Speaker 1: It is absolutely the case that we're going to get
Speaker 1: it with something probably a lot even scarier than COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: Our ability to respond to those things effectively and quickly
Speaker 1: is so much better than it was five years ago.
Speaker 1: I mean, so it's an arms race, and we might
Speaker 1: be winning the arms race right now. Malcolm Gladwell is
Speaker 1: a journalist, a public speaker, a podcast host, co founder
Speaker 1: of a podcast company, and a New York Times bestselling author.
Speaker 1: Gladwell has been on the Time one hundred Most Influential
Speaker 1: People list and as touted as one of Foreign Policy's
Speaker 1: top global thinkers. Stephen Colbert once said that Malcolm says
Speaker 1: things that other people haven't thought of before. And I'm
Speaker 1: very delighted to have him here in my Bedford, New
Speaker 1: York home and on my podcast. Welcome Malcolm. Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's very nice to see you in person. Yes, I
Speaker 1: think I have seen you speak before in person, but
Speaker 1: you we never met in person. So it's a very
Speaker 1: exciting and and it's really a droid to talk to
Speaker 1: someone who has managed to take thoughts and put them
Speaker 1: into absolutely clear writing. I mean, I just I'm always
Speaker 1: amazed that you can take the word blink and make
Speaker 1: it into a book that really is meaningful or or
Speaker 1: the tipping point. But first I wanted to talk. I
Speaker 1: had no idea, and I bet our audience doesn't have
Speaker 1: any idea that you love cars. I do. Tell me
Speaker 1: why you love cars? Well, I've always you know how
Speaker 1: every four year old boy is obsessed with cars and
Speaker 1: trucks and tractors. I just never grew out of that phase.
Speaker 1: So it's just the rest of development. There's nothing more
Speaker 1: than that. When I was a kid, when I was
Speaker 1: thirteen years old, I rode away to every car company
Speaker 1: in the world, with the exception of one, which one
Speaker 1: the Russian zill which was not I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to get in contact with him, but I collected and
Speaker 1: I still have to this day. The promotional brochures on
Speaker 1: every single car made, those big fancy books that they
Speaker 1: put out every year every I think five, I have
Speaker 1: one for every car in the world. How amazing, And
Speaker 1: they're incredible time because you know, back then, more so
Speaker 1: than now, incredible amount of thought and care went into
Speaker 1: the making of these promotional brochures. They were beautiful. The
Speaker 1: photography is so extraordinary, it's extraordinary, and the way they
Speaker 1: set it up and they took them on to mountains
Speaker 1: and deserts and all over the world. And the most
Speaker 1: fun ones were the general motors adds back then always
Speaker 1: had it took great pains to put to pair a
Speaker 1: couple with car, so they would imagine what the ideal
Speaker 1: couple was for this particular model of car, and they
Speaker 1: would give you. You You know, it was a hilarious I
Speaker 1: mean I was a little kid, so it was kind
Speaker 1: of discovering the world of marketing. I guess it was
Speaker 1: very rare for a car I can't belive we're talking.
Speaker 1: This is so lovely. It's very rare for car ads
Speaker 1: back then to have people in them. It was an America.
Speaker 1: It was very much a Detroit thing. But you wouldn't
Speaker 1: the Germans. You if you looked at the Mercedes brochure
Speaker 1: from the mid seventies, only the engineering, right, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a discussion of the engineering. It was a very
Speaker 1: technical picture of the cars kind of inner workings, and
Speaker 1: it was the car in motion on some Bavarian pass.
Speaker 1: But there were no people. I mean, that was not
Speaker 1: They weren't thinking about people in their in their marketing.
Speaker 1: So what do you what do you collect? You collect cars?
Speaker 1: To well to say I collect them as too much.
Speaker 1: I have UM a Pride and Joy, which is a
Speaker 1: two thousand and four BMW M five, which is considered
Speaker 1: the great I have no idea what he's talking about.
Speaker 1: It is the great analog. It's the last great car
Speaker 1: they made before cars were taken over by computers? Is
Speaker 1: it the little one? Was it little to be? I
Speaker 1: must have had that car. You probably did if you
Speaker 1: had a BMW in the I did in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands. This is the card did. This is the car.
Speaker 1: I gave it to my nephew because I didn't, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't like the air conditioning or the heating. That
Speaker 1: something was your breaking bar. You gave it away, and
Speaker 1: I get well. I gave it to my my nephew.
