Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine his provocative and unique take on the world has even spawned its own term Gladwell Ian he is the author of five enormously popular books among them the tipping point blinkin outliers and his newest book is David and Goliath underdogs misfits and the art of battling Giants here this evening in conversation with Malcolm Gladwell is Michael Lewis best-selling author of boomerang the big short The Blind Side and Moneyball please give a warm Castro and Jay CCSF welcome to Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Lewis [Applause] [Applause] so Malcolm yes you've written a book I have yes before we get to the book I want to start with you Malcolm and I have known each other for more than 20 years I think I met Malcolm when he was a he just started at the Washington Post and we had we have lots of mutual friends and after I met him after I've actually I read your first pieces I can remember saying to one of our mutual friends he's gonna be very famous someday he was clearly destined for great things and early on in our relationship I made the mistake of getting in an argument with him and I was just tryin dinner party and left and left in tatters and I remember thinking never again I'm gonna get it am I gonna get in an argument with you in public so if we find ourselves in conflict this evening yes we will just demure and move on okay this book Malcolm's written is an example of his talent its enormous ly persuasive its counterintuitive but it's different in one way and it's that I think it's more emotional than anything he's written and it is persuasive it takes as its thesis that disadvantages off an advantage and advantage is often disadvantage and it is inspiring for little guys everywhere who read this and as you are so persuasive and so well-read I wonder if you worry that you're going to be responsible for millions of little guys getting the crap beaten out [Applause] because you've inspired them to take on the Goliath in the world yeah so let's start everything I'd like to start with you and and and some of things I've heard recently about you for example I've heard that you returned to running I have can you tell us a little bit about your running career well I I was briefly in high school and I peaked at the age of 14 and when I was 14 I was a very very good middle distance runner for my age class but I sensed correctly that it was all gonna go downhill because there's this thing there's two things one is that when you're an age class athlete it's true of all athletes but when you're you're immersed in this sport you understand that there's a distinction between the day-to-day performance of you and your peers and how good people actually are so you know just because you beat someone doesn't mean you're better than them so I was beating this certainly this one runner named Dave Reed tell us who Dave Reed is the great he ended up being the great canadian distance runner of his generation and I when I was 13 I beat him by about 10 yards and then when I was 14 I beat him by about 3 yards and I did the math that I just said that this was not sustainable and I looked to him and I understood that he is actually a much better runner than I am and I also understood in the crude way that one does in those at that age that I had hair on my legs and he did not which suggested that puberty had happened to me and perhaps it hadn't happened to him which meant that is the minute he got hair in his legs I was toast so I quit I quit it at 15 I was gone because I knew I'd beat him one last time by like a hair's breadth and I was like all right that's it and then I I you foot running well I quit racing and I ran casually for on and off for the next many many decades and then very recently I would I just got hooked again and I've been enjoying myself and now I'm filled with regret actually about having quit so long ago you think you missed years of mediocrity I think I but the problem is I as a kid I was an absolutist and I thought that unless you were gonna win there was no point did you really think that I did I had all kinds of very very curious ideas when I was a kid and then now I understand that who cares right but then I really thought the notion that Dave Reid would beat me was so kind of catastrophic that I had the only way I could deal with it was just by leaving the sport entirely and I also didn't understand that you could be a runner and something else to me too I mind it was a category that would absorb your entire life so I thought that oh I could be a runner or I could be I could read books but I couldn't actually juggle both is there a place where that all the energy that went into the running win when you stopped running well it's sort of I you know if you talk to people who knew me when I was 13 they would have said that I was a jock and so I kind of got to reinvent my image in the you know I'm image I mean we're talking about small town Ontario but I don't think anyone had I don't even knew what an image was the notion that someone would have an image was like so bizarre that's that's something that would happen in Toronto maybe but not in but I you know but I got to sort of reinvent myself as someone who was kind of bookish and you know was on the debate team as opposed to the guy who was the runner do you get mistaken for being American often well I go so far out of my way to make it absolutely clear but I'm not an American no because it's there is this tent business tendency for every Canadian who become successful to become an honorary American the myth we when Canadians become famous in America everybody just assumes they must be American no but privately we we we keep we keep track of these Canadian and you know I could give you a list this long of all of us can I mean we're very good at this game and I insisted on your Canadian well though this is one of the great one of the many I've recently gotten very interested in contradiction and on the idea that as human beings we don't it used to be this notion that what we do the project of human personality is to explain away all the contradictions in your life I now think this is nonsense in fact the opposite is true what we do as human beings is exploit our contradictions we we willingly enter into contradiction because contradictions give you all kinds of freedom to do things that you couldn't otherwise do so we're drawn to them anyway my point is I am this massive contradiction the longer I live in the United States and don't live in Canada the more kind of vociferous Lee I proclaimed Canada's virtues so when I left Canada years ago I was like yeah now I'm like aw it's like the greatest place the world you know you guys have so much to learn from my country you know that that's my whole mo now what are our Canadian virtues oh do we do we have to ask we don't have that there's so numerous Canadians are and I don't need to tell you that you I'm not gonna in any way blow your cover but you are writing a book right now about a Canadian so you know about this Canadians are where while we're modest we're self-effacing we we would never talk about how great we are we are know that the great things about Canada I I really like the idea that this the modesty thing is actually really really important because it's institutionalized the modesty is so it really you find yourself when you're in Canada you talk one talks differently you you can't express yourself when you say it's institutionalized what do you mean by that I mean it's so deeply embedded in the culture like this is actually a very serious and beautiful thing about Canada but I remember my father my father my parents switched churches and they went to started going to