WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.220 Okay, let's unpack this. We usually dive into 00:00:02.220 --> 00:00:05.700 topics, you know, concepts, history, technology. 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:09.560 But today, we're diving into a person. Yeah. 00:00:09.640 --> 00:00:11.839 And not just any person, but someone who has 00:00:11.839 --> 00:00:16.839 effectively become a genre unto himself. That's 00:00:16.839 --> 00:00:19.379 the perfect way to put it, a genre. Because there 00:00:19.379 --> 00:00:21.679 are authors, right? People who write books, maybe 00:00:21.679 --> 00:00:23.179 they hit a bestseller list for a week, you see 00:00:23.179 --> 00:00:26.199 them on a morning show, and then life goes on. 00:00:26.300 --> 00:00:28.899 Right. And then there's Malcolm Gladwell. Completely 00:00:28.899 --> 00:00:30.920 different category. Yeah. You're so right to 00:00:30.920 --> 00:00:33.159 call him a genre. You don't just read a Gladwell 00:00:33.159 --> 00:00:35.859 book. Yeah. You inhabit a world he constructs 00:00:35.859 --> 00:00:37.899 for you. It's like putting on a specific pair 00:00:37.899 --> 00:00:40.340 of glasses to see reality. The very specific 00:00:40.340 --> 00:00:42.820 lens. Yeah. He gives you this framework. Exactly. 00:00:42.820 --> 00:00:45.259 It's the Gladwellian phenomenon. You know, you're 00:00:45.259 --> 00:00:46.659 in it when you're at a dinner party. The wine 00:00:46.659 --> 00:00:49.200 is flowing and someone leans in with this like 00:00:49.200 --> 00:00:52.380 conspiratorial look and says, actually, did you 00:00:52.380 --> 00:00:54.500 know that most plane crashes aren't caused by 00:00:54.500 --> 00:00:57.520 mechanical failure? Oh, here he comes. They're 00:00:57.520 --> 00:01:00.020 caused by the pilot's inability to communicate 00:01:00.020 --> 00:01:02.539 with air traffic control because of cultural 00:01:02.539 --> 00:01:04.879 hierarchies in the cockpit. Yeah. And everyone 00:01:04.879 --> 00:01:08.120 just stops eating and goes. That is the signature 00:01:08.120 --> 00:01:10.939 move. It is. He takes social science, which, 00:01:11.040 --> 00:01:13.719 let's be honest, is usually incredibly dry. So 00:01:13.719 --> 00:01:16.459 dry. It's academic. It's full of p -values, regression 00:01:16.459 --> 00:01:18.760 analyses, standard deviations. Things that make 00:01:18.760 --> 00:01:21.359 your eyes blaze over. And he transforms it into 00:01:21.359 --> 00:01:24.000 a thriller. He makes sociology feel like a detective 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:26.420 novel where you are. solving the case of human 00:01:26.420 --> 00:01:28.920 behavior. But here's where it gets really, really 00:01:28.920 --> 00:01:33.379 interesting. Our mission today is to unpack the 00:01:33.379 --> 00:01:36.459 life and the mind of the man who essentially 00:01:36.459 --> 00:01:39.299 invented the modern smart thinking book genre. 00:01:39.480 --> 00:01:41.739 He really did. He coined the tipping point. He 00:01:41.739 --> 00:01:44.540 popularized the 10 ,000 hour rule. He made us 00:01:44.540 --> 00:01:47.310 all obsessed with the idea of outliers. And we 00:01:47.310 --> 00:01:49.469 have to appreciate the sheer scale of this. This 00:01:49.469 --> 00:01:51.989 isn't just a one -hit wonder. He has been a staff 00:01:51.989 --> 00:01:54.510 writer for The New Yorker since 1996. Almost 00:01:54.510 --> 00:01:57.409 30 years. A lifetime. He's published eight books. 00:01:57.590 --> 00:02:00.530 He co -founded an entire audio empire, Prishkin 00:02:00.530 --> 00:02:03.269 Industries. He hosts Revisionist History. He's 00:02:03.269 --> 00:02:05.670 everywhere. He is, you could argue, the most 00:02:05.670 --> 00:02:09.349 visible public intellectual of the last 25 years. 00:02:09.729 --> 00:02:12.090 But, and this is the twist, this is the core 00:02:12.090 --> 00:02:15.370 of our deep dive today, he's also a massive paradox. 00:02:15.750 --> 00:02:18.419 That is the tension we need to explore. Absolutely. 00:02:18.800 --> 00:02:22.039 Because on one hand, you have Time magazine naming 00:02:22.039 --> 00:02:24.259 him one of the hundred most influential people 00:02:24.259 --> 00:02:26.699 in the world. And that was way back in 2005. 00:02:26.939 --> 00:02:30.099 Right. He is without a doubt one of the most 00:02:30.099 --> 00:02:32.840 significant nonfiction writers of the 21st century. 00:02:33.039 --> 00:02:35.340 But on the other hand. On the other hand, he 00:02:35.340 --> 00:02:39.710 faces this intense. I mean, relentless criticism. 00:02:39.789 --> 00:02:42.490 Yes. The cherry picking accusation. Exactly. 00:02:43.069 --> 00:02:45.689 Critics argue he oversimplifies complex science, 00:02:45.909 --> 00:02:48.189 that he picks the facts that fit his perfect 00:02:48.189 --> 00:02:50.750 little story and just ignores the ones that don't. 00:02:50.750 --> 00:02:53.590 And that he prioritizes a good narrative over 00:02:53.590 --> 00:02:55.979 rigorous truth. It's the classic battle, isn't 00:02:55.979 --> 00:02:57.479 it? The tension between it makes for a great 00:02:57.479 --> 00:03:00.900 story and is it scientifically watertight? We 00:03:00.900 --> 00:03:02.400 are going to get into all of it. We're going 00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:04.740 to talk about why he was rejected from literally 00:03:04.740 --> 00:03:07.599 every single advertising agency he applied to. 00:03:07.740 --> 00:03:10.719 Which is just so ironic. It's unbelievable. And 00:03:10.719 --> 00:03:12.740 thank goodness for that, by the way. A real sliding 00:03:12.740 --> 00:03:14.759 doors moment for publishing, for sure. We'll 00:03:14.759 --> 00:03:17.139 talk about how his haircut, his actual hair, 00:03:17.300 --> 00:03:19.840 inspired a bestseller. And we absolutely have 00:03:19.840 --> 00:03:22.080 to talk about the Igon value problem. Oh, the 00:03:22.080 --> 00:03:24.800 Igon value problem, which is just a fascinating, 00:03:24.960 --> 00:03:27.680 slightly cringeworthy case study in the limits 00:03:27.680 --> 00:03:29.860 of, you know, being a journalistic translator 00:03:29.860 --> 00:03:32.400 of science. Totally. So what does this all mean? 00:03:32.580 --> 00:03:36.159 How did a guy from rural Canada become the chief 00:03:36.159 --> 00:03:39.759 interpreter of our social reality? Let's start 00:03:39.759 --> 00:03:42.009 at the very beginning. The origin story. And 00:03:42.009 --> 00:03:44.050 it is, if you'll excuse the very obvious pun, 00:03:44.189 --> 00:03:46.509 an outlier of an origin story. Don't allow it. 00:03:46.569 --> 00:03:48.849 Malcolm Timothy Gladwell was born on September 00:03:48.849 --> 00:03:53.370 3rd, 1963 in Farram, England. But to really understand 00:03:53.370 --> 00:03:54.990 how his brain works, you have to look at his 00:03:54.990 --> 00:03:57.689 parentage. It's this fascinating collision of 00:03:57.689 --> 00:03:59.990 worlds. Right. Usually people are kind of firmly 00:03:59.990 --> 00:04:02.689 planted in one demographic or another. But Gladwell 00:04:02.689 --> 00:04:06.639 is. He's this bridge. He is. His mother, Joyce 00:04:06.639 --> 00:04:09.120 Gladwell, was a Jamaican psychotherapist. Okay. 00:04:09.240 --> 00:04:11.840 And his father, Graham Gladwell, was a mathematics 00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:15.800 professor from Kent, England. Wow. Math and psychology. 