Americans Are the Worst in the World at This w/ John Heers

John Heers of First Things Foundation sends field workers abroad to spend their first eight months learning the language, working a job locals already do, and starting no projects of their own. In this conversation with Joe Coleman, John traces the work back to the Georgian Supra—the toasting dinner he encountered doing relief work in the 1990s—and explains how a board member’s funding offer became Keipi Restaurant in Greenville, South Carolina, where strangers sit down together for four and five hours at a time.

Main Ideas:

* The resistance the Supra meets in America and how it gets overcome by a good tamada

* Why field workers spend their first eight months abroad learning the language and working a job locals already do, with no Western projects allowed

* What stopped the model from working in Appalachia—no central gathering place, no easy way in as an outsider, and field workers who could isolate themselves—and the change it forced

* How a Supra runs: the tamada sets the theme, the table answers, the food overflows, and the ice usually breaks on a stranger’s own toast around the third or fourth of the night

Resources:

* First Things Foundation

* Keipi Restaurant

* Art of Tamada (Greenville, SC)

* “The Virtue Men Have Stopped Practicing” with Daniel Padrnos on Sword&Spade

Chapters: