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The Tipping Point Revisited: Live with David Remnick
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- [00:13]
Malcolm Gladwell
Hello, Hello, Revisionist History listeners.
- [00:15]
David Remnick
This is Revenge of the Tipping Point month at Revisionist History, where we bring you stories and snippets and tantalizing tales from my new book, now available everywhere. And in this episode, we're bringing you the very first stop on my book tour, a conversation I had about my life and career with my old friend and former boss, David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker. We did this at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, my home away from home. I first met David almost 40 years ago when he was a star at the Washington Post and I was a cub reporter who'd never written a newspaper story before.
- [00:51]
Malcolm Gladwell
He's one of the people in the.
- [00:53]
David Remnick
World who I admire the most, and our conversation was hilarious and fun.
- [00:59]
Malcolm Gladwell
I hope you enjoy. It's Been a While has. Yes, Malcolm, I have to tell you.
- [01:08]
David Remnick
The title of this book is so brilliant, because it's like Revenge of King Kong. It's fantastic.
- [01:15]
Malcolm Gladwell
Pink Panther. It's a Pink Panther shout out. Yeah.
- [01:19]
David Remnick
And I have to say that one of my fondest memories at the New Yorker. And we'll go back even earlier in a moment, but at the New Yorker, you're telling me. You know, I've written two pieces now, Cool Hunters and the Tipping Point. I have this idea for a book. You got an agent, the Redoubtable Tina Bennett, and you thought, you know, if I could make just a small amount of money, I could help out my family. And let's just say by the end of the day, things went well. And now, 23 million books later, things have gone really well. But what interests me most is not success, material success, however deeply jealous I am. What interests me is how you invented yourself and what you do. Because we have a not dissimilar background. We were both at the Washington Post. We were both at the New Yorker. And I couldn't have, in many ways, a more conventional approach to journalism. I wonder when you look back and you were at the Spectator, you were at the Post, and then you came to the New Yorker, but something happened at a certain point that a more conventional story was left behind. And even a humorous story like the one at the Washington Post where you did. You had a dog on death row and you treated.
- [02:47]
Malcolm Gladwell
Oh, that was my finest work.
- [02:49]
David Remnick
It really was.
- [02:50]
Malcolm Gladwell
There was a dog in Bergen County. Well, should I back up and tell that story?
- [02:55]
David Remnick
Sure.
- [02:56]
Malcolm Gladwell
I became the New York correspondent for the Washington Post, and they were uninterested in stories about New York at that point. I don't know why. And then I decided to make my life more interesting and maybe increase my profile in Washington. I would only write stories from Bergen County.
- [03:14]
David Remnick
My county.
- [03:15]
Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah. Because I decided that Bergen county was more interesting. I still believe this. Than New York City. So I just. Every day I would read the Bergen county record. Record. That's right. And I saw a little tiny mention one day of a dog, an Akita named Taro, who had been confined to doggy death row. Now, doggy death row in Bergen county is in Hackensack, where I was born. Were you born in Hackensack? You bet there is. You know. You think I'm joking when I say this. Doggy death row. No, it is actually doggie death row. It's a. You can't get there. It's like a ravine. And if you want to, you're on the other side of the ravine. And then you see a long string of cages and that there's all these dogs who are there pending. There's all kinds of appeals, obviously. And if they lose their peels, then they are euthanized, and they're there for biting people. And Taro, what had happened was he had been asleep, and a child, the nephew of his owner, had stumbled across him in the middle of the night on the way to the bathroom. And Taro had swiped the kid. This is. Now all of these claims I'm making were subject to a great amount of litigation. And had cut.
- [04:26]
David Remnick
So stipulated.
- [04:28]
Malcolm Gladwell
Had cut the kid's lip. And the result was like. There were like, seven different lawsuits head. And I became convinced that Taro was wrongfully convicted. And I wrote for the Washington Post. I mean, it was thousands. Thousands.
- [04:43]
David Remnick
It was impressively long.
- [04:44]
Malcolm Gladwell
And the editor of the Washington Post, the next day, after it ran, came up to me and said, that was a very good piece on Taro. It was, however, four times too long, which is the greatest thing anyone's ever said to me. And they were T shirts. The owner printed up T shirts. Free Taro. They were distributed, and the story made the front punch of the New York Post.
- [05:07]
David Remnick
That's the goal.
- [05:08]
Malcolm Gladwell
That was. They. The New York Post picked up my story.
- [05:12]
David Remnick
That's the heaven.
- [05:12]
Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah, that's the heaven. So my point. This. It was. So my whole strategy of conceiving of Bergen county as being a kind of more fertile ground for.
- [05:22]
David Remnick
But this was the. This was rebellion. This was the beginning of the Gladwellian rebellion against the conventional, which is that New York, as I believe, is not only the most interesting place, but on certain days, the only interesting place I'm a patriot. But at what point as we know what a Malcolm Gladwell story is? The kind of sense of surprise, playing with ideas, exploring ideas, reading social science. When did that begin to click in?
- [05:59]
Malcolm Gladwell
I think it starts at the Post, because the problem. Whenever I would take a job, you have to kind of conceive of what is the problem that you're trying to solve in this job. And the problem that I had when I got to the Post was that I was 23 and I had never written a newspaper story in my life. I had no idea how to do it. And I was surrounded by people who were the greatest. Like yourself. Yeah.
- [06:22]
David Remnick
Yeah.
- [06:23]
Malcolm Gladwell
No, for those of you who don't know, David in his day was an absolutely legendary. One of the great newspaper reporters of his generation.
- [06:32]
David Remnick
Thank you.
- [06:33]
Malcolm Gladwell
And they were. They were like Woodward. Bob Woodward was. When I got to the Washington Post, I was in a business section. Woodward was there. And I would watch and like, Steve Call. Steve Call went on to become. I mean, he's still around, but he ran the Columbia Journalism School. Carl, when he. I think you told me you pointed this out to me when, you know, when we had the push button phones.
- [06:56]
David Remnick
Yes.
- [06:57]
Malcolm Gladwell
He would, you know, when I dialed, it would be like, do, do, do, do, do. Carl was like, that's too slow. And he'd be like. It was like a concert pianist.
- [07:06]
David Remnick
He'd play a chord.
- [07:07]
Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah. Like. And like the White. He'd get the White House. And he would be like. It would take him like five seconds. I'm like, that was all. And I had Mike. The legendary Mike Istikoff was next to me. Anyway, my point is, I'm surrounded by all these people who are just better at daily journalism than I am. And so the problem was, how do you succeed in an environment whenever. And you succeed in that environment by being the thing that they are not. Right. Everyone else was fast and fluid. So I decided I would be slow and weird. Right.
- [07:40]
David Remnick
And in fairness, the Washington Post did not prize weirdness.
