Talking to Strangers

What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know

By: Malcolm Gladwell

Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell

Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's Summary

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the number-one New York Times best seller Outliers, reinvents the audiobook in this immersive production of Talking to Strangers, a powerful examination of our interactions with people we don’t know. 

How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to each other that isn't true? 

While tackling these questions, Malcolm Gladwell was not solely writing a book for the page. He was also producing for the ear. In the audiobook version of Talking to Strangers, you’ll hear the voices of people he interviewed - scientists, criminologists, military psychologists. Court transcripts are brought to life with re-enactments. You actually hear the contentious arrest of Sandra Bland by the side of the road 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 song - Janelle Monae’s “Hell You Talmbout”. 

Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the 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 conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. 

The audiobook edition of Talking to Strangers was an instant number-one best seller, and was one of the most pre-ordered audiobooks in history. It seamlessly marries audiobooks and podcasts, creating a completely new and real listening experience.   

©2019 Malcolm Gladwell (P)2019 Hachette Audio

Critic Reviews

"Malcolm Gladwell is a fabulous narrator of his latest book... His pleasing tone, phrasing palette, and exceptional skill with dramatic pauses all sound natural, yet add sparkling energy to his writing." (AudioFile Magazine)

"Talking to Strangers is a must-read...I love this book.... Reading it will actually change not just how you see strangers, but how you look at yourself, the news - the world.... Reading this book changed me." (Oprah Winfrey, O, The Oprah Magazine)

"Gladwell has again delivered a compelling, conversation-starting read.... At a time when the world feels intractably polarized, a book examining the varying ways we misinterpret or fail to communicate with one another could not feel more necessary.... With a mix of reporting, research and a deft narrative hand, Gladwell illuminates these examples with the page-turning urgency of a paperback thriller." (Chris Barton, Los Angeles Times)

Disappointing

I'm a fan of Malcolm Gladwell and was very disappointed by this book. I found it to be a string of disconnected stories awkwardly pieced together around a weak theme: talking to strangers. The book is about misjudging people and deception. It tries to demonstrate that defaulting to trust is a better option for human relationships than systematic suspicion. Where it really fails is in bringing in the theme of "strangers." It does not clearly state when people qualify as strangers to each other, and it is completely unclear from the examples as some cases are about foreigners, immigrants, out-of-towners, white vs black, and others are about people who work tightly together, or are part of the same community (judges, defendant), and teenagers who live with their parents and are yet deceiving them. I found the research interesting but incomplete and the analysis superficial. The author reads his own book and does an OK job at it. I prefer professional narrators. The book also includes audio clips and acted narration, like in a podcast. The execution is OK but not great. All in all, a less than average performance.

Far fetched theories on a few unrelated stories

This is by far the worst book I read from the author. I guess this his attempt to try something new, but failed miserably. His theories and observations are far fetched from reality. This book is a political statement more than an anything else.

Unnecessary

Deadspin was right. Malcolm Gladwell had no business bringing up Jerry Sandusky or Brock Turner in this mess of a thesis statement that draws all the wrong conclusions about sexual assault and harassment—an issue he’ll never understand personally and goes so much deeper than “impulse control.”

Fiction or non-fiction?

I gave this book a chance and found it was highly opinionated. I can accept this, but in chapter 2 about 27 minutes where Chamberline signs an agreement with Hitler made an unlikely claim. It states that Chamberline wrote a vulgar statement in place of what historical data claims. For this reason I didn’t go much further. How do I know if the statements in this book are truth or fiction?

Started good and ended well but was horrible in the middle

What you hear on the review is the first chapter and then it has nothing todo with the devil cops killing . then the middle is full of history lots and lots of history. If you like to year history from way back on all kinds of strangers meeting each other and fighting then this is the book you will enjoy. I hated all of it but the first chapter and the last chapter. He does a great job of telling a story and from a good point of view.

Enjoyable listen with some facts incorrect

I enjoyed listening to this audiobook.

I take issue with some of the passages in the section where he writes about me. I’m James Mitchell, the person who interrogated 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM). Some of what Gladwell writes confounds elements of different instances into unrelated events. These are factually incorrect, He could have cleared these up had he bothered to talk to me before he went to final print, but he didn’t. I won’t address those here.

More importantly, Gladwell implies that Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs) were (1) used to pressure KSM into “confessing” to attacks; and (2), that efforts to question KSM about future attacks were marred because KSM was being subjected to EITs when he provided information that the CIA used to disrupt plots and capture or kill terrorists still at large. But, those two things are inaccurate. I know it makes for a better story, but that’s just not what happened.

