Talking to Strangers What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know

I like that you narrate your books. It's very frustrating with someone who's a great speaker does not narrate their books so thanks for doing that. ... to talking to strangers.

the question is why that's what I began to get really fascinated by is you think at this point in human evolution we would have got this thing about talking to strangers down and we clearly don't and we're being pushed to talk more and more to strangers right in a kind of globalized world and if we're bad at it that doesn't bode well does it?

talking to strangers is great, but you know what's really amazing is the audio book.

It's this terrific book that talks about how we think we know people assumptions that we make, how we don't really know sometimes who we're talking to that our assumptions are incorrect.

It's available by the way on audible anyway.

one of the reasons I love that book so much is that you pretty much reveal that we don't know what other people are thinking. We're not able to judge other people.

And actually, I begin the book with that story about my dad.

Talking to Strangers is great, but you know what's really amazing is the audio book.

It's this terrific book that talks about how we think we know people, assumptions that we make, how we don't really know sometimes who we're talking to, that our assumptions are incorrect.

It really adds a whole other dimension to the book.

one of the reasons I love that book so much is that you pretty much reveal that we don't know what other people are thinking.

And actually, I begin the book... I don't remember, but I begin the book with that story about my dad.

I was reading, I think it was a Malcolm Gladwell book recently. And they talk about how the most effective torture still is sleep deprivation. And it's why fraternities do it. It's just, it works.

Dude if you listen to that Malcolm Gladwell book Talking to Strangers, they talk about this and he literally, the family was like I'll call my doctor friend, he's a mandated reporter, and the doctor was like I'm not reporting this.

One of the things I love about you, Malcolm is like yours truly. You're not afraid to touch the third rails. And I mean, the 30th of the 30 rails, um, in, in, I think it was talking to strangers.

And, you know, even as recently as Malcolm Gladwell's book Talking to Strangers, where he analyzes the case and he, you know, from the very get go is like, we know who did this crime. It's Rudy Gade, but he then goes on to say, well, the reason why Amanda was wrongly convicted was because she's ultimately an innocent person who acts guilty.

even as recently as Malcolm Gladwell's book Talking to Strangers, where he analyzes the case and he, you know, from the very get go is like, we know who did this crime. It's Rudy Gaudet. But he then goes on to say, well, the reason why Amanda was wrongly convicted was because she's ultimately an innocent person who acts guilty.

I wanted to dive into your incredible book, Talking to Strangers, that we'll be putting a link to available for everyone to grab as well.

And I'm going to dive straight in here. But I've heard you say that when you visit the Lincoln Monument, you're always moved to tears. And I wanted to know why is that?

I wanted to ask you to start with, because it's called Talking to Strangers. How do you define or how can people define who a stranger is in their life?

What are those things that we then are? What are like the biggest pitfalls in our assumptions and biases when we're first meeting a stranger? Where is it that we naturally go wrong?

I wanted to dive into Talking to Strangers, because what I find fascinating is you wrote this book before everything happened. And it almost... When I say everything happened, I mean everything that's happened in 2020.

He spoke to us about the hurdles society is up against because of our lack of connection and how as a culture we've shifted from a front porch to a backyard culture where we frantically build hedges to ensure we will never come into contact with a neighbor as long as we both shall live.

Growing up in New Jersey my family used to eat dinner on our front porch and chat with every stranger who strolled by. We are still close friends with all of our neighbors past and present but these days we build up these hedges and hope to never get even so much as a glimpse of another person and God forbid someone should knock on the door.

I've written a new book called Talking to Strangers, and it's about the mistakes we make in our interactions with people we don't know.

Talking to Strangers features con artists and sociopaths and spies.

It talks about how drinking affects the way we make sense of others.

And I pick a Malcolm Gladwell book that I've read before. So, like, this year I read Talking to Strangers.

He wrote Outliers. He wrote the tipping point. His new book is called Talking to Strangers. This is one of the most in-depth interviews about his new work and we did I would say a bang up job.