the Mennonite Church in our home my area of my where I grew up was very Mennonite and the Mennonites are I think of their value system as being at the acts of heart of Canada Canadian as' and my father was describing coming home from a congregational meeting where they were choosing a new assistant pastor and I said to him oh so who oh so the pastor ran the meeting but how did that work it's like oh the pastor didn't run the meeting the pastor was in the audience with everyone else the meeting was run by someone in the church but that pastor participated in the process of choosing his deputy on the same level as everyone in the congregation now that is both beautifully Mennonite but also that's beautifully Canadian that you the leader sits in the congregation right not at the front in fact the leader goes out of their way to act in the least leader like fashion and that you know that not to get overly sentimental but that's sort of thing about candidate it moves me right just like that's fantastic to live in a culture where it's not just it's not exceptional for the leader to want to do that you know be from behind why did you leave well I I didn't mean to leave I tried to get a job in Canada but it was the middle of the recession and then I applied for a job at this disreputable right-wing magazine and I didn't know anything about the magazine some friends show me in a job but were you did you think of yourself as a disreputable right-winger well I had I was briefly at that point of my life a right-winger because as I because every either opportunity for rebellion had been cut off I had no options I I couldn't do drugs because they're literally were no drugs in my high school they just he was it they're the rebels at my high school smoked cigarettes and I was a runner I couldn't smoke cigarettes my mother bless her heart she had there were no rules for me I announced my mother in a in an attempt a failed attempt at rebellion I said to her when I was in high school that my friend Terri and I had devised this way of we decided that we were unhappy with the traditional measures metrics of success in high school grades and we wanted to do a system where you would multiply your grade point your grade by the number of days that you were absent from school and so there was a degree of difficulty if you get a really high average well also having a high number of absences that was like that was amazing so we embarked on this on this process of trying to get really great grades while never going to college so this is I thought this is a very clever way of rebellion right so I was I thought I'd put my mother in a box what she what she couldn't do this so what did she do she kind of she said oh that's a great idea and she the next time she entered with the principal at some town thing she said I should tell you my mother's very polite I should tell you that Malcolm and his friend Terri probably won't be attending school as diligently this and then she wrote these notes with that head Malcolm is you know to be excused from school today and she left the date blank and she would just give me like bunches so I was like I can't win so what was left well Canada was pretty far to the left in those years this is the late 70s so I was like alright I'm gonna become a right-winger like I'll show her so I was a dutiful I read William F Buckley books and I I you know subscribe to National Review and I rode away to the RNC and got I caught a big poster of Ronald Reagan you know next to the Cheryl Tiegs poster and I that was my way of coming my nose and sort of you know but then I went to got to college I realized that I I would never I would never get a girl if there was a model you can't it's like a it's a it is a Ronald Reagan poster in a Canadian College on your dorm room is a prophylactic it is it is you are guaranteeing that you will never have any kind of relations so that I very hastily abandoned my policy and sought more mainstream avenues of rebellion but you found your way to the American Spectator so I did so then I had never heard of it but then this friend of mine brought me the mere expected had an ad in the back that's one of my favorite stories for an assistant managing editor and I had failed to get a job and this is I was approaching the end of my senior year in college I was jobless so I was like kind of panicked so I rode away it's like literally it's like thank you right away for the ad in the back of the magazine I wrote away this yet and they sent back a form that I had to fill out a application five pages the last question of which was why do you want to work for the American Spectator no and they gave you this much space rightfully now I had no idea I didn't never read the magazine so I just said I just wrote one sentence doesn't everyone wanna work either astonishment so I I moved to Bloomington II I know where it was and discovered to my horror that what Bloomington and it was which is culturally about as far from Canada as you can get there was I remember turning on the local liver forget this television and there was an ad there would be ads on TV for this local gun shop and there was this guy named bud something and he would do the ads himself and he was the I consisted of him shooting various weapons at a target just over and over again open so that's the ads like 30 seconds so the first 25 seconds is just him taking one form of weapon after another and then he just turns to the camera the end he says I don't want to make money I just love to sell guns [Laughter] this sheltered Canadian boy from the you know the hinterlands of the Bible Belt in southern Ontario and I was in southern in Indiana you know looking at this I mean it was quite a friend in Alabama who came back from a trip to candidate and said how horrible Canadians were and he said because when he got to the border they harassed him they went through his car and tried to take away all his guns and I said well did they get your gun and goes oh no I keep it in the Kleenex box the the so but you feeling it you know that you're filling in a mental map of you for me how did you get the idea in your head that you wanted to be a writer in the first place I mean why are you even applying for a job at a magazine well I had had a zine in college with members eenz with my two best friends and the zine was called ad hominem a journal of slander in critical opinion and it was serious if the rule was you had to attack someone in every article and so we just wrote these kind of screeds and we would run it off on the photocopier and distribute and then we were our big thing was we were constantly we put out issues and then we would constantly put our best of issues which we would call you the essential ad hominem which we thought was hilarious and so I kind of got it in my head cuz I was reading all this William F Buckley and he was inspiring me you know I got it in my head that that but I never thought of it as it as a I didn't occur to me you could do that as a job so I tried to get a job in advertising in the night and I couldn't and so then I just was just by accident that I got this it really was I had never conceived of myself going into journalism it seemed ridiculous I was gonna go to law school and or Business School or something so then what happens I got fired and I was illegal I'm sure I've told the story so many times but I was illegal for a while and then I I was caught because I didn't really want to la and so I was trying to you know was try to sneak through I'd had my parents drive me across the border but one time I got caught get to the American expected I was now living on Washington but I was illegal and I got caught I was they were gonna deport me and I this is pretty 