Revenge of the Tipping Point with Malcolm Gladwell

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Revenge of the Tipping Point" with Malcolm Gladwell

Introduction

In this episode of Here's Where It Gets Interesting, host Sharon McMahon engages in a deep and insightful conversation with renowned author and thought leader Malcolm Gladwell. The discussion centers around Gladwell's revisit to his seminal work, The Tipping Point, through his latest book, Revenge of the Tipping Point. Together, they explore the enduring impact of the original book, the motivations behind the new work, and delve into various societal puzzles that Gladwell seeks to unravel.

The Cultural Phenomenon of The Tipping Point

Sharon begins by reflecting on the widespread influence of The Tipping Point. She asks Gladwell whether he anticipated the profound cultural impact his concept would have.

Sharon McMahon [01:38]: "The Tipping Point became like a cultural phenomenon. Were you prepared for the impact that conceiving of something called a tipping point was going to have? Was that on your radar?"

Gladwell responds with surprise at the book's gradual rise to prominence, likening its success to the very phenomenon it describes—something that seems to gain momentum and achieve a tipping point over time.

Malcolm Gladwell [01:53]: "It wasn't like it was this big bang out of the gate. It sort of built over time. It became a reflection of the very phenomenon it was describing."

Unveiling Revenge of the Tipping Point

When discussing his new book, Gladwell explains that Revenge of the Tipping Point serves both as an anniversary reflection and a necessary update based on over two decades of additional research and societal changes.

Malcolm Gladwell [06:36]: "We've learned so much in the intervening 25 years about some of the things I was talking about... It was a strong impetus on my part to kind of go back to something that I felt was incomplete in some way."

Exploring Contemporary Puzzles

Gladwell describes Revenge of the Tipping Point as a collection of societal puzzles that seek to understand and resolve contemporary issues through the lens of epidemic theory. Each chapter tackles a unique mystery, ranging from vaccination rates in Waldorf schools to the sudden shift in public opinion on gay marriage.

Malcolm Gladwell [08:59]: "Revenge of the Tipping Point is really a kind of list of puzzles. And you've mentioned two of the fun ones."

The Role of Monocultures in Educational Institutions

A significant portion of the discussion focuses on Gladwell’s exploration of monocultures within prestigious private schools. He illustrates how a lack of social diversity can lead to unhealthy societal behaviors and increased vulnerability to negative trends.

Malcolm Gladwell [18:27]: "High school no longer serves that function. There aren't 15 groups. There's one group... There's nowhere for you to go."

Sharon echoes these concerns, highlighting the pressure parents place on children to achieve narrowly defined standards of success, which often equates to material and professional accomplishments.

Sharon McMahon [23:41]: "There's such a danger to the kind of relentless raising of expectations that parents have foisted on their children."

Gladwell emphasizes the importance of broadening the definition of happiness beyond material success, advocating for environments where children feel fulfilled and enjoy their daily experiences.

Malcolm Gladwell [23:41]: "A good definition of happiness is when my kid wakes up in the morning, do they want to go to school? Do they find school a place that's enjoyable...?"

Defining Happiness and Parental Expectations

The conversation delves into the ramifications of equating happiness with success, discussing how this narrow focus can backfire and lead to increased pressure on adolescents.

Malcolm Gladwell [23:41]: "Their definition of happiness, how narrow it was, caused them to pursue a series of strategies for their kids that ultimately backfire."

Malcolm Gladwell’s Research and Writing Process

Gladwell provides a glimpse into his meticulous research methodology, which involves extensive conversations with experts, revisiting past work, and integrating new insights to refine his understanding of complex societal issues.

Malcolm Gladwell [26:53]: "I spend a lot of time talking. It's not self-generated. I spend lots and lots and lots of time either reading things people have written who are thoughtful people, or talking to them."

He underscores the importance of translating intricate research into accessible narratives for the general audience, ensuring that complex ideas are both understandable and engaging.

Malcolm Gladwell [28:18]: "That's sort of, to my mind, what makes the chapter so compelling is you're seeing this town not just through my eyes, but through the eyes of people who have real expertise..."

Personal Insights and Values

The discussion takes a personal turn as Sharon inquires about Gladwell’s values and how they shape his work and interactions. Gladwell attributes much of his value system to his Canadian heritage and his mother's exemplary listening skills, highlighting the profound influence of personal relationships on his professional ethos.

Malcolm Gladwell [34:07]: "He would say my values are fundamentally Canadian... I avoid the extremes. I do like stirring up a little bit of trouble, but not a lot of trouble."

