The Person You Should Know

A collection of essays extended from The New York Times' most-read article of 2016. Anyone we might marry could, of course, be a little bit wrong for us. We don’t expect bliss every day. The fault isn’t entirely our own; it has to do with the devilish truth that anyone we’re liable to meet is going to be rather wrong, in some fascinating way or another, because this is simply what all humans happen to be – including, sadly, ourselves. This collection of essays proposes that we don’t need perfection to be happy. So long as we enter our relationships in the right spirit, we have every chance of coping well enough with, and even delighting in, the inevitable and distinctive wrongness that lies in ourselves and our beloveds.

Just as the head of state is the only one that matters in a state, this book introduces the only person that matters in life. To have a relationship with people that matter, you must have something to offer. For example, you may not be allowed to see the president unless you matter. However, this book explains that a relationship with this person requires nothing from you but your willingness. If a relationship is to thrive, it will solely depend on the mutual understanding of those involved. This book paints the picture of this person in a closer look than the long distance beliefs. It is never just enough to start a relationship, but keeping and sustaining it is the key. In this book, you will learn how to keep and sustain a relationship with this person.

Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go wrong—now with a new afterword by the author. A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn’t true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.

“A beautifully written and well-researched cultural criticism as well as an honest memoir” (Los Angeles Review of Books) from the author of the popular New York Times essay, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” explores the romantic myths we create and explains how they limit our ability to achieve and sustain intimacy. What really makes love last? Does love ever work the way we say it does in movies and books and Facebook posts? Or does obsessing over those love stories hurt our real-life relationships? When her parents divorced after a twenty-eight year marriage and her own ten-year relationship ended, those were the questions that Mandy Len Catron wanted to answer. In a series of candid, vulnerable, and wise essays that takes a closer look at what it means to love someone, be loved, and how we present our love to the world, “Catron melds science and emotion beautifully into a thoughtful and thought-provoking meditation” (Bookpage). She delves back to 1944, when her grandparents met in a coal mining town in Appalachia, to her own dating life as a professor in Vancouver. She uses biologists’ research into dopamine triggers to ask whether the need to love is an innate human drive. She uses literary theory to show why we prefer certain kinds of love stories. She urges us to question the unwritten scripts we follow in relationships and looks into where those scripts come from. And she tells the story of how she decided to test an experiment that she’d read about—where the goal was to create intimacy between strangers using a list of thirty-six questions—and ended up in the surreal situation of having millions of people following her brand-new relationship. “Perfect fodder for the romantic and the cynic in all of us” (Booklist), How to Fall in Love with Anyone flips the script on love. “Clear-eyed and full of heart, it is mandatory reading for anyone coping with—or curious about—the challenges of contemporary courtship” (The Toronto Star).

Statistics show that about nine-in-ten Americans cited love as a very important reason to get married. Whether you are single, dating or in a relationship, the thought of if someone truly loves you or you are in love comes to mind. We all want to fall in love and get married to someone who feels the same way we feel about them. However, people find it hard to say those three big words (I Love You) we want to hear. The reason for their hesitation varies. They are afraid to be perceived as moving too fast if it's a relatively new relationship, so they don't want to push you away. It could be because they don't want to come off too strong if they cannot tell that you have similar feelings. And some people hold off saying it because they feel like the other person should say it first. Regardless if they are professing their love or hiding it, this book will reveal the signs that convey someone truly loves you and if what you are feeling also is true love.Dr. Femi "Gfem" Ogunjinmi is a global relationship new rule expert, TV host of Dr. Femi Show, United Nation Representative, and author of Revelations of Relationship: What You Don't Know About Finding True Love and Sustaining Relationship. He has been a go-to expert to media outlets like USA TODAY MAGAZINE, FOX NEWS, REWIRE.Org., and STYLECASTER. He has spoken on big media platforms including The Word Network, RADIO ONE, SIRIUS XM, SPLASH FM, and TEDx. His speech on TEDx has received over 2.8 million views and growing by 100,000 views every month. Apart from keynoting and speaking at conferences across the United State and overseas, Dr. Femi also conducts his own relationship programs. His signature conference, "Revelations of Relationship Seminar" occurs every year in United State and has been conducted internationally in Nigeria. Dr. Femi is the founder of National Relationship Equity Day, an organization that has created a national awareness day celebrated June 24th of every year. National Relationship Equity Day is dedicated to eradicating gender inequity in relationship and promoting the use of gifts, values, skill sets, and interests as a way of defining roles in relationship other than gender.

FOREWORD BY BRENE BROWN and POSTSCRIPT FROM BRAIN PICKINGS CREATOR MARIA POPOVA Rock star, crowdfunding pioneer, and TED speaker Amanda Palmer knows all about asking. Performing as a living statue in a wedding dress, she wordlessly asked thousands of passersby for their dollars. When she became a singer, songwriter, and musician, she was not afraid to ask her audience to support her as she surfed the crowd (and slept on their couches while touring). And when she left her record label to strike out on her own, she asked her fans to support her in making an album, leading to the world's most successful music Kickstarter. Even while Amanda is both celebrated and attacked for her fearlessness in asking for help, she finds that there are important things she cannot ask for-as a musician, as a friend, and as a wife. She learns that she isn't alone in this, that so many people are afraid to ask for help, and it paralyzes their lives and relationships. In this groundbreaking book, she explores these barriers in her own life and in the lives of those around her, and discovers the emotional, philosophical, and practical aspects of THE ART OF ASKING. Part manifesto, part revelation, this is the story of an artist struggling with the new rules of exchange in the twenty-first century, both on and off the Internet. THE ART OF ASKING will inspire readers to rethink their own ideas about asking, giving, art, and love.

“Like the YouTube channel, this is a touching yet informative guide for those seeking fatherly advice, or even a few good dad jokes.” — Library Journal

From the duo behind the massively successful and award-winning podcast Stuff You Should Know comes an unexpected look at things you thought you knew. Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant started the podcast Stuff You Should Know back in 2008 because they were curious—curious about the world around them, curious about what they might have missed in their formal educations, and curious to dig deeper on stuff they thought they understood. As it turns out, they aren't the only curious ones. They've since amassed a rabid fan base, making Stuff You Should Know one of the most popular podcasts in the world. Armed with their inquisitive natures and a passion for sharing, they uncover the weird, fascinating, delightful, or unexpected elements of a wide variety of topics. The pair have now taken their near-boundless "whys" and "hows" from your earbuds to the pages of a book for the first time—featuring a completely new array of subjects that they’ve long wondered about and wanted to explore. Each chapter is further embellished with snappy visual material to allow for rabbit-hole tangents and digressions—including charts, illustrations, sidebars, and footnotes. Follow along as the two dig into the underlying stories of everything from the origin of Murphy beds, to the history of facial hair, to the psychology of being lost. Have you ever wondered about the world around you, and wished to see the magic in everyday things? Come get curious with Stuff You Should Know. With Josh and Chuck as your guide, there’s something interesting about everything (...except maybe jackhammers).