Malcolm Gladwell Interview (Full Episode) | The Tim Ferriss Show (Podcast)

1. 0:00 – 12:38

   Easiest and Hardest Books, and Michael Lewis as Storyteller

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

      Quick soundcheck. Malcolm

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:01

      Right

   3. TFTim Ferriss0:01

      ... can you tell me what you had for breakfast, please?

   4. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:03

      I had a, a cappuccino and a third of a croissant.

   5. TFTim Ferriss0:08

      Third of a croissant.

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:09

      Yeah.

   7. TFTim Ferriss0:09

      Do you, do you divvy it up over three days, or is that just-

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:11

      [laughs]

   9. TFTim Ferriss0:12

      Was it a bad croissant?

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:13

       No, I love croissants, but I feel like, one, I don't, I think one should eat a minimum, uh, the, the absolute minimum in the morning. I don't think you should eat a lot in the morning.

   11. TFTim Ferriss0:21

       Oh, we will con-

   12. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:22

       One of my rules

   13. TFTim Ferriss0:22

       ... we will explore that further. Thank you. Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat-out for a half mile before my hands start to shake. Can I ask you a personal question?

   14. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:33

       Now would seem an appropriate time.

   15. TFTim Ferriss0:35

       What if I did the opposite?

   16. MGMalcolm Gladwell0:37

       I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

   17. TFTim Ferriss0:42

       The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront, and this is a very unique sponsor. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive, in a good way, set it and forget it investing service led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last two years, and they now have more than two and a half billion dollars under management. In fact, some of my very good friends, investors in Silicon Valley, have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. So the question is why? Why is it so popular? Why is it unique? Because you can get services previously reserved for the ultra wealthy, but only pay pennies on the dollar for them. And this is because they use smarter software instead of retail locations, bloated sales teams, et cetera. And I'll come back to that in a second. I suggest you check out wealthfront.com/tim. 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For everything they charge .25% per year on assets above the first 15,000, which is managed for free if you use my link, wealthfront.com/tim. That is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000 account, for instance. Now normally, when I have a sponsor on this show, it's because I use them and recommend them. In this case, it's a little different. I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal. They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials, so I couldn't be a user and have them on the podcast. But I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, uh, in the team and the company itself. So I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client. Now back to the recommendation. As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, you'll get $15,000 managed for free if you decide to open an account, but just start with seeing the portfolio that they would suggest for you. Take two minutes, fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront.com/tim. It's fast, it's free. There's no downside that I can think of. [percussive music] This episode is brought to you by gymnasticbodies.com. This is the training system that I am most obsessed with at the moment, and I don't get paid any commissions or anything like that. You may have heard Coach Summer on the podcast, who designed the program, former national team coach for men's gymnastics. I am not easily impressed, and I've just been completely blown away by the sophistication of his programming and the elegance of his programming. I've been using Gymnastic Bodies for just a few months now, and I feel more flexible, stronger, and younger than I have in years. And it sounds cheesy to hear myself say that, but it's true. That's the hardest part to believe. [laughs] And you can check it out, gymnasticbodies.com/tim. If you go to that landing page, gymnasticbodies.com/tim, you can take a look at the fundamentals course, which will help you diagnose your weakest points, areas to improve, et cetera. And I highly encourage you take a look at this body weight training system. It is incredible. Gymnasticbodies.com/tim. [percussive music] Hello, boys and girls, ladies and squirrels. It is a late night in New York City, and the echo is from within the walls of a fine establishment, otherwise known as a hotel, that I am calling my abode for this evening. Molly is curled up. All the children are snug in their beds with visions of sugarplums. No, that's not why we're here. This is The Tim Ferriss Show, and welcome to another episode where it is my job to deconstruct world-class experts and world-class performers so that we can borrow their habits, routines, tools, test them ourselves, improve how we perform in our personal and professional lives. And this episode features Malcolm Gladwell. I've wanted to interview Malcolm quite a long time, and it finally happened. We had a proper sit-down. We've bumped into each other before a few times, but this was the first in-depth conversation, and we cover a lot. Malcolm Gladwell, @gladwell on Twitter, say hi, is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, mega bestsellers, The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath. He's been named one of the 100 most influential people by TIME magazine. He has explored how ideas spread, decision-making, the roots of success, the advantages of disadvantages, and in his latest podcast project, Revisionist History, which I highly recommend, Gladwell examines the way the passage of time changes and enlightens our understanding of the world around us. He also revisits Certain aspects of history that perhaps we should take another look at. And in this wide-ranging, in-depth, in-person conversation, we cover a ton, including his research and writing process, how he learned to ask good questions, favorite books, routines, habits, tools, how he puts together or pulls together, rather, seemingly unrelated stories into a cohesive theme and eventually a book, his obsession with running, why he eats as little as possible in the mornings, and much more. It is highly tactical. There are some hilarious and great stories, some very surprising stuff that I am sure you have not heard anywhere else. And, uh, that is all I have to say about that. So please say hi to him on Twitter, @gladwell, and I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Thanks for listening. [static] Malcolm, welcome to the show.

   18. MGMalcolm Gladwell6:57

       Thank you, Tim.

   19. TFTim Ferriss6:58

       I really appreciate you making the time, and I know we've bumped into each other a few times over the years. I remember, I wanna say the first time was at a salon that Peter Thiel put together about, like, religion, ethics, and morality or something like that.

   20. MGMalcolm Gladwell7:12

       Oh, right. Yeah.

   21. TFTim Ferriss7:13

       It was ages ago, and-

   22. MGMalcolm Gladwell7:14

       Years ago

   23. TFTim Ferriss7:14

       ... years ago, and I remember showing up, and, uh, Oren Hoffman, who had co-hosted the event, who's a friend of mine, was like, "Hey, would you mind just, like, improvving and speaking at this event for a few minutes about X, Y, or Z? We haven't decided on the topics yet." And I said, "Sure." Then I showed up, and I see Malcolm Gladwell. I see some award-winning, you know, voted favorite teacher of the decade, Harvard professor, and that's when I started drinking really heavily.

   24. MGMalcolm Gladwell7:37

       [laughs]

   25. TFTim Ferriss7:37

       So I suspect it was a poor performance on my part. In preparation for this, because I've, I've been looking forward to it, I pinged, uh, Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics-

   26. MGMalcolm Gladwell7:46

       Yeah

   27. TFTim Ferriss7:46

       ... mutual friend, and his response was short. It was, "Fun! He's a great talker. He likes to talk about writing, running, fast cars, not golf, being Canadian. Sorry, gotta run," something along those lines, and he took off. And I was planning to speak with you about at least one or two of those, and I thought we could start with writing.

   28. MGMalcolm Gladwell8:05

       Okay.

   29. TFTim Ferriss8:05

       What have been the easiest and hardest books for you to write?

   30. MGMalcolm Gladwell8:10

       Well, uh, that's an interesting question. Um, I don't find writing, or to the extent that I find writing, I link hard and fun. So if it's not hard, it's not fun. Um, so I never think about writing in terms of hard and easy. I think about it in terms of fun and not fun. Um, so which one was the most fun? Probably the last two, mostly because I wrote the first book while I was still working pretty much full-time at The New Yorker. So I just was, didn't have a lot of time, and that m- makes it less fun. You know, can't really kind of savor it and appreciate it. But the last two, I took as much time as I needed and deliberately dragged it out because I was enjoying myself so much. So I think that's probably the last two books were the, were the... So that, does that mean the last two were the hardest [laughs] I've used?
2. 12:38 – 15:12

   No Writer's Block: Newspaper Habits and Thinking Before Writing

   1. MGMalcolm Gladwell12:38

      Well, I don't. You know, I worked for 10 years at a newspaper, and if that experience teaches you anything, it's that you can't have writer's block. I mean, you quite literally can't. I mean, the story will be, you'll start the story at 10:30, and it's due at 4:00 or 4:30 or whatever back in those days. There was hard deadlines. So you can't have... I mean, it's unthinkable. I mean-

   2. TFTim Ferriss13:00

      It's, you don't have the luxury. [laughs]

   3. MGMalcolm Gladwell13:01

      And if you went to your bosses and you said, "I'm blocked on this story," they would look at you like you were insane.

   4. TFTim Ferriss13:07

      [laughs]

   5. MGMalcolm Gladwell13:07

      You know? Like-

   6. TFTim Ferriss13:08

      Take off your beret.

   7. MGMalcolm Gladwell13:09

      Yes. [laughs]

   8. TFTim Ferriss13:09

      Resign your poetry. You have a job to do.

   9. MGMalcolm Gladwell13:11

      And it's like, so it's like, there's not even an issue. So I mean, I, I did used to have these issues, and then I went to The Washington Post, and then you get cured in a hurry-

   10. TFTim Ferriss13:19

       [laughs]

   11. MGMalcolm Gladwell13:19

       ... of any pretensions you have about your writing, and you, you just, you just keep typing. I mean, it's not, there's no kind of alternative. And luckily that I have those habits that I ca- that I learned over tho- that 10 years at The Washington Post, um, have s- stayed with me, and so I, I, I, I never... And also, you know, writing to me is only, writing a book is maybe 20% writing and 80% organization, logistics. So I will think about something. For every hour I spend writing, I spend three hours thinking about writing. So usually when I'm writing, it's, first of all, it's a tiny period, and secondly, it's all worked out already. I mean, I'm just putting down on the page what has already been kind of figured out in my head.

   12. TFTim Ferriss14:07

       Where does, where do you... Now is that true also for a shorter piece in, say, The New Yorker?

   13. MGMalcolm Gladwell14:13

       Yeah. I will have, not all of it, but, uh, I know what I'm doing before I start, or I know what the pieces are.