He also reflects on the values of mutual respect and the importance of being a good listener, principles that guide his interactions and storytelling.

Malcolm Gladwell [36:58]: "My mom is a good listener. I aspire to be. Whether I am or not is another question."

Conclusion

As the conversation draws to a close, Gladwell articulates his overarching mission: to make the exploration of ideas engaging and enjoyable, equipping listeners and readers with the tools to understand the epidemic-like spread of behaviors and ideas in society.

Malcolm Gladwell [39:39]: "I'm trying to equip people for thinking about the world around them in a more sophisticated way."

Sharon and Malcolm bid each other farewell, leaving listeners with a sense of anticipation for the insights that Revenge of the Tipping Point promises to deliver.

Key Takeaways

• Revenge of the Tipping Point revisits and expands upon the concepts introduced in The Tipping Point, incorporating 25 years of new research and societal developments.

• Monocultures in educational institutions can lead to increased vulnerability to negative societal behaviors due to the lack of diverse social groups.

• Defining happiness solely in terms of material and professional success is limiting and can place undue pressure on adolescents.

• Malcolm Gladwell’s research process is deeply rooted in extensive dialogue with experts and a commitment to translating complex ideas into accessible narratives.

• Personal values, shaped by heritage and influential relationships, play a crucial role in shaping one’s professional and creative endeavors.

Notable Quotes

• Sharon McMahon [01:38]: "The Tipping Point became like a cultural phenomenon. Were you prepared for the impact that conceiving of something called a tipping point was going to have?"

• Malcolm Gladwell [23:41]: "A good definition of happiness is when my kid wakes up in the morning, do they want to go to school? Do they find school a place that's enjoyable..."

• Malcolm Gladwell [34:07]: "He would say my values are fundamentally Canadian... I avoid the extremes. I do like stirring up a little bit of trouble, but not a lot of trouble."

• Malcolm Gladwell [39:39]: "I'm trying to equip people for thinking about the world around them in a more sophisticated way."

This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of Malcolm Gladwell's intellectual journey, his reflections on past work, and his approach to unraveling the complexities of societal behavior. Listeners are left with a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that drive cultural and behavioral changes, as well as the personal philosophies that underpin Gladwell's influential work.

Transcript

[Malcolm Gladwell]

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[Sharon McMahon]

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[Malcolm Gladwell]

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[Malcolm Gladwell]

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[Sharon McMahon]

Yours at a DSW store near or dsw.com hello friends. Thanks for joining me today. My guest is the one and only Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm is revisiting one of his most important and popular works, the Tipping Point. He has a new book out called Revenge of the Tipping Point, and I think you're going to really enjoy this conversation, so let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon and here's where it gets interesting. I'm really excited to be joined by Malcolm Gladwell. Thanks for being here today.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

My pleasure.

[Sharon McMahon]

Revenge of the Tipping Point. First of all, the Tipping Point became like a cultural phenomenon. Were you prepared for the impact that conceiving of something called a tipping point was going to have? Was that on your radar?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

No.

[Sharon McMahon]

I mean, yes, it was. I was prepared.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

I thought, yeah, it's impossible to say yes in answer to that question, but no, I would put myself in the ranks of the shocked. It took a little while to become a successful book. So yeah, it wasn't like it was this big bang out of the gate. It sort of built over time. Even after I published it, I thought, oh, you know, kind of had a nice little modest run and I thought, oh, that's it. And then it kept going. It became a reflection of the very phenomenon it was describing, which was something that becomes seems contagious and seems to hit a tipping point.

[Sharon McMahon]

I know that's such an interesting story in publishing and I am sure. That there are, like, business schools the world over who have examined the phenomenon of it doesn't have to be an instant overnight success for it to go on to have a very significant impact. When you reflect on the release of the Tipping Point, what do you think really drove the success over time? What was the tipping Point, Malcolm?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Truth is, I don't know. I spent a lot of time on the road promoting it. The book tour went on for years, so that was a kind of important thing. And I always tell people who are publishing their first books to remember that, especially with your first book, because what's happening with your first book is something very different than what's happening with your second and third and fourth books, assuming you write that many. And that is that people have never experienced you before as a writer of books. They knew me as a magazine writer and before that as a newspaper writer. And so you have to sort of win their confidence and trust, and that's not going to be given to you instantly. You know, even today, the podcast serves a function. It's easier to publish a book when you have a podcast because you have a core audience that tunes into you and you've won their confidence and trust. So they don't feel like they're taking a huge risk when they devote the time to read your book. Tipping Point really took off when my second book, Blink, came out, and I think that was the point at which people began to have some confidence and faith in me as a book writer. That's my best reading of it.