Speaker 1: He needed a car, all right, he was at yale yea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have UM. But I have you know, I have
Speaker 1: these friends. I have several friends, one friend in particular, Dan,
Speaker 1: who has a garage full of the most beautiful cars.
Speaker 1: That's why I lived next door to here. Do you
Speaker 1: know who? Ralph Lauren? Oh? Of course, who has got
Speaker 1: a next door? Are you serious? Yes? You want to
Speaker 1: go see his car? Colleps I would. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: he's got one of the great car collections in the world,
Speaker 1: in the world. I'm killed to see that. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: I will arrange that be fantastic. Okay, any other thing
Speaker 1: you want to say about cars, Well, if you would like,
Speaker 1: I could talk about them forever. But we may want
Speaker 1: to talk about other things. I think we should probably
Speaker 1: talk about who is Malcolm good Well and what has
Speaker 1: he done to to create a great, big buzz in
Speaker 1: the world of thinking. Really, this is all about thinking.
Speaker 1: It's for for me. It is like just incredible. And
Speaker 1: your latest book, The Bomber Mafia. Tell us about that?
Speaker 1: Is that your seventh book or eighth book? Can't I
Speaker 1: think I can't remember it six or seven. It grew
Speaker 1: out of a I went to Tokyo how many years ago?
Speaker 1: This is three or four years ago. And um, first
Speaker 1: of all, I mean, I'm sure you've been to Tokyo
Speaker 1: many times. The most extraordinary city. I may I just
Speaker 1: fell in love with it right away. We're just saying
Speaker 1: it matters where you stay. Well, I stayed in this
Speaker 1: little out of the way place, but I spent one
Speaker 1: night in the Amman just to treat myself and good
Speaker 1: it was. I mean, but the high Did you go
Speaker 1: up to the top of the high? I didn't, So
Speaker 1: I used to stay only at the Okra, which was
Speaker 1: the traditional Frank Lloyd reightish kind of horizontal hotel. Is
Speaker 1: that the one they tore down down? They knocked down
Speaker 1: and then it's the most fabulous place and only to
Speaker 1: Tommy rooms. You didn't sleep on a western bed, you
Speaker 1: slept only on the on the futons. Yeah. So, but
Speaker 1: then I then I stayed at the Hyatt, which went up.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I can't remember how many stories short
Speaker 1: compared to what they're building now in Singapore and elsewhere,
Speaker 1: But what an amazing place. A friend of mine has
Speaker 1: a theory about Japan which I love, which is the
Speaker 1: smaller things get in Japan, the better they are. So
Speaker 1: you you as opposed to nor only when you appreciate
Speaker 1: a new place, you expand your horizons. You look up.
Speaker 1: You could have looking. No, no, no, in Japan, you look,
Speaker 1: you narrow your gaze because their geniuses all in the details.
Speaker 1: Every d you look at Tokyo from afar, you don't understand.
Speaker 1: It looks like any looks like new work, but it's
Speaker 1: anything like Newark. So I my favorite tooky story was
Speaker 1: I was walking down the street and I saw a
Speaker 1: little tie any sign which said in English coffee. I'm
Speaker 1: a residential street. There's no other sign, no evidence whatsoever
Speaker 1: of this coffee shop. But I wanted. I actually wanted
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee. So I spent twenty minutes hunting
Speaker 1: for this coffee shop because it was clear that it
Speaker 1: was somewhere ended up, you know, downstairs, through an alley, upstairs,
Speaker 1: across the courtyard, up you know, down a long corridor,
Speaker 1: and there is an absolutely exquisite room the size of
Speaker 1: this one, with one person in it, young woman. It's gorgeous.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, a minimalist white with a beautiful
Speaker 1: window over a garden. And she made me the greatest
Speaker 1: cup of copy or I had in my life. And
Speaker 1: when I tried to tip her, you know I'm an American,
Speaker 1: she got very offended and I sort of felt like
Speaker 1: I had I mean, it was I can't remember, Yes,
Speaker 1: it was a couple of years, but it was such
Speaker 1: a Japanese experience. It's like they had this exquisite coffee
Speaker 1: house hidden away. You have to spend twenty minutes looking
Speaker 1: for it and then then you and when you find it,
Speaker 1: it's this little jew box. Oh no, I've been to
Speaker 1: Japan many times. It's actually one of my very favorite
Speaker 1: countries to visit. As people are flocking to Italy and
Speaker 1: I have nothing against Italy. I love Italy. I would
Speaker 1: rather go to Japan and discover that coffee shop and
Speaker 1: the little sushi restaurant hidden away someplace, or the or
Speaker 1: the oldest tree on Yakushima Island. I mean, that's what
Speaker 1: I go for. It's it's an amazingly beautiful country. And
Speaker 1: so so you were visiting their way, I happened to
Speaker 1: go to this little museum um a private museum in
Speaker 1: what looked like a dentist's office in way in some
Speaker 1: distant corner of of of East Tokyo, and it was
Speaker 1: a museum dedicated to it's called the Center for the
Speaker 1: Bombing of Tokyo or something, and it was it was
Speaker 1: a kind of the most homespun um d i y
Speaker 1: museum you've ever seen, you know, things on print, you know,
Speaker 1: print out computer print outs and photocopy things and scale
Speaker 1: models of things. And it was a record of the
Speaker 1: night that the US Air Force fire bomb Tokyo, in
Speaker 1: March of nine. It maybe the day where more people
Speaker 1: died in a wartime action than any single day in history.
