001: w/ the hubs 👨🏻‍💻❤️🔥 👩🏻‍💻 bonding over mutual nerdiness (tech vs. biohacking) + asking: why would you ever confess to an aromantic?!

Hi & welcome to episode 1 of Don't Be Strangers ✨☺️ a podcast and social experiment for learning to create meaningful connections together via collaborative conversations! Statistics show that (1) social isolation is on the rise and (2) the number of close friends someone would say that they have is decreasing. Considering that having a strong social network is one of the key factors in general happiness, overall health, and prolonged longevity, my hope is that this podcast will serve to bring awareness to the issue as well as provide a platform to start solving the problem, together!  My name is XinYi and I dreamt up this little experiment... and when I say experiment, I stress, this is a complete experiment because I fully intend to treat each episode as a test and learn and improve along the way. So I thought I'd start off easy and not put a lot of pressure on myself by asking someone whom I already knew that I adored having conversations with ... my husband, Joseph. I kind of forgot how wordy we both can be and it was made extremely apparent during the recording because I think we ended up recording close to 3 hours of content (which I was able to edit down to only 1 and a half hours?), so if you like long-format podcasts or if you listen to everything at 2x speed like me — I've got you covered! And to avoid making this any longer... let's just cut to it.  ~ And that concludes our conversation! The point of this podcast is to encourage open and meaningful conversations so I'm very keen to know if you found any part of our conversation interesting or unconventional. Did you agree or disagree with anything? If so, why? This is your warm invitation from me to you to find the instagram post associated with this episode and to share your thoughts (I'll link them the show notes) OR if you feel so inspired... you can send a direct message to @dontbestrangers on instagram or email me at [email protected] and maybe potentially co-host a future episode with me? I know I would love to meet you.  Also, if you happen to know anyone who is passionate about community building, loves meeting new people, or simply enjoys listening to and participating in deep conversations — I'd be so honored if you could connect us. Again, you can reach out to me @dontbestrangers or email me at [email protected] or you can share this podcast with this loved one and see what they think!  So, thanks again if you've stuck around till the end here for sharing your time and energy with us! I hope something that we talked about made you laugh or smile at the very least and until next time, wishing you all the very best that life has to offer. ✨