Jason Swett still cringes when he remembers the party in Atlanta 10 years ago, where, drink in hand, he tried "to impress the local Southern belles," he says, by talking—nonstop.

He told the six or so people he'd just met the tale of how once at a grocery store he helped apprehend a thief who'd stuffed steaks down his pants. And the story about the time he spotted a bike at the bottom of a pond in a local park and jumped in to retrieve it. And then the one about how he smoked himself out of his own basement by setting...