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

quick sound check Malcolm tell me what you had for breakfast please I had a cappuccino and a third of a cross on the root of a crystal and do you divvy it up over three days or is that just was it a bad croissant no I love croissants but I feel like one I don't I think he wants you to eat a minimum the the absolute minimum in the morning I don't think you should eat a lot in the morning we will commit omit rules we will explore that further thank you at this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking can I ask you a personal question no it is soon I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over metal endoskeleton 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 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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 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 fifteen thousand dollars 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 dot-com forward slash Tim it's fast it's free there's no downside that I can think of this episode is brought to you by gymnastic bodies calm this is the training system that I am most obsessed with at the moment and I don't get paid any Commission's or anything like that you may have heard coach summer on the podcast to design the program former national team coach for men's gymnastics I am not easily impressed 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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 and prove 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 at Gladwell on Twitter say hi is the author of five New York Times bestsellers mega bestsellers the tipping point blink outliers with 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 that is all I have to say about that so please say hi to him on Twitter at Gladwell and I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did thanks for listening Malcolm welcome to the show thank you Tim I really appreciate Megan the time and I know we've bumped into each other a few times over the years I remember I want to say the first time was at a salon that Peter teal put together not like religion ethics and morality or something like that oh right is ages ago and years ago years ago and I remember showing up and Erin Hoffman who had co-hosted the event as a friend of mine was like hey would you mind just like improving and speaking at this event for a few minutes about X Y or Z we haven't decided on the topic set 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 so I suspect it was a poor performance on my part in preparation for this because I've been looking forward to it I paying Stephen Dubner freakanomics mutual friend and his response was short it was fun exclamation point 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 okay what have been the easiest and hardest books for you to write well uh it's an interesting question 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 so I never think about writing in terms of hard and easy I think about it in terms of fun and not fun 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 now makes it less fun you can't really kind of savor 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 there so that does that mean the last two of the hardest hardest slashes fun yes I think they were because I was trying to do tell better stories I became convinced about 15 years ago or so that I if I was to develop as a writer I had to be a better storyteller and so those the outliers in what the dog saw were books where I was really really trying to do a better job and I'm sorry and David and lithe where I was really trying to be a do a better job of telling good stories who do you are there any people come to mind fictional or otherwise who are good storytellers yeah Michael Lewis is the gold standard Michael Lewis um and that's I was actually in reading Michael Lewis that I realized that I wanted to be you you can't be him any more than you can you know you can't say I watch Steph Curry play basketball and I decided that's the kind of basketball player I want to be like you you know you can try and you can be inspired by him you could pattern your play after him but you can't be him that only you know that's impossible so I have tried it I was inspired by Michael Lewis to get better but I am not on his level I was well I think both of you are very very good at taking what could be dense impenetrable material or overwhelming material and making it a story that is easy to consume I mean as storytelling and consuming machines Oh he tells I tell a million stories in one book he tells one story that's so much harder what makes that harder cuz you have to go to a level and complexity and have confidence what happens is that I lose confidence in the reason I tell lots of stories and I don't the confidence to keep going with the same one I think oh I everyone must be losing interest I got a switch to do something else now Michael doesn't have that problem I mean he he has the kind of panache to say I'm going to tell you a story about a guy basically trying to do hi-c can't take on the high speed traders and I will we're going to this for 200 pages and you're gonna love it like I I can't start with that that's part of the reason I also write my books in and I'm not in any way comparing myself to you or you have every right to tonight why I'm a writer who dad or I'm a teacher who dabbles incorrect and sometimes put stuff down that's intelligible but the way that I tend to nonlinearly write my books and encourage people to consume it in a nonlinear ways precisely for that reason because I worry that if in some cases I can keep something interesting for 15-20 pages but I lack the confidence that I can do it for 200 or 300 yeah it takes em you got to be you got to be good to pull off that feat particularly with the sorts of topics that he chooses which are you know esoteric he wrote he would a gripping thriller about credit swaps and derivatives I mean that's not easy not easy at all I I mean then you have sabermetrics and he's so consistent the next question I would ask was related to the perennial topic of course but writer's block and or anything that you might consider something like that and it's related to the kind of module choose-your-own-adventure like way in which I write myself which is one way that I can put something on the Shelf of I'm having trouble with it and move on to something else it doesn't have to be sequential do you run into writer's block if so how does that manifest and what do you what do you do or do you get stuck well I don't you know I worked for 10 years at a newspaper and if that experience teaches you anything it said 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 do it 4 or 4:30 or whatever back in those days there's hard deadlines so you can't have I mean sitting with unthinkable I mean you know the luxury 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 no like take off your beret he's a poetry yeah but you know según 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 wash suppose Elia you get in a hurry have any pretensions you have about your writing 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 caught that I learned over though that ten years at The Washington Post I just have stayed with me and so I I never and also you know writing to me is only writing a book is maybe 20 percent writing an 80 percent 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 where does weird now is that true also for a shorter piece and say The New Yorker yeah I will have not all of it but I know what I'm doing before I start or I know what the pieces are could you give an example of 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 am fascinated by structure I don't think I'm particularly gifted at it but I did long ago took a class at John McPhee one year oh yeah colleagues staff writer at The New Yorker and his his grasp and approach to structure is just incredible at least the way that he visualizes his structure but he has very particular process I can't follow his say day to day schedule just basically sitting in front of a blank piece of paper from like 8:00 in the morning to 6:00 p.m. whether anything's written or not which would lead me to just want to throw my head through a window what uh can you give us any origins story of any yeah so uh it's some are easy I did a story for The New Yorker last fall about a school shooter in Minnesota and there I that was super easy because I wanted to write about school shootings I start rooting around the internet and I find this criminal complaint and transcript transcript of a interrogation