00:04:16.509 --> 00:04:18.550 Think about that combination for a second. If 00:04:18.550 --> 00:04:20.970 you look at every single book Malcolm Gladwell 00:04:20.970 --> 00:04:23.350 has ever written, that's the DNA right there. 00:04:23.470 --> 00:04:26.170 I see it now. It's the rigorous, structural, 00:04:26.490 --> 00:04:29.509 pattern -seeking thinking of mathematics combined 00:04:29.509 --> 00:04:32.329 with the empathetic, human behavior -focused 00:04:32.329 --> 00:04:34.889 lens of psychotherapy. He's constantly trying 00:04:34.889 --> 00:04:37.089 to find the mathematical equation for human feelings. 00:04:37.269 --> 00:04:39.689 That's it. That's his whole project. And the 00:04:39.689 --> 00:04:42.470 heritage goes even deeper than just their professions. 00:04:42.910 --> 00:04:45.649 I was reading about this. The research Henry 00:04:45.649 --> 00:04:48.629 Louis Gates Jr. did for that PBS show, Finding 00:04:48.629 --> 00:04:51.089 Your Roots. Yes. It turns out he has a great, 00:04:51.170 --> 00:04:53.649 great, great, great grandmother of Igbo ethnicity 00:04:53.649 --> 00:04:56.509 from Nigeria. Right. And on the maternal side, 00:04:56.610 --> 00:04:59.110 there's a very complex, very heavy history. He 00:04:59.110 --> 00:05:01.550 has an ancestor who was a Jamaican free woman 00:05:01.550 --> 00:05:03.610 of color, so mixed black and white, who actually 00:05:03.610 --> 00:05:06.329 owned slaves. Which is, I mean, that's a complicated 00:05:06.329 --> 00:05:08.029 piece of history to carry in your own family 00:05:08.029 --> 00:05:11.649 tree. It's incredibly complicated. And Gladwell, 00:05:11.670 --> 00:05:14.339 to his credit, acknowledges this complexity he 00:05:14.339 --> 00:05:17.339 doesn't shy away from it in the epilogue of outliers 00:05:17.339 --> 00:05:20.720 he actually analyzes his own family history through 00:05:20.720 --> 00:05:23.019 the lens of his own theories of course he does 00:05:23.019 --> 00:05:26.240 the most gladwellian thing possible exactly he 00:05:26.240 --> 00:05:29.459 describes the series of lucky circumstances things 00:05:29.459 --> 00:05:32.180 like skin tone privileges in colonial jamaica 00:05:32.180 --> 00:05:35.100 specific educational opportunities opening up 00:05:35.100 --> 00:05:37.819 at just the right time that allowed his ancestors 00:05:37.819 --> 00:05:40.579 to move up the social ladder so he doesn't attribute 00:05:40.579 --> 00:05:44.120 his own existence to just Grandma's grit. He's 00:05:44.120 --> 00:05:46.319 looking at the structural advantages his family 00:05:46.319 --> 00:05:49.180 accumulated over generations. Precisely. It wasn't 00:05:49.180 --> 00:05:51.319 just individual effort. It was the demographic 00:05:51.319 --> 00:05:54.220 shifts of the 19th century that gave them a tailwind. 00:05:54.420 --> 00:05:56.839 Now, the geography is also super important. When 00:05:56.839 --> 00:05:58.980 he was six, the family moved from England to 00:05:58.980 --> 00:06:01.860 Elmira, Ontario. And for our listeners who don't 00:06:01.860 --> 00:06:04.240 know Ontario, we need to be clear. Elmira isn't 00:06:04.240 --> 00:06:06.519 downtown Toronto. Not even close. This is rural. 00:06:06.860 --> 00:06:08.959 This is deep Mennonite country. It is. We're 00:06:08.959 --> 00:06:11.959 talking horse and buggies, barns, very quiet, 00:06:12.060 --> 00:06:14.199 very religious. He grew up attending a Mennonite 00:06:14.199 --> 00:06:17.759 church. That is just, it's a crucial detail. 00:06:17.959 --> 00:06:21.699 It is. Because we often picture Gladwell as this 00:06:21.699 --> 00:06:25.100 quintessential New York intellectual, you know, 00:06:25.100 --> 00:06:27.959 sitting in a cafe in the West Village with a 00:06:27.959 --> 00:06:30.740 velvet blazer on. Right, with the hair. But his 00:06:30.740 --> 00:06:34.560 formation, his entire childhood, was in a quiet, 00:06:34.579 --> 00:06:38.279 religious, rural Canadian community. It paints 00:06:38.279 --> 00:06:40.100 such a different picture, doesn't it? Yeah. You 00:06:40.100 --> 00:06:42.519 imagine this kid with a British math professor 00:06:42.519 --> 00:06:45.579 dad and a Jamaican therapist mom sitting in a 00:06:45.579 --> 00:06:47.779 Mennonite pew in the middle of nowhere in Ontario. 00:06:48.300 --> 00:06:50.680 He must have felt like an observer from day one. 00:06:51.290 --> 00:06:54.069 An outsider. And being an outsider is a superpower 00:06:54.069 --> 00:06:56.949 for a sociologist or for a writer like him. You 00:06:56.949 --> 00:06:59.029 notice things the locals take for granted. The 00:06:59.029 --> 00:07:01.790 water the fish swim in. Exactly. And that environment 00:07:01.790 --> 00:07:03.949 fostered his intellectual curiosity in a very 00:07:03.949 --> 00:07:06.310 specific way. His father was a professor at the 00:07:06.310 --> 00:07:08.769 University of Waterloo. And when Malcolm was 00:07:08.769 --> 00:07:11.370 just 11 years old, his father would bring him 00:07:11.370 --> 00:07:13.170 to the university and just let him wander. Just 00:07:13.170 --> 00:07:16.329 let him wander the offices. No iPad, no babysitter. 00:07:16.389 --> 00:07:18.569 Just go on, son. Explore the math department. 00:07:18.810 --> 00:07:20.980 Pretty much. He would just wander around. the 00:07:20.980 --> 00:07:24.040 offices, the libraries, the hallways. It developed 00:07:24.040 --> 00:07:26.579 this deep comfort with academic spaces and a 00:07:26.579 --> 00:07:29.560 profound love for reading. That's a huge advantage. 00:07:29.879 --> 00:07:33.180 A massive one. Most kids see a university library 00:07:33.180 --> 00:07:36.660 as a scary, distant fortress of solitude. He 00:07:36.660 --> 00:07:39.180 saw it as a playground. Right. He wasn't intimidated 00:07:39.180 --> 00:07:41.399 by professors or dense books. He was raised among 00:07:41.399 --> 00:07:44.410 them. Exactly. But, and this is the part that 00:07:44.410 --> 00:07:47.009 surprises people who only know him from his author 00:07:47.009 --> 00:07:49.350 photos where he looks very cerebral, very slight. 