- [07:47]
Malcolm Gladwell
No, it did not. Although the key was the key. I mean, the problem to be solved was how do you stand up in an environment where everyone around you is a total pro? And so to stand out, you have to do what everyone else is not doing. So people around me were not writing 5,000 word stories on death or dogs.
- [08:07]
David Remnick
No, no.
- [08:08]
Malcolm Gladwell
And I remember the first time I wrote a story for the New Yorker, I was still at the Washington Post, and I was writing the talk of the towns before they were signed. So that way I could freelance without them knowing So I was writing these Talk to the Towns, and I went to see Chip McGrath, and he was.
- [08:25]
David Remnick
Tina Brown's deputy editor.
- [08:26]
Malcolm Gladwell
Yes. And Chip said I'd written this little Talk of the Town, and he had some problem. He said, I want you to fix this problem. He said, why? And so I said, I took it from him. I said, okay. And I just wrote in the margins my fix. And I remember looking at him, and he was astonished.
- [08:44]
David Remnick
Vulgarian.
- [08:46]
Malcolm Gladwell
It was vulgar. It was vulgar. He expected me to go home and come back in a week with the fix. I was like, no, I'll just move this here. Do that. And I realized that's at the New Yorker. You had to be that. Otherwise, if you wanted to be slow and thoughtful and weird, then you were competing with everyone else. Right. Right. So I had to. I got there, and I had to completely change. I had to work hard. I had to, like, do all these things that I wasn't doing at the Washington Post.
- [09:12]
David Remnick
I'll be right back with more from my conversation with David Remnick. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. There are lots of phobias out there. Arachnophobia, the fear of spiders, claustrophobia, aquaphobia. You name it, someone probably has a phobia of it. And once a year, Halloween lets us have fun with what scares us. But what about those fears that don't involve zombies and ghosts? Therapy is a great tool for facing your fears and finding ways to overcome them. Because sometimes the scariest thing is not facing our fears in the first place. Therapy is for everyone. It empowers you with the tools you need to deal with whatever life throws at you. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Visit betterhelp.com global today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp.
- [10:23]
Malcolm Gladwell
H E L P.
- [10:27]
David Remnick
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- [11:43]
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- [12:53]
David Remnick
Which piece would you say set you off? You're now at this retrospective moment in your literary journalistic life where you're writing a piece that echoes your first book and you're no longer 23 years old.
- [13:10]
Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah.
- [13:11]
David Remnick
There must be some sense of self examination about this.
- [13:14]
Malcolm Gladwell
It was probably a piece called the Cool Hunt. Remember the Cool Hunt?
- [13:18]
David Remnick
I do.
- [13:19]
Malcolm Gladwell
Where I, I don't know how I found her. A woman who's still a very good friend of mine, Dee Dee Gordon, who was a, who went around, whose business was going around America telling corporations what.
- [13:31]
David Remnick
Was cool T shirts and the look.
- [13:34]
Malcolm Gladwell
T shirts and she was and still is absolutely hilarious. Anyway, she, I wrote a piece about her about this idea that she would just go around and she would declare something cool and she would tell you what was and companies would hire her as hire her. But the, the whole point of that piece was the title the Cool Hunt. Once you had the title, just like it's like. And there was, you know, someone wanted to make a movie out of it. Of course. Never, nothing ever came of it. But it was the first time I realized, like, that was, you know, that kind of.
- [14:06]
David Remnick
It was something else.
- [14:08]
Malcolm Gladwell
There was something fun about taking. Being interested in pop culture for the New Yorker. And did the New Yorker never have.
- [14:18]
David Remnick
That kind of thing before? Now this kind of story comes up. But was that an absence that you were filling a vacuum?
- [14:25]
Malcolm Gladwell
No, I didn't know anyone else in the New Yorker. It was the same. It was the same thing about trying to be different. So I didn't know of anyone else who was writing about. Dede Gordon was not the typical subject of a New Yorker profile.
- [14:36]
David Remnick
No.
- [14:37]
Malcolm Gladwell
I mean, she. You know, she was this kind of strange, hilarious. She had this crazy crush on Keanu Reeves. She was obsessed with Keanu Reeves. But I just thought, like, this is different in a way. This will stand out. You just needed to stand out.
- [14:56]
David Remnick
And then you did the Tipping Point, which is now associated with you. But as you've said repeatedly, what you were doing is taking an idea that was very much in the air in sociological terms, in terms of crime and. And much else. So what was the idea for the book? You had these two pieces, and how did you cast out what it would be, what shape it would take, what voice it would have?
- [15:28]
Malcolm Gladwell
Well, I didn't. My agent came, Tina, who I knew socially, and then she became an agent. She was like a. She worked in the admissions department of some.
- [15:37]
David Remnick
She'd been a graduate student in history.
- [15:39]
Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah.
- [15:40]
David Remnick
In the industry.
- [15:41]
Malcolm Gladwell
Knew. She's friends of friends. And then she became an agent. She's like, can I be your agent? I was like, I guess. Sure. And then she's now like, the powerhouse of powerhouses. But I knew her, and she said, you should write a book on this. And I.
- [15:52]
David Remnick
But what is this?
- [15:54]
Malcolm Gladwell
The article, the Tipping Point?
- [15:55]
David Remnick
Yeah.
- [15:55]
Malcolm Gladwell
Because people got really interested in it, and I started. Like, someone in California flew me out to speak to their group about it. I remember thinking that was really weird that a piece of New Yorker could. So I thought, oh, maybe people are kind of into this. And Tina's like, yeah, you should do a book. So I knew the article in the New Yorker was a chapter. Clearly a chapter. A part of a chapter. And then I had to kind of improvise. I'd never written a book before. I had to kind of.
- [16:23]
David Remnick
Before we get to the way you reconsider the idea, because it's a very interesting bridge. I want to know. It probably is not in the stack of cards here. I want to know how you invented yourself as a voice and how naturally or not that Came to me because I can read a paragraph of yours or a page of yours, and I know it right away. That's you. There's a certain cadence, there's a certain way that chapters end. There are moves that are as distinctive as somebody's, you know, a piano player or an athlete. You know, you watch enough athletes, you listen to enough music. There's a Gladwell cadence, there's a Gladwell sense of humor. It's very, very distinctive. How self aware are you of it? How did it become itself?
- [17:17]
Malcolm Gladwell
Well, it's hard to say, you know, So I spent 10 years at the Post. And there's something I think that's crucial because what happens at the Post is you learn how to write. Meaning you learn how to write without fear and self consciousness. You're forced to. I remember by the end of my time at the Washington Post, I remember when I was. One of the last stories I wrote before I left for the New Yorker, there was a shooting on the LIRR and it happened at like 4:30 in the afternoon. And back then the deadline was like 6:30.
- [17:58]
David Remnick
Yeah, right.