[Sharon McMahon]

Sure. Okay. So if somebody has not in the last almost 25 years, has not read the Tipping Point, which, by the way, doesn't seem like even though it came out in 2000. Right. It doesn't seem like it's been that long. Maybe I'm just getting old, but it doesn't feel like one of those dusty, musty titles that's just been like, what are you talking. Talking about? Like, it still seems really relevant. It still seems like people are reading it and talking about it. And I'm sure you know that's true. But if somebody hasn't read the Tipping Point, because we want to talk a little bit about your new book, what even is the Tipping Point? Give us some context about what we're talking about here.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

It was a book that was based on a very simple idea, which is that the best way to understand how ideas and behaviors spread is to use the metaphor of the epidemic, that they behave like viruses do. Now, that's a much more of a commonplace idea today.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yes, it is.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah, we talk about things going viral, whatever. 25 years ago, it was a much fresher idea. And I was saying, look, let's use that phrase epidemic, and let's take it seriously. So if an idea can be contagious, how does that contagion work? Who does the infecting? Who does the transmitting? Who's susceptible and who's not? You. Let's speak about it the same way we speak about HIV or Covid or flu or. Covid wasn't around back then, obviously, but that was the kind of idea, and it turns out to be a really interesting exercise, to take rules from the world of epidemiology, from the world of studying diseases and start applying them to the spread of. In that book, I talked about crime in New York City. I talked about fashion trends. I talked about why kids choose to smoke or not. I went in all kinds of different directions, taking this kind of template of principles from the world of infectious disease and applying them to, you know, what is a in diseases. We talk a lot about super spreaders who are responsible for the bulk of the work of spreading a virus. So what's the equivalent of that when it comes to ideas? You know, this was well before influencers online and things like that. So it was a kind of an interesting question for people to think about.

[Sharon McMahon]

Using the language of epidemiology certainly has become far more part of our daily conversations. Nobody really needs to be informed about what a super spreader is today or what an epidemic is. Yeah, we're all very familiar with these concepts. And so why revisit this idea in Revenge of the Tipping Point? What are you bringing that feels like it needs to be reopened?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

It began very simply as a kind of, oh, the book's 25 years old. Be fun to do an update just to revisit it on its anniversary. But I realized I've spent a lot of time over the last quarter century since it came out kind of arguing with myself over the book about, you know, it's such a kind of fascinating, complicated topic. Did I do the best possible job? Did I explore the issue in the most kind of thoughtful and insightful way? Are there things I left out? Are there things I got wrong? So there was a strong impetus on my part to kind of go back to something that I felt was incomplete in some way. And also, the other thing is, we've learned so much in the intervening 25 years about some of the things I was talking about that I felt like there was so much more to say. For example, the paradigmatic epidemic. At the time I wrote the original tipping point was hiv. We'd just been through the AIDS epidemic. That's what was top of mind when I was writing this one. We'd just been through Covid, and the way in which we understand Covid and the way in which we've discussed it publicly was so much more sophisticated than the way we talked about AIDS in the 90s. Just because we had the benefit of a quarter century of knowledge. You had this combination of there was stuff I really wanted to say and expand on, and there was such a greater degree of sophistication among researchers and such. Those two things combined to make me think it would be really fun to go back and do a kind of sequel to the original one. So that's what I did.

[Sharon McMahon]

You talk about the. You really like the idea of, like, trying to solve puzzles, of, like, why is this thing the way it is? Why do some private schools in California have, like, 100% vaccination rates for their students, and some of them have, like, 34% vaccination rates or whatever the exact statistic is. Why do some dying patients in the state of Minnesota, for example, why do they get a far lower number of visits from healthcare providers while they're dying than somebody who lives in Los Angeles? Is it the Scandinavian reserve of the people who migrated to Minnesota? You love this idea of, like, why does this thing happen? And how are they all interrelated? So, first of all, have you arrived at a solution for the puzzle?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

You're right. Revenge of the Tipping Point is really a kind of list of puzzles. And you've mentioned two of the fun ones. Every chapter is really about an attempt to kind of resolve a puzzle. I have a chapter on Miami that asks the question, why is Miami so weird? And Miami's a really. Turns out. You're not in Miami, by the way, are you, Sharon?

