My favorite, by far:

> [...] old Karp was usually delighted by the latest innovations that the scientists brought up from their camp, and though he steadfastly refused to believe that man had set foot on the moon, he adapted swiftly to the idea of satellites. The Lykovs had noticed them as early as the 1950s, when “the stars began to go quickly across the sky,” and Karp himself conceived a theory to explain this: “People have thought something up and are sending out fires that are very like stars.”

Especially the last part: “People have thought something up and are sending out fires that are very like stars.”

Yes, that was also one of my favorites.

This is doubly strange because “recounting dreams” is, in modern society, a pretty surefire way to bore other people. But it may be that when you live this kind of pre-modern life you don’t have all the random coins of so much life, media, and other humans around you, so the most reliable source of surprising material is dreams.

Most people are bad at recalling dreams, which doesn't help. It's not a bad experience, if you're interacting with people who are good at it.

Most people are bad at telling stories in general, both recounting events in a captivating way and making up tales to entertain. Like anything, you get better at it with practice. All cultures have a history of sitting around the campfire and listening to the elders spin yarns. What else would you do at night? Your average caveman was probably a more engaging speaker than most people today.

You mean a way to bore strangers? Because our family share funny, interesting, or strange dreams and I don't find it any less boring than hearing about other aspects of people's day (and sometimes far more engaging).