   14. TFTim Ferriss14:21

       Could you give an example of, um, any piece or any book where it started and what the process was for you in getting to the point that you're then putting words down on paper? And the reason I ask is that I'm, I am fascinated by structure. I don't think I'm particularly gifted at it, but I did, uh, long ago took a class with John McPhee, one of your-

   15. MGMalcolm Gladwell14:40

       Oh, yeah

   16. TFTim Ferriss14:41

       ... colleagues, staff writer at The New Yorker, and h- his, his grasp and approach to structure is just incredible. Uh, at least the way that he visualizes his structure.

   17. MGMalcolm Gladwell14:52

       Yeah.

   18. TFTim Ferriss14:52

       But he has a very particular process. I can't follow his, say, day-to-day schedule, which is basically sitting in front of a blank piece of paper from, like, 8:00 in the morning to 6:00 PM-

   19. MGMalcolm Gladwell15:01

       Wow

   20. TFTim Ferriss15:02

       ... whether anything's written or not, which would lead me to just wanna throw my head through a window.

   21. MGMalcolm Gladwell15:06

       Yeah.

   22. TFTim Ferriss15:07

       What, uh... Can you give us any origin story of, uh, any book or piece?

3. 15:12 – 22:09

   How Stories Begin: School Shooter Transcript, Jewish Lawyers, and a Mennonite Pastor

   1. MGMalcolm Gladwell15:12

      Yeah. So, uh, I mean, some are easy. I did a story for The New Yorker last fall about, um, a school shooter in Minnesota, and there I, that was super easy because I wanted to write about school shootings. I start rooting around on the internet, and I find this criminal complaint and transcript, transcript of a, uh, interrogation of a kid who was caught basically in the act. Um, a would-be school shooter caught in the act, and he gives this, it's like 60 pages, and it's this absolutely extraordinary account of what he was thinking and what he was planning to do and why he was planning to do it. And when you find something like that, I mean, your job is done, right? So you're like, "Oh, I'm gonna tell this story, and then I'm gonna step away only to kind of put that story in broader context." So those are rare. That wrote itself. That's rare. What's harder are things that are, have a less of an, a less obvious structure. So my book Outliers began with, there was a chapter in that book about Jewish lawyers, about this curious fact that the group, the kind of core group of Jewish lawyers in New York City who rose to prominence in the '60s and '70s and basically kind of take over corporate law in the city all had strikingly similar backgrounds. And so that's the first chapter I wrote in Outliers. That sort of is where I began that book because I met one of the... One of those lawyers was the father of a friend of mine. I met him and I talked to him. I was like, "Oh, wait a minute. They're all of his buddies. They're all from the same part of the Bronx. They all were born in practically the same year. They all went to City College. They all went to NYU Law School. They all started in the same kind of firms." I mean, it's the same story again and again and again. And out of, if you think about, I mean, if s- if one were, I don't know why one would, but if one were to study that book Outliers, you would discover that almost all of the themes that I explore in that book are present in the story of the Jewish lawyers. So everything is there. So I, I, I reported that story. I wrote that chapter. I thought about it. I was like, "Oh, okay. It's all, all the strands I'm interested in are there. I'm gonna pull out strand after strand and write chapters about them."

   2. TFTim Ferriss17:36

      Did it start off in your head as the, as a chapter in a prospective book, or was it a standalone?

   3. MGMalcolm Gladwell17:43

      No, it was... I wanted to write a book about successful people, and so it was always gonna be a chapter in the book. But it was, it was just a great, I don't know, it was just a lucky place to start because when you could start with, uh, with one of those, I don't know if that's the best chapter in the book, but it is, it is functionally the most important chapter in the book.

   4. TFTim Ferriss18:05

      Because it had all the m- macro elements in the micro.

   5. MGMalcolm Gladwell18:07

      Just, yes. And that, that's the gold standard, when you can have that kind of, you can begin on that kind of note. Um, other ones have been much more difficult because they haven't had that.

   6. TFTim Ferriss18:17

      Now, let's say you have that story. Uh, you have that chapter. How do you go out, or go about, rather, collecting And let me take a step backwards. How did you... What tools were you using to query and find this 60-page transcript of the would-be school shooter?

   7. MGMalcolm Gladwell18:35

      I, I [laughs] honestly don't remember. I was, I was screwing around on the internet.

   8. TFTim Ferriss18:41

      [laughs]

   9. MGMalcolm Gladwell18:41

      Um, I was interested in school shootings. And I don't even know how... I mean, this was, there was zero coverage of this case. It was in the local Minnesota press. That's it. Um, I'd never heard of it. He didn't... The kid was caught before he did anything, so it never made national headlines, and the transcript is just on the website of the l- local DA. So it's like he... And I don't know how I found it. I can't remember.

   10. TFTim Ferriss19:12

       Got it.

   11. MGMalcolm Gladwell19:12

       I just found it. You know?

   12. TFTim Ferriss19:12

       I'd be so curious to, I'd be so curious to know.

   13. MGMalcolm Gladwell19:14

       I would love to know now, too. I just, it was one of those... But other cases, like in my podcast, for example, one of the episodes I like the most, two episodes actually touch on this question. So one is an episode, I think it's the eighth or ninth episode, it's called Generous Orthodoxy, and it's the story of a 98-year-old Mennonite pastor in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who takes on his church. And I come from a very Mennonite area in O- Ontario. Many of my friends and brother's friends are Mennonites. My brother's a Mennonite. My parents grew up Mennonite. You know, I know that world really well. I go home at Christmas, and my, everyone's talking about this guy. And when I say everyone, there's only, the number of Mennonites in [laughs] North America is very small. It's a very small, you know, evangelical Protestant sect, denomination. But they're talking about this letter this guy wrote. It's got a lot of Facebook likes for them, you know. And he's 98. And so I read the letter, I'm like, "Oh, my goodness, what an extraordinary letter." So I track down the guy, I interview him, like a week later. Go out to, drive out to Lancaster, and then I s- look at the transcript and I say, "Well, what's this about?" And I realize that what it's about is how to protest. He's a guy who is so wise, and, uh, it's an extraordinary interview. It's like, again, I did nothing. It's one of those cases where he's just amazing, and I stumble into this. It's a l- it's 10 o'clock at night on a cold Saturday night in January. I'm in this little tiny house on the turnpike in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, talking to a 98-year-old guy, and it's one of those amazing interviews where it just all, it's all there. I don't have to do anything. And he's... I'm crying by the end. I mean, it's just insane. So y- I go home and I look at it and I think, well, I wanna make a sh- a podcast about this. And what's amazing now is I'm not writing this up in print. I'm using this man's own words, which because he's so insanely moving, powerful, you know, it's just like so much better that I can hear his voice. And so the question is, what does this story need to be finished? Not a lot, right? Just a little bit to put it in context. So there's a, a case where you stumble across something, and your role, your only role is not to screw it up, [laughs] right?

   14. TFTim Ferriss21:48

       Yep.

   15. MGMalcolm Gladwell21:48

       Don't screw it up. Don't bury it. Just put him out there, tell the story, and then just find some other little element that makes it clear what, to the listener, what it's about. Um, so that's actually, it's my favorite Revisionist History, um, episode for that reason. It's just so pure and simple.

4. 22:09 – 26:11

   Organizing Notes and Choosing What's Interesting

   1. TFTim Ferriss22:09

      When you have, uh, let's say in the case of the Outlier chapters or, or chapter rather, on the Jewish lawyers, how do you capture your notes and organize your notes on something like that?

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell22:24

      Oh.

   3. TFTim Ferriss22:25

      What tools do you use if-

   4. MGMalcolm Gladwell22:26

      I mean, I just, uh, I mean, it's gonna sound so old school. I transcribe the interview, print out the transcript, and underline the parts I like, and [laughs] then move them into a file.

   5. TFTim Ferriss22:39

      And do you move, uh, what, is it a Word file? How do you, uh, what type of file is it? I know this is getting very-

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell22:45

      It's a Word file, yeah.

   7. TFTim Ferriss22:45

      Word file.

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell22:45

      Just like m- move from one Word file to the next Word file. I don't even use Google Docs. I mean, I vaguely recently got into Google Docs, but I sort of feel like it doesn't really matter. I mean...

   9. TFTim Ferriss22:57

      No, the, the tools, I, I would agree. I mean, it's, uh, you know, whether it's a pen or a paintbrush or [laughs] crayons, like, you, you still have to know how to use the, the writing implement.

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell23:07

       Yeah, yeah.

   11. TFTim Ferriss23:07

       But the process is interesting to me. So if, if you take these quotes, how, what qualifies, and this may seem like a, a sort of infantile question, but how do you, what qualifies as interesting?

   12. MGMalcolm Gladwell23:19

       Yeah. No, it's not an infantile question. That is, in fact, the core question. The whole, to the extent that a writer deserves his or her paycheck, it comes down to how good at they, are they at looking through, at something like looking through a transcript and understanding what's int- interesting, right? If you can't do that, if you can't kind of... You have to sort of visualize what the story's going to become before it has become anything. So you might be dealing with a document that is 20,000 words, right? Which is, or even longer, could be 30,000 words, which is enormous. I mean, a book, my books are 75,000 words. I mean, so you're dealing with a single interview that might be, you know, a, a third of a book in length, and you have to distill out of that, I don't know, a couple thousand words. So, you know, that process can take days. And I initially go through and I simply delete all of the stuff that's clearly, that clearly doesn't belong, just the dead space. And then I just take repeated passes, pruning, pruning, pruning until what I'm left with is what... Until I know the interview almost by heart, and then, and what I'm, what I'm left with is the stuff that matters. If you don't transcribe it yourself, it's so much harder. Right? You really, there's enormous benefits to taking the huge amount of time necessary to transcribe it yourself.