of a kid who was caught basically in the act would be school shooter caught in the act and he gives his SEC 60 pages and it's his 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 going to 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 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 could of core 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 them one of those lawyers was the father of a friend of mine madam when I talked to him I was like oh wait a minute there are all of his buddies they're all from the same part of the Bronx they all were born in pact in the same year the almond 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 it I mean if 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 reported that story I wrote that chapter I thought about it 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 did it start off in your head as the as a chapter in a prospective book or was it a standalone no it was I wonder write a book about successful people and so it was always going to be a chapter in the book but it was it was just a great I don't know a lucky place to start because when you could start with the with one of those I don't know if that's the best chapter in the book but it is is functionally the most important chapter in the book had all the macro elements in the integral and that that's the gold center when you can have that kind of you can begin on that kind of note other ones have been much more difficult because they haven't had that now let's say you have that story 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 sixty page transcript of the would be school shooter I don't remember I was I was screwing around on the internet um as interested in school shootings 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 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 local da so it's like the end I don't know how I found it I can't remember I just fab you so curiously I be so glorious know how to I just was one of those but other cases like in my podcast for example one of the episodes I like the most two episodes actually touching this question so one is an episode I think it's the eighth or ninth episode is called generous orthodoxy and it's the story of a ninety eight year old Mennonite pastor in Lancaster Pennsylvania who takes on his church and I come from a very men in that area in a Ontario many of my friends and brothers friends are Mennonites my brother's event at night my parents quit you know I know that world really well I go home at Christmas and my everyone's talking about this guy I want to say everyone is only number of Mennonites in 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 like oh my goodness what an extraordinary letter so I tracked down the guy I interview him like a week later going to drive out to Lancaster and I said look at the transcript and I say well what's this about and I realized 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 I stumbled into this it's a it's ten 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's just all it's all there I have to do anything he's I'm crying by the end I mean it's just insane so I go home and I look and I think well I want to make a shot 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 is voice and so the question is what does his story need to be finished not a lot right just a little bit to put it in context so there's a case where you stumble across something and your role your only role is not to screw it up right 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 it's so that's actually it's my favorite revisionist history episode for that reason it's just so pure and simple when you have let's say in the case of the outlier chapters or chapter rather on the Jewish lawyers how do you capture your notes and organize your notes on something like that oh what tools do you use if I mean I just I mean it's gonna sound so old-school I transcribe the interview print out the transcript and underline the parts I like and then move them into a file and do you move I what is it a word file how do you add what type of file is it I know this is getting very it's a word file yeah just like 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 no the the tools I would agree I mean it's up you know whether it's a pen or a paintbrush or crayons I think you still have to know how to use the writing implement but the process is interesting to me so 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 is interesting 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 it they are they hat looking through at something like looking through a transcript and understanding what's interesting right if you can't do that if you can't kind of get to sort of visualize what the story is going to become before it has become anything so you might be dealing with a document that is twenty thousand words right which is or even longer could be thirty thousand words which is enormous I mean a book my books are seventy-five thousand words I mean so you're dealing with a single interview that might be you know 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 that dead space and then I just take repeated passes pruning pruning pruning until what I'm left with is well until I know the interview almost by heart and then when 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 to transcribe resolve and once you have these nuggets these various highlights how do you determine what starts a chapter well or a book for that matter yeah that's the other thing that's another thing that kind of qualifies you as a writer 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 oh not just one good answer it takes the pressure off but typically you know I might try out several openings I don't get it so 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 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 but I it's become a bit of a trope if that's the right word for me where I'm always doing in media rests right so I'm always taking some exciting moment right in the middle of mm X 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 writer doctor consultation but do you ever find yourself doing that you're like you know what this recipe works but I want to play with other recipes or 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 credibly powerful so you know there's a one of the shows is about one of my favorites of two favorites this is the other one it's about giving a sounds boring when I say that it's about a university philanthropy and so I can trust two very wealthy men one who may reach very different conclusions about where they want to give their money and one of the men is my hero and one is my villain and the hero I'm not gonna add honest 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 had the memorial service a local a cappella group sang a kind of semi cheesy boyband 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 the song and your initial thought is oh my god and then you're like oh right and you get it the emotion hits you now if you're writing about that it's meaningless but all that nuance is lost in a podcast suddenly you're like oh wow that's my beginning right no question that's how I that's the way in because he you want that movement from oh this is cheesy - 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 and I have to break out of that and think in a different way about what's powerful you are a very good public speaker I think your tremendous speaker how do how do you plan your keynotes because this is yet it from format yeah yeah well if you think of your most let's say your most successful and then perhaps a less successful presentation yeah how have they how are they different they differ well there's first of all I the breakthrough for me and 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 decide do I what you realize that started about uh I was there a particular incident or so just about analyze ten years ago when I asked myself the question do I want to continue doing this because it has its pluses and it's minuses and I realized I only want to continue doing it if I get much better at it and if I change it in a way that it's much more meaningful to me so 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've spent 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 has made it much more interesting to me I now I enjoyed in a way I didn't enjoy it when I was it didn't feel like I was doing it a kind of halfway manner but I realized in retrospect I was just because I hadn't understood I thought that what giving his 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 in its rays