00:07:49.509 --> 00:07:53.790 Malcolm Gladwell was and still is an elite athlete. 00:07:54.170 --> 00:07:56.189 This blew my mind when I read it. I knew he was 00:07:56.189 --> 00:07:58.230 a runner. He has that runner's build. But I did 00:07:58.230 --> 00:08:00.949 not realize he was fast. Exceptionally fast. 00:08:01.189 --> 00:08:03.610 He was an Ontario high school champion in track. 00:08:03.769 --> 00:08:07.370 At age 13, just 13 years old, he ran the 1500 00:08:07.370 --> 00:08:10.430 meters in 4 minutes and 14 seconds. Wait, wait. 00:08:11.079 --> 00:08:14.879 14 at age 13? Yes. That is absurdly fast. It's 00:08:14.879 --> 00:08:17.199 not just good for his age. That's national class 00:08:17.199 --> 00:08:19.519 speed. It is. In university, he brought that 00:08:19.519 --> 00:08:22.079 down to three minutes and 55 seconds. That is 00:08:22.079 --> 00:08:24.959 legitimate elite territory. That's not, I run 00:08:24.959 --> 00:08:27.519 on weekends. That is, I am a biological engine. 00:08:27.639 --> 00:08:29.759 And he didn't stop. This isn't just a glory days 00:08:29.759 --> 00:08:31.759 story where he talks about how fast he used to 00:08:31.759 --> 00:08:35.250 be. This is a lifelong obsession. In 2014, at 00:08:35.250 --> 00:08:38.629 the age of 51, he ran a 4 .54 mile at the Fifth 00:08:38.629 --> 00:08:41.250 Avenue Mile in New York. A sub -five mile at 00:08:41.250 --> 00:08:43.990 51. And even at 57, a few years ago, he ran a 00:08:43.990 --> 00:08:48.610 5 .15 mile. A 5 .15 mile at 57. I'm pretty sure 00:08:48.610 --> 00:08:51.409 I couldn't run a 5 .15 mile if I was being chased 00:08:51.409 --> 00:08:54.490 by a bear, and I am nowhere near 57. It speaks 00:08:54.490 --> 00:08:56.769 to a level of discipline and single -mindedness 00:08:56.769 --> 00:09:00.080 that is just... off the charts. His father actually 00:09:00.080 --> 00:09:02.399 noted that about him as a boy. He said he was 00:09:02.399 --> 00:09:05.580 unusually single -minded and ambitious. He once 00:09:05.580 --> 00:09:07.659 said he'd rather be a mediocre runner than a 00:09:07.659 --> 00:09:09.279 good one, which is a funny quote. That sounds 00:09:09.279 --> 00:09:11.419 like some serious false modesty. Frankly, if 00:09:11.419 --> 00:09:13.279 you're running a sub -five mile in your 50s, 00:09:13.279 --> 00:09:15.340 you are not mediocre. Not by any stretch of the 00:09:15.340 --> 00:09:17.759 imagination. Okay, let's pivot to his career. 00:09:17.960 --> 00:09:20.480 Because for a guy who seems to have the Midas 00:09:20.480 --> 00:09:23.419 touch now, he started with a pretty significant 00:09:23.419 --> 00:09:26.629 face plant. He did. After graduating from Trinity 00:09:26.629 --> 00:09:29.009 College at the University of Toronto in 1984 00:09:29.009 --> 00:09:32.210 with a history degree, he had his heart set on 00:09:32.210 --> 00:09:34.750 a career in advertising. Which makes total sense. 00:09:35.429 --> 00:09:37.789 He's the guy who explains why things are cool, 00:09:37.929 --> 00:09:40.789 why trends spread virally. He would be the ultimate 00:09:40.789 --> 00:09:43.789 ad man. He literally understands the sticky idea. 00:09:44.070 --> 00:09:46.110 You would think so. It seems like a perfect fit. 00:09:46.289 --> 00:09:49.850 He applied to 18 advertising agencies. What happened? 00:09:50.110 --> 00:09:54.429 He was rejected by... Every single one. Not one 00:09:54.429 --> 00:09:57.730 interview turned into an offer. 18 rejections. 00:09:57.750 --> 00:10:01.269 18. Imagine if one of them had said yes. We wouldn't 00:10:01.269 --> 00:10:03.350 have the tipping point. We just have a really, 00:10:03.389 --> 00:10:05.710 really catchy slogan for a soft drink or a car 00:10:05.710 --> 00:10:07.870 insurance company. It is a classic sliding doors 00:10:07.870 --> 00:10:10.669 moment. That absolute failure forced him to pivot 00:10:10.669 --> 00:10:13.230 into journalism. And interestingly, given his 00:10:13.230 --> 00:10:16.049 reputation today as a darling of the liberal 00:10:16.049 --> 00:10:19.169 NPR listening intelligentsia, he started out 00:10:19.169 --> 00:10:21.429 in conservative media. Really? I did not know 00:10:21.429 --> 00:10:23.909 that. Yes. He moved to Indiana, of all places, 00:10:24.029 --> 00:10:26.210 to work for the American Spectator, which is 00:10:26.210 --> 00:10:28.269 a well -known conservative magazine. Then he 00:10:28.269 --> 00:10:30.590 wrote for Insight on the News, which is a magazine 00:10:30.590 --> 00:10:34.549 owned by the Unification Church. Wait, the Moonies? 00:10:34.669 --> 00:10:38.269 The Moonies. That is a wild resume entry. Previous 00:10:38.269 --> 00:10:41.299 employer. The Unification Church. It's definitely 00:10:41.299 --> 00:10:44.120 an unusual path. I think those early years in 00:10:44.120 --> 00:10:46.320 conservative media were really important, though. 00:10:46.460 --> 00:10:49.759 They taught him how to be a contrarian. He learned 00:10:49.759 --> 00:10:51.879 to look at the mainstream consensus and say, 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:54.399 hang on, is that actually true? That's a great 00:10:54.399 --> 00:10:56.799 point. He learned to question the dominant narrative. 00:10:57.059 --> 00:10:59.639 And it wasn't until 1987 that he moved to a more 00:10:59.639 --> 00:11:02.259 mainstream outlet, The Washington Post, where 00:11:02.259 --> 00:11:04.720 he covered business and science for nearly a 00:11:04.720 --> 00:11:07.809 decade. And at The Post. This is where the Gladwellian 00:11:07.809 --> 00:11:09.830 style starts to cook, right? He's covering science, 00:11:09.929 --> 00:11:12.029 covering business, but always looking for the 00:11:12.029 --> 00:11:14.730 story underneath the data. Exactly. And he was 00:11:14.730 --> 00:11:17.250 learning his craft. He later looked back on this 00:11:17.250 --> 00:11:19.769 period, and he actually validated his own 10 00:11:19.769 --> 00:11:22.169 ,000 -hour rule with his own experience. Oh, 00:11:22.169 --> 00:11:24.389 that's perfect. He said, I was a basket case 00:11:24.389 --> 00:11:26.649 at the beginning, and I felt like an expert at 00:11:26.649 --> 00:11:29.289 the end. It took 10 years exactly that long. 00:11:29.470 --> 00:11:31.990 That is so satisfying when the theory fits the 00:11:31.990 --> 00:11:36.240 life. 1996 comes around. He gets the call. He 00:11:36.240 --> 00:11:38.340 moves to the New Yorker. This is the big leagues. 00:11:38.500 --> 00:11:40.940 This is the pinnacle for a nonfiction writer. 00:11:41.159 --> 00:11:43.259 And he goes in with a very specific philosophy, 00:11:43.620 --> 00:11:47.279 a mission statement almost. He did. His stated 00:11:47.279 --> 00:11:50.720 goal was to, quote, mine current academic research 00:11:50.720 --> 00:11:53.440 for insights, theories, direction, or inspiration. 