[Sharon McMahon]

No, I live in Minnesota.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Oh, you live in Minnesota. I do. Just checking. Just checking. No, Miami turns out to be this incredibly, interestingly strange place. Yeah, I was very interested in the fact that there is way, way, way more Medicare fraud in Miami than any other city. Not just any city in Florida, any other city in America. It's like you cross the border into Miami and all of a sudden all bets are off when it comes to doctors and Medicare. Why? Why is Miami that way? And, like, Fort Lauderdale isn't, and Fort Lauderdale is, like, 20 miles down the road. And I devote the chapter to both describing what's going on in Miami and to try and come up with an answer. You mentioned this. The weird thing about Waldorf schools.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Which are in many ways wonderful schools, have this weird thing that the vaccination rates of the kids who attend Waldorf schools are just way, way, way, way lower than any other kind of school.

[Sharon McMahon]

Oh, yeah.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And it's not because they're explicitly telling parents, if you come here, don't vaccinate your kid. There's just something in the air, in the water of the Waldorf school that leads people to not want to get their kids vaccinated. Why?

[Sharon McMahon]

What is it you mentioned here in the Sonoma county In California, the St. Vincent de Paul elementary school, presumably a Catholic Private School. 100% vaccination rates.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

So the Catholics are fine.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah. Sommerfield, Waldorf, 24%.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

24%. So there's a bunch of puzzles like that, large and small. And what I'm trying to do is to use our kind of enhanced understanding of the way epidemics work, patterns of contagion, to answer that question. You know, I have another whole chapter that's on why did we all of a sudden change our mind about gay marriage? By the way, the reason I did that chapter is if you talk to people who study social change and you say, okay, what's the most surprising sudden change in public opinion in your lifetime? And it's a long list of things, right? And they will all give you the same answer. They'll say, oh, it's gay marriage. First of all. No one saw it coming, you know, in the early 2000s, this was one of the major reasons George Bush won reelection. He took that issue and he said, we're going to pass a constitutional amendment forbidding gay marriage. It was this huge hot button issue. State after state was passing amendments to prevent gay marriage from ever happening. When you talk to Americans, this was top of mind for them, and it made sense. It was something that touched on a core social institution, which is marriage. People's deepest feelings about homosexuality. I mean, it seemed like the kind of thing we would be arguing about for generations. And when you talk to gay activists in that period, they felt the same way. They were like, we're in this for the long haul. This is going to take 20, 30 years. It's not going to happen overnight. And then what happens? It happens overnight. That's a puzzle. Regardless of how you feel about the issue, that's a puzzle. So I have a whole chapter trying to figure out, okay, so what did happen? How is it that an issue that seemed to tap into some of our most primal cornerstone beliefs and values. We just went from saying, uh, never happening to whatever, it's fine. Does anyone have pitched arguments anymore about gay marriage? It just seems like it faded into oblivion. You know this question which obsessed us. The book is basically nine chapters. Each chapter is about trying to make sense of something that is mysterious and baffling a little bit. And I think that what I end up discovering is that if I take the ideas that I first started to explore in the original tipping point and kind of add 25 years of new knowledge and sophistication, we do have a pretty powerful tool for making sense of a lot of the puzzles of the present day.

[Sharon McMahon]

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[C]

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[Malcolm Gladwell]

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[Sharon McMahon]

You know, I've been a longtime classroom teacher, and I'm not in the classroom anymore in a public high school, but I do still teach on the interwebs. And I found it very interesting to read the section about the research related to students and where they plot on these graph lines when it comes to good student versus bad student, popular student versus un popular student. And this was just such an interesting observation where good students are labeled with things. And the labels that the researchers use are also kind of amusing that bad students are called things like skaters and punkers, which the vernacular changes over time, of course.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Sharon, did you teach public or private high school?

[Sharon McMahon]

I taught public high school.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Okay. So this is really interesting. I went to public high school. So those of us who went to public school, and that's most of us, we may not be aware of how strange things have gotten in private schools, particularly kind of wealthy private schools. And that's what this chapter is all about. So I found this town, and I don't identify it by name, but I was able to figure out it had been written about by these researchers and they wanted to keep the name of the town a secret. I managed to figure out what the town actually was and went there. When I say it's the perfect town, it is the perfect town. It's gorgeous. There's a strong sense of community. Schools are amazing. The, you know, and it's somewhere between upper middle class and rich. So their public schools are basically like private schools. Right. And they had this terrible. I'm not going to say what it is because I don't want to ruin the surprise of the chapter. But they had a tragedy in that town, a series of tragedies that unfolded over 10 or 15 years they didn't know what to do about. And the root of the problem was that their schools had become monocultures. In other words, when you were teaching high school and when we were going to high schools, the thing that made high school high school was that there were like 10, 15 different social groups, cliques.

