Malcolm Gladwell on truth, Trump's tweets and talking to strangers

my guest today is a remarkable man he's a journalist a writer business guru most facial speaker some people call him a sort of a rock star journalist Malcolm Gladwell welcome thank you your latest book is is I'm still mulling over rock star rock star journalist so you said some people call me that I've never heard of one so test really oh I've heard that Lots in sort of in articles about you but I mean it's good cuz you've got a following you you got you've got sort of a cult following people come and see you in theatres you see that puts me in the same category as Mick Jagger yeah good idea what drives you as a journalist or as a writer drives well I like it why are you still doing its moments because you don't need to do well would I do otherwise I hope I would be bored I would be bored I mean I like discovering things and what happens is I keep going back and discovering that what I thought five years ago isn't right right it's incomplete that we've learned way more that now we're smarter and so that constant that that idea that you that part of what it means to be human in the world and a thinking person is to constantly be correcting your beliefs is to me fascinating and addictive I mean it's like oh you mean we've learned way more now I have to go back and redo it set but to me that's like I love that that idea that it makes it makes thinking an adventure right if we everything was settled then what would be the point but the idea that I have a job that requires me to go back and essentially keep readjusting the way I see things is to me it's catnip because do you think books should come with a disclaimer you know everything in this book is probably gonna be a little bit wrong and I'm gonna think something different in five years so don't just nagaru you know this conversation should come with a disclaimer I mean I think if we had that spirit if all of us shared in that spirit we would have a lot less division in the world it should be okay like I'm gonna use because I'm in England and because all you V English do is talk about brexit I'm a geezer practicing example you know what if if Boris Johnson would stand up week from now and say you know I had a long conversation with someone who studied closely the economic consequences of brexit and I realize probably not a good idea to do it by October 31st see if we do it at all one response would be like you AMPA grab another response would be you know what everyone should be able to do that if you someone convinces you that you're wrong you ought to be able to stand up and say you know what you can miss invincibie I'm wrong I'm changing course and it should we should be fine with that but we seem less able to do that now do you think or as well doesn't it's as a as a poet that that people changing their minds publicly is used as an occasion for ridicule and not as in a as an occasion for for applause should be an occasion for applause good for you we should say although we actually have leaders now who completely contradict what they've what they've said in the past they I mean you know call it a lie call it a change of my heart whatever it is I mean what they say one minute often there's very little to it you keep your hand you're not yourself you have to say I used to believe X I no longer believe it and then it give you a reasons I think it's really crucial to kind of walk through how you came to change your mind that's the that's the instructive part what you can't do is say if I were to say to you know I but I wrote about crying 20 years ago I am changing this things I see everything I said back then you I wouldn't boomer I could get all upset about you and just deny it and some portion of people would believe by denials but that's dishonest I think we have to be honest honest about how our views of the world evolve and I suppose that I mean that that involves a sort of a responsibility on everybody you know in journalism as well not to ridicule yeah yeah but I mean you also have to have it takes a certain amount of a world in which we follow the facts as opposed to our preconceptions does require a kind of strong stomach but we're not in a world to follow those facts on the moment are we I mean I suppose that's what I mean here yeah in terms of what drives you I mean you know how that sort of are you in a pursuit for truth you know in a world in which the truth doesn't really matter anymore I think you know that's funny I I think truth does matter I think we have a small group of badly behaved leaders around the world at the moment who have kind of distracted us from the fact that you know if you were to sit down with if I was the you know head of business development for you know Dyson vacuum cleaning company or whatever some other British big British company and you walked me through why I made the decisions I made everything I did would be fact-based I would have more data I would have done more analysis than any other previous generation of British business owner if he would sit down with High School Principal from some local plumber the closest high school we can find to this office and ask that person why does she do this this and this she would give you reasons that we're not oh I felt that way this morning she would say no no I I've studied this or I saw you know she we could pick a hundred different professions of serious professions people where people cognitively based driven professions and ask them how they make decisions and they would tell you that facts matter it is only in this realm of politics and public discourse where we have thought we with we think we're in a fact free world the world the rest of the world is totally fact driven I had a encounter