How to Convince the World of Bulls**t & Evil - Malcolm Gladwell

1. 0:00 – 6:36

   Does the Death Penalty Reflect America’s True Values?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Talk to me about the history of the death penalty, fettered past that I didn't realize existed.

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:06

      Oh, my goodness. In what country? In, in America. Yes. Um, well, uh, this is a subject we dig into in this new, uh, series we've done on re- revisionist history, the Alabama murders, and, you know, the, the history of the death penalty in the United States is not a... In other countries, there's a... The battle is essentially about whether you should have it or not and in America, the battle is really, uh, we'd like the states to have the right to do it, but they have to do it humanely. It's this absurd position where the, at issue is not the morality of the state taking someone's life. The issue is that the state should take someone's life in a manner that seems consistent with the values of America. So, there is this, you know, the, used to be the case, you know, it was the, it was the, way back when, it was w- we, we hung you publicly. Then we moved on from that and then was the firing squad which was considered to be more humane. And then they moved on from the firing squad and they went to the electric chair and then from the electric chair, um, they went to, uh, lethal injection and then from lethal injection, they have now gone on, uh, to, uh, uh, to, um, nitrogen gas, to asphyxiating you with nitrogen gas. So that-

   3. CWChris Williamson1:32

      I didn't know about the, I didn't know about the most recent, the iPhone 17 Pro Max that came out for-

   4. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:36

      This is the latest wrinkle, right. So they've been-

   5. CWChris Williamson1:39

      Okay.

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:39

      ... and each stage, the intention was, formally, the intention was to make the death more humane and, um, certain for the person being executed. But in fact, the intention was to make the process of execution more acceptable to the public.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:58

      Less gruesome.

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:58

      So they're looking for the, for the way that, the form of executing somebody that, um, is easiest to watch. So you can imagine how hanging would be, uh, quite a spectacle, you know, disturbing. But you wouldn't take your child to a hanging. Um, y- you, uh, you know, the, uh, uh, execution by firing squad might be a little less dramatic. But certainly, the big jump was the electric chair was gruesome. I mean, somebody's whose brains were literally being fried in front of your eyes and their eyes were popping out and things. So that really was, that was up until the 1970s and the move to lethal injection was the idea was that we, um, can put people down the way we put down horses and that's really quite calm and it seem, appears at least to be kind of calm and humane and it's done by medical people and it's all very kind of, um... So that's, that's the kind of like, it's a very curious, peculiarly American approach to this subject.

   9. CWChris Williamson3:05

      Mm. And what is the, what's the current status of that in the US?

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell3:13

       Well, a guy, we get into this in the podcast, a very brilliant Canadian like me, um, a guy named Joel Zivet, um, who's a anesthesiologist and intensive care specialist with a kind of side interest in the death penalty. Uh, people have been using lethal injection for 40 years, since the late '70s. It's become the, the standard for if you wanted to kill somebody and you're a state government in the US, you, you inject them with three drugs. Uh, the first is a, uh, a sedative. Um, the second is, calms you down, uh, the second is a paralytic which just kind of like keeps you in one place, and the third is potassium chloride which stops your heart. And that's, the idea was that you got calmed down, you were buckled in, and, and, uh, the, the paralytic just kept you still and then we stopped your heart with potassium chloride. Um, and what Joel Zivet discovers is that's not how you die during, um, uh, in the, in, in, um, lethal injection. You die because the first thing you get, which is typically some kind of barbiturate, the sedative, so alters your, the, um, the, uh, pH, the acidity of your blood that essentially your lungs are on fire and burn up and you can't cry out in pain because you've been given a paralytic and so you spend a few minutes in exquisite agony as your... Imagine pouring, um, uh, acid, imagine forcing someone to drink a cup of acid. That's essentially what we're doing. And then I give you, I give you another drug which makes it impossible for you to, to be heard as you silently scream. That's lethal injection. And so ever since he, he, he showed the world that, there's some, there's been this idea that, oh, maybe we should, um, move to asphyxiating people with nitrogen.

   11. CWChris Williamson5:18

       Sounds humane comparatively.

   12. MGMalcolm Gladwell5:20

       It's, it is... Honestly when I was doing this, our podcast is all about this, uh, this murder that took place in Alabama. And all of these issues come up in the course of as a state tries to figure out how to, what to do with killers and it is the most... Not only is- are the details of these things just so bizarrely macabre. I don't know, h- how do you pronounce that word? I never know. Macabre?

   13. CWChris Williamson5:43

       I think macabre.

   14. MGMalcolm Gladwell5:44

       Do you say macabre?

   15. CWChris Williamson5:45

       Uh, yeah, yeah.

   16. MGMalcolm Gladwell5:47

       Th- the details are so absurdly that way, but then what's additional is that there is simply no interest in any of these details on the part of we- we're talking about a case that happened in Alabama. The state government of Alabama is just completely indifferent to all these... They don't even, like-They don't even seem to care what happens to somebody that they're executing. They're just kind of... And that was the kind of, one of the many revelations in doing this little miniseries we did called the Alabama Murders, was the kind of, um... It's almost as if the, for the state of Alabama and other states, um, the cruelty is the point. That telling them that what they thought was humane actually isn't, doesn't diminish their motivation and enthusiasm. It seems to increase it.

2. 6:36 – 13:37

   Why the US Still Clings to Capital Punishment

   1. CWChris Williamson6:36

      We're gonna have this come up with the young person that shot Charlie Kirk, it sounds like. I think the day that the, uh, head chief of police, uh, did a press conference, the f- one of the first things that he said was, "We will be seeking the death penalty."

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell6:56

      Yes. Utah is a state... Now, Utah has used, where Charlie Kirk was killed, um, has, in some cases, gone back to the firing squad.

   3. CWChris Williamson7:05

      Oh, wow. Okay. Real-

   4. MGMalcolm Gladwell7:07

      We could pull that out. We could pull that out again. Now, I don't know-

   5. CWChris Williamson7:10

      Nostalgia. Brilliant.

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell7:11

      Yeah. A little, um-

   7. CWChris Williamson7:12

      Play the old stuff. Play the old songs again.

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell7:14

      (laughs) I- it is, it is very like, you know, the band from the '70s playing its hits. Um, now, I don't know. In some states they... It's considered, this is again very American, you get to choose your method. I don't know whether that's the case in Utah.