Speaker 1: UM certainly in the Second World War, hundred thousand people
Speaker 1: as many of the hundred thousand people were killed in
Speaker 1: this um with B twenty nine's dropping napalm. They napalm
Speaker 1: to Tokyo in the spring of h was when was
Speaker 1: the bomb dropped on hero Shima in the fall of
Speaker 1: forty five, So this is right before the dropping of
Speaker 1: the two nuclear bombs on Nagasaki. In Hirishima was the
Speaker 1: consequence of the failure of the fire bombing campaign of
Speaker 1: the summer of nine to bring to bring uh to
Speaker 1: force Japan to surrender. They wouldn't surrender. So I went
Speaker 1: to this place and I knew nothing about this history,
Speaker 1: and I found the experience going to the museum so
Speaker 1: moving that I thought I would love to tell the
Speaker 1: story of that night. And of course the story of
Speaker 1: that night. The minute you commit yourself to telling the
Speaker 1: story of one night in a war, then you get
Speaker 1: pulled in a million different directions. In the bottom off,
Speaker 1: he is the kind of that I worked backwards from
Speaker 1: that night and told you basically, try to tell the
Speaker 1: story of how was it that America decided to burn
Speaker 1: some huge portion of Tokyo to the ground with napalm
Speaker 1: in the SPRINGTI that is the fortress awfullest kind of
Speaker 1: thing to do, right, Yeah, it's a it's a. It
Speaker 1: is probably the darkest moment for the United States of
Speaker 1: the Second World War. UM, it may have been. There's
Speaker 1: an argument that I make in the book, not that
Speaker 1: I'm endorsed, but I just the book is not intended
Speaker 1: to be a kind of It's not my theory on
Speaker 1: the war. It's very descriptive. I'm trying to dis I
Speaker 1: have a struggle between two men, Curtis the may and
Speaker 1: I got into Haywood Hansel, who had two radicate different
Speaker 1: ideas about how to pursue the war against Japan. And
Speaker 1: they were polar opposites, and they hated each other and
Speaker 1: they did it. They're both Americans, both Americans, are they
Speaker 1: both generals, both generals, and Haywood Hansel is in charge
Speaker 1: of the air war against Japan, and he tries it
Speaker 1: his way and fails. And that was the atom bombs.
Speaker 1: That was no he he wanted to He had a
Speaker 1: whole idea that you didn't uh. He believed in precision bombing.
Speaker 1: Hit this notion you can bring your enemy to his
Speaker 1: knees just by selectively bombing very critical industries, you know, aqueducts,
Speaker 1: power stations. You don't you don't have to kill any civilians.
Speaker 1: You don't have to destroy a city. That was sort
Speaker 1: of a nice, nice way. It was the Yes, it's
Speaker 1: the most humane way. It doesn't work, and he's at
Speaker 1: wits end and he gets fired, and they bring in
Speaker 1: his antithesis, this man named Curtis to May, and May
Speaker 1: is the man who says, if if the humane way
Speaker 1: doesn't work, I'm going to napalm Tokyo and burn to
Speaker 1: the ground. And that's the book is about that story,
Speaker 1: but of their conflict and also about the use of
Speaker 1: airplanes in war. Yeah, it gets because you quickly once
Speaker 1: you start from the premise. You know. It begins in
Speaker 1: Alabama because a group of these visionaries in the Air
Speaker 1: Force moved to Montgomery, Alabama in the mid nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: because they want to be as far away as possible
Speaker 1: from washing in d C. And they try to They
Speaker 1: sit at Maxwell Air Force Base. If you've been to Montgomery,
Speaker 1: by the way, I have been to concomery. But I
Speaker 1: haven't been to the Air Force base. Ah, you must
Speaker 1: go to Maxwell. Oh, actually this is a digression, but
Speaker 1: you know this is how much you should go to Maxwell,
Speaker 1: because what it is is it is first of all,
Speaker 1: a time capsule of earlier of the of the Southern.
