i will never forget when brock turner was having his case and brock turner some people may or may nots the young guy who raped a woman in an alley and, you know, the court case was this messy thing. people were like, was she drunk? was he drunk? i'll never forget what the judge said. the judge basically said, i don't want to send this kid for jail forever because it's going to mess up his life. he had so much going for him. and i thought to myself, wow, this judge was able to see passed what he had done and see him as a human being and say, hey, maybe we should give him another chance. that is the power of seeing somebody like you see yourself. and that for me is the two sides of the coin that americans have been forced or have lived with for a long time, is that there are two different sides of justice. there are two different ways that law and order are dulled out. and people don't understand the different. people don't understand how an officer has the opportunity to give you a warning, an officer has an opportunity to spare your life if they see you as they see themselves. and so

brock turner sexual assault case at stanford a few years back, these are failed communications.nd the one that really, the book starts and ends with, the signature case i'm concerned with is the sandra bland case, which is one of those high profile encounters between african americans and law enforcement that was, excuse me, so much in the news a few years ago, which was a conversation between a young black man, black woman and a police officer who pulls her over, and the conversation goes off the rails. and i wondered why is it, why is it that we're, that we fail in these conversations with strangers? that's where the book comes from. susan: each one of your books has explored an aspect of human communication. what is it about this topic that you keep coming back to? why is it so important to you? malcolm: i don't know. i just think it is endlessly -- no one loves a transcript more than me. i am keenly interested in how people express themselves and how they succeed and fail at that. i'm one of those people who, if someone is articulate, i'm all in. i find myself so -- one of t