Malcolm Gladwell in conversation with Larry Wilmore at Live Talks Los Angeles

thank you thank you very much and let me formally introduce Malcolm I'd like to welcome a man I'm a huge fan of lucky enough to know he's always fascinating from all of us books and revisionist history if you haven't listened to the podcast it's so good you guys Malcolm got will welcome alpha thank you laptop before I was at cure I was at the ringer offices where is your home base this afternoon I mean I was talking to Bill Simmons our kind of patron saint yes and bill said well what's very going to talk about and there was a long pause and I said I don't know like it could be all just about the Lakers for all I know I know you have a lot of opinions about sports we talked about running you been challenging like people are running yeah I challenge LeBron and you challenge LeBron to a race I did you don't know about this is he had to be in the in the running world which is this big it was a big deal I I said to live I hope Sean LeBron to a one-mile race one mile yeah and then thereupon the running community began a fierce debate about who would win yeah I love how people like had this fight for you guys yeah oh yeah you know it's fantastic high position was that he would win because even though wait wait back up for a second you challenged him to a race he's like you're gonna probably win no in the for I'm not I'm not playing him okay I legitimately think so there's some so LeBron is what 280 I'm 125 so you're one of his legs in running of course in this event it's an advantage to be ludicrous these skinny as I am especially know that being said every now and again and not infrequently there are basketball players who are possessed of of extraordinary aerobic engines and I saw and all runners did a video that LeBron posted on his Instagram where he just runs he's running he's in a gym yes and he's running back and forth between each end of each basket and someone will throw him the ball as he approaches the basket an alley-oop he dunks it runs to the other end dunks it runs the other way it goes on forever if you look at it as a running but like holy mackerel this guy can run like a 430 mile so I thought that it was like wool he's gonna beat me but how great would it be to be destroyed by the ball alone but it took I love that it took that evidence to convince you that no no we need runners need evidence so there's some it's LeBron James oh no no no he's a machine he's a machine but there are some basketball players who by virtue of their size would have difficulty running a mile but you know do you remember about Scott I don't know why we're on this town it's great do you remember a jumper Vernon Maxwell of course absolutely quite safe for the rock so I met a guy who went played for Vernon played for the University of Florida as I believe mm-hmm and he said they used to do this thing where they would have to show up a like six o'clock in the morning in a coach would make them on half a mile and Vernon would show up hungover in like a pair of jeans and he would run a two-minute 1/2 mile right and he'd never did any kind of training and that you know he was not a small dude right so the idea is there and Larry Bird had amazing no he was a superb superb I do but my point is LeBron I think is in the category of very very large people who are so aerobic we gifted they I personally think LeBron just doesn't like to lose and he's like Kobe Bryant you could challenge him to anything he's gonna find a way to win the people just made up like that which kind of transcends even the thing that they're twice is a just be clear yeah but I know I clear about this I did not challenge him to the race every time I meet someone who works for either the Lakers or Nike yeah I badger them on this point right what's the matter what's up with LeBron why is he ducking me a man yes when it was clear he wasn't gonna do it I was like all right let's have our moms race like that and what did he say my mom is 89 years old so there's a similar age differential with his mom right but Joyce is up for it and she's probably of these dudes gonna use a walker but like I think it's like to use the Walker I wouldn't bet against your mom she has some velocity with the rock with the Walker I all right let's talk about your excellent book talking to strangers what we should know about the people we don't know there you go guys came out last week get this book you'll be happy that you did it's so fascinating on so many different levels make them congratulations you start by talking about Sandra bland yeah Sandra bland was the black woman who was driving in Texas and she was pulled over there's this kind of homes that kerfuffle black people don't have kerfuffles with police under please exactly what happened they just had a kerfuffle I don't understand I know this goes back to the to the to the Rodney King profile follows yes yeah you know people don't understand that's why they got off it was just a crazy seriously before we start this I was thinking about this the other day that the history of a lot of racial relations in Los Angeles is defined by a series of encounters between white policemen and black people so is it violence and what in riots yes it was the ending right there so the Watts Riots begin when a young black man is stopped by a cop on suspicion of DWI right and his mom comes and there's a whole confrontation then the next big event is EULA love famous case from the late 60s right where is a black woman who has a confrontation with police and they shoot her dead right because she they think they're she's threatening them then there is Rodney King right which happens sort of 15 years after that it's like I'm quite sure we could go back in time yeah and I'm quite sure the next major conflagration will be about it is extraordinary how many times in American history this particular kind of encounter has been the trigger for and some kind of explosion of unhappiness right it's interesting because you obviously didn't find this out recently you've you know you've known this you know even even as a Canadian but of course as a man of the world and yet the Sandra bland incident seems like it affected you in a different way there kind of motivated this book can you talk about that yeah because it's so unbelievably I mean they're all senseless these things so we you know we had the string we had starts with Ferguson and then we have you know and there's like 10 of them right Eric garner it's amazing how many of those names still the Sandra bland is a little different because yeah for those of you that don't remember she three days later I think it was she was found hung in her jail cell I'll say found hung because some people don't know if it was suicide or something else and it's also different because unlike say Ferguson where we're still arguing about what happened the whole encounter between Sandra bland and the police officer who stopped her is captured on his dash cam right we have a transcript and you can and you can watch the video online and I watched it you know 50 times yeah we covered it on my show at the time I mean it's so you you can see just how insanely senseless and stupid and heartbreaking this encounter is and that maybe sets it apart because it's always for bad reasons largely when we get when we get the videotape are I was puzzled about this by the way like Ray Rice we get told that he hit his girlfriend hard and dragged her from the elevator and we're like okay and then we see the video we're like oh my god wait what's the difference like why is it there was another case with a guy I mean there's actually numerous cases of this over the last couple of years where we we somehow can't get energized until we see the video Donald sterling yeah so everybody knows that Donald sterling the owner of the Clippers was a deeply racist dude twice the Department of Justice comes after him for not renting to black people he's clearly a kind of person who in private you know all the players would say over the course of many many years the man is despicable in the way he behaves towards us and then we get audio tape from his girlfriend of him behaving in precisely the manner we knew he behaved right and everyone that League is in an uproar and he gets turfed out of his job so it's like I don't really understand this although I understand that I am the exact same way with Sandra man there are a SAP there are the average number of civilians who are shot every year in America by police is a thousand so there are roughly a