Since the publication of The Tipping Point nearly two
decades ago, Malcolm Gladwell has made a career of writing
books that drive the cultural conversation. His latest offers
a provocative take on what close encounters between
strangers have to teach us, and how we can get better at
reading each other’s signals. Oprah sat down with the author
and creator of the popular podcast Revisionist History to talk
about some of his surprising conclusions.Ta l k s t o
Oprah
THE O INTERVIEW
THE LAST TIME I spoke with Malcolm
Gladwell was when he came onto the
Oprah show to discuss his 2005 bestseller,
Blink, a book about instinct and decision-
making. He’d already achieved the kind of
household-name success few authors ever
earn, and each of his subsequent books—
Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and
Goliath—also became literary phenomenons
that shifted our perspective on why
humans behave the way they do. Then, as
now, I found his ideas fascinating.
Gladwell’s new book, Talking to Strangers:
What We Should Know About the People We
Don’t Know, is another must-read. It
investigates why we so often misconstrue
others’ intentions and how those errors
can have unfortunate, even catastrophic,
consequences. One historical example:
British Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain’s faulty interpretation of
Hitler’s motives (after their meeting,
Chamberlain wrote to his sister, “I got the
impression that here was a man who
could be relied upon when he had given
his word”). More recently: the 2015
confrontation between a police officer and
Sandra Bland, a newcomer to the Texas
town of Prairie View. The officer stopped
Bland for failure to use her turn signal and
wound up arresting her; she was found
dead in her jail cell three days later.
I invited Gladwell to my home in Santa
Barbara to discuss why he spent the
last four years trying to figure out not
only what really led to the death of
Sandra Bland in rural Texas, but also
how revisiting our interpersonal miscues
can help us avoid future tragedies.Oprah: I have to tell you, I love this book.
You’re touching on so many profound
themes—themes that are especially urgent
now when the world seems so topsy-turvy.You have a way of turning over rocks and
showing us that what’s underneath isn’t
always what we’d expect.
Malcolm Gladwell: That’s what
journalists and academics try to do—give
us the means to look at a familiar problem
in a new way.
OW: How did you come to decide that
talking to strangers was the rock you
wanted to turn over this time?
MG: We had that wave of police brutality
cases, beginning with Michael Brown in
2014, and I was really shaken up by them.
OW: Mm-hmm.
MG: When I started to dig into it, I realized
it was on a scale I’d never imagined:
Roughly a thousand civilians are killed
every year by police in this country.
OW: It’s been happening forever, especially
to African Americans.
MG: And it struck me that there’s
something broader at work, and that thePHOTOGRAPHS BY Frank Terry @OPRAHMAGAZINE SEPTEMBER (^2019101)