For the few times where I had to speak to someone about topics I don't care much about, I found that simply asking questions to learn about them ( as well as the person I'm speaking to) is enough.

"What team do you support? Has it always been the case? How do you think they compare to <well-known other good team>?" "What car do you drive? Any particular reason for that car model? What's the brand's best and worst things? Oh, that piece tends to break easily; pardon my ignorance, but what's the purpose of it?" "Any key difference in the way you hunt/fish this or that animal, or the time of the year during which you hunt/fish? I don't know that word, what does it mean? Do you have any anecdotes about some hunting/fishing you did?"

Those have to be adapted to the person and situation, but they are pretty good to keep a conversation going. People love to speak about their interests, and a lot love to even teach about them. Putting yourself as the listener makes them perceive you as nice, and you might even gather interesting information to yourself, or at least gather enough knowledge to have an easier time speaking about it next time.

    I found that simply asking questions to learn about 
    them ( as well as the person I'm speaking to) is enough.
This is such a great insight and skill.

This is something that 99% of "nerds" don't understand about sports. You don't have to fake your way through "knowing about sports" to have a conversation around it.

Suppose you're in Buffalo, NY and you don't know a thing about sports. However, unless visiting with your eyes and ears closed, it would be difficult not to see that the city is really into its football team.

If you are "stuck" in a conversation with a Bills fan and don't know a thing about football, you could just ask - are the Bills good this year? what's it like being a Bills fan? are Bills fans as crazy as they say? how did you come to be a Bills fan - were your parents Bills fans?

There's like 100 possible conversation angles there that don't require any knowledge of sports

Discussions like these show that some people really block out anything beyond their specific interests.

I don't care about superhero movies, so I haven't seen any of the Marvel or DC movies, yet I still know they exist and sometimes I know which one is being promoted right now. If I got stuck at a table somewhere with someone who is a big fan of them, we could have a conversation. It'd mostly consist of me asking questions, but that'd work fine, because as a fan he'd have opinions to share. Same thing with sports or anything, really.

Right! It's so simple to me, that I actually get kind of frustrated with people who haven't figured this out.

Being a good listener is key for any relationship, however brief it may be.

Definitely agree on the listening and just asking questions. It helps to have one or two factoids about many subjects to sneak into any conversation.