thousand cases we can get riled up about every year in America when you say shot do you are you saying unjustly shot no shot in let's say maybe in self-defense or are you making a distinction so the universe it's complicated because there are lots and lots of fatal but it is I think the criterion is in a situation where the civilian is not he's not obviously or directly threatening so if I hold up in my house with a shotgun and the cops break in and I fire and they fire that doesn't count we're talking about situations that should not have ended in it's about a thousand people a year mm-hmm so there were a thousand times we can get upset but we get most upset about the one case that where we can actually hear the video to see the videotape right it's right weird thing about us that we require that kind of documentary evidence before it affects us in a different way and you talk about this deeply into your book on a different points but there's something about now maybe it's not wanting to believe the worst in some cases and in other cases the Sandra bland thing is interesting and when you talk about cops pulling over blacks is interesting because there's the racism part of ADA's in the mix there sometimes I think sometimes not you know but in that but in this book talking to strangers you're not really talking about that aspect of it right you're really talking about something else yeah I I see this is something it's worth kind of dwelling on a little bit i explicitly don't explore the racial dimension right of this I want to point out this not read that's not what you're extrapolating here and there's many reasons one the principle one there's two that I want to talk about the principle one is I read an essay written by a historian of black historian at Chicago called Charles Payne which is called the whole United States his southern and it is one of the most extraordinarily insightful and devastating essays I've ever read in which he makes this argument that that was a statement made by George Wallace in I think the late early 70s he was governor of course of Alabama famous segregationist yes yeah you later kind of transformed into a curse people to forgive over black people do but this is bad George Wallace right this she's done a series of just like I still hate you black people George Wallace and he has done I've forgotten what the trigger is he's done something yeah totally racist and he marking on the fact that he go he woke up that he got his letters of support from across America and his the reason he makes a comment is that the great print assist of pains argument the great project of segregationists of white segregationists in the 1960s and 50s and 60s in the south was actually more than that was to personalize racism was to say what racism is about is that you and me Larry we don't see eye to eye you know we have hatred in our heart and if a white person in a black person could say oh I'm not of course white person so in this case I'm standing in for because I am whiter than you I'll stand in for the white person yeah my wife I am white of the year well you were in Canada for so long you know how are you supposed to get any darker than you are I have gonna be temporary I know what he means inspectors well yes I that the great project of the southern racist was to transform the racial argument to a personal argument so to forget about institutionalized racism to forget about voter suppression and and segregation all those kinds of things and just say you know it's about you not need to feel love in our hearts towards one another right and so long as the argument is framed in personal terms they win so long as people talk about when people talk about institutional terms they lose and Wallace was saying after he got this sort of outpouring of emotion for something that he said oh my god we want they're thinking about it in totally personal terms it's all about is the other two people involved in the conversation racists in their heart it's not about the fact that we don't let black people vote right and we what's amazing this prism of thinking about racism is that he's totally right day one right so the governor of Virginia wears black face and it's like a 1 month long story everyone's up in arms as if it's somehow surprising that a dude in his 60s who went to UVA in the 1970s wouldn't have worn blackface at some point I mean it was probably you probably needed to do that to get in right why is this probably surprising yes frankly I'm not that impressed for this kind of some weak racism it's like you can do better than meanwhile in exactly the same moment in history we're coming out of election where there is clear evidence that both gerrymandering and voter suppression substantially altered the outcome of the 2016 elections that and the Ralph whatever-his-name-is blackface story are on a par and George Wallace would say oh my god we won like you're really considering black face along with voter suppression and gerrymandering right that's what they want they wanted to be elevated so what I was trying to get away with in that story is and I felt people were dismissing the story of Sandra bland and the cop by saying oh the cops are racist and that ended the discussion I don't want to end the discussion I was like all right sure maybe he is but can we somehow find a way to talk about this that doesn't foreclose some kind of systemic reaction problem yeah one of the things I've always said that you know not all the time people are racist I think the benefit of the doubt is races itself actual benefit of the doubt you know it's the one benefit that white people get in droves you know but it's that assumption that it's made you talk about this little blink a little bit you know yeah the assumption that's made from the beginning and further in your book you when you talk about policing especially in Kansas City many times police make an assumption based on skin color I'm not saying they're racist but there's an assumption that's made that can inform their behavior they're certain not all cops are like this I certainly don't want to say that but in the Sandra bland case it felt like that was both of I thought there was some female stuff going in there to like you know that kind of thing like like it seemed like he couldn't believe a woman was talking that's what it felt like to me I was getting some of that like how dare she hos there's so many layers to that I so many layers you know she's out of state plates right a woman black eye I keep saying this because I'm a car person I love cars she's driving a Hyundai I'm not saying that trivially now it explains that is no I mean I really I really do think it's part of it he's like you think the Hyundai is part of it is absurd I'm certain but like so what are the circumstances under which she does not stop her okay so if she's white mmm way lower chances he stopping shops right if she's not 28 but 68 sure whale our chance to spray and if she's driving a Mercedes season stop where she's driving a Mercedes right right so he's like looking at a car I need to say that it's like no a nice car it's like a Hyundai and it's got Chicago plates and as a young black hole in it and I don't know that's like I'm in small town in rural Texas that just seems weird to be right and by the way as I point out in the book they are trained to do that that is they are trained to look for anomalies she is anomalous in Prairie View Texas in that moment she's not fitting the template of a normal motorist I mean his he has three triggers shouldn't not in she's a pickup truck it's different story no Confederate flag no consider if she was somehow by some extraordinary active of self-hatred putting the Confederate flag in the back of the truck yeah like she she walks right she escapes but there's so he's putting all those kind of pieces together and then and then you know the whole thing unravels but what's interesting about that is that the problem with the tape with watching a tape and obsessing over the tape and I thought about it's a lot because I someone who obsessed about the tape if the tape suggests that the interaction fails at the moment that he confronts her for the first time for the first time when he's asking for her life registry so the tape begins you see him pull her over and walk up to the passenger side leader in and say but of course it doesn't begin there it begins before he pulls her over it begins when he sees her pull out of the street pull onto the street and he drives up behind her and it's really really important to understand