   9. CWChris Williamson7:29

      What would you choose?

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell7:31

       Uh, firing squad.

   11. CWChris Williamson7:33

       I'd w- I'd go firing squad too. It's a pretty heroic way to-

   12. MGMalcolm Gladwell7:37

       Yeah. There's, there's, um... The ru- the one that I would really want is guillotine.

   13. CWChris Williamson7:44

       Oh, that's epic. Yeah. Yeah.

   14. MGMalcolm Gladwell7:47

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson7:47

       And then have your head placed somewhere magnificent for the rest of time?

   16. MGMalcolm Gladwell7:51

       Well, you know, the, the thing about guillotine was... You know, guillotine, at the time, was considered this great progressive innovation. It wasn't... It was intended to be a vast improvement over, like, tying people to the wheels of wagons and running them over. It was like, "Look, we're a civilized society. We should be able to kill people quickly and cleanly." And so the guy, the guy who g- who gave the guillotine his name, whatever his name was-

   17. CWChris Williamson8:21

       Monsieur Guillotine.

   18. MGMalcolm Gladwell8:22

       ... you know, Jacques Guillotine.

   19. CWChris Williamson8:23

       Yeah.

   20. MGMalcolm Gladwell8:23

       That was his, his whole thing is that, you know, "We're, we're a civilized country. This is... We're Frenchmen of the 18th century. You know, we can't be playing these games."

   21. CWChris Williamson8:34

       (laughs)

   22. MGMalcolm Gladwell8:34

       Um, so, like, I would... Uh, g- there is something to be said-

   23. CWChris Williamson8:37

       We must chop their head off with a, a big blade.

   24. MGMalcolm Gladwell8:41

       Yeah. There's something to be said for, um... I mean, it's an abs- you know, the very fact that we're having this conversation is, is absurd, right? Like, w- wh- why, why are states killing people? Like, I, does it... Because it just seems like this just... The idea that we're entertaining this conversation in 2025 is slightly incredible. It's a sign of just how strange America... I mean, you're new to America. This, does this not strike you as just being bizarre?

   25. CWChris Williamson9:08

       Uh, not particularly. I think that the desire for retribution has existed throughout every sort of human's, uh, thought processes, whether they're modern or, or, or, uh, from five decades ago or forever ago. Um, you know, is it capital punishment? Is that the, the sort of the title for this kind-

   26. MGMalcolm Gladwell9:28

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson9:28

       ... of a thing? Right. Yeah. Um, uh, mutiny, you know, pirates on pirate ships, stuff like that. There is this sense of, um... There is a particular line that if you cross it, uh, the threshold is you pay the ultimate price, which is that you no longer get to live. I, I understand... My point is, I understand the psychological compulsion from humans. It doesn't surprise me. Do we think... Would I have thought that in the modern world, we would've transcended that in the same way as we transcended shitting in the street and, and, uh, open warfare that you just do on your neighbor because you don't like him or something?

   28. MGMalcolm Gladwell10:07

       Mm-hmm.

   29. CWChris Williamson10:07

       Um, yeah, in, in some ways, but I think the, the compulsion, the desire to do it makes, makes, makes total sense to me. And you get this lock in from the past. Uh, there is, I, I would imagine, an argument, a sort of a twofold argument. Uh, one being, uh, this person did something so heinous that they do not deserve to live anymore. Uh, and secondly, uh, this is a deterrent to other people who would consider doing this in future. Um, one... Uh, oddly enough, one is... The second one is very sort of utilitarian. Um, and the first one is actually kind of like karmic and astral. And, uh-

   30. MGMalcolm Gladwell10:50

       Mm-hmm.
3. 13:37 – 26:37

   How Social Influence Has Shifted Since Malcolm’s First Book

   1. CWChris Williamson13:37

      that's correct. Uh, speaking of trajectories over time, do you think that The Tipping Point, um, aged with difficulty, like lots changed in the information landscape from then until now. I'm, I'm, I'm particularly interested in sort of what you didn't or couldn't foresee, what y- what happened that you couldn't have predicted in that way, which obviously led to The Revenge Of?

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell14:02

      Yeah. I mean, we're talking about two books written 25 years apart. My first book, The Tipping Point, my last book, Revenge or The Tipping Point. When I wrote the first book, the really, the internet is really, uh, just in its infancy. Uh, and all of social media doesn't exist, and the Cold War has just ended and we're absurdly optimistic about the future of the world. And I'm 30 some odd years old (clears throat) and, you know, my world is, my, my life is ahead of me. And then 25 years later when I write the sequel, um, I don't know whether the, the dynamics that I'm unders- that I'm, uh, describing in the original Tipping Point are that, you know, the simple idea, "The spread of ideas can usefully be, uh, uh, understood as similar to the spread of a disease, that the same contagious principles that govern epidemics of disease govern epidemics of ideas." That idea was a novel idea in the year 2000. Today it's a commonplace idea. So in essence, it's not that the ideas of the book became dated, it's that they became commonplace, right? Now we, we, everything's viral now, we talked about that. We, and when, whenever we use that, when we say something on the, on, you know, Twitter has become viral, we are using the language of epidemics of disease. We have, we have adopted that metaphor as our own. Um, so the task ... So when I was sat down to write this kind of sequel to my first book, it wasn't that I was saying, "Okay, I got it wrong and this is what I missed," I mean, I, I, there's a little bit of that in the book. It was more like, "Okay, the task is different now. We've all accepted this metaphor. Let's dig a little deeper and try and understand what it means."

   3. CWChris Williamson15:59

      Do you feel like a Cassandra in that context, being able to ... Virality and contagion.

   4. MGMalcolm Gladwell16:06

      Mm-hmm. Well, not re- ... I mean, I feel there's something kind of very self-regarding about calling oneself a Cassandra.

   5. CWChris Williamson16:14

      I, like, I love, I love the question. I love the question because everyone's, um, desire, this compulsion, the temptation to see yourself as the prescient clairvoyant that could have, "I would've said it before." I think it, it speaks, it speaks to you that you're like, "Ah, fuck, you know, like I just kind of said it then."

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell16:30

      No, 'cause I got the ... Listen, academics were talking about, I got this idea from ...

   7. CWChris Williamson16:34

      Yeah.

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell16:34

      Sociologists were using this metaphor in this way. It wasn't like I somehow saw it, I just kind of stumbled on this idea and said, "I like, I love this idea. I think it's cool."

