TALKING TO STRANGERS by MALCOLM GLADWELL

 

INTRODUCTION

"STEP OUT OF THE CAR!"

In July 2015, an African American woman, Sandra Bland, was driving to her job interview at Prairie View A & M University. She often posted short, inspirational videos on YouTube. She got the job and was really glad. 

In the afternoon of that day, she wanted to get groceries from the supermarket when she got pulled over by a cop who told her she failed to signal a lane change, as she made a right turn onto the highway.

Sandra Bland and the cop named Brian Encinia would argue for a long time as Encinia tried to force her to step out of her car. Sandra finally got arrested. A few days later she committed suicide in police custody.

Many other cases of what seemed to be black oppression had been surfacing over the years. The Black Lives Matter movement was birthed and names such as Philando Castile, Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, and Eric Garner. 

This book directs these facts and explains what actually happened on that fateful day in July 2015. Talking to Strangers analyses criticizes and gives better suggestions into how conversations would have gone and no one ending up dead.

PART ONE: SPIES  AND DIPLOMATS: TWO PUZZLES

CHAPTER ONE: Fidel Castro's Revenge 

Florentino Aspillaga was a high ranking officer in Cuba Directorate of Intelligence. He was so admired and trusted that he got several recognitions and commendations, even by Fidel Castro himself. But he grew to dislike Cuba and decided to defect. And had to escape several death threats because of the kind of information he had about Cuba and the Soviet Union. 

Many years after, Brian Latell who worked for the CIA Latin America office found him. And received a box of Aspillaga's memoirs containing a puzzle-like story. The story contained what happened after Aspillaga left for Vienna. 

He informed the CIA of the pretend spied that we're on the Cuban team to their shock. Fidel Castillo heard about this and released a film completely and blatantly exposing the pretend CIA agents.

CHAPTER TWO: Getting to Know der Führer

Neville Chamberlain, the 1938 British Prime Minister was also fooled by Adolf Hitler, who was a stranger to him. Only a few world leaders met face to face with Hitler, but Chamberlain did. In fact, he did all he did to try to reason with Hitler not to invade Czechoslovakia. 

He met with Hitler several times that he assumed he was in safe hands before Czechoslovakia was taken by Hitler. Chamberlain, as well as his foreign secretary, Lord Halifax was deceived. 

These people got to meet with Hitler more than once and even got to have dinner with him. They thought they knew him too well, but they were fooled. 

Wrong predictions by judges on criminal cases even after several eye contacts and others, including the words puzzle assessment that leads to the conclusion.

As a result of these assessments, one of the biggest mistakes of humans is judging strangers based on their first contact and they believe the same is not applicable to them.

PART TWO: DEFAULT TO TRUTH

CHAPTER THREE: The Queen of Cuba

The Cuban's issue is another instance to learn from. It was obvious that there's a spy from within giving out meaningful. After a series of interrogations and investigation Ana Montes, who happened to be the last person they would suspect, was responsible.

Also, tests that interviews that presented participants with the opportunity to cheat, and making a person go through an electric shock which was fake to know how the audience will react. People believed they were real because of the facial expressions of the people involved. That is how much facial expression could be a source of information.

CHAPTER FOUR: The Holy Fool

A person who insists on getting to the root of his/her suspensions no matter what others say or feel about it is called a "Holy Fool". Being a Holy fool has its advantages like eradicating crime, and also its disadvantages such as lack of trust which can bring down any organization.

CHAPTER FIVE: Case Study: The Boy in the Shower

These it difficult in judging serious criminal cases like rape, child sexual harassment, and others. This is because the criminals seem to be trusted by people, and the casualties are not believed in most cases.

PART THREE: TRANSPARENCY

CHAPTER SIX: The Friends Fallacy

The transparency of one's friend can be known through the test from transparency TV, using FACS (Facial action coding system) is as follows;

• Pan-am smiles which involves lifting a corner of the lips, and it can be called a fake smile when one is trying to be polite. It involves using Zygomaticus major muscle and is scored AU12.
• The Duchenne smile which involves moving the whole cheek, and is called a genuine smile. It has to do with using the outer orbicularis oculi muscle scored AU12 plus AU6.