9/11 and I said to the guy the border look I have a doctor's appointments very important can you can we just delay this for a couple days he said sure so I go home and I I quit my job and I sublet my apartment and I give away all my belongings and I go to the I NS and I'm go to the office to get deported and I you know they make you wait go in on this guy two hours there comes in and like looks at me like rifles through all these files leaves come back rifle soon where files leaves come back I'm funny he looks at me he goes I don't know who you are what your name is but why you're here I've lost you file I just went back and got my apartment back in my god whenever people denounced the American bureaucracy for its inefficiency I always go you know there are times where the efficiency conservative or inefficiency considered very well so I've had a soft spot in my heart ever since then for big government [Applause] but that's literally why I'm here I mean I would be I'd be in Canada as a lawyer if I had not been my file at not you had no you didn't feel any particular calling to be a journalist or a writer or anything like he just kind of stumbled into it yeah I never I didn't really I used to write in college the only sport the writing I did was sports writing and because they we had no sports in our college we had this one sort of vaguely intramural football team so what my friend Bruce and I did is we invented because no one went to the games so the whole thing was we you decided we would write about the football team for the school newspaper and because literally no one went to the games when I say no when no one went to the games so we just made everything up cuz no one would know so we invented this coach named Wexford Harding because we thought that sounded really southern I mean this whole persona that we developed over the current was this from Alabama and he had a drinking problem and he was always and we would the the articles were always these kind of long elegiac that he would make the long drive up from Tuscaloosa to to Toronto to coach an intramural it made no sense but but we divide people I honestly believe like we there's no way of checking this of course but I honestly believe people thought Wexford Harding existed and he was always I had thought about this for so many years he was full of these kind of southern epigrams he was a host it's like he's like he'd read just a little bit too much Faulkner you know like there was that kind of that's where we were getting our cuz we were reading Faulkner in our English class so we were kind of like importing that whole thing into Wexford Harding and he was always you know sort of moral problems with drinking postures but that's what I did that's that's what you know what's funny is that you've just created in me the sensation I sometimes feel that I'm reading your work that you didn't answer my question [Applause] but I don't really care so you can go on or we can go back to what I actually asked you how you became a rider you telling me how you didn't but no but I think that's how I did I think Wexford Harding is the answer Wexford Harding but how great is that name it's just fantastic I think it's how I became a writer so I had to zine I had Wexford Harding and then I went to American Spectator and I wrote these kind of I forgot I mean I would just do these kind of things and then I got to Washington when I got fired I came to Washington and I remember I thought my career was over I remember actually I had put all my belongings you know I remember this a white Chevy Impala and I drove from Indiana into Washington DC because I knew someone in Washington DC and I felt I could sleep under a floor for a while and I thought is my big chance to make it in America and I blown it it was this paradise day I remember like sort of tearfully driving through West Virginia in the middle of the winter and this song on the radio that was playing cuz you go from one AM station to the other and they were so you'd hear the same song over and over again two songs were the song by halle notes M ETH OD method modern love but more importantly that song I want to know what love is by hook coroner is it foreigner yes what it's foreigner yeah and ever since then I remember I devised in this teary trip a psychological questionnaire based on the song I want to know what love is and all you do is you take every lyric and you turn it into a question so question number one is do you want to know what love is if so do you want me to show you do you need a little time you know a to think things over in you in your life is there hard to contain if so have you come so I've come so far can you take it all or can you do it all again or take it all again I forgotten anyway it turns out that that the lyrics of that song every lyric works like a question on a psychological questionnaire and it's not a bad question air it actually starting out with a question do you want to know what love is is to it any I mean it goes straight to the heart of who you are right if so do you want me to show you I mean you're a walking digression I [Applause] haven't thought about any of these things for such a long it's good it's very good let's go with it you get with your questionnaire you get to Washington how do you break through and start I I this is what I met you right after this no no later there was later a little later I started at the Washington Post no that was many years from from very years away okay hi because I'm still illegal and then I get a job at this right-wing think-tank and I chose it because I I went in and they had L an l-shaped office and the entrance was at the top of the L and they had the long spine of the L and then it turned and then there was the short end and the office at the very very foot of the bottom of the L I realized that geography office was such that no one would ever go to that office in other words there was no reason for anyone to ever go in that office unless they were there especially to see you right so I went to apply for the job of like doing their newsletter or something and they said I said well where did I work in this office there oh my god I will have complete privacy and this just like a light bulb goes on I was like this is fantastic I can essentially do whatever I want and no one's ever gonna know they don't even know whether I'm in the office remember by history in high school that leaving was so I just thought on that basis allows like I'll take it I mean and I'm just like it was $12,000 and I started to freelance because no one no one ever came into the like because I figured out correctly that that was the and then I was there for a while and then I started doing enough freelancing that I got off so what's the first thing you did with the first thing you did that caught people's attention I did pieces well then I room eight was the person that we shared jacob weisberg who was an intern at the new republic and he he he got he got me into the new hobby he got hikes published an article air cuz Jake made it happen I was told and Jacob was my roommate I didn't even know him he answered an ad in the paper the whole thing is completely serendipitous he just he and he wasn't gonna take for the New Republic gave you your start yeah they gave me my start - yeah in the same year yeah yeah what was it about you know I don't remember I think I don't remember I think I I had I was really good in those years at piggybacking with people who knew what they were doing so I I remember many of my early pieces were co-written with people who had written pieces for the New Republic that's kind of early stage Gladwell you're kind of still doing the same thing right you finding people who yes yes I never