   9. CWChris Williamson16:41

      It's all about who popularizes it, not who came up with it. Uh, so I'm, uh, okay, I'm, I'm, I'm interested in how your view of influencers evolved-

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell16:50

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson16:50

       ... since The Tipping Point. Obviously you're saying, uh, dynamics that you noticed back then are now very commonplace in terms of how people describe stuff now.

   12. MGMalcolm Gladwell16:58

       Mm-hmm.

   13. CWChris Williamson16:59

       So that's something that's the same.

   14. MGMalcolm Gladwell17:00

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson17:00

       What's changed? What's, what's differed? What's evolved?

   16. MGMalcolm Gladwell17:05

       So we, one of the ideas that I spent a lot of time with in the original Tipping Point and in the, and in the sequel is this, is y- just the observation that social influence is asymmetrical. That, and this is true of epidemics of disease, many kinds of epidemics of disease, which is that, if you look at COVID, um, every con- every person infected with COVID does not carry an equal risk of infecting someone else. The job of infecting is done by about 5% of the population. That 5% might be 100 or even 1,000-fold more likely to pass on their infection to someone else than the rest of us. That's an asymmetry.

   17. CWChris Williamson17:45

       I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't know that.

   18. MGMalcolm Gladwell17:46

       Yeah. It's a massive asymmetry. That is very similar to the way ideas spread. If 100 of us think that Taylor Swift is a great singer, um, we are not equally responsible for spreading that news to the rest of the listening, music-loving public. There's gonna be four or five of us who do all the work, right? Who have, by virtue of their social position or their-... uh, or the kind of trust that people have in them or, uh, how socially connected they are. They can tell the world that soc- that this, this unknown artist named Ta- Taylor Swift is great. But if somebody is... If my mom listens to Taylor Swift in her nursing home, it... She's not... That... And loves her. That's not a consequential fact in the history of the trajectory of Taylor Swift, right?

   19. CWChris Williamson18:35

       Mm-hmm.

   20. MGMalcolm Gladwell18:35

       With all due respect to my mom. She's not like (laughs) ... She does not have her finger on the pulse of popular culture, but you can all... You can imagine that there are people who are, you know, massively social connected and have bonafides. There are people who when we want to know what to listen to, we, we listen to them, and if that person likes Taylor Swift, it really matters. That process, an asymmetry, which I was really fascinated with in the original Tipping Point, and that was t- dis- it's the great commonality between diseases and spreads of ideas. I think it's, that's gotten more marked in the... I think everything's asymmetrical now.

   21. CWChris Williamson19:11

       Mm-hmm.

   22. MGMalcolm Gladwell19:12

       I, you know, I... I- I- if you'd asked me 25 years ago, I would say that select kinds of contagious ideas have this pattern that... But many other, many other things are kind of like spread randomly or spread equally through the, through population. I don't... I think everything's asymmetrical now. I think that... I, I don't think you can find a phenomenon that isn't marked by the fact that 5% of the infected population is doing 90% of the work.

   23. CWChris Williamson19:39

       Why?

   24. MGMalcolm Gladwell19:42

       Because I think... I mean, here's an analogy which is before there's air travel, international air travel, so we're in the 19th century, and if you had a contagious disease, it could... It would spread to another country only if somebody got on a, on a passenger ship, crossed the ocean and-

   25. CWChris Williamson20:09

       Survived.

   26. MGMalcolm Gladwell20:09

       ... was still infectious at the time-

   27. CWChris Williamson20:10

       Yeah.

   28. MGMalcolm Gladwell20:10

       ... they got off the ship, right?

   29. CWChris Williamson20:12

       Yeah, yeah.

   30. MGMalcolm Gladwell20:12

       So things did move around the world, but they moved relatively slowly around the world. And-
4. 26:37 – 35:29

   What Spreads Faster: Drug Epidemics or Dangerous Ideas?

   1. CWChris Williamson26:37

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell26:37

      Yes.

   3. CWChris Williamson26:37

      Uh, you, you mentioned, uh, OxyContin there, um, opioids. Why is the OxyContin, Sackler family such a good through line case study literally, morally, pharmaceutically? Like w- what is it that they all bring together in, in one example?

   4. MGMalcolm Gladwell26:58

      Well, the... You have to understand that this, that OxyContin, the most infamous drug of the last 100 years, the drug that stopped, kicked off this opioid crisis in the United States that at its peak was claiming, whatever, 120,000 lives a year? I mean, unbelievable carnage. There's nothing particularly special about OxyContin. It's just a, it's a reworking of a drug, of drugs that have been around for years and years and years. They made it a little more powerful and they made its slow release, but it's not, it wasn't like it was some dramatic breakthrough. So in other words, OxyContin is not the product of some kind of innovative genius. What it is, is the product of, of, of a marketing innovation. That what they realized in... What, uh, uh, Purdue, the maker of OxyContin realized in the 1990s and early aughts as this epidemic had started, is that if you look at how a pain- an addictive painkiller is prescribed by doctors across the United States, there is a massive asymmetry. Most doctors don't prescribe it at all because they are doctors, they're aware of how dangerous opioids are, and they dramatically limit their patients' access to them. A very, very, very small group of doctors in a very, very specific parts of the country don't give a shit. And what, what, uh, what Purdue was able to do using the kinds of databases and, that we have now that we didn't have 20 years ago that track the prescribing habits of every doctor in America, is precisely identify and target the tiny fraction of doctors who didn't give a shit. That's how we got the opioid crisis.

   5. CWChris Williamson28:45

      Mm-hmm.

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell28:45

      It's, it's, uh, it is exactly what we're talking about. It's the mos- it's finding the, the swarm of mosquitoes, it's looking at the block in New York City where all the crime is. They, they found those doctors and they said, "We're gonna ignore every..." We're talking about 2,000 doctors out of the hundreds of thousands of doctors who could potentially have prescribed OxyContin. They find that, that group of 2,000 and they put all of their resources in trying to convince tho- those 2,000 people to prescribe as much OxyContin as is humanly possible. That is the entire... That's all you need to know about the o- about the opioid crisis, right?

   7. CWChris Williamson29:24

      Mm-hmm.

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell29:25

      It's just a ruthless application of this kind of asymmetry that we've been talking about.