   13. TFTim Ferriss24:41

       To transcribe yourself. And once you have these nuggets, these various highlights, how do you determine what starts a chapter?

   14. MGMalcolm Gladwell24:52

       Well-

   15. TFTim Ferriss24:53

       Or a book for that matter.

   16. MGMalcolm Gladwell24:54

       Yeah. That's the other thing. That's another thing that kind of qualifies you as a writer. Um, the truth is that there are so many ways you can do it. There's so many answers to the problem that I don't get too hung up on it. I sort of think that it's not a math question where there's only one answer. So as long as you understand there's not just one good answer, it takes the pressure off. But typically, you know, I might try out several openings. I don't get... Th- It's, it's made easier by the fact that I don't start at the beginning. So once you don't start at the beginning, your life just gets so much simpler.

   17. TFTim Ferriss25:34

       So on that point, so I have a tendency to always try the, and I think this has become a bit of a crutch for me because it seems to work well, [laughs] but, uh, it's become a bit of a, a trope, if that's the right word for me, where I'm always doing in media res, right? So I'm always taking some exciting moment right in the middle of-

   18. MGMalcolm Gladwell25:51

       Mm-hmm

   19. TFTim Ferriss25:52

       ... X that then requires explanation, and I get into that later in the piece. But I found myself doing that effectively all the time. Not to turn this into like a, a writer-doctor consultation.

   20. MGMalcolm Gladwell26:03

       Yeah.

   21. TFTim Ferriss26:03

       But do you ever find yourself doing that and you're like, "You know what? This recipe works, but I want to play with other recipes," or...?

5. 26:11 – 35:33

   Podcast Storytelling and Becoming a Better Public Speaker

   1. MGMalcolm Gladwell26:11

      Well, that's why I wanted to do a podcast like this so much, which was that with a podcast you're still storytelling, but suddenly the, the list of considerations is different. It really matters how good your tape is, how powerful the voices are, how meaningful the interaction you have with the person you're interviewing is. So all those things, do you have archival tape that is incredibly powerful? So, you know, there's a, one of the shows is about, it's another of, of my favorites. I have two favorites. This is the other one. It's about giving. Uh, sounds boring when I say that. It's about, uh, university philanthropy. And it's a con- I contrast two very wealthy men, one who m-may reach very different conclusions about where they're gonna give their money, and one of the men is my hero and one is my villain. And the hero, I'm not gonna, I don't want to s- to spoil it, but there was a little bit of tape. The hero had just died, and the school that he had given his money to had a memorial service for him. And at the memorial service, a local acapella group sang a kind of semi-cheesy boy band song, and I've forgotten the title of it, in memoriam of him, but in such a way that it wasn't cheesy anymore. It was actually really touching. And so you, you hear this tape and you hear this boy, these acapella group singing this song, and your f- initial thought is, "Oh my God." And then you're like, "Oh," right? And you get it. Y- the emotion hits you. Now, if you're writing about that, it's meaningless, right? All that nuance is lost. In a podcast, suddenly you're like, "Oh, wow, that's my beginning," right? No question. That's how, like that's the way in because y- you want that movement from, "Oh, this is cheesy," to, "Oh my God, no. It's incredibly meaningful," right? That's that little thing. So that's what's lovely. It's suddenly I'm, after 20 years of doing the pure print thing, I'm shake, I'm br- I have to break out of that and think in a different way about what's powerful.

   2. TFTim Ferriss28:24

      Y- you are a very good public speaker. Um, I, I think you're a tremendous speaker. How do, how do you plan your keynotes? 'Cause this is yet a different format. Uh-

   3. MGMalcolm Gladwell28:34

      Yeah. Yeah. Well-

   4. TFTim Ferriss28:36

      If, if you think of your most, let's say, your most successful and then perhaps a less successful presentation.

   5. MGMalcolm Gladwell28:44

      Yeah.

   6. TFTim Ferriss28:45

      Uh, how have they, how have they differed?

   7. MGMalcolm Gladwell28:47

      They differ. Well, there's... First of all, I, the breakthrough for me in speaking came when I realized that it required about 10X more work than I was giving to it, and that was a huge moment. So I had to decide do I wa-

   8. TFTim Ferriss29:03

      When did you realize that? Sorry to interrupt.

   9. MGMalcolm Gladwell29:04

      About, uh, I would say t-

   10. TFTim Ferriss29:05

       Was, was there a particular incident or conversation-

   11. MGMalcolm Gladwell29:07

       No

   12. TFTim Ferriss29:07

       ... that catalyzed?

   13. MGMalcolm Gladwell29:07

       It was about 10 years ago, uh, when I asked myself the question, "Do I wanna continue doing this?" Because it has its pluses and its minuses. And I realized I only wanna continue doing it if I, uh, get much better at it, and if I change it in a way that it's much more meaningful to me. So it was then I decided I need way more material. I have to give very, very different speeches. I can't just give the same one all the time. I have to spend a lot more time thinking about who I'm speaking to, and I have to spend a lot more time thinking about my performance, and realizing, by the way, that it is a performance, that it's not, I'm not giving a speech, I'm giving a performance. And all of those things, I thought a lot about all of those things, and it took a long time to kind of fully kind of implement them. But it m- has made it much more interesting to me, and I now, I enjoy it in a way I didn't enjoy it when I was... It didn't feel like I was doing it in a kind of halfway manner, but I realized in retrospect I was, just because I hadn't understood. I thought that what giving a speech was, was reading an article. And if you think that's what it is, then you just get up and you read your article, right? And it's very... Once you realize, actually, no, it's a world that has its own rules and principles, you're really acting, then it, you're like, "Oh, wow, that's totally different. That is, that's g- I gotta throw myself into that in a significant way." And so that's what I tried to do.

   14. TFTim Ferriss30:36

       Is there anyone in the world of speaking, alive or dead, who is the Michael Lewis for you?

   15. MGMalcolm Gladwell30:43

       I once went to a [laughs] , uh, a wedding. Not a wedding, I'm sorry, a birthday party for an old, old friend of mine, and it was in, in England. It was, I can say it's my friend Anne Applebaum, and she has all of these ... She's been in England for years and she has all these sort of, kind of fancy English friends. When I say fancy, you know, not posh, but like, you know, historians and just kind of like English intellectuals. So she had this birthday party at this little country house in the middle of England. And the E- the English, of course, A, way better at giving speeches than we are, first of all. But secondly, we were talking about the crème de la crème of English speech givers, like serious kind of, uh, you know, Cambridge and Oxford debating society kind of people. So Niall Ferguson, the historian, gave a wedding toast that is, uh, s- uh, I m- uh, birthday toast, which is just the best toast I've ever heard in my life. I mean, it was like so much better than anything I'd ever heard. It's like on another level. I was like, "Oh my God, that's good."

   16. TFTim Ferriss31:47

       [laughs]

   17. MGMalcolm Gladwell31:47

       And part of what made it genius was he really gave you the impression he was making it up on the spot. Now, he might actually have done that. He may be so good he could do that, but he, he got up and you just like, that was the, the conceit was it, I'm just-

   18. TFTim Ferriss32:05

       This is off the cuff

   19. MGMalcolm Gladwell32:05

       ... I'm just, yeah, this is totally spontaneous. And it was so cleverly done and so hilarious. And the other thing I realized was that he, it was so charming that it ... And what was charming about it was the ways in which he was wrong. Like, that, the kind of part of the joke was he was gonna make this elaborate, hilarious argument about Anne, who was turning 50, and half the stuff that he was gonna say was not right. It was like, I mean, th- that was sort of like-

   20. TFTim Ferriss32:34

       Wait, did he start off saying that? Or was it-

   21. MGMalcolm Gladwell32:36

       No, no. He sort of spun a theory about, about the weekend and about her birthday and about her friends that was like hilarious because it was not accurate. [laughs]

   22. TFTim Ferriss32:46

       [laughs]

   23. MGMalcolm Gladwell32:47

       You know? But it was like he, he did it with such panache and kind of ... And I was just like, d- first of all, that would never have occurred to me to like make stuff up in such a dramatic way. But also, I can't do the thing. I can do conversational. I don't think I ever get to the level where people think I'm off the cuff. Like, I'm not. It's clear that there's been some effort here. But with him, there's just no, it was just like ... So ever since then, I like worship the guy. I mean, I just think-

   24. TFTim Ferriss33:15

       [laughs]

   25. MGMalcolm Gladwell33:16

       ... I think he walks on water.

   26. TFTim Ferriss33:17

       What, what are the elements of a good performance for you? What are some of the ingredients that make a good performance in your case?

   27. MGMalcolm Gladwell33:26

       The thing that I strive for in speaking is authenticity, which sounds corny, but it's really hard to do when you're giving a prepared talk to a group of people who belong to a world that you don't belong to. So if I'm speaking to a group of IT specialists, I don't know anything about IT, right? Nothing. So I'm an outsider, and yet I'm trying to say something that will engage them and be intelligent and make them think. Um, so in the context of doing something that is artificial. By artificial, I don't mean phony. I mean in a sense that I am, I have to make an effort to connect with them. It's not, I can't just stand up and talk the way I would talk to my friends, right? These guys belong to a world I don't know or belong to. So I'm doing something that requires an effort, but at the same time, it has to f- feel like me, right? They have to feel like they are connecting with me and that I'm not, I can't feel like I'm faking it, right? It's gotta ... So that's the, that's hard, and that's in really, but it's hard in, in a good way. It's real- that's what makes it interesting. So the question I have, I ask myself is, I would like to say something intelligent about IT while still remaining true to myself, someone who knows very little about IT, right?

   28. TFTim Ferriss34:48

       Mm-hmm.