On several occasions such as moments when one is dead-scared, afraid, angry, overexcited, and others the look on the person's face determines that. The look might include the shape of the eyeball, the movement of the eyeball and eyebrows, the movement of the nose, the shape and movement of the mouth. 

Though, these factors might be true, but not entirely true due to differences in our response to situations. Hence, these factors shouldn't be the major determinant to know a person's intents and mood.

CHAPTER SEVEN: A (Short) Explanation of the Amanda Knox Case

On November 1, 2007, Meredith Kercher, who happened to be a college student was killed by Rudy Guede in Perugia, Italy. The investigation focused on Kercher's roommate; Amanda Knox. Raffaelle, Amanda's boyfriend, Amanda, and Guede were all charged, convicted, and sent to prison. 

It was until eight years after Amanda Knox was released, and it was amidst many contrary arguments. Amanda was misinterpreted to be a liar and was sent to prison for not behaving like someone who had lost a friend in cold blood murder. But Amanda was just like that. She was by nature, quirky odd. And just like many other mismatched persons, she was mistaken for a murderer.

CHAPTER EIGHT: Case Study: The Fraternity Party

A very common criminal case in our world today is the case of sexual assaults. Sexual assaults on most occasions among youths and teenagers has mostly been as a result of irresponsible intake of alcohol, and misinterpretation of sexual advances. 

This has been blamed on the government, for refusing to educate schools about drinking, interpretation of sexual advances, and sexual assaults.

PART FOUR: LESSONS

CHAPTER NINE: (KSM): What Happens When the Stranger is a Terrorist?

After the arrest of a renowned criminal, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a terrorist. Several interrogations were carried out on him to know that will reduce the crime rate in the world, but all the torture and torments seem abortive. So after five years of torture, he made confessions, which was a relief to the investigation forces. 

There was a belief that the confessions were false, and were due to continuous torture.
KSM was said to make false confessions so the torture would be stopped. If it could be that hard for the police force, to detect a false confession then detecting a lie is not something that could be gotten by facial expressions alone.

PART FIVE: COUPLING

CHAPTER TEN:  Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath is a poet who suffered from a broken marriage and also suffered depression which made her immerse her head in an oven that emits CO gas. Several other cases of suicide were recorded including that of Plath's friend Sexton who died as a result of the exhaust from her car(suicide).

 It was then noted that for a depressed person, sex workers and criminals to stop the process, is like devising another means for them to perpetrate what they want to do. But the secret to these is that knowing a stranger, in most cases has to do with the location and the acts there.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Case Study: The Kansas City Experiments 

There are also cases of citizens, mostly African Americans, killed or unlawfully arrested by police. The worst part is that the officers still try to blame the people involved in the assaults. 

This points to the fact that when a misunderstanding happens between a person and a stranger, everyone tries to blame the stranger instead, not willing to admit they are the ones at fault.

CHAPTER TWELVE: Sandra Bland

Sandra Bland was 28 years old and new at Prairie View University. Brian Encinia parked behind her and approached her car before the grueling conversation ensued. 

Everything that led to Bland's death, went that way because Encinia made a lot of mistakes. The profound one being mismatching.

Encinia's first mistake was that he didn't try to diffuse Bland's rage when she expressed them. He never actually intended to find her at first, he tried acting courteous but he was too slow in letting her know that. She, on the other hand, thought Encinia would issue out a ticket.

Encinia got the more irritated when Bland lit a cigarette, but he could have courteously told her he wasn't comfortable with that or just let it slip. But he doesn't and his authority is challenged. He then goes on to arrest her. 

Brian Encinia was a tone-deaf bully, and mismatched Bland for a violent person when she was in fact just trying to live on peace, having been through a lot in the hands of police at Illinois, where she previously lived.

Society has really gone wrong on this. And policing enforced to assume everyone is a criminal, just so much that an athlete in his car would be accused of being a Pedophile, and an innocent woman would be assumed to be violent. The reality is that they do not know how to talk to strangers.

Photo credit: Penguin

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