A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2019

Malcolm Gladwell, web host of the podcast Revisionist Background and writer of the #1 New York Moments bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers — and just why they often fail.

How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for the generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain believe he could trust Adolf Hitler? What makes campus sexual assaults increasing? Do tv sitcoms train us something about just how we relate with each other that’s not about Speaking with Strangers: What We Should Know about individuals We HAVE NO IDEA true?

While tackling these queries, Malcolm Gladwell had not been solely composing a reserve for the page. He was also producing for the ear. In the audiobook edition of Talking to Strangers, you’ll hear the voices of people he interviewed–scientists, criminologists, armed service psychologists. Courtroom transcripts are taken to lifestyle with re-enactments. You actually hear the contentious arrest of Sandra Bland by the side of the street in Texas. As Gladwell revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, and the suicide of Sylvia Plath, you hear directly from lots of the players in these real-life tragedies. There’s even a theme tune – Janelle Monae’s ‘Hell You Talmbout.’

Something is quite wrong, Gladwell argues, with the various tools and strategies we make use of to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting turmoil and misunderstanding with techniques which have a profound influence on our lives and the world.