   29. MGMalcolm Gladwell34:48

       So this, that, and if you pull that off, that's interesting to the audience. So they get that. They don't, they're not bringing me in because I'm an IT specialist.

   30. TFTim Ferriss34:59

       [laughs]
6. 35:33 – 45:46

   Finding More Stories by Walking Around the Nugget, and Learning to Ask Questions

   1. TFTim Ferriss35:33

      When you have, for instance, one or two stories for a book and you, you understand what the theme is going to be or some of the, the structural components, how do you find the others? Or is it a case where you've gathered these stories over the span of a time with the inkling of an idea and then you have half of it locked and loaded already?

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell35:56

      Well, there's a good actually example of this from Revisionist History, from this podcast. I started out by wanting, I wanted to tell a story about this kid who I had met who was a teenager and lived in LA, came from a poor family, and had, I don't know what his IQ is, 150. I mean, he's a one in a million kid. And I thought his story of how does a, what happens to you if you're, you have an IQ of 150 and you grow up in South Central, right? That, that's sort of interesting. So I was gonna tell that story, and so I talked to the kid, and I was particularly interested in how does he get to college? Is it easy? Do you get recognized? Is it like you're a great 15-year-old basketball player and they, they find, they always find you. If you, if you can dunk a basketball and hit a three-point shot and you're, you can dominate your, you know, middle school basketball team and you live in Nebraska, they find you, right? So my question was, is that what it's like if you've got an IQ of 150 and you live in South Central? Do they just find you and, like, adopt you and blah? So I was, I went out, I had this long conversation with this kid. It's incredibly powerful. It's totally interesting. And then as I tell the story, I realize, oh, so my episodes are 45 minutes, and I realized this story is all I need. I mean, I don't... He's, he's the whole thing. I mean, I can do little contact, contextual things, but there's no room for anything else here. Not just room logistically or physically. There's no emotional room for anything else, right? This kid is to- you're in tears by the end. I mean, he's... And what happened to him and his story is crazy, and then there's this other kid we talk about. It's like you can't. So then I said, "Oh, so there's other things I wanted to say, so I'll do, so I'll do another show also on the same topic of what happens, how good are we at finding, at fulfilling the American dream, the American promise, which is if you work hard and you have some ability, you can make your way up the ladder." That's really what... So this part of Revisionist History is revi- is revisiting that promise that we make. How good are we at fulfilling it? So I do a second show, which is all about do colleges actually, how do they find these kids? Do they do a good job of finding them? How do they find them? What do they, do they spend a lot of time and money on it? Do they... And the answer is, the colleges do a terrible job of finding them. So the answer is, well, why? So I do the show on why. Why do they do a terrible job? And the answer is, a lot of the time they're distracted, but more than that, they're spending their money somewhere else. It takes money to find these kids, not just to find them. If the cost of educating a kid is 50 grand and you want to bring in a kid from South Central, he doesn't have 50 grand, so you gotta pay 50 grand. You gotta- you're out 50 grand if you wanna bring him to your school. So if you're gonna spend 50 grand on him, it's 50 grand you can't spend on something else, right? That starts to get really interesting. All right, so what's the thing you can't spend on? And if you can't spend on that other thing, how do you compete with other colleges that do spend on the other thing, right? So that's what the whole episode's about. So then I do that one and I'm like, I do that one and I'm like, "Wait a minute, I'm not done." [laughs] This gets more interesting, right? So if you have to spend, you've gotta find the 50 grand, then where do you get the 50 grand? So now we get into philanthropy. That's why I did this whole thing on philanthropy. So that was the third one. So then, so these are all stories that grow out of... Do you know what I mean? You find, it all starts with one kid. I find the kid, and all of a sudden I end up with three very different stories, all of which look at the problem of the kid from a different angle, and that's very typical of the way books work for me, which is you start with the nugget and then you just start walking around it and parts of it just kind of, you're like, "Oh, that deserves its own..." You know, that's, that's a... You know, it's like when you... The thing I find myself doing when I interview someone most often is stopping them, saying, "Wait, wait, wait." I, if I, when I transcribe it, tapes, I hear that so many times. "Wait, wait, stop." And then I make them go back and elaborate on that point, which was like that kind of weird point. Wait, is that... You know, they, they skip over it because it's old hat to them, and you are like, "No, no, no, no, no. That, I could spend hours on that point," you know? So it's that-

   3. TFTim Ferriss40:32

      Oh, I do. [laughs] I know exactly how that feels.

   4. MGMalcolm Gladwell40:34

      Yeah.

   5. TFTim Ferriss40:35

      And it, it strikes me that you ask questions as part of that walking around the first story, right?

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell40:42

      Yeah.

   7. TFTim Ferriss40:43

      And you ask a question that then redirects you or focuses you in ano- into another topic. You find a story, and then you ask another question, which then leads to, in this case, another episode, but it could have been another chapter of a book.

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell40:55

      Yeah.

   9. TFTim Ferriss40:56

      If you were to credit someone or some people or resources with helping you to get better at asking questions-

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell41:04

       Mm-hmm

   11. TFTim Ferriss41:04

       ... who or what would that be?

   12. MGMalcolm Gladwell41:06

       My dad is a great question ask- asker, and my father has this, I've spoken about it many times, he has, uh, of his many gifts, one in particular as a kid always had the biggest impact on, on me, which is my father is, has zero intellectual insecurities. So this is the only thing he has in common with Obama. He and Obama are the same way. They [laughs] my dad has no... It has never crossed his mind to be concerned that the world thinks he's an idiot. Just doesn't. He's not in that game, right? So if he doesn't understand something, he just asks you. He doesn't care if he sounds foolish. He will ask the most obvious question. Like, you know, and it was without any sort of concern about it. And maybe it's because he's, my dad's a mathematician, so he has this thing that he knows it's, he's really good at, and so he's like, he's home free. I think-

   13. TFTim Ferriss42:00

       Right, right

   14. MGMalcolm Gladwell42:00

       ... if you have a PhD in math, you're home free. You-

   15. TFTim Ferriss42:02

       You're home free.

   16. MGMalcolm Gladwell42:02

       [laughs]

   17. TFTim Ferriss42:02

       Well, it's, well, it's something either true or it's false or it's clear or it's not.

   18. MGMalcolm Gladwell42:05

       Yeah. And it's like you're not, if you look like an idiot because you don't know anything about basketball, who cares, right?

   19. TFTim Ferriss42:10

       [laughs]

   20. MGMalcolm Gladwell42:10

       So he, he asks lots and lots and lots of dumb quest- I mean dumb in the best sense of that word. Dumb questions. Wait, like he'll say to someone, "I don't understand. Explain that to me." Or he'll, and he'll just keep asking questions until he, he gets it right. And I grew up listening to him do this in every conceivable setting. You know, my father made friends... So my father, who's this guy with his PhD in math, he made friends with all of these farmers who were our neighbors, who were all dropouts. They-

   21. TFTim Ferriss42:44

       This was in, uh, Canada.

   22. MGMalcolm Gladwell42:45

       In Canada. They were all, they all went, they basically had maybe seventh grade. And he first of all treated them with like equals, and secondly was intensely interested in what they knew that he didn't know, and would ask them tons and tons of questions about why they did what they did. So that's what I grew up around, right? That ... And that's what I do. I mean, it's, there's no, it's straight from my dad. I don't think there's any ... I just do, and I, you know, when I'm hanging out with my father and someone interesting, we do the same thing. We just start asking questions. It's our sort of thing.

   23. TFTim Ferriss43:17

       Well, it, it strikes me also that the, uh, the dumb questions or the obvious questions are precisely the questions oftentimes that we should be asking because half the people in the room, if it's in a group setting, are probably thinking of those questions anyway, but are embarrassed for whatever reason to bring them up.

   24. MGMalcolm Gladwell43:32

       You know, you know what's a great example of this? I often imagine my dad meeting Bernie Madoff. My father would say, he would look at the returns and he would say, "Wow, that's really good." Because as a mathematician, he would know that, you know, the steady, whatever it was, 9% a year, year in, year out. He went, "That's really..." And then he would say, "How did you do that?" And then Madoff had that, remember that stock explanation that didn't, that was bullshit. And I, my father would just simply continue to ask really, really dumb, obvious questions and until Madoff would either have had to leave or [laughs] because he would have tried his patience and been at risk of... But he would never have invested money with him-

   25. TFTim Ferriss44:11

       [laughs]

   26. MGMalcolm Gladwell44:11

       ... because he would have said, "I don't understand," 100 times, right?

   27. TFTim Ferriss44:16

       [laughs]

   28. MGMalcolm Gladwell44:16

       "I don't understand how that works. I don't understand." [laughs] Like in this kind of dumb, kind of, you know, slow voice, "I don't understand, sir."

   29. TFTim Ferriss44:26

       Yeah. [laughs]

   30. MGMalcolm Gladwell44:27

       You know? What is going on? [laughs]
7. 45:46 – 50:55

   Best Investments, Failure and Quitting Running at 15

   1. TFTim Ferriss45:46

      So I have so many questions that I want to ask you. I'm just gonna jump into, uh, a, a rather uncohesive list-

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell45:53

      Sure

   3. TFTim Ferriss45:53

      ... of miscellanea. Gonna try some new ones this time around. Uh, what is the best or most worthwhile investment you've ever made? Could be money, time, energy, or otherwise, or just a very good investment.