[Sharon McMahon]

Right.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

There were the kids who were serious students and the jocks, and they were the on and on. Right. The idea about high school is that you went there and you were someone who was coming out of middle school. You're entering adolescence, you don't know who you are, and you find a group where you feel at home. And you use your time in high school to understand the kind of person that you're going to become. Right. That's what high school was. What had happened in these schools that serve very, very wealthy kids is that high school no longer serves that function. There aren't 15 groups. There's one group. And the one group is you have to be someone who goes to an Ivy League school, who excels at sports, who's popular, who dresses perfectly, who behaves perfectly, who does their homework on time, and who does 25 different extracurriculars. There's only one identity now that looks to the parent like the ideal high school. If I send my kid to that high school, they're going to turn out to be a perfect person. But for the kid, it's incredibly problematic, because what if you can't measure up to that extraordinarily high bar? There's nowhere for you to go. Right. So the very thing that many people think is a problem in the typical public high school is actually what makes it a socially resilient. Resilient and accepting place. You don't feel like a complete loser if you're not on the honor roll and captain of the football team. Because there's another place where you can find validation. In my little high school, I went to a little high school in southern Ontario, not, by the way, dissimilar from the upper Midwest. Canada is basically the upper Midwest is what it is. Right? Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

I live in Duluth, Minnesota, near Lake Superior, near Canada.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah. So effectively, yeah. You know what I'm talking about. In my little high school, there was the drama society. Right. There was a whole kind of group around drama, as there is in any High school. And there was the orchestra, right? The thing about the orchestra was 100% of the kids who went out for orchestra made the orchestra. It wasn't like some kind of competitive thing where you had to be. No, no, no. If you went out to play in the band, you got to play in the band. That was true, by the way, of virtually everything at my high school. If you wanted to be on the newspaper, you could be in the newspaper. If you wanted to join the track team, you just joined the track team. Our track team was so mediocre, you know, and so was our basketball team. And you just walked on. That doesn't look from the outside like an elite school. I can imagine today, hyperparents would look at my high school and say, oh my God. But it means that the social life of the average student at that high school was incredibly rich. You could do a million different things. You never felt like a loser. So the question is, what happens to a community where high school does not serve that function, where there's only one culture at the high school? That's what that chapter is about. And that high school was a monoculture. And I talk about epidemics, love monocultures. It makes that high school vulnerable to patterns of dangerous, contagious behavior. Because once it hits one student, it just runs through the whole population because they're all chasing the same thing. That chapter, to my mind, might be my favorite chapter in the book. Favorite is maybe not the right word, but it made me think that something has gone off the rails in the top end of American society, that we're doing things that concern our kids, that are profoundly unhealthy and we don't realize it.

[Sharon McMahon]

You say this is what rebellion looks like in a monoculture. A deviation from the general path so slight that you would need an MRI to detect it. That lack of crowd diversity is what allowed this high school that you're talking about to score so highly in the state high school rankings. It's also what reassured parents. Your child might be an outsider, but at least they will be a high achieving outsider. And then I loved this part where you said, but what you give up in a world of uniformity is resilience. And that diversity has cultural antibodies, you say, that make it hard for a contagious agent to move unmolested through the population of an entire school. It's such an interesting point when we're talking about things like education. I have kids in school now and I certainly pay attention to education related issues. And this is such an interesting topic. That I don't see discussed very often, that in an effort to make our children successful, and we have a narrow definition of what is successful. Right. Successful generally in American society means pursuing a quote unquote honorable profession, preferably at the top of the food chain, are like doctors and lawyers. Even still, those are at the top of the pyramid of wishes for our children and monetary success. We want our kids to have money and achieve some kind of status. And I think a lot of parents would add happiness. We want our kids to be happy. And I. I don't know if wanting our children to be happy is actually beneficial for them. Certainly the lengths we will go to to make them happy as children I think can be harmful. I would love to hear your thoughts on that.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Well, certainly a lot depends on how we're choosing to pursue and define happiness. So in this town that I was writing about, which I refer to as Poplar Grove, the parents of the kids in Poplar Grove thought that the best path to happiness for their children was to be popular, busy, academically, top notch, and to go to a elite college. They framed all of this in terms of this is what will make you a fulfilled, happy adult. That's why we're going to put this much pressure on you as an adolescent. So I would say that their definition of happiness, how narrow it was, caused them to pursue a series of strategies for their kids that ultimately backfire. That's not how you produce happiness. I think you need a different definition of happiness. I don't think you can tie happiness to material success and professional success and prestige of the institution you attend. I think a good definition of happiness is when my kid wakes up in the morning, do they want to go to school? Do they find school a place that's enjoyable, where they're surrounded by people they like, where they find some value in what they're doing. If they don't want to go, then you should start asking questions about what can be done to improve their level of satisfaction with what they're doing. That chapter is all about the importance of lowering the temperature for kids when they are at their most vulnerable, which is when they're adolescents. You know, a lot of the questions we're asking of adolescents are questions that should more appropriately, I think, be asked to people in their 20s. For some reason, the kind of desire to put people on the correct track has just been moved down too far. Right. Like, I don't have this in the book, but I did a conversation last year with a woman named Linda Flanagan who wrote this brilliant book about youth sports, really about girls, youth sports. She was a coach for many years and had the very strong feeling that youth sports was broken. And a lot of her arguments are about it's starting too young and the pressure starts too young and the kind of professionalization of sports starts too young. And as a result, kids aren't enjoying themselves. She's like, we shouldn't be selecting for club teams at 12. And she has this whole thing about parents have turned the experience of playing sports for kids into this high pressure, high expectations. She thinks that parents should stop going to games, just like, let your kid play. I just thought there was something very lovely and beautiful about that. And it reflects something deeper that's going on, which is that there is a danger to the kind of relentless raising of expectations that parents have foisted on their children. And that's really what that chapter is about. It's about a community that is going through the tragic results of their misplaced expectations for their kids.

