The new conversation has a different purpose - it is to discover who other people are. Our goal now is to know who inhabits the world, individually, one by one."
Under the auspices of Mr Zeldin's Oxford Muse project, strangers are invited to converse with one another on topics chosen from a menu.
It's a closely guarded recipe, to preserve the wow-factor, but suffice to say the subjects up for discussion among his volunteers include their fears - and loves.
The mainly 20-something participants whom we met said the session was a stimulating change from being in the pub with their mobile-fixated friends.
It's certainly an admirable experiment, but watching these bright, young things filling an elegant salon in Oxford with their talk, I was struck by how old-fashioned, even quaint, it might appear to some.
In other words, the conversation was in danger of becoming what antique dealers call a conversation piece.