do quite all alone like yeah why yeah yeah you know I'm always looking for it's more I'm a little more mm-hmm then I really was you know I get an idea and I just call up someone and say can I like I would I would do I remember that actually not so I came back to me someone had written an article on a subject and I had discovered some little tiny wrinkle so I just got in touch with him and said I have this little wrinkle that adds to this piece you've already written can we do it together that's what was mine that was mine so you wrote with other people yeah in the beginning yeah yeah when did you get a sense that you could actually make a living at this well I worked for a while this is the Nader of my career I worked for a while for a magazine that had been started by the Reverend moon and it was called insight and the Reverend moon was throwing cash around DC like you've never seen and that great the thing that sold me on I went to the job interview and the guy trying to hire me explain this as a outstanding amount of money that was gonna make and he said in justification of taking money from the Reverend moon money doesn't smell and it's just like I was 22 and totally broke and I was like the thought that someone would say as justification smell that's why you should I just up that was hilarious and then I got there and I realized they had no accounting controls so you would take a trip and then they you would just tell them how much you spent so I just disappeared to England on the dirty stories I don't take friends with me and I would just say I spent you know and I've just named some absurd number and they would write you a check because we used to remember that song I may sing a song here you can do that I remember the song walking on the moon by the police how does it go well we did we used to sing because they paid us to no Simon megabucks are what you make working for the moon I hope my bag don't break the chorus was some they say you wasting your career away no way might as well stay I forgot the rest [Applause] that was a lot of fun and I went from there to the Washington Post and then you had a sense this was a career and I finally did I was finally legit that kind of the joke was over at that point I became a grown-up so we have about three minutes before we start taking questions from the audience oh we haven't discussed and I want to talk about the book okay yeah and you know one of the things that struck me about it I read a few of the reviews and I mean your reviews are the most of the strangest things I read in that you get you hit nerves with people sometimes it's positive and sometimes it's negative but I always feel they're not reviewing the book they're reviewing you and that they are either in amber with you or upset with you but it's you it's not the book and it happens over and over again I feel like I put down the review and I feel like something smells about it unlike Reverend Moon's money yeah and we can go ten minutes more so so this book the first thing when I picked it up I thought the first story in it was sensational the David and Goliath sorry briefly because this book is new nobody's probably nobody has read it yet but more just quickly tell the story oh it's a retelling of the biblical story of David and Goliath which is brilliant is it I assumed it was original please tell me it is well it's I mean it's this this turns out to be this huge amount of speculation about that story in various literature's medical of which I was totally unaware yeah it's really cool that there's two kind of interesting observations that are one is that David's weapon a sling is an incredibly devastating weapon it is not a child's toy it has I talked to this hilarious ballistics expert for the Israeli Defence Force who had done the math on the stopping power of a stone fired at that speed and it's equal the stopping power of David Stone is equal to a 45 caliber handgun so it's like that scene in Indiana Jones where you know the guys yeah and then he just picks out of thinking cooks that's what it David's doing he's essentially he has superior technology to Goliath that's the first thing you have to understand the second thing is that you know the story has all these weird all this weirdness about Goliath Goliath is led onto the valley floor by an attendant which makes no sense if he's a mighty war why is someone leading by the hand he he takes a long time to figure out what David is up to in fact he never really does it's like he's completely oblivious to what's going on and then the biblical story also has all these kind of knowing winking comments about how slowly Goliath moves and so people have thought about this and thought about Goliath sighs and come to the conclusion that maybe he has acromegaly which is which is caused by a benign tumor on your pituitary gland it causes an overproduction of human growth or hormone and causes giantism so many of the Giants in history have acromegaly Andre the Giant the wrestler Abraham Lincoln we think maybe hid acromegaly and acromegaly has a side effect which is it often compresses the optic nerves leading to deficiencies in sight so we think that Goliath is partially blind which explains all of these anomalies right so here we have David armed with superior technology okay I'm empowered man with a handgun going up against the blind man now yes why is he the head why is he the underdog right something underdog he's a favorite right in no way is he some some improbable victory pulling off this massive upset no he Peterson win he's useless I mean he's Goliath is this pathetic guy who not only is suffering under a massive misapprehension about the nature of the battle right he brings a sword to a to a gunfight and and to he's like you know so it's like when you realize that you're like ha so we've been telling the story wrong for 3,000 years right so that's the book so if that's the case why is the story told the way it was told well because it's more romantically satisfying to tell it that way because we're invested well that's one but then the larger reason is because I think when it comes to this is what this is really what the book is about when it comes to our mental accounting are the advantages and disadvantages I just think we're just nuts where we just are completely irrational we like in the case of Goliath why do you think alive is the favorite just because he's big right that's it because he's big in because the assumed combat was going to be at close quarters and yeah yeah where he would have an advantage but that's a massive assumption right but I just don't I just think and the many of the chapters in book are just about interrogating our assumptions about advantage you think this is an advantage how why you why do you think of small classes and advantage for your child can you remember when you first had the seeds of the idea that this was there was a book in this in this stuff in this subject it was when I met and by the way this is very relevant you should be here I as you know have I worship you and I my career do I do this no no no no no no I am NOT I am NOT I'm James Lipton here no no no because this is dead serious I'm actually being dead seriously I have always wanted to write more like you and I have been trying over my career to write books like you write books does to say books that are about character and emotion and and this book is as close as I have ever gotten and I don't think I'm they are by any stretch the imagination but so I was very very very I had an encounter with a guy a couple years ago and I it was this guy named vivec who lives in Silicon Valley he's a Silicon Valley guy and he was telling me about coaching his daughter's basketball team and I