- [17:58]
Malcolm Gladwell
So I get on the Lair and I go out to the scene. I get there at like 5:30 and it's clearly a front page story. And they're like, we need the story.
- [18:08]
David Remnick
There's a shooting on the Long Island Railroad is a front page story in the Washington Post.
- [18:13]
Malcolm Gladwell
It was a big shooting. Ah, it was like serious. Well, I mean, my assumption was right. I was telling them, of course it's a front page story. That's the way it works. This is huge. Hold the front page.
- [18:24]
David Remnick
It's never happened before.
- [18:26]
Malcolm Gladwell
Someone got shot in New York City. Hold the front page. It's above the fold. You know, like the whole manual. You know this. You did this drill yourself many, many times.
- [18:34]
David Remnick
Oh my God.
- [18:34]
Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah, yeah. And you could do it from Moscow.
- [18:37]
David Remnick
And you could just. They all get nervous.
- [18:39]
Malcolm Gladwell
Michael Specter, used to. His colleague of ours was so good at this, he would do a kind of salami slicing where he'd take a story and do 10 stories out of it. And each one would get on the front page because he would be like, it's changed yesterday. I said, there's another wrinkle. They'd be like, oh my God. And they put the first wrinkle on the front page. They put the second wrinkle. Then there's a day three. Oh my God. I go out there, I'm on the lar. And I remember this is like. This is when I was at the peak of My powers. So I interviewed all these people. I don't have time to. I don't. There's no laptops back then. There's no like. And I did the thing which I had heard, you know, hard bitten newspaper reports, dictated. I picked up the phone and I called it in. I remember that feeling of like I dictated a 1500 word story into the phone to someone typing on the other end, straight through. And I was so pleased with myself. But I realized at a moment I got nothing else to learn here. I have. But that's what you learn and that you never lose that fluidity. So in other words, every bit, every bad habit you have as a writer gets beaten out of you at a newspaper because it's just discipline. It's like, boom, tell the story, tell it in a way that's compelling.
- [20:08]
David Remnick
But something happens to your prose. And I won't linger on this too long, but if I read Anthony Lane, for example, I can read him. And I know that obviously Anthony is an incredibly erudite reader and writer, but I know that he did not get through life without reading PG Wodehouse over and over again that informs the texture of this tapestry. Who was that for you? Or was it just the newspaper business?
- [20:38]
Malcolm Gladwell
Well, no, no, no. So then I get to. I don't think. I think I have a little bit of that at the Post, but you get pared down. You get rid of all your bad habits and then you have. It's like a. It's like in playing a musical instrument, you spend the first 10 years mastering the fundamentals and then you're free to develop some kind of study, but you have to do the compulsory work to kind of. And that's what the Post is. You get reduced to the simplest essence of how to tell a story. And now you have the freedom. And it come to the. A lot of. It was Adam Gopnik. So I was reading Gopnik long before I joined the New Yorker. And Gopnik has an exceedingly distinctive voice, right? And a beautiful way of expressing himself. And there's little kind of beautiful little frills. I mean, his prose sings, his little choruses and. And it's just like. And reading that, you know, he's. I'm half a generation, but his move.
- [21:49]
David Remnick
Is he has many. But what is the pop culture or boomer pop culture, as he and I have discussed. But reference, when discussing something like, you know, Nietzsche or the French, that's crucial.
- [22:01]
Malcolm Gladwell
So this reminds me of something. When I was very. When I was in middle school, I Met my lab partner was a guy named Terry Martin, who I know of. Terry Martin, now a Soviet scholar, but he, by happenstance in our little town in Canada, he was my lab partner. And Terry was an absolutely brilliant guy. And we were in biology together, and we would do these experiments, and he would always refuse to do the experiment the way we were supposed to do it, like, as a matter of principle. And I remember at first utterly horrified because we would never. We couldn't finish anything. Nothing was ever handed in. We would always get terrible grades. And then about, like, by kind of November of seventh grade, I realized it's genius. Because what he taught me was that you have the freedom. I mean, he wasn't being destructive or nihilistic. He was like, saying, okay, so they're all going to do it this way, but we don't have to do it that way. We can. There's another way to learn what's going on here. He was deeply interested in biology.
- [23:11]
David Remnick
This is what so interests me. So play is what you use the word. And I think it even causes some people alarm or they're offended, intellectually or otherwise, or they're jealous or whatever it is. You used the phrase playing with ideas as if this is, to them, somehow irresponsible. What does playing with ideas mean?
- [23:34]
Malcolm Gladwell
It begins with Terry in seventh grade, because Terry and I then, we developed this deep friendship. And we would play endless games of Monopoly. And we then deregulated Monopoly. And his whole. Our idea was. This is our idea was the rules. At that point, we were like, well, the rules make no sense. Like the game, as it's a brilliant game. But, for example, why do you start with $1,500? That is, by the way, if you're interested, this is the flaw with Monopoly, because the point of Monopoly is when you're playing it. It should be a question of what can I afford? It should be a difficult question. I land on Marvin Gardens. Do I want to buy Marvin Gardens? Should be a question that you have to entertain and come up with a serious answer to. If you give each player $1,500 to start, and you land on Marvin Gardens, you just buy it. How is that interesting? That's absurd.
- [24:30]
David Remnick
So it's a little bit like inherited wealth.
- [24:32]
Malcolm Gladwell
Yes, exactly. So we started with $1, and what.
- [24:40]
David Remnick
Could you buy with $1? You can't even get a slice of pizza.
- [24:43]
Malcolm Gladwell
No, no, no, no.
- [24:43]
David Remnick
Much left.
- [24:44]
Malcolm Gladwell
Marvin Garden. So the first 10 minutes is just speed circling the board, accumulating capital. And then we had to come up with all Kinds of ways to. Basically we created systems for creating leverage.
- [24:59]
David Remnick
Did you have too much time on your hands?
- [25:00]
Malcolm Gladwell
No, no, no, no, no, no. We played so much Monopoly, so what I realized now is that we would sell derivatives. So I would say, like, if I landed on your property, you had improved, you know, the blue property, you know, Vermont and Oriental and whatever. I owe you 500 bucks. We'd never pay the $500. That's silly. Why would you pay the $500 instead? It should be an invitation to a negotiation about. There are clearly. I owe you 500 bucks. All right? So how can I be useful to you in some other way?
- [25:38]
David Remnick
Right, so it's goods and services.
- [25:41]
Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah, I have. You land on Vermont, you owe me 500 bucks. I have Broadway, I need Park Place. So I say, okay, pay me 100, but if you land on Park Place, I have the right of first refusal to buy that property from you. Right? Now, that's a simple example. We constructed these insanely elaborate massive derivatives. And we would play did they have.
- [26:04]
David Remnick
No drugs in Canada?
