Malcolm Gladwell's latest book looks at how we talk to strangers
Credit to Author: Dana Gee| Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2019 18:00:19 +0000
Thanks to the circus-like atmosphere of American politics, best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell admits he pines a little for his old job as a Washington Post reporter.
Gladwell was at the newspaper from 1987 to 1996, first as a business and science writer, and then the Post’s New York bureau chief.
“I miss it. To be at the Washington Post right now is the best moment to be a journalist in 50 years. It’s fantastic,” said Gladwell, reflecting on the constant mayhem of Donald Trump’s administration.
“It must be so thrilling. They must be working 60 hours a week — if not more. I am sure they are killing themselves, but this is what journalists live for, this kind of stuff.
“You see the value. This is a really, really powerful reminder of how valuable a free press is. Democracy cannot function without that,” he added.
The topic of American politics came up (as it often does these days) in advance of the five-time best-selling author’s event at the Vancouver Writers Festival to discuss his new book, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know.
In the book, Gladwell reminds us of the polarized world we live in, how we have stopped listening to each other, and how we often make the wrong assumptions about others.
One of the more impactful points in the new book is the idea that we don’t have to meet a person to understand them. In fact, it might be better, at first, if we went on hard facts over handshakes.
A classic example of that theory, Gladwell says, is former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s huge hoodwinking at the hands of Adolf Hitler before Second World War.
“The people who were wrong about Hitler were the ones who had talked with him for hours,” said Gladwell, who outlines Chamberlain’s trips to meet with Hitler in the book.
Those who were right about him never met him, he says, but they read the writing on the wall and the writing in Mein Kampf (the 1925 manifesto where Hitler laid out his anti-Semitic political ideology and future plans).
Gladwell’s course toward his latest book began with an interest in spies, and how many of them were inept bumblers who somehow went go undetected in the high-stakes world of international espionage.
“I didn’t understand why it was so hard to catch spies. So I did all that spy stuff that’s in the book first, but I didn’t think it was a book. I just thought it was interesting. I did all those interviews and I went down and met (psychologist) Tim Levine,” said Gladwell.
“(Levine) has thought as much about the problem of why we are deceived by strangers as anyone in social science,” added Gladwell about the professor and chair of Communication Studies at the University of Alabama Birmingham.
One of Levine’s ideas is that we “default to truth” as basically a way of just getting on with things.
“Levine’s big argument is trusting strangers makes for a very efficient communication and social transaction — default to truth. The reason why we have evolved to default to truth is that it just works better. It allows us to do all kinds of things,” said Gladwell, who was raised in rural Ontario but has called New York City home for years.
With his spy research completed, Gladwell decided to move forward on a book after the story of Sandra Bland broke. Bland was in Texas when she was pulled over for failing to signal a lane change. The cop demanded she get out of the car. She questioned why, and they argued. He eventually said: “I will light you up! Get out! Now!” He drew his gun. She got out and went to jail where she took her own life three days later.
“I didn’t know where I was going with it and then Sandra Bland happened and I realized that was a kind of really, really useful way of coming to grips with this problem of these sort of tragic encounters between law enforcement and African-Americans. And so Sandra Bland was the catalyst for the book, but I had been kind of thinking about this problem of strangers before that.”
Thanks to the internet, we interact with strangers all the time. Modernity has moved us outside of what Gladwell calls our “kinship circle,” and forced us to confront people who are different.
“If you think about things like Airbnb and Uber, they’re two exercises in institutionalized stranger transactions, where you’re taking an extraordinary leap of faith entrusting your home and your transportation to someone you have never met. Someone you basically know nothing about and who supposedly was kind of vetted by some third party — but who even knows if that is the case?” said Gladwell.
“We weren’t doing that in the 1960s, were we? We weren’t even doing that in 1985. So, there is something weird about that going on right now.”
Doing research for the book and talking to strangers Gladwell says reminded him to take a beat before forming a definitive opinion about another person.
“It has powerfully reinforced something that I might have had already — a kind of caution about drawing conclusions about people I don’t know well. It is something I have always done, but it is something I feel more strongly about,” said Gladwell.
“I have lost all my sense of certainty about my ability to make sense of someone. Now I am just trying to reserve judgment as much as possible.”
That outlook comes in handy when you are out on the road promoting a book, meeting new people every day and having your work critiqued and criticized by those who aren’t buying what you’re selling.
“I have done it before, I know what to expect. It is always exhausting but it is exhilarating, as well,” said Gladwell about the launch of a new book.
“With book one, I was, predictably, much more sensitive to criticism than I am now. Now, not really. I’ve been doing this for 20 years, and I have built an audience. I have painstakingly cultivated a group of people who like what I do and want to participate in my (work) — whether it is my podcast or my books, my articles or whatever. Those are the people I am writing books for. So that is more than enough for me.
“I don’t need 100 per cent approval. I don’t think anybody gets a 100 per cent approval, do they?”
With the book already launched, Gladwell is looking forward to focusing on the fourth season of his podcast Revisionist History. While he enjoys the format of podcasts, he admits it makes for a lot more creative anxiety than writing a book.
“I need 10 ideas, not one, for the podcast. It’s a huge difference. It is actually a little more hair-raising than writing a book,” said Gladwell. “I am having a good time, but I am losing sleep.”
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