00:11:53.940 --> 00:11:56.690 To be the bridge. It'd be the bridge. He realized 00:11:56.690 --> 00:11:59.409 there were thousands of brilliant academics writing 00:11:59.409 --> 00:12:02.250 fascinating papers that nobody was reading because 00:12:02.250 --> 00:12:04.250 they were locked away in journals written in 00:12:04.250 --> 00:12:06.950 this dense, impenetrable language. He decided 00:12:06.950 --> 00:12:09.250 he would be the translator. And I love, love 00:12:09.250 --> 00:12:11.570 the story of his first assignment. They tell 00:12:11.570 --> 00:12:13.769 him to write about fashion. Now, normally that 00:12:13.769 --> 00:12:16.509 means Paris runways, haute couture, million -dollar 00:12:16.509 --> 00:12:18.669 models, the whole devil wears Prada thing. Right, 00:12:18.690 --> 00:12:21.529 the glamour, the high -end stuff. But Gladwell, 00:12:21.590 --> 00:12:24.009 being Gladwell, wasn't interested in the $100 00:12:24.009 --> 00:12:26.909 ,000 dress. He decided to write about a man who 00:12:26.909 --> 00:12:29.529 made t -shirts for $8. Why? What was the logic 00:12:29.529 --> 00:12:31.929 there? His logic was fascinating, and it's the 00:12:31.929 --> 00:12:34.629 key to his whole method. He said that anyone 00:12:34.629 --> 00:12:37.870 can make a beautiful dress for $100 ,000. If 00:12:37.870 --> 00:12:40.730 you have unlimited resources, quality is easy. 00:12:40.830 --> 00:12:42.730 You just buy the best silk, you hire the best 00:12:42.730 --> 00:12:45.399 seamstresses. No challenge in that. But... To 00:12:45.399 --> 00:12:48.940 make a T -shirt for $8 that's durable, profitable, 00:12:49.279 --> 00:12:52.779 and decent quality, that is an incredibly difficult 00:12:52.779 --> 00:12:56.299 engineering and economic problem. That's where 00:12:56.299 --> 00:12:58.740 the real story is. That is the Gladwell twist. 00:12:59.379 --> 00:13:02.320 Finding the extraordinary complexity in the seemingly 00:13:02.320 --> 00:13:05.000 ordinary object. And that perspective is what 00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:07.539 launched him into the stratosphere. In 1996, 00:13:07.840 --> 00:13:10.350 he wrote two articles for them. One was called 00:13:10.350 --> 00:13:12.330 The Tipping Point. The other was The Cool Hunt. 00:13:12.649 --> 00:13:15.110 These went viral before viral was really a term 00:13:15.110 --> 00:13:17.190 people used. They became the basis for his first 00:13:17.190 --> 00:13:19.629 book. And that brings us to the big hits, the 00:13:19.629 --> 00:13:21.429 books that are probably on your shelf right now. 00:13:21.590 --> 00:13:23.169 Let's talk about The Tipping Point, published 00:13:23.169 --> 00:13:25.429 in 2000. This was a bring through. He received 00:13:25.429 --> 00:13:27.529 a million dollar advance for it, which was just 00:13:27.529 --> 00:13:29.909 unheard of for a relatively unknown writer at 00:13:29.909 --> 00:13:33.110 the time. A million dollars. Wow. And the inspiration 00:13:33.110 --> 00:13:36.269 for the book came from the sudden, dramatic drop 00:13:36.269 --> 00:13:39.269 in crime in New York City in the 1990s. Right. 00:13:39.720 --> 00:13:41.399 Everyone is trying to explain that. Was it the 00:13:41.399 --> 00:13:44.399 economy? Was it better policing? What was it? 00:13:44.720 --> 00:13:46.600 Gladwell wanted to look at it through the lens 00:13:46.600 --> 00:13:49.539 of epidemiology. He had covered the AIDS epidemic 00:13:49.539 --> 00:13:51.860 at the Washington Post, and he was struck by 00:13:51.860 --> 00:13:54.679 how ideas and behaviors spread just like viruses. 00:13:55.139 --> 00:13:57.519 They simmer along under the surface, then they 00:13:57.519 --> 00:14:00.279 hit a critical mass, and boom, they tip. The 00:14:00.279 --> 00:14:02.779 curve goes vertical. Hence the tipping point. 00:14:03.559 --> 00:14:06.259 But this book also popularized the broken windows 00:14:06.259 --> 00:14:08.720 theory, right? It did. The idea that if you fix 00:14:08.720 --> 00:14:10.679 the small things like broken windows, graffiti, 00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:13.559 turnstile jumping, you prevent the big crimes 00:14:13.559 --> 00:14:15.480 from happening. Yes. And this is where we have 00:14:15.480 --> 00:14:17.399 to add some nuance and some historical perspective. 00:14:17.980 --> 00:14:20.559 Gladwell was credited with packaging this theory 00:14:20.559 --> 00:14:22.980 in a way that made it incredibly attractive to 00:14:22.980 --> 00:14:25.559 policymakers and the public. It sounds so intuitive. 00:14:26.120 --> 00:14:28.399 It does. Stop the turnstile jumpers. You stop 00:14:28.399 --> 00:14:30.740 the murders. It felt like simple common sense. 00:14:31.019 --> 00:14:33.320 History hasn't been entirely kind to that theory, 00:14:33.440 --> 00:14:36.240 has it? No, it hasn't. It became the intellectual 00:14:36.240 --> 00:14:39.100 bedrock for tactics like stop and frisk policing, 00:14:39.360 --> 00:14:42.179 which, as we now know, disproportionately targeted 00:14:42.179 --> 00:14:44.879 minority communities. Right. Years later, critics 00:14:44.879 --> 00:14:47.299 and data analysts argued that the link between 00:14:47.299 --> 00:14:50.399 broken windows policing and the crime drop was. 00:14:51.000 --> 00:14:53.679 tenuous at best? I mean, crime dropped in cities 00:14:53.679 --> 00:14:55.960 that didn't use those tactics as well. Other 00:14:55.960 --> 00:14:58.620 factors were at play. So has Gladwell ever addressed 00:14:58.620 --> 00:15:01.600 that criticism? The fact that his popularization 00:15:01.600 --> 00:15:03.960 of this idea had some really serious real world 00:15:03.960 --> 00:15:07.600 consequences? He has. In 2013, he was interviewed 00:15:07.600 --> 00:15:10.559 by the journalist John Ronson. And in that interview, 00:15:10.700 --> 00:15:13.460 Gladwell admitted he was too in love with the 00:15:13.460 --> 00:15:15.679 broken windows notion. Too in love with it. Those 00:15:15.679 --> 00:15:18.419 were his words. He said he was enamored by the 00:15:18.419 --> 00:15:20.879 metaphorical simplicity of that idea. and that 00:15:20.879 --> 00:15:23.919 in retrospect he overstated its importance. That's 00:15:23.919 --> 00:15:25.600 a rare admission from a public intellectual. 00:15:25.860 --> 00:15:28.600 I loved the metaphor so much I might have ignored 00:15:28.600 --> 00:15:31.419 the complexity of the data. It is a key insight 00:15:31.419 --> 00:15:34.220 into his process. He is a storyteller, first 00:15:34.220 --> 00:15:37.179 and foremost. Sometimes the beauty of the story, 00:15:37.340 --> 00:15:40.039 the elegance of the metaphor, can overshadow 00:15:40.039 --> 00:15:42.779 the messiness of the real world. He wants the 00:15:42.779 --> 00:15:45.679 world to be elegant even when it's chaotic. Okay, 00:15:45.720 --> 00:15:49.500 so then comes Blink in 2005. The power of thinking. 