   9. CWChris Williamson29:29

      Mm-hmm.

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell29:29

       Everyone else up to that point was under the illusion that, "If I wanna sell lots of a given drug, I gotta reach everybody." Right? "I need as many, uh, I need as many customers as possible, doctor customers as possible." And Purdue is like, "No, you don't. What? You're nuts. You need to focus on 2% of the population in order to make this thing take off." And that's, that's, that's like- that's how we get 220,000 deaths a year.

   11. CWChris Williamson29:55

       Is there a way that an epidemic of drugs differs from an epidemic of ideas, or even, I guess, an epidemic of viruses? Do, do ideas spread in the same way or is there something else going on?

   12. MGMalcolm Gladwell30:09

       It's... Well, you know, I mean, I'm hesitant. One should always be hesitant about making sweeping statements about-

   13. CWChris Williamson30:16

       Especially when the word epidemic is being used.

   14. MGMalcolm Gladwell30:17

       Yes. Yes. I think that the... I would say that the commonalities are greater than...... than we, than we imagine.

   15. CWChris Williamson30:26

       Mm-hmm.

   16. MGMalcolm Gladwell30:27

       Um, obviously you don't, you don't die in the same numbers from a noxious idea that you do from a, from a dangerously addictive, um, opioid. But, um, so there's that. Uh, and ideas, there are some weird differences, which is when I was doing my book and I was talking to all these people who studied the opioid crisis, the thing that they did, couldn't understand was why it lasted so long. It should have... Normally, when you look at an epidemic of disease or that's killing lots of people is they burn out really quickly. The crack epidemic in the '90s, doesn't, doesn't actually last that long. Um, the HIV, uh, well the... We get a, really get a, uh, a really powerful, uh, medical intervention early on, but HIV doesn't, in the Western world, does not hang around for decades. It gets tamed pretty quickly. The flu comes every fall and it's gone by the spring, right? You're not... People, large numbers of people aren't coming down with... But opioids linger. That was what was so weird. It goes on for 25 years. It's still going on. It's finally starting to fall, but it's at a high level 'cause o- it moves from opioids to heroin, and then heroin to prescription drugs, to heroin, and then heroin to fentanyl, and then fentanyl to mixtures of all three, and just keeps going. And all these people who study this for a living, they're observing this and they keep waiting for it to burn out, right?

   17. CWChris Williamson31:55

       Mm-hmm.

   18. MGMalcolm Gladwell31:55

       Like there's a, there's a well-known generational mechanism where if your dad or mom is addicted, this happened with crack, the kids of people whose parents were addicted to crack did not touch crack. You, you saw what happened and you were like, "I want no part of it." Right?

   19. CWChris Williamson32:13

       Mm-hmm.

   20. MGMalcolm Gladwell32:13

       Um, and people-

   21. CWChris Williamson32:13

       It's interesting with the, the, the, uh, genetic predisposition that would be carried through as well. So, what you have to assume there is the environmental, like inverse role model effect is so powerful-

   22. MGMalcolm Gladwell32:28

       It overcomes.

   23. CWChris Williamson32:28

       ... that it's got escape velocity to get over you having the raw building block genetics of an addict.

   24. MGMalcolm Gladwell32:37

       Yeah, yeah, really interesting, really.

   25. CWChris Williamson32:37

       Yeah, that's impressive.

   26. MGMalcolm Gladwell32:39

       I mean, you see a lesser version of this with, I mean, alcoholism clearly runs in families, but I think that might be because, to use the same kind of model that you're talking about, that there, uh, people can be functioning alcoholics for their entire lives. And so the kind of lesson that the child is receiving is a little bit more mixed. With crack, you literally saw your parents disintegrate in front of your eyes. It's a really, really powerful concentrated lesson that this is something you stay away from.

   27. CWChris Williamson33:12

       Yeah.

   28. MGMalcolm Gladwell33:12

       If the, if the, if the natural path of alcoholism was that one of your parents starts drinking when you're 12 and they're dead by 16, then I would imagine that the alcoholism would not run in families in the same way.

   29. CWChris Williamson33:26

       Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's fascinating. There's this idea called the, the region beta paradox, uh, things that are not bad enough to be bad, but not good enough to be good, living in a house that's in an all right location and the rent's not too expensive, but there's mold and your landlord's a dick. Or being in a relationship with somebody and they're not abusive, but you're really not that in love, and maybe they're cheating on you actually and you're not too sure. All of these people would be worse if their situations... Uh, all these people would be better off if their situations were worse.

   30. MGMalcolm Gladwell33:55

       Were worse. Oh, that's fascinating.
5. 35:29 – 43:28

   How Parental Behaviours Shape Who We Become

   1. CWChris Williamson35:29

      one. Um, another thing I'm interested in, uh, this parental contagion idea. I've been having a lot of, um, conversations recently about embryo selection, IVF embryo selection, um, polygenic risk scores and stuff like that, and the potential, the potential sort of tiger mom implications pre-birth, um, that could roll back. Uh, so I'm interested in, uh, this parental contagion idea that, that-

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell35:57

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson35:58

      ... you talked about.

   4. MGMalcolm Gladwell36:01

      Well, I'm a little bit of a skeptic on that kind of polygenic screen- screening 'cause the things that you're interested in are the ones that are impossible to screen for, right? So intelligent, what is... Intelligence, if, if it's definable at all, is probably the result of an unknowable interaction between so many thousands of genes that God knows how you select for it. Um, and then the other thing is like we, if you don't have a handle on the ways in which a genetic...... susceptibility interacts with environment, then you could select for something and it could all come to naught, right? Like when I think about what intelligence is or what, what it, what the kind of determinants of success are, they are, there's so much, A, randomness, and B, so much of the, uh, so much of it is about motivation. And motivation is the least genetically determined of all the, um, character traits. Conscientiousness is the few, you know, the, what's the big five? Conscientiousness, neuroticism, uh, openness to experience, uh-

   5. CWChris Williamson37:18

      Agreeableness and extroversion.

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell37:19

      ... agreeableness and extroversion. Um, conscientiousness is the least genetically determined of all those. Extroversion is the most.

   7. CWChris Williamson37:26

      Is that right?

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell37:26

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson37:27

      Wow.