Speaker 1: It is French colonial um villas for all of the officers.
Speaker 1: So these imagine um these huge oaks, so those Southern oaks.
Speaker 1: So we've got curving streets with these hundred year old
Speaker 1: live oaks and these French colonial villas which are for
Speaker 1: rear the officers. And it goes on for It's like
Speaker 1: street after street after street of these you know, exactly
Speaker 1: as they were in nineteen whatever thirty six when they
Speaker 1: were built. And then you have these forties kind of
Speaker 1: modernist buildings where all the Air Force offices are. It's
Speaker 1: just like you think you've been you've been dropped into
Speaker 1: ninety It's like you could film a movie there and
Speaker 1: you wanted to change the singles. How great, because you know,
Speaker 1: you go to other places, like in San Francisco, there's
Speaker 1: like an army base that looks like that to not
Speaker 1: not not Southern, but more like San Francisco architecture. They
Speaker 1: used to take the idiom of the local architecture, the dormitories,
Speaker 1: and you know, you go to places and it's so
Speaker 1: amazing that they actually in Italy. We just we were
Speaker 1: in Milan and we went to some air Force space
Speaker 1: that they had had with all the hospitals in there,
Speaker 1: in the hospital rooms everything, it's just looked like a
Speaker 1: residential area. It's funny, So that sounds if ever you should,
Speaker 1: you should go and take a little tour of Maxwell
Speaker 1: and the you know, I went there in the summer
Speaker 1: and you know, central Alabama in August is I love,
Speaker 1: actually love it. It's that kind of really close heat
Speaker 1: and that particular smell and the you know, the cicadas
Speaker 1: and the cypress trees, trees. It was the swamps or
Speaker 1: the swamps there, I mean super yeah, it's that whole.
Speaker 1: I mean everything is the swamp. I mean it's so
Speaker 1: humid you step outside and you're sort of drenched in sweat.
Speaker 1: So the people I write about the Bomber Mafia with
Speaker 1: this group of young men who they were in Virginia
Speaker 1: and they felt that they were misunderstood by the Army
Speaker 1: brass and literally said, what is the place we can
Speaker 1: go in America and be as far away, not just
Speaker 1: geographically but intellectually from this orthodoxy we can't stand. So
Speaker 1: they were the ones who started to come up with
Speaker 1: these ideas that bombing selectively would be more humane. So
Speaker 1: they so they DeCamp to Maxwell Air Force in Montgomery,
Speaker 1: which is but in and of itself is such a
Speaker 1: kind of strange. Can you imagine being in Montgomery in
Speaker 1: the thirties and all of a sudden these group of
Speaker 1: young Air Force pilots just kind of land renegades, land
Speaker 1: in the middle of what is the sleepiest, most conservative,
Speaker 1: kind of most retrograde, you know, town in Alabama. So
Speaker 1: it's it's a great story. So then back to what
Speaker 1: was your sister first book, typic Point. Yes, this one
Speaker 1: just put you on the map. This I mean you
Speaker 1: were already uh you know one of the best writers
Speaker 1: that you were born in England. I was educated in Canada,
Speaker 1: and Canada outside Toronto, there's a there's a town called Waterloo,
Speaker 1: which is where the big Canadian science universities, and then
Speaker 1: started to write not only essays, but now this first
Speaker 1: book was published in what year, in two thousand times
Speaker 1: and betraying my advanced years. Yes, fifty eight years old.
Speaker 1: He has accomplished more than most fifty eight year olds ever, ever,
Speaker 1: ever could hope to accomplish. And what made you choose
Speaker 1: chipping point? Well, I had to describe to our listeners
Speaker 1: what because there probably are some, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: that had not read your book. I moved to in
Speaker 1: and in New York was You'll remember this was still
Speaker 1: one of the most dangerous cities in the United States,
Speaker 1: right it was, famously it was so. I remember going
Speaker 1: out with my friends and at the end of the
Speaker 1: evening we would pool our money and figure about how
Speaker 1: everyone was going to get home because it wasn't safe too.
