Malcolm Gladwell: Why Must We Ruin Everything?

[Music] welcome to metaphysical milkshake the show where we go deep we get weird and we search for the meaning of life along the way presented by cast media and soul pancake [Applause] [Music] hey there i'm reza aslan and i'm rain wilson and today we're going to talk about bombs no no no we're not we're not talking about bombs so bombs were apparently invented by robert oppenheimer that's fascinating but that's not an actual topic what's really interesting is that raza please that atomic bombs have only been used twice in a war i'm just going to pretend that my co-host reign is having an aneurysm uh because he apparently can't remember uh the topic of today's conversation so bombs get their energy from fission reactions do you understand you're ruining the podcast okay you are ruining the podcast right okay just like you ruin everything frankly you're accusing me of ruining everything i'm just saying i mean maybe you don't ruin everything you ruin everything you ruin a lot of things ruining that's a way better topic than bombs why do we ruin everything why do we ruin why do we up every last bloomin thing human beings this is a question that i ask myself all the time raza why do you have to everything up it's a condition that i would say like most of humanity i would say all of society has this condition like this need to just ruin everything every good idea we have well it's been happening since the dawn of time but especially it goes hand in hand with technology don't you think yeah all of these innovations wonderful innovations you got electricity right we're so happy for electricity it gets light and heat and warmth to billions and yet we can also use it in an electric chair right i am i'm thinking about that first you know that first ape that grabbed that rock and was like hey i can open this i can open a coconut with this rock i can also open a skull with this rock like this just who we are we ruin things so why do we ruin things reza well look i mean i think part of it has to do with the fact that we don't really we don't tend to think about the implications or the full consequences of our actions or our creations you know our innovations we're so excited about the next new thing right and how it's gonna change the world it's gonna change everything and then we never really stop to say wait what for better or for worse because it's usually for worse i think i think that's part of it we just don't think far enough well frequently used example but i'm gonna go there is this little pocket computer that i have uh called an iphone if you had said to young rayne wilson uh 20 years ago hey uh you can have a little a computer in your pocket and in it you will have all your photographs you've ever taken in it you will have unlimited supply of songs any song you ever want to hear um you want to hear ziggy stardust uh in in three and a half seconds you can pull that up you can google anything any piece of information you want to know there's endless supply of games uh people can be in touch with you there's maps you will never get lost again you'll never be alone again i'll never be alone at all i would say bring it on oh my god this is the answer to all of my problems right here in my pocket and yet who would have foreseen how addicted i am to this phone and that i have seven hours of screen time a day reza check your screen time seven hours a day i'm telling you that's so it's so true like i remember the the smartphone i was thinking to myself wow like so you'll never be bored again because you always have everything at your at your disposal and now besides the fact that it's hard to actually maintain you know my actual human relationships because my phone is with me at all times um i'm bored now like i have literally like really only a million songs is that it no there's nothing else on here but also what's wrong with boredom boredom was not something that we needed to fix there used to be times when i would like be alone with my thoughts wow i i honestly can't remember i really can't remember the last time i was alone with my thoughts because my phone is with me i thought that today i literally meditation is an important part of my life i went to meditate and i had my phone as a timer and i had my phone with me like why do i have my flippin phone with me when i'm meditating i want to meditate i want to commune with the spirit of the universe i don't need my phone to tell me that it's my move now in a chess game with my friend wade i mean we could look we could come up with a thousand examples of like things that were created or ideas that were advanced or innovations that were developed that you know were to make things better right it was make the world better and it ended up making everything worse i mean yes the phone that's a good one internet absolutely social media i mean i i guess you and i are old enough to remember a time not that long ago where there wasn't twitter right where facebook didn't exist and then it showed up and we were like wow this is amazing i mean i remember when when twitter showed up and i was like so you're telling me that i can tell everyone in the world what i am thinking at any time and then you know what happened i started telling everyone in the world what i was thinking at any time well look this is a this is a fascinating topic it's something that obviously you and i have a lot of personal uh you