Joe Rogan Experience #1383 - Malcolm Gladwell

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (claps) Hello, Malcolm. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (claps) Hello, Malcolm.

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:06

      Hey, Joe.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      How you doing?

   4. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:07

      I'm doing very well.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:08

      (laughs)

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:09

      (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:09

      You sound like you.

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:10

      (laughs) Good, good. That's always a good sign, no?

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      Through headphones. It's very interesting, 'cause I've been listening to, uh, Talking to Strangers.

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:17

       Uh-huh.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:18

       I like that you narrate your books. It's very frustrating when someone who's a, a great speaker does not narrate their books, so thanks for doing that.

   12. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:25

       No, I actually, uh, I kind of enjoy... I used to hate that process with my first one, and then I've grown to enjoy it, because, uh, you... When you s- say your book out loud, you see it in a different way.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:38

       Mm.

   14. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:39

       Like, "Oh." You know, you get a l- little bit of a different perspective on it.

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:42

       Well, I'm a giant fan of your work, man, particularly Outliers.

   16. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:45

       Oh, thank you.

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:45

       I, I, I really love that book.

   18. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:47

       Yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:47

       It's, uh, very illuminating, and it sort of peels away the, the mystery of talent.

   20. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:53

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   21. JRJoe Rogan0:54

       And, uh, so tell me what you're doing. What is this Talking to Strangers, I'm into about... I'm in the f- s- second chapter right now.

   22. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:02

       Oh, I see. Uh, well, that was... That was a book about... I was struck by how many of the kind of high-profile cases that we got obsessed with were, at their root, about the same thing, which is that individuals were... Two people who didn't know each other well had an exchange, and they got each other wrong. So, you know, everything from Amanda Knox to Bernie Madoff to the, to Larry Nassar at Michigan State, to Jerry Sandusky at Penn State. And then, to the signature case which the book is organized around, which is, uh, the Sandra Bland case. Remember, the young woman, Texas, who gets pulled over by the side of the road?

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:43

       Yeah.

   24. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:44

       They're all, at root, fundamentally the same problem, which is there's a, there's an exchange between... And the exchange just goes wrong. And the question is why. That's what I began to get really fascinated by, is you'd think at this point in human evol- human evolution, we would've got this thing about talking to strangers down.

   25. JRJoe Rogan2:05

       Mm.

   26. MGMalcolm Gladwell2:06

       And we clearly don't. And we're being pushed to talk more and more to strangers, right, in a kind of globalized world. And if we're bad at it, that doesn't bode well, does it?

   27. JRJoe Rogan2:17

       Well, I think there's also an issue today with people not learning the necessary skills in how to talk to people, 'cause so much communication is done digitally.

   28. MGMalcolm Gladwell2:28

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan2:29

       That's, uh... It seems to be a giant issue with young kids. They're, they're more awkward initially talking to people than I think I remember.

   30. MGMalcolm Gladwell2:36

       Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's probably... You forget how much... I mean, adolescent- adolescence used to be this one, one long rehearsal in how to be a normal human being in-
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Right. …

   1. MGMalcolm Gladwell15:00

      into the scenario, instead of ... You don't want something to unfold in a, a second and a half, where you have almost no time to react properly, or ... What you want to do is to un- it to unfold in five seconds. If you can add ... Oh, I'm, I'm making this up. I can't remember his exact term, but basically, what your job is, is to add seconds into the, the encounter, so that you have a chance to intelligently respond to what's going on. And so he was ... He had this great riff about, um, how good Israeli, uh, s- uh, secret sec- uh, Secret Service guys are, and one of the things they do is they're, they're, uh, they're either not armed, or they don't, they're trained not to go for their weapons in these situations. Because his point is, so s- say you're guarding the president, you're a body man for the president, you're walking through a crowd, somebody comes up to you, like pulls a gun, wants to shoot the president. His point is, if you're the secret security guy, and your first instinct in response to someone pulling a gun is to go for your own gun, you've lost a second and a half. Right? Your hand's gotta go down to your ... Your whole focus is on getting to your own gun, and in the meantime, the other guy, whose gun's already out, has already shot. You've lost. You need to be someone who forgets about your own gun and just focuses on the, on the man in front of you, right, on protecting the president. But it, it was all in the context of time is this really crucial, um, variable in these kind of encounters, and everything as a police officer you should be doing is slowing it down. Um, wait, uh, you know, analyze what's happening, and that's what he doesn't do. The cop, in this instance, speeds it up.

