James' World 2

Click the link below the picture

.

If you want to know how to do something, don’t just search the internet. Instead, find a person who already knows how and ask them. At first, they’ll give you a hurried, broad-strokes kind of answer, assuming that you’re uninterested in all the procedural details. But of course, that’s precisely what you’re after! Ask for a slowed-down, step-by-step guide through the minutiae of the thing.

For seven years, I did exactly that — I called a stranger and asked that person to describe how to do a specific task or skill. For my weekly advice column in The New York Times Magazine, I interviewed hundreds of experts, among them a heart surgeon; a congresswoman; a boy scout who survived a tsunami; a hospital baby cuddler; a telenovela star; an iceberg-dodging sea captain; many psychologists; a grave digger; scientists; artists; astronauts; and a 13-year-old lemonade entrepreneur.

Sometimes the instruction was for a physical task (How to Rescue a Cat From a Tree or How to Milk a Killer Whale), and other times the skill was emotional (How to Apologize to a Child or How to Propose an Open Relationship). In every case, the advice eventually drifted from precise instructions to the most existential guidance on how to navigate the world. Take the safecracker from Providence, R.I., who, after some 40 years on the job, knows that nearly all locked safes will be empty but that humans will want them opened anyway; we’re curious, covetous, and prone to disregard terrible odds (How to Crack a Safe). Or the laughter researcher who has tickled humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans, and gorillas and reminds us that touch should be consensual (How to Tickle Someone). Or the octogenarian British actor’s advice on how to play dead: You don’t need flailing, gasping or guts spilling out — sometimes death is just a quiet slide toward stillness.

.

.

.

Click the link below for the article:

.

__________________________________________