- [26:08]
Malcolm Gladwell
We would play with Terry's cousin Fred, and we would play like three or four games an afternoon, and we would play hundreds of games a summer, and we just get together every morning, just play this game. But it was the same thing. It was like. And each over the course of the summer, we would create ever more elaborate structures around. But that's the origin of play. Because Terry's assumption. This is what Terry taught me. He was like, what does Parker Brothers know about Monopoly? The self confidence of that was so brilliant.
- [26:42]
David Remnick
Fair enough, but when you're dealing with auto safety, medical tests, all the many subjects, in other words, at what point do you feel grimly responsible to the set of ideas and the facts? And how does that interact with playing? What's the difference between what you're doing and what an academic feels obliged to do? Because, I mean, I remember a piece of yours and there was a piece. And it was so mean to Ralph Nader, who I was still great. Who I was brought up to think was just an incredible hero for all the. Okay, he lost the election at one point, but another mind.
- [27:29]
Malcolm Gladwell
But I can tell you where that came from. So this goes to your point.
- [27:32]
David Remnick
And then you blamed poor Ralph Nader for what?
- [27:35]
Malcolm Gladwell
Like, oh, it's so genius. So on the sense of play, what should. The first. The first layer of play is understanding other people who want to play, right? So I got. I like cars. And I thought it'd be fun to write about automobile safety for the New Yorker, because nobody was writing about automobiles. And if they were writing about it, they were writing about it in this. Kind of. Really kind of boring.
- [27:57]
David Remnick
Right, right, right.
- [27:58]
Malcolm Gladwell
So find someone who has an interesting take on auto safety. Now, where would that person reside? Well, not in academia. They would work for a car company. Right. Turns out there's a Scottish guy called Leonard Evans who ran the safety department at General Motors. And Leonard wrote a book called Traffic Safety in America, which is so genius. And I read Traffic Safety. I was like, oh, my God, Leonard's your genius. So I call up Leonardo, and he's got this whole Scottish brogue accent, and.
- [28:25]
David Remnick
He'S been waiting for you all.
- [28:27]
Malcolm Gladwell
He has been waiting for me his entire life. No journalist has ever called Leonard.
- [28:31]
David Remnick
Of course not.
- [28:32]
Malcolm Gladwell
And Leonard's sitting in his office in, like, Dearborn, wherever the hell he is, and he doesn't even bother to clear it with General Motors Public Relations because he's never had a journalist call him before. He's just on the phone with me, and Leonard does something. The first story Leonard gives me, he goes in his Scottish accent, which I can't do, he says, you realize we're talking about airbags. And one of this is in the mid-90s, early late 90s. And one of Leonard's points was airbags were suddenly a big deal. Everyone was in love with airbags. His point was the airbag. If you're not wearing your seat belt, the airbag kill you can kill you, particularly if you're very young or very old or very small. And Leonard said, the reason we don't realize this is that the reason we have airbags is because of Ralph Nader. And Ralph Nader didn't understand this fact. And he was promoting the airbag without. He thought it was an alternative to the seatbelt as opposed to an accompaniment to the seat belt. And then Leonard said, and I never wrote about this. He said, what you should do is you should file a Freedom of Information act request with the. Whatever the automobile. Whatever the transit automobile.
- [29:46]
David Remnick
Bureaucracy.
- [29:46]
Malcolm Gladwell
Bureaucracy is. And ask for all the cases of people who died because they weren't wearing a seat belt and the airbag went off, and that's the blood that's on Ralph Nader's hands. And I was like, oh, my God. So I file. I file the FOIA request, and like, two months later, like, seven huge boxes show up at the Washington Post, and it's all the case files. What did I do with that story? Nothing. And then, so I remember this, and I remember letter, and I get to the New Yorker And I'm filled with shame that I never wrote the story. I would have won the Pulitzer Prize. I would have won. The letter gave me a Pulitzer Prize. It was all there in the boxes. It was like hundreds of people. I mean, it's sad, but like, he.
- [30:34]
David Remnick
Did say it was sad. Hashtag sad, sad.
- [30:38]
Malcolm Gladwell
And Leonard is not happy with me for not doing a story about this. So then I say, okay, Leonard, I'll do the Ralph Nader story. Just. I can't. I'm not. The ship is sail, but we'll do the Ralph Nader story. And then I go. So then for some reason, I go to Detroit, but I don't hang out with Leonard. I hang out with his competitor at Ford. And I think he got very concerned about that. He was unhappy. But the guy at Ford had this whole thing about three point belts and we crashed all these cars. It was so much fun. And then I. So I came back. But the point, it all starts with Leonard. Like, Leonard was a guy who wanted to play. He was an iconoclast, ignored, sitting in his office in Dearborn and nobody was listening to him. And he was writing these books that were read by seven people. And he was just great. He. He was just like. And when you uncover someone like that, and he was just so thrilled with the idea that.
- [31:33]
David Remnick
I think another thing that thrilled you is that all the rest of us slobs who are writing about politics or show business or sports are obsessed with access, Right? You want to write a profile of LeBron James, you want to write a profile of Kamala Harris or whatever. And you have to go through these tentacles and seaweed of handlers and no. And no. And can we have, quote, approval and photo approval? And the answer is no. Okay? We're not. Blah, blah, blah. It's terrible. It's terrible. And I think part of it. Tell me if I'm wrong, was your antipathy to that. Yeah, I mean, the closest I think you might have done to a true celebrity profile. One of my favorite pieces was the guy who was the Ronco. What was it called? The Ronco Jar and Bottle Cutter.
- [32:25]
Malcolm Gladwell
Oh, that's one of my favorite pieces that I ever did on the guy who did the Showtime Rotisserie.
- [32:31]
David Remnick
That's really right, The Rotisserie chicken guy. But what I gleaned from that, also, you had a very early interest. And here we're going back a little bit. Before you were in journalism, you were in advertising. What was your.
- [32:48]
Malcolm Gladwell
I wanted to be in advertising. I couldn't get a job.
- [32:51]
David Remnick
You Couldn't get a job.
- [32:52]
Malcolm Gladwell
No. No, you didn't.
- [32:52]
David Remnick
Why did you want to be in advertising?
- [32:54]
Malcolm Gladwell
Well, because I liked the idea that someone can tell a story in 30 seconds. I just thought that was fantastic. And I was in awe of. I thought the greatest achievement was a well told 30 second story was the hardest thing in the world. And the idea that they can make you laugh or cry in 30 seconds while they're selling you something is just the degree of debility on that is just off the charts. I wanted to do that.
- [33:18]
David Remnick
Hence, what was his name? The Ronco Jarrod.
