Amanda Ripley is a New York Times bestselling author, an investigative journalist and host of the Slate podcast How To! She’s spent her career trying to make sense of complicated human mysteries, from how people get out of dysfunctional conflicts to how countries educate virtually all their kids to think for themselves. Amanda’s most recent book is High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out, published by Simon & Schuster in 2021. Her previous books include The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why, which was published in 15 countries and turned into a PBS documentary, and The Smartest Kids in the World—and How They Got That Way, a New York Times bestseller which was also turned into a documentary film.
In her books and magazine writing, Amanda combines storytelling with data to help illuminate hard problems—and solutions. She follows people who have been through some kind of a transformation—including the survivors of hurricanes and plane crashes, American teenagers who have experienced high school in other countries and politicians and gang members who were bewitched by toxic conflicts and managed to break free.