recently with them Donald Trump's Secretary of the Air Force she's a member of the names Heather Wilson a member of the Trump administration I was at some meeting and she spoke she's got nothing in common she didn't know left actually the position but she's not a blustery racist no nothing no this is a woman who's like one of the most impressive articulate women you will ever meet who thinks about everything she says who has chapter and verse of who will systematically make you the argument for why she wants to do what she do based on careful analysis I mean so like even within the administer the problem is we don't talk to Heather Wilson we just only talked to Donald Trump and a handful of people the top but if you take the time to talk to people who are actually making policy you realize oh no no facts matter in that world is this partly why you sort of seem to avoid politics as an area its rise about yeah I mean it's if all you do is think about it it's just depressing and it's you know with some exceptions 1939 2017 it doesn't it's not the central fact in people's lives people's lives are about much more than that because what you have sort of cracked as a writer is trust I mean you have detractors but but people don't say you're a fake or a liar like that so people trust you actually yes so I mean how how have you done that have I done that is it my charming personality you think Canadian Canadians are you know if you have that if you can say you're a Canadian and waive your Canadian passport first of all you just get a huge amount of credit from the world I'm saying that only half the seizure state I think it's kind of true it's like being Swedish you know like whoever says to a Swede I think you're making it up or I think you're trying to trick me no we believe the Swedes the though but more than that is I think that I come from a journalist of tradition where where the institutions that I worked for over a long period of time earned the trust of the people of their readers and that spilled over unto me so I worked for The New Yorker magazine for many years and before that one of the most prestigious newspapers in the world the Washington Post and I'd benefited from that association just as you know I don't if you if you work for you couldn't name is that there's a every country has a group of institutions that have that have one that kind of respect from the general public I think that's a crucial thing that there is a nother words there is a journalist's tradition that exists in free society that over hundreds of years has rightfully been placed on a pedestal and earned the respect of of the general population and that's a very crucial thing to defend but I I still believe in that kind of power and I think it has had enormous benefits she believed in in policy when it comes to journalism no well it's too strong a word I believe in the difference I think that that everyone has a point of view that it is impossible to erase so when I think about what impartiality means I simply mean that are you fair in the way that you you consider evidence do you are you willing to step outside of your own particular world and engage with other worlds are you willing to give those who you disagree with at least a hearing do you when I was in the world of newspapers it was you're running a story even if it's clear the other side is you know off their rocker you got to call them because it's a chance actually they're not off your rocker their rocker or even if they are you have to you have to have the person off their rocker in the story you can't just go ahead Matt that's what I when I talk about impartiality that's what I would mean that you're that you you take care to make sure that what you do observe certain standards of fairness but I don't think you can ever pretend that you are without opinion or without point of view because in a world in which the traditional you know respected media whether it's the Washington Post or the BBC or channel 4 you know or whoever it might be are under attack and undermined for their fairness accused of being unfair I mean do you see a you know a wrong road that they've gone down you know that has got got them here you know is there correction than it's needed yeah you know this is a dumb example but I don't think journalists for newspapers should tweed I don't think it's useful um don't be it's fine I know you have a point of view I know in America I know if you're a journalist you're probably a Democrat um I know you probably don't like Donald Trump with exception of people who work for Fox News but I don't need to be reminded of that you need to tell the world that you should keep it under wraps a little bit you should at least formally proceed as if you are trying very hard to be in the middle on this and I think you should try harder to to dwell in the subject of tweets for example in America an enormous amount of journalistic attention is devoted to Donald Trump's tweets I think they'll be very useful not to write about his tweets for a while for all parties it's not policy tweet is not policy the man is waking up at 3:00 a.m. and he's you know he's like your grumpy grandfather who wakes up really early and starts kind of yelling at the TV it so happens that when he yells at the TV he simultaneously tweets and reaches 20 million people it's if my grumpy grandfather did that I would ignore it right it's no different now there's no reason to make that the lead story every day in the newspaper except here's the president's and his tweet seems to make a difference because they are to do with internationally we're making all of us I think are kind of we're making a bad problem worse so do you think if we just have ignored him for example on the squad before