thought I can finally write a Michael Lewis story and I that story I wrote for The New Yorker on how this guy coached his daughters to a pro team what you explained it briefly so he's an indian guy and he wants to hang out with his daughter more and she's 12 and she wants to play basketball so he says I'll coach it but he has no idea about basketball is he knows cricket so he starts to go to basketball team games to kind of learn the strange thing and he's like he's good and he's like I can't believe the way they play the game it doesn't make any sense why does everyone run back into their own end and wait for the other team to bring the ball up why wouldn't you play defense the whole court all that what are you in other words plays full-court press all the time particularly if you're the weaker team right it makes no sense for the weaker team to allow the stronger team to more easily and quickly do the thing that sets the stronger team apart which is pass and dribble and execute choreographed plays say if you have a lousy team you should try and delay the onset of the other team's offense as long as possible you should full court press all time and he looks at his team and he realizes my girls are really lousy they have no basketball skills whatsoever they are skinny girls from Menlo Park right you know what I'm talking about they're all daughters of computer programmers they are you so he looks at him and he's like you know we we're just not gonna win any games at all if we play normal and so he takes these girls who can't play basketball and he says to them we're not gonna learn basketball we're not gonna dribble pass or shoot you're just gonna get in really good shape and you're gonna do this and so you know that one thing these girls have going to be in there pretty very they realize he's right there they're not coming home and shooting baskets right they're coming home to dream about being marine biologists and so they understand intuitively the genius behind this notion and so they do this and so they start to win games like 6-nothing and because when they get the ball they get it right under their fake what they can do is shoot layups yep so the vectors allow them to practice that particular skill because it will become necessary to score points for the odd point yes right go on forever yeah otherwise so he does allow for the but if the other team is not actually ever getting the ball across midcourt as is the case if you don't have to score a lot to win right if the other team is at zero really one basket will do the job so they go all the way the national championships and so he told me this story I didn't even know who he was I met him at some conference and because I was telling my story today actually because I was at Google this is happy once before I have a very mild form of Trott what's that prana Gosha I'll trust you well you can't I can't remember people's faces so I'm constantly snapping I shall give you two great examples of this one was I was seated in a cafe in Miami and I was working and I haves on deadlines and this woman sits down next to me and she starts to try and engage me in conversation and I you know I'm working she tries tries tries finally she gives up and starts chatting and of course the effect of my mild form Pras something is that it just takes me a long time to process people's face so 10 minutes pass and I think you know she's really familiar and then 10 minutes past and I think she's also really attractive and then 10 minutes pass and I think oh god Jennifer Aniston that was that's one then I was at a conference and I'm seeing next some guy and dress slubby way and I figured it's a grad student of some kind so I was like he went to screw up in Michigan went to Michigan State so I start chatting with my mom Michigan State basketball and we chat for good 45 minutes about Michigan State basketball and we talked a little bit about his graduate still stuff and then maybe familiar but I can't place it I could happy Kitsap walk away then someone comes out to me and said you know you were talking to you and I said no Larry Page never we never got to the part where he was a billionaire they just anyway so I meet this guy this conference and I he turns out to be this big software mogul but I just start talking about basketball which is my default apparently what I don't know what someone who someone is and he told me the story and I sat I sat on it for years without realizing I'm nice and then it occurred to me when I was in one of my I want to be more like Michael Lewis paces but this was honestly I was like this is a Michael Lewis story but I went to my editor and said I can write I think I can finally do a Michael Lewis story and I that was as close as I came the question actually was but is that's where the book I just forgot you've numbed my brain that's the way the book but it's interesting because what you do better than anybody on the planet is you play with an idea you you you and you you take it all sorts of unexpected directions and Michael Lewis would have taken that story written a magazine piece it would not have occurred to him that he had the wit to spool unspooling over 300 pages in the in the various forms that you have I just wouldn't as well I would have made the connection but remember necessity is the mother of invention the reason I do that is that I don't feel I have the ability to take that story and make a whole book out of it you could have taken that narrative what will what you would have done is taken that and made a completely compelling book about because the guy's story is actually incredibly fascinating his the story and in The New Yorker piece I tried to do this but the story of his software company is the same as the story of what he did with his girls his daughter's basketball team in other words he was concerned with exactly the same problem in his work life as he was in his coaching so it's actually a really beautiful grand narrative but I didn't think I had the chops to do it over a whole book so what I did is I got a TD and just told a bunch of other stories hide the fact that I couldn't pull off this particular but it's it forces you to think about the meaning of disadvantaged and old all different yeah now I got a lot of other things I get talking about but we've got questions for the audience should we take them well the first one is would you class your classify yourself as David and if so who is your Goliath no I'm not David I what what about the story just tell told suggests that I was an underdog yeah I mean I've had the kind of blessedly trouble-free you never thought of yourself as an underdog oh no I thought I've jumped from one advantage to the next yeah how's this book been informed by your past books has it changed your theses well it's an this is a kind of addendum to outliers in the sense that outliers was concerned with advantages as advantages and this book says no wait a minute it's more complicated than that there are there's a separate class of really interesting cases where the thing you thought was advantageous is not so it is a kind of a continued exploration of the project of outliers which was to which is to figure out if there are kind of rules about why people end up doing extraordinary things you know the part of the book that was most striking to me they were to the two parts of the book that jumped off the page for me was with the stories of the dyslexics but yeah your attempt to argue the dyslexia was an advantage in certain cases of course yeah but what might also we won we're wanting to pick a fight with you which I'm actually not here in this public forum but maybe backstage that if there are so many dyslexics on the planet yeah some of the