“Talking to Strangers” by Malcolm Gladwell
An Audiobook that experiments with its medium and succeeds
I recently finished ‘reading’ (or more aptly listening) the audiobook- “Talking to Strangers” by Malcolm Gladwell and I really enjoyed it. ‘Enjoy’ might not be the right word here because while I was engrossed in the book, the book contains several real stories of dark events, which also made me feel upset sometimes, while other times frustrated. But before I dive into reflecting on the content and main messages of the book, I want to comment on the ‘medium’ used by the book, which is ‘audiobook’. This is not a typical audiobook where the author or a narrator simply reads the text of the book. Malcolm Gladwell brings his experience and expertise from hosting several brilliant and interesting podcasts to creating “Talking to Strangers”, which is designed more like a long podcast than the typical audiobook.
And I love that!
Instead of just reading out the text, including background sounds, real interviews and adding the special sound editing only used for podcasts, makes the audiobook much more engrossing and lively. I believe, this is the real strength that audiobooks as a genre can have, compared to physical copies of books. Although audiobooks have grown in popularity in recent times, I don’t think it is going to completely replace physical copies of books ever; some books are probably more suited as the traditional physical copy of book, as opposed to being a highly produced ‘Audiobook’. But there are books, “Talking to strangers” being an example, where highly produced audiobook is more suited for delivering the content and making an impression on the reader’s (or listener’s) mind. Now more on the content in the book!
In the typical Malcolm Gladwell style, the author weaves in many commonly known (for example the Brock Turner case at Stanford) and unknown stories (for example the story of Ana Montes, who was a Cuban spy working within US intelligence) and makes a lot of convincing arguments using those stories. While there are research papers cited, the author depends on qualitative evidence to make his points, not quantitative evidence that you may expect from an economics journal research paper.
The book is centered around the case of Sandra Bland’s encounter with the Police in Texas, US. Sandra Bland was a 28-year-old African-American woman who was found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas, on July 13, 2015, three days after being arrested during a pretextual traffic stop. This caused a massive uproar against Police violence in the US (yet again). Gladwell is after finding the answer to the question- why did the events unfolded in the way it did, which is, why did a police officer arrest Sandra Bland simply because she failed to use a turn signal when changing lanes on a highway? The answer is more complicated than simply saying the police officer was racist.
Key ideas:
1. People default to truth i.e. that people generally assume that others are truthful (in most cases, this is a good heuristic as without this trust, society wouldn’t function)
2. People have the illusion of transparency, i.e. you can understand what someone else is feeling simply by observing how they behave, their facial expressions, etc. (spoiler: this is not true in many cases)
3. We need to accept that the search to understand strangers have real limits (no matter how much information we are provided)
4. The idea of “coupling” that people commit acts (including crimes) partly because of the environment they are in. (research supports this idea)
Interesting quotes:
The quotes below are not direct quotes, rather notes that I jotted down based on quotes (without changing any meaning):
The illusion of asymmetrical insight- the idea that you can know insights about others that they themselves do not know, but the vice versa isn’t true.
In a lot of cases, having more information doesn’t seem to correlate with people understanding other people, compared to people who know comparatively less.
It’s impossible (almost) to know other people’s intentions.
People can’t easily tell when other people lie. Evolution hasn’t picked up on this skill. We should be good at it! Why?
“Truth Default Theory” (see key idea 1)
We are much better than chance to correctly identify truths. But much worse than chance to identify deception. Our default position is people are honest.
Defaulting to truth makes logical sense because most people, most of the time, do not lie. Our entire society functions based on trust, on believing strangers.
Evolutionarily, it’s better for humans, there are more benefits, by believing strangers. Because if someone was always suspicious of others & wanted to probe every situation, then the costs are really high and the returns will be low.
If you don’t begin with a truth Default and a state of trust, you cannot form meaningful social connections. That is the high price of being someone who can be good whistler blower by not defaulting to the truth.
Facial expressions are not universally interpreted the same way. Because people do not express their emotions on their face the same way. In real life, faces are not billboards for our emotions.
Specific facial expressions can be associated with specific emotions, perpetuated by tv shows & media. But we don’t express that in our faces automatically.
We are terrible at judging others’ emotions from their facial expressions.
There are mismatches. Sometimes the cues that we would take for people lying or being dishonest, for example when they seem to be nervous, these people might actually be telling the truth and they might just be nervous.