that his complete misunderstanding and the paranoid fantasy that he constructs around Sandra bland does not begin when he actually meets Sandra bland it begins before he meets her right that's the thing that's the crazy thing he's not even I mean the thesis is one of these of this book is that we're really bad at talking to strangers why because a lot of times were in a hurry and we used really lousy evidence as a basis for he's in such a hurry that he has already formed a suspicion about her before he has even laid eyes on I mean he's seen her glancingly as she drives by and he's like woman she's got a problem and then he manufactures the reason for pulling her over that's part of what is profoundly creepy about it and you're saying that affected the entire conversation yeah okay now do you also I don't remember if you do but do you also look at it from the other side like what has she made up in her mind about him because she had had she been posting things about incidents with police says there's a where politically aware young woman right so there was obviously a narrative playing in her head as well yeah how much credence do you give to that like in this situation so on the other side of this argument there are those who will make a lot out of that and they'll say we don't if she just you know said yes sir no sir yes or no sir she's alive today to which I would say several things one is that she is legitimate first of all she's had a series of encounters with the cops before and she has several thousand dollars in unpaid traffic fines from previous police stops that is part of the reason she is moved from Chicago to Texas is to start her life over because she was deeply in debt she had she had psychiatric problems she committed she'd attempted suicide and she had lost a child her life had really been in tatters in Chicago and she wanted a new start so she comes down to Texas and then one day into Texas she gets a new job she thinks she's turned over a new leaf and a cop pulls her over and here's the thing though and the reason why I'm not I don't buy this argument that she's in some way to blame the cop pulls her over for completely reasons he she pulls out of Prairie View University and she's driving down the road he pulls in behind her accelerates up behind her so what does she do she gets out as one would do if a cop accelerates behind behind you right she gets out of his way and she doesn't use her turning signal because she's in a hurry to get out of a police car who's driving really quickly and then he stops her and says you didn't use your turning signal it's like she's incensed and legitimately if anyone did that to you I'm particularly she's someone who was trying to start over after having yeah she had her own things going she may have been suffering from some kind of depression or something I think there's some issues going but the trigger is the cop completely manufactures a pretext for pulling her over and that quite properly irritates her and but it doesn't if you watch the videotape it's not like she's screaming at him she's not misbehaving she is complying and all she does is light a cigarette by the way why do people light a cigarette to calm their nerves she's trying to de-escalate I do not agree I think really have you you think just oh you're gonna be the ticket officer hold on one second no it's back let me just finish this blunt no because nobody's not that it is I am very upset right I would like to calm myself down and it's more you know nicotine in the day if nicotine is an extraordinarily powerful drug with many effects one of it one of its effects is an anxiety reducer very powerful and she is sitting in her mind I believe she's signaling to the police officer I'm upset just let me calm down try to calm down right she's trying to calm down and she track and by calming herself down trying to de-escalate the situation and he sees it as an act of defiance right so not a one of his ludicrous miss readings of the situation but just I find that cops generally don't like it when you give them what they call attitude they just don't I mean I cops that I talked to my father was in law enforcement if you give them what they consider attitude I'm not saying it just turns them into like you this is gonna be difficult now he wasn't a cop use of a probation officer but he he was LA County Sheriff's and my experience that my father always had a badge he still has a Tuesday and when he got pulled over several times and were in the car as soon as he shows the badge the blue color takes over from the black and it was all good so that was my experience that man that badge is pretty powerful you know yeah so it's kind of an interesting point of view but um in the book you talk a lot about spies and how I find this stuff very fascinating because um part of what you cover in the book is how we like to believe I don't know I'm not saying that's a saying but but we kind of believe the best in people or we want to believe the truth about something yeah and people can it's hard to it's harder to tell them people are lying to us than it is when they're telling the truth is that there our assumption is that people are always telling us the truth it's got our baseline some right but we really really want to believe that as well yes yes yes and so it's difficult so it takes an awful lot of evidence for us to shift out of what's called truth default mode into the belief that you're being deceived and this is a an astonishingly universal observation about human behavior so just by virtue of being someone who is deeply experienced or expert does not that that expertise and experience does not mean that you are better at knowing when you're being deceived all of us do it I mean I tell us we're in the book of the Larry Nasser case in Michigan smells terrible deal with parents who were in this one story with a mom who is herself a doctor is in the room while Nasser is treating her daughter and he's got his fingers inside her daughter's vagina and he has a hard-on and the mom the doctor sees that Larry Nasser has a erection the apparent the parent sees after me the parent the parent looks at Larry Nasser the doctor and sees that he is sporting an erection while treating her daughter and she was like she she was like I saw it and I was like that's kind of weird why would he now this is not someone who is a bad parent an idiot an inexperienced person none of those things she is a deeply caring parent who is a medical doctor who ought to know but that fundamental desire human desire to see the best in people overcomes all of her doubts right and that's that happens across the board it's fashion because if you talk about this in different ways like there there are two ways to me that this is kind of expressed there's the liar in that sense the the person that is purposely putting out a lie and you know people believe because Liars are actually pretty good you know especially professional Liars as we see when almost every day yeah well he's you know what it is he's so horrible at lying he's taken to a medal leblanc where no really it's this it really is unbelievable I love that we don't have to say we were talking about no no I'm giving him credit he's the most unbelievable liar I have ever seen in my life where the lies take on a different form of truth that he can pass any kind of polygraph I guarantee you hooked that creature up to a polygraph pass pass pass on anything on anything he's an amazing machine of yeah I'm truth sort of parenthetical but when I was doing this book I had I did none of it made it into the book yeah that became really interested in polygraph and then the CIA has like they deeply believe in the poly use it regularly right oh my god more than early they're obsessed with it they have a whole department of like dozens and dozens of people and as far as I could tell everyone who ever retired from the CIA's polygraph division wrote a memoir that's hilarious and so I didn't get to collect the memoirs of ex-cia all the experts and they're all like we're doesn't quite capture it it's like you're doing something of his no scientific basis yeah for an organization like the CIA and then you retire and the first thing you do is write a memoir boasting about your how good you are at this thing that is completely horseshit so then I thought well I'll go and visit them so I began to visit and they are you there they when they tell stories about their triumphs they're trying it's never that I caught the spot I caught Aldrich Ames before he gave away every secret