know involvement in why do we ruin everything and i think i think we might have the right person to help us answer this question [Music] ladies and gentlemen um we have um [Music] a writer uh apparently he's published a few books uh on the show today um on metaphysical milkshake uh malcolm glad well sounds like a made up name to me anyways big fan of all of those books you wrote for economics sapiens you're the best um no no no no no dude rain welcome to the what no it's a wrong guy malcolm gladwell he wrote tipping point blink david and goliath eat pray love all of them huge huge international bestsellers i loved eat pray love it made me cry it's so beautiful you know for the longest time people legit thought i did write for economics back when free economics was that massive international bestseller at least half of the people who had come up and talked to me you know hey you're mocking level yeah i love freakonomics and they would go on and on for like you know they're going people in that situation go on for like 10 minutes and you don't have a chance to interrupt and say no no i'm sorry and then you realize you can't interrupt and say no no and finally my strategy was just i would just say yeah it's you know thank you so much really that's it was a great book i enjoyed writing it i'm now working on you know for economics too weird like rain gets that with tom cruise all the time people are always like i love the mission impossible movies but there are there's periods of time as an actor that i go through where i get legit recognized as someone else in another movie for years it was vincent vincent d'onofrio and men in black who remember he played that kind of lumbering alien walking down the street um and there is a certain resemblance there and it was just all the time loved you love your work great it was so funny the alien men in black and i did the same thing it's kind of like thank you thank you obviously we're just ribbing you we know all about malcolm gladwell and uh all the stuff that you do the revisionist history podcast the amazing books and of course your uh newest book uh bomber mafia which actually happens to be my favorite of your books i i really really loved this thing i was listening to it on soundcloud and uh you know just kind of basically ignoring my children for the last two or three days just getting so deep into and he has seven children that's a heart that's a heart i have to have seven seven correct seven children we'll see how it goes um which who makes the cut in other words um but i love this book it's actually i have to say of all of your books it's the one that i found to be um most like a history book right i mean it was like a deep dive into a particular moment in time in the second world war it looks at this huge technological innovation during that war that you know could have massively reduced the number of war casualties uh but didn't because we managed to it up so we're going to talk a little bit more about uh all the themes and issues that arise from the book but maybe just for our listeners tell us who exactly were the bomber mafia so there's a group of pilots in the 1930s uh who were all at a place called maxwell field which is now maxwell air force base just outside of montgomery alabama and they're you know this is the dawn of the age of air power so planes have only been around for you know 20 years um brand new technology no one's really figured out what they mean if you want to fight a war they're just a kind of play thing and this group of these these guys are all young they're in their 20s and early 30s and they're way off the reservation they no one else involved in the us army or the navy or any other part of the marines thinks these people are sane they think they're all nuts and you know they're not in washington dc and they're not in california not they're in the they're outside of montgomery alabama right in the sleepiest and they're just they they kind of get together and drink a lot of bourbon and they have this dream they decide we don't think the airplane is this novelty we think the airplane is going to change warfare forever and we're going to be the ones to do it and so they call themselves the bomber mafia because they have this dream and in 1936 they had a little school at maxwell air force base 36 37 38 39 years before the war and not a lot of people went through that school but the people who graduated from the school run by the bomber mafia were the ones who you could argue they were the ones who won the war for the allies i mean everyone who was anyone in the air force during the second world war spent time [Music] drinking the kool-aid in central alabama i mean it's a crazy forgotten story from the second world war so one of the things i loved about bomber mafia was the incredible cast of characters that you painted um there at the training facility throughout the army um uh the and the air then this this burgeoning air force this kind of nascent air force which was so brand new um and two of the greatest characters were hayward haywood hansel and curtis lemay and the thing i was interested about was that hansel was uh the one who was really uh part of the bomber mafia and he was like the godfather of the bomber mafia right he was like yeah and and searching for this goal of precision bombing that if we can bomb the exact right target in the exact right way and the exact right day we can cause incredible