His newest book is Talking to Strangers what we should know about the people we don't know basically all the tools we have when we talk to our friends and family betray us when we talk to strangers in this book is a deep dive on that

You've said that this is your angriest work why is that the case well because i've written books that begin in with a sense of wonder or curiosity or all outliers's a book about i mean awe of the success of certain people i want to make sense of it but this one really begins with the Sandra Blanc case which made me angry not just me made many many Americans angry and i was even angrier maybe even more angry with the way that i thought that that string of high profile cases involving law enforcement and african americans were just kind of i felt like we just kind of pushed them aside and went on with our lives that struck me as being profoundly wrong

in a way this book is it's sort of like blink but about people but it's one other side of the same ten sided die that maybe these social characteristics are it's not exactly yeah same thing but it's how our impressions might be right at first but for reasons we can't explain or how we form impressions that are completely wrong based on the wrong data

the real solution to this problem is not to have police conduct these kinds of stops the problem begins not with the mistake i think is because we have videotape of this encounter to think the encounter begins when the videotape starts rolling but in fact it begins when he spots her on the street and he makes this decision which is consistent with his training to pull her over because she's discrepant she's out of state plates in a small Texas town young black woman Hyundai i think

the book title is talking to strangers what we should know about the people we don't know

I was reading Malcolm Gladwell's new book just recently he's got an entire chapter on sexual abuse on the jury's in dusky case and the Larry Nasser case and he excuses every single person who didn't report those warnings in fact he recently said we should be re-reacting the statue of Joe Paterno and his reasoning was even though Paterno knew that sand dusky was seen naked in a shower with his body pressed against a pre-pubescent boy it's quote very difficult to determine pedophilia if you're not specially trained and so he is excused himself and spent an entire chapter in his book arguing that we default to truth and that the reason that Larry wasn't caught in sand dusky wasn't caught in that we that we don't catch predators is because we default to truth.

His new book is called Talking to Strangers.

This is one of the most in-depth interviews about his new work and we did, I would say, a bang up job.

His newest book is Talking to Strangers what we should know about the people we don't know basically all the tools we have when we talk to our friends and family betray us when we talk to strangers in this book is a deep dive on that

it's a wholly different story when you hear all those voices and throughout the whole book you will hear like i interviewed one of the CIA guys who did all that did the enhanced interrogation

the book title is talking to strangers what we should know about the people we don't know

and links to that will be in the show notes

I was reading Malcolm Gladwell's new book just recently he's got an entire chapter on sexual abuse on the jury's in dusky case and the larry nasser case and he excuses every single person who didn't report those warnings

he recently said we should be re-reacting the statue of joe paterno and his reasoning was even though paterno knew that sand dusky was seen naked in a shower with his body pressed against a pre-pubescent boy it's quote very difficult to determine pedophilia if you're not specially trained

we default to truth and that the reason that larry wasn't caught in sand dusky wasn't caught in that we that we don't catch predators is because we default to truth that's not true that is not inaccurate premise we do not default to truth we default to what's comfortable to us and perpetuating the notion that we are defaulting to truth normalizes ignoring pedophilia gladwell is normalizing and excusing not acting on very clear warning signs of childhood sexual abuse

He wrote blank. He wrote outliers. He wrote the tipping point. His new book is called Talking to Strangers.

This is one of the most in-depth interviews about his new work and we did I would say a bang up job.

His newest book is Talking to Strangers what we should know about the people we don't know basically all the tools we have when we talk to our friends and family betray us when we talk to strangers in this book is a deep dive on that

You've said that this is your angriest work why is that the case well because i've written books that begin in with a sense of wonder or curiosity or all outliers's a book about i mean awe of the success of certain people i want to make sense of it but this one really begins with the Sandra Blanc case which made me angry not just me made many many Americans angry and i was even angrier maybe even more angry with the way that i thought that that string of high profile cases involving law enforcement and african americans were just kind of i felt like we just kind of pushed them aside and went on with our lives that struck me as being profoundly wrong

in this book what i'm trying to say is the same thing happens here is that these incidents happen and we say oh it's a racist cop and that's what we get riled up about and then we neglect the fact actually there's a whole system behind that to explain what happened and that's where we should be spending our attention

it's like let's figure it out and let's see whether we can prevent this kind of thing happening again

the book title is talking to strangers what we should know about the people we don't know

But then when I read Talking with Strangers last year, I read it actually before last year, I read it when I was on my book tour for Stillness is the Key. I remember I shot him an email and I said Malcolm, this book is like the definition of mastery. It's like watching a master at work. He took this subject matter that should have been so difficult and frankly not interesting and it's fascinating.

I think I messaged you this when I read Talking With Strangers and it just felt like this was watching a master at work.