   4. MGMalcolm Gladwell46:07

      It's a really interesting question. All of the investments that, the most worthwhile investments are investments about time. They have to do with time, and they're all about persevering past the point that I would normally have quit. So I can think, for example, of books where there's no, the payoff didn't come until page 1,000, and yet it was very, getting to that page was incredibly important in some future endeavor. Or when I was describing how I ran across that transcript of that school shooter, which that was about an investment of time where, I mean, I was sort of screwing around. No, screwing around is the wrong word. I was l- looking for much longer than I would normally look. I kind of, for reasons I don't really understand, put my impatience aside and, and committed a much longer period of time to that hunt. So those are, I would say those are probably the, that's a very broad category, but those are the best investments.

   5. TFTim Ferriss47:08

      Now, when you said page 1,000, you're ta- you're talking about reading?

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell47:12

      Yeah. But I mean, in any kind of, generally speaking, hunting, so many of the really wonderful things that I've uncovered in my life, not just from my writing, but also personally, have come after elongated, um, hunts. So you never find the thing that is moving, moving and powerful in the first five minutes. It just doesn't happen, right?

   7. TFTim Ferriss47:38

      I remember a friend of mine, who I didn't f- really feel very friendly towards when he said this, uh, said to me when I was, uh, 90% done with my second book, Four Hour Body, and I said, "Wow, well, you know, pretty close to the finish line, 90% done." He goes, "Oh, congratulations, you only have 50% left." [laughs] And-

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell47:57

      So true

   9. TFTim Ferriss47:57

      ... I've heard that from a lot of, uh, long distance runners also.

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell48:01

       Yeah.

   11. TFTim Ferriss48:01

       You know, like kind of the race starts at mile 20 or whatever it might be.

   12. MGMalcolm Gladwell48:04

       That's nice. Yeah.

   13. TFTim Ferriss48:05

       Uh, going back to the sort of investments and these, uh, not postponed, but like delayed gratification-

   14. MGMalcolm Gladwell48:15

       Mm-hmm

   15. TFTim Ferriss48:16

       ... wins, like this page 1,000, uh, can you think of any failures that set you up for later success, or a favorite failure of yours?

   16. MGMalcolm Gladwell48:25

       Yeah. I mean, I mean, it's all kinds. I, when I was a kid, I was, uh, in, just one of many, but I was a, uh, a runner, very serious runner, and I-

   17. TFTim Ferriss48:38

       What d- what distance?

   18. MGMalcolm Gladwell48:39

       1,500 meters and 800 meters. And I-

   19. TFTim Ferriss48:42

       Those are the, the puking distances.

   20. MGMalcolm Gladwell48:44

       Yes.

   21. TFTim Ferriss48:44

       [laughs]

   22. MGMalcolm Gladwell48:45

       They're, uh ... And I, I, uh, in my third year of running seriously, lost races I thought I was gonna win. I mean, it kind of- What for me at the, that age was a quite, quite a dramat- a traumatic fashion. And I quit running. And it, it was the first ... I would regard that as the, the, of that, the first real failure of my life. Something I really wanted to do well at, I didn't. And, um, I feel like it was hugely important, both because it made me think hard about what my priorities were, what, that I had placed running too high in that list. Um, but more than that, it, it, um, I l- then later in life went back and thought a lot about why I quit and was dissatisfied with my reasons. Um, so anything that you can ... This whole notion of circling back I think is so important. I mean, it's, this show is called Revisionist History, so it's e- explicitly about that. But, you know, I, I would almost obsessively revisit my reasons for quitting running, and scrutinize them and say, "Was it right? What did I learn in the intervening five, 10, 15, 20 years about who I am, what I want, um, what it takes to be good at something?" Um, so that was a very valuable, a really valuable experience, um, uh, at exactly the right time, 'cause that's the age where, you know, where d- decisions, uh, not decisions matter, but where, uh, I think you reflect on things in your adolescence in a way that you don't reflect on things later in your life.

   23. TFTim Ferriss50:22

       What, uh, what age was this, or what grade?

   24. MGMalcolm Gladwell50:25

       I was 15.

   25. TFTim Ferriss50:25

       15. I always thought I was gonna go back at some point and be a ninth grade teacher. So right around that, like 14 to 16 range.

   26. MGMalcolm Gladwell50:34

       Yeah.

   27. TFTim Ferriss50:34

       It seems like there are a lot of very important forks in the road.

   28. MGMalcolm Gladwell50:37

       Yeah, I think there is. I think you are. Because so much is, everything is plastic at that age, right? So you can mold it whatever way you want. Um, and so it's just to kind of like, I think about what a, how confusing and complicated those years are in retrospect.

8. 50:55 – 57:38

   Morning Routine, Writing Habits and Family Traits

   1. TFTim Ferriss50:55

      What is, uh ... Do you have any morning routines? What does the first 60 minutes of your day look like? Could be any day of the week. Let's just say it's a work day.

   2. MGMalcolm Gladwell51:02

      I, well, I was just saying earlier, I try, I think one should eat very little in the morning. So-

   3. TFTim Ferriss51:08

      So what time do you wake up, typically?

   4. MGMalcolm Gladwell51:10

      You know, 8:00.

   5. TFTim Ferriss51:11

      8:00. Mm-hmm.

   6. MGMalcolm Gladwell51:12

      I have a big thing of tea.

   7. TFTim Ferriss51:13

      What type of tea? Sorry, I'm gonna keep-

   8. MGMalcolm Gladwell51:16

      Lapsang Souchong.

   9. TFTim Ferriss51:17

      Oh, that's great stuff.

   10. MGMalcolm Gladwell51:18

       Great stuff.

   11. TFTim Ferriss51:19

       If you like, uh, what is it? I remember a friend who was getting off of, he loved whiskey, and he felt like the smell reminded him of some type of peaty alcoholic beverage. So he ended up-

   12. MGMalcolm Gladwell51:29

       Yeah, it has an amazing smell. Um, it's a very controversial tea. And then I might-

   13. TFTim Ferriss51:35

       [laughs] Okay.

   14. MGMalcolm Gladwell51:35

       I might have a-

   15. TFTim Ferriss51:35

       I'm gonna pull a Malcolm here. Wait, wait, wait. Why is it a controversial tea? [laughs]

   16. MGMalcolm Gladwell51:40

       It, some people smell it and they just run in the opposite direction. They think it, s- it, they're, they don't even think it's tea. I mean-

   17. TFTim Ferriss51:47

       [laughs]

   18. MGMalcolm Gladwell51:47

       ... I've never seen people have such a kind of ... And I, uh, there's this, there's a little coffee shop where I go often in the morning to have my tea, and they have it. I, I think I'm one of the only people who order it. I think they get it because of me. And it's like I walk in, they're like, you know, make a beeline for it. But it's clear that, you know, I'm in a distinct minority. It smells. I mean, you can smell it from quite a ways off. I might eat a little bit of oatmeal. That's pretty much all I'll eat in the morning.

   19. TFTim Ferriss52:16

       That's your go- one of your go-tos?

   20. MGMalcolm Gladwell52:18

       Yeah. Um, but not a lot. And then I look at three websites.

   21. TFTim Ferriss52:23

       Okay, so we're gonna come back to three websites. So not a lot means like a cupful? A couple of spoons?

   22. MGMalcolm Gladwell52:29

       Yeah, half a, like a, a cupful. Like half a cup, something like that. Just enough that I'm, you know, have a reasonable something in my stomach. Um, and then I will look at three websites. The first one is letsrun.com. The nerdy runners, all serious runners read Let's Run. Then I read Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen's column. And then I read espn.com, just to make sure that nothing major happened in the world of sports. And then I start my work.

   23. TFTim Ferriss52:57

       How do you, and, uh, what time is that then when you're starting your work?

   24. MGMalcolm Gladwell53:00

       So we're talking, we're now, we're still before 9:00.

   25. TFTim Ferriss53:03

       Mm-hmm.

   26. MGMalcolm Gladwell53:04

       And then if I have writing to do, I, it's best to do it in the next, in the two hours that follow.

   27. TFTim Ferriss53:11

       So before lunch.

   28. MGMalcolm Gladwell53:12

       Yeah.

   29. TFTim Ferriss53:12

       And what does your routine look like as, or in those few hours when you start your work? What does that look like? Is there particular music you listen to?

   30. MGMalcolm Gladwell53:19

       Sitting in a coffee shop.
9. 57:38 – 1:05:43

   Bad College Advice, Flawed Friends and Compensating for Flaws

   1. MGMalcolm Gladwell57:38

      Yeah. The worst advice that in general we give in America is that we terrify high school kids about their college choices. I mean, all, all things related to college fall into the category of bad advice. As you will find out when you listen to my rants about college in, on this podcast, um, I think the American college system needs to be blown up and they need to start over. I mean, it's, to my mind, you could not have conceived of a worse system. Um, so you know, anything, any advice that has to do with you need to work hard and get into the best college you can is just, I'm sorry, it's just bullshit. I mean, it is just terrible. You should not try to go to the best college you can because, particularly if best is defined by US News and World Report. You should go to a place that ... What a college should ... The sole test of what a good college is is, is it a place where I find myself late at night having deeply interesting conversations with people that I like and find interesting? If you, you go where you can do that, right? That's all that matters. So am I so inspired by what I learned during the day that I want to be talking about it at 1:00 in the morning, and do I have someone who will have that conversation with me and will challenge me? That's it. That's it. Everything else is nonsense, right? So you tell me what that place is. Now is, so that place could be any number of a thousand places in, in the world. Maybe you c- maybe even that place is unpredictable. Maybe it is that what matters is not that some schools can provide that experience and some can't. What matters is what happens when I go to that school? Do I create that experience for myself? And I think that experience could be created at almost any institution in the country, right?

   2. TFTim Ferriss59:27

      Yeah.