we ever had it's never that because they don't catch all the gems right it's always like there was this guy and he was like having an affair of his wife I caught him okay okay or like this guy I mean he was he said that he was straight but he was gay incredible percentage of their wins are that they uncovered that someone is gay but first of all is 2019 I don't understand like why what's the win here how was this difficult generally I just asked them are you gay yeah that would be the best I don't have to hook them up to some machine but there you go so there they have Lois them out if you know the bar far enough uh-huh everything's a win right that's essentially what they're doing yeah but I would I would go I visited more than one of them and I do so kind of and they were all so perversely proud of their record and then they would always have some story about how yeah I told those fools on the Eastern European desk not to trust so-and-so it's like you know like after the fan of it made the book cause like why would I write why do you think the people who are most responsible like people in the CIA or you know the people who are supposedly the experts at subterfuge are the people who probably get fooled the most I mean they fall hard like you talk about it's years to just figure out who double agents are like why is it so hard to figure out who double agent is from an organization whose job it is figuratively exactly that's what I mean so yes so the book begins with this - I don't want to ruin it but I tell this unbelievable story about Cubans and yes Cubans the cube is how the cubes a little bit but it's a really fascinating guy who's high up in Cuban intelligence shows up in 1987 presented defects presents himself at the American Embassy in Vienna and says I have a story to tell and he insists on he insists that the former CIA station chief in Havana be present when he tells the story this is a very famous spy called the mountain climber who I spent about a year and a half trying and finally found huh he's like the greatest CIA operative his generation and what year did this happen 87 okay break ladies mount summer is now retired I can't use his real name he's a legend mountain climber his nickname was the mountain climber lol paulista the KGB would teach courses on hell out Batista to their crews because he was like he was like the real deal so he's been like so much time trying to find him cuz I was like I got to hear this story cuz I was told every time I would try and ask some CI person tell me the story about what happened this dude defected they you gotta talk to them like what do you do when someone says you got to have the mountain I really got to find the mountain can't Google mountain climber but I so I I in fact found him I was so pleased miss cuz I'm actually cut a bad reporter and i the fact that I found it was like roll up got my part like a secret information how you found him okay but one day I look at my wake up and there's a voicemail literally is mr. clapper I hear you're looking for me it's the mountain climber I was like oh my god it would have been great had you not been home and its Sun your voice felt uh hello this is this is the mountain climber [Music] anyway the mountain climber tells this kind of epic story and you realize that even mount comic the waiters to operative his generation even he can be fooled and this is always all spy stories are the same which is the spy is not James Bond took on Elaine and the shark to spy right and you know five years in someone suspects them and they get passed with flying colors and then ten years in even though they're like Aldrich Ames you know the worst spy of his generation did everything about to be caught he he was like drunk all the time mm-hmm Soviets start paying a large amounts of cash which he starts to spend even though he's like gs-7 you know like he's showing up at Langley and like a brand new you know xj12 Jaguar like it was like my favorite thing is they all make a big deal about how he capped his teeth so you get the sense that like the CIA is a place where knowing nobody caps no one caps her teeth here at the agency and all of a sudden like all James like shows up in the xj12 and like gets that unlike his teeth are gleaming white like you would think this is like and no suspicion no suspicion he's just crazy he's crazy crazy Aldridge he marries like a woman who like has ties to you know but it's just like or even I read this is not in the book but I read this book recently over the holidays about Klaus Fuchs who's the spy gives away all the atomic secrets to Soviets in the 40s arguably the most damning the most damaging spy of the 20th century and Klaus Fuchs is it das Alamos because he's one of the top nuclear physicists in the world and he has to get all of the so everything he's learning so they're inventing the nuclear bomb a Klaus is central it's like Oppenheimer Klaus but and Klaus is working for the Soviets the whole time so he has to get the stuff to the Soviets now so Los Alamos is like 20,000 people there but it's on lockdown you can't leave Los Alamos for obvious reasons because you're you're it's the biggest secret in the world right we're trying to make them Tomic bomb something you can't so it's like big fence around to get out of it it's harder than to get out of god knows what house is like constantly leaving for like unexpect all right where's pot I don't know what color he's got he's like God how do the desert somewhere like nobody seems to see incredible things like it's a real puffy maybe he's gaining weight there's so for at the end class gets caught and he ends up in East Germany and the padishah is British they're really bummed that they lost him this is just how weird and surreal the world of spies is like so the guy the whole time that he's figuring out how to make an atomic bomb he's giving everything to the Russians sure we know this about him we then the Brits didn't have to give him up and he goes to East Germany lives out his days and their first thought is such a shame to have lost Klaus because their whole position is alright I know he gave everything to the Russians but we can't make a bomb without him I can't even I don't read the time or the energy to unpack the logic behind that in particular it's unbelievable how people compartmentalize their common sense you know common sense gets compartmentalized so the biggest example in this book and this is an area that I've been interested in for a long time to this how does Neville Chamberlain yeah at the dawn of the Second World War think yeah I think I believe that Hitler guy yeah how does he look Hitler in the eye and come up he you know comes away several times not just once with complete faith in it I mean not complete faith but he presents it that way there yeah because you know people you know we're very scared about the prospect of war at that time you know Hitler had already done a couple of things how does that happen how does that phenomena well not only that Hitler is written like nine hundred page manifesto yeah detailing in the agenda you know it's like he's kind of spelled it all out all you have to do is read the book yes Chamberlain decides no action of fly to Munich and every part of the flight - I'd never been in an airplane before Neville Chamberlain and he flies to the plane and half of the whole story is like the Brits celebrating him for his bravery mm-hmm flying to Munich from London and there's some you know he flies from some aerodrome back then yeah Oh whoo where is NATO I'm from no no no he's a shopkeeper from Manchester right and he he has this notion by the way not dissimilar to George Bush looking George Putin in the eye and saying I have seen to this man so I've seen it so I think he was eating some eggs and sausage and I figured he must be regular George Bush got a pack he got a hit a pass from history that I will never understand do you think he got a pass oh my god okay I don't think he got a pass he got a pass when he started paying he starts a war for any completely fictionalized reason which results in hundreds of thousands of people dying and an entire generation of war vets coming home damaged for the rest of their lives and you can see them on the streets why they on the streets because George Bush started a war for no reason right and then not to mention the devastation that is left over in Iraq because we started a war for no reason right and somehow this doesn't matter and we're obsessing about Trump's tweets when is a guy in Texas you know who's against that war