[Sharon McMahon]

I would love to know more about what makes you tick. Like, you wake up in the morning and you write down five ideas. You want to think about some more that day, and then do you spend your morning eating Cheerios and drink and coffee thinking? Because this is obviously what you're known for. Like, I like to think about things, I like to puzzle over things. I noodle over ideas and I research and I write about them and I share my thoughts. What does that even look like on a daily basis? How does one even execute that as a job, Malcolm?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Well, I mean, at the core of it, at the core of it is I spend a lot of time talking. It's not self generated. I spend lots and lots and lots of time either reading things people have written who are thoughtful people, or talking to them, particularly talking to them. You have to constantly replenish your store of knowledge about the world, particularly if you intend to write about it. So, for example, I just had a call this morning with a guy. One of the things I'm doing is a podcast that looks back at my original tipping point and asks the question of whether I got the discussion of crime wrong. And I did. So what I'm doing is sort of going back and talking to a bunch of people and figuring out, well, what did I not understand 25 years ago? I had a chapter on the puzzle of why New York City crime declined by as much as it did. And I think the explanation I gave in that book is not correct. So you can't just sort of noodle on that yourself. You got to go and find the people who have thought about that problem in the intervening 25 years and speak to them. So that's what I've been doing. The gift of being a journalist is that that's your job to do that. Many people would do the same, but don't have the opportunity to do it. If you're working 50 hours a week as a nurse or something, you don't get to call up people and interrogate them about their ideas about some complicated subject. So you know, we rely on writers to do that for us. So that's how I see my job is that I help people make sense of their experience and update their experience with the kind of state of the.

[C]

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[Sharon McMahon]

So you spend a good part of your day talking to people that you feel like. Have a perspective on a topic that interests you so that you can refresh your storehouse of knowledge. Continue to add more to the top of the silo, so to speak, from the work of other people who have studied things that interest you.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

How many meetings do you have a day, Malcolm? How many phone calls and zoom calls do you have a day? The people want to know.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