Speaker 1: I had a walk or take the subway. Yet I
Speaker 1: don't see. I don't know where that comes from. I was.
Speaker 1: I felt so safe in New York I did. I
Speaker 1: did not feel unsafe until nine twelve. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a that was that was the tipping point
Speaker 1: for me. And then I started to look up. I
Speaker 1: never I never felt like looking up. I just was.
Speaker 1: I was so happy. You never got mugged in New York,
Speaker 1: and I did get mugged once. It's not a pleasant experience,
Speaker 1: but I thought that was just like a kind of
Speaker 1: a weird, a weird occurrence. I mean, I knew people
Speaker 1: got mugged, but you know, you're in the big city. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something I was going, what happened? I was going to
Speaker 1: you just reminded me of this. I forgot about this.
Speaker 1: I was going to my publisher with my only copy
Speaker 1: of my manuscript for one of my cookbooks. It was
Speaker 1: probably like Quick Cook or Quick Cook menus, I can't remember,
Speaker 1: in a big bag. And I was taking a finished manuscript.
Speaker 1: And this is pre computer. You know, we didn't have
Speaker 1: it on I think I had a carbon copy at
Speaker 1: home or something. And I was walking across the street.
Speaker 1: They were at that time, they were below forty two
Speaker 1: street on Park Avenue, and I was on the side
Speaker 1: street on carrying this thing, and some man came up
Speaker 1: to me and bashed me on my shoulders from the behind,
Speaker 1: and I dropped my manuscript and I said, I looked around,
Speaker 1: what do you want? And he said I want your money?
Speaker 1: And I said to people were standing around me and
Speaker 1: said help me, please. Nobody would help me. This is
Speaker 1: like three o'clock in the afternoons. Yeah, And I picked
Speaker 1: up my bag and I said, you get out of here,
Speaker 1: and I ran across the street into the building. So
Speaker 1: I didn't give him any money and nothing, but that
Speaker 1: was that was scary. I remember he hit on the shoulder.
Speaker 1: My shoulders hurt for a while. Goodness. Yeah, So that
Speaker 1: was my This is my only muggy. This was not
Speaker 1: sufficient to cause cause you to be scared of New York. No, no,
Speaker 1: because that I mean, you know, any city, go to
Speaker 1: go to Europe, you know, go any place, you would
Speaker 1: get mugged. I got mugged by someone once and he
Speaker 1: said I have a gun, and he had something. He
Speaker 1: had his hand in his jacket pocket and it was
Speaker 1: very clear that it was just his finger, but I
Speaker 1: wasn't certain. And there was his finger. I was maybe
Speaker 1: so I thought, well, there's a two percent chance it
Speaker 1: actually is. It could be a small gun. So so
Speaker 1: I thought about this and then I said, um, I said,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to give my whole wallet, but I
Speaker 1: will give you the money in my wallet. And he
Speaker 1: thought that was a good arrangement, and that was the
Speaker 1: That was the end of it. But so to my story,
Speaker 1: New York in when I got there was statistically at
Speaker 1: least a very unsafe place, and then within three or
Speaker 1: four years. By the late nineties it was one of
Speaker 1: the safest cities in the United States. It was this
Speaker 1: extraordinary transformation, and there was no one who predicted that transformation.
Speaker 1: To the contrary, if you talked to criminologists, they would
Speaker 1: have said, it would be unimaginable that New York would
Speaker 1: ever be a safe place. They couldn't know that if
Speaker 1: if it changed at all, it would take decades. But
Speaker 1: that's not what happened. It turned around in the space
Speaker 1: of three or four years. And then if you ask
Speaker 1: people after it turned around, well, how did that happen?
Speaker 1: No one had an explanation. Even the savvaest criminologists in
Speaker 1: the country. We're like, we're baffled as to why this happened.