your boy chump I don't think Trump is nearly as egregious as George Bush I don't think it's even close really yeah I think Bush is in a cat he started a war on the basis of a lie a complete falsehood you come right which he told to the American people that had nothing to do with 9/11 which devastated tens of thousands of lives cost a trillion dollars and left a generation of American soldiers devastated and wounded and somehow he's perceived as this genial guy down in Tech like painting pictures and giving speeches for this is like well what is the matter with us there is nothing Donald Trump has done that even comes close to the human devastation of George Bush's time not not even close not even close I mean Trump is a deeply objectionable figure but he has not resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people for no reason right right George George Bush is eight I don't know why I'm honest he's a war criminal he's a classic example of it that is what a war criminal is someone who enters into a disastrous conflict for no good reason right for them not worse than no good reason for a completely trumped-up ridiculous reason well the entire government was complicit in that as well and you know what your next book is as a non-american I have to say I I am yeah the choice of things that Americans get riled up about has always amazed me mm-hmm you're like this guy is like you're fine with that guy yes he's considered to be the voice of reason well no no I was I was just asking about a Hitler and you know Hitler takes it all kinds of I read this great book on what I was doing that thing on Hitler by Hitler's PR no but I love that you didn't get as mad about Hitler as you did about George Bush I love that oh I'm plenty mad about Hitler yeah you I mean you and that Hitler I have I'm gonna do a religious history episode next season on Hitler's PR guy and I'm not gonna tell you the story which is it'll ruin the a PR guy here's a PR guy you mean like Leni Riefenstahl all I wanted to say this is about his PR guy already went to Harvard really my part antipathy towards Harvard is well known and this is just icing on the cake this is a ridiculous connection you're making where did you go I went to Cal Poly Pomona I'm a local guys [Applause] the theater major - I don't know why I had you for one of those fancy guys I'm not this Hobbit elitism I did do PR for Hitler's grandpa I feel really bad about that I probably shouldn't have done it but he seems have cleaned up the family name is all I can say no I was a Cal Poly was an agricultural engineering school which explains why I was a theater major there that's called the very fine school out here by the way just say anyhow yeah make your play about Harvard your hatred for Harvard because well I mean when it is PR guy right anyway the story I'm gonna tell in my podcast yes episode on this which is yet to come I can't tell you because you won't listen to the episode but let me just say there is a shocking Harvard related twist still I can't wait I'm always waiting for Harvard or Leggett chosen with bated breath I wanted it oh it's what I live for there's one thing you know what I'm going to talk about I when you get to the you come back to the Sandra bland at the end and there's a lot of points that you make you have friends in this book we're just real fascinating it's I still don't know why friends but the show friends is in this book I have no idea but there is an issue in here that kind of goes outside of this a little bit but you bring it back in and it's called coupling yeah this term a man quite heard this term before and it's this it's kind of a phenomenon how things can be related you know the way that they occurred together I guess and you just suicides as a way to demonstrate it right but why is coupling such a powerful thing in the observation of how of how we treat peaks on coupling is this idea which begins really with is developed very fully by a generation a very recent generation of criminologists who begin to understand that what crime is is not the actions of an individual but rather what crime is is an actions of an individual coupled with a context with a place so a good way to illustrate this excuse me is if you were LAPD chief and you were interested in lowering the crime rate in LA County I could give you a choice of two sources of information I would get rid of all Honda's first yes I can either give you the names of every person who committed a crime in LA County over the previous year okay or I can give you the addresses of every crime that was committed in LA County the previous year which do you think is more useful to stopping crime probably the addresses because you get an idea of where crime is occurring exactly right so this is the great inside of the cupola stat yeah that the places that crime occurs are more useful in understanding crime than the criminals themselves so the criminal is not someone who commits a crime out of context they commit a crime in coupled to a very very very specific place and when you do maps of crimes in cities this is a great insight you find that as a general rule more than 50% of the crime in any urban area occurs on less than 5% of the street segments now there was the blocks which is an extraordinary fact so I did a when I was doing the book I did a tour of Baltimore the America's most dangerous city with the criminologist who was trying to make this point to me she was like okay we're not driving in West Baltimore you know where the wire is from credibly dangerous neighborhood sure most streets in West Baltimore have almost no crime so even in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in America the crime is concentrated in a very very very small number of street segments of one block segments even when the assumption might be that it's kind of yeah spread out so and when cops have the assumption that crime is everywhere they behave that's my the argument i bill is that they feel they have the right and the obligation to employ aggressive police tactics everywhere but when they realize that in fact crime is something that is incredibly specific to very particular places then you realize oh no the tactics that are appropriate on 95% of the street segments are not appropriate on the 5% or all the crime is and vice versa you can't police an entire city the same way and that's to me that is the most important lesson about Sandra bland case which is as I you know when I went I'm never going to one of the guys who's made this argument guy named Larry Sherman brilliant criminologist who's been in the forefront of this movement we were walking through the Sandra bland case and the first thing he says is what on earth is the cop stopping her at two o'clock in the afternoon what he meant was crimes do not occur at two o'clock in the afternoon right if you understand what criminality looks like crimes occur in very specific neighborhoods generally speaking between the hours of X and why it not you know sometimes you have to make an appointment he was just like so to do that is to court disaster you are setting yourself up for pulling over an innocent person and making a grave a false positive error right of alienating someone for no good reason who is not likely to be engaged in again a criminal activity you have to if you want to use aggressive police tactics you have to use them incredibly sparingly and intelligently I mean not doing that can you define aggressive police tactics you have a I think in your book the way you talk about it there was the Kansas City experimental yeah and by aggressive it means they would just pull people over on the slightest of whim but the idea was to try to get guns off the street yeah that was the initial way that they were doing it right which is kind of interesting to me because I don't remember like when this was happening like the nra like crying that black people's guns are being with that type of thing I don't recall that they were known I don't remember them getting up in arms that particular thing people are happy when black people get their guns taken on yeah yeah black people's guns don't kill people but how would they in Iran come on people do know the idea is that so when you look at it's kind of fascinating this idea it's got the law of criminal concentration and this idea that crime happens overwhelmingly year after you're on the same very specific narrow set of streets so it would in a place like Baltimore there might be a street segment and the street segment is not an entire block it is a half of a block it's