   2. JRJoe Rogan16:44

      Right.

   3. MGMalcolm Gladwell16:44

      Right? He goes to DEFCON ... You know, she lights a cigarette, and within seconds, he's screaming at her. This is a ... You know, a parent shouldn't do that. I mean, let a- let alone a police officer by the side of the highway.

   4. JRJoe Rogan16:55

      Right. But the difference is, he knows she's not a criminal. I mean, he, he must know. It's bullshit. He's pulling her over because he's trying to write a ticket-

   5. MGMalcolm Gladwell17:05

      Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan17:05

      ... and the way he's communicating with her when she lights a cigarette, it's like she's inferior. Like he ... This is not someone who's scared. He's not scared of, uh, a perpetrator. He's not scared-

   7. MGMalcolm Gladwell17:17

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan17:17

      ... that there's a criminal in the car about to shoot him. He's not scared of that at all. He, he wants utter, total, complete compliance, and he's talking to her like, like he's a drill sergeant.

   9. MGMalcolm Gladwell17:28

      But can't, can't both those things be true?

   10. JRJoe Rogan17:32

       How so?

   11. MGMalcolm Gladwell17:33

       Well, in the ... So in the deposition he gives, which I got to the end of the book, and I got the tape of the deposition. It's fa- it's totally fascinating. It's like he's sitting down with the investigating officer, uh, in the ... looking into the death of Sandra Bland, and he's got, I don't know how long it is, two hours, and he's walking them through what he was thinking that day. And he makes the case that he was terrified, that he was convinced ... He, he says he goes back to his squad car. He pu- comes up, and there's some e- there's some evidence to support this. So he pulls her over, and he goes to the passenger side window and leans in and says, "Ma'am-"... "You realize why I pulled you over?" Blah, blah, blah. And says, "Are you okay?" 'Cause he s- she doesn't seem right to him. She gives him her license, he goes back to his squad car. And he says while he's in the squad car, he looks ahead and he sees her making what he calls furtive movements. So he's like-

   12. JRJoe Rogan18:27

       Furtive movements? How so? W- what, do, do you-

   13. MGMalcolm Gladwell18:28

       ... He thinks she's being all kind of jumpy, and... You don't know. He doesn't, he just says, "I saw her moving around in ways that didn't make me happy." And then when he returns to the car, he returns driver side, which is crucial because if you're a cop, you go driver side only if you think that you might be in danger, right? He doesn't... If you go driver side, you're exposing yourself to the road. The only reason you do that is that when you're driver side, you can see the... It's very, very difficult, if someone has a gun, to shoot the police, police officer who's pulled them over if the police officer is on the driver side, right? You have an angle if they're on the passenger side. So why does he go b- If he thinks she's harmless, there's no reason for him to go back driver side. I think this guy, I think these two things are linked. I actually believe him. He constructs this ridiculous fantasy about how she's dangerous, but I think that's just h- what he was trained to do. He's a paranoid cop.

   14. JRJoe Rogan19:20

       Mm-hmm.

   15. MGMalcolm Gladwell19:21

       And then why is he so insistent that she be compliant? For the same reason. Because he's terrified. He's like, "Do exactly what I say 'cause I don't know what the, what's gonna happen here," right? And she's... I, you know, I, I don't know. I, I, I don't think those two, uh, those two strains of, uh, of interpretation are mutually exclusive.

   16. JRJoe Rogan19:43

       Mm-hmm. (smacks lips) That's interesting. It didn't sound like he was scared at all. It sounded like he was pissed that she wasn't listening to him.