reverberations throughout the the enemies army and production and industry and and bring it to a screeching halt and this way we save lives and uh reduce the time of the war it's like win win win all around so this uh a handful of people come up with this idea later you get into sorry spoiler alert but because we're diving into the ideas underneath what you've written um curtis lemay is a you know trained in the same place but has a very different philosophy that maybe you can explain a little bit about curtis lemay and also the differences between the two because then i have a uh a question for you about it yeah so imagine here's the best way to think about it imagine that you're canada and you would like to defeat the united states in a war and you're the head of the canadian air force um and you decide the surest way to get america to give up and sue for peace is to new york city and actually the bomber mafia one of the exercises they did was this exact thing how would we bring new york city to its knees one approach would be remove all bagels from it yes riots in the street anyway one approach is you send you know a couple hundred bombers and just level manhattan right that's one approach that's what the germans were trying to do to the english uh when during the blitz right let's just level london and see if they give up the other approach would be the bomber mafia said well actually what if all we did was take out the aqueducts that bring water to new york city so the aqueduct there's an aqueduct you can see it from the air it's still there by the way it's whatever back then it would be six feet wide you know six feet off the ground it runs 30 miles 40 50 miles from the catskills into new york city it brings a hundred percent of the water to new york if you take out the aqueduct and there's no drinking water in new york how long will new york last i mean it won't like i mean that's it right you couldn't go on so they would say why would you don't bother leveling an entire city and killing millions of people just take out the aqueduct the same result will happen but you'll save you'll spare a million lives um so that's the now if you want to do the second route take out the aqueduct you have to be able to hit the aqueduct right and that was incredibly complex like it's that was incredibly just almost an impossible feat like you said yeah so that's what the what the these cast of characters down in alabama led by this guy haywood hansel they believed you could take out the aqueduct they were like you know what everyone else thinks you can't name a bomb we think you can name a bomb so well that all you have to do is take out maybe take out the aqueduct and then take out like a power station take out a couple of electrical substations you could maybe kill 20 people and use maybe 10 bombers and you're done call it a day new york's new york's finished that's the dream but it was an impossible dream wasn't it i went and i had dinner with the chief of staff of the air force um got him david goldfein and afterwards we went outside and he gathered a bunch of his top people um and we had drinks and we'd have chatted for two hours one summer night last summer and he there was a moment in the conversation when he said you know we were on a fort myer um basin just outside of dc and there's a there's a street with a row of gorgeous homes where all the top military brass live the head of the joint chiefs the vice chair of the joint chiefs the head of the air force long row of houses overlooking washington dc it's incredible and he was saying you know and he walked me through all the iterations of aerial warfare he's like in the second world war you would have sent this many bombers and they would have leveled the entire base with this many and then he was like you know my father flew in vietnam and he would have brought in and it would have been you know three whatever it was three uh bombers and they would have done and then like in the gulf war we would have brought in what i like and today we would have a single stealth bomber you wouldn't hear it coming and it would take out you know the room in which we're sitting and nothing else right he's like talk about the evolution and he was like so 50 years ago or 70 years ago in order to kill us all around this little you know where we were chatting you would have had to kill you know another 10 or 20 000 people because you would have bombed the entire base today we could just take out you and me so too but he said the difference is now the temptation to go to war is so much greater so 75 years ago when you thought about going to war you're like oh my god to even to do even the smallest thing in this war i'm gonna have to kill tens of thousands of people he's like today you can be you can sit in the oval office and you can say i want to take out malcolm and you could take out malcolm and no one else so what's stopping you from taking out malcolm nothing right there's no collateral damage you're not going to kill women and children you're not going to like take out not even going to take out my cat you could find malcolm walking down the street and just take out malcolm so what's stopping you from doing that every single day with some other person you don't like nothing that's the new temptation and so to your point is to that's exactly the question these guys wrestle with is the new regime where we can hit whatever we want with absolute