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell37:27

       And that's because conscientiousness is powerfully environmentally determined. If you like your job and you like your boss and you like your co-workers, you'll work hard. If you hate them all, you won't. Whereas, you know, if... An extrovert in a, in a room full of, of, of, uh, of sour people is still an extrovert. They're still yucking it up. Like they're not... So you're relatively impervious to that. And I, I've come to the opinion that when it comes to explaining performance, c- conscientiousness and motivation are way, way, way, way, way, way more important than we realize. And if that's the thing that's the least genetically determined, then what are we doing here?

   11. CWChris Williamson38:07

       Mm-hmm. Yeah. I-

   12. MGMalcolm Gladwell38:08

       Maybe-

   13. CWChris Williamson38:09

       I mean, I, I suppose the argument would be trying to gain 1% or 0.1% wherever we can, the same as playing classic music to your unborn baby while it's in the womb because it's going to help the brain complexity of the brain development or, you know-

   14. MGMalcolm Gladwell38:27

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson38:27

       ... people are... The same reason that I use a temperature controlled mattress duvet that tracks my HRV and I try to not eat three hours before I... You know what I mean? Like people are, are trying to-

   16. MGMalcolm Gladwell38:38

       Are you on the H- Are you on the HRV train?

   17. CWChris Williamson38:39

       I am on the HRV train.

   18. MGMalcolm Gladwell38:40

       Are you on the-

   19. CWChris Williamson38:40

       Look at me. Who do you think is on the HRV train?

   20. MGMalcolm Gladwell38:42

       You've got it.

   21. CWChris Williamson38:43

       Yes, Whoop brothers. Whoop brothers indeed.

   22. MGMalcolm Gladwell38:45

       Whoop, baby.

   23. CWChris Williamson38:45

       Yeah, um-

   24. MGMalcolm Gladwell38:46

       Whoop, Whoop. We could do a whole side of thing on Whoop. I'm a Whoopssessive. Whoop, its chief function for me is, sorry, this is a digression.

   25. CWChris Williamson38:54

       Yeah.

   26. MGMalcolm Gladwell38:55

       The sleep score, really what it is, is I think I had a shitty night, and then Whoop tells me I didn't. This happened last night. My daughter wakes me up at four o'clock in the morning, "Daddy, Daddy, I wanna, uh..." And I can't get back to sleep and I wake up dreading my Whoop score. Whoop said I had a great night of sleep and I've been fine ever since. (laughs)

   27. CWChris Williamson39:14

       But what about the gaslighting in the other direction? That's what you need. Like what happens when you think you had a great night's sleep, you wake up and Whoop-

   28. MGMalcolm Gladwell39:21

       Almost never happens.

   29. CWChris Williamson39:22

       Oh.

   30. MGMalcolm Gladwell39:22

       It's only, for me, it only ever works if I think I had a great night, I had a great night.
6. 43:28 – 48:00

   Why We’re So Quick to Blame Our Parents

   1. CWChris Williamson43:28

      I didn't know mine either. Can I give you... I, I came up with this idea a couple of weeks ago. I want to... Uh, well, I'm going to give it to you.

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell43:33

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson43:33

      It's my show, I can do what I want. Um, but, uh, it's called the parental attribution error. We love blaming our parents. It's practically a rite of passage in modern psychology, but there's a double standard buried in the trend. We attribute what's broken in us to our upbringing while claiming what's strong in us is ours alone. Call it the parental attribution error, like the fundamental attribution error, where we blame others' actions on their character but excuse our own by pointing to circumstance. This is a skewed way of assigning credit and blame. We externalize the bad, internalize the good. We're quick to blame and slow to credit. You say that you're anxiously attached because no one held you when you needed it, but isn't your ability to be alone with your emotions and to endure discomfort quietly also forged in the same crucible? You blame your parents for pushing you too hard in school, convinced that it made you perfe- perfectionistic and neurotic, but when was the last time you acknowledged that same pressure gave you ambition, discipline, and drive? You point to a childhood where mistakes weren't tolerated as the reason f- that you fear failure, but what about your meticulousness and your standards and your refusal to phone it in? Basically, as far as I can see, people are more than happy to lay the blame for their shortcomings at the feet of their parents but very rarely lay the credit for their victories thereto. And I just... I thought that was a, a, an interesting asymmetry.

   4. MGMalcolm Gladwell44:49

      Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's like a, that is a... It- it- it's funny that you... That is a, a, a beautiful allegory to the fundamental attribution error.

   5. CWChris Williamson44:59

      Mm-hmm.

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell44:59

      That there are... We make... I, I have my own version of that, which is what I call the, um, asymmetrical parental attribution error.

   7. CWChris Williamson45:08

      Okay.

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell45:08

      I love asymmetries.

   9. CWChris Williamson45:09

      Mm-hmm.

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell45:09

       And that is that we indulge in that, but typically when we indulge in that, we only ever make reference to one of our parents at a time. So you don't say, "I got this bad from my mom and this bad from my- my father." What you do is you're in a moment or a stage where you say, "Well, you're just blaming Dad." And then years pass, and you flip, and you just blame Mom for-

   11. CWChris Williamson45:31

       Hmm.

   12. MGMalcolm Gladwell45:31

       ... for a while.

   13. CWChris Williamson45:31

       Yeah.

   14. MGMalcolm Gladwell45:31

       And then you flip. It's at only e- only one time. You can only hold one disparaging parent in your-

   15. CWChris Williamson45:38

       Oh, right. Okay. That's brilliant. It's like, um...

   16. MGMalcolm Gladwell45:41

       ... in your mind at a time.

   17. CWChris Williamson45:42

       I remember Scott Alexander had this idea. He called it thinking in superpositions, right? That you could have two worlds exist in your mind at the same time.

   18. MGMalcolm Gladwell45:50

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson45:50

       But when you're talking about the parents, it's like you have to collapse the superposition down. Like, the, the uncertainty principle isn't able to exist. Only one parent can exist in your mind at one time. You know, it's never the interaction between the bookish father and the outgoing mother, and I am somewhere in between.

   20. MGMalcolm Gladwell46:05

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson46:05

       It's like when you're not wanting to be outgoing, it's like, "Well, Dad did tell you..." And when you can't chill out, it's like, "Well, Mom did say..."

   22. MGMalcolm Gladwell46:11

       It's binary.

   23. CWChris Williamson46:12

       Yeah.