just one side of the street between two streets right so there are street segments in Baltimore that might have 200 police calls in a year it's crazy right so their argument is if you happen to live on that street segment you are totally fine with cops being there all the time pulling people over all the time sure because you don't have a problem with that right anyway that aggressive policing is good you are terrified of going out you can't step out of your door you're living in Lebanon it's like a nightmare you want the cops there if you live on a street segment and most street segments in cities have almost no one or two police calls a year if you live there you don't want the cops there all the time all think all they're doing is harassing you right so there's a big difference between the attitude towards policing in those specific areas that are crime ridden and in those vast majority of areas that are not and so these guys it's kind of David weisburd who's the kind of genius of this and very Sherman their argument is you don't have a credibility problem for law enforcement when you limit yourself to the areas where crime is you have a credibility problem when you start to get lazy and injudicious and use these tactics in places where they don't really got appropriate that is to my mind the real lesson of Sandra bland what's he doing stopping leave aside what happens after he stops her that's all secondary stuff the real issue is why is he stopping her what are you doing there is almost no chance she is up to no good Wow one of the things I wanted to ask you about as well as now you've you're presenting your books in a whole new way yeah it sounds amazing so we did what we call it an enhanced audio book of this which is if you listen to the audiobook we it's produced like a podcast so I did when I was reporting this I made sure that I got high quality tape on everyone I was interviewing at home and then so when we did the audio book for the first thing we did was I don't you normally you just read everything when I come to someone that I'm quoting you hear them yes and when you when I describe Sandra bland at the beginning you hear actual Sandra bland and when at the very end when I come back to the police officer and he's giving his deposition on his side of the story you hear it in his voice and then we went to gentleman and gentleman I wrote this saying this incredible song about police shootings go how how am you talking about and we went to Janelle Monae and we said can we use the song that's like absolutely so we the song it's got this incredibly powerful song that and we have it scored by this group in we spent six months and a couple hundred thousand dollars making this and it's a I will say this it's a better book in audio it's a totally different book it's a whole different experience completely different experience and it's a it's way more powerful once you hear because Sandra bland did this she had a youtube channel and she did all of these you can find him online she used to post he's kind of like little kind of essays online should shoot I was begin hello my beautiful kings and queens and there you realize when you listen to them that what a kind of she was a really kind of beautiful human being she had she was not someone who was this is why I get so upset at people who suggest she's in some way called she really affected you these these tapes and just listen she did when you listen to them you realize she this is a woman who had an extraordinary amount of love and kindness in her heart she is one talking about really squarely about race when she talks about how the solution to all of these she's very this is in the middle of that series of high-profile police shootings and she's very much caught up in this and she has this one YouTube essay where she talks about how the solution is not for black people to hate white people that's just does not she talks about her own experience in a you know racially mixed high school and it's incredibly affecting you realize this is an intelligent thoughtful young woman she's not this she's not out she's not like turning to the cop and going like this that's not her right she's a very different kind of person that's why this thing is one of the many many reasons this thing is so heartbreaking yeah that she's actually someone who wanted to bring some degree of civility and wisdom to this conversation it really is amazing one of the things that even hearing you speak about it now I'm really struck by the level of emotion that you have about her in that case and you know to book in her story with this it's different that's the way that this is different from other things you've read other things you've written from my point of view you like you you present a thesis to us and you develop a thesis over the course of it this is a little different you're presenting a problem that I think almost an emotional problem you've had if something you're trying to work out and the book is almost you working you know when you hear get to experience almost the feelings that you're happy about this right and when you and all of these stories like there's the story of where I sit down with the guy who did all of the waterboarding for the CIA and because I torture is the ultimate talking to strangers right sit down with an al Qaeda guy yes and you were required to figure out what he's yeah what secrets he has and he doesn't want to give them to you and you have to find out who he is and what he knows right and so one the solution they had I say they I have to stop myself because this was someone acting at the behest of the United States government mm-hmm it's really and one of the issues I have with people's relationship to to questionable or evil deeds done by the government as they use they try and distance themselves from it it is really this is a guy we sat down with al Qaeda and we attempted to use coercive measures to find out what they were thinking right and we decided that sleep deprivation and waterboarding and welding was an appropriate way to do that and we have got to live with the consequences and by the way if the same situation were to come up now we would be doing that again if you don't think if you think that this administration would be somehow more squeamish about using coercive interrogation than George Bush's administration was you're crazy right that I don't know because this is where Trump is so unpredictable like he think of no don't do that like he has these weird reactions to things you know he really does he I believe he's unpredictable in that room he might surprise him be against torture I honestly I have no idea he has sad he's in favorite but that means nothing cuz it but he's so unpredictable you know he might be squeamish one day about it I mean who knows yeah like in other words I don't believe he has an ideology I believe he has a how he's feeling that day elegy yeah I think that is right is if the KFC is working hard against him that day yeah then I can see you forget of it for a guy who's got like a kind of cleanliness fetish he's an awful lot of fast food that's also good yes but actually it's interesting about Trump and you know I rarely give them credit because you know it's just too much fun to be against him but um but he seems to have a soft spot in the criminal justice area you know and maybe it's because the people who have been coming to him about it or that type of thing so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out but yeah but he has that hawkish defend the country thing about him but there's this other area that it's kind of interesting too so if you broken as many laws as he has right you're gonna have an antagonist together exactly we do know that in the audio book it's one thing when you in the physical book when you read about this CIA guy when but that whole chapter or half of it is told in his voice in the audio book it's just I back out entirely it's just long stretches I'm nuts about that oh no this is a CIA oh you did the you he you will hear him in his own voice describing what it's like to water he tells the CIA interrogator guy torturer guy tells a story which is emitting it's kind of funny which is he is his buddy and they're they want to figure out whether they want to waterboard people but they are from so there's two dueling there from sere schools the sere schools are the schools where you go you're like a Navy SEAL and you they torture you and they do all the stuff - right so to prepare you for if you cook you for captured so he goes there and for