Towards the end of 2024, Amanda Litman was two months postpartum and feeling lonely. Her husband had an idea. He loved the rhythm of Shabbat, but Friday nights felt too chaotic. What if they tried Saturday instead? Amanda was skeptical, but they decided to try it. Every Saturday they were in town, they would have people over for dinner. After the first month, she was fully bought in.
You may have seen Amanda’s posts about the year she and her husband hosted a Saturday night dinner every week. They’ve gone totally viral, and with good reason.
Amanda co-founded Run for Something on the morning Trump won in 2016, at a moment when many people were saying, “If he can do this, anyone can do this,” but there was no clear on-ramp for what to do next. Run for Something became that on-ramp. So when she wrote that hosting 52 dinners was “the most political thing I did in 2025,” I paid attention.
Below are 10 insights from our conversation about how and why these 52 dinners worked
1. When building your guest, ask: who else might share this particular need in this moment?
Amanda initially built her guest list by literally going through her phone and looking at who she had texted in the past year to try to get together with. Then they expanded the list: daycare families, people they met at the park, neighbors, people she had a short conversation with and wanted to connect with, even colleagues from work they wanted to get to know better.
2. Some people are inviters, and some people are invitees. Don’t keep score.
Not everyone is going to return the favor, and that’s OK. Amanda talked about having to grapple with this. Her husband reminded her that some people are natural inviters and others are natural invitees. Some people love having people in their space, while others don’t, even if they deeply value connection. Amanda’s shift was deciding to do this for herself and her family because they wanted a village. She’s not hosting as a trade, she’s hosting as a practice.
3. Create a recurring hang that brings you joy.
The dinners work in part because Amanda and her husband genuinely want to do this. It gives them energy. He likes to cook and made an awesome spreadsheet tracking all 52 meals. If cooking drains you, don’t cook. If dinner feels like too much, make it a board game night. Make it coffee. Make it a walk. The form doesn’t matter as much as the fact that it fits your life and your energy and is sustainable.
4. Set up a rinse-and-repeat gathering format for yourself.
Amanda’s dinners aren’t just “let’s hang sometime.” It’s not unlike what Shabbat or church are for many. It’s a chosen civic infrastructure that works for their family and that they’ve committed to doing regularly. A recurring container does something powerful: it removes negotiation fatigue and gives people a default way of hanging. And when people can’t make it this week, there is another week right behind it.
5. Keep it absurdly simple.
If you’re trying to build a habit, complexity will kill it. Amanda’s dinner rhythm is clear: Saturdays at 5 pm. That time choice was not random. It solved a real problem: the window between nap time and bedtime. It makes it easy for friends with kids to come and leave before bedtime, and it also makes it easy for friends without kids to join. Simple and specific makes it easier for people to say yes.
6. 90% of the gathering happens before anyone enters the room
Amanda and her husband are priming their guests, intentionally. From the invitation to the tone of the texts (“my kid is literally not wearing a shirt!”), people know this is casual. There are kids in pajamas. Drinks are BYOB. This is not a formal dinner party. That priming matters. People arrive knowing what to wear and what to bring and how to be. They aren’t confused or guarded. They can settle in and actually connect.
7. Help your guests cross over the threshold.
At Amanda’s home, her toddler is obsessed with greeting guests and runs out to the elevator to welcome everyone into their home. Once inside, they have kid-safe food ready to go (berries and cheese and crackers). Adults are offered a beverage. People feel oriented, welcomed, and ready to connect.
8. Be clear about roles so nobody is guessing
The clearer you are, the more relaxed everyone becomes. Amanda and her husband have a clear division of labor. She handles invitations, communication with guests, and getting the home to “clean enough for guests.” He cooks. Guests bring their own drinks so they have agency over whether or not they drink alcohol. They tell guests that they can clean up plates, but are limited by their dishwasher. That clarity is a gift — it lets people be.
9. Practice makes you socially buff
During the pandemic, our social muscles atrophied. Many of us didn’t just stop gathering, we lost the ease, the rhythm, and the confidence that comes from gathering regularly. And when something hasn’t been used in a while, it can start to feel intimidating or high-stakes. With her dinners, Amanda is practicing. In the first few months, they learned a ton, and by March, the dinners were second nature. They knew how long things took, how many plates they needed, what kind of group size worked, how to move through the evening without overthinking every step. That ease didn’t come from talent, it came from repetition and that regularity has given her muscles. She’s now socially buff (lol).
10. It doesn’t need to be Instagram-worthy (in fact, it shouldn’t be)
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: focus on connection over perfection. Amanda barely takes photos of these dinners. They aren’t styled, the house is lived in, kids are in pajamas, people are sometimes eating on the floor. None of it is particularly Instagram-worthy, she says. And that’s a good thing. When we start designing gatherings for social media, we often lose the people in the room. These dinners are designed for presence and for being with each other.
*Bonus* 11. Relationships are political
When Amanda said this was the most political thing she did all year, I knew exactly what she meant. Politics isn’t abstract. It’s made out of people, trust, and shared life. During our conversation, I mentioned a study I return to often by the sociologist Ashutosh Varshney. After violent riots in India in 2003, researchers found that the villages most likely to be protected and resist violence were the ones where people already had pre-existing relationships across religious lines – often by running a business together. When things turned dangerous, those ties mattered.
At the end of our conversation, Amanda shared that on many Saturdays around 3pm, she and her husband would look at each other and ask, “Should we cancel?” Sometimes they’re tired or their kids are melting down. But, like clockwork, every Saturday around 9pm, when people leave, they are so glad they didn’t cancel.
So here’s my invitation. Don’t copy Amanda’s dinners unless you actually want to. Instead, borrow the spirit of her experiment. Create a container that fits your life, keep it simple and specific, and shape it in a way that genuinely feels joyful and sustainable.
If this conversation stayed with you and you want to go deeper, consider becoming a paid GROUP LIFER, and get access to my most recent GROUP HELP Session where I share seven concrete insights on how to build recurring gatherings that actually last.
Warmly,
Priya
P.S. Join me and Anya Kamenetz and Anand Giridharadas tomorrow for another Substack Live: On making friends as adults inspired by Anya’s beautiful essay, I’m A Working Mom In My 40s And An Introvert. I Have More, Sweeter, And Deeper Friendships Than Ever In My Life. It’s going to be a great hang. I hope you join us.
