🏃 Ed Kohler's year of 100 friendly jogs

The idea of “six degrees of separation” — the theory that everybody exists within six-or-so social connections of each other — is often misunderstood as evidence of how interconnected we all are. But that’s not quite it. The theory actually works because a small handful of people know a lot of others, and the rest of us are connected through them, like spokes on their hub. 

Ed Kohler is one such hub. It's common to run into him in routine neighborhood business, and when you do, it's uncommon for him not to run into someone else shortly after. During our time together for this piece, he told me a story from a few days prior, when he was chatting with a stranger at a history walking tour in North Minneapolis. Over the course of the tour they traced a series of connections that eventually revealed that Ed’s son now uses a pair of the man’s old ski poles — to which Ed’s friend on the tour merely sighed and said something along the lines of, “This happens every time.”

Just moments after he shared that anecdote, we jogged past a group of people on the river who slowed to greet him. One person in that group was Hiawatha Neighbors podcast co-host Jay Carlson; the Carlsons interviewed Ed on their podcast last year even though Ed didn't live within the show's boundaries, simply because so many people suggested him as a guest. 

Such is life as a knower of many. And while Ed’s plenty personable, force of personality doesn't explain it. It’s something simpler. Ed just...joins things and goes to stuff.