precision is that more moral than the old regime and they don't know the answer to that question and i don't know the answer to that question folks cbd isn't about what you feel it's about what you don't feel i'm talking about stress i'm talking about anxiety pain you know if you're someone like me uh you know i'm a writer my neck and and shoulders are always in agony a little bit of cbd takes that pain right away my friends feels is a better way to feel better it's a premium cbd that will help you keep your head clear and feel your best it's hassle free delivered 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it'll get the job done quickly safely and hygienically you know father's day is around the corner and you are a father of like 17 children my children never get me anything for father's day this would be a good father's day gift kids actually i don't let them listen to the pot but okay so here's what you want to do get 20 off plus free shipping with the code milkshake at manscaped.com that's 20 off manscape.com use the code milkshake it's dad bod season reza time to get smooth the brand new lawnmower 4.0 and ultra smooth package is the perfect gift for you and the dad in your life to complete your grooming game get 20 off plus free shipping with the code milkshake at manscaped.com well and this brings up of course the uh the topic of this pod and why we wanted you on uh which is why must we ruin everything right why why can't we have nice things why as as a as a species to humans have to just everything up we have all these great ideas these these um moral imperatives whether it's target bombing or whether it's the internet and social media or whether it's just factories in the industrial revolution whatever it is we we act in uh and goodness and in an attempt to make life better for humans and what always seems to happen is that we end up making things worse the factories uh destroy the environment the internet uh which is supposed to give freedom uh to people and let people's voices be heard very quickly becomes just another way for tyrants and autocrats to stifle any kind of freedom of speech social media which is just a cesspool you know was supposed to change the way that we communicate with each other and expand all of our circles to give us access to new sources of knowledge and information and instead all it's done is made our world smaller and more siloed what is the thing about the human condition and this is a huge part of the barber mafia what is the thing about the human condition that just has to up every good intention that we have especially when it comes to these technological advances yeah we can't yeah it is super isn't it interesting like we can't help ourselves can't have nice things the part of this interest me is i think in part it's because we're always solving the part of the problem that's not a problem expand on that tell me more well so for example um google googling something gives you unlimited access to all the information you could possibly want um before we had google was that a problem well no wasn't a problem in 1995 was my life ruined because i couldn't look up the capital of thailand in two seconds no i i could find out the capital of thailand it just would take me a little bit longer but it wasn't i wouldn't have identified if you'd said to me in 1995 malcolm your life is forever scarred because you can't find out bangkok in two seconds i would have said actually no it's not that's not the i have problems in my life that's not one of them so google looks at all the problems that malcolm has and decides the one we're going to solve is we're going to let you look up bangkok in two seconds like that's a sort of dumb version but here's another dumb one but it's amazing how many uh i'm a big runner right now the running world is in tumult because nike and all the shoe companies have come up with shoes that makes everyone run faster way faster so every record is being broken right now which has the effect of erasing the past so now like we don't even know who the fastest runners are anymore someone's going to break usain bolt's 100 meter record this summer but not because they're better than usain bolt but because their shoes are better so now that solves a problem of of it helps us run faster but that wasn't a problem the problem with running was not that we're not running fast enough the problem was we get injured or the problem is not enough people run how about a shoe that helps people who don't want to run run that strikes me as a legitimately good shoe that's not the shoe we got the shoe we got was it helped people who already run like maniacs to run a couple seconds faster why are you solving that problem that's not the problem right but i feel like we do endless versions of this like it's cons like it's just like i want to convene all the smart people in the world and say okay guys look let's just can we just decide on what the top 10 biggest problems are and let's just focus on those for five minutes as opposed to running off and like giving me some other like thing that someone's right now in the world is trying to make a bicycle which is one ounce lighter why the problem with bicycles is that when i ride my bicycle i'm afraid so a car's gonna hit me and kill me solve that problem please right it's just the end but it's just to your point this is why we can't have nice things because all the smart people are not solving the