   3. MGMalcolm Gladwell59:27

      There are interesting kids everywhere, and it's only in our snobbery that we have decided that interestingness is defined by your test scores. This is just such ... It's so, just an outrageous lie, right? Test scores, sure they matter in some way, but I'm talking about college now. What makes for a powerful college experience is can I find someone interesting to have an interesting discussion with? And that you can do, you can do that if you're curious and you're interesting. That's it. Or you are ... By the way, not that you're interesting. You're interested.

   4. TFTim Ferriss1:00:02

      Interested.

   5. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:00:04

      Right? That's all that matters.

   6. TFTim Ferriss1:00:06

      Which comes back to the questions, right? Having, having the ability-

   7. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:00:09

      Yeah. To ask

   8. TFTim Ferriss1:00:09

      ... and the ammo to ask good questions and follow-up questions.

   9. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:00:13

      And by the way, some of the people that you learn most from in those s- settings are some of the most flawed people, right? People ... It's not true that you learn the most from the smartest, most put-together people. You f- I, I think about my college experience. It's the people who had a lasting impact on me were deeply, deeply flawed people, and their flaws were what almost drew them to me, d- drew me to them and what I kind of fixated on and found fascinating. I had a friend, still one of my very best friends, end up being very, very successful. In college, he was a basket case. Complete basket case. To the point where he was, he literally said this to me once. I said, "Why do you have a library book that's Three months overdue. Your fine is going up every day." He said, "Well, I'm afraid to take it back because I can't afford the fine." He said this to me.

   10. TFTim Ferriss1:01:09

       [laughs]

   11. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:01:10

       This is a guy ... And that facet, you know, that kind of ... And yet simultaneously he was, uh, actually turned out to be a brilliant student or, or a brilliant professional. And just the squaring those two sides to his personality, the idea that he was hapless in some really crucial respects, and yet made an incredibly successful place for himself in the world. Figuring that contradiction out took years, and when I did kinda figure it out, it so enhanced my understanding of people in the world and just of understanding the ways in which he compensated for his haplessness brilliantly, right? And also realizing that it doesn't ... If you're hapless in that kind of logistical sense, common sense sense, he has no common sense.

   12. TFTim Ferriss1:01:59

       [laughs]

   13. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:02:00

       It, if you can, if you're s- if you're thoughtful about it, it won't matter one iota.

   14. TFTim Ferriss1:02:07

       What flaws or weaknesses do you have that have turned out to be strengths in some capacity?

   15. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:02:13

       This is like a job interview question, isn't it?

   16. TFTim Ferriss1:02:15

       [laughs] I, I was going to offer you a position at Tim Ferriss Enterprises, but I think you're too busy.

   17. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:02:19

       [laughs] Um, well, probably, uh, God, uh, my, uh-

   18. TFTim Ferriss1:02:26

       [laughs] It's only a job interview if you say, "Sometimes I just work too hard."

   19. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:02:31

       Exactly.

   20. TFTim Ferriss1:02:31

       [laughs]

   21. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:02:32

       Well, in, in, i- in, in dealing with my own impatience and my sloppiness, uh, into f- at- attending to those flaws, uh, I think I have done ... That's been a really crucial thing in, in helping me achieve what I've achieved. So it's just-

   22. TFTim Ferriss1:02:55

       Could you elaborate on that?

   23. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:02:57

       Yeah. I mean, I'm sloppy.

   24. TFTim Ferriss1:02:58

       How are you ... In, in what, in what sense?

   25. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:03:00

       You know, I don't-

   26. TFTim Ferriss1:03:01

       Sloppy like-

   27. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:03:01

       I'm in a hurry

   28. TFTim Ferriss1:03:02

       ... like clothes all over the floor sloppy?

   29. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:03:04

       No, no, no. Sloppy about I'm in a hurry. Uh, I, you know, I don't always double-check something I know, or I, I'll interview someone for 45 minutes when I should interview them for two hours. Or, you know, I'm just kind of like y- I'm a good enough person. I'm not a perfectionist. Like, "Fine. It's fine. Let's da, da, da." And so I've become so aware of that now that I've compensated and I have taught myself to be a lot more of a perfectionist, or I've forced myself to keep asking questions much longer than I would have. When I said earlier that it was these investments of time that have been so ... That's what I'm talking about, that I've forced myself to invest more time in a lot of activities, knowing that, um, if I did it my normal way, I'd be out the door.

   30. TFTim Ferriss1:03:56

       Yeah.
10. 1:05:43 – 1:13:18

    Galen Rupp, Restraint in Running and Systems

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:05:43

       when you think of the word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind, and why?

    2. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:05:48

       Well, you know, I'm so deeply obsessed with running these days that I immediately think of runners.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:05:53

       That's fine.

    4. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:05:54

       There's an American runner, Galen Rupp, who's maybe our silver medalist in the London Games in the, uh, 10,000. And I really m- admire him for many reasons. He's first of all a very, uh, he's a system runner. That is to say he was sort of, um, identified in high school as being someone of promise, and he's been with the same coach ever since. And he had a very thoughtful training path and career path.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:06:20

       What was his name again?

    6. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:06:21

       Galen Rupp. And he's a very, also a very beautiful runner. Both those things matter to me.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:06:26

       What makes a beautiful runner? Is it the gait?

    8. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:06:27

       He is, if you looked him up on the internet-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:06:29

       Yeah

    10. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:06:29

        ... and you looked at the way he moved, you would say he's like a ballet dancer. He just has grace. You know, there are ugly runners and there are beautiful runners. He's a beautiful runner. Those two things in combination, the idea that he aes- on an aesthetic level is, uh, deeply pleasing. So he d- he does the thing that he wants to do, not just successfully by the standard metric. He runs very quickly. He wins races. But also by an, a purely irrelevant aesthetic metric. He's beau- he, he creates beauty as he's doing it, right? That matters to me. And it matters to me that he's so thoughtful purposeful in his, to use that overused phrase, in his preparation. You know, that it's not happenstance or that he sort of thought about what does it mean for m- for me, Galen Rupp, to be, to bring out the best in myself? And, you know, running is tricky because you... Running is all about restraint, even especially at the elite level. You can't be obsessive or a perfectionist and succeed as a runner. You'll get injured. E- running is all about good enough.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:07:39

        Because you will have too much training volume? Or-

    12. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:07:41

        Yeah, you can't... The minute you, you're walking this fine line between adequately preparing yourself for racing and over-training, which leads to injury and burnout and all these kinds of things. And the whole struggle in running is to not get injured, to not cross that line. And so in order to not cross that line, you have to rein in all of these tendencies. Your obsessiveness, you wanna do the 10th, you know, repetition. You know, you're doing 10 times of whatever, half miles, and you know logically that after nine that that's enough. You've pushed your body as far as it can go. But your, you know, your kind of anal discipline self says, "No, do 10," because 10 was the workout, right? You can't do 10. You have to be tough enough to say, "No, no, no, I've done enough for the day," and walk away, right? Do you know how hard that is? Particularly for the kinds of personalities who are attracted to elite running. I mean, it's insane, right? So that kind of, that notion of how hard it is to say it's good enough and walk away, [laughs] it's like he does that.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:08:45

        Well, so a couple of things. It r- makes me think, uh, about a story I heard related to Charlie Francis, very controversial-

    14. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:08:53

        Yeah, sprint

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:08:54

        ... uh, sprint coach.

    16. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:08:55

        Yeah.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:08:55

        Ben Johnson and so on. Uh, the reality is, uh, he, he was a, he was a brilliant coach. Um-

    18. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:09:00

        A brilliant coach

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:09:00

        ... and, uh, I hate to say it, but I'm not gonna point fingers at any specific people, but very likely that all of the top sprinters at that level are using something besides, uh-

    20. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:09:09

        Were

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:09:09

        ... spirulina. [laughs]

    22. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:09:10

        I'm not sure it's still true, but go on. In that era, in Charlie Francis' era, absolutely. Yeah.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:09:14

        Yeah. I mean, that was kind of the golden age of-

    24. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:09:16

        Yeah

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:09:16

        ... of doping in a sense, but the athletes always have more resources than the, um, the, the WADA crew in terms of, of testing in that cat and mouse game. But, uh, some really interesting things that have come out. I mean, they're just recently. I'll give you an example. Sorry. [laughs] So there was a period of time where, uh, the, the vast majority of world championship or Olympic sprinters had prescriptions, uh, due to their narcolepsy [laughs] because they wanted to take modafinil as a stimulant-

    26. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:09:44

        Yeah

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:09:44

        ... pre-race. But I digress. But what Charlie said was in the case of an elite sprinter, someone said, "How do you push your athletes?" And he said, "No, no, no. The last thing I need to do is push my athletes. It's my job to rein them in."

    28. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:09:56

        Yeah.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:09:56

        "I always have to rein them in." And he would have to say, "No, Charlie, you can't do two sets of squats with 600 pounds on your back at 160," or whatever it was.

    30. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:10:03

        Yeah.
11. 1:13:18 – 1:19:09

    Favorite Books, Spy Novels and Brian Eno

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:13:18

       what books, uh, besides your own have you gifted to other people the most?

    2. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:13:25

       I, um, there's one book I've given the most in my life, which is a book called... Well, there's several now I think about it. There's a book by, um, [smacks lips] Timothy Wilson called Strangers to Ourselves, which is one of the loveliest, most insightful books about social psychology that I ever read, and I, I give that a lot to people. And, uh, I give [laughs] every time I meet, and weirdly I'm always meeting, um, people who work in retail, particularly, like, I always send them, particularly if they're Jewish, I send them a book called The Merchant Princes.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:14:00

       The Merchant Princes.