00:15:50.240 --> 00:15:53.139 without thinking. This book is all about rapid 00:15:53.139 --> 00:15:55.879 cognition, how our unconscious mind makes these 00:15:55.879 --> 00:15:59.360 incredibly fast, powerful snap judgments. Well, 00:15:59.379 --> 00:16:01.860 the origin story for this book is just, it's 00:16:01.860 --> 00:16:04.120 so personal. It's the hair store. It is. It's 00:16:04.120 --> 00:16:06.360 a great story. So Gladwell decided to grow his 00:16:06.360 --> 00:16:08.419 hair out. He let it get long and curly, this 00:16:08.419 --> 00:16:10.960 big kind of untamed halo of hair. And suddenly, 00:16:11.039 --> 00:16:13.159 his life changed. In what way? What happened? 00:16:13.360 --> 00:16:15.179 He started getting speeding tickets. He said 00:16:15.179 --> 00:16:16.559 he had never gotten them before in his life. 00:16:16.639 --> 00:16:18.299 He started getting pulled out of airport security 00:16:18.299 --> 00:16:20.919 lines for special screening constantly. But the 00:16:20.919 --> 00:16:23.159 clincher, the moment it all clicked, was when 00:16:23.159 --> 00:16:25.799 he was walking in downtown Manhattan. What happened? 00:16:25.960 --> 00:16:29.019 He was stopped by three police officers. They 00:16:29.019 --> 00:16:32.379 were looking for a rapist. Now, the suspect looked 00:16:32.379 --> 00:16:34.860 nothing like Gladwell. Different height, different 00:16:34.860 --> 00:16:37.240 build, different features, except for one thing. 00:16:37.500 --> 00:16:39.740 The curly hair. The curly hair. So the police 00:16:39.740 --> 00:16:43.110 saw the hair. They thin sliced him as the suspect 00:16:43.110 --> 00:16:46.370 and they just ignored everything else that contradicted 00:16:46.370 --> 00:16:48.769 that first impression. Exactly. And that terrifying 00:16:48.769 --> 00:16:51.590 moment of being judged instantly and wrongly 00:16:51.590 --> 00:16:55.039 based on one single visual cue. That was the 00:16:55.039 --> 00:16:58.259 aha moment that led him to research Blink. He 00:16:58.259 --> 00:17:00.500 wanted to understand how we make these split 00:17:00.500 --> 00:17:03.000 -second decisions, both when they save our lives, 00:17:03.120 --> 00:17:05.599 like a firefighter instinctively knowing a building 00:17:05.599 --> 00:17:08.519 is about to collapse, and when they lead us terribly, 00:17:08.519 --> 00:17:11.480 terribly astray, like in cases of racial profiling. 00:17:11.599 --> 00:17:13.559 It's amazing how he takes a personal annoyance, 00:17:13.579 --> 00:17:15.720 you know, getting a ticket or being stopped by 00:17:15.720 --> 00:17:17.720 the cops, and turns it into a multi -million 00:17:17.720 --> 00:17:20.539 copy bestseller about cognitive psychology. That 00:17:20.539 --> 00:17:23.079 is the gift. He generalizes from his own experience 00:17:23.079 --> 00:17:25.930 and finds... the universal principle. Then in 00:17:25.930 --> 00:17:29.049 2008, we get Outliers. This one might be my favorite. 00:17:29.069 --> 00:17:31.349 I think it's his most influential book because 00:17:31.349 --> 00:17:34.190 it takes the American dream, the whole myth of 00:17:34.190 --> 00:17:37.349 the self -made man and just completely dismantles 00:17:37.349 --> 00:17:39.269 it. It does. It's a radical book in its own way. 00:17:39.450 --> 00:17:42.029 The core argument is that success isn't just 00:17:42.029 --> 00:17:44.730 about being smart or ambitious or hardworking. 00:17:44.829 --> 00:17:46.869 It's about when you were born, where you were 00:17:46.869 --> 00:17:49.789 born, your culture and the random opportunities 00:17:49.789 --> 00:17:52.410 you were given. It's about luck. A huge amount 00:17:52.410 --> 00:17:54.450 of it is about luck. The famous example is the. 00:17:54.569 --> 00:17:57.869 Right. Yes. Tell that story. He asked, why do 00:17:57.869 --> 00:18:00.269 the most powerful corporate lawyers in New York 00:18:00.269 --> 00:18:02.609 City all have the same biography? Which is what? 00:18:02.730 --> 00:18:05.289 They were Jewish men born in a very specific 00:18:05.289 --> 00:18:09.069 window of years in the 1930s in the Bronx or 00:18:09.069 --> 00:18:11.809 Brooklyn. And their parents did garment work. 00:18:11.970 --> 00:18:14.250 Such a specific demographic. What was the connection? 00:18:14.549 --> 00:18:17.069 He traced how all the specific conditions mattered. 00:18:17.349 --> 00:18:20.250 They were locked out of the polite. white shoe 00:18:20.250 --> 00:18:22.809 law firms on Wall Street because of anti -Semitism 00:18:22.809 --> 00:18:26.230 in the 50s and 60s. So they had to take the dirty 00:18:26.230 --> 00:18:28.509 work that those firms wouldn't touch, things 00:18:28.509 --> 00:18:31.170 like litigation and hostile takeover. The scrappy 00:18:31.170 --> 00:18:34.690 stuff? Exactly. But then in the 1980s, the market 00:18:34.690 --> 00:18:37.769 completely shifted and suddenly hostile takeovers 00:18:37.769 --> 00:18:39.569 and corporate raiding were the most profitable 00:18:39.569 --> 00:18:41.970 thing in the world. And these guys were the only 00:18:41.970 --> 00:18:44.430 ones who had put in their 10 ,000 hours of practice. 00:18:44.690 --> 00:18:46.990 They were ready right when the golden age arrived. 00:18:47.559 --> 00:18:49.759 And the Bill Gates example, too. It wasn't just 00:18:49.759 --> 00:18:52.079 that Bill Gates was a genius. No, Gates was obviously 00:18:52.079 --> 00:18:54.960 brilliant, yes. But Lidewell points out that 00:18:54.960 --> 00:18:57.559 Gates attended a private school, Lakeside, that 00:18:57.559 --> 00:18:59.119 just happened to have a computer terminal in 00:18:59.119 --> 00:19:02.240 1968. Which was incredibly rare at the time. 00:19:02.299 --> 00:19:04.700 It was almost non -existent. A university might 00:19:04.700 --> 00:19:08.680 have one. A high school. Unheard of. So he had 00:19:08.680 --> 00:19:11.279 effectively unlimited access to programming time 00:19:11.279 --> 00:19:13.700 when almost no one else on the planet did. By 00:19:13.700 --> 00:19:15.819 the time he dropped out of Harvard to start Microsoft, 00:19:16.099 --> 00:19:18.440 he had already logged thousands and thousands 00:19:18.440 --> 00:19:21.160 of hours of coding practice. His 10 ,000 hours. 00:19:21.460 --> 00:19:23.920 Precisely. If he had been born five years earlier, 00:19:24.019 --> 00:19:25.839 the technology wouldn't have been there. Five 00:19:25.839 --> 00:19:27.900 years later, and everyone would have had access. 