   24. MGMalcolm Gladwell46:12

       And what's, what's... There are many interesting things about this if you... Particularly now that I'm a, a, a parent. The, um, the... One is that from a very early age, and this is an obvious dumb observation, but it's f- nonetheless one that I've s- been thinking about. There is a, um... Hypothetically, you might think that the child, particularly the young child, thinks of their parents as a unit. "My parents don't want me to do this. My parents..." But in fact, they never do. From the very beginning, they're distinguishing between the father and the mother or whatever. They're, they're... And we continue to do this later i- t- you know, I think this becomes e- e- even more kind of pronounced as we get older. And it's a... It is... In the beginning, it's understandable because you're correctly, as a toddler, understanding that your parents relate to you independently and using different strategies. But you are, to your point, you're completely missing the extent to which it is the interaction between your parents that also fundamentally shapes you. You're just blind to it. Like, they... Their... The consensus position of Joyce and Graham Gladwell was X, and X also had an effect on me, right? Not just Joyce and Graham individually.

   25. CWChris Williamson47:29

       Well, how many people when they get together are different people to who they are when they're apart? You... Uh, with- with- with some of my friends, there's- there's a version of both of us that comes out, and maybe it's even more us, right? It feels closer to our sense of self than, uh, I am when I'm on my own or with other people that I maybe even know better, but there's something... Or the reverse. I- I'm around some person, and around them, all I can do is be bitter, or resentful, or I think small-minded things, or I see the world in scarcity mindset or whatever. Um,

7. 48:00 – 55:51

   Why are Stories More Infectious Than Fact?

   1. CWChris Williamson48:00

      gi- given the fact you, you talk a lot in, uh, stories, which I, I think is why, um, it's very easy to read your writing. When it comes to the medium of communicating, uh, infectious ideas, noxious or- or benevolent, I guess, um, talk to me about the landscape of how storytelling infects, uh, differently than facts and sort of how, how, how that plays together 'cause I think in the modern world people assume that people... You- you should be convinced by the facts. Follow the facts.

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell48:39

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson48:39

      Follow the science. Um, but I'm not convinced that that's the way that the human brain works, especially when you're trying to...... uh, change opinions, fuel empathy-

   4. MGMalcolm Gladwell48:50

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson48:50

      ... uh, even fuel hate as well.

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell48:52

      Yeah. Well, the story does a lot better job of eliciting emotion, uh, and that's enormously important obviously in, in, um, anchoring an idea and making and giving an idea leverage over somebody's, um, thinking or feeling. Um, they, uh, the, the story embedded, this is a kind of more subtle point, but I, you know, a story to my mind is a narrative that, uh, defies or b- a narrative that betrays the audience's expectations. That's what a story is. I- the reason I will, why do I, why did I watch, mm, HBO's Task? Finished it on Sunday. I watched it every week for seven weeks. Why did I keep watching? Well, it was interesting, I needed to find a TV show to watch, blah, blah, blah. But fundamentally, I didn't know how it was gonna end, right? So I knew if you had asked me before the final episode how do I think it's gonna end, I would've given you six possibilities. Turns out almost all of them were wrong. So the story, what made it satisfying to watch that through to the end was that it did not conform to my expectation, and I knew that, and that's why I was drawn to it, right? I knew that it was pointless to figure out, try and figure out how it was gonna end. And all stories, good stories, good songs, good... all have that quality of betraying our expectation, and we know that going in and that's why we want it. We, there's something fundamentally human about wanting our expectations to be betrayed. That's why we laugh at jokes, right?

   7. CWChris Williamson50:38

      Mm.

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell50:38

      That's why we, there's so many things we do. Why would... think about it, why would somebody pay an enormous sum of money to sit in an arena and have just somebody, one person up on stage just tell these abbreviated anecdotes about their life or the world? And the answer is because it's just a constant rush of betrayed expectations, right? Like there's a, I always watch these little Instagram snippets of, um, Nate Bargatzi, um, and, uh, is that, am I pronouncing his name right? Bargatzi? Bargatzi?

   9. CWChris Williamson51:10

      I've only ever seen it written down. (laughs)

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell51:12

       Yeah, so who I think is very, very, very, very funny in a kind of... but his betrayals are so beautifully done and so subtle, and so 'cause he's working with this incredibly narrow template of he's telling these super, kind of, uh, prosaic and benign stories about family life, right? So you, and so you, your expectation is nothing can be funny or happen here, right? He's, he's taken so many things off the table. There's gonna be no, you know, dangerous, edgy commentary. There's no politics. There's no sex. There's no violence. There's no swearing. There's no nothing. He's not gonna rag on anybody. He's not gonna make fun of anybody. So you're like, so we've narrowed it and that's why he's so inviting and we're like, "Okay, this dude is, uh, trying to thread the needle here. He's gonna do something, he's gonna betray me after taking 90% of possible-

   11. CWChris Williamson52:09

       (laughs)

   12. MGMalcolm Gladwell52:09

       ... objects of betrayal off the s- off the table," right? And then he pulls it off, and you're like, "Oh my God, that's..." And so you laugh way out of proportion to the, to, to the, to the quality of the joke.

   13. CWChris Williamson52:19

       Mm-hmm.

   14. MGMalcolm Gladwell52:20

       I mean, the joke is it's, the joke itself is pretty mild, but the degree of difficulty is so great, that's what you're rewarding. You're like, "You did it, man." Like-

   15. CWChris Williamson52:29

       Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

   16. MGMalcolm Gladwell52:30

       ... you did not see that coming and you, you decided you were gonna paint in one color, right?

   17. CWChris Williamson52:34

       Mm-hmm.

   18. MGMalcolm Gladwell52:34

       That's like, and that's, that is the... So all of which is a long way of saying that a story is one of the few places where we are willing to change our mind, right? It's when we're, when we're talking about a betrayed expectation, we're talking about you change your mind. And fact, facts don't, people have no difficulty whatsoever dismissing facts, but the kind of subtle mind-changing that comes with a story is much harder to dismiss.