rien DUP successful and it's a you go find the successful ones cherry-picked them and tell a story about oh it's like this is you know you people say this and I was like the problem with that is it's in addition to being maybe it's true but there's a certain class of critical reaction that is out there which is people who are determined at all costs not to enjoy themselves that's exactly right can you have found it and then you wonder why they're bothering themselves reading your books yeah if you don't just don't read it you don't know yeah I say this and it comes across as people get even more upset when I say look if you don't like him why do you keep reading them it's a free country you know you cut into this particular project Janet Maslin has now reviewed my books she said she reviewed blink hated it outliers hated it this book hated it I'm like Janet come on your this is an exercise in masochism at this point I feel sorry for her she she's sitting there like sweating her away through these books I I don't want her to suffer like this I wouldn't like can we stop the her before you know I want to go and give her a back rub so she's not so painful the other story which was incredibly moving and all the stories all of them all the arguments are encased in narrative and the narratives take you places where you don't expect to go and this the the I think the great triumphs in the book is the story of the two different responses parents have two losing children violence and I could take you awhile teleca's you're gonna dress 18 times would you briefly just give a quick summary of what that is and then we'll I will go on with these questions well I struggled more with out chapter than any other chapter he was really really hard to figure out how to tell it but it started with the story of three strikes in California is the story of a man who lost his daughter right Mike Reynolds in Fresno his daughter is murdered by this drug-addled maniac and he embarks on the crusade that results in three strikes and three strikes is charitably a disaster for the state of California but it is though he continues to believe he continues to be but it's not and he he he pursued that crusade in an entirely well-meaning way he wanted to try and fix the law crinimal laws in this state so that what happened to his daughter would not happen to anyone else's daughter this was his attempt to make sense of his grief I found in Canada a parallel story of a Mennonite woman whose daughter was murdered by some crazy predator the stories are in there in the Maine exactly the same accepted in Canada the woman stood up days after the day her daughter was murdered and said even before they had caught her murderer that she forgave her daughter's murderer and she was not going to you to try and enlist the power of the state in any way to try and right the wrong and tell these two stories in parallel and they're all about there's two questions I'm interested in one is that when you enlist the power of the state in the service of private Crusades there are all kinds of unintended consequences the power in other words is an extraordinarily tricky and dangerous thing to use it's not straightforward when you that's a big theme of the book that we overestimate the value of enlisting the authority of big institutions the second more interesting question is where on earth did this woman get the strength do you forgive the murder of her daughter and that's a story about her face and the book a lot of this book this is about faith and the extraordinary power of the kind of the extraordinary power that that belief religious belief gives people tie it back into your main thesis how do you how is this a David and Goliath story cuz the reason this woman found the strength to forgive her murderer is that she said Mennonites are a historically a highly persecuted religious minority so their history is not dissimilar to the to the history of the Jews they're much smaller but the Anabaptists which the Mennonites are a part and a Baptist were a dissident Protestant movement that a that arises out of Europe in the time of the Reformation and they are persecuted at every stage they're persecuted during the Inquisition and then they moved to Russia where they are subjected to pogroms just as Jews are and the stories re as horrible as and they eventually flee persecution in the thirties and moved to Canada so there are all these Mennonites in Canada who have compa family histories that are analogous to the histories of Jews who are persecuting the Holocaust their families were wiped out there and the way they had interpreted this experience was they chose to turn the other cheek and to forgive their tour mentors and they thought they felt that the only way they would survive as a people is if they walked away from the trauma and moved on with their lives the big Mennonite mensch mantra is you forgive and you move on and there's that Mennonites the stories that come out of the Mennonite community around forgiveness are so unbelievable another one that I cannot never get over is one about a an Amish mother who whose son is hit by a car and the car has been driven by a young kid some kid probably been drinking and the mother comes to see of the accident as her child is being taken mortally wounded being taken off by an ambulance to his eventual death in the hospital and the kid driving the cars in the back of the police car and she goes over to the police car she says the policeman will you take care of the boy and the policeman says your boy will get every you know every doctor will work as hard she was no no I don't mean my child I mean this boy right her first instinct is she understands how deeply this kid is suffering having that's her first instinct right like that story is true first of all and incredible but that's the tradition this woman came out of those are the stories they told right and so what they derived from the most horrible kind of adversity essentially their community suffering through program after pogrom what they derived from that was his insane strength in the face of tragedy and she draws on that that's the experience she learned and there's I yeah that's the book ends and with two stories like that in a row because that's where I want you do end up with a kind of an appreciation for the beautiful things that can emerge from darkness so there's an audience question that follows very naturally from what you just said where do you place the role of God or divine providence or luck in the outcomes of your case studies well very sensually you know it's funny I come from a very very religious family you do I do yeah and I had drifted away from then and I had to say you don't want to say this writing this book has brought me back to that just because I can't you can't talk to people you can't talk to someone who has forgiven the murderer of their daughter and not come away with an appreciation for the power of religious faith you can't I mean unless you're completely insensible to human emotion how is it when you're sitting down with him how does it feel differently than in being with the father of of who hasn't forgiven the murderer he was so this guy Mike Reynolds for whom I have an infinite amount of compassion but it's it's been 20 years and he is still utterly consumed by his daughter's death he has no peace whatsoever and it was heartbreaking and I say in the book when I meet him one point he wants to take after the interview is over he wants to take me to the place where his daughter was killed and I can't go it's just too much it's just like it's just like and then you know I to contrast that with just a few months later I go up to Winnipeg and I talked to this woman Wilma