00:19:28.160 --> 00:19:31.279 The timing, that lucky break, was the outlier. 00:19:31.480 --> 00:19:35.549 End. People just ate this up. Outliers was number 00:19:35.549 --> 00:19:37.750 one on the New York Times list for 11 straight 00:19:37.750 --> 00:19:40.710 weeks. By that point, between tipping point and 00:19:40.710 --> 00:19:43.490 blink, he'd already sold 4 .5 million copies 00:19:43.490 --> 00:19:46.529 in the U .S. alone. He wasn't just a writer anymore. 00:19:46.609 --> 00:19:48.990 He was a full -blown phenomenon. But he didn't 00:19:48.990 --> 00:19:52.349 stop there. He's not someone who rests. He continued 00:19:52.349 --> 00:19:55.210 to churn out these big idea books, David and 00:19:55.210 --> 00:19:58.029 Goliath in 2013, which looked at underdogs and 00:19:58.029 --> 00:20:00.869 the advantages of disadvantages. Then Talking 00:20:00.869 --> 00:20:03.069 to Strangers in 2019, which I think is one of 00:20:03.069 --> 00:20:06.029 his darker, more serious, more important works. 00:20:06.390 --> 00:20:08.470 That was one inspired by the Sandra Bland case, 00:20:08.609 --> 00:20:10.710 wasn't it? Yes. He said he was just struck by 00:20:10.710 --> 00:20:13.289 the profound tragedy of Sandra Bland. A woman 00:20:13.289 --> 00:20:15.609 pulled over for a minor traffic violation. An 00:20:15.609 --> 00:20:17.430 argument escalates and she ends up dead in a 00:20:17.430 --> 00:20:19.529 jail cell three days later. It was a horrific 00:20:19.529 --> 00:20:21.940 story, just a... Complete breakdown of communication. 00:20:22.400 --> 00:20:24.579 And Gladwell wanted to understand the mechanics 00:20:24.579 --> 00:20:27.460 of that interaction. How did a conversation between 00:20:27.460 --> 00:20:30.740 a police officer and a civilian go so wrong so 00:20:30.740 --> 00:20:34.440 fast? His thesis was that as a species, we are 00:20:34.440 --> 00:20:36.200 terrible at detecting lies and understanding 00:20:36.200 --> 00:20:39.500 people we don't know. We default to truth or 00:20:39.500 --> 00:20:41.839 we misinterpret body language and it leads to 00:20:41.839 --> 00:20:44.200 disaster. It's almost like a rebuttal to Blink 00:20:44.200 --> 00:20:47.960 in a way. In Blink, our snap judgments are this 00:20:47.960 --> 00:20:50.759 secret superpower. And talking to strangers, 00:20:50.940 --> 00:20:53.160 those same snap judgments get people killed. 00:20:53.279 --> 00:20:55.180 That's a great observation. It's a much more 00:20:55.180 --> 00:20:57.779 cautious book. He's constantly refining and questioning 00:20:57.779 --> 00:21:00.599 his own worldview. Then came The Bomber Mafia 00:21:00.599 --> 00:21:03.400 in 2021, and most recently, Revenge of the Tipping 00:21:03.400 --> 00:21:07.029 Point in 2024. A sequel. A sequel, 25 years after 00:21:07.029 --> 00:21:08.769 the original. Why go back to that? Well, he said 00:21:08.769 --> 00:21:11.029 he wanted to focus on the dark side of contagious 00:21:11.029 --> 00:21:13.309 phenomena. So things like the opioid epidemic, 00:21:13.549 --> 00:21:15.190 the spread of COVID, the rise of misinformation. 00:21:15.910 --> 00:21:17.890 He wanted to look at how tipping points can be 00:21:17.890 --> 00:21:20.009 engineered for bad outcomes, not just good ones 00:21:20.009 --> 00:21:21.670 like crime dropping. And with that one receipt. 00:21:21.869 --> 00:21:24.069 It was a bestseller, of course, but it got mixed 00:21:24.069 --> 00:21:26.410 reviews. Some felt it was a bit of a rehash. 00:21:26.960 --> 00:21:29.119 But it shows he's still wrestling with these 00:21:29.119 --> 00:21:32.720 core ideas a quarter century later. Now we have 00:21:32.720 --> 00:21:35.640 to talk about the massive shift to audio. Because 00:21:35.640 --> 00:21:37.940 for the last decade, I feel like I hear Malcolm 00:21:37.940 --> 00:21:40.799 Gladwell's voice more than I read his words. 00:21:41.059 --> 00:21:43.700 That was a very deliberate and very smart pivot. 00:21:43.839 --> 00:21:46.940 Around 2016, he launched his podcast, Revisionist 00:21:46.940 --> 00:21:49.380 History. He was recruited by Jacob Weisberg, 00:21:49.500 --> 00:21:52.180 who was at Slate at the time. And Gladwell realized 00:21:52.180 --> 00:21:54.480 that the audio medium allowed for something that 00:21:54.480 --> 00:21:57.130 text just didn't. What was that? He called it 00:21:57.130 --> 00:21:59.289 whimsy and emotionality. You can hear it in his 00:21:59.289 --> 00:22:01.609 voice. Yeah. When he gets excited about an idea 00:22:01.609 --> 00:22:03.829 or when he pauses for dramatic effect, you can't 00:22:03.829 --> 00:22:06.269 do that on a page in the same way. And he uses 00:22:06.269 --> 00:22:09.019 music. Archival tape. His shows are very produced, 00:22:09.140 --> 00:22:11.259 very cinematic. And he didn't just make a podcast. 00:22:11.339 --> 00:22:15.299 He built a business, a big one. In 2018, he co 00:22:15.299 --> 00:22:17.880 -founded Pushkin Industries with Weisberg. They 00:22:17.880 --> 00:22:19.839 produced Revisionist History, Broken Record. 00:22:20.099 --> 00:22:21.619 That's the one where he interviews musicians 00:22:21.619 --> 00:22:24.039 with Rick Rubin. Yeah, amazing conversations. 00:22:24.279 --> 00:22:26.220 And they produced a whole slew of other shows. 00:22:26.319 --> 00:22:29.019 He became a media mogul. And just this year. 00:22:29.369 --> 00:22:33.390 In 2025, he launched a new one, The Unusual Suspects. 00:22:33.390 --> 00:22:35.829 Yes, interviewing people like Dr. Dre and the 00:22:35.829 --> 00:22:39.369 former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns about their unconventional 00:22:39.369 --> 00:22:42.730 paths to success. It's very on brand. He is constantly 00:22:42.730 --> 00:22:45.529 obsessively hunting for that hidden pattern of 00:22:45.529 --> 00:22:49.099 success. But. And here's the but we've been building, 00:22:49.160 --> 00:22:51.160 too. You don't get this famous and you don't 00:22:51.160 --> 00:22:54.119 simplify complex ideas this much without making 00:22:54.119 --> 00:22:57.700 some enemies in academia and journalism. We need 00:22:57.700 --> 00:22:59.900 to talk about the criticism. We do. And we have 00:22:59.900 --> 00:23:02.059 to start with the Eigon value problem. Laughs. 00:23:02.440 --> 00:23:04.900 The Eigon value. Please explain this because 00:23:04.900 --> 00:23:06.759 it's kind of a legendary mistake in journalism 00:23:06.759 --> 00:23:09.079 circles. It's a perfect encapsulation of the 00:23:09.079 --> 00:23:11.460 critique against him. It really is. So Steven 00:23:11.460 --> 00:23:13.859 Pinker, the famous cognitive psychologist from 00:23:13.859 --> 00:23:15.920 Harvard, has been one of Gladwell's fiercest 00:23:15.920 --> 00:23:18.660 and most articulate critics for years. He once 00:23:18.660 --> 00:23:21.140 called Gladwell a minor genius, but then heavily 00:23:21.140 --> 00:23:24.019 criticized his statistical reasoning. A backhanded 00:23:24.019 --> 00:23:26.240 compliment if I have ever heard one minor genius. 