Democrats Congress women it's just ignored the tweets that problem wouldn't be amplified and wouldn't therefore exist yeah I'd rather if we don't I think we could have a much more thoughtful conversation about about serious issues I just think it's a distraction he knows it's a distraction and he plays it up it's why you think he does it to distract from serious conversation of you know there was a stirred this thing this this spring with though and going on right now the with the absolutely horrific way in which refugees migrants are being treated at the border in the United States held in camps under the most appalling of conditions that was that story kind of pops up here now and again but in a normal democracy that would be a scandal that wouldn't go away right we're separating children from their parents putting them in cages and play giving them an inadequate food and water no beds to sleep on I mean this this is like something that's out of the 19th century I mean it's just incredible is this happening but did what happens is it in the news for two days and then we pay attention to some outrageous tweet and it goes away like that's the real consequences in other words form people in the world journalism from being distracted from their mission which is to focus on matters of consequence and when entirely innocent people under who are under enormous emotional and physical distress are being treated like animals by the richest most comfortable most powerful country on earth that is the kind of thing I would like to spend more than 48 hours on and when the president sleepily tweets at 3 a.m. something outrageous that is something I would like to say you know what it's not worry about it let's focus on someone who's actually in pain well so tell us about this new book what's the jumping-off point talking to strangers is a book that I have gotten interested in this general question of why human beings are so easily deceived because you would think we would be good at it by telling whether someone was lying to us that over time evolution would have selected people who had that skill but in fact evolution didn't select people who had that skill and were as gullible today as we ever were right there was a famous case in America which probably heard of over here a woman named Sandra bland and it was a one of those series of high-profile confrontations between police officers and african-americans gee she's pulled over by him on a small town in Texas after she's come from a job interview on the most film sziasztok pretext we have a conversation it escalates into a disagreement he drags her out of the car arrests her puts her in prison and then she hangs herself three days later and in the hole in conversation they have is taped by his he's a video camera on his dashboard and it was it's if you would read the tape or watch the videotape for the first time it is heartbreaking and I couldn't get it out of my head and I realized that the thing I had been mulling over this problem of why wouldn't you talk to a spy do you not realize that the spy is a spy was part of this larger puzzle of why is it we have such difficulty when we encounter strangers in discerning their motives because that's the conversation between Sandra bland and the police officer is about the police officer completely misunderstanding who she is and her motivations and intentions I mean epically he's trying to but he thinks he reads her emotional distress and she is an emotionally unstable woman who is very unhappy about being pulled over for no reason he reads that as evidence of criminality and malice you think she's dangerous right now never seen being distressed and dangerous is enormous right the question why would a police officer who is reasonably his job is to read people's intentions and here he is you know it's a sunny day by the side of the road and nothing Bad's going on no one's shooting at him and he counters this woman and he apically miss reads her and so I thought would it be that's where I began to think it would be really interesting to write a book about this general problem of when two strangers encounter each other why do they get each other wrong so often and and that's how you get a book called talking to strangers and in your way you go into detail and you challenge many of the assumptions that many of us would make about a case like that that we might say well he just he just misread her you know it was his fault and you examine whether actually it was to do with his training whether it was the to do with the nature of him being a police officer what was going on in her head I mean do you think there are so soon bigger truths that we can discern from these sorts of stories yes or are they just interesting no they're they're the best kind of story is the story that is at once highly individualized introducing Craddock and general and kind of something from which you could discern broader so this is a story like that it's it's specifics it's like weird and unusual and but it didn't happen a lot that things like this on the other hand it is the kinds of mistakes the police officer was making other kinds of mistakes that we all make that was my why I was so drawn to this story and you know the bulk of the book is each chapters devoted to a different kind of under Smith understanding and I you know I have a chapter on men the Amanda Knox case on Bernie Madoff the famous Wall Street Ponzi schemer the you know numerous famous spy case of sexual assault cases famous notorious one at Stanford University and might the argument is in all of these seemingly disparate stories there are these similar threads of reasons why sister systemic reasons why we find it so hard to make sense of someone who is unfamiliar to