Dirksen and the kind of you understand that she has managed to carve out some piece and you know she has restored her family and her belief in God and her faith in her community even in the face of this tragedy and to understand that you know to contrast those two it's just it was really overwhelming I mean it was just kind of I was so I don't think I've ever been so emotionally moved by you know by by the act of reporting you said recently that you never wanted anybody who sat down with you to regret having sat down with you yeah how do you think Mike Reynolds feels I spent more time on the mike Reynolds part of the book than any other part of the book precisely because of that fear even I disagree profoundly with course he took I think that three strict we will look back on through the three-strikes era in California as one of the darkest episodes in the history of the state I honestly believe that but I also believe that he did it pursued it for the right reasons I don't think there is a malicious or bone in his body I mean I think he was a man who was genuinely trying to find some way to resolve the pain of his daughter's death and thought he was doing the right thing they thought he was going to prevent other people from having he thought that by so dramatically increasing the severity of criminal laws in this state he would save lives like he believed that truly and still does believe that truly and I so that the the difficulty the challenge in running that chapter was to find a way to disagree with him honestly without denying him without denying the sincerity with which he acted and I did I pull it off I don't know I mean that's for anyone who reads the book to jail I wonder how does he read it I haven't heard from him never heard I mean the book just came out so I don't know I he will I know he will disagree I don't know whether he will think I did him I dealt with him sincerely that's but that's not like say that is the thing about the book that I that keeps me awake about is that did I did I deal with him fairly would you comment on your racial ethnic background its role in your early life identity any role it plays in your work and whether you may ever write about race in the US or globally well I've written a lot about race and I in my last book I wrote very specifically about my mother's history and the particular that I've written for The New Yorker about race a couple times I think I feel like I've said I didn't blink I had a big thing about race I feel I have nothing left to say about race which is not to say that there is not I think there is an infinite amount to be said about race in this country but in terms of my own personal story I've I have exhausted the topic how often is how often you ask to comment on it sometimes I mean there's a very peculiar thing because I did not grow up in Canada I was did not grow up conscious of my root of my racial heritage so Canadians are so support of Canada we grew up there everyone was so chill about these things that I kind of forgot that my mom was black for about 20 years and then I moved to America and I was like oh like it's a big deal down here and then digress and tell a story of course you can it was such a non-issue growing up that it was only two years ago that my father told me the following story it's night my father marries my mother in England in 1958 right white guy marries a black woman fairly radical act they moved to Jamaica and where he's teaching at the University of West Indies and he needs to get accents I love this story so much he needs to get access this play this is everything everything you need to know about my father is contained in this story it's just about my dad is why I love this man with all my heart he needs to get access to a book cuz you know that age he's a mathematician he needs some complicated textbook he canvases around he finds that the closest copy is in the library at Georgia Tech so he writes to them and says can I come and use your library and they say write back and say yes little does he know that this request touches off this wave of panic inside the bureaucracy at Georgia Tech because they're like it's 1960 Georgia Tech is segregated institution and they have just said yes to a professor from the University of West Indies to come and use their research facilities and they're like oh so they start this frantic search to discover whether professor graham gravel is white or black and they can't figure it out they they try and principle they thought okay we do miss direction my dad finds us all out subsequently they do a misdirection and they start frantically calling his thesis advisor in England to find out is this what color is this dude and I can't get a hold him it's 1960 you know they'd only have phones and people's offices and you know University College London so then okay they have met me they all we got no choice we got a call University of West Indies University of West Indies making a call from America to Jamaica in 1960 it's not an easy matter my parents would have a phone at home they're frantic right finally the day my father is about to leave and the body the journey is like boat to Miami bus fare bus from Miami to Atlanta my dad only has enough money to get to Atlanta the day before his leave leaving finally they track him down and my dad gets the call which is as follows professor Gladwell yes this is professor so-and-so yes I have a question to ask for you before you leave on this epic journey yes are you white yes oh thank god so my father suddenly values what's going on so he gets to Georgia and this is the great part he gets to Atlanta and of course there because he's a visiting professor they take him out to dinner all these dignitaries in the department and halfway through dinner my father says starts to open up I was like I I just got married I would love to show you all a picture of my wife reaches into his pocket pulls out an 8 by 10 [Laughter] it's that's a very upmarket version of the Blazing Saddles scene yes where the white women at alright so we want to sit some of us just to shift to sports briefly all right do you believe that Lance Armstrong and other athletes accused of using peds should be should should not be held responsible I thought I said should not be inhale should not be held responsible or punished well you know I did this is in reference to a piece I did for The New Yorker where I puzzle about the whole PD issue because although I am formally opposed to their use as someone who is firmly opposed to use I believe I have an obligation to come up with a good argument about whether they should be legal and I think all the arguments we use against peds at the moment are really terrible and the one I always come back to is and this I made its point of peace in the sport of baseball it is perfectly legal in fact more than legal it is considered to be a wonderful thing to remove the ulnar collateral ligament from your elbow the ligament that is principally implicated in pitching remove it and replace it with a tendon taken from either a cadaver or from some other part of your body a tendon which is in every way has superior performance characteristics to the ligament that was put there by God put it in and in so doing not only just extend your career but possibly make it possible for you to pitch more effectively right that totally fine but no one's got a problem with it in fact the guy you pioneers procedure is such a hero he will probably end up in the Baseball Hall of Fame right okay that's final true right but for a baseball player like a-rod to inject himself with a copy of a naturally occurring hormone available by prescription to everyone in this room right that oh that's so wrong hey rod there's