EITs were never used to pressure KSM to “confess” to anything…period…full stop. And, EITs were not—let me repeat— not being applied when KSM provided information that helped CIA prevent a second wave of 9/11 style catastrophic attacks on the West coast or aided in the capture terrorists still at large. I explain all this in my book (Enhanced Interrogation) which can be found on audible.

Finally, Gladwell makes much of KSM confessing in open court to a large variety of attacks and plots (including 9/11 and killing Daniel Pearl). Gladwell seems to be saying that KSM confessed to these things because, years after their brief use, the EITs compelled him to confess to things he didn’t actually do. To be clear, we did not discuss many of the things on KSM’s confessed list during his interrogations and debriefings. My guess is that if KSM confessed to crimes he didn’t commit, then it was to imbed his true crimes in a list of bogus plots in order to cast doubt on his confession later, should he need to or simply to mess with court proceedings. It is not necessary to evoke the boogie man of cognitive impairment to explain KSMs duplicitous behavior.

Readers interested in exploring this topic further should read the SSCI Minority Report dated June 20, 2014. That's the minority report, not the majority report.

NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT'LL BE

This book should NOT be under self-development because it misleads the reader to believe it'll be about learning to talk to strangers. This book LITERALLY just tells a few historical stories....no advice, no analytics, NOTHING. Waste of 8 hours of my life.

A new era in audio books...and maybe in relating to others

I am ruined forever on all the usual audiobooks. This was utterly fabulously produced, and now I shall expect all audiobooks to sound like fascinating podcasts ;) Ha! Really though, Malcolm has dramatically raised the bar on audiobooks.

Second, I just had a conversation in which my husband and I were talking about how complex people are....that sometimes things are not as they’d first seem. True to form, Malcolm sweeps us into a story about one thing, and then suddenly it is about something totally unexpected yet profoundly relevant in helping us see and understand the story (and characters in it) at hand.

This book has moved me toward working to hold a more gracious posture in my interactions with others and myself without sacrificing wisdom. I cannot forget the three interlocking realities he explores in this book: default to truth, the illusion of transparency, and coupling. If everyone in America could sit quietly with this information and truly consider it, we may perhaps create a kinder—and wiser— society. I’m recommending this to everyone. Although, some content is not intended for young ears. Parents be aware if you’re listening in the car with kiddos in the back.

Wow – What a letdown. Left me aggravated on many l

Ok I’m going to say first that I have loved some of this authors other books but this was by far a real let down. He seems to be grasping for gotcha hot topics from T.V tabloids and pop news networks. There is some interesting information but the conclusions that he tries ever so hard to force the reader into coming along with are full of bias and miss direction. I get through between 60-75 book a years and rarely do I have one that just makes me feel “how can someone draw this conclusion from the information”. I even went back and review some of the information presented and it is simply very bad. I’m sure I will get another one of his books because not everything can be great, but this is going to lead people who don’t think critically or who go and do research regularly filled with bias and misdirection of so many key pieces of information.

Secondly there is un need background noise “music” during the audio. It is distracting and distracting. I feel it is fine going into and out of chapters, but it is in random places here “I assume to paint an effect and support the mood he is trying to lead the read in”

I would suggest skipping this one although I’m sure with the marketing behind it and his other success this book will rank high on the charts. I do not regret the credit used, because I now have more reference to the fallacies of people logic and how easy it is to put out bad information and watch how quickly some will take it is fact.

Deeply disappointing

I started listening to MG years ago and found his books to be insightful, considerate and fair minded. The last book I listened to was a little disappointing because there were a few instances in which the continuity of his logical analysis was broken. This book just got worse. Maybe it is because I’ve listened to volumes more nonfiction since those first books or because I’ve now spent many years in scientific studies myself or because of formal instruction in literature review, and if I went back the same inconsistencies would be there in past books. Perhaps his analysis of a topic has gotten worse, I don’t know. In this book he tends to establish some premise (several times) that governs the interactions of strangers, citing researchers, landmark studies, and field experts, then he applies the premise unevenly to the topic, or even one sidedly. Moreover he applies landmark experimental findings to situations that they were never meant to define, this is logical fallacy. Experiments are highly specific, they are designed to test small ideas and eliminate as many confounding factors as possible, they cannot be so broadly applied. It’s dishonest and creates false conclusions or at very least un-validated conclusions. This book is rife with misapplied science and one sided or unbalanced applications of concepts.