once you actually know 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 it that's I gotta throw myself into that in a significant way and so that's what I tried to do is there anyone in the world of speaking alive or dead who is the Michael Lewis for you I once went to a wedding not a wedding I'm sorry at birthday party for an old old friend of mine and it was in in England cuz when I contested my friend Anne Applebaum and she has all of these she's been in England for years and she is all these sort of kind of fancy English friends who 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 and this little country house in the middle of England and the English of course a way better at giving speeches and we are first of all but secondly we were talking about the creme de la creme of English speech givers like serious kind of I you know Cambridge and Oxford debating society kind of people so Neil Ferguson the historian gave a wedding toast that is not a 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 had ever heard like on another level I was like oh my god that's good 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 out and you just like that was the the conceit was it I'm just this is off the cuff I'm just there this is totally spontaneous and it was so cleverly done and so hilarious and yet I think I realized was that 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 Han who was turning fifty and half the stuff that he was going to say was not right it was like me that was sort of like we did he start off saying that 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 no it was like he did it was such panache and kind of I was just like 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 I ever say I like worship the guy I just think I think he walks on water what what are the elements of a good performance for you what are some of the ingredients that make a good performance in York is 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 if I'm trying to say something that will engage them and be intelligent and make them think 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 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 all right it's kind of so that's that's hard and that's an really but it's hard in a good way it's really 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 so this that and if you pull it 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 specialists but they do they want what would bring that what makes them what satisfies them is my attempt to speak to them while being true to myself right my attempt to bridge the can i bridge the gap is the question really that they're asking them in the back of the mind and when you can bridge the gap that's really satisfying to someone it's like oh right that's you know that I think you you know you've succeeded when you have just a few more questions about writing because I'm up most likely about to go into as we discussed briefly crunch writing deadlines myself when you have for instance one or two stories for a book and 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 well there's a good action 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'm he's a one-in-a-million kid I thought his story of how does that what happens to you if you're you have an IQ of 150 and you grew up in South Central right but that's sort of interesting so I was going to 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 3-point shot and you're you could 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 got an IQ of 115 you live in South Central did I just find you and like adopt you and blue so I was I went out I had this long conversation with this kid it's credibly powerful totally interesting and then as I tell the story I realized oh so my episodes are 45 minutes and I realized this story is all I need United 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 isn't tall you're in tears by the I mean he's I want to happen to him and his story is crazy and then this is an 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 thought I'd 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 Revati is revisiting that promise that we make how good are we at fulfilling it so into a second show which is all about do college is actually how do they find these kids do they do a good job of finding how do they find them what do they do spend a lot of time and money on it today and the answer is the college is - a terrible job of finding them so that's is well why so I do the show on why why did I do a terrible job and the answer is a lot of 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 got to pay 50 grand you could you're out 50 grand if you want to bring them to your school so if you got to 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 episodes about so then I do that when I'm like I do that one like wait a minute I'm not done this gets more interesting right so if you have to spend you've got to 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 you mean you find it all starts with one kid I find the kid and all of a sudden 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 say we I think 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 skip over because it's old hat to them and you were like no no no that I could spend hours on that point you know so it's all I do I know exactly Olivia and it did strikes me that you asked questions as part of that walking around the first story right and you asked a question that then redirects you or focuses you in into another topic you find a story then you ask another question which then leads to in this case another episode but it could have been another chapter of a book yeah if you were to credit someone or some people or resources with helping you to get better at asking questions who or what would that be my dad is a great question as Oscar and my father has this I've spoken about it many times he has of his many gifts one in particular as a kid always had the biggest impact on on me which is my father has zero intellectual insecurities so this is the only thing he has in common with Obama you know Ballmer the same way but but has no it has never crossed his mind to be concerned that the world thinks he's an idiot just isn'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 maybe it's because he's my dad's a mathematician so he has his thing that he knows it's he's really good at and so he's like he's home free I think if you have a PhD math you're home free you're home free well if you need something you the true or its false or it's clear it's not 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 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 but 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 this PhD in man he made friends with all of these farmers who were our neighbors who were all dropouts it was in Canada in Canada they were all do when they basically 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 what 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 well it strikes me also that the the dumb questions or the obvious questions are precisely the questions oftentimes we should be asking because half the people in the room if it's in a group setting or probably thinking of those questions anyway but are embarrassed for whatever reason to bring them up it's sweet example 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 these steady whatever it was nine percent a year you're in you're out you know that's really and then you would say how did you do that and then may not had that remember that stark explanation that didn't that was and my father would just simply continue to ask really really dumb obvious questions and until Madoff would either have had leave or because he would have tried his patience and been at risk of but he would never have invested money with it because he would have said I don't understand a hundred times right I don't understand how that works I read it like in this kind of dumb kind of you know slow voice I don't understand sir you know you know what is going on okay so let me ask a and you feel free to not did not answer this if you don't want but so I I ask a lot of questions I enjoy asking a lot of questions and it can drive some people crazy yeah uh did your mom get the 20 questions about a lot of things or was the relationship different oh she asked lots of questions too I they are neither of them she's not intellectually insecure either they're not um it wasn't directed at my mother it was directed the outside world they had a bit they have an exceedingly harmonious relationship they don't yeah they don't they don't do that that's