us I mean in that case that you should have built the book around you know it obviously comes in the context of black lives matter of many black people being shot by police officers and you know in Brian and Phinehas case that's the police that's the police officer you you examine the extent to which I suppose he's sort of a victim of his upbringing is his training yes are you challenging us to think that you know the the the instinct to say racist cops is wrong not wrong incomplete so does it matter a really interesting counterfactual is if Sandra bland had had been white would could the incident have unfolded the way it did the answer is yes the puppy it it's hard to separate race from this issue I think it's probably clear on some fundamental level that his reactions to her were conditioned in part by the fact that he's white and she's black that being said one of those I do in the book is I get his police record looked at the records of every single traffic stop that he had made every single encounter he had with a civilian over the entire span of his life on the on the Texas Highway Patrol and this is a man who stopped you know so many people people then you can comes over as crazy he was he was the most kind of proactive nice word is proactive police officer which by the way is the way police officers are today trained to be 30 years ago a police officer was someone who responded to crime now we have the new 21st model century model of policing is the police officer someone who at every occasion possible gets out of his or her car and in and confronts and encounters and interacts with civilians looking for evidence of some incipient criminality he's part of that later tradition so he's trained to stop everyone and Ashley he says there's a moment in his deposition afterwards where they where he's asked this point point-blank did you react to Sanjib and away you did because she's black and he he said no we stopped everyone and I sort of think you know that's probably and it's probably true it's probably the most honest thing he ever said they did stop everyone contemporary cops stop everyone that's the problem they do happen to single out for people people of color minorities but it the problem is in some sense broader than that is that they have a philosophy of policing that's asking them to cast their net over not just people who are very likely to be engaged in criminal activity but basically everyone who strikes them as being somewhat odd and Allen's assumed that they might be criminal yeah and that there might be something terrible going on in their lives but that's that's sort of where the book ends in that in a kind of very in an examination of the ideas that are driving contemporary law enforcement and how they're flawed and but the road to that is you know I don't want me I don't like the sound of about cops because it's a book about many other different interesting fast decisions problem but policing is something that you you will famously linked to as well in that's not you know in in the past you've examined broken windows policing yeah which was I suppose made famous in New York um to Bill Bratton which was this sort of method of policing everything you know of police had a broken window literally that obviously has sort of that there's been a sort of an arc of that story hasn't there of people believing and it was it was it was real and that was a successful method of policing to it now being discredited well where where are you on this yeah maybe too strong a word I think now we understand what is useful and what is not useful about that kind of policing so there is an accurate statement which is at the heart of broken windows policing was the idea that there is a symbolic component to crime that when there is litter on the ground and graffiti on the walls and people engaging in very sort of obvious infractions of decorum it sends a message that no one's in charge and larger crimes are more likely that idea is not wrong that ideas actually has been confirmed in a number of places it's why it's why we pick up the litter on the subway or on the streets not do you build that for just for aesthetic reasons we do that because we understand that it's important to signal that a urban area is under control and Israel and the people care about their environment the downside of broken windows was that broken windows encouraged police officers to engage in interactions with innocent civilians without heed to the consequences of harassment that when I when a young black man can't walk down the street without having the police suspecting over and over again that he's up to no good what happens then is the the the faith the belief of that young man in the legitimacy of the system is profoundly eroded and that is very serious right and it's that piece of it that I don't think we understood in the 90s that you could okay you can do this you can send your cops out to enforce you know order on a kind of very very specific but you will pay a price and the price is not trivial because in Britain were coming back round on the circle on stop and search down here where we had very high rates of stop and search then people said this is clearly racist and counterproductive so it was it was cut we've now seen a big rise in violent crime and so stop and search seems to be the obvious way politicians are looking to combat this yeah they should be careful yeah so yeah there's a point out it's not going to make in the book at the end of the book which is a really important one which is an idea that has comes from two very brilliant criminologist one of whom teaches it here in Oxford named Larry Sherman another is an israeli-american named David weisburd and they made this and it sort of maybe this