Speaker 1: So I was in the middle of this. I was
Speaker 1: working for the Washington Post, and um I left to
Speaker 1: go to the New Yorker, and I was reflecting on
Speaker 1: this transformation, and I realized, Oh, there must be some
Speaker 1: way to explain what happened. I should write a book
Speaker 1: about that. So that was the genesis of the idea
Speaker 1: of the tipping point, which is that social phenomenon can
Speaker 1: behave like epidemics and just you know, an epidemic is
Speaker 1: something that mysteriously goes from zero sixty and no time,
Speaker 1: and then just as mysterious, they can disappear. Think about
Speaker 1: the way the flu comes out of nowhere every winter
Speaker 1: and then it's gone right overnight. So I said, what
Speaker 1: if crime in a place like New York is following
Speaker 1: the same logic as contagious disease? And then I thought, well,
Speaker 1: but what if all kinds of things followed that logic?
Speaker 1: So what if fashion trends really follow that? What if
Speaker 1: they're contagious phenomenon? So that was what got me thinking.
Speaker 1: And then and the tipping point is simply a is
Speaker 1: the term that you used to describe when an epidemic
Speaker 1: goes from that kind of hidden phase to exploding. And
Speaker 1: you wrote so lucidly about that. I mean, it's such
Speaker 1: an amazing man. Chipping point became part of our vernacular.
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton used it once and I was like, I
Speaker 1: can die happy now Bill Clinton is talking about tipping points. Well,
Speaker 1: everybody has I I can't. I can't imagine any public
Speaker 1: speaker not using tipping point? Is this your favorite book?
Speaker 1: Do you have a favorite book? It might be talking
Speaker 1: to strangers. I don't know. I think I'm talking to strangers.
Speaker 1: What a great, great book tell us about that? That
Speaker 1: one was just that I was struck by how many
Speaker 1: um soften the way my book ideas come come from.
Speaker 1: You know, I was just struck by how many of
Speaker 1: the kind of controversies in the news we're all about
Speaker 1: the same thing. This is a couple years ago. They
Speaker 1: were all versions of we're confronted with someone and we
Speaker 1: misinterpret them. So, you know, this was I was thinking
Speaker 1: of the book. I was hatching a book when the
Speaker 1: Bernie made Off case was at its height, and it
Speaker 1: was such a classic example of this that a large
Speaker 1: group of people think they know Bernie made off and
Speaker 1: they don't. And the people who think they know Bernie
Speaker 1: made off and you are mistaken, are not naive, They're intelligent, thoughtful, experienced,
Speaker 1: they're not well look how many Look how many wealthy, intelligence,
Speaker 1: successful people invested with him exactly, So it's how were
Speaker 1: they taken in by him? So this is what was
Speaker 1: interesting because normally when we see a scam artist, we say, oh,
Speaker 1: a scam artist is someone who takes advantage of the
Speaker 1: vulnerable of people who are who don't know anything, are
Speaker 1: easily fooled. Are they're old the bad lage? You know.
Speaker 1: They we come up with all kinds of reasons why
Speaker 1: they were susceptible to being taken in in that way.
Speaker 1: None of those arguments work with pretty made off. He
Speaker 1: fooled the Kremla krem and so that makes him really interesting, right,
Speaker 1: And then I thought, oh, there's tons of other examples
Speaker 1: of this. You know, in the book I write about
Speaker 1: the case of Jerry Sandusky, the football coach at Penn State,
Speaker 1: who was a pedophile, and he, you know, the the
Speaker 1: people who were taken in by him. The president of
Speaker 1: the university was fooled by him. The Joe Paterno, one
Speaker 1: of the great football coaches of our day, was fooled
Speaker 1: by him. These were not people who were There was
Speaker 1: an argument that I strenuously disagree with that said that
Speaker 1: those people, Joe Paterno, when the president were complex it
Speaker 1: in they were not complicit. The idea that the president
Speaker 1: of university would would look the other way if he
Speaker 1: thought there was a pedophile on the staff of his
Speaker 1: school is nonsense. They were fooled by him, and the
Speaker 1: same way that people were fooled by Bernie Madoff, and
Speaker 1: the same way that all of us, if we are
Speaker 1: honest about ourselves, we realize that we are also, on
Speaker 1: occasion excessively trusting. And so what I wanted to discover
Speaker 1: all of us? You really think that you can? You
Speaker 1: can put us all in the same bucket human beings.
Speaker 1: So this is the kind of core argument of the book,
Speaker 1: which is this idea by this guy named Tim Leavin.