it's all it's reserved for outsiders really what - what would you attribute the the harmony is there a lot of non harmonious unharmonious relationships in the world there I mean they were lucky to be well suited there also but both in Crete Inc incredibly um they're very calm people so there's very very few they have very little conflict because it doesn't they defuse conflict really well I think I think it probably would be a good way of saying is they can speak rationally and yeah they're not interested in they know I've never seen them pick a fight with each other for example that doesn't interest so I have so many questions that I want to ask you I'm just going to jump into a rather uncoated list of miscellanea gonna try some new ones this time around 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 it's a really interesting question all of the investment said the most worthwhile investments or investments about time they have to do with time and they're all about persevering past point that I would normally have quit so I can think for example of books where there's no payoff didn't come until page a thousand 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 now swing around on word I wasn't 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 that it's a very broad category but those are the best investments know when you said page a thousand you thought you're talking about reading 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 hunts so you never find the thing that is moving moving and powerful in the first five minutes just doesn't happen I remember a friend of mine who I didn't really feel very friendly towards when he said this said to me when I was 90% done with my second book for our body I said wow well you know pretty close to the finish line 90% done he goes oh congratulations only a 50% left and so heard that from a lot of long-distance runners also you know like I know the race starts at Mile 20 or whatever it might be yeah I going back to the sort of investments and these not postponed but like delayed gratification wins like this page of thousand can you think of any failures that set you up for later success or a favorite failure of yours yeah I mean I mean it's all kinds I when I was a kid I was in just one of many but I was a runner very serious runner and I like what distance 1500 meters and in our meters and I were puking distances yes and I I in my third year of running seriously lost races I thought I was going to win a kind of what for me they that age was a quite quite a drum at a trauma fashion and I quit running and it it was the first I would regard that as the of that the first real failure of my life something I really wanted to do a lot I didn't and I feel like it was hugely important both because it maybe think hard about what my priorities were what that I had placed running too high in that list but more than that it it um I lived then later in life went back and thought a lot about why I quit and was dissatisfied with my reasons so anything you can this whole notion of circling back I think is so important I mean it's this shows God revisionist history so it's explicitly about that but you know I I would almost obsessively revisit my reasons for quitting running and scrutinized them and say was right what did I learn in the intervening 5 10 15 20 years about Who I am what I want what it takes to be good at something so that was a very valuable a really valuable experience um at exactly the right time because that's the age where you know where decisions I'm not decisions matter but where I think you reflect on things in your adolescence in a way that you don't reflect on things later in your life what would age was lists are were great I was 15 15 I always thought I was going to go back at some point and be a 9th grade teacher so right around that like 14 to 16 range it seems like there are a lot of very important Forks in the road 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 a kind of like I think about why how confusing and complicated those years are in retrospect what is give any morning routines what is the first 60 minutes of your day look like could be any day of the week let's just say it's a workday I will I was just saying earlier I try I think one should eat very little in the morning so at what time do you wake up did we know eight I have a big thing of tea what type of tea sir I'm gonna keep lapsang souchong oh well that's great stuff great stuff if you like what is it I remember friend who's getting off of he loved whiskey and he felt like the smell reminded him of some type of PD alcoholic beverage so yeah yeah it has an amazing smell it's a very controversial tea and then I might I'm going to pull a Malcolm here wait wait wait why is it a controversial tea it some people smell it and they just run in the opposite direction they think it is it there they don't even think it's tea and I've never seen people have such a kind of business there's a little coffee shop where I go often in the morning to have bitee 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 there 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 Olly the moment you go to one of your go twos yeah but not a lot and then I look at three websites I guess we're going like three hours so not a lot means like a cupful a couple spoons I got a cup full of africa tsamina just enough to them you know have a reasonable something in my stomach and then I will look at three websites the first one is let's run calm the nerdy runners all serious runners read let's run then I read marginal revolution Taylor Cohen's column and then I read espn.com just to make sure nothing major happened in sports and then I start my work how do you end what time is that than when you're starting your work so we're talking where now we're still before nine and then if I have riding to do its best to do it in the next the two hours of follow so before lunch yeah and what is your routine look like is there in those few hours when you start your work what does that look like is there particular music he's in a coffee shop sitting in a coffee shop I'm uh or you know some restaurant I'm not at home and I'm not on office and I'm working pretty steadily I'm not really easily distractible been around 11:30 or so I kind of have to do other things I mean I I don't stop working but I stopped writing do you listen to music when you write do you just take in the ambient music on and I write almost entirely in public places so whatever I don't listen to music myself a headphone but I like the noise because I I came of age in a newsroom so I need that I mean I you know I learned how to write in the middle of when newsrooms are not noisy now they used to be credibly loud so that's what I need to kind of get going and then do you is that when the bulk of your writing is done is that pre-lunch period or do you write in the afternoon so we really write in the afternoon if I find ya journalists seem to be very adaptable for former journalists people have worked in newspapers or had those types of daily deadlines yeah we're faster and also remember writing is not the time consuming part it's knowing what to write it's the thinking and the arranging and the interviewing and the researching and the organizing and the that's what takes time you know writing this blissful I wish I could do it more I mean it's it's a break from all of the hassle so let's just say end of workday to bed what are your winddown routines look like we're running at probably after at the end of the afternoon and although I'm injured now but that's really the highlight of the day of the kind of workday some days I'll go to my train with my Track Club them to go for a long run or I'll go biking or I'll go to a CrossFit workout or something physical okay what is your favorite movement and CrossFit or exercise and least well I kind of runners you know secretly disdain any activity that's not run so i guys i know the first right so I don't I don't I don't even want to think about favorite in that context it's something I suffer through because it's necessary to ward off injury and when it's over I'm very happy but uh you know I'm much happier if I can go and you know run eight miles with some friends got a pre-bid anything in particular no I'll eat dinner might read an evening i watch sports or tea you have trouble getting to sleep who do you generally sleep easily i man i come from a family of we are champion sleepers Gladwell's are some are some of the best sleepers out there there we are some of the best it is our it is our defining characteristic that we're at our definition of a bad night of sleep is so hilarious because it's like you know my father will say he had trouble sleeping what that means is he was up for 20 minutes between you know for and for 20 I mean that's a bad night of sleep so if the Gladwell's are heading up the leaderboard and sleep uh we're really good what do you guys not gonna we are or you personal what are we not good at we're what do you find challenging um well we're not great talkers we're all pretty introverted with the exception of my brother it makes up for it we are not we're not terribly adventurous I don't I mean we're adventures in certain very very specific ways but we don't I didn't grow up going we would go on family vacations to either England or Jamaica where my both my parents are from my father was to travel a lot to interesting places but we never went out to eat or went to the movies or went to concerts or the sort of going out thing was not something we did we were we would I would go into our summers when I basically never left the house you know so we're we were not um we didn't civics were we didn't explore the our immediate surroundings in a way that we might have I what is some of the or an example of the worst advice that you hear being dispensed or given could be could be related to anything writing running this yeah the worst advice that in general we give in America is that we terrify high school kids about their college choices in 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 collagen on this podcast 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 so you know anything any advice that has to do with you need to work out and get into the best college you can it's just I'm sorry it's just 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 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 the world maybe you maybe even that place is unpredictable maybe it is that what matters is not that some schools can provide that experience in some kid 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 now 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 she's not just a lie right Tesco is sure they matter and someday 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 are curious and you're interesting that's it oh you are by the way not that you're interesting your interest did interested right that's all that matters she comes back to the questions and having having the ability yeah and I am Oh to ask good questions and follow-up questions only some of the people that you learn most from in those 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've I think college experience it's people who had a lasting impact on me were deeply deeply flawed people and their flaws were what almost drew them to me 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 she 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 you're 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 dude this is a guy and that fast that you know that kind of and yet simultaneously he was I actually turned out to be a brilliant student or 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 yours and when I did kind of figured out it so enhanced my understanding of people in the world and just of understanding the ways in which he compensated for his hapless nespresso realizing that it doesn't if your hapless in that kind of logistical sense common sense since here's no common sense if you can if you if you're thoughtful about it it won't matter one iota what flaws or weaknesses do you have that have turned out to be strengths in some capacity this is like a job interview question isn't it I was going to offer you a position to embarrass enterprises but I think you're dizzy well probably uh God uh my uh it's only a job interview say sometimes I just work too hard exactly well in in in in dealing with my own impatience and my sloppiness uh into attending to those flaws 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 could you elaborate on that yeah I mean I'm sloppy how are you it was anyway what in what sense you know I don't slop in a hurry like clothes all over the floors 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 forty-five minutes when I should in you of them for two hours or you know I'm just kind of like I'm a good enough person I'm not a perfectionist like five is fine let's do and so I become so aware of that now that I've compensated and I have taught myself to be a lot more of a perfectionist or have 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 forced myself to invest more time in a lot of activities knowing that if I did it my normal way I'd be out the door yeah right you know I'd be thinking about what I wanted for dinner as opposed to so that's sort of a a very it's why I buy by the way I so object to so when you when you observe or measure someone's natural inclinations you haven't got a picture of them because you don't know what they do with those natural inclinations right so it turns out that one of the most important things about me is that how obsessed I am with those two flaws of mine right so identifying those as my natural inclinations tells you exactly the opposite about me because you're compensating because I developing the opposite I am massively compensating for them all day long right it's obsessed with calm saying have you received a lot of bad advice along the way as to what you might do professionally or has that not been the case no I mean I don't I'm not an advice seeker about those kinds of things nor much of an advice giver so I haven't really gotten a lot of and also my position is you can't know I kind of stumbled into most things I've been doing I must refer to simply to be open to opportunity then to plan my path I think that's a better for me anyway I don't know I mean people are different so some people need to plan but I'm not up I don't think I had really am but all you know that your comment about the compensation and just that that last mile so to speak with the interviews and so on reminds me of Laird Hamilton they surfer and the face he gave he was trying to teach me a lot of patience at a surf at one point a few years ago and he said when you think you've caught a wave paddle again he's like because if you don't it's like that last paddle and you think you're there you're just not going to catch the wave yeah when you think of the word successful who is the first person who comes to mind and why well you know I'm so deeply obsessed with running these days that I immediately think of runners that's fine there's an American runner Galen Rupp who's maybe our Summa medalist in the London Games in the 10,000 and I really admire him for many reasons he's first of all a very he's a system runner that's to say he was sort of identified in high school as being someone who promised he's been with the same coach ever since and he had if a thoughtful training path and career path what was his name Ian Galen Rupp he's a very also a very beautiful runner both those things matter to me makes a beautiful runner is if you look him up on the internet yeah you looked at the way he moved you would say he's like a ballet dancer he just has grace you know they're ugly runners they're beautiful ones he's a beautiful runner those two things in combination the idea that he is set on an aesthetic level is deeply pleasing so 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 appear Li irrelevant aesthetic metric he's beauty he creates beauty as he's doing it but 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 know that it's not happenstance or that he sort of thought about what does it mean from for me Gail and Rob 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 running is all about good enough because you will have too much training volume yeah you can't the minute you you're walking this fine line between adequately preparing yourself for racing and overtraining which leads to injury and burnout 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 reign in all of these tendencies your obsessiveness you want to do the tenth you know repetition you're doing ten times up whatever half miles and you know logically that after nine that that's enough you've pushed your body as far as you can go but you're you know you're kind of anal discipline self says no do 10 because 10 was the workout right do 10 you have to be tough enough to say no no I've done enough for the day and walk away right do you know how hard that is simply 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 it's like he does that well so a couple of things it makes me think about a story I heard related to Charlie Francis very controversial a straight sprint coach and Johnson and so on