observation in the 90s which it took them 15 20 years to convince their peers was true which was that when you map criminality in an urban area what you discover is that and you discover this in every single city didn't matter what city you look at in almost every city they have ever looked at this 50% or more of crime happens on 2% or less of the city's blocks what that says is with respect to stop and search yes you stop and search but use it very selectively use it only in those areas that are those handful of blocks where crime is such a serious problem that the local population will welcome an active police presence don't use it in areas where there's no crime and by the way most areas have no crime I had a woman driving around Baltimore a young criminologist who was part of this movement Baltimore the one of the least one of most dangerous cities in the West right in the news right now because Donald Trump was attacking it we drove through the worst neighborhoods of Baltimore particularly West Baltimore which is a kind of in every five minutes she would stop the car and she would say look around do you think there's any crime on this street and she asked me to predict and she had the numbers in front of her and I would always say Oh God looks terrible I'm sure there's huge amount of crime she was no no crime on the street and then we go two blocks over and I would and she would say on this street they were 150 police calls last year right so her point was two blocks away you don't need to have police stopping and frisking everyone on this block you need to have police there all the time right and that block was one of maybe ten blocks in the whole city that where crime was really really entrenched that's what we're asking of please that the correct answer to this puzzle is to be strategic and cautious and highly targeted in how you use police power because police power has got has real consequences right if you if you misuse it you will do you will destroy the fabric of society but do you think national systems like policing can be that sophisticated yes I mean it's already starting to happen in major cities and people are getting these ideas that have come up through these these fields of criminology are starting to make a difference in the way policing is practiced in more sophisticated Police Department so you know the NYPD in New York which is famously one of the most sophisticated police departments in the world has been adopting this policy over less with the result that a lot of the outcry over what we call stop and frisk has diminished in recent years they have really cut back on the use of these tactics in neighborhoods where crime is not endemic and they're focusing and in places where people want and need that kind of active police presence where does your sort of forensic approach come from I mean you were the son of an academic is it about the way you grew up just who you are yeah I mean I suppose it's hard to say I had a I had many different sources of of education going up obviously parents I had a friend I cuz we were born in Britain one you wouldn't in New Hampshire yeah my father was teaching at University Southampton then we moved to Canada and I often think you know you said I remember writing about this book by a woman named who was had a theory that piers matter far more in child development and parents parents contribute genes and not much else piers contribute the balance it was very controversial the time but since then lesser people now Kunda so the questions who are my peers I had a friend growing up named Terry who was who is my closest kind of companion intellectually and otherwise for many many years who was a truly extraordinary a use of most fear act the most intellectually fearless person I ever met he pursued his interests regardless of what the world thought regardless of their immediate value regardless of the consequences to his you know grades or anything else and I he had a profound effect on me his notion was if I'm interested in it I'm gonna pursue it I don't really care about what my you know if my mother thinks I'm neglecting my homework fine I don't care so here's this I'm exposed to this boy at the age of eleven all the way through into my on a daily basis till I go to college and it's really left an imprint on me that you you know following your nose is reason enough to read something or and it's okay to drop everything else if you're interested in some obscure topic you know it's there's not you shouldn't worry in other words shouldn't spend your time well his lesson to me was what the world is telling you to do is just not that crucial if you're 14 you should be doing whatever you want to do that in which is your mind and that was that was incredible I thank Terry all the time and I suppose that's your approach to journalism now I mean when you when you doing a book and you because your books are about series of different stories are these all stories that's you've gathered over time and then go okay that makes a book or you know what's what's the approach I mean oh yeah or do you have an idea and then look for examples that's a little bit of both so this book for example began I read in a very in a book that no one appeared to have read I don't know why I was reading it in a memoir of an old CIA guy who was a CIA's cube expert he tailed told a story as extrordinary story which is in a book of someone defected hi someone high up in Castro's intelligence apparatus defects to the West in 1988 and says I have a story to tell I would like to meet with the top CIA people interested in Cuba he sits them down and he says you have a spy in Cuba by the name of X that guy works for Cuba he doesn't with you he's a double agent he says you have another