example he he goes to the Air Force One and the Air Force One and the Navy one have very different ideas about how to torture you okay so he goes through what he tells us I said what was it like he's like yeah well for example one time they came in the middle of the night and you know they try to make it as real as possible you came in the middle of the night and they drag me out of bed and they put me in a hole in the ground naked and then they put a metal plate over the hole and then they inserted a water hose and they filled the hole with water and what got higher and higher and higher and higher and higher and what I didn't know is it right behind my head there was a exhaust drain pipe so the water couldn't go any higher than my nose but I didn't know that I'd all I knew it was getting higher and higher and higher and all I could think of was maybe they won't kill me but I don't know maybe they will so it was a moment when he began to seriously question whether it's gonna survive that's the kind of stuff they do to each other any Kateri but they didn't that Air Force guys don't believe in waterboarding because they think it works so well why would you if you train air force people on waterboarding they're gonna give up and the point of the training is that you don't give up so you don't want to do the thing that's so humiliates them that they'll think once they're captured it's pointless right the Navy guys think no no it's really useful to show you the full range of bad things so you could spend a lot of time just kind of unpacking the significance of this distinction between the philosophies of the Navy in the Air Force but anyway so he's Air Force and he isn't done waterboarding and he calls the Navy guys and says is it gonna work against al-qaeda and they go totally so he's at the black site and he is buddy decide that what they'll do is they'll try waterboarding on each other to see how bad it is and so they try on each other like oh this bad and then so then they call Washington and they say we want to do instinct on waterboarding and the Justice Department has to okay it so they're like well what's that and there's a good they try to explain it like no no let's send some attorneys down to the black site to figure out what it is so he's like one day this guy by the way name's James Mitchell in enormous ly charming you'll see will you listen to the audio book you kind of your interest so he says what happened so one day they're at the black site like in Poland whoever the hell it is had to attend two young DOJ attorneys show up from Washington and you know a woman in a man you can imagine the woman in like the big bow tie in the and the guy in like his Brooks Brothers suit and they're just like probably three years out of Law School they show up in Poland and they're James Mitchell it's like all right look we're gonna waterboard you so they strap him to the gurney and they waterboard them and I he's like a nanny and we did it and then I said what did they what did they say when they got out of the and he said the woman said turn to him and said man that sucked that was that's that's why they and so that's why we had waterboarding Malcolm Gladwell breaks down waterboarding you guys come on give it up but fascinating fans to do bezel well let's go to some questions you want to take some questions from all right we have time for a few questions Malcolm if you had 10,000 hours to dedicate to a new craft what would you choose and why 10,000 hours to a new craft no I guess I I read so many thrillers I maybe want to reinvent myself as a fiction writers I'm still want to write yeah exactly but maybe I should do something more adventurous maybe I'd look you know but no I think maybe I'd want to write I have ideas for thrillers that I've never pursued because I think it's really hard to master writing dialogue you could take 10,000 hours to figure out how to beat LeBron well that's frequently when you write so now you look back I can't believe they met that you No so one of the things that happened thousands when you write a book yes is that people are overly enthusiastic in their interpretation of some of your ideas yeah so I presented 10,000 hours in a very narrow sense I was talking about you know computer programming mm-hmm chess right like serious cognitive tasks but people were like oh this applies to you know playing power forward in the NBA no it doesn't right doesn't apply in a place like being a computer program world-class computer programmer and playing and being in the Beatles but it doesn't apply to life so so I will it doesn't notion 10,000 hours as was popularly explained it doesn't got to do with me and they were articles written in which they would talk about my theory yes not my theory a and B to the extent that it is my theory what you described and goes nothing has no nothing in common with Malcolm you've been you've been very critical of philanthropy and higher education yeah yes that's true yes what is wrong about it and how might it be different or better oh my god let's start you did a whole pod episode on assembly right and as he thought about this yeah well it's so kind of base of common sense you have two choices you can give money to schools that need money or you can give money to schools that don't need money my advice phrase right is give money to schools that need money yes why I agree why because they need money Yeah right and I every time I meet someone who's just giving like you know million dollars to harbor yeah I say you know you could first of all are you are you walking into a Louie Vuitton store and giving them money to cuz that's essentially the same thing right do you feel like it needs a little sprucing up around the edges would you like to open it division of the Louis Vuitton store with your name on it like Larry Wilmore of you know hand dressing me down you've probably have some and you know it always is that Cal Poly doesn't ask me for money thanks they accept the fact that this is the best thing you're loaded no I actually have covered I figured this out once that so I would encourage any of you who would like to to read the financial statements of Princeton University and what's fascinating about them is Princeton University has so you have an endowment and what you do if your university is you do a draw from the endowment every year right and you typically might draw you might take five percent of the endowment out every year and if you make seven percent then you keep the extra two in there and they done slightly gross or if times are hard you'll draw ten percent and your endowment will dip a little and your try and raise some more sure Princeton has so much money in its endowment but it tries as hard as it can to take the maximum amount and still that number is such a tiny fraction of the hole then every year regardless of what Princeton does their endowment gets bigger so there's no scenario in which they don't make more money in a given year they have like the school is tiny they've already spent all the money on like they of running out of things spent you walked around Kristin there they're literally at their wit's end yeah about what to spend money on right and so and so the endowment regard if they roll if they raise 0 dollars next year and took the maximum amount out of their endowment the endowment would still grow ok that's their financial situation ok do they still raise money absolutely so at which point what point do you say well what I don't understand what's the money being really make sense and so I sat down next to a woman who managed their endowment I said that's really interesting that you things are done and I said I read financial statements of my understanding of them is it you guys could fall asleep for the next 50 years and your endowment would double have you ever thought about doing more productive work and she was like that's not true that's like buiidings true and we had a kind of argument at the dinner I love these little I think it's us I get it I get it I'd like to pick a fight yeah and and then she emailed me the next day I actually checked in you're right yeah all right do you think some of these to go off this question do you think you know a lot of politicians are talking about free college and all that kind of stuff but they always you know the idea is for the government to pay for but it seems to me there's a lot of private institutions that could just be giving college away for free right now do you think we'll see some of them maybe I don't I don't think the issue is that's not the fix mm-hmm so I'm now's not the overall fit no I'm now I really really really do think that wealthier so if you think about it the Ivy League institutions plus Stanford have a combined endowment of one hundred and forty billion dollars billion yeah hundred forty billion and they educate a hundred thousand students yeah so at a certain point I think those institutions have the obligations they are really good at fundraising they should just fundraise for everybody else Yeah right like I don't see why is it if you give a million dollars to Harvard why can't Harvard say the best use of your money is for someone other than hard why can't Harvard go to you and say you know mr. Schwartzman you're a hundred million would do a lot of good at a community college in ER you know like that I don't understand why that that argument is people always roll their eyes with that argument I'm sorry is not impossible if the president of Harvard said to their number-one donor thank you I really appreciate your generosity I would like to make the best use of this money I can and I am I have to tell you the best use is not on this campus I don't think the people would you know I was found and it never happened but I learned that there was a guy who had someone who a friend not afraid someone I knew I was on the harvard board told me there was a guy i really really get into that i learned there was a guy on the Huayra board who's real rich who really wanted to give like hundreds of millions of dollars to d renovate the Harvard football stadium in other words they had the football stadium which is like a classic traditional blue that they renovated it to make it look modern this guy was like you know what I'd like to take it back to before like man like that that's amazing okay our final question for the final question of all the interviews you've completed in your career for your various books and podcasts which interview and with whom had the biggest impact on you personally come on Ribbit's I come on these people no I'm not you conducted this interview I didn't know well so one that was done with me clearly Larry one that I did with someone else what was the question one he's done correct one I love that you're going out of your way to make this about you yeah trying to get some love I know how Smitty you get so just try to get try to get some Malcolm love Iran I've actually rarely snitty I am very well behaved I hate I occasionally wander outside the lines occasionally yeah my dress when it eNOS is always entertaining my eyes it my twitter is like it's like cats yeah it's like there's nothing there's no harshness going on on my Twitter well let me ask you this cuz people kind of pounced on you a bit last year remember the whole New Yorker thing even happened they did you know well it seemed like they were pouncing I knew you might view of Twitter's is like eight people uh-huh I don't know where they live like in the suburbs of Cleveland right and they're very angry with their lives and they go on a variety of Twitter sites whatever they are every day I just post lots of nasty things but it's not a lot you know we think because they're so prolific yeah that there's a lot of them out there I just don't think it's allowed either it just eight is a pretty good number yeah yeah let me ask you this to back on there do you have a favorite book I know your most recent one usually can be feeling like your favorite but is there any one that sticks out in your mind that you just really always kind of look at finally or do you just forget those once you're done well there's you know the standard answer people give which I'm not going to give but I'll tell you what the standard answer okay which is my books are like my children I like them all I rarely visit but I mean I growing up it was an article of faith that if parents had a favorite they would never own up to it so in when I was a kid you would observe family your own family other families and it would be clear there was big differences among the siblings you know love ability but no one no one ever even raised the notion that parents might favor one over another and then lately I've realized that in the 21st century apparently parents seem to be much less concerned yeah about this and I know people who openly yeah will say well she's my favorite yeah I mean when it's so obvious I took it so do you have a favorite no I do not have a thing I don't come on baby come on I wouldn't lie I don't really I would tell you if I had to put Noah form for one of them was rotten I would definitely have a favorite what they said they would say yeah absolutely dad's totally even-handed completely now I come from a family where there were some favorites you know and that was pretty obvious for a while and sometimes that would you were not the favorite no I was there but that's why you're a comic although I think I might be my mom's favorite now but that's cuz I pay for a late surge but there's definitely schisms that are called cause from their favorites but we're talking about books your books aren't gonna be affected by being the favorite do I have a favorite I'm just calling on your answer [Laughter] no you can't you can't your favorite can't be your first one no right like the first one was written in the late 90s there is nothing I thought or did or wore in the late 90s said I would endorse today like he does not know part about million good idea yeah commending all of us feel that way who who would stand next who would stand behind their date 90 self in this day and age Trump yeah that's about it you what were you doing would you stand behind your late night yourself completely we had a crackhead on the show are you kidding me hahaha still hasn't been done until we actually had a line on the show well don't show you can't do that line today on TV good I stand by my late 90s oh that's all I'm asking of you Malik oh that's okay a final question Malcolm what advice would you give us actually was one of the question that came in as a parent in here who teaches kindergarten and her husband teaches high school what is the best advice you would give them to give a kindergarten student and a high school student advice in the realm of like what's like anything [Music] are you sure this is a question for this show that was our child psychology show last night do you have an odd question but do I'd like to give thanks to people are you asked to really I don't think of my uh-huh I don't think when I think of my own experience I don't know whether it lends itself to I wouldn't would I want someone who followed my career path I don't think so but I advise leave I mean I always think that you if you're young and in America you should leave America I don't mean permanently I don't mean leave it in anger I'm use it places you should live somewhere else for a while and you know your appreciation for this country will grow if you go somewhere dysfunctional sure and that's a very know cuz I think lot of people are on I'm as again as an outsider and also as a child so I grew up you know my mom is Jamaican immigrant and I grew up in the family of Jamaica in the world of Jamaican immigrants in American Canada and there are many many many many Jamaican immigrants and if you grew up in the world of Jamaican immigrants they're all they asked they left Jamaica when Jamaica was at its craziness in the 70s and that reference point in their head in her mind about how crazy things were under sadness in Jamaica meant they were always happy to be here and no amount of craziness and dysfunction in America can possibly dislodge the notion of how crazy things were elsewhere yeah that's a really you know to talk to Americans today you would think they were that this country you know was on its last legs it is but it's still just about the best place to live in the world right okay one guy can't screw that up and if you have if you forgot man you should go somewhere that isn't working well and reacquaint yourself about what dysfunction really looks like so that's my my advice would be by paying ticket go somewhere that isn't working well and gets a healthy what a nice way to end and go talk to strangers how about that Malcolm Gladwell talking to strangers go by the book everybody thanks [Music] [Applause]

Channel: LiveTalksLA

Views: 18,828

Rating: 4.8679867 out of 5

Keywords: Malcolm Gladwell, Larry Wilmore, Live Talks Los Angeles, Talking to Strangers, Live Talks LA, Little Brown

Id: FgICQojqZCo

Length: 80min 40sec (4840 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 14 2020