the reality is he was a brilliant coach brilliant cook and I hate to say it but I'm not going to point fingers at any specific people but very likely that all of the top sprinters at that level are using something besides were spirulina I'm sure it's still true but go on in that year I and Charlie Francis is here absolutely yeah Bobby that was kind of the Golden Age of doping in a sense but the athletes always have more resources than the the water crew in terms of testing in that cat mass game but some really interesting things that have come out I mean just recently give an example sorry so there was a period of time where the vast majority of world championship or Olympic sprinters had prescriptions due to their narcolepsy because they won big modafinil as a stimulant yeah pre-race but I digress but what Charlie said was in the case of an elite sprinter some said how do you push your athletes and he said no no the last thing I need to do is push my athletes it's my job to rein them in I always have to rein them in and he would have to say no Charlie you can't do two sets of squats with six hundred pounds on your back and 160 or whatever it was you have to do one set and and so on but the I wanted to come back to plan so you said you're not much for plans but you are one for systems all right so made me think it seems at least in the case of running made me think of and I'm going to paraphrase here there's a quote from I want to say Jeff Bezos something along the lines of we're uncompromising on the vision and flexible on the details yeah where do you have systems in your life that you rely on I wish I had more systems sometimes I don't really have a lot of I mean I've sort of because I now I'm essentially self-employed and don't go I mean I have discipline personal discipline but it's not is it that rigid I don't know if I have part of the reason I'm said I think Galen Rupp is successful is because I'm a little bit envious of the system and structure that he has in place and screw to me that how much can be achieved when you're that kind of thoughtful about what you're doing I mean nothing as someone you know is obsessed with sports as I am the thing that always breaks your heart is that someone who leaves potential on the table like I don't think Galen Rupp has and that is an extraordinary achievement but to be able to say when he retires I ran as fast as I could possibly have run that is more important than to say I want to go metal or I set a world record or but I don't mean any kind of cheesy I mean that really I really mean that to say I got a 99 percent of my ability in the Iuh and I think folks should be surprised and you've probably interacted with many more elite runners and I have but I've met people a few of them and I've also interacted with coaches and first since physical therapists who've worked with people like Jackie joyner-kersee hot and it's very common that they would say about that level of athlete I just can't get them they've never let it all go and really given a hundred percent because whether it's fear of a hamstring tear fear of ex fear of y'see never might be so the fact that this yeah this Runner is anything else to being it all on the track yeah so it's just you know we've been talking there's two necessarily contradictory things here with runners which is training is about restraint but racing is not right so that that's why we're so getting out why the psychology of these elite athletes is so complex restraint restrain restrain in preparation get in the track all of a sudden no no more restraint go all that behavior on you've been conditioned ignore all that really hard to kind of and you know I as I returned to running quite recently in running in a serious way and that's the piece of it that is proving really hard for me to grasp is that idea of turning it on on race day so I trained very well and I race less well and for that very reason whereas I look around me you know really elite runners the distance difference between their training and racing is astounding like they're just different different animals I mean it's it's fascinating to see that what books besides your own have you gifted to other people the most I am there's one book I've given the most in my life which is a book called mother several now I think about it there's a book by um Timothy Wilson called strangers to ourselves which is one of the loveliest most insightful books about social psychology that I ever read and I give that a lot to people and I give every time I meet and weirdly I'm always meeting people who work in retail particularly like I always send them particularly Jewish I send them a book called the merchant Prince's the merchant Prince um she's it's 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 trader 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 I mean you literally you go to any town in America that the traditional department store is one one of those families well a guy and I forgotten his name wrote a book about those families is called the merchant princes and it's all princess Prince's plural okay yes it's fantastic as a kind of it's about everything I'm interested in it's about immigrants it's about people 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 of bottling we're still you know all these internet retailers there'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 ten years and there's such extraordinary characters and I love the way their personality is kind of imprinted on there under business so there's a fantastic chapter about Filene's Filene brothers who start Filene's in boston which they have Filene's basement and so on yeah and they invent these 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 I had everybody else it's night you know it's like a hundred years ago and they are on another level right just like it is that it's one sort like that I've done it's a brilliant book do you read any fiction Oh huge maths I read uh I read um spying spy novels spy novels yeah if it has the word spy in it I've read it Annie so for someone who's unfamiliar with the genre but excited to get started where should they start well I mean did we have how many hours do we have but we should if you know nothing about it you should start with John Licari of course 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 be little drums too a little drummers girl or even Russia house I liked his later stuff less cell but it's still fantastic but you must read spy came in from the cold I mean that's just kind of like goes to given yeah um and then uh I mean I read all of the child books or not spy through those per se but they're thrillers that those are fantastic I mean I have hundreds I have literally hundreds of spinal spy novels in my in my house what $100 or less purchased I mean this is ballpark right meaning just not a Bugatti or something yeah that is most positively impacted your life that comes to mind probably a piece of music I think it was probably an album by Brian Eno 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 here 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 that album in my head all the time and um I worship Brian Eno um he's a fascinating guy you have you interviewed him I haven't I would enjoy it though I helped my god he's I have a collection of cards that he also put out called oblique strategies yes I know of all that does yeah and of it right on top of there's another one called the wack pack which is a series of odd questions just intended to help you it's genius yet he's also the most articulate person I've ever met Wow you he's douche I should I should try to get a mystery no on the podcast you should oh you should because just to listen to him talk it's distracting how perfectly he talks so you're he's one of those you just want to listen because it's perfectly done paragraphs and register complication it's just yeah II just I mean it's I can't explain the experience it's just kind of inspiring sounds like I've had that experience when watching Neil Gaiman speak or listening to him speak I also perform just incredible 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 from a college piece either either one but most interested in things that you believe that other people would raise an eyebrow think that believe in ghosts I like this alright tell me more I just do I don't understand my aunt who lives in Jamaica uess live in his house called hilton hill which was said to be haunted it was a particular room that was said to be haunted and so I slept in a room as a kid like 13 14 it was haunted saw ghosts in there played the guitar in real the night I don't know and I that age I was like Jamaica everyone blues and ghosts not everyone but it's a cono you people believe in ghosts so do I think the house is haunted i Shi do think it's haunted and also don't understand if you believe in God as I do it's not that hard to believe in ghosts I mean so I believe in the existence of things outside my own direct physical experience right so and also I don't think 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 every we're not yet right I mean there are it's just just because there's a ways to go there a phenomena that we can't currently explain or examine using the scientific method right which is sometimes poorly sometimes properly implemented doesn't mean we won't and there's I mean you just have to sort of look back in the history books to see many many many examples of this yeah if you're my mother is an identical twin and if you know an identical twin you witness that they live thousands of one lives in Jamaica one is mechana de 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 welcome to the middle of night with a terrible pain in my stomach mm I was like that's because I just had an upper for today you know like that kind of stuff which is like that weird thing you get about in it happens I don't know this is the second time this has come up on this podcast I had an identical twin on my podcast we talked about yeah it's like so do I have a rational explanation for that does my mother know does it is it may be a coincidence I don't know maybe I I mean I don't know just needs explanation I don't have one but I'm open to things that don't add explanation so I the question the what is something you believe that other people think is insane is I actually modified kind of paraphrased wording of a question that Peter teal likes to ask I suppose when he's interviewing founders what is your what are your what is your opinion of Peter teal if you have one well all I know about him is what I know from this whole Gawker thing I know that he's having bad odor among some people um and I never read his book but I think I think he said he might have taken a shot at me I don't remember this so the zr1 he he takes issue with what he how he interprets your position as it relates to success and circumstantial factors or a lotta does he think there's more he's more up to the individual that would be his position I see as a reasonable position I mean the the irony in pardon one of my fans pointed this out is that he talks in the very beginning of the book how failing to get a sort of fact by a string of events outside of his control failing to get a clerkship led to all these other things that wouldn't have happened had he received the clerkship but there we go are there any uh I'm going to word this broadly innovators and that's sort of jumping I live in Silicon Valley so a lot of real innovators and even more people who like to fashion themselves innovators are there any people do you think are engaged in very interesting innovation at the moment oh wow I mean so many obviously so many people and most people doing the interesting stuff we wouldn't even know about would we I mean they wouldn't have told us so I don't have publicists yeah they're I don't know if I have a good answer to that I mean I'm sort of continually we could also take a retrospective I mean because like everything that was old is once new again right yeah they interviewed the retail so there are other examples of innovators that have had a that that you've become fascinated by for instance I interviewed Marc Andreessen recently incredible tech icon fascinating guy and he looks to people like Walt Disney and Edison you apply lessons that they learned and habits they developed rules they developed for themselves - yeah I guess I would say my New Yorker colleague Atul Gawande has done all this work um with checklists so get such great stuff fantastic stuff and I I really admired him because it's deeply unpopular work within his own profession but it's work that has I mean extraordinary potential for saving lives and particularly it's one of those things that ultimately I think PI's far more usefulness in developing world and the developed world I mean the Lion infection example in the checklist manifesto is just it's just staggering I mean the area but you took a extraordinary risk to his own reputation in domestically in America and the medical profession by doing that people doctors do not like checklists and they think of him as simplifying dumbing down with all they have all incentive epithets they use against him unfairly I think because he's not saying all medicine can be reduced to a checklist he's saying let's find the parts that can be and do it that way right so I admire the idea but almost more I admire the kind of guts that made the idea possible I have so their number of books about 20 or 30 that I have in my living room because I spent a lot of time there right often times although I do like to get out to a third location of some sense guys I'll go stir-crazy but I have a it's about ten books that are face out to remind me of certain things or to elicit certain emotions and the checklist manifesto is one of them oh yeah please do the other thing by the way tons and tons of people write interesting things a tool then went and put his ideas into action on a grand scale throughout the world I mean taught follow through so he's not this kind of intellectual holding forth he has the idea he takes the heat and then he makes it happen in a real way around the world I mean it's extraordinary varied an animal what advice would you give to your actually before we get to that one we talked about books do any favorite movies or documentaries that you've seen multiple times no I'm not really a movie or Darwin tree bang alright well then that's an easy easy pass to the advice you would give you thirty year-old self I would have left North America leave North America to get out of there get out why 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 in place that matters I just would have been I would have been so much more interesting and thoughtful and would insightful and whatever if I had experience particularly in the developing world 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 or some similar kind of thing no 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 Yeah right your it will limit you in ways you cannot even begin to understand at this point totally agree I was chatting with Sebastian Junger about that she got out of the bubble yeah yeah how badly about the system and also any potential remedies and he felt a mandatory year of in his case national service but it could be volunteering with the Peace Corps and after I think it was high school and spending a year exposing yourself to those types of environments before going into the real world somewhere in yeah this case North America - two of the religious groups who take a lot of heat but for which I for whom I have enormous respect the Mennonites in the Mormons have an institutionalized practice of sending people to other cultures their mission the mission 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 the side of the other end it by the way they're not going as American college students do when they do the year abroad to Florence Florence does not going to Florence does not expand your horizons don't do it your 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 you know six months in this in the seventh or on two small you know that go somewhere real right that's the that's what the that's the upside of that kind of experience when people have the means I mean I I spent a year in Japan as an exchange student at fifteen my first real time outside of the United States and completely rocked my world it's just called everything into question and I so when people have the Chancellor think about going here here here and if Japan's on list I go I always respond with go to Japan because it will make no sense you won't be able to read anything and the English that you do read won't make any sense people do not speak English well and you should just walk until you get lost and then trying to find your way back because it's safe you won't get hurt and amazing but I went there for the first time months ago oh really blew my mind that means like oh my god so interesting Oh any any favorite moments or frames there so briefly I had to come back sad because I was working on this podcast but uh I was there for like four days I just walked around oh yeah it's my I did what I had to do and I just like went for it's like wait for this I remember once I said I was walking down some perfectly ordinary random residential street I see a little I was thirsty I sign called coffee so I look is there a coffee shop can't find it search finding it to go down some stairs through doors up some stairs to another one is like a room and there's like a woman young woman behind the counter and she makes a cup of coffee that is so far and away the greatest cup of coffee I've ever had like nothing else is even close right and then I tried to tip her as one would and she got offended look I think you know threw the money back was just like this kind of an impossible to find in the middle of nowhere coffee shop that just kills any other but that's that's Japan yeah it's like walking through a fever dream I mean Japan is it's so much fun so the podcast how did you decide no doubt you have had people propose that you do a podcast before yeah I mean I still think we're at the very early stages of adoption people I am that think something like 15 or 17 percent of the people in the US have listen to podcasts it's a very relatively my early days minority group at this point why why and why now I mean what did you what to what led to the decision well my friend Jacob uh who runs the slate group an old old friend of mine has they have to panoply his there's big podcasting company and he said you wanna do a podcast I said no so come on do a podcast so I said all right it's really that and then I've got really into it and realize how fun it was and for all the reasons I talked about earlier just how it's a different way to tell story what about it has been the most fun for you I mean maybe we covered it already I mean it is certain well it's a group what 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 really know one hates meetings but I was like whoa this is exciting so everything was just kind of like and then the idea of just the the ability to generate emotion in a way you can't do on the page is was more than a revelation it was a kind of I mean I was entranced by that possibility it's transformative I mean for me this podcast started as a lark something to do in between extremely exhausting book projects and when people if any fans come up to me now when I'm on the street at least nine 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 they're relatively speaking that is the case but I think the emotional bond the emotional response you're able to create and the emotional bond that is forged through the audio medium is just yeah it's it's I have to imagine it's it's some it's a reflective of some hardwiring that we have as yeah so we were telling machine is kind of an amazingly powerful thing where would you and maybe this is is to be kept a secret but where would you in an ideal world let's say two years from now what are you doing an audio or not what is or what does the podcast look like what is your well I imagine I'll do another season and I had played with the idea of inviting someone to join the revisionist history rubric and have someone else to cup some episodes that try something similar I mean this is a reason why I can't be a kind of if I'm doing a collective project let's make it just really make a collective like not just me dreaming up there so I thought about that if I could find someone who you know took it seriously and wanted was have shared my but uh I don't know and then you know can I make a living doing it that's not a question so uh you can certainly talk more about the last last piece offline but I would say the answer should be yes there's no reason why it shouldn't be and that on the second-to-last piece I would absolutely encourage you to experiment with the format because it's such a lightweight relatively speaking medium and format for doing that I mean I've I've tried four or five different formats some were complete strikeouts yeah and some with in terms of the cost of creation in terms of energy time money etc to the output and impact on listeners was so disproportionately favorable I was like wow I'm really glad I tried those because these hadn't work but like the solo Q&A is that I do sometimes as round twos with guests start it off because if you want talk about kind of a-- I was sick at the time I did the Peter teal interview and so ended up being this solo read of sorts which was profound and hilarious and great in different ways and I realized oh wait a second I don't actually have to be there for this to be useful to listeners and say I hope you experiment with that a last 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 probably a picture of one of my favorite runners on my phone I'm sure it's on my phone oh yeah he's obscured by all the all the icons but who is that ash Belka prop rolled squid smiler from Kenya he's my screensaver for my picture on my phone I don't know I'm obsessed with the idea that a 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 I want I want to 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 do you have any give any this this could seem like silly question but do you have any quotes that you live your life by er mantras in a non whooooo kind of sense that are meaningful to you they might just be like heuristics rules of thumb thing like that not really I mean kind of in a playful way I used to love I really like that I keep kind of myself going back to that the legal adage difficult cases make bad law which I think it's an incredibly a site for comment about how because where were drawn to the difficult case one but you shouldn't generalize from it and then we can't that's this problem we run into in political realm over and over again itís political many wows but give an example of that I I'm not sure I'm yeah failure ah 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 what do we do I think you mean a bunch of really terrible mistakes right we spent two trillion on a war that went nowhere I made the world worse off we subvert at 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 exercise 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 but 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 but I like that notion similarly you know it's it's about not overreacting to to black swans you know to to outlying events and also not choosing your your case studies wisely that's I think what it's really about when I suppose you could also generalize it to your personal life in many ways to 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 yes exactly exactly right and yet and we I think we can go further that just because you have been traumatized in some way doesn't mean you are permanently scarred right that human beings are resilient they recover and that's something that Sebastien also brought up and 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 if they suffer from PTSD for a whole host 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 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 podcast is revisionist history calm but anyway our podcasts you can find revisionist history and my twitter handle is just at Gladwell I'm the only global out there so I die but I tweet I'm an indifferent tweeter but I I get into little moments when I when I go off especially if someone brings up the the myths and policies of current higher education in the United States so that gets me going I remember Poe Bronson told me once I asked at a QA 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 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 thank you Tim and I can't wait to to jump into the episodes you mentioned of the podcast and I'll probably just go from start to finish that's I can be pretty linear that way yeah and to everybody listening you can find links to richness history to everything we discussed the books mentioned etc in the show notes at 4-hour workweek comm forward slash podcast and until next time and as always thank you for listening hey guys this is Tim again just a few more things before you take off number one this is five bullet Friday do you want to get a short email from me and would you enjoy getting a short email for me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend and 500 Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been 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Channel: Tim Ferriss

Views: 56,467

Rating: 4.7094016 out of 5

Keywords: tim ferriss, 4 hour workweek, 4 hour body, 4 hour chef, forbes, timothy ferriss, entrepreneur, author, writer, best-seller, public speaker, angel investor, ferriss, twitter, Facebook, stumbleUpon, evernote, uber, tim ferriss blog, timothy ferriss speaker, Malcolm Gladwell, Malcolm Gladwell interview

Id: vrBEbgnG01s

Length: 105min 25sec (6325 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 14 2016