    4. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:14:01

       Which is, is a book about the great Jewish retail families of America. So in the 19th century, all these people come over from Europe who have, have experience in the garment trade or retailing. And all of the, not all of them, but an extraordinary number of the early 20th century, late 19th century department stores that pop up around America are founded by Jewish immigrants from Europe, right? You, you know, from, you know, uh, I mean, y- literally you go to any town in America that's, the traditional department store is from one of those families. Well, a guy, and I've forgotten his name, wrote a book about those families, and it's called The Merchant Princes, and it's fantastic.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:14:44

       Oh, princes.

    6. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:14:46

       Princes.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:14:46

       Princes, plural. Okay.

    8. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:14:47

       Yes. It's fantastic. As a kind of... It's about everything I'm interested in. It's about immigrants. It's about people, uh, figuring out and then conquering an unfamiliar marketplace, right? It's about all of the brilliant ideas that were, that came to these guys in, as they, as they invented the department store, right? The ideas, by the way, were still, you know, all these internet retailers, they're s- they're just grandchildren of these guys. I mean, there's nothing, nothing dramatically new has happened. They worked it all out 100 years ago. I mean, it really humbles you about the so-called retail revolution of the last, um, 10 years. And they're such extraordinary characters, and I love the way their personality is kind of imprinted on their, on their business. So there's a fantastic chapter about, um, Filene's. The Filene brothers who start-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:15:44

       Filene's

    10. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:15:44

        ... Filene's in Boston.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:15:45

        Which, and they have Filene's Basement and so on.

    12. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:15:47

        Yeah. Which leads to... And they invent these i- they have incredibly interesting ideas about how to hold a sale. How to generate, how to use people's kind of psychological impulses to generate the desire to buy. These guys are so far ahead of everybody else. It's nine- you know, it's like 100 years ago and they are on another level, right? Just like, it's just that. It's one story like that after another. It's a brilliant book.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:16:11

        Uh, do you read any fiction?

    14. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:16:13

        Oh, huge amounts. I read, uh, I read, um, spy, spy novels.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:16:17

        Spy novels?

    16. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:16:18

        Yeah. If it has the word spy in it, I've read it. [laughs]

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:16:22

        [laughs] Any, uh, so for someone who's unfamiliar with the genre but excited to get started, what, wh- where should they start?

    18. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:16:29

        Well, I mean, do we have, how many hours do we have?

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:16:31

        [laughs]

    20. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:16:31

        But we should, if you know nothing about it, you should start with John Le Carré, of course.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:16:35

        Mm-hmm.

    22. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:16:36

        And read his first five books. So I would read through, at least through Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. And you can keep going. Actually, no, no. Read, you should read Little Drum, uh, Little Drummer's Girl or even Russia House. I like his later stuff less so, but it's still fantastic. Um, but you must read Spy Coming In From the Cold. I mean, that's just kind of like gold standard.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:17:02

        A given.

    24. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:17:03

        Yeah. Um, and then, uh, I mean, I read all of Lee Child books. They're not spy thrillers per se, but they're thrillers. Um, those are fantastic. Um, I mean, I, I have hundreds. [laughs] I have literally hundreds of-

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:17:19

        Spy novels

    26. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:17:19

        ... spy novels in my, in my house.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:17:21

        [laughs] Uh, what $100 or less purchase, I mean, this is ballpark, right? Meaning just not a Bugatti or something-

    28. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:17:30

        Yeah

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:17:30

        ... uh, that has most positively impacted your life that comes to mind?

    30. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:17:35

        It's probably a piece of music. I think it was probably an album by Brian Eno, um, called Another Green World, which is one of his earlier, early '70s, I think. It's ambient music, but not, not the kind of really weird ambient music. There's an adage that says the music you discover when you are 18? I think it's 18 is the magic year, is the music that stays with you for the rest of your life. Well, I discovered that when I was 18. And I, I sing the songs on that album in my head all the time, and-
12. 1:19:09 – 1:26:36

    Believing in Ghosts, Peter Thiel and Atul Gawande

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:19:09

       what is something you believe that other people think is crazy? Or something that a lot of people believe that you think is crazy, aside-

    2. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:19:17

       Oh

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:19:17

       ... from the college piece. Ei- either one, but I'm most interested in things that you believe that other people would-

    4. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:19:21

       I think-

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:19:21

       ... kind of raise an eyebrow to

    6. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:19:22

       ... I think I believe in ghosts.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:19:24

       I like this. All right. Tell me more.

    8. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:19:26

       I just do. I don't understand. My aunt, who lives in Jamaica, used to live in this house called Hilton Hill, um, which was said to be haunted. There was a particular room that was said to be haunted. And so I slept in a room. I was a kid, like 13, 14. It was haunted. There was a ghost in there, who played the guitar in the middle of the night. I don't know, and I, at that age, I was like, in Jamaica everyone believes in ghosts. Not everyone, but it's a kind. You know, you, people believe in ghosts. So do I think the house is haunted? I actually do think it's haunted. And I also don't understand, if you believe in God, as I do, it's not that hard to believe in ghosts.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:20:04

       [laughs]

    10. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:20:04

        I mean, so I believe-

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:20:06

        Right

    12. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:20:06

        ... in the existence of things outside my own direct physical experience.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:20:11

        Mm-hmm.

    14. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:20:12

        Right? So... And also, I don't believe that why that, why that's controversial. Like, why people think that you can only believe in things that you have, we have conventional explanations for, and that you can see and touch. Well, that strikes me as being, why would you limit yourself like that? I mean, I'm not crazy. I don't believe in UFOs, although I don't rule them out. I mean, I don't, I'm not a kind of spiritualist, but it, in a kind of purely rational way, I believe there's stuff out there that can't be properly explained. Why? Because why would we have explanations for everything?

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:20:49

        Or not yet, right? I mean, there are-

    16. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:20:50

        Or not yet

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:20:50

        ... it's just, just because-

    18. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:20:52

        There's a ways to go

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:20:52

        ... there are phenomena that we can't currently explain or examine using the scientific method, right? Which is-

    20. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:20:59

        Mm

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:20:59

        ... uh, sometimes poorly and sometimes properly implemented. Uh, it doesn't mean we won't. And there's, I mean, you just have to sort of-

    22. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:21:06

        Yeah

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:21:06

        ... look back in the history books to see many, many, many examples of this.

    24. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:21:10

        Yeah.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:21:10

        Uh-

    26. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:21:10

        If you're, if you're... My mother's an identical twin, and if you know an identical twin, you witness that they live thousands of... One lives in Jamaica, one lives in Canada. You know, and they do that thing that twins do, which is they call each other and say, "I was so worried about you." And then the other one will say, "I just had some kind of accident." Or one will say, "I woke up in the middle of the night with a terrible pain in my stomach," and my mother's like, "That's because I just had an operation for," to get... You know, like, that kind of stuff, which is like that weird thing you read about in... It happens. I don't know.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:21:42

        This is the second time this has come up on this podcast. I had an identical twin on my podcast, and we talked about this.

    28. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:21:47

        Yeah, it's like... So d- do I have a rational explanation for that? Does my mother know? Does it h- is it maybe a coincidence? I don't know. Maybe. I don't, I mean, I don't know. It just needs explanation. I don't have one. But I'm open to things that don't have explanation.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:22:01

        So I, I, I, I, the, the question, the what is something you believe that other people think is insane, is actually modified, kind of paraphrased, um, wording of a question that Peter Thiel likes to ask, uh, I suppose when he's interviewing founders. What is your, what are your, what, what is your opinion of Peter Thiel, if you have one?

    30. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:22:19

        Well, all I know about him is what I know from this whole Gawker thing. I know that he's of in bad odor among some people. Um, and I never read his book, but I think, I think he sa- he, he might have taken a shot at me. I don't remember this. [laughs]
13. 1:26:36 – 1:30:53

    Advice to a 30-Year-Old Self: Leave North America

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:26:36

       Well, then that's an easy, easy pass to the advice you would give your 30-year-old self.

    2. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:26:41

       I would have left North America. Leave North America.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:26:44

       To where?

    4. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:26:44

       Get out of there.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:26:45

       Get out? Why?

    6. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:26:46

       Because you'll wake up when you're 50 and realize that you spent your entire working career in North America, which is, despite the fact that it pretends to be the only place that matters, is not the only place that matters. I just would have been, I would have been so much more interesting and thoughtful and insightful and whatever if I had experience, particularly in the developing world. Um, I had an idea when I was in my 20s that I wanted to go and study in Jamaica, you know, a place where I have family and I have some familiarity with it. I should have done it, um, or some similar kind of thing.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:27:19

       Yeah.

    8. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:27:20

       Um, I just think... And I, it's always my advice to young people, which is, particularly young people of privilege, is just leave. I mean, go away. You can come back, but you have to. You can't stay in the cocoon your whole life.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:27:37

       Yeah.

    10. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:27:37

        Right? Your... It will limit you in ways you cannot even begin to understand at this point.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:27:42

        Totally agree. I was chatting with, um, Sebastian Junger about the ex-

    12. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:27:46

        Oh, he got out of the bubble.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:27:48

        Yeah. [laughs]

    14. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:27:48

        Yeah.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:27:48

        Yeah.

    16. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:27:49

        Repeatedly.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:27:49

        About the, about the system and also, uh, any potential remedies, and he felt a mandatory year of, in his case, national service, but it could be volunteering with the Peace Corps-

    18. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:27:59

        Mm

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:27:59

        ... after I think it was high school, and spending a year exposing yourself to those types of environments before going into the, quote, "real world" somewhere in-

    20. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:28:08

        Yeah

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:28:08

        ... this case, North America.

    22. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:28:08

        There are two, two of the religious groups who take a lot of heat, but for which I, for whom I have enormous respect, the Mennonites and the Mormons, have an institutionalized practice of sending people to other cultures.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:28:22

        Their mission.