   17. MGMalcolm Gladwell19:51

       Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan19:51

       I didn't, I didn't think he sounded even remotely scared. I, I felt like he had... I mean, t- we're reading into it, right, right?

   19. MGMalcolm Gladwell19:59

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan19:59

       I have no idea.

   21. MGMalcolm Gladwell20:00

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan20:00

       But f- my, my interpretation was he had decided that she wasn't listening to him and he was gonna make her listen to him.

   23. MGMalcolm Gladwell20:07

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan20:08

       That's what I got out of it.

   25. MGMalcolm Gladwell20:08

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan20:09

       I didn't get any fear. And I thought that version of it that he described just sounds like horse shit. It sounds like what you would say after the fact-

   27. MGMalcolm Gladwell20:17

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan20:17

       ... to strengthen your case.

   29. MGMalcolm Gladwell20:19

       Well, the... So there's another element here that I get into, which is I got his record as a police officer. So he'd been on the c- on the force for, I forgot, nine, 10 months, and we have a record of every traffic stop he ever made. And when you look at his list of traffic stops, you reas- you realize that what happened that day with Sandra Bland was not an anomaly. That he's one of those guys who pulls over everyone for bullshit reasons-

   30. JRJoe Rogan20:46

       Mm-hmm.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Hm. …

   1. MGMalcolm Gladwell30:00

      civilian.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      Hm.

   3. MGMalcolm Gladwell30:01

      But, um, yeah, I don't think there's a lot of, um, uh ... But I don't know whether ... I mean, I, I still think we're saying the same thing, which is, the thing that's driving him, his motivation, is not rational, right? And if you were a rational actor, you would never engage in an activity where 99.9% of your police stops e-... resulted in nothing.

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:22

      Right.

   5. MGMalcolm Gladwell30:23

      You're, he's, he is off in some weird kinda fantasy land-

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:27

      Mm-hmm.

   7. MGMalcolm Gladwell30:27

      ... for a reason, which is that's what, in certain jurisdictions in this country, that's what law enforcement has come to look at-

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:34

      Right.

   9. MGMalcolm Gladwell30:34

      ... look like. Um-

   10. JRJoe Rogan30:35

       Yeah.

   11. MGMalcolm Gladwell30:35

       ... and that's, that's problematic.

   12. JRJoe Rogan30:36

       It's a huge problem. Yeah, the, the power trip aspect of it. I mean, y- you know, I've often said, what would they do, you know, 'cause there are certain a- there are certain areas where police officers do have quotas-

   13. MGMalcolm Gladwell30:49

       Mm-hmm.

   14. JRJoe Rogan30:49

       ... or they have to write a certain amount of tickets. What would they do if no one broke the law for six months?

   15. MGMalcolm Gladwell30:54

       (laughs) Welcome to s- They, they should, that's what small-town Canada is. (laughs)

   16. JRJoe Rogan30:57

       Yeah, right?

   17. MGMalcolm Gladwell30:58

       That's right. That's what-

   18. JRJoe Rogan30:58

       What would they do? I mean, I, I would really be curious, like, what would happen to the numbers? Like, 'cause y- what you were saying that they use people as an ATM, they really do. I mean, people are-

   19. MGMalcolm Gladwell31:08

       Mm-hmm.

   20. JRJoe Rogan31:08

       ... they're glorified revenue collectors. They're-

   21. MGMalcolm Gladwell31:10

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan31:10

       ... pulling people over, trying to write huge tickets, and I believe it's North Carolina where you were talking about that's got this creepy law that they've recent- I think they've recently changed it, where you're allowed to just confiscate people's money.

   23. MGMalcolm Gladwell31:24

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JRJoe Rogan31:25

       Because if you see, like, I pull you over, "Hey, Malcolm, why do you have $3,000 on you?"

   25. MGMalcolm Gladwell31:29

       Yeah, yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan31:29

       "You have $3,000 in cash?"

   27. MGMalcolm Gladwell31:31

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan31:31

       "What are you doing with $3,000... Give me that money." And they take it and you have to prove that you weren't going to buy heroin or buy illegal guns or whatever, and then most of that money wound up going to the police department.

   29. MGMalcolm Gladwell31:45

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan31:45

       So they used it to, like, build a fucking gym for the cops or do whatever. I mean, it was literally they had an incentive-
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Yes. …

   1. MGMalcolm Gladwell45:00

      (laughs) ... It's one of these crazy, it's one of these crazy... You'd think it... You know, that w- whole institutions would've fallen.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:06

      Yes.

   3. MGMalcolm Gladwell45:07

      No, it's-

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:07

      Did you ever hear the conversation that he had? I, I believe it was recorded somehow on a phone or something, or maybe it was after he was in jail, where he was talking about trying to get money back from one of his biggest investors. The guy had gotten, like, a billion dollars from him over the years.

   5. MGMalcolm Gladwell45:26

      Oh, that's right. That's right, that's right. Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:28

      And he's like, "You gotta give the money back." And he's like, "Fuck you. I'm not giving you shit."

   7. MGMalcolm Gladwell45:32

      Yeah, yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:32

      And, you know, then, then there's this crazy conversation where he's basically telling this guy, "Look, you knew this was bullshit."

   9. MGMalcolm Gladwell45:39

      Mm-hmm.

   10. JRJoe Rogan45:40

       "And you were making money off this and now, you know..."

   11. MGMalcolm Gladwell45:42

       Yeah, yeah. So, so this is, like, the clever... So if you think about this, that guy... I know exactly who you're talking about.

   12. JRJoe Rogan45:48

       Yeah.

   13. MGMalcolm Gladwell45:48

       So, so game this through. Let's, let's just do a, let's do a, um, a, uh, a hypothetical scenario.

   14. JRJoe Rogan45:55

       Okay.

   15. MGMalcolm Gladwell45:56

       You have a friend who is an incredible salesman and has gone around Europe and to Saudi Arabia and whatever, and raised a $20 million fund, $20 billion fund. And they're promising a 20% return a year on your investment, right? So you give them a million, you're getting $200,000 a year back from this thing. You know it's all bullshit, but no one else does. What is the rational thing for you to do? The rational thing for you to do is to take your... On your million dollar investment, is to take the $200,000 that is made, "made" in quotation marks, every year out of the fund. So you say most people... You know, when you invest in stocks, normally what you do is you check the box, "I want my... I want any dividends or earnings reinvested in the fund." Don't check the box. Take the real cash. So if you're investing with this phony friend of yours for 20 years, you're gonna get $200,000 a year for 20 years. That's $4 million. You will make $4 million clear of your, out of your $1 million initial investment in, uh, in 20 years, right? That's smart if you know what's going on. So that's what some people did with Madoff. They're like, "Yeah, I don't know what he's doing. These returns are pretty fantastic. I'm just gonna take all my earnings off the table every single year." So they are the ones who... The real winners of this whole thing were those people-

   16. JRJoe Rogan47:21

       Yeah.

   17. MGMalcolm Gladwell47:21

       ... 'cause this money's not real. That money's coming from other investors. There's, nothing's being made, actually.

   18. JRJoe Rogan47:25

       What happens with them? Like, if a guy does make all these millions of dollars, like that one guy-

   19. MGMalcolm Gladwell47:31

       He had to... So, so-

   20. JRJoe Rogan47:32

       Does he have to give some of it back?

   21. MGMalcolm Gladwell47:33

       Yeah. So what happens is they appoint... Remember, they appoint a, um... After the scandal breaks and Ba- Madoff is invested, they bring in a, a kind of supervisor, financial supervisor, who has the power to claw back winnings from ph- money from the people who took m- who took cash off the table. So-

   22. JRJoe Rogan47:53

       Hmm.

   23. MGMalcolm Gladwell47:53

       But not everyone had to claw back. And the question was, how far back do we go? So-

   24. JRJoe Rogan47:58

       Hmm.

   25. MGMalcolm Gladwell47:58

       ... if you were investing, if you were investing with Madoff 25 years ago and you took, you know, $10 million off the table between 1990 and 1993, do you have to give that up too? Like, it gets complicated.

   26. JRJoe Rogan48:10

       Also, how can you prove that he was doing the same activity back then?

   27. MGMalcolm Gladwell48:13

       Exactly. Exactly.

   28. JRJoe Rogan48:15

       Oh... It's a conversation... I, I really wish I could remember where I was hearing this conversation, but somebody had recorded Madoff talking to this guy-

   29. MGMalcolm Gladwell48:24

       Mm-hmm.

   30. JRJoe Rogan48:24

       ... telling him, "Look, you gotta give that money back."
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   It's very good. …

   1. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:00:00

      a 2:40 marathon. Now, 2:40, you have to be really good to run... It's not world-class or anything, but it's like-

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:05

      It's very good.

   3. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:00:05

      ... you have to be serious to run 2:40.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:07

      Yeah.

   5. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:00:07

      So they'll l- eyeball someone who claims to run 2:40 and they'll say no. Uh, I mean, it's got-

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:12

      He's just looking at them?

   7. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:00:13

      10, you know, 10, 15-

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:15

      Extra pounds?

   9. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:00:16

      ... extra pounds.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:00:16

       Right.

   11. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:00:16

       They're... They should be... They should look like they've been running their wh-... They look totally fresh as a daisy right now. They're... What are they doing wearing those shoes? "No, 2:40 marathoner." You know, it's like... It's that kind of process. And then goes the second order where they do complicated analysis of splits and they do all this kind of thing. But it, uh... It often begins with the same thing. It's like, "This guy's trying to claim to be this?" And it's like-

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:00:37

       Mm-hmm.

   13. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:00:37

       ... "No, no, no, it's not-"

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:00:38

       Right.

   15. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:00:39

       "... it's not working. That's like a..." Um, I love those insider-y, uh-

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:00:43

       Well, I have this thought about how much culture has shifted through the internet and how much culture will shift again in even more astronomical way once we can read minds. And I don't think we're far away from that. I think we're a few decades away from some technology that allows people to est- establish intent and to see thoughts.

   17. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:01:05

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:01:05

       And I think they're, they're very... The- there's-... s- some sort of theoretical work they're doing on this right now.

   19. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:01:12

       Mm-hmm.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:01:12

       And there's, there's different models that they're trying to achieve. I think that's going to eliminate a lot of the bullshit of communication.

   21. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:01:22

       Mm-hmm.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:01:22

       And I think it's gonna happen really quickly, just like Google sort of eliminates a lot of the bullshit of people telling stories about something and someone goes, "What? What happened? Wait a minute."

   23. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:01:30

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:01:31

       "What year?" And then Google goes, "That didn't happen."

   25. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:01:33

       Mm-hmm.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:01:33

       And they can find out, like, almost instantaneously.

   27. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:01:36

       Mm-hmm.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:01:36

       I think we're gonna be able to figure that out with people.

   29. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:01:38

       Huh.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:01:38

       I think there's going to be a way-
6. 1:15:00 – 1:15:29

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:15:00

      uh, enormous crisis-

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:15:02

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:15:02

      ... was in play and we had to all communicate with the same language, and so... Remember when they were trying to push the m- well, you're from Canada. The, the metric system was actually real over there.

   4. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:15:11

      It was real.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:15:12

      You know (laughs) when I was in, uh, high school, they were trying to push the metric system.

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:15:15

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:15:16

      And I remember there was, like, a concerted effort. They were like, "We're gonna have to learn the metric system 'cause it's a universal system-

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:15:21

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:15:21

      ... that the whole world uses." And they gave up. The- the United States gave up.

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:15:25

       I never understood, why did, why was this possible in Canada and not possible in the United States? I don't remember-

Episode duration: 2:38:30