Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know Audiobook (Free)

A FINANCIAL TIMES Ideal BOOK OF 2019

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Instances bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful study of our relationships with strangers — and just why they often go wrong.

How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for any generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? What makes campus intimate assaults increasing? Do tv sitcoms train us something about the way we relate to each other that’s not about Speaking with Strangers: What We Should Know about individuals We Don’t Know true?

While tackling these questions, Malcolm Gladwell was not solely writing a book for the web page. He was also generating for the ear. In the audiobook version of Talking to Strangers, you’ll hear the voices of people he interviewed–scientists, criminologists, military psychologists. Courtroom transcripts are brought to life 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 many of the players in these real-life tragedies. There’s even a theme track – Janelle Monae’s ‘Hell You Talmbout.’

Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the various tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting issue and misunderstanding in ways that have a deep effect on our lives and the world.