Jess Janz is a writer, community facilitator, and the founder of Dinner With Strangers - a project that has brought over a thousand people together for a meal with one rule: no one talks about what they do for work. Her book, The Table Where We Meet, is out July 14th.

We set out to talk about platonic love and ended up somewhere more personal - about what it actually means to bid for connection with a stranger, what gets in the way of letting people in, and what happens when someone turns the big scary light on and decides to stay anyway.

In this conversation: why we project entire futures onto people we've known for five minutes, the grief of nine years of building something and not knowing where you end and the project begins, why friend breakups are so hard to mourn, and the small everyday acts that are actually love stories - if only we'd name them.

What We Cover

1. Why we are obsessed with romantic love over platonic love - and what that costs us

2. How Dinner With Strangers works, and why removing the agenda is what makes connection possible

3. Projection: narrating entire futures onto strangers in coffee shops before they have introduced themselves

4. Bidding for connection - small honest signals and whether they get returned

5. Jess answers "how are you" honestly - fear about the book, and not knowing who she is outside the work

6. Identity tied to vocation and the danger of losing yourself in what you have built

7. The loneliness of being single while creating - no one to debrief with at the end of the day

8. The big scary light - what it means to be truly seen, and what is actually more terrifying: rejection or acceptance

9. Friend breakups - no script, no closure, no culturally sanctioned way to grieve

10. How to actually build community - ritualizing friendship and why getting out of your comfort zone is the only answer nobody wants to hear

About Jess Janz

Jess Janz is a writer, poet, and community facilitator based in Toronto. She is the founder of Dinner With Strangers, a gathering project that has brought over 1,000 people together across North America for meals where no one talks about what they do for work. She has hosted events for lululemon, Pinterest, Wealthsimple, and The W Hotel, among others.

Her debut book, The Table Where We Meet: Lessons Learned From Dinner With 1,000 Strangers, is out July 14, 2026. She also writes a Substack called Gentle Company.

Connect with Jess

Instagram: @jessjanz

Website: jessjanz.com

Pre-order the book: jessjanz.com/book

Substack: Gentle Company

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