person whose name is why he doesn't work for you he works for Cuba and he went down he named every single spy United States had in Cuba and said actually they're all double agents they've been working for Castro from day one everything you thought you were doing in Cuba for the last ten years is a sham and this story is so incredible and I subtract down all the people who are involved in it and recreate story but what's amazing to it is so in other words the most sophisticated intelligence agency in the world was duped 100% by this you know relatively impoverished tiny island in the middle of the Caribbean Sea and was completely aware of it right completely unaware of it until some random guy came in and said by the way they're all and that notion of you know I was interested in this general topic of why are we so bad at making sense of strangers this is the the perfect illustration because if the CIA has no clue about the loyalty of its spies no clue right an agency that is educated to dependent on the belief that you ought to be able to tell the difference between a liar and a tooth teller right I mean the whole thing is hinging on that if they can't do it who could do it and that was my so that story there's a there's a example of a story that gets me started that raises a question that I want to try and answer and you look for answers in the world of social science you say well what is what can psychologists who study deception tell us about that puzzle and the answer is they have a lot to tell us that's what do you come to a conclusion as to how the CIA could avoid being duped in the future dad Mike inclusions they probably can't and they know this you know if you tell if you speak candidly with people in the spying business they will tell you there is no way to prevent deception and now I more so than ever I mean think of the two biggest spies at the last ten years they are in the United States they are Chelsea Manning and Ed Snowden who were they they were both extraordinary low level people weren't on anyone's radar screen who had I mean Snowden wasn't even an employee of the US government he was a contractor to an outside agency Chelsea Manning was someone who they tried to kick out of the army repeatedly I mean she was at there and yet these two people managed to literally have done more to damage u.s. intelligence interest than almost anyone else in the post-war era it's impossible it's impossible to police these things what do you do about that I don't know one argument is this pointless to have spy agencies you really can't tell who's if you can't tell who's lying or telling the truth then you should probably just walk away from the game of it's fine so so if anyone thinks talking to strangers is a self-help book you know you're not gonna walk away from it with a set of tips well it's a certain kind it's a certain kind of self-help book it's a self-help book that does not actually tell you how to help yourself it is but those are also those are also useful those are also useful sometimes it's very useful to know what you can't do so I end up by saying we need to approach strangers with caution and he and it was slowed down and don't pretend that you can know everything about everyone in a short period of time or even ever be content with those parts of a stranger that you can make sense of and give up on the notion that you can ever have complete understanding and that conditions everything from the way police encounter people in the streets to the way we you know I have a whole chapter on the role of alcohol and sexual assault and how we have radically underestimated the disruptive power of alcohol in that context and that you know if you want to be if you want to end the epidemic of sexual assault particularly on University campuses you know the right now we seem to think if you just educate young men to be better behaved and respect the rights of women we'll be fine I'm sorry that's nonsense when I'm cuz all that learning goes out the window if the man is had ten vodkas over the last hour and a half right what you will need to do is control the intake of ten vodkas and make it very clear to the young man that if you are so foolish as to so completely disable your better senses by drinking ten vodkas and in an hour and a half you will be held accountable for your behavior right that makes sense to me and that's the conversation that in many contexts we're not having we're pretending that something like alcohol does not disrupt our ability to make sense of each other's intentions but in fact you know if teenagers are already idiots when it comes to you know social interaction and they are right you and I remember sure I see that look in your house children you're you know what I'm talking about then it is the height of lunacy to introduce an element severe inebriation into what is already a bad situation and make it worse so you a prohibitionist no really I'm not a pro-business I and I understand that there is no way to stop teens from drinking but if they are going to drink to excess there'd better be adults around to make sure that there aren't to limit the bad consequences and be it will be very useful to explain to teenagers that there's a big difference between having two beers over two hours and having five shots of vodka in in 20 minutes and does the course of writing your book changer and behavior I mean did you talk to strangers differently yes I it has made me ever since I wrote the book blink I have become more and more and more and more convinced of how I'm dangerous interactions can be or at least how problematic they are they are and so I always give the example of you know I hire differently now I try to limit my face-to-face interactions with the people I'm