00:23:26.799 --> 00:23:30.359 Indeed. So Pinker pointed out a specific and 00:23:30.359 --> 00:23:33.519 kind of hilarious error in one of Gladwell's 00:23:33.519 --> 00:23:36.619 pieces for The New Yorker. Gladwell was quoting 00:23:36.619 --> 00:23:40.140 someone who was referring to an eigenvalue, a 00:23:40.140 --> 00:23:43.240 pretty standard concept in linear algebra spelled 00:23:43.240 --> 00:23:46.579 E -I -G -E -N. Right, eigenvalues. I vaguely 00:23:46.579 --> 00:23:48.619 remember them from a math class. But Gladwell 00:23:48.619 --> 00:23:52.059 in the article wrote it as eigenvalue, I -G -O 00:23:52.059 --> 00:23:55.500 -N, as if it were a person's name, like Mr. Eigenvalue. 00:23:55.880 --> 00:23:58.670 Oh. no, that is, that's bad. That implies he 00:23:58.670 --> 00:24:01.430 heard the word, had no idea what it was, didn't 00:24:01.430 --> 00:24:03.650 bother to check it, and just phonetically spelled 00:24:03.650 --> 00:24:06.039 it out thinking it was some guy. That is exactly 00:24:06.039 --> 00:24:08.720 what it implies. And Pinker seized on this. He 00:24:08.720 --> 00:24:11.279 used it as a symbol for the broader issue. He 00:24:11.279 --> 00:24:13.839 called it the Igon value problem. And the problem 00:24:13.839 --> 00:24:16.160 is what exactly? The problem, Pinker argued, 00:24:16.299 --> 00:24:18.319 is that when a writer's education on a topic 00:24:18.319 --> 00:24:20.980 consists only of interviewing a few experts, 00:24:21.240 --> 00:24:23.880 they often repeat things that are banal, obtuse 00:24:23.880 --> 00:24:26.819 or flat wrong because they don't actually understand 00:24:26.819 --> 00:24:28.960 the underlying mechanics of the field. It's the 00:24:28.960 --> 00:24:31.240 danger of being a tourist in someone else's profession. 00:24:31.519 --> 00:24:33.440 You get the postcard, you learn a few phrases, 00:24:33.480 --> 00:24:35.029 but you don't actually speak the language. language 00:24:35.029 --> 00:24:37.789 that's a perfect analogy and other critics have 00:24:37.789 --> 00:24:40.950 piled on they argue he dresses up vacuous truths 00:24:40.950 --> 00:24:43.789 with flowery language and compelling anecdotes 00:24:43.789 --> 00:24:46.609 the new republic once called him america's best 00:24:46.609 --> 00:24:50.190 paid fairy tale writer ouch fairy tale right 00:24:50.190 --> 00:24:52.730 and the register a tech publication accused him 00:24:52.730 --> 00:24:55.650 of having an aversion for fact that is harsh 00:24:56.349 --> 00:24:59.369 But what's the core of that critique? Is it just 00:24:59.369 --> 00:25:01.609 that he gets things wrong sometimes? It's deeper 00:25:01.609 --> 00:25:04.329 than that. The criticism is that he has a formula. 00:25:04.549 --> 00:25:06.569 He starts with the counterintuitive conclusion 00:25:06.569 --> 00:25:09.450 he wants to reach, like underdogs actually have 00:25:09.450 --> 00:25:12.390 the advantage or success is mostly luck. And 00:25:12.390 --> 00:25:14.569 then he goes out and finds the studies and anecdotes 00:25:14.569 --> 00:25:17.069 to support it while conveniently ignoring all 00:25:17.069 --> 00:25:19.069 the data that contradicts it. It's storytelling, 00:25:19.250 --> 00:25:22.289 not science. That's the accusation, that the 00:25:22.289 --> 00:25:25.269 narrative comes first and the facts are marshaled 00:25:25.269 --> 00:25:27.500 to serve it. There was also an ethics dust -up 00:25:27.500 --> 00:25:30.220 involving Bank of America, wasn't there? This 00:25:30.220 --> 00:25:32.119 gets into the business of being Malcolm Gladwell. 00:25:32.259 --> 00:25:35.799 It does. This was back in 2011. Gladwell did 00:25:35.799 --> 00:25:37.960 a three -city speaking tour that was sponsored 00:25:37.960 --> 00:25:40.119 by Bank of America. Now, you have to remember 00:25:40.119 --> 00:25:42.420 the context. This was right after the 2008 financial 00:25:42.420 --> 00:25:45.940 crisis. Bank of America's brand was toxic. They 00:25:45.940 --> 00:25:48.079 were dealing with foreclosure scandals, public 00:25:48.079 --> 00:25:51.079 anger. And here comes the cool guy, the intellectual 00:25:51.079 --> 00:25:53.880 rock star Malcolm Gladwell, lending them his 00:25:53.880 --> 00:25:57.059 halo. That's exactly how it was seen. Publications 00:25:57.059 --> 00:25:59.319 like the Columbia Journalism Review and Mother 00:25:59.319 --> 00:26:02.759 Jones called out the terrible optics. They asked 00:26:02.759 --> 00:26:05.039 if he was basically becoming a spokesman for 00:26:05.039 --> 00:26:07.640 the bank. Was he selling his journalistic credibility? 00:26:08.079 --> 00:26:10.500 What was Gladwell's defense? How did he respond 00:26:10.500 --> 00:26:13.440 to that? He essentially claimed ignorance or 00:26:13.440 --> 00:26:16.079 perhaps naivete. He said he just did a talk on 00:26:16.079 --> 00:26:18.119 innovation for a group of entrepreneurs that 00:26:18.119 --> 00:26:20.400 happened to be sponsored by the bank. He said 00:26:20.400 --> 00:26:22.660 he didn't know the bank was bragging about him 00:26:22.660 --> 00:26:24.880 in their press releases. To him, it was just 00:26:24.880 --> 00:26:27.420 another speaking gig. A speaking gig that presumably 00:26:27.420 --> 00:26:31.000 paid tens of thousands of dollars. Yes. And that's 00:26:31.000 --> 00:26:32.880 the reality of being a public intellectual at 00:26:32.880 --> 00:26:35.720 his level. You become a brand. And corporations 00:26:35.720 --> 00:26:38.440 want to buy a piece of that brand's credibility. 00:26:38.619 --> 00:26:40.960 It becomes very difficult to separate the journalism 00:26:40.960 --> 00:26:43.380 from the business. It's a very tricky line to 00:26:43.380 --> 00:26:46.220 walk. But I wanted to pivot again to the personal 00:26:46.220 --> 00:26:50.000 side. Because for a long, long time, Gladwell 00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:53.279 seemed like this solitary figure, the workaholic 00:26:53.279 --> 00:26:55.619 in the New York apartment, just churning out 00:26:55.619 --> 00:26:58.940 ideas. That has changed dramatically in recent 00:26:58.940 --> 00:27:01.660 years, almost a complete reinvention of his personal 00:27:01.660 --> 00:27:04.299 life. First, there's the faith aspect. We mentioned 00:27:04.299 --> 00:27:06.480 he grew up in a Mennonite church, but he drifted 00:27:06.480 --> 00:27:08.940 away when he moved to New York. He did. He wandered 00:27:08.940 --> 00:27:10.900 away from his religious roots, as many people 00:27:10.900 --> 00:27:13.599 do. But while he was writing David and Goliath, 00:27:13.700 --> 00:27:17.140 he interviewed a woman named Wilma Dirksen, and 00:27:17.140 --> 00:27:19.980 her story profoundly affected him. What was her 00:27:19.980 --> 00:27:22.140 story? She was a Mennonite woman whose child 00:27:22.140 --> 00:27:25.220 had been murdered. Oh, wow. Unimaginable. And 00:27:25.220 --> 00:27:28.099 her reaction to this horror was not what he expected. 