The World's Best Book Summaries
What is a word stem completion task? Is the way you complete it indicative of your personality? And what do answers to that question say about your bias against strangers? We’ll look at how the word stem completion task works, whether your answers to the task are random, and how your assessment of the task can reveal your biases.
Do you know how to tell if someone is lying through their body language? Is body language really the key to detecting a lie? We’ll cover why it’s hard to learn how to spot a liar through body language and what signals to watch for (and why mismatching might throw you off).
Why do people experience memory loss from drinking? What’s happening in the brain? What are the consequences? The effects of alcohol on memory are startling. At a blood-alcohol level of approximately 0.15, the hippocampus shuts down entirely. At that point, all memories disappear completely and there is nothing to recall. Even in this state of total blackout, when the hippocampus is entirely shut down, it is possible for the drinker to continue to function like a “normal” drunk person. In fact, it can be impossible to tell when someone else has reached the point of blackout. Learn more about drinking and
Why does it always start with why? Start With Why covers everything you need to know about creating an organization that puts its values at the center of its business. The core concept is simple and straightforward: great businesses know why they’re doing what they’re doing—and they use that mission as their guiding principle. Given this goal, Start With Why covers three aspects of WHY: 1) defining your WHY, 2) understanding how your WHY affects your company on all levels, and 3) making sure you stay focused on your WHY in the long-term. We’ll cover why, to create a successful
How did the 1938 meeting between Neville Chamberlain and Hitler go? How did Hitler convince Chamberlain that he only planned to invade Czechoslovakia? The meetings between Chamberlain and Hitler show how hard it is to spot a lie. Learn about Chamberlain’s attempts to read Hitler and why none of us are very good at understanding strangers.
Was Amanda Knox guilty? What were the issues with the Amanda Knox case? Why were so many people so sure of her guilt, despite the evidence suggesting otherwise? We’ll cover how Amanda Knox’s actions made her seem guilty, and why we all have a hard time understanding strangers when they don’t act the way we expect them to.
What are the effects of stress on memory? Are the effects severe? Long term? Stress affecting memory is a huge problem in everyday life, and a particular problem for people who need to obtain crucial information under stressful circumstances, such as interrogators. We’ll look at the effects of stress on memory in the military to understand how stress might also affect us in less acutely stressful environments.
What happened to Sandra Bland? What events led up to death in jail? Who’s to blame? The police officer? The justice system? Our society as a whole? We’ll cover Malcolm Gladwell’s answer to the question, What happened to Sandra Bland?, from his book Talking to Strangers. Learn why Gladwell thinks the death of Sandra Bland was the tragic result of common misreadings of strangers.
Who was Aldrich Ames? How was he outed as a spy? How was he able to fool the CIA for so long? Aldrich Ames was one of the most senior officers in the CIA’s Soviet Counterintelligence agency during the Cold War. He was also working as a double agent for the Soviet Union. The CIA is supposed to be the most sophisticated intelligence agency in the world. But even some of the best CIA agents have failed to detect liars in their midst. Learn what it means for the rest of us when even CIA agents can’t identify liars like Aldrich
What was the Kansas City preventive patrol experiment? Why was it so groundbreaking? Why have we failed to replicate it successfully across the country? We’ll cover what the Kansas City experiment was, how it used the theory of coupled behaviors, or coupling theory, and why it was so successful. Then, we’ll look at why it hasn’t been particularly successful in other parts of the country.