Today, Tom's guest is the author and scholar Malcolm Gladwell. He’s a staff writer for the New Yorker, the author of six best-selling books, and the host of the podcast, Revisionist History, which draws as many as three million listeners per episode.
His latest book is called Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know, in which Gladwell explores how bad we are, generally, understanding people we don’t know, and how we often think we know people better than we do. It’s that lack of ability to accurately anticipate the motives and actions of people that have led to tragedies both individual and global. Malcolm Gladwell explores this phenomenon through the lens of historical events and contemporary news stories; from Montezuma’s meeting with Cortez to the likes of Bernie Madoff, Amanda Knox, and Sandra Bland.
Malcolm Gladwell joins us from NPR studios in New York City.