I mean, a good day when I'm not consumed with getting my car inspected, which is what a big chunk of this morning was. A futile search for someone who will inspect my car. Yeah, a good day is some mix of. Like this guy I talked to this morning, for example, who's a professor at Northwestern University, who's done this really, really, really interesting work in Chicago on trying to understand where does violence happen on the west side of Chicago, for example. It's not random and it doesn't affect everyone. It affects very specific groups of people who belong to very specific social networks. So what do we know about those networks? And that's his life's work. It's incredibly fascinating, important stuff. And so I got very interested in that because, like I said, I'm trying to kind of update my understanding of why crime would rise or fall in a city. And so I read his work. He has a bunch of papers which I read last week, thought about them, called him up, and we talked for an hour. And he kind of led me through how he goes about his work and what certain things mean and answered my questions. And then I'll have to sort of sit and think about, first of all, do I understand what he told me? And secondly, if I want to make sense of his work for a general audience, how do I do it? Because that's the kind of hardest part of my work. When I take something complicated and I have to represent it for someone who doesn't have the time or inclination to actually read the research paper in its original form. I mean, they're hard to read. So that's what I'll do next, is to sit and think about which piece of that interview is useful in my explanation. So I'll know there was this moment where he was really persuasive and explained what he was doing in a really good way. I'm going to use that bit of tape, like for revenge of the Tipping Point. The audiobook has the actual interview tape of the people I talked to. So the audiobook is actually really interesting. When I'm trying to resolve one of these puzzles that I'm so interested in, you hear the voices of the people who I was resolving the puzzle, and you hear them at their best. Right. When they get to the heart of the matter. So like in the Poplar Grove chapter, there are these two researchers called Seth Arburton and Anna Muller, both professors of sociology, and they're the ones who discovered this crazy town, Poplar Grove, and who went there over the course of many years and interviewed people and struggled to understand it. So I sat down with them and they talked me through how they learned about this town, how they tried to figure out what was going on, what their conclusions were. And so we're kind of following their line of thinking in that chapter. And that's sort of, to my mind, what makes the chapter so compelling is you're seeing this town not just through my eyes, but through the eyes of people who have real expertise and who spent weeks and weeks and weeks there, going back again and again and again and again over the course of many years. So you really get a sense of what is really happening in this strange little place.

[Sharon McMahon]

You know, we have a friend in common. We are both friends with Adam Grant.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Oh, yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

And I wonder, what do you think he would say your values are?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

What would Adam say my values are? Yes.

[Sharon McMahon]

This is a very common question that he likes to ask people or puzzle over about what are your values?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

What do you think he would say about you? Because I can find out the answer, Malcolm. So let's check it out.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

He would say my values are fundamentally Canadian.

[Sharon McMahon]

What does that mean? Just apologizing for everything. Being like, oh, I'm sorry. Sorry about that. Whoopsie daisy. Sorry.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

But all those things they say about Canadian reasonableness are true. No, I would say that I avoid the extremes. I do like stirring up a little bit of trouble, but not a lot of trouble. I like stirring up a Canadian amount of trouble, not an American amount of trouble.

[Sharon McMahon]

Uh huh. That's a good way to put it. It's like I like a Canadian amount of spice, not a Jamaican amount of spice in my food.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

No. But my member now, so my mom is Jamaican, so I do like spicy food. But Jamaicans, you know, that side of my family, we are a little bit Jamaicans, as a kind of cultural group, are a little bit raucous. That's part of the cultural makeup. But at the Same time, my mom, she would be another powerful explainer of my values. My mom is a listener. And to this day, my mom is in her 90s. She lives in a nursing home. I called her up the other day because she hadn't answered my email. I sent her an email. I was like, I didn't get an answer from my own mother. So I called her up and said, did you not get my email? And she said, oh, I've been busy. Now, when your 92 year old mom cannot answer your emails because she's busy, you know that she has a very, very healthy social life. So my mom's life is full of people coming to visit her. And this has been going on for my entire life with my mother. People come to her because she's a great listener. So more than a behavior, that's a value. It's a value because she believes that there is something of real value in listening to people, that not only can you learn things yourself, but you are providing a valuable service to others by being an attentive listener, by giving people the time to express themselves and to helping them share what they're feeling. Right. That is at the core of who my mom is as a human being is the belief that that is the way that she adds value to the. It's by being that person to people. So imagine growing up with someone who embodied that. I would come home from school, my mom would be on the couch in the living room and there would be someone who I'd never seen before talking to her. That's my childhood. Right. Is that experience. These people would just show up in my house and like. And then she later becomes a therapist because that was obviously, you know, where she was headed. A good part of my life has been listening to people. I'm now a journalist. Was a journalist. It's a form of someone who also believes in the value of listening to others. Right. I think Adam would probably. He's a very, very shrewd judge of human nature. He would probably get that. That's something that is very important to me, listening to what others have to say.

[Sharon McMahon]

Okay. A Canadian amount of trouble.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Canadian amount of trouble. Or a northern Minnesota.

[Sharon McMahon]

Or a northern Minnesota amount of trouble. It's a little trouble. It's not a lot of trouble. It's a little bit.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Just a little bit.

[Sharon McMahon]

It's just a little passive aggressive amount of trouble. A Canadian amount of trouble. And a good listener.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Well, my mom is a good listener. I aspire to be. Whether I am or not is another question.