   19. CWChris Williamson53:04

       Dude, that's so great. That's such a, uh, such an interesting insight. Um, I had this conversation with Alex O'Connor who is a upcoming agnostic commentator, I guess, used to we would've called him an atheist a few years ago, but I don't think that's, that's kind of the in term anymore. Uh, and he's very pro-religion. He's, he's fascinated. He goes into every conversation with a, a, a theologist, uh, or a believer desperately hoping to believe on the other side. Um, he just-

   20. MGMalcolm Gladwell53:33

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson53:33

       ... has a very high bar for it and is educated in the counterarguments. And, um, he said, he said this real interesting thing that what we are asking people to do in the modern world is to ignore the types of information and persuasion which is most easily understood and believed in, story, myth, archetype, narrative, personification, uh, to dispense with that in place of stats, figures, numbers, charts, data, sterile, scientific, rational, matil- m- materialistic.

   22. MGMalcolm Gladwell54:09

       Mm-hmm.

   23. CWChris Williamson54:09

       And he goes, "Is it any surprise (laughs) that you can't sort of rip people across? You can't bludgeon them over the head with just more bar charts, um, in the hopes that you... uh, and, and then shame them for not believing, right?"

   24. MGMalcolm Gladwell54:28

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson54:28

       The thing which is most believable to you is the thing which you're not supposed to believe, and the thing which is least understandable and least salient to you is the thing that you're now sp- o- supposed to put all of your faith in. And again, asymmetries. There's asymmetry between the power of story and the power of statistics.

   26. MGMalcolm Gladwell54:44

       Mm-hmm.

   27. CWChris Williamson54:44

       You know, d- uh, Shapiro's got that famous, um, "Facts don't care about your feelings." Like, it could not be more backward.... it's like feelings really do not care about your facts at all, especially if that feeling has come from a fable, right, or a story.

   28. MGMalcolm Gladwell54:57

       Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Although, he's using it in a slightly ... That actually ... That's super interesting, on top of that, but he is using that in a slightly, uh, different context, which is that ... What he's saying is that you are really upset right now over something-

   29. CWChris Williamson55:15

       Mm-hmm.

   30. MGMalcolm Gladwell55:16

       ... is not, does not mean that the, the underlying thing is somehow, um, uh, has been kind of, uh, existentially disabled.
8. 55:51 – 1:02:34

   Is the Trans Athlete Debate Worthy of Headlines?

   1. CWChris Williamson55:51

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell55:51

      I'm saying that-

   3. CWChris Williamson55:52

      I saw that you, uh, I saw you made headlines last month-

   4. MGMalcolm Gladwell55:54

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson55:54

      ... about trans athletes. I imagine that was thrilling for you.

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell55:57

      Mm-hmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson55:58

      Do you see a tipping point dynamic going on there?

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell56:03

      I think it's already tipped. I mean, I don't ... This is one of the most puzzling... Let me just say parenthetically that that was one of the strangest public controversies I've ever been a part of. I was describing... I was the moderator on a panel (laughs) on a ch- on ... I was just describing my experience as a moderator, a moderated panel between a pro-trans participation and an anti-trans pertition, partition person, and I'm trying to elicit a fair argument. Four years pass and I'm on a podcast out of Johannesburg with one of the participants and I just think ... I said, "There was a moment in that discussion where I failed as a moderator. I didn't do a good job. There was a moment where I should have moderated." Moderating is difficult. Ever, ever moderated in your life?

   9. CWChris Williamson56:47

      Yeah.

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell56:47

       Particularly on that topic? So, yeah, that's all I said, and then like the whole thing went ... And I was like, I did not, I didn't, I didn't recognize any of ... Usually when you're involved in a controversy, you recognize the controversy. I did not recognize the controversy. (laughs) I was like, "What are they talking about?" This-

   11. CWChris Williamson57:02

       You wouldn't, you wouldn't have predicted this in advance?

   12. MGMalcolm Gladwell57:04

       No. (laughs) It's like, "What are they talking about? As a moderator," no one ever mentioned the word moderator. Like I ... It sort of changes when you know that I was the moderator, right?

   13. CWChris Williamson57:12

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   14. MGMalcolm Gladwell57:13

       Anyway, uh, has it ... It's already tipped. Uh, this is ... But wait, this is the most, one of the most ridiculous, uh, subjects in the following sense, um, that most people, myself included, would give their 100% approval, support for the trans agenda. We've ... The idea that we would be discriminating against a class of people over this particular characteristic is absurd and offensive, right? But I think the ... This last random thing that's thrown into the agenda that says, "Oh, and by the way, a, someone who is biologically male should be able to compete against biological females," is deeply puzzling to a lot of people, right? They're like, "What does that have to do with ... It's weird. Like, what's it doing there?"

   15. CWChris Williamson58:06

       Mm-hmm.

   16. MGMalcolm Gladwell58:07

       I don't think ... And I think most people are in, wholeheartedly in support of the agenda and just say that last item, which by the way, it tr- ... It only involves like a dozen people in the (laughs) entire, the United States, like it's so hypothetical. It's like most people just say, "Why are you adding that? You're just, you're just antagonizing, you're giving fuel to the, to the right." By the way, during the election, what is the part of the trans agenda that the Republicans hammered again and again and again? Participation in sports. That's what it came down to. So you're giving your enemy a weapon, a b- you know, to use against you over what? A dozen ... A hypothetical case involving a small number of people. Like, so that's why I find the whole thing puzzling. I don't, just don't, I don't understand. Why are we even talking about this? It doesn't ... Can you name, can you name a signal trans athlete, trans w- a trans woman competitive elite athlete who is currently being disadvantaged by this policy? Can you give me the name?

   17. CWChris Williamson59:10

       A trans woman athlete who's being disadvantaged?

   18. MGMalcolm Gladwell59:14

       Yeah, who's been locked out of competition with biological women as a result of the policies in elite sports.

   19. CWChris Williamson59:20

       I would imagine that Lia Thomas would be at some point. I feel like the, uh, the swimming association was one of the first bodies to have implemented this, so I-

   20. MGMalcolm Gladwell59:31

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson59:31

       ... I have to imagine if sh- they are going to continue to swim.

   22. MGMalcolm Gladwell59:36

       They, right now they can't swim.

   23. CWChris Williamson59:38

       So would that be a yes?

   24. MGMalcolm Gladwell59:40

       So you have-

   25. CWChris Williamson59:41

       I've got one.

   26. MGMalcolm Gladwell59:42

       Okay, go ahead. You got one.

   27. CWChris Williamson59:42

       I got one. Yes.

   28. MGMalcolm Gladwell59:44

       Can you g- can you get me another?

   29. CWChris Williamson59:45

       No.