- [33:21]
Malcolm Gladwell
So Ron Papil. Ron Papille. Remember he did the. He used to do the late night infomercials. He was the infomercial king, right? And he did, he made a number of things. But his showpiece product was the Showtime Rotisserie oven, which was, I claim, dollar for dollar, the finest kitchen appliance ever made. And I still believe that to be the case. And I went out to LA and I hung out with Ron and it was. I decided to go deep on Ron and he turns out he's from like Asbury park or somewhere in his. People were all.
- [33:57]
David Remnick
Tumblers.
- [33:58]
Malcolm Gladwell
They were sailors on the boardwalk in New Jersey. They all sewed like knives and stuff on the boardwalk. And Ron was the, you know, Another guy, Ed McMahon was part of that circle. And a guy named Kidders Morris, who was Ron Popiel's grandfather, was a legendary guy from the old country who came over and was selling kitchen gadgets on the boardwalk. And they were, they would do the spiel and, you know, the chop, chop, chop. They'd have the, they'd have the, all the vegetables and they'd be sitting on the boardwalk and they would show you the knife and they'd go, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. And the whole thing was the turn. This is a crucial thing that he learns back then, which is. So the crowd gathers around you and you got the Ginsu knife and you're chopping the vegetables. And then at a certain. First of all, you can't. You have a. He taught me this. He's like, you got the carrots and the potatoes and you got the pineapple. You can't ever chop the pineapple.
- [34:51]
David Remnick
Why?
- [34:51]
Malcolm Gladwell
Because it's so expensive. It's just there, it's the thought that he might somehow one day chop the pineapple. That keeps the people coming. But no, no, you chop the carrots. The carrots are like 5 cents a carrot. But the key thing is the turn. So the people come close together around you, you're going, chop, chop, chop, chop. And you gotta sell them the knife and they gotta get out of there. Cause the news, when new people have to come in, that's the key. So that anybody could do the thing. Chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. People gather around, but it's turning that crowd and bringing in a new one in a seamless fashion. That's the. And Ron was battle tested on the board. He was the greatest of all the boardwalk. And then he goes to LA and he takes it up a notch and he starts doing late night infomercials. And he was so good. And I hung out with him and he. I was out there for like two weeks, mostly goofing around, but. And I talked with the guy who he collaborated with on the Showtime oven, and I actually got a. I used to. For years, I used to cook my chickens on the Showtime. It was amazing.
- [35:56]
David Remnick
No more, I think.
- [35:58]
Malcolm Gladwell
I don't know what. It got really squeaky in like year six.
- [36:02]
David Remnick
You had a squeaky rochester.
- [36:03]
Malcolm Gladwell
I had a squeaky one. And Ron told me that I had to fix it. And I.
- [36:06]
David Remnick
You threw it out.
- [36:07]
Malcolm Gladwell
But his big thing was.
- [36:08]
David Remnick
You threw out the oven.
- [36:10]
Malcolm Gladwell
I did his big thing. That, you know, a lot of the. Back then, in the old days, the rotisserie, they went like. This is the spit.
- [36:21]
David Remnick
Vertical.
- [36:22]
Malcolm Gladwell
They were vertical. And Ron's like, why do you do it vertical? It makes no sense. The juices flow to the bottom. Crazy. It's got to be horizontal. He's the guy who starts the horizontal rotisserie. And it was so. And getting into the family history. And at one point, he takes me to the grave site in New Jersey where all the whole. There's three generations of these legendary pitchmen who work the boardwalk and they're all buried in this thing. And he starts to cry and it was just like. It was just unbelievable. But the move there and this. My editor, your dear friend Henry Finder, was very. He was another very formative figure in this. He's like, everyone, the standard move is to make fun of Ron Papilla. Do not make fun of Ron Papille. You have to. Genuinely. He's a hero. You have. And if the reader thinks for a moment you're mocking the man, you've failed. And I. That is the single point.
- [37:21]
David Remnick
I'm 100% with Henry on that.
- [37:22]
Malcolm Gladwell
100%. And to this day, people make this error. Journalists do. They think at some point they have to demonstrate their superiority to the subject. No, the subject. The subject is the hero. And you have to Find your job. There's 10 ways to write that romp appeal. Had a very complicated.
- [37:44]
David Remnick
Except in political reporting, but okay.
- [37:46]
Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah, well. But Ron had a. There's 10 ways to write the romp appeal profile. Nine of those ways you make fun of him.
- [37:55]
David Remnick
Thank you.
- [37:55]
Malcolm Gladwell
And one way you reckon you look for what is what was fantastic about this guy, which is he devoted his life and his people for three generations, devoted his life to making working in the kitchen a happier, healthier, easier, more efficient. That's a fantastic. He cared about whether the chicken was vertical or horizontal. We'll be right back.
- [38:32]
David Remnick
We're back at the 92nd Street Y with David Remnick.
- [38:37]
You are no longer 23 and you've just had a couple of kids. They're how old now?
- [38:45]
Malcolm Gladwell
I got a toddler and a baby. I'm forbidden. I'm forbidden to give their real name. 60. Are you 14?
- [38:57]
David Remnick
First of all, good luck. Second of all. Second of all, famously. And you once told me, you know how you did one of your moves about college admissions?
- [39:12]
Malcolm Gladwell
I love that subject.
- [39:13]
David Remnick
It's crazy. They're getting in and then 92nd Street Y, kindergarten and Ivy League this and da, da, da in Canada. We just filled out an application the night before, and I. Ok, all right.
- [39:26]
Malcolm Gladwell
No, no, no. Not even the night before.
- [39:28]
David Remnick
Well, you.
- [39:28]
Malcolm Gladwell
The morning of day of. David, my parents weren't even involved. My father asked me, why are you applying to college? I was like, well, I'm just doing the form now.
- [39:39]
David Remnick
And what did you put on it? Monopoly?
- [39:42]
Malcolm Gladwell
No, you just. What the hell did you do? When I send the form in, it's like a page. You just send it in.
- [39:46]
David Remnick
All right, so your kids are going to not stay toddler and baby for very long. I promise you that. This is one area where I know more. How are you going to feel about college admissions when they get to be 16, 17, 18? Because your rant about Ivy League, which.
- [40:06]
Malcolm Gladwell
I've been doing for years, which is.
- [40:08]
David Remnick
It's one of the most perfected rants of all time.
- [40:10]
Malcolm Gladwell
I got a new rant, by the way. I got two episodes of my pod. So I've been working on this rant. You're right. Fifteen years. I have. Perfect. I got two episodes of my podcast coming out, I think, next week. It's called the Georgetown Massacre. It is. When I say, this is. This is like. It is my Beethoven's fifth. It is my. It is my White Album. It is my. Everything else I have done. This is. What's going on is just like chump change Compared. This is two parts. Two parts on one case involving a tennis player who goes to Georgetown. And every single. Everything I've done as a writer has been building towards. It's so genius. And by the end, it's just like. And it has twists and turns, and it's just. It's.