no that for you to do that a rod we're gonna drum you about a baseball why is it okay for the pitcher to do something performance-enhancing but not for the hitter and then Lance what did Lance want to do Lance wanted to inject himself with his own blood so it's wrong to inject yourself with your own blood but totally fine to take a completely foreign object from a cadaver and stick it in your elbow until we can resolve that cut that contradiction I I can't in good conscience jump up and down and get excited about PDUs right isn't this a problem so why if you can't think of a good argument not to use them why do they bother you at all why do oh because well I'm a big fan of track and I don't want my eye it does ruin the sport but you can't you have to have rules I mean this is a big part the big thing of this in my book that for an authority to work it must be legitimate and when in the rules we have now about PDU sorry illegitimate that's why they're being violated so regularly a rods no dummy he looks at this and says 75% of the pitchers in the major leagues have had have Bionic elbows I'm not allowed to inject myself as testosterone that's what he's saying and you know what he's right so I mean it matters because if you're going to effectively police sports you gotta have good arguments otherwise janaab is never gonna work so why does it bother you why does it bother why do you want to just come out probe head I just come up to forum but not just be forum if you can't think of a good reason why not I want to think of a good I don't want to be well he's so track a support support I love most it's really really clear that lots and lots of runners were using Ipoh in the 90s because the times are just crazy in the 90s and distance running and it does it should trashes the sport because records are meaningless there's all these insane records that just may you know and no one can ever so I mean it disrupts discontinuities when people discover new kind of new forms of enhancement yeah so I don't want that but I do but I don't think we'll ever be able to stop it unless we can come up with better arguments I don't know I mean I know I know that I'm I I am I'm my position is lame here okay that's all I wanted to get to all right so what surprised you most in your research over the years you can do it we can go a long way with it we got I only have a few minutes left but once you go ahead and do that prizes me most well I'm always surprised by what surprises me what would I know what you don't realize until you book there so there are a couple things you realize when you become a journalist that you would never otherwise know about the world so the first thing you realize it's when you were journalists is that much of what all of us believe is not true I don't mean in a gross macro way I mean in a very very Micra way that when someone tells you a story about something that happened to them or that they observed many of the details are likely to be erroneous right some erroneous in small ways some so that's really really surprising it takes years as a journalist to accept that fact and the mistake that rookie journalists always make is they forget this and they get told something and they write it down and is filled with errors right because people honestly oh they're not lying to you just much of what's in our heads is not accurate but the other interesting thing is that that almost everyone has a really really great story to tell and are not aware of the fact that they have a great story to tell that's the thing that I think you know this almost as well as anyone that insane numbers of people have some fascinating thing in their life and because it's their life they have no perspective on it so they don't even realize it's fascinating and all you have to do is keep the tape recorder running long enough and you will find it so I had pneumonia Africa because I've been telling the story all week so it's getting old but I ran into this guy from Procter and Gamble and Procter is of course the great the nerdiest of all companies right it's everything a proctor has to be supported with research they will not if they say that this is the new and improved Tide they're not lying it's new and improved time right and if you ask they will ship you cartons of PhD theses that will testify to either so nothing there is nothing done by chance at Patrick gamble it is it's a company founded by Germans so I've talked his guy from Procter gamble and he starts saying about the thing that drives him crazy more than anything else is Arm and Hammer baking soda toothpaste why because it doesn't work right he's like one of their competitors makes a product that has like seven percent market share which all kinds of people think works because it says baking soda but they've done the tests and they've done the math it does not work and he will not rest as a toothpaste guy until he has driven that but up in the marketplace like I think as he was talking I just had this sense of like this is so fantastic how can I make this into a story like how can you not want to read a story that has that moment when the guy from Proctor you're in the office in Cincinnati and he's like he's the filing cabinets are next to him right and he says he brings up the subject of Ottoman hammer and you say of course as you would just come on right Wow how can that be true right and then he reads and pulls open the drawer and there it's there it all is report after report on Jolanda on this the scam that is army baking soda took this but he himself is not aware that this is interesting I don't think he realizes how genius that is I don't mean I don't mean I thought that by the way I will say parenthetically there's only one way this story works and that is that by the end of it you share his outrage in other words you can't it doesn't work if you treat him as a as a figure of fun he's not a figure of fun he's actually why the world goes round like it's people like that that are the reason things work right so you can't meet him and make fun of him no you won't you have to convince everyone that oh he's absolutely right and unless those scumbags over there [Laughter] that's the and I mean ever since that I've been literally on between stops and this thing I've just been thinking about okay so what is that what's the story that that's that dad what's the larger story here because there is a larger story here and I've actually I figured I'd all right so this takes us to this naturally I've heard you say you don't consider yourself to be a journalist can you comment no I really I do think of myself as journalists I don't all the other words that are used to describe me I don't know I think of myself and I think that's the highest people are people are always confusing me with the people that I write about yeah I don't have these it's sometimes annoying because the criticism I don't have these grand thoughts other people do I am brooked I'm telling you about what they think I'm adding my own context yeah but you know I'm not a I don't have I'm not a great thinker I'm a journalist I turn the type of art that the tape recorder on that's what my contribution is it's not a minor contribution by the way it's like um but yeah I do think of myself as a journalist ladies and gentlemen Malcolm Gladwell [Applause] and [Applause] I need to come [Applause] on your way out if you haven't collected your book there they're books for people who haven't collected their books on the way out the books are waiting for you thank you very much you

Channel: 3200 Stories

Views: 44,118

Rating: 4.8465471 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: vlBqnpHyVsQ

Length: 76min 11sec (4571 seconds)

Published: Thu May 22 2014