00:27:28.890 --> 00:27:31.009 She spoke about her capacity for forgiveness 00:27:31.009 --> 00:27:33.990 and her refusal to be consumed by vengeance. 00:27:34.289 --> 00:27:36.509 She explained that she didn't want the murderer 00:27:36.509 --> 00:27:39.269 to destroy her spirit, too, and Gladwell hearing 00:27:39.269 --> 00:27:42.089 this was just deeply, deeply moved. It touched 00:27:42.089 --> 00:27:44.809 something in him from his past. It did. He said 00:27:44.809 --> 00:27:47.150 that through that interaction, he rediscovered 00:27:47.150 --> 00:27:49.490 the value and the power of his own faith tradition. 00:27:49.710 --> 00:27:53.240 He now identifies as a Christian again. It's 00:27:53.240 --> 00:27:55.619 fascinating. It wasn't an intellectual argument 00:27:55.619 --> 00:27:57.779 that brought him back to faith. It was a story 00:27:57.779 --> 00:27:59.779 of human grace in the face of suffering. That's 00:27:59.779 --> 00:28:02.420 a powerful arc from the cynical city back to 00:28:02.420 --> 00:28:04.579 a return to faith, not through doctrine, but 00:28:04.579 --> 00:28:07.519 through a story, which is so Gladwell. It is. 00:28:07.579 --> 00:28:09.859 And the other big, huge change is fatherhood. 00:28:10.140 --> 00:28:12.779 Yes. For the longest time, I just assumed he'd 00:28:12.779 --> 00:28:15.450 be this perennial bachelor intellectual. And 00:28:15.450 --> 00:28:18.289 then suddenly he's a dad. Very late in life. 00:28:18.430 --> 00:28:21.049 For decades, he was the singular work -obsessed 00:28:21.049 --> 00:28:24.230 bachelor. Then starting around 2019 or 2020, 00:28:24.589 --> 00:28:27.009 everything shifted. In a span of about five years, 00:28:27.210 --> 00:28:29.529 he got engaged, had two children, and moved out 00:28:29.529 --> 00:28:31.890 of Manhattan. Where'd he go? Back to Canada. 00:28:32.130 --> 00:28:35.089 To Hudson, New York, a small town upstate. So 00:28:35.089 --> 00:28:37.410 he's gone from the West Village to a small town. 00:28:37.549 --> 00:28:40.089 He's raising kids. He's reengaged with his faith. 00:28:40.369 --> 00:28:42.589 It's almost like he's circled back to the Elmira 00:28:42.589 --> 00:28:44.829 of his childhood in a way. It's a remarkable 00:28:44.829 --> 00:28:49.230 third act. He turns 61 in 2024. He has a toddler. 00:28:49.569 --> 00:28:52.390 His life looks completely and totally different 00:28:52.390 --> 00:28:53.970 than it did when he wrote The Tipping Point. 00:28:54.150 --> 00:28:56.990 Though, as one reviewer of his latest book noted, 00:28:57.210 --> 00:28:59.809 while his life has profoundly changed, he has 00:28:59.809 --> 00:29:03.190 not. Meaning he's still the same curious, obsessive 00:29:03.190 --> 00:29:05.670 thinker. Exactly. He's just thinking about diapers 00:29:05.670 --> 00:29:07.789 and school systems now, too. So let's try and 00:29:07.789 --> 00:29:10.319 wrap this all up. Let's synthesize. We've looked 00:29:10.319 --> 00:29:12.980 at the runner, the outsider, the ad agency failure, 00:29:13.240 --> 00:29:16.720 the bestselling author, the podcaster, the lightning 00:29:16.720 --> 00:29:19.599 rod for criticism. If we synthesize his legacy, 00:29:19.880 --> 00:29:22.740 it's complicated, but it's undeniable. I think 00:29:22.740 --> 00:29:25.519 his single biggest contribution is that he democratized 00:29:25.519 --> 00:29:27.680 access to academic research. He broke the lock 00:29:27.680 --> 00:29:30.119 on the ivory tower. He did. Before Gladwell, 00:29:30.279 --> 00:29:32.440 sociology and psychology were locked away in 00:29:32.440 --> 00:29:34.500 journals that no normal person ever read. He 00:29:34.500 --> 00:29:37.460 kicked the door down. And even if the details 00:29:37.460 --> 00:29:39.720 are sometimes contested. even if he gets the 00:29:39.720 --> 00:29:42.220 eigenvalue wrong every now and then. Even then, 00:29:42.240 --> 00:29:44.839 he changed how the public talks about human behavior. 00:29:45.180 --> 00:29:48.160 He gave us a shared vocabulary. We all talk about 00:29:48.160 --> 00:29:51.059 tipping points, outliers, and thin slicing. Now, 00:29:51.059 --> 00:29:52.480 because of him, they're part of the culture. 00:29:52.720 --> 00:29:54.819 He made us look at our own lives differently. 00:29:55.359 --> 00:29:57.319 He made us question the story we tell ourselves 00:29:57.319 --> 00:30:00.279 about our own success, making us realize that 00:30:00.279 --> 00:30:02.380 we are products of our environment, our timing, 00:30:02.480 --> 00:30:05.460 our hidden biases. And that is a significant 00:30:05.460 --> 00:30:08.460 contribution, however you slice it. He made us 00:30:08.460 --> 00:30:11.180 think about how we think. So here's my final 00:30:11.180 --> 00:30:12.819 thought, the final question for you to chew on. 00:30:13.819 --> 00:30:15.960 Malcolm Gladwell spends a huge amount of his 00:30:15.960 --> 00:30:18.480 career telling us that success is about luck 00:30:18.480 --> 00:30:21.579 and timing and hidden advantages. He consistently 00:30:21.579 --> 00:30:23.660 downplays the role of the heroic individual. 00:30:23.920 --> 00:30:26.319 Right. Greatness is circumstance, not just willpower. 00:30:26.440 --> 00:30:28.599 That's the core message of Outliers. But then 00:30:28.599 --> 00:30:30.960 you look at the man himself. He runs elite level 00:30:30.960 --> 00:30:33.400 mile times in his 50s. He writes eight massive 00:30:33.400 --> 00:30:36.440 bestsellers. He starts a media company. He works 00:30:36.440 --> 00:30:39.539 relentlessly. He fails 18 times at ad agencies 00:30:39.539 --> 00:30:42.119 and just keeps going. So the question is this. 00:30:42.730 --> 00:30:45.450 How much of the Gladwell effect is actually just 00:30:45.450 --> 00:30:48.150 the result of a man who, unlike the rest of us, 00:30:48.269 --> 00:30:51.609 has a truly outlier level of ambition and simply 00:30:51.609 --> 00:30:54.630 never, ever stopped running? That is the ultimate 00:30:54.630 --> 00:30:56.769 Gladwellian paradox, isn't it? The man whose 00:30:56.769 --> 00:30:59.450 life seems to both prove and disprove his own 00:30:59.450 --> 00:31:01.569 theories at the same time. Thanks for taking 00:31:01.569 --> 00:31:03.650 the deep dive with us. It was a pleasure. A lot 00:31:03.650 --> 00:31:04.130 to think about.