interviewing for jobs I've heard you talk about this now I find it intriguing because I get that you you think it's probably better to hire the best person for the job objectively on paper and according to their skills but a lot of the success of working with somebody is the interpersonal relationship yeah which is to do with you meeting them and getting on with them I'm liking them well I will say so several things about that yes and no use my assistants don't suppose this is specific to what my assistants do they they don't actually do not in the same I'm not in an office they don't know they're in a coffee shop somewhere in Brooklyn I'm emailing so you don't meet the middle I make them once every 10 days and whether or not I get on with them is not terribly relevant I mean I would like to it's more pleasant but in fact their job does not require them to be nice to me their job requires them to do their job so it confuses matters if you my worry and I think this is true of all human beings my worry is that if I meet them to face to face I will downplay the formal characteristics that are necessary to be good at their job and I will inappropriately over value how well they get along with me how funny they are how interesting they are how well they're dressed how attractive they are I could go on and on and on do their do they have a nice smile all these things don't matter they don't matter they matter if you're selling perfume on the ground floor of Harrods they do not matter if you are mouthing about was assistant right or for nine d % of the jobs in the world it does not matter whether you have a nice smile matters whether you're honest and hardworking and conscientious and show up in the morning and you know take criticism well these are not things that you can reliably decipher from a 20 minute interview with someone right these are things you learn over time or you learn from talking to the people the really great the really great job interview is where you'd never meet the person which you only talk if you could have honest conversations with people in their life which you can't but let's assume you could that would be the great chopping right well if you could both really say what you think and not see each other you know I'm just hiring an assistant right now and I realize if I could have five conversations off the record anonymous conversations with the former boss former coworker you know ex-boyfriend or girlfriend mom and and high school English teacher that would be better right much better I mean that's how you back to blink which is while ago yeah what about talking to strangers all of us have this I call it transparency in the book this expectation that someone's inner feelings are going to be reliably and transparently represented on their face and in their demeanor and that it's just not true so have you stopped judging on appearances or on the first impressions I've tried I have tried I you know I've tried for example you're very charming and I've tried to keep my judgment of your charming this at bay and just I'm not usually describing that where I have said but it's nice of you to say so I mean I I'm sort of getting the impression that you you are kind of you you carry on doing what you're doing partly as a curiosity and partly because you're driven to just do it but so partly because you want to change the way people think you do want to change the world - Sami Jewry I do embarrass to say that or am I to say that people are embarrassed to say I once change them yeah well I'm not sure I can change the world I would like to I think I can nibble around the edges with it but I yeah I I mean I guess I better we'll save it I believe people human beings are capable of being better and so if you believe that then you have no choice but to help them get better so I am NOT I'm fundamentally not nihilistic in my view of human nature I am an optimist in the sense that I believe all of us can tomorrow be better people than we were today yes I like to ask everybody I mean if you could just change the world what would you do how would you change it I would mean like like major wave a magic wand kind of change it I would I would take the populations of the ten wealthiest countries in the world and I would swap them for how long do you say week with the populations of the ten poorest countries in the world and then I would not even go back after a week and I would let the world go on when it's very way and what do you think that would achieve I think it would blow the minds of both parties particularly those from the wealthiest countries in the world I think it would radically change their understanding of what it means to be what it means to come from privilege what it means not to have privilege and they would radically change there you would it would destroy hopefully it would destroy their useful and I think are you not useful it would destroy their pernicious myth that they are somehow responsible for their own success and I think it would give them a good deal of insight into the suffering of other of others welcome couple thank you very much indeed they sharing your way to change the world

Channel: Channel 4 News

Views: 261,815

Rating: 4.8135991 out of 5

Keywords: Channel 4 News, ways to change the world, ways to change the world podcast, channel 4 news podcast, malcolm gladwell spot a lie, malcolm gladwell interview, malcolm gladwell, malcolm gladwell new book, malcolm gladwell explains why it’s so hard to spot a lie, malcolm gladwell writer, malcolm gladwell journalist, malcolm gladwell goes dark, talking to strangers review, talking to strangers malcolm gladwell review

Id: on7Wjdl_qhM

Length: 44min 18sec (2658 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 04 2019