Speaker 1: It brilliant researcher in in Birmingham, Alabama. His argument is
Speaker 1: that we are by nature trusting as human beings, which
Speaker 1: is why we have achieved what we've achieved. Right, we
Speaker 1: would never have been able to to build a modern society,
Speaker 1: to form companies, to innovate, to collaborate, to do anything
Speaker 1: of value unless we trusted each other. But the cost
Speaker 1: of that implicit trust that we have for one another
Speaker 1: is that we will occasionally be deceived. On occasion we
Speaker 1: are a little too willing to extend the benefit of
Speaker 1: the doubt to people, and that means that Madoff can
Speaker 1: come along every now and again and and and make
Speaker 1: off with our money. Now, the good news, though, is
Speaker 1: that there are vanishingly few Bernie Maynoffs in the world.
Speaker 1: But what Tim would say is that that's the price
Speaker 1: we pay for everything else that's good about the world.
Speaker 1: And if you think about just read all a few
Speaker 1: people that we have to put up with in the world,
Speaker 1: think about your own career. You have gone from one
Speaker 1: thing to the next, where you have built these um organizations, companies, communities,
Speaker 1: all these these things. You've these collaborative things you've done
Speaker 1: over the course everything that you've done has been based
Speaker 1: on trust. Right you also extend that bene to the
Speaker 1: doubt to others. Right that, so I said, the collaborative
Speaker 1: nature of so many of the things to have done
Speaker 1: our evidence that you. Um, if you the people who
Speaker 1: give trust are rewarded with trust. That's a kind of
Speaker 1: a fundamental principle of every now and then a bad
Speaker 1: and were we can't let them ruin it for the
Speaker 1: rest of us. We have to kind of you have
Speaker 1: to say, all right, um, you know I made off
Speaker 1: took me, but that doesn't mean that I have to
Speaker 1: I have to assume that everyone who I deal with
Speaker 1: is trying to rip me off. That is not the
Speaker 1: right way to live your life. Right. I wanted to
Speaker 1: get back to tipping point just for one second. Did
Speaker 1: you ever when you were writing this book and vision
Speaker 1: a pandemic like COVID nineteen. Well, oddly yes, I did,
Speaker 1: because when I was at the Washington Post before I
Speaker 1: wrote Tipping Point, one of the jobs I had was
Speaker 1: that I was I covered the AIDS epidemic for the Post.
Speaker 1: We had a full time reporter covering that, and I
Speaker 1: was covering it at UH, one of the worst stretches,
Speaker 1: so before we had any kind of effective treatment UM.
Speaker 1: And in that, in that period of my life, had
Speaker 1: many long conversations with epidemiologists and biologists. I actually knew.
Speaker 1: I knew Tony Faucci back in the day, back when
Speaker 1: Tony was UM was when his wh I called him
Speaker 1: Tony an extraordinary human being who saw America through two
Speaker 1: you know, devastating epidemics. But if he's spend any time
Speaker 1: at all with virologists, UM, you absolutely entertain the notion
Speaker 1: that there's going to be a big one one day.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what they've been. They spend their lives
Speaker 1: worrying about that and trying to protect us against UM
Speaker 1: that eventuality. So I was I would go down to
Speaker 1: the CDC in Atlanta and they would talk about, you
Speaker 1: know what did a you know there was a moment
Speaker 1: when back in the eighties, when they you know, we
Speaker 1: were fearful about how much damage aids, whether HIV could
Speaker 1: spread far and wide as opposed to being confined to
Speaker 1: particular subgroups. Um, when it became clear that HIV was
Speaker 1: not nearly as contagious as we thought it was, then
Speaker 1: the question immediately rose, well, what would it truly contagious
Speaker 1: virus look like? It looked like a lot like COVID
Speaker 1: denteteam by the way, and what do you what do
Speaker 1: you see in the near future for that? Are you
Speaker 1: going to write another book about that or not? My my,
Speaker 1: my good friend Michael Spector, who was also uh covered
Speaker 1: hivy with me at the Washington Post, he's doing a
Speaker 1: book right now on vaccines, and so there are other
Speaker 1: better people writing about this. But what he would tell
Speaker 1: you is that although it is absolutely the case that
Speaker 1: we're going to get hit with something probably a lot
Speaker 1: even scarier than COVID nenteen, our ability to respond to
Speaker 1: those things effectively and quickly is so much better than
Speaker 1: it was five years ago. I mean, so it's an
Speaker 1: arms race, and we might be winning the arms race
Speaker 1: right now. So what about you must have thought about
Speaker 1: Ukraine Russia, What do you think? Well, I, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a thing that I follow. There's something called military
Speaker 1: logistics Twitter, which is a group of these military people
Speaker 1: x army guys mostly on Twitter, who are obsessed with logistics.
