds by encouraging others to pay the kindness forward, and, maybe, even end up entertaining angels unawares.

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Punctuality is something like a virtue. It respects other people’s time, demonstrates reliability, and requires integrity and discipline. Given that it’s virtue-adjacent, it can seem like the more stringent the practice of punctuality, the better, and so you get maxims like: “Early is on time; on time is late.”

However, there are situations when being late is entirely acceptable, and even desirable. There are even conditions where being late is actually more polite than being on time. We’ll run through these exceptions to the always-be-punctual rule below.

Date (With At-Home Pick-Up)

If you’re meeting a date at a restaurant or coffee shop, you want to be on time, and maybe even a few minutes early to get yourself settled and establish your poise. Especially on a first date, you want to make a good impression, and rolling in late decidedly does not.

But if you’re picking a date up from her house/apartment (more likely to be the case if you knew her already or are in high school/college), then it’s actually nice to arrive just a bit late. Getting there early is a definite no-no, lest you make your lady friend answer the door with curlers in her hair (do women still put curlers in their hair?), and as she’ll likely be getting ready right up until the time you knock, getting there late provides her a bit of buffer to complete this process. Even if she’s ready on time, she won’t mind having the chance to give herself one last look in the mirror. So get there just a few minutes late — no more than five, lest she begin to worry you’ve stood her up.

Restaurant Reservation

Restaurants will typically hold your reservation for 15 minutes after the scheduled time, so if you’re running a little late, you don’t have to panic. (If you’re going to be more than 15 minutes late, give them a call to let them know.) Restaurants don’t always have your table ready exactly at your reservation time anyway, so if you arrive five minutes late, there’s a better chance you’ll be seated straight away.

Of course, you also want to be respectful of the restaurant’s staff and its other customers; if you’re late, then your dining time may run long, which means your table won’t be ready at the reservation time held by its subsequent occupants. Nice restaurants typically allot two hours of dining time per reservation, so just make sure you don’t exceed that, timed from when your original reservation began (e.g., if your reservation was at 6:00, and you showed up at 6:10, still depart by 8:00).

Music Concert

If you’re going to a nice show in a seated theater — a ballet, play, musical, orchestral performance — you should show up early. Find your seat; get settled in; read through the program. The doors close once the show starts (you’ll often have to wait until a break/intermission to be let in), and you don’t want to disturb the experience of others by being the guy who has to be shown to his row with a flashlight-wielding usher and climb over fellow audience members to get to his seat.

There’s an entirely different equation when it comes to “popular,” non-high-brow music concerts. If you’re going to see your favorite band in the world, it’s a general admission show (sans assigned seating), and you want to be as close to the stage as possible, then you might want to arrive an hour (or many hours, depending on the band’s popularity) before the doors open. But in most cases, positioning yourself close to the stage is pretty overrated (especially as you get older), given that the area is hot, crowded, cramped, sweaty, and, depending on the genre of music being played, liable to turn into a mosh pit.

If you’re not interested in getting close to the stage, nor in hearing the opening act, then it’s best to show up late to a concert.

There’s no set, hard-and-fast schedule as to when a headliner will take the stage. On average though, the opening band will start playing 30-60 minutes after the doors open, and play for around 30-45 minutes, after which comes the transition time in which the stage is set up for the headliner. The headliner will thus start playing around two+ hours after the doors open. Here’s an example of how this could go: doors open at 6:30; opening band starts playing at 7:30; headliner begins show at 9:00. To strike a balance between minimizing your wait-around, stand-around time, and minimizing the risk of missing any of the headliner’s show, aim to arrive around an hour and a half after the doors open. (When making this calculation, be sure to factor in things like traffic on the way there and how long it will take you to find parking). This way you should have time to use the bathroom, get a drink, and find a decent spot on the floor as the opening band finishes up their set.

Dinner Party

Generally, you never want to show up early for a dinner party. Unless the host has asked you to come help, or there’s an understanding that guests can do some pre-meal-time socializing together while the cook prepares the food, the last thing a host wants is to have to devote part of their bandwidth to making small talk with you, while simultaneously keeping an eye on the about-to-burn rolls in the oven. Being exactly on time is actually impolite for the same reason; the host would prefer to have everything out of the oven and set up before you arrive, and given that it’s quite difficult to ensure that every dish is done exactly at the time the meal is scheduled to begin, he or she can almost invariably use a little buffer. So arrive at a dinner party a few minutes late. But just a few; more than ten, and the host’s relief as to their guests not showing up on time will turn to despair as their optimally hot food begins to get cold.

Come-And-Go Party

When it comes to a party that has no set “events” (like dinner), and is a shindig where people are expected to casually come and go, aim to arrive 30-60 minutes after it begins. If you get there exactly when the party starts, you can, as with a dinner party, fluster the hosts who may be putting the finishing touches on their preparations. And you’ll have to navigate the early-party awkwardness — milling about as the first person there, or being stuck talking to a small handful of fellow premature arrivers you may not know or may not like. In being fashionably late and arriving when the party is already in full swing, your entrance will be low-key and inconspicuous, and you’ll have your pick of guests to chat up. (If people have already formed little conversation circles, follow these tips to gain entrance to one).

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

You’ve seen it in silver-screen classics. A dapper gentleman suavely and effortlessly helps his date put on her coat before they head out on the town. While your date is certainly capable of putting her own coat on, this is a simple way to show some consideration — a little stylistic grace note in the duet of the sexes. But like opening a door for a woman, helping her put on her coat is easy to bungle — leaving both of you feeling awkward. Remember, the goal of courtesy is to make others feel comfortable, not awkward.

Illustrated by Ted Slampyak

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.

Three-quarters of our face-to-face communication with other people is given through nonverbal cues — the way we smile, hold our arms, raise or lower our voice, and so on. This body language is what helps us make a good impression, build rapport, and collaborate and create with others.  

It’s no wonder then, that in an age where so much of our communication has moved to the digital realm, which is largely devoid of this body language, misunderstandings and miscommunications are so common.

My guest would say that the key to improving our digital communication is to translate the body language of the physical world into our texts, emails, and calls. Her name is Erica Dhawan, and she’s a leadership consultant and speaker, as well as the author of Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection No Matter the Distance. Today on the show, Erica explains the way things like how long it takes you to respond to a text, what punctuation you use in your messages, and how you sign off your emails can all affect the impression you make in your personal and professional relationships. We discuss the significance of exclamation points in our digital communication, using the example of how putting one after the word “sure” can convey a different meaning than using an ellipsis or nothing at all. Erica then gives her take on if and when to use emojis. From there we turn to how to avoid putting passive aggression into your messages, and how to deal with receiving messages that feel laden with such. We then unpack the best way to sign off on your emails. Erica explains how to choose the right communication channel — text, email, or video/phone — for your communication and the expectations as to how quickly you should respond to messages that are received on each respective medium. We end our conversation with what to do when someone’s digital communication style leaves you frustrated or confused. 

If reading this in an email, click the title of the post to listen to the show.

Show Highlights

• Why does digital communication/body language cause such headaches?
• Real-world examples of digital comms gone wrong 
• How do you show warmth and trust in the digital world?
• How can a single punctuation mark change the meaning of an email or text?
• Erica’s take on the all-important exclamation point 
• Why you need to think before you emoji 
• Passive aggressiveness in digital comms 
• Closing an email 
• The importance of reading and writing slowly and carefully 
• When to switch communication channels 
• How quickly should you respond to various types of messages?
• Managing and dealing with communication expectations 

Resources/Articles/People Mentioned in Podcast

• Digital Manners and Etiquette for the Modern Man
• Men and Manners: Tipping, Emojies, and More
• How to Overcome Phone Shyness
• Send
• The 3 Elements of Charisma: Warmth
• Email Is Making Us Miserable
• 6 Tips for Writing Shorter Emails
• How to Write an Email That Will Actually Get a Response! 
• How to Initiate Contact With a Woman Via Text

Connect With Erica 

Erica’s website

Erica on Twitter

Erica on Instagram

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This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.