   30. MGMalcolm Gladwell59:45

       (laughs) Okay. So that's number one.
9. 1:02:34 – 1:11:32

   Should College Athletes Get More Academic Flexibility?

   1. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:02:34

   2. CWChris Williamson1:02:34

      Mm. What was the story about the Harvard women's rugby team?

   3. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:02:39

      Oh, there I was interested in, uh, uh... Well, I was interested in this. There's a, there's a certain amount of Ivy League bashing that I've done over the course of my career that, um... Now that Ivy League bashing has, uh, become a, an agenda item in Washington, I'm a little more circumspect about my Ivy League bashing. But I was just intrigued in my book about the fact that, uh, this university in the United States that plays more varsity sports than any other is Harvard.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:03:13

      Huh.

   5. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:03:13

      Which pe- people think, "Oh, it must be some sports factory in the South or something." No, no, no, no. Ivy League schools have the most athletes, have the greatest share of athletes on... Recruited athletes on campus of any institution. My question is, well, why? That seems weird to me. Why would an elite academic institution go out of its way to have lots of athletes on campus and also give those athletes a tremendous break at admissions? So, huge controversy in America about, "Oh, don't you dare give an admissions break to Black people. That's wrong. That's a violation of... Uh, the Supreme Court says outlaws it," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, the exact same institutions are giving an equal, and in some cases, larger break to people who are really good at rowing or fencing. That strikes me as weird. Does that not strike you as weird? It's very strange. And why is one controversial and the o- the other one is not?

   6. CWChris Williamson1:04:12

      I would guess that in a meritocratic system people believe that something which is done based on merit, uh, is maybe more deserving somehow or justified in some sort of a way.

   7. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:04:29

      But the, but the... What relationship is there between the merit here and the role of an academic institution? It's like saying if you... If... Did you put on your app-... If you, if you were a high school kid applying to Harvard, is it useful to put on your application that you're a really good cook? The answer is-

   8. CWChris Williamson1:04:46

      Well, well, if, if cooking was something which was part of the competitive landscape for a varsity league college, perhaps that would be the case. I think when people look at sports, but I mean college sports is an entire category, right?

   9. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:05:00

      Yeah, but these sports are absurd. Like, it's fencing. No one's... It is... The rule-

   10. CWChris Williamson1:05:04

       I'd say that to a, say that to a fencer with this big long pokey, pokey thing on their face.

   11. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:05:07

       What is it? You'll come after me.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:05:09

       Yeah, yeah.

   13. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:05:09

       When I make the point about... I, I talk a lot about tennis, which I think is the most ludicrous example. Massive admissions breaks at elite schools for people who are tennis players. What is the definition of someone who's good enough to play Division 1 tennis in America? That they spend their entire lives on a tennis court. Why do you want at your school someone who's not even participating in the undergraduate experience? They're just practicing their backhand. What is, what is so special about that solitary, utterly, uh, uh, uh, boring activity that merits them getting a admissions break that is equal or greater to the break that you give to somebody who is part of a historically disadvantaged minority?

   14. CWChris Williamson1:05:49

       I was gonna say, is there something more special about somebody who's Black than somebody who can play tennis well?

   15. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:05:55

       Uh, someone who is, someone who is a product of, uh, several centuries of racism in the United States absolutely has a moral claim on an admissions break that is an order of magnitude greater than someone who has spent their entire adolescence at a tennis academy in Florida hitting forehands.

   16. CWChris Williamson1:06:15

       What if they also play tennis? Black tennis players are the rarest of them all, you know?

   17. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:06:20

       Yeah. There's not a lot of them. That's, you know... Well, tennis, being good at tennis is a linear function of how much money your parents have. So, you would expect that the wealthiest, uh, uh, ethnicities in the United States would have the most tennis players.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:06:34

       Interesting question on that. Um, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz wrote a great book about, uh, was it who owns the NBA? Who Wins the NBA? Something like that. And, uh, he did a data scientist, used AI to help him write this book in 30 days. It's brilliant, and, uh, the most common name of N, uh, of NBA players, the top five-

   19. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:06:56

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CWChris Williamson1:06:56

       ... it's like Michael, John.

   21. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:07:00

       Mm-hmm.

   22. CWChris Williamson1:07:00

       They're very, uh, middle class names, and the reason is that even in the sport of basketball, one that people assume is going to sweep up these-

   23. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:07:09

       Oh, no. Not

   24. NANarrator1:07:09

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:07:09

       ... poor kids from the streets and keep... Deposit them into the NBA. Uh, now LeBron, uh, born to a 16-year-old single mother, um-... it is, uh, remarkable for, uh, how much-

   26. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:07:23

       It's the exception that proves the rule.

   27. CWChris Williamson1:07:24

       Yes. Yeah, how much of an outlier he is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   28. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:07:26

       Because I mean, if you are LeBron, you can beat the system, but not anyone else. No, it's-

   29. CWChris Williamson1:07:32

       Well, I, I wonder how many LeBrons have been born after LeBron now. That's my question, whether or not we're gonna see a ton of LeBrons in the NBA in a couple of, uh, decades time.

   30. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:07:40

       Um, yeah, that makes perfect sense because the degree of preparation, uh, necessary now to make the NBA is just way higher than... The minute you radically increase the amount of preparation necessary to excel in a given area, you skew it, um, by income, right?
10. 1:11:32 – 1:12:19

    Keep Up to Date With Malcom

    1. CWChris Williamson1:11:32

       Malcolm Gladwell, ladies and gentlemen. Malcolm, I find you fascinating. Uh, I think you, that we could continue to do this for a long time, but I need to get on a flight to go on tour to your state. So, um-

    2. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:11:43

       That's right.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:11:44

       ... I need to leave. Where should people go to keep up to date with all of the stuff that you've got that's going on?

    4. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:11:47

       They should listen. I, I think the latest podcast I did on my podcast Revisionist History, we have a series called The Alabama Murders. It is the best thing I've ever done, and I would wholeheartedly recommend that to people. And I have a new book out in paperback, Revenge of the, of the Tipping Point.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:12:02

       Sick. Malcolm, I appreciate you. Thank you.

    6. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:12:05

       Thank you so much. This was really fun.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:12:07

       Congratulations, you made it to the end of an episode. Your brain has not been completely destroyed by the internet just yet. Here's another one that you should watch. Go on.

Episode duration: 1:12:19