Speaker 1: All they care about is like, how do you supply
Speaker 1: an army? Do you? You know? They have long Twitter
Speaker 1: threads on they examine a picture of a of a
Speaker 1: tire from a Russian armored car and they'll tell you,
Speaker 1: on the basis of what the tire looks like, what's
Speaker 1: wrong with the Russian army? That those those guys, and
Speaker 1: from the beginning they have been remarkably optimistic about Ukraine's chances,
Speaker 1: even back in March, based on the fact that they
Speaker 1: just think that the Russians, although they have a large army,
Speaker 1: they're just seriously incompetent in in in warmaking and that's
Speaker 1: really been and the Ukrainians, by contrast, are in the
Speaker 1: mind the eyes of these these people that I thought,
Speaker 1: this is Broye the way. The greatest thing about Twitter
Speaker 1: is that you can locate a community of people who
Speaker 1: know insane amounts about a very specific thing, and you
Speaker 1: can follow them. You can get it as if I'm
Speaker 1: talking to these guys every day, you know, me and
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of people around the world get access
Speaker 1: to the genius of these people. So they've been pointing
Speaker 1: out that the Russians reading it, of course, but they
Speaker 1: understanding that they're ill prepared. It's a little late in
Speaker 1: today to fix things when you're in the middle of
Speaker 1: a war and nobody's nobody's providing arms for maybe somebody
Speaker 1: is helping them with more armaments. Yeah, they're not being
Speaker 1: supplied with the sort of state of the art equipment
Speaker 1: the way that Ukrainians are. What's the focus of your
Speaker 1: next book. I'm writing a book about m Bradley, remember,
Speaker 1: the mayor of Los Angeles, first African American mayor of
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. And uh, it's a lot of it. It's turning.
Speaker 1: It's turning into a lot about what does it mean
Speaker 1: to be First of all, what was Los Angeles like
Speaker 1: in the forties and fifties, and in particular, what does
Speaker 1: it mean to be black in Los Angeles in the
Speaker 1: forties and fifties. Um, So I'm very very focused on
Speaker 1: his early long before he gets to be mayor. I'm
Speaker 1: very focused on his early days and it's where do
Speaker 1: you grew up with section? He grew up just off
Speaker 1: Central Avenue, So you know, the black community in those
Speaker 1: years was concentrated south of downtown on out side of
Speaker 1: the term south central refers to the neighborhoods on out
Speaker 1: the side of Central Avenue. It's been absolutely fascinating. And
Speaker 1: I've been reading about Jackie Robinson because Jackie Robinson is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, black Angelino of that here. It grew up
Speaker 1: in Pasadena, goes to u C. L A. Is friends
Speaker 1: with Tom Bradley there they went to college together. Um.
Speaker 1: So the world of all these people that knew each other,
Speaker 1: that interacted, and that we're all dealing with the same
Speaker 1: issues in l A in those years. And it's been
Speaker 1: I've been listening to all this kind of jazz from
Speaker 1: l A. Because that's the fifties. Of course, it is
Speaker 1: the time when that kind of music was sounds like
Speaker 1: a good movie too. Oh. I think it would be
Speaker 1: an amazing it would be an amazing audiobook because there's
Speaker 1: so much incredible tape of that era and of um
Speaker 1: all these incredible speeches and this is before both of
Speaker 1: our time. But Jack Benny had a radio show in
Speaker 1: the We sat at our kitchen table and eighties six
Speaker 1: Old Place and Nottley and listened to Jack did you really?
Speaker 1: We did. We were allowed to listen to Jack Benny,
Speaker 1: to the Shadow, to a lone Ranger, um that Dogwood
Speaker 1: or no Dad would? I mean, there were certain remember Rochester.
Speaker 1: Of course Rochester was his like aide de camp. You know,
Speaker 1: I sidekick Jack Benny is. There's people who don't know
Speaker 1: Jack Benny is one of the great American comedians of
Speaker 1: the very great Yeah, he's up there with you know
Speaker 1: that generation George, Yes, yes, that whole and he had
Speaker 1: a so the Ray. He had this famous radio show,
Speaker 1: and he had a sidekick on radio show. He was
Speaker 1: an actor, a black actor called Eddie Anderson, who played
Speaker 1: Jack Benny's butler. But he was this kind of He
Speaker 1: wasn't a subservient, you know, he was He was outrageous.
Speