Joe Rogan Experience #1383 - Malcolm Gladwell

1. 0:00 – 2:17

   Gladwell’s audiobook narration and what “Talking to Strangers” is really about

   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?

2. 2:17 – 3:09

   Digital communication and the lost ‘rehearsal’ of face-to-face social skills

   1. 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.

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell2:28

      Yeah.

   3. 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.

   4. 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-

   5. JRJoe Rogan2:51

      Right.

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell2:51

      ... conversation. And now, the rehearsal, it's like the rehearsal got cut in half. And, you know, instead of getting to the point where we play basketball with basketballs, we're still just doing wind sprints or something, you know?

   7. JRJoe Rogan3:03

      Mm, right.

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell3:04

      I- you know?

   9. JRJoe Rogan3:04

      You never get to actually playing a game.

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell3:06

       Yeah, playing the game. I'm butchering the metaphor here, but-

   11. JRJoe Rogan3:08

       I know what you're saying, though.

   12. MGMalcolm Gladwell3:09

       ... you know what I'm saying, yeah.

3. 3:09 – 7:45

   Sandra Bland case overview: escalation, jail, and the suicide-versus-homicide controversy

   1. JRJoe Rogan3:09

      The Sandra Bland case, um, th- uh, how does that one fit in? Because that one, that w- that girl was pulled over.

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell3:17

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan3:17

      The, the cop was te- she... It was failure to signal, right?

   4. MGMalcolm Gladwell3:22

      Yeah. I mean, it's a bullshit thing, right?

   5. JRJoe Rogan3:23

      It's a bullshit thing.

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell3:24

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan3:24

      And she started lighting his cigarettes. He told, told her to put the cigarette out, and it all escalated from that. She said she doesn't have to put the cigarette out.

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell3:31

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan3:32

      And then he s- says he's gonna light her up. Um, he's screaming at her. He pulls her out of the car. He arrests her, and then... Is there controversy about whether or not she committed suicide in jail?

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell3:45

       There is. I don't get into that.

   11. JRJoe Rogan3:47

       Okay.

   12. MGMalcolm Gladwell3:47

       Uh...

   13. JRJoe Rogan3:48

       Because it seemed, that seemed unlikely.

   14. MGMalcolm Gladwell3:52

       That she was killed, that she-

   15. JRJoe Rogan3:53

       Well-

   16. MGMalcolm Gladwell3:53

       ... as opposed to committing suicide?

   17. JRJoe Rogan3:54

       Yes. It seemed likely that she was killed versus-

   18. MGMalcolm Gladwell3:57

       Oh.

   19. JRJoe Rogan3:57

       ... that she committed suicide. I didn't think that someone would commit suicide being in jail for three days, especially one of the things that you highlighted in the book and you actually played in the audio version of it, her little sort of affirmations, you know? And she was, she sounded very positive and upbeat-

   20. MGMalcolm Gladwell4:15

       Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

   21. JRJoe Rogan4:16

       ... and calling everybody kings and queens, and there was ev- and thanking God-

   22. MGMalcolm Gladwell4:19

       Mm-hmm.

   23. JRJoe Rogan4:19

       ... and being very thankful, and being aware of, of life and, uh, humility and just graciousness and gratitude. It didn't seem... I mean, obviously, you don't know-

   24. MGMalcolm Gladwell4:32

       Mm-hmm.

   25. JRJoe Rogan4:32

       ... I mean, what kind of dark things can happen to a person when they're incarcerated for three days for a bullshit reason.

   26. MGMalcolm Gladwell4:37

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan4:37

       Like how maybe that's the straw that broke the camel's back, but...

   28. MGMalcolm Gladwell4:41

       She did have... You know, she had a, uh, a complicated, um, emotional history. She had previously, uh, tried to commit suicide.

   29. JRJoe Rogan4:50

       Oh.

   30. MGMalcolm Gladwell4:50

       Um, and she had... She was emerging from a, quite a difficult period in her life and went to Texas to start a new life.
4. 7:45 – 13:15

   Dashcam details and the cigarette as a misunderstood de-escalation signal

   1. MGMalcolm Gladwell7:45

      I mean, well, th- this is fascinating, and I feel like... I don't know. You, you and I are probably the same age. There's this... So the cop's 29. If you grew up with cigarettes, you have a different understanding of the meaning of lighting a cigarette.

   2. JRJoe Rogan8:00

      Mm-hmm.

   3. MGMalcolm Gladwell8:00

      So what's happening in the encounter is, he pulls her over. What he does is, he sees her coming out of this university campus, and while she's still on campus property, she rolls through a stop sign. And then he notices that she's got out-of-state plates and she's a young Black woman and she's driving a Hyundai, like, not a, not a Mercedes-Benz. And he thinks, "Ha, I'm gonna check this out." So he... she pulls onto the road and he drives up behind her, aggressively. He speeds up behind her. So what does she do? Well, what any of us would do. She gets out of the way, thinking, "Oh, he's o- he's going to... he's going to, you know, the scene of an accident or something. I better get out of his way." She pulls over to get out of his way, and he goes, "Oh, you didn't use your turning signal," and he pulls him- pulls her over and pulls him behind her.

   4. JRJoe Rogan8:49

      Oh.

   5. MGMalcolm Gladwell8:49

      Now, by the way, whenever I hear a fire department truck or a police car coming and I pull over to get out of the way, I do not use my turning signal, right?

   6. JRJoe Rogan8:59

      Right.

   7. MGMalcolm Gladwell8:59

      You just get out of the way. It's reflexive.

   8. JRJoe Rogan9:00

      Right, right.

   9. MGMalcolm Gladwell9:01

      So her immediate thought is, when he does this, is like, "Oh, this is bullshit and he tricked me." And he knows what he's doing. That's exactly what he wanted. He wanted to get her in a situation... 'cause it's all a pretext. He just wants... He thinks, "Oh, maybe there's something weird with her." So then he... We have this all on tape, of course, because this is... and this is one of those incidents that was captured entirely on the dash cam, the officer's dash cam. He goes up to the window and he says, uh... he looks at her and he realizes she's agitated. Why? Because obviously... she's pissed off. And he goes, "Ma'am, is there something wrong?" And she's like, "Well, you know, I wanna know why I'm pulled over," blah-de-blah. And then he goes back to his car and he comes back to her, and, uh, he later says in a deposition that when he goes back to his, to his, uh, vehicle to check on her license and registration, he begins to develop suspicions that she's up to no good, she's got drugs or guns. And so she comes back and they commence to have this increasingly heated conversation, and she lights the cigarette because she's trying to calm herself down. And this is my point. You and I, who grew up in an era where people smoked all the time, know that one of the principal functions of lighting a cigarette was to calm your nerves. And in her mind, I think in her mind, she's trying to signal to the cop, "Let's deescalate this."

   10. JRJoe Rogan10:23

       Mm-hmm.

   11. MGMalcolm Gladwell10:24

       "And I'm... One of the ways I'm gonna show you that I wanna deescalate this is I'm gonna take a moment and light a cigarette, and just take it down a notch, and let's have a real conversation." He doesn't understand the meaning of that gesture, and he thinks, "Oh." She... He thinks several things. He thinks, one, "She's messing with me. She's defying my authority by lighting a cigarette. She's gonna blow smoke in my face or something, you know, nefarious. Or she's gonna, like, take the lighted cigarette and put it out of my..." He has all these kind of weird, crazy fantasies.

   12. JRJoe Rogan10:58

       This is what he said?

   13. MGMalcolm Gladwell10:59

       In the deposition. Oh yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan11:00

       Mm-hmm.

   15. MGMalcolm Gladwell11:00

       He... So even on the level... I try and identify in the book all of the different ways, and this... when I come back to the case at the end of the book, I go through this in more detail, all the different ways in which he completely misunderstands her. And one of them is, he doesn't understand the meaning of lighting a cigarette in a moment of tension. Um, and that's, you know, still more evidence why you need, if you're a cop or anyone dealing with a stranger, you need to slow down and ju- not jump to any conclusions, because there's so much you can miss.

   16. JRJoe Rogan11:32

       What it seemed to me when I listened to it initially, and then I listened to it again in your audiobook, there's a thing that happens with police officers and I've never been a police officer, but I was a security guard for a brief period of time. And I recognize it in myself and I recognized it in a lot of people that I work with, is that you start treating the other people like the other.

   17. MGMalcolm Gladwell11:53

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JRJoe Rogan11:53

       Like, it's us and them.

   19. MGMalcolm Gladwell11:55

       Mm-hmm.

   20. JRJoe Rogan11:55

       It was us as... I worked at a Great, uh, Great Woods, it's a performance center in Mansfield, Massachusetts. It's like this, uh...

   21. MGMalcolm Gladwell12:02

       Mm-hmm.

   22. JRJoe Rogan12:02

       And we would catch a lot of people smuggling booze in, things like that. And-... th- there was an attitude that you got, and I was only there for one summer.

   23. MGMalcolm Gladwell12:13

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JRJoe Rogan12:13

       But there was an attitude of th- they were, they were the bad people, and you were the good guys. It was us and them, and we stuck together, and they weren't us.

   25. MGMalcolm Gladwell12:22

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   26. JRJoe Rogan12:23

       And cops get that 100 times worse, because there's guns involved, and they can get shot at, and we've all seen videos of g- cops pulling people over, and y- he says, "Can I see your hands, please?" and the guy pulls out a gun and shoots at 'em. We've all seen those videos.

   27. MGMalcolm Gladwell12:38

       Mm-hmm.

   28. JRJoe Rogan12:38

       Those are re- this is all- always in the back of the mind of cops.

   29. MGMalcolm Gladwell12:41

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan12:42

       And I think that was just a guy who, as you said, 29 years old, is a young guy, he's n- not that bright, not good at communication, and he has this attitude that he's a cop, and that you have to listen to the cops, 'cause he's them, and you're you.
5. 13:15 – 17:28

   ‘Add seconds’: why time compression makes police encounters go bad

   1. MGMalcolm Gladwell13:15

      He does. Yeah, he does want ... He gets ... It's funny, the ... What's remarkable about that tape, which I must have seen 50 times, um, and which has been viewed on YouTube, you know, even like a couple million times, is how quickly it escalates.

   2. JRJoe Rogan13:31

      Yeah.

   3. MGMalcolm Gladwell13:31

      The whole thing is, it's insanely short.

   4. JRJoe Rogan13:35

      Yeah.

   5. MGMalcolm Gladwell13:35

      You, you would think, if I was telling you the story of this, you would think, oh, this unfolds over 10 minutes, and it doesn't. It unfolds over a minute and a half. Um, and that ... When I ... I remember years ago, I wrote a p- uh, my second book, Blink, and I have in that book a ch- chapter about a very famous, infamous police shooting in New York, case of Amadou Diallo.

   6. JRJoe Rogan13:58

      I remember that one.

   7. MGMalcolm Gladwell13:59

      Remember that one?

   8. JRJoe Rogan13:59

      Yeah.

   9. MGMalcolm Gladwell13:59

      Where he was shot like 40 times by cops.

   10. JRJoe Rogan14:01

       Yeah.

   11. MGMalcolm Gladwell14:02

       And one of the big things I was interested in, uh, talking about in that case was, how long does it take, how long did it take for that whole terrible sequence to go down? So from the moment the police develop, uh, suspicions about Amadou Diallo to the moment that Amadou Diallo is lying dead on his front porch, how long, how much time elapsed? And the answer is, like two seconds. It's boom, boom, boom. It's like ... And I, I had a c- a conversation with, um, (smacks lips) actually here in the Valley, with, uh, uh, Gavin de Becker. Um ... Has he ever been on your show?

   12. JRJoe Rogan14:39

       No.

   13. MGMalcolm Gladwell14:39

       Oh. F- fascinating guy. And we were s-

   14. JRJoe Rogan14:42

       He's a security expert, right?

   15. MGMalcolm Gladwell14:43

       Yeah, a security expert.

   16. JRJoe Rogan14:44

       Yeah.

   17. MGMalcolm Gladwell14:44

       Incredibly interesting guy.

   18. JRJoe Rogan14:45

       He's friends with Sam Harris. I know that about him.

   19. MGMalcolm Gladwell14:47

       He is, yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan14:47

       You know?

   21. MGMalcolm Gladwell14:48

       Yeah. Um, and he was talking about this question of time, that when you're a security guard guarding someone, you know, famous, a lot of what you're trying to do is to inject time 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.

   22. JRJoe Rogan16:44

       Right.

   23. 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.

   24. 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-

   25. MGMalcolm Gladwell17:05

       Yeah.

   26. 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-

   27. MGMalcolm Gladwell17:17

       Yeah.

   28. 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.

6. 17:28 – 31:10

   Power, paranoia, and ‘proactive policing’: the system that trains the “ideal” bad stop

   1. MGMalcolm Gladwell17:28

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

   2. JRJoe Rogan17:32

      How so?

   3. 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-

   4. JRJoe Rogan18:27

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

   5. 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.

   6. JRJoe Rogan19:20

      Mm-hmm.

   7. 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.

   8. 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.

   9. MGMalcolm Gladwell19:51

      Yeah.

   10. 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?

   11. MGMalcolm Gladwell19:59

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan19:59

       I have no idea.

   13. MGMalcolm Gladwell20:00

       Yeah.

   14. 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.

   15. MGMalcolm Gladwell20:07

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan20:08

       That's what I got out of it.

   17. MGMalcolm Gladwell20:08

       Yeah.

   18. 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-

   19. MGMalcolm Gladwell20:17

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan20:17

       ... to strengthen your case.

   21. 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-

   22. JRJoe Rogan20:46

       Mm-hmm.

   23. MGMalcolm Gladwell20:46

       ... all day long. So I think... I've forgotten the exact number, but in the hour before he pulled over Sandra Bland, he pulled over four people, four other people, for equally ridiculous reasons.

   24. JRJoe Rogan20:57

       Mm-hmm.

   25. MGMalcolm Gladwell20:57

       He's that cop.

   26. JRJoe Rogan20:59

       Yeah.

   27. MGMalcolm Gladwell20:59

       And he's that cop because he's been trained that way, right?

   28. JRJoe Rogan21:01

       Right, they have quotas.

   29. MGMalcolm Gladwell21:03

       That's a kind of strain, strain of modern policing which says, "Go beyond the ticket. Pull someone over if you f- if anything looks a little bit weird because you might find something else." Now, if you look at his history (laughs) as a cop, he almost never found anything else. H- his history as a cop... In fact, I went through this... I forget how many hundreds of traffic stops he had in nine months. If you go through them, he has like... Once, he found some marijuana on a kid. And by the way, the town in which he was working is a college town, so, I mean, how hard is that? Uh, I think he found a gun once, misdemeanor gun. Uh, but everything else was like, pulling over people for, you know, the, the, the light above their license plate was out.

   30. JRJoe Rogan21:44

       (laughs)
7. 31:10 – 35:08

   Revenue policing and civil forfeiture: Ferguson as the real systemic story

   1. 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.

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell31:24

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan31:25

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

   4. MGMalcolm Gladwell31:29

      Yeah, yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan31:29

      "You have $3,000 in cash?"

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell31:31

      Yeah.

   7. 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.

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell31:45

      Yeah.

   9. 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-

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell31:51

       Mm-hmm.

   11. JRJoe Rogan31:51

       ... to keep the money.

   12. MGMalcolm Gladwell31:52

       Mm-hmm.

   13. JRJoe Rogan31:52

       And f- is that North Carolina that they did that?

   14. MGMalcolm Gladwell31:56

       There's a number of states that have those-

   15. JRJoe Rogan31:58

       It is, it is North Carolina.

   16. MGMalcolm Gladwell31:58

       ... that have those confiscation laws.

   17. JRJoe Rogan32:00

       Civil forfeiture laws.

   18. MGMalcolm Gladwell32:01

       Yeah, civil forfeiture.

   19. JRJoe Rogan32:02

       Yeah.

   20. MGMalcolm Gladwell32:02

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan32:02

       And they're really gross.

   22. MGMalcolm Gladwell32:03

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan32:03

       Do they still have that or is, I mean, I know it's-

   24. MGMalcolm Gladwell32:05

       Trying to check.

   25. JRJoe Rogan32:05

       ... extremely controversial and people are up in arms and furious that, you know, their money-

   26. MGMalcolm Gladwell32:11

       But this-

   27. JRJoe Rogan32:11

       ... has been stolen. People are on their way to buy a car, for instance, you know?

   28. MGMalcolm Gladwell32:14

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan32:14

       And they, they get pulled over and the cop will just take all the money.

   30. MGMalcolm Gladwell32:17

       This is what, um, uh, I talk a little bit about the Ferguson case in my book later on, and I, this is what Ferguson was ultimately about. The focus in the Ferguson case was whether the officer in that case, Mr. Darren Wilson, what he did and didn't do to Michael Brown, but the real story, when the Department of Justice investigated, the real story is not the encounter between those two.
8. 35:08 – 41:27

   Why smart people get fooled: Bernie Madoff and ‘default to truth’

   1. MGMalcolm Gladwell35:08

      Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to... I wanted to sort of start with the premise of why are we so bad at, you know, like, I tell the story in the book of the Larry Nassar case at Michigan State.

   2. JRJoe Rogan35:22

      Which one's that?

   3. MGMalcolm Gladwell35:23

      That's the guy, remember the doctor for the gymnastics team-

   4. JRJoe Rogan35:26

      Oh, yes.

   5. MGMalcolm Gladwell35:26

      ... who turns out to have been sexually molesting-

   6. JRJoe Rogan35:28

      Huge pedophile, right?

   7. MGMalcolm Gladwell35:29

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan35:29

      Yeah.

   9. MGMalcolm Gladwell35:29

      Huge pedophile.

   10. JRJoe Rogan35:30

       (sighs)

   11. MGMalcolm Gladwell35:30

       So there you have a case where everyone thinks they know this guy. He's their friend.

   12. JRJoe Rogan35:35

       Right.

   13. MGMalcolm Gladwell35:35

       He's this gifted doctor. The parents are willingly bringing their kids to, to be treated by him. The parents are in the room while he is m- abusing their kids and they don't see it. The kids are saying something weird happened and the parents are dismissing it. So I wanted to, that's a good example of a phenomenon that I wanted to try and explain, which is, how is that possible? How can we think we know someone and be so completely, um, wrong? How can you take your kid to a doctor and think the doctor is the greatest possible doctor and h- in fact what he's doing is abusing your child in front of you? Right? And that's a very similar kind of problem to Bernie Madoff. People invested their life savings with this guy, not, not little old ladies in Dubuque-... sophisticated, savvy, incredibly intelligent investors handed over millions of dollars to this guy who was n- not even tr- I mean, the Madoff fraud was so outrageous, he didn't even bother to in- he didn't even put it in T-bills. I mean, he just spent it. Right? (laughs) It was just like crazy.

   14. JRJoe Rogan36:47

       What's T-bills?

   15. MGMalcolm Gladwell36:48

       Treasury bills.

   16. JRJoe Rogan36:49

       Oh, okay.

   17. MGMalcolm Gladwell36:49

       I mean, he didn't, he wasn't even, he was, he was a 100%, uh, sociopath fraud.

   18. JRJoe Rogan36:56

       Yes.

   19. MGMalcolm Gladwell36:57

       And people, over the course of 20 years, wrote check, after check, after check, after check to him, thinking he was this brilliant investor. You know, it's like, that's a puzzle. That's what I wanted to get at, like-

   20. JRJoe Rogan37:09

       But people did recognize that something was wrong, right?

   21. MGMalcolm Gladwell37:13

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan37:13

       There, there were financial analysts that were saying that this doesn't make sense.

   23. MGMalcolm Gladwell37:16

       A few of them. But it's funny. There's a, the, my favorite story, um, on the, in the Madoff chapter is, the greatest hedge fund in the world is Renaissance Technologies. These are the guys out in Long Island who have had like 30% returns for 25 years. They're like all PhD, ar- you know, AI geniuses, literally geniuses. And they found themselves, years before Madoff was busted, they found themselves with, I think, $30 million in a Madoff fund because of some complicated transaction. And they're all geniuses. So, they look at what Madoff's doing and they're like, "Hmm, that doesn't look good. Like, that doesn't make any sense to me." And so, like, "What should we do? We have a $30 million stake in a fund and we don't understand what the guy's doing." And you would think logically they would sell their stake. They don't.

   24. JRJoe Rogan38:06

       'Cause it's returning.

   25. MGMalcolm Gladwell38:07

       No. It d- in fact, it's not even returning that. Their own legit returns are twice his illegitimate returns. They're making-

   26. JRJoe Rogan38:14

       Really?

   27. MGMalcolm Gladwell38:14

       They actually make the point that, "His returns are really low for us. Like, there's no reason for us to keep their money."

   28. JRJoe Rogan38:18

       (laughs)

   29. MGMalcolm Gladwell38:18

       But they don't sell. Well, and so, that's what I was trying to understand, like, they can't even... You know, there's this notion I talk about in the book is called default to truth, which is this idea, it's from a, uh, researcher called Tim Levine, which is as human beings, we're trusting engines. We are evolved to give people the benefit of the doubt. And once you understand that, and why do we do that? Because it's the right move 99% of the time. Most people are being truthful, and if you have as your strategy, "I'm gonna believe what people say," it makes you a fantastic friend, a wonderful person to work with. It means that you can, you know, skate through the world with a minimum of, of fuss. If you're a... The paranoid person's a person whose life is a nightmare, right? Because they are suspicious of everything that moves. So, we evolved to be trusting engines because that makes your life easier, that's the best part of human... People wanna mate with you. Like, if you wanna talk in evolutionary terms about who passes on their genes, nice people pass (laughs) on their genes. If given the choice between having a child with a crazy, suspicious, paranoid person or a loving, trusting person, you choose the loving, trusting person 100% of the time. So, multiply that out- out times a million years of human history, you realize trusting genes beat paranoid genes every day of the week, right? So, that's what we are. We're credulous by, by, um, by evolutionary choice. So, those guys that, in the, uh, at Renaissance, they're, they're no different fr- they may be smarter than the rest of us, but they're not constructed differently. Their inclination is to believe people, they're like, "Well, I don't know. Guy says he's a good investor. Eh, why not? Let's hang onto it, see what happens." Right?

   30. JRJoe Rogan40:00

       Mm-hmm.
9. 41:27 – 50:58

   How the Ponzi worked: turning himself in, family denial, and clawbacks

   1. MGMalcolm Gladwell41:27

      He do- he doesn't... In fact, what's weird, there's so many things weird about the Madoff case. Um, one of them is, we forget that he doesn't get caught, he turns himself in. Right? And he turns himself in because, uh, not because he's screwing up, but because he's "so good." 'Cause remember, the financial crisis hits in 2008 and his clients are losing so much money on their legit investments that they go to Madoff and say, "Can I have some of my money back from you? I gotta pay off all the stuff I've done that has gone sour." So like, in effect, no one ever caught him. He gets c- caught by a once in a, you know, one in a million circumstance where he's the only one making any money for his clients, so they (laughs) come after him. My point is, if you, if you're totally rational and you look at this, you say, "Here's a guy who managed to bamboozle the most sophisticated people in the world to the tune of billions of dollars for 25 years and he only gets caught because we had a once in a lifetime financial meltdown." Isn't the rational lesson of that that we should all be Bernie Madoffs?... right? I- it's, like, super easy. It's, like, not that hard. I could... All I have to do is, you know, he dressed really nicely. I get really nice office space on the East Side of Manhattan.

   2. JRJoe Rogan42:44

      What, what did he actually do?

   3. MGMalcolm Gladwell42:46

      Nothing.

   4. JRJoe Rogan42:46

      N- really didn't invest in anything? He just moved other peoples' money around and he ran a Ponzi scheme?

   5. MGMalcolm Gladwell42:51

      Mm. He spent a lot of it.

   6. JRJoe Rogan42:53

      And how did his sons not catch onto this?

   7. MGMalcolm Gladwell42:56

      That's a good question.

   8. JRJoe Rogan42:58

      'Cause they're not being...

   9. MGMalcolm Gladwell42:59

      Well, one of them committed suicide, remember?

   10. JRJoe Rogan43:01

       Right. That's right.

   11. MGMalcolm Gladwell43:02

       Um, and then... So it's an open question of-

   12. JRJoe Rogan43:05

       How much they knew.

   13. MGMalcolm Gladwell43:06

       ... how much anyone else knew. Um, I... You know, the older I get, the more I believe in the powers of... Particularly within f- ... Within family, denial is something now I don't find hard to believe.

   14. JRJoe Rogan43:22

       Mm.

   15. MGMalcolm Gladwell43:23

       So your ability... I've now heard so many stories of, you know, a parent is some kind of monster and family members just w- won't see it. They just can't-

   16. JRJoe Rogan43:34

       Mm.

   17. MGMalcolm Gladwell43:34

       ... bring themselves to go that... So did they know something... Everyone knew there was something slightly fishy in what Bernie was doing, but they never went so far as to think that he was just making it up.

   18. JRJoe Rogan43:46

       So they knew something was up, but they didn't know it was 100% horse shit?

   19. MGMalcolm Gladwell43:50

       They thought that he was... So there were some... People thought that he actually had investments, but he was... There was a suspicion, for example, that he was front-running, that because he had a larger business, um, uh, uh, sort of managing the- the deal flow in the NASDAQ, that he would get advance word of where money was flowing and he would jump ahead of the queue, buy stocks before other people did, and profit off the... When the stock would rise, he would just sell and profit off that difference. So there was a feeling that he had a dubious kind of illegitimate strategy that, nonetheless, legitimately made him a lot of money. So people were like, "Well, if... As long as he can get away with it and I can profit off it, I'm fine."

   20. JRJoe Rogan44:33

       Right.

   21. MGMalcolm Gladwell44:33

       But the truth is, he wasn't doing that at all. And the truth is, he was just... He was... He had his... He had some confederate in the attic of his company essentially making up trade orders from scratch. I mean, they were just making shit up.

   22. JRJoe Rogan44:46

       Did, did... How many people got arrested?

   23. MGMalcolm Gladwell44:48

       I forget. I think they took... I can't remember the exact number. I think they got... He had two confederates, I think, who went down with him.

   24. JRJoe Rogan44:56

       That's it?

   25. MGMalcolm Gladwell44:57

       I think that's what it... It was e- ... I- in retrospect, it's a really (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.

   26. JRJoe Rogan45:06

       Yes.

   27. MGMalcolm Gladwell45:07

       No, it's-

   28. 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.

   29. MGMalcolm Gladwell45:26

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

   30. 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."
10. 50:58 – 52:57

    Lie detection reality: we’re barely better than chance (and expertise is content-based)

    1. MGMalcolm Gladwell50:58

       Well, the, the Bernie Madoff story and, uh, all, you know, all of these stories, but this one in particular, goes to this question of we really think we're good at spotting liars and we're not. So virtually every profession that is invested in, you know, in, in, in investigation of human beings, has some belief that, you know, we know how to figure out who's liars because-

    2. JRJoe Rogan51:22

       Yes.

    3. MGMalcolm Gladwell51:23

       And the truth is, nobody does. And if someone tells you they are good at spotting liars, there's a 99% chance that they're lying.

    4. JRJoe Rogan51:30

       (laughs)

    5. MGMalcolm Gladwell51:31

       So the, the evidence, the, the... So if you could think, if we did an experiment here where I had 100 people parade through this office right now, the studio right now, and every one of them made a statement in front of you, and some were lying and some were telling the truth, and I asked you, "Joe, tell me who's lying and who's not." Your accuracy rate, your success rate, would be, uh, 52 to 54%. In other words, slightly better than chance. You might as well flip a coin, um, slightly better if you don't. And that's not about you. Anyone in that chair watching these people parade in front of us is gonna do a slightly bit better than chance. And the reason we're slightly better than chance, is there are a small fraction of people who are such epically bad liars that there's just-

    6. JRJoe Rogan52:19

       (laughs)

    7. MGMalcolm Gladwell52:19

       We're not gonna lose those people, like we... Those are obvious, like-

    8. JRJoe Rogan52:21

       One thing that you can tell though is if it's an area of your own personal expertise, right? Like if someone tried to talk to you about what it takes to write a book and get a book published and get a book on the New York Times bestseller list and they were just making things up, you would, you would get that.

    9. MGMalcolm Gladwell52:36

       Okay. So, so this is, okay, so now you, we're talking about a separate thing here.

    10. JRJoe Rogan52:40

        Specialist.

    11. MGMalcolm Gladwell52:41

        That's content-based. So if I pretend to be a UFC fighter, you're gonna spot my liar, my lies in five minutes, 'cause you know more about the content than I do. But let's remove... But there, you're not catching me because I look like I'm lying.

    12. JRJoe Rogan52:55

        Right.

    13. MGMalcolm Gladwell52:55

        You're catching me because I'm saying something that's bullshit.

11. 52:57 – 1:00:43

    Rogan’s fake BJJ black belt story—and why transcripts may beat face-to-face judgment

    1. JRJoe Rogan52:57

       I have a good story about that.

    2. MGMalcolm Gladwell52:59

       Oh, really?

    3. JRJoe Rogan52:59

       I have a good story. I used to think that I was really good at spotting liars.

    4. MGMalcolm Gladwell53:02

       Uh-huh.

    5. JRJoe Rogan53:02

       And then I met this guy.

    6. MGMalcolm Gladwell53:04

       Uh-huh.

    7. JRJoe Rogan53:04

       Uh, I met him through a friend and that's... I'd given myself a pass, and then I met him through this friend, and he was a friend of a friend, so I just assumed he was okay because my friend is a very good friend. Um, and this guy was claiming to be this Brazilian jujitsu black belt, and he was writing for, uh, this online, um, magazine that was like a well-read magazine in the martial arts world, and it was, uh, the Abu Dhabi Combat Club, they were responsible for this big, uh, the Abu Dhabi Submission World Championships, this is the biggest championships in the world, it's very highly regarded, high prestige. Um, this guy was talking about these, uh, fights that he had had, and you know, people bullshit a little bit, so you give people a little bit of room for that. But then he was talking about this particular m- particular move that he had pulled off in a fight that he had just learned from my friend. And it's a very difficult move, it's called the twister. It's basically a guillotine from wrestling and it's set up from, uh, a position called side control. It's really complicated, you have to wrap someone's leg around, you have to roll onto your left shoulder, you have to get behind them, you have to grab their arm, put it over your shoulder, grab ahold of their spine, and it's essentially like a spine lock.

    8. MGMalcolm Gladwell54:17

       Mm-hmm.

    9. JRJoe Rogan54:17

       It's a very difficult move to pull off, and it takes a long time to master the steps, it takes a long time to understand the position. So this guy learned it, and then a couple of days later claimed to have pulled it off in Thailand. And it was like, it was like one of those scenes in a movie where the rec- record scratches-

    10. MGMalcolm Gladwell54:36

        (laughs)

    11. JRJoe Rogan54:36

        ... and everybody just goes, "What?" And I remember we were like, "What's going on?"

    12. MGMalcolm Gladwell54:41

        (laughs)

    13. JRJoe Rogan54:41

        So then, uh, my friend winds up, uh, rolling with him. Rolling is sparring. It's, uh, you do jujitsu rolling and-... he comes back to me and he goes, "There's no fucking way that guy is a black belt. It doesn't even make sense."

    14. MGMalcolm Gladwell54:54

        Mm-hmm.

    15. JRJoe Rogan54:54

        He goes... He's like, "He doesn't know what the fuck he's doing."

    16. MGMalcolm Gladwell54:57

        Mm-hmm.

    17. JRJoe Rogan54:57

        Like, this is really weird. So, um, he winds up having this confrontational conversation with him on the phone while I'm in the car. He's talking to him and he goes, "I wanna know what you are, 'cause you're not a fucking black belt, so tell me what's going on."

    18. MGMalcolm Gladwell55:10

        Yeah.

    19. JRJoe Rogan55:10

        And he says, you know, "No, no, I'm a black belt in Japanese jujitsu. It's different. It's not..." Time goes on. Well, he tells this guy to go fuck himself. Time goes on. The guy winds up killing someone. He winds up murdering this-

    20. MGMalcolm Gladwell55:23

        Oh, my God.

    21. JRJoe Rogan55:23

        ... g- girl e- that he's having sex with, m- murdering her husband, and he gets caught driving around her... his car, the guy's car, after he's killed the guy.

    22. MGMalcolm Gladwell55:33

        Mm-hmm.

    23. JRJoe Rogan55:34

        And then he winds up trying to recruit a friend to kill someone. It's, like, this whole big thing-

    24. MGMalcolm Gladwell55:39

        Mm-hmm.

    25. JRJoe Rogan55:39

        ... and he winds up going to jail.

    26. MGMalcolm Gladwell55:40

        Mm-hmm.

    27. JRJoe Rogan55:41

        And he's in jail now.

    28. MGMalcolm Gladwell55:42

        Mm-hmm.

    29. JRJoe Rogan55:42

        But I remember thinking, "Okay, you don't know shit about catching and spotting liars, 'cause you didn't... You didn't spot that guy as being completely full of shit." Like, I thought he was a little full of shit.

    30. MGMalcolm Gladwell55:53

        Yeah.
12. 1:00:43 – 1:10:00

    Mind-reading tech, intent, and taboo words: clarity or a bigger mess?

    1. 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.

    2. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:01:05

       Mm-hmm.

    3. 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.

    4. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:01:12

       Mm-hmm.

    5. 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.

    6. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:01:22

       Mm-hmm.

    7. 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."

    8. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:01:30

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:01:31

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

    10. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:01:33

        Mm-hmm.

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:01:33

        And they can find out, like, almost instantaneously.

    12. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:01:36

        Mm-hmm.

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:01:36

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

    14. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:01:38

        Huh.