[Sharon McMahon]

Oh, is This a backpedal? You don't want him to say something other than a good person.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

You asked about my values, not my abilities. So there's a distinction. The value is what you aspire to be.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah. Okay.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

And the ability is what you are, what you're capable of. I aspire to be a good listener. Now, I think I'm better than I was.

[Sharon McMahon]

Okay.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

But it's a work in progress. I'm not at my mom's level. I don't have my mom's patience. Yeah, but you asked what Adam Grant would say was my value, and I think that's what he would say.

[Sharon McMahon]

Okay.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah.

[Sharon McMahon]

Okay. We're gonna find out. I'm gonna send you an email.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Why don't you ask me what I think about Adam Grant's values?

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah. Now I wanna know. Hey, what would you say are Adam Grant's values?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

My theory about Adam, which I think he knows, is that the single most important fact about him, in understanding him, is that he was a competitive diver in college.

[Sharon McMahon]

He loves to bring that thing up. He loves to bring up the Junior Olympic diving.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

You have to understand how deeply competitive he is. And I say that as someone who's very competitive. And I don't think that's an insult. He's very competitive, by which I mean he has a very, very strong desire to succeed by doing things well. He is incapable of not doing things well. He's not someone who does half measures. It's not someone who says something that he hasn't thought through. He's not someone who has a relationship that he doesn't participate in fully. I mean, he's just. That's who he is. And diving is a sport for perfectionists. Right. I'm a runner. Runners are not perfectionists. Running is the opposite of that. There's a million different ways to train diving. Everything has to be done with absolutely perfect precision.

[Sharon McMahon]

Fractions of an inch are the difference makers. Yes.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

So he has constructed this actually very beautiful value system out of that kind of discipline, perfectionism and competitiveness and drive. That's how I make sense of Adam.

[Sharon McMahon]

I would say that he. And I'm sure he's going to love that we are spending so much time talking about him. There's no malicious intent, I would say. One of the things that I've noticed about him is that he takes considerable care to temper his natural tendencies towards competitiveness, that he doesn't want to become cutthroat in his desire to succeed.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Yeah. Well, there's public Adam and there's private Adam, Private Adam. He has a great deal of thought in how he presents his ideas and himself to the world. And that is something I wish way, way, way more people had.

[Sharon McMahon]

What do you hope the reader, when they close Revenge at the Tipping Point or they finish listening to it, what do you hope the reader takes with them and tucks into their pocket?

[Malcolm Gladwell]

All of my work is an attempt to make the exploration of ideas fun. It should be as fun to read about a really fascinating idea in all of its implications and all the people who are involved with research that should be as interesting and fun as reading a detective book or a thriller or going to see a Marvel movie. Goal number one is to share with people the kind of excitement that I feel when I'm uncovering a new fascinating idea or trying to solve one of the puzzles that are in the book. The other thing I would say is that I really do think that so many of the things that we deal with on a daily basis are epidemic in structure. They involve some kind of contagious idea or habit or practice. And you really do need to know something about how that works. Works if you want to make sense of your world. Whether you're a parent in a place like Poplar Grove who's trying to deal with a strange thing happening in your kid's high school, you got to know something about epidemics to understand that. I would begin and end with a discussion of OxyContin and the opioid crisis. When you look at a problem that's claiming the lives of over 100,000Americans a year, you got to know something about how epidemics work. If you're going to understand how to feel about that issue and how to solve it. Right. You can't just go in and assume it's just some random thing without rules and explanations and a theory behind it. A lot of the book is an attempt to make sense of things that would otherwise seem random or baffling. I'm trying to equip people for thinking about the world around them in a more sophisticated way.

[Sharon McMahon]

Yeah. Mm. I feel that, well, hopefully this will not be the last time we meet.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Sharon's been very fun. Thank you for your interest in my book.

[Sharon McMahon]

Of course.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Say hi to your fellow Minnesotans.

[Sharon McMahon]

I shall. I will. Say, Malcolm Gladwell says, hey, you guys. He says, hello.

[Malcolm Gladwell]

Well, I have enjoyed this very much. Thank you, Sharon.

[Sharon McMahon]

You can find Revenge of the Tipping Point wherever you get your books. If you want to support a local bookshop, head to yours or go to bookshop.org I'll see you again soon. Thank you so much for listening to here's where it gets interesting. If you enjoyed today's episode, would you consider sharing or subscribing to this show that helps podcasters out so much? I'm your host and executive producer, Sharon McMahon. Our supervising producer is Melanie Buck Parks and our audio producer is Craig Thompson. We'll see you soon.