thing the problems that are problems but isn't there something a little a little deeper isn't there something a little underneath that a little bit which is uh we're so into short-term gain that uh we don't think things through and doesn't doesn't there need to be for instance let's just use precision bombing um what it led to is in this kind of war and against terror that we're in right now is it i'm not trying to get all political but essentially what it's led to is a kind of non-stop war and then precision bombing is used as an assassination technique so there's a constant kind of button being pushed oh someone's getting assassinated oh they got taken out oh this general got taken out this person i'd say one step further than that it's turned war into a video game so our fighters aren't even necessarily out in the battlefield anymore they're in a cubicle you've seen the guys flying the drones that they're this they look like guys playing an xbox you know what along these very lines what uh what the when i was chatting with all those air force generals they were talking about the stealth bomber so the stealth bomber is in i may have this correct incorrect it's in um kansas on an air force base in kansas and it's in kansas because it's so valuable costs so much it's got to be in the center of the of the country so we can defend it so when we were fighting the war and i think in uh in bosnia or that the the guys would get in the plane the drive they live in this suburb of whatever city in the middle of kansas they would drive to the air force base get in the plane and fly in so fast they would fly to wherever it was drop their bombs fly home and then pick up their kids from school and wow it's like the whole notion of you know this you have to go to the field of battle and you you're away from your family for months no no these guys are literally they're getting in the ford escape at eight o'clock in the morning and driving to the air force base and they're in they're over europe in like whatever it is a couple two hours now they don't even do that right now they just go to you know again some like office building somewhere in virginia yeah and fly the drone over from there and pick up papa john's pizza on the way home yeah it's we it's so it is so weird i mean so here's the question i have malcolm is has it always been like this i mean do you feel like there was a time in in you know human society in which you know we actually stopped to think about the long-term morality behind these innovations or as rain said is it just that part of the human condition is that we can't we don't have the ability for that kind of long-term thinking that we're always trying to solve the problem immediately in front of us and we don't stop to think what will be the consequences for solving this particular problem i mean occasionally we clearly get it right some portion of the time right that's that's why we have progressed as a species and you and i can point to 10 20 you know the coveted vaccine solves a problem that's a problem like we did a really good job on that so we can get our act together and we can focus i just think there's a lot of time spent on i remember i don't want to pick on everyone picks on him but i'm going to pick on jeff bezos for a moment somebody asked him why he built this you know he wants to build a rocket that goes to wherever it is mars and they're like why are you spending billions of your dollars building a rocket to go to mars he goes like that was just the most interesting problem i could i could think of trying to solve and i was like really dude that's the problem can you that's how about poverty the most interesting hunger i don't know can i borrow 15 minutes of your time to give you some other suggestions about where you want to put your billions although in bezos's uh favor i will say he's shifted his focus now and he is putting tens of billions 60 80 100 billion dollars towards fighting climate change which is cool although yeah you know sidebar it is causing climate change it's uh he's you know he's doing this carbon sequestration kind of technology like how do we not cease polluting but actually just take carbon from the atmosphere and put it back no that's the better i'll a bit i thought it was funny that the minute his wife mackenzie sets out on her own she immediately gives away a whole lot of money for some really really good causes like i feel like she was sort of sitting in the back like thinking she was thinking about it now jeff there's some better things we could do with our cash i mean i have an idea jeff maybe don't send me one tube of toothpaste at a time that's that seems like well maybe maybe reza don't order one tube of toothpaste at a time because that's what i do with amazon toothpaste here's my mini computer in my pocket thank you whoever invented that idea toothpaste and then the next day it's at my house but i i want to bring i want to talk about morality for a minute i know this is i know this is it's a it's a difficult topic but it's just like forget religion let's put religion aside let's put the ten commandments aside and god and hell and damnation and any of that nonsense aside and just talk about like just good old-fashioned right and wrong and isn't this a result why do we things up because morality is not connected to technology because when science happened uh science wanted to be unfettered from any kind of restraint it just