    24. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:28:23

        Their mission. Um, and that's... I just, you know, people who go on those missions come back transformed, not just spiritually, but, you know, they have seen a side of the... And then, and then, and by the way, they're not going as American college students do when they do the year abroad to Florence.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:28:40

        [laughs]

    26. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:28:41

        Florence does not... Going to Florence does not expand your horizons. [laughs] Don't do a year abroad in Paris. Like, this is... That notion that, oh, I, you know, my school, I'm gonna break out of the box and go and spend the, you know, six months in the s- in the seventh arrondissement, you know? They're bullshit. Go somewhere real, right? That's the, that's what the, that's the upside of that kind of experience.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:29:03

        [laughs] Uh, when, when, when people have, uh, the means... I mean, I, I spent a year in Japan as an exchange student at 15. It was my first real time outside of the United States.

    28. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:29:13

        Yeah.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:29:13

        And completely rocked my world. [laughs] I mean, it just called everything into question. And I-

    30. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:29:18

        Yeah
14. 1:30:53 – 1:35:14

    Why Podcasting and the Future of Revisionist History

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:30:53

       so the podcast, how did you decide... Uh, no doubt you ha- have had people propose that you do a podcast before.

    2. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:31:01

       Yeah.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:31:02

       Um, I mean, I still, I still think we're at the very early stages of adoption. People, um, uh-

    4. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:31:07

       Mm-hmm

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:31:07

       ... I think something like 15 or 17% of the people in the US have listened to podcasts. It's a very relatively-

    6. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:31:13

       Early days

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:31:13

       ... um, mi- yeah, early days-

    8. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:31:15

       Yeah

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:31:15

       ... minority group at this point. Why, why, why now? I mean, what did you, what d- what led to the decision?

    10. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:31:21

        Well, my friend Jacob, uh, who runs the Slate Group An old, old friend of mine, um, has... They have d- Panoply is theirs, big podcasting company, and he just said, "Do you wanna do a podcast?" I said, "No." He said, "Come on, do a podcast." [laughs] So I said, "All right."

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:31:35

        [laughs]

    12. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:31:35

        It was really that. Um, and then I s- got really into it and realized how fun it was, uh, and for all the reasons I talked about earlier, just how it's a different way to tell a story.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:31:46

        What about it has been the most fun for you? I mean, and may- maybe we covered it already. I mean, it is certainly different.

    14. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:31:51

        Well, it's a group... One is that I've never done a group experience, group thing before. So creating in a group was super novel. I mean, I just... I don't even go to meetings, Tim. I... There are no meetings in my life, and suddenly I went to meetings, and I didn't realize everyone hates meetings, but I was like, "Whoa, this is, this is interesting."

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:32:09

        This is exciting. [laughs]

    16. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:32:12

        Um, so everything was just kind of like a... And then the idea of just the, the ability to generate emotion-

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:32:19

        Mm

    18. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:32:19

        ... in a way you can't do on the page is, was s- just more than a revelation. It was a kind of... I mean, I was entranced by that possibility.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:32:27

        It's transformative. I mean, for me, this podcast started as a, um, a lark, something to do in between extremely exhausting book projects. And when people... If, if, if any fans come up to me now when I'm on the street, at least 9 times out of 10, probably even a higher percentage, talk about the podcast and not the books. And hopefully that's not because my books are terrible. That could, that could mean that relatively speaking, um, that is the case. But I, I think the emotional bond, the emotional response you're able to create and the emotional bond that is forged-

    20. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:33:01

        Mm

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:33:01

        ... through the audio medium is just-

    22. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:33:04

        Yeah

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:33:04

        ... h- it's, it's... I have to imagine it's, it's some, uh, it's reflective of some hardwiring that we have as-

    24. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:33:11

        Yeah

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:33:11

        ... story, storytelling machines.

    26. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:33:12

        No, it's, it's, it's kind of an amazingly powerful thing.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:33:14

        Where would you, and, uh, maybe this is, is to be kept a, a secret, but where would you, in an ideal world, let's say two years from now, what are you doing in audio or not? What does or what does the podcast look like? What is your-

    28. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:33:27

        Well, I, I imagine I'll do another season.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:33:30

        Mm-hmm.

    30. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:33:30

        And I have played with the idea of inviting someone to join the Revisionist History rubric and have someone else do a couple some episodes that try something similar. I mean, there's a reason why it can't be a kind of... If I'm doing a collective project, let's make a, just really make a collective, like not just me dreaming up the... So I thought about that, if I could find someone who, you know, took it seriously and wanted and was sort of shared my... But, uh, I don't know. And then, you know, can I make a living doing it? That's another question. Um.
15. 1:35:14 – 1:45:25

    Billboard, Mottos and 'Difficult Cases Make Bad Law'

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:35:14

       last, uh, last real question, and then we'll wrap up here. If you had a billboard and could put anything on it, what would you put on that billboard?

    2. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:35:22

       Probably a picture of one of my favorite runners. [laughs] On my phone. I'll show you what's on my phone.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:35:29

       Oh, yeah.

    4. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:35:30

       Um, he's obscured by all the-

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:35:32

       All the icons. But who is that?

    6. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:35:33

       Asbel Kiprop, world's greatest miler.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:35:37

       From Kenya.

    8. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:35:37

       He's my screensaver for on my, my picture on my phone. Um, I don't know. I'm obsessed with the idea that, uh, ru- uh, track and field ought to be one of our most popular sports, and in fact, is our least popular sport. So I would love to... Um, I want, I want a, I want a day when America's, you know, when the American record holder in the 5K can walk down the street and everyone will come up to her and say, you know, "Wow, can I have your autograph?" And she'll be mobbed and, you know. That's what I want to happen one day, so.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:36:07

       Do you have any, do you have any... This, uh, this could seem like a silly question, but do you have any quotes that you live your life by or mantras in a non-woo-woo kind of sense that are meaningful to you? They might just be like heuristics, rules of thumb.

    10. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:36:22

        Uh-

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:36:22

        Anything like that?

    12. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:36:23

        Not really. I mean, kind of in a playful way, I used to love... I really like the... I keep com- myself coming back to that, the legal adage, "Difficult cases make bad law," which I think is an incredibly insightful comment about how... 'Cause we're, we're drawn to the difficult case, and we want... But you shouldn't generalize from it, and then we can't... That's this problem we run into in the political realm over and over again, not just the political, many realms. But-

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:36:52

        Can, can you give an example of that? I, I'm not sure I'm-

    14. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:36:55

        Yeah. So-

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:36:55

        ... clear

    16. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:36:55

        ... uh, 9/11, it's a difficult case, right? Incredibly rare, catastrophic event, catches us by surprise. Should you try to generate policy exclusively from the 9/11 experience? That's what we did. And what did we do? I think we made a bunch of really terrible mistakes, right? We spent $2 trillion on a war that went nowhere and made the world worse off. We subverted our own civil liberties. We created these monolithic government agencies that God knows what they're doing. Are we actually safer than we were? I'm not sure. That's a case where You, if, if we had exercised some restraint and said, "You know what? You can't use a single incident," which was this bizarre outlier, "and base the whole national security policy of your country on it. You have to look at the, at the long view. Take the long view," right? Obama is a very natural... That kind of thinking is very natural to him, right? He's a difficult cases, bad law kind of guy. He's like, "Let's not overreact. Let's wait and see," that kind of thing, which people find very frustrating with him. Um, but I like that notion. Um, similarly, you know, it's, it's about not overreacting to, um, to black swans, you know, to, uh, to outlying events. Um, uh, and also not choosing your, your case studies wisely. That's, I think, what it's really about.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:38:27

        And I suppose you could also generalize it to your personal life in many ways, too. I mean, just because you're mugged once doesn't mean you should have a fundamental distrust of every human being as you go throughout life.

    18. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:38:37

        Ex- yes, exact- exactly right. And yeah, the... And we, I think we can go fur- further that just because you have been traumatized in some way doesn't mean you are permanently scarred.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:38:48

        Mm.

    20. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:38:49

        Right? That human beings are resilient. They recover.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:38:53

        And, uh, that's something that Sebastian also brought up. Uh, and, uh, not everyone shares this opinion, but given his extensive experience with vets and soldiers, he felt like they should not be treated like victims when they come back-

    22. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:39:05

        Yeah

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:39:05

        ... if they suffer from PTSD for a whole host of reasons that I won't get into. But this has been so much fun. I, I really think we could, we could continue talking for hours, but I want to be respectful of your time. Malcolm, where can people find the podcast? Where can they find you on social media or elsewhere? Where would you like them to, to check things out?

    24. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:39:23

        Podcast is revisionisthistory.com, but anywhere there are podcasts you can find Revisionist History. And, uh, my Twitter handle is just @Gladwell. I'm the only Gladwell out there. So, and I, but I, I tweet. I'm an indifferent tweeter, but I, I get into little moments when I, when I go off. [laughs]

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:39:42

        Especially if someone brings up the, uh, the, the myths and policies of current, uh, higher education in the United States.

    26. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:39:50

        Oh, that gets me going.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:39:51

        [laughs] I remember Poe Bronson told me once, I asked at a, at a Q&A, this is before I had written any books, and I asked him what he does when he has writer's block. And he said, "I write about what makes me angry." [laughs] And occasionally I use that. It seems to work pretty well, at least to get me, get me started. Malcolm, thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate it.

    28. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:40:11

        Thank you, Tim. That was really fun.

    29. TFTim Ferriss1:40:12

        And, uh, I c- I can't wait to, to jump into, uh, the episodes you mentioned of the podcast. And I'll probably just go from start to finish. That's... I, I can be pretty linear that way.

    30. MGMalcolm Gladwell1:40:23

        Yeah.

Episode duration: 1:45:25