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:01:38

        I think there's going to be a way-

    16. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:01:40

        Mm-hmm.

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:01:40

        ... where you can... where we can see intent and we can read minds. I, I don't think we're far away from that.

    18. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:01:47

        Yeah.

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:01:47

        I mean, I know, uh, n- this Neuralink thing that Elon Musk is very... Elon's very hush-hush about. It's this different sort of, um, electronic brain interfaces that they're trying to, uh, e- experiment with.

    20. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:02:01

        Yeah.

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:02:02

        I think-

    22. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:02:02

        But wouldn't, wouldn't your worry be that if we read... we're able to read someone's thoughts-

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:02:08

        Mm.

    24. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:02:08

        ... intentions, what we would in fact discover is, uh, even more confusing than what we know now? In other words, maybe what's inside my head right now are 35 different thoughts and intentions warring at... with each other.

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:02:22

        Murder scenarios.

    26. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:02:23

        Yes, mercenaries.

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:02:23

        And then, and then Malcolm just sort of keeps everything- (laughs)

    28. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:02:26

        (laughs)

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:02:26

        ... everything-

    30. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:02:27

        I'm just like-
13. 1:10:00 – 1:16:52

    Universal language, translation devices, and the cultural ‘rules of the road’

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:10:00

       No, it certainly makes sense. Um, it's, it's interesting when you think about like the Tower of Babel, right? Like this, this idea that at one point in time, everyone spoke the same language and God sort of set it up so that it was... we were never going to be able to really communicate with each other because everybody has a bunch of different languages and we'll, we'll never figure it out. That's the sort of-

    2. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:10:25

       Mm-hmm.

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:10:26

       ... crunched up version of it. If there was a way to change the way... Like all languages are essentially little symbols that are written down on paper or typed out and then sounds you make with your mouth and they convey intent. If there was a way to do another version of language, a universal version of language that's eventually adopted.

    4. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:10:49

       Mm-hmm.

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:10:49

       Like, I'm reading this book about these, um, people that were kidnapped, um, uh, by Native Americans and that they were assimilated into the tribes and they learned the, the language and this happened over a course of a couple of years and I was thinking like, "What would that be like if you... you know, that's how you learn a language, you're kidnapped by, uh, uh, uh..." You know what I mean?

    6. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:11:09

       Yeah.

    7. JRJoe Rogan1:11:09

       Like, you go... But if there was a new language, how long would it take for adults to learn a new language? If someone came up with a new language of completely universal characters and this language is conveyed through this technology rather than through your mouth. So, it's your, your, your thoughts, your thoughts interface with some sort of technology.

    8. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:11:32

       Mm-hmm.

    9. JRJoe Rogan1:11:32

       It creates whatever, hieroglyphs, some sort of visual language that we all agree upon.

    10. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:11:38

        Mm-hmm.

    11. JRJoe Rogan1:11:39

        And then this is universal. This is universal throughout all cultures.

    12. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:11:43

        Yeah, yeah.

    13. JRJoe Rogan1:11:43

        And the only thing that we- we'd be confused is about assumptions and rules as far as like what's okay and what's not.

    14. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:11:48

        Well, you could do that... Can't, can't we kind of do that already in a sense that we could have a universal language and then we have a, a device, you know, sitting on our phone or something-

    15. JRJoe Rogan1:12:00

        Yeah.

    16. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:12:00

        ... that when we... I'm in, you know, I'm in some... or I'm in Bulgaria-

    17. JRJoe Rogan1:12:05

        Mm-hmm.

    18. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:12:05

        ... and I'm ordering coffee, I speak into the device and it simply translates, either translates me directly into Bulgarian. That's actually not that hard.

    19. JRJoe Rogan1:12:14

        No.

    20. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:12:15

        Um, or it translates this into this common language that the Bulgarian translator services. And if you think of the technology at a slightly more advanced level than it is now, it could be done in a very seamless, um, uh, way. Like, it doesn't have to be some bulky box.

    21. JRJoe Rogan1:12:33

        Mm-hmm.

    22. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:12:33

        It could literally be that, um, I am speaking in English and what you're hearing is... there's a filter and what you're, what you're hearing is this other language. I mean-

    23. JRJoe Rogan1:12:41

        Well, don't, don't Google buds or whatever they are. The, the air... you know, the AirPod version of those Google things. I think there's something, some technology that actually enables you to instantaneously translate that-

    24. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:12:55

        Yeah, there is something-

    25. JRJoe Rogan1:12:55

        ... Google will do it for you.

    26. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:12:56

        Yeah. Though you, you hate for Google to have one more thing over us, right?

    27. JRJoe Rogan1:13:00

        (laughs)

    28. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:13:00

        It's like not enough that they should control nine tenths of our life.

    29. JRJoe Rogan1:13:04

        Yeah.

    30. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:13:05

        We're also going to let them control our communication. I remember as a kid reading... I used to love Doonesbury. Did you read Doonesbury?

Episode duration: 2:38:30