- [41:15]
David Remnick
Would you like to preview it?
- [41:17]
Malcolm Gladwell
No, I don't want to give it away. You got to listen to it. I'm not giving it away. So. Good. No, but I.
- [41:21]
David Remnick
This is why I have to work for a living.
- [41:24]
Malcolm Gladwell
No, I know what you're saying. Am I going to be a hypocrite? Yeah, of course. What? The one thing I will not do, though. Yeah.
- [41:35]
David Remnick
What?
- [41:36]
Malcolm Gladwell
There was one place where I believe.
- [41:38]
David Remnick
Where are you going to. Where are you going to draw the line. SAT prep.
- [41:40]
Malcolm Gladwell
No, I'm not making the call.
- [41:44]
David Remnick
Oh, okay. You mean the call to the Macher?
- [41:48]
Malcolm Gladwell
Call in. I know the guy who knows the guy who knows the guy who's on the board. Not doing that.
- [41:52]
David Remnick
Okay.
- [41:52]
Malcolm Gladwell
I say.
- [41:59]
David Remnick
We talked about voice before, and one of the reasons I think that your podcast is so successful and so seductive and I don't miss them, is that it has a real human voice. It doesn't feel read, even though I know damn well that you've worked on them really hard. Similar to your prose, it feels. Your written prose feels spoken and vice versa, which, I mean, is high praise. Podcasting is a relatively new form. Why did you gravitate toward it in such a complete way? This is not some avocation. In fact, at a certain point, you know, you've done work where the book is an extension of the podcast, as with the Ballmer book. So tell me about that and your attraction to it.
- [42:48]
Malcolm Gladwell
Well, there's certain kinds of stories, so. For example, the story I was just telling about the Georgetown massacre, you could write it, but it's not nearly as fun in written form. So there's a certain kind of story which lends itself beautifully to audio where audio permits you. You could be more playful. You can get away with stuff. What does that mean, get away with stuff? Yeah, there's no critical infrastructure, so it's like, no one's gonna.
- [43:18]
David Remnick
I don't understand. You can be more full of shit.
- [43:21]
Malcolm Gladwell
No, you couldn't be like.
- [43:22]
David Remnick
You have to be. You're careful. I mean, I am.
- [43:24]
Malcolm Gladwell
No, no, we're not making stuff up. What I'm saying is people are more accepting of a kind of playful outlandishness. So part of the Georgetown massacre episodes, the tongue is in the cheek. Right. Even as I'm making a substantive point.
- [43:44]
David Remnick
And you feel you can do that more than in Caslon type in a certain magazine.
- [43:49]
Malcolm Gladwell
You would not let me write that for the New Yorker. You take it out.
- [43:53]
David Remnick
Because I would feel what.
- [43:55]
Malcolm Gladwell
It wouldn't work. It's like. It's hard to explain because a lot of what's playful about audio is stuff you're doing with your voice. Right. So you're. You know, I can adopt a tone of voice that says, we're kids around here.
- [44:12]
David Remnick
We're having fun. We're playing with ideas.
- [44:14]
Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah. Like, there's a character in the Georgetown massacre. Part of it was a turn. And we meet the. There's a guy who's charged in a case, and he takes as his lawyers the two legendary two greatest defense lawyers in the country. Roy Black and Howard Srebnick, these two guys in Miami. And we meet Roy and Howard. Now, the first crucial thing is I could. If I'm writing a print version, you'll meet Roy and Howard. I describe them. You gotta hear. When you hear them, it's just so much better. And you realize, like. And then when you're describing them, I can describe them in a much more colorful way when I know you're gonna hear their voice. Right. I can't explain it better than that, but there is something about. I can. Like, Howard has got long hair and rides a motorcycle in the early morning hours and looks like a movie star and does this. In this trial, he does a direct examination of the defendant's daughter that is just so masterful. I mean, it's just. It's like. And I was reading. You know, you read the transcript and you come to this thing and you're like someone. Because people like you and I, you know, our business fundamentally is not about. We're not in the writing business. We're in the interviewing business. Right. We only write because we've interviewed somebody. It's really interviewing.
- [45:47]
David Remnick
You think of it that way.
- [45:48]
Malcolm Gladwell
Oh, yeah.
- [45:49]
David Remnick
Really?
- [45:50]
Malcolm Gladwell
Oh, yeah. The whole game is interviewing. It's not. Writing is. I would never write something without it. The idea of writing something just without having sat down first to talk to someone is unthinkable to me. So when you. A defense lawyer is just to stipulate.
- [46:06]
David Remnick
That'S the fun part for you, that's the juice of it above all.
- [46:10]
Malcolm Gladwell
Well, I don't find the writing part hard. I find the writing part is just. It's just a matter of sitting down. And it's the. Wow.
- [46:18]
David Remnick
Don't tell any writers that.
- [46:20]
Malcolm Gladwell
No, but that's the gift of being at the Washington Post for 10 years. It used to be hard and it wasn't. By the time I was done there, I was on the phone dictating the story. Like they solved that problem. The hard part is, can I sit down with somebody and can I understand who they are and what they're trying to say and represent that in a way that's meaningful and powerful? And all of that is stuff you get from the interview. You don't. You can't make it up after the fact. So you have to. Like I was doing this summer, I spent like 20 hours. Maybe I'd forgotten how many hours. 10, 15, 20 hours with this woman who's a psychologist. And it was incredible. Like, she agreed, thank God, to sit with me for that long. Who is this? I'm telling you, steal it. You're like the competition, for goodness sake.
- [47:15]
David Remnick
That hurts me very much.
- [47:18]
Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah, not telling you. Not telling you. And it was the same thing with the Paul Simon thing that we did.
- [47:24]
David Remnick
Yeah, I've heard of him.
- [47:25]
Malcolm Gladwell
Where he, you know, he sat for 40 hours and the whole thing, the trick, not the trick. What's interesting, what's hard about that was not writing it up afterwards. All those problems were solved in the interview. The trick was when we were talking.
- [47:41]
David Remnick
To him and I. If I. Sorry to interrupt. Which is the worst thing you do in an interview. But I've interviewed Paul Simon. He's not immediately easy.
- [47:49]
Malcolm Gladwell
No, he's not easy.
- [47:50]
David Remnick
And you had him for, you know, on and on and on, and it got richer and richer and richer. And he. Something you did, something about you, your patience, your interest, your silence, whatever it was, drew out a guy that, I think it's fair to say is not immediately thrilled with the process of being interviewed.
- [48:16]
Malcolm Gladwell
I don't understand why he was so. He was. He kept on. I kept on saying, I'm done. And then he would say, no, let's. When are we meeting again? And we would. Me and Bruce, my friend Bruce did it together. And Bruce and I would look at each other.
- [48:29]
David Remnick
Rich Adlam.
- [48:30]
Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah. Bruce and I would look at each other like he really wants to do it again. And he would always do it again. And then I couldn't believe it. And I think that, you know, if I was kind of reconstructing why he was so kind of generous with his time, that would be part of it. Part of it was, I think we were uninterested in the parts of his life that he felt had been picked over. So we're not interested in your marriage to so and so and relationship with Art Garfield. But we were really interested in his dad. And I remember there was one moment we were.
- [49:00]
David Remnick
He was a musician.
- [49:01]
Malcolm Gladwell
Who was a musician. I remember there was one time where Bruce and I asked him some question and I asked him some question about his dad and he went. He talked straight for like half an hour, got incredibly emotional and then he said, I have to stop. And he got up and walked outside.
- [49:17]
David Remnick
It was like, wow.
- [49:20]
Malcolm Gladwell
It was. There was something really deep. And the idea, it's so interesting. And it's that thing, that moment when you're interviewing somebody. First of all, it never gets old when you tap into something. So we tapped into something that was real about him, that his relationship to his father. He's a man in his 70s. His father's been dead for 30 years. He eclipsed his father in every conventional way by million miles. And yet. And he was still. You realize he was still writing about his father. He was still dreaming about his father. His father was still like with him, you know, it was just such a kind of like. But that when you get there. And that was. That took a long time for us to get there. When you get there with somebody that, like I said, the writing is not hard. When you get that kind of moment on the.
- [50:13]
David Remnick
How did your parents affect, in fact, the way you look. You're now at this. You're moving forward, but slightly retrospective. You have kids, your life has changed. You look back on it. How did your parents inform who you are in your work?
- [50:33]
Malcolm Gladwell
My dad, he was a mischief maker. He was someone who had no interest whatsoever in any authority. In any. He did not. The psychological term that best describes him was disagreeable. Not psychologists, when they use the term, they don't mean obnoxious. He was the furthest thing from obnoxious, incredibly gracious man. In psychological terms, disagreeable means you are uninterested. In what? In the approval of others? No, could care less. Just the idea of standing out and being different was just second nature for him. It wasn't that he relished that being different. It's just he didn't care. He just did what he wanted.
- [51:24]
David Remnick
How was he different? He taught math.
- [51:26]
Malcolm Gladwell
Taught math. He was a kind of. I've told this story many times. But he came. We moved to Canada. We're living in rural Canada and in kind of Mennonite country was all these old order Mennonites, people who are like the Amish. They're driving buggies and a barn would burn down and they would Do a barn raising. They'd all gather the next day and they would raise the barn in one day. Hundreds of Mennonites would come in, their horses and buggies for miles around and they would, you know, have huge spread of food and they would just. It was incredible to watch, actually, if you go to a barn raising, hundreds of them, putting up a barn. And my father decided to join and he see. So there's one car, a kind of, you know, his Volvo in with like 100 horses and buggies. And he's like an English guy. They're all like clean shaven, wearing black pants and like these, you know, hats, straw hats. And he's like, got a big beard and a tie and, you know, he looks like a mathematician, an English mathematician. And he drives up in his vulva with his kids in tow. And not an ounce of self consciousness, not even for him, did it even occur to him to ask permission to show up. He shows up and says, you know, basically put me to work. And they're like, okay. And he doesn't know what they're doing, so he's doing the most manual labor. No one, none of the hundred people at this fundraising had had more than a 6th grade education. He has a PhD in advanced mathematics and he's the happiest man there. That's so my dad, he was just like. And went home and then never spoke about it again. Or my other favorite story about my dad, a story he told me when he was in his 70s. I don't know why he never told me this before. He's married, my mom, my mom is Jamaican. They're in Jamaica. He's teaching at the University of West Indies where one of his students is Kamala Harris's dad. Kamala Harris's dad. And he decides he wants to write. He's writing some paper and back then if you needed a book, you would. It wasn't. There's no. The book he needed was not in the University of West Indies library. And he figures out it's at the Georgia Tech library. And so he's going to go to Georgia Techen. So he writes a letter to the professor, a friend he knows at Georgia Tech. My name is Graham Gladwell. I'm a professor at University of West Indies. I would like to come to Georgia Tech to use your library. The guy says yes. And he's preparing to go. And he learns later that it kicks off a panic at Georgia tech because it's 1960, Georgia Tech is segregated, and they don't know whether he's White or black, they just know he's a professor from the University of West Indies. God knows, he could be a black guy coming to our campus. We just invited a black guy to the campus. Holy shit. And, like, they go nuts. And finally, there's no tell. There's no. There's telephones, but there's no direct line. They try and find out. Finally, they reach him on the phone before he's about to come, and, you know, he's called to the switchboard, whatever, you know. Professor Gladwell? Yes. This is so and so from Georgia Tech. Yes. Are you white? He goes, yes. And they go, oh, thank God. So then. But this is. The story's not over. So then now they're gonna roll out the red carpet, right? But. So he gets on the boat, sails from Jamaica to Miami, gets on the bus. That's how you did it back then. Takes the bus from Miami to Atlanta. Goes, they have a welcome dinner. They're all sitting down, all like, these white men. And halfway through the meal, he pulls out a large 8 by 10 photo of my mom. Says, yes, my wife, I was going to bring her, but I decided against her. Hands it around the room now to him. That was a fantastic moment. Like, show these guys. Never mention a word about that story for 40 somewhere. And then he's like, oh, I went to Georgia Tech and I had interviewed some guy there who was the head of the political science department, who was a black guy from Atlanta. And I told it to my dad, and he goes, oh, it's so funny. Wasn't always that way. And then he tells the story. But that was so him. He just like. He just. It was like he loved nothing more than, like, poking the bear. But he didn't, you know, he didn't make a big deal about it. He just wanted to go around poking the bear.
- [56:01]
David Remnick
Before I ask about your mom, you mentioned that your dad was taught Kamala Harris father.
- [56:07]
Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah, Donald Harris was a student of his. Or he knew him somehow. Donald Harris told me this, not my dad, because my dad obviously had passed by the time Kamala became a big deal. But yeah, they were Donald Harris. My mom knows Donald Harris is from. Is from Brownstone, which is where my mom went to school. She knows she went to school. She went to church at his father's church. And, like, they clearly must have seen each other across a pew. At the age of the degree of excitement in. Well, all. I mean, first of all, what's hilarious is there's one group that says Kamala Harris is black. Then there's another group that says she's Indian. And then there's the Jamaicans, who are like, she's Jamaican.
- [56:56]
David Remnick
Right.
- [56:57]
Malcolm Gladwell
So the level of excitement among the Jamaicans over her is my mother, like, literally, she's 93. There is zero chance she will exit this world between now and the election. It's just zero. It's just. It is not happening. Like, the degree to which. And her defense. I call her up. She just. The first 10 minutes, just defending Kamala against. They were attacking her for. Her big thing is they attacking her for not revealing her positions. She's just started. How can. How can she have positions before she started? My mother's whole thing is this should unfold over the passage of time.
- [57:40]
David Remnick
I remember I had the privilege of meeting her a few times, particularly in Washington, and she struck me as a very proper.
- [57:48]
Malcolm Gladwell
My mother is a very, very. Yes, she is a very refined, dignified Jamaican lady. Yeah, you don't. Nobody messes with. She also. She loved also confronting authority and did it endlessly and to great effect in our little town. They had never met.
- [58:09]
David Remnick
How did she navigate rural Ontario?
- [58:12]
Malcolm Gladwell
She just sailed right in. She met all the kind of power brokers in town, charmed them, got on all the right committees. And, I mean, it was Mennonites. So the Mennonites are. There's no. They're not. They're the opposite end of the.
- [58:30]
David Remnick
They're not racist.
- [58:31]
Malcolm Gladwell
There's no racist. There was no racist. You know, it was nothing. And also, it's a very different. Now that I understand this, it's a very different story when you're the only black person in town.
- [58:41]
David Remnick
What do you mean?
- [58:43]
Malcolm Gladwell
We'll actually talk about this in my book. An outsider is not threatening in those numbers. Right? Particularly an outsider who is. And she was. This is a deeply Christian town, and my mother is a very devout woman. And so she read very. She seemed very familiar to them, even as she was, at the same time, in some sense, exotic. But she's very. She would never register. Even if something untoward was done to her, she would never register that in the moment. She would hold it back and she would tell you about it maybe later, but it was in a. And also, there's a lot of West Indians will tell you this. It's very different to come from a culture where you're in the majority. You know, a story, actually, I told in Outliers when my mom was in. She was a scholarship student at a boarding school in Jamaica, and all of the scholarship students were black. Right. They would be and they were all there because they were really good students. And so she's like 11 years old, and she reads in the Encyclopedia Britannica that black people are genetically inferior to white people when it comes to intelligence. And she is. No, she can't comprehend this because in her world, all the smart people are the.
- [60:00]
David Remnick
This was in the Britannica?
- [60:02]
Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah. This is, like, from 1900.
- [60:03]
David Remnick
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [60:04]
Malcolm Gladwell
They are still in Jamaica in 1930. Whatever. But in her world, all the smart people are black. And the dumb ones are the, you know, the plantation owners, daughters, you know, these white kids from, you know, one generation. They're like, what are they doing here? You know? And so it's like, that's the. If that's your mindset when all you. In her. So she has a. So you come to Canada and you have no comprehension of the basis. You think of racism. You think of racist tropes as absurd as opposed to being malignant.
- [60:37]
David Remnick
Malcolm, I want to thank you deeply for your work and your friendship. I miss you. You live in, in, like, God knows where in upstate New York. I wish I saw you much more often.
- [60:53]
Malcolm Gladwell
Your idea of upstate New York is, like, awesome. That's about as far as you go. You're like, we're Renter and I are going away from the weekend. Where are you going?
- [61:03]
David Remnick
Yonkers. Yonkers.
- [61:06]
Malcolm Gladwell
We're going to Yonkers.
- [61:08]
David Remnick
What was your theory there? What was the mountain Jews? I'm not a mountain. You.
- [61:12]
Malcolm Gladwell
You're not a mountain?
- [61:13]
David Remnick
No, I'm really not. I, you know, I, I'm an environmentalist because I want there to be a wonderful and healthy environment for you.
- [61:21]
Malcolm Gladwell
Are you? No. You're an environmentalist because you, you've, you've been told there is an environment out there.
- [61:27]
David Remnick
I, I'm, I, I, I, I check in with Betsy Colbert and Bill McKibben and, and, and others.
- [61:34]
Malcolm Gladwell
Yes.
- [61:35]
David Remnick
And I'm told, like, the other day I was walking into my building and I heard this racket, and I said, what is that? And the door guy said, those are birds. Evidently. This is a bad attitude. I want to close by asking you a very crucial question. You have an ambivalent relationship. Relationship with sports. With sports. You once said, and I know you're a huge sports fan. Buffalo Bills, running. You're a terrific runner. But you've also said that sports are a moral abomination.
- [62:18]
Malcolm Gladwell
Did I say that? You did, yeah. Yeah, I remember. In what era of my, I think.
- [62:27]
David Remnick
You were, your annoyance with professionals sports.
- [62:30]
Malcolm Gladwell
Well, I do, you know, so here's my, in a nutshell, my current thinking on this. I was a very good high school runner and then I quit and didn't run for 30 years and then started again and became a kind of slightly better than mediocre.
- [62:49]
David Remnick
Better than that.
- [62:50]
Malcolm Gladwell
But okay, not. Yeah, when I was at 16, I was up here. When I was 50, I was down here. And I had way, way, way more fun when I was 50 and mediocre than I did when I was 15 and a national champion. And it has made me realize that you actually, you want to be mediocre. You don't want to be, you don't want to be good. It's that aside from the very, very small group of people who genuinely, if you're LeBron or you're Usain Bolt, fine, But the, the idea that the rest of us should be pursuing that kind of athletic excellence is a mistake. And what's happened there is, I think in the audience a woman named Linda Flanagan, who wrote this book I adore called Taking Back the Game, which is this critique of what's gone wrong with youth sports. And this is, I think, one of her, this is one of her central arguments in this wonderful book, which really change the way I think about, which is that we've destroyed the very thing that made sports fun. Play, play. Right. By this kind of professionalizing of youth sports. And I realized that was my problem when I was 15. I was caught up in a fantasy about that I was going to go to the Olympics and it ruined running for me. And I didn't run for 30 years. And that's heartbreaking because I love running more than almost anything else. And I recovered my joy of running only when I was coming in 28 in my local 5K. And so that's what I mean by like this. We shouldn't be telling. We shouldn't be. Linda would tell you, why are you taking a 13 year old and putting them through the torturing, the torture and getting in a car and driving for three hours for like a song soccer match? Why the drive should never be longer than the match. That should be a rule, right?
- [64:48]
David Remnick
Malcolm Gladwell, thank you. It's been a pleasure.
- [64:59]
Thanks for listening to that conversation with David remnick at the 92nd Street Y. You can find revenge at the tipping point wherever you get your audiobooks. Next time on Revisionist History, an update on Broken Windows theory. Revisionist History is produced by Lucy Sullivan with Ben Nadaff Haffrey and Nina Byrd Lawrence. Our editor is Karen Shakerji. Original scoring by Luis Guerra. Mastering by Echo Mountain. Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence. Production support from Luc Lamond. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Sarah Nix and, as always, el jefe, Greta Cohn. I'm Malcolm Glappo.