is like we are just going to look at data and we're going to uh create experiments and we're going to solve problems and we're just going to build and there was never that kind of ongoing discussion of like okay precision bombing let's get together let's have a colloquium let's have a zoom meeting let's uh bring everyone to the table and talk about okay what are the what are the consequences of precision bombing what might precision bombing look like in 10 20 50 100 years and how now can we address that isn't morality at play in this discussion malcolm well the you know the original obama mafia certainly felt they were representing a moral position a considered moral position and i think uh in their context they were right so they didn't they weren't thinking about how the modern world would use some of the ideas they were proposing and technologies they were proposing to turn war into a kind of 24 7 phenomenon they had a legitimate immediate concern which was they had just come out of the first world war which was you know the first world war is was one of the most extraordinary moral abominations of you know where a million people died in one battle in the first world war in the battle of the psalm is crazy so they were saying we don't need to do that again we we you know so i don't think i think what happens it's not that morality and technology are disconnected it's that i think they very often start connected and what happens is that they just go on divergent paths like i do think the people who started twitter you know honestly felt that twitter could be an agent for positive change in it could be a way to fight tyranny it could do all these you know remember all the excitement around twitter and arab spring people that was an honest belief that twitter was a force for good turns out probably isn't doesn't have the impact we thought it would but that's not the fault of um it's just that we didn't no one had any notion about how that technology would evolve you know we didn't realize that twitter was just going to turn into high school he thought it was something nobler and you know grander um and so i don't know i think it's just kind of impossible for anyone who's at the in on the ground floor of a technology to understand the way it's going to evolve the way it's going to interact with existing institutions and does it also have to do with the fact that innovation moves at such a fast pace right that it is sometimes difficult to slow down long enough to say what what are the consequences of this like i mean i remember the genius of twitter was precisely that you could be anonymous and so if you were you know a green movement member in tehran you could be on twitter and anonymously post information without you know putting your life at risk and that same very important innovation in 2009 now makes it you know the worst place on earth uh where you know any can say whatever he wants to say about you know anyone without ever having to deal with um the consequences because of of twitter's anonymity so in a sense like the issue here is that the this in each case the source of our progress is also the source of our downfall and we can't catch up to the technological innovations because they're moving at such a rapid pace um and so it's almost like this this rock is rolling down the hill and there's almost nothing to be done about it one one technological innovation leads to the next one leads the next one leads to the next one and then next thing you know you know war is a video game played by teenagers in inside of you know cubicles and so what i want you to do because you've spent 30 years right delving into aspects of history and historical trends and i'm curious when you when you look at certainly the last you know 50 years or so of technological innovation since since the since the second world war most definitely and when you look at the ways in which we have used technology or or created technology meant for good only to have it turned against us in one way or another do you feel like there's some kind of hope like do you do you see that this perpetual cycle you know of being by up uh to put it in uh kindly do you see that cycle heading in the right direction or are things just going to get worse especially now with you know the the current pace of technological advancement yeah i mean i'm congenitally optimistic so i always like to believe that we figure things these problems out um i do think you know this is a this is a a random example of this i was i read this essay on the internet um by a guy who was doesn't have a lot of money and was talking about what does it mean to be just above the poverty line in america right i am not just about the poverty line in america so a lot of what he was talking about is stuff i don't think about and one of the examples he was talking about was you know if you're not on the just above the poverty line you forget how big a deal cars are if you are that you're in fear that your car is going to break down and if your car breaks down you're screwed can't get to work you could lose your job can't do really really basic things and you don't have any other options and the cost of fixing your car is typically more than you can afford and it's just talking through that kind of anxiety and it made me think you know has anyone designed a car with that set of things in mind so you know we we design um mass transit with that person in mind but mass transit in most cities doesn't have that doesn't actually solve that person's problem because you could spend four hours getting to your job on the other side of la you know it doesn't help you if you got to wake up but you're already stressed out you're working at four o'clock now to get to work at eight but does someone say i can build a car that not only is cheap to buy and cheap to run but is i have ruthlessly removed every source of potential breaking down you know that's all i care about that'd not be fancy doesn't have to be sort of we've done that but not really right like that's a really really useful thing to kind of puzzle out but i do i think we'll have that in five years i actually kind of think with some combination of like electric cars and autonomous thingy and you know if you add all these together we could get to a some kind of solution for that person um but it's amazing to me how long it's taken us to get there right we've been poor people have had trouble getting to work for as long as there have been poor people and they have you know and like and it's gotten worse in contemporary times with you know inequality and traffic and all these kinds of things and like it just it distresses me how long it's taken but i do have confidence we'll get there it's funny you bring that up because as a kid the first time i ever rode on a golf cart i was like why don't we just have golf carts why don't we have all these different cars and trucks and bus like everyone just give everyone a golf cart and the first time i was on the bumper cars i was like why can't ever why can't anyone everyone just have a bumper car this is perfect just bump into each other all the time we can bump and it doesn't hurt anyone and you can bump you can have fun but isn't that where we're headed yeah i know this is kind of a tangential but we're kind of headed in the place where everyone is going to have the equivalent of a golf cart bumper car that maybe yeah okay maybe its range is a little bit limited 200 miles and maybe it only goes up to 40 or 50 miles an hour but that's but it doesn't break down it charges at night it doesn't have emissions anyway we'll figure out a way to screw it up to follow up so that's actually a really good example and i know this is a tangent but it allows you to think about what has to happen for us to get there so yes could we have a world where every car is essentially very very small and is a bumper car where if it if it collides with another they just kind of bounce off yes you can get there but the only way you get have to get there is that rich people have to give up their big heavy expensive cars we all have to agree if we all agree to ride around on little tiny light things then all cars can be little tiny and light but if one person says no i still want to drive my suv then it doesn't work anymore right because then everyone else has to defend against the suv right so you you get into these these these questions of solving social problems very very quickly become questions about collective morality that i have to convince the person with the cadillac escalade or the range rover you can't have a range order anymore right to solve the problem for the guy who's on the poverty line you have to give up your ride are you willing to give up your ride right now we have a now we have a moral now we have a moral social complicated problem to solve i think uh i'm pretty sure malcolm just figured out the subject of his next new yorker article the bumper card bumper cars for all yeah this was just a fascinating discussion i got so much out of it and the the way that you take history and you intersect it with life's biggest questions and psychological and sociological quandaries is uh really inspiring and uh and you've done that again with bomber mafia and uh it was uh it was just fabulous it's got my my mind is is bubbling [Music] and speaking of big questions malcolm you know we like to end our podcast with what we call the lightning round we just ask you a bunch of kind of big questions and then you just answer the first thing that comes to your mind and then we snicker and make fun of you silently um you ready for that no not silently after he leaves what's the one skill you wish you had wish i could uh swim you literally can't swim like you sink to the bottom like a stone can't swim wow that's great because i was going to ask my lightning round question is what is something no one knows about you probably that i can't swim [Laughter] what emotion do you wish you could better control oh my god what an interesting question well i'm such a repressed englishman i feel like they're all under control i would ask the question differently which emotion do you do you wish you couldn't control right which one would you want to let go let loose uh well you know i i wish i was more um emotionally expressive particularly in my um in my affections for people you know i wish i told people who i love that i love them more i suppose i would say that you can practice on me right now i love you rain name something that a lot of people like but you can't stand little mermaid big opponent of the middle of the little little mermaid yeah people don't know this about you malcolm but you've really got it in for the little mermaid i have it in the homer man uh when do you feel most connected to the universe when i'm running what's one eye-opening experience that everyone should have well i go back to running everyone should know what it feels like to run for more than an hour so to be by yourself in nature alone with your thoughts in motion for more than 60 minutes all right and then finally what is your life's big question uh it's a question that my that i got from my mom which is every morning i feel like my mother would ask the question where do i find joy in the coming day that's my question that's a great daily question here's a funny thing that malcolm will not remember this story but before my first book had come out that's when i first met you malcolm i met you at a party somewhere and i remember we're having a conversation we were having drinks and i said to you you know i've got a book coming out do you have any advice for me and this is what you said you said yes remember nobody gives a about you or your book except you do you remember telling me that i said that no it was eye-opening it was the greatest advice i have ever heard i have literally given that advice to dozens of more people you may have a publicist you may have an editor you may have you know a marketing machine behind you you may have you know an agent and all that stuff they don't give a about you or your book yeah that's what i meant yes that is true literally my entire career was launched from that bit of advice just do it yourself because no one else cares it's just you anyway well malcolm gladwell we've loved all your books from the power of now to songs my father taught me to it takes a village um my favorite was beloved absolutely uh genius thank you for all of those wonderful stories thank you for your contribution to western civilization and thanks for this conversation it was really fantastic yeah no my pleasure thank you guys wow that malcolm gladwell huh how about kids going places what a storyteller really really interesting conversation and uh you know i was thinking about the whole bumper car idea like individual bumper cars and it's kind of genius if you think about it like if we all just had you know these kind of small bumper cars like covered in rubber and just kind of bouncing off each other all the time there'd be no more accidents and deaths you know everyone turns 16 they all get a bumper car that is never gonna break down uh sealed nice little radio in there protect you from the elements maybe it just needs a little heater yeah this could be the future i think it's so i think it's great what could go wrong nothing could go wrong possibly some is gonna outfit his bumper car with even bigger bumpers and then what's going to happen then i have to have bigger bumpers obviously like if he's having bigger bumpers so you can really slam someone going down the venture a freeway you know i i knew i knew that you were going to figure it out and we've got gladiator bumper cars right you saw ben hur the little spikes sticking out of the side yeah then ginormous think about that bumper cars the size of suvs i guess the other thing too is we'd have to put bumpers on all the like the highways too right because you gotta bump off the wall oh that would be something this isn't gonna work now that i think about it actually see we we we ruined it we ruined it yeah we'll just screw it up in all seriousness i was really uh touched by his optimism and uh for someone who's written this many books and has dovan dived into uh human psychology and sociology with uh as much expertise as he has over the decades uh he's still optimistic for the future yeah and the can-do human attitude that can overcome these issues so i enjoyed hearing that about this conversation it's just us that are the hopeless cynics reza it's mostly me let's just be honest it's you basically it's you but your wife is so nice is she available to do a podcast with me super fun conversation thank you again to malcolm gladwell everyone check out his new book slash audiobook slash podcast extravaganza storytelling event the bomber mafia it truly is a fascinating tale and now listen maybe you want some more of the life's big questions you can find us on our socials at reza aslan and at rain wilson also of course at metaphysical milkshake let us know your life's questions right and who knows we just might explore them on a future episode you can also subscribe to the metaphysical milkshake youtube channel where you can watch full episodes every week and remember to follow rate and comment on metaphysical milkshake on apple podcasts and wherever else you listen to podcasts thank you so much for listening today see you next week in the meantime try not to ruin everything metaphysical milkshake is executive produced by rayne wilson reza aslan and colin thompson it is produced by safa samazadeh yazd harris lane mick dimaria hashem self and dj lubel cast media is the production and distribution partner it is edited by tyler newbold and audio mixed by justin kyle original music by jeff tang [Music] like my wife is i i love cooking and i love cooking for my wife and she's always so grateful for you know the meals that i make for her and it makes me feel good until i realize she likes everything there's nothing she doesn't like so then just make her grilled cheese and call it a day

Channel: Metaphysical Milkshake with Rainn & Reza

Views: 5,137

Keywords: Rainn Wilson, Reza Aslan, Malcolm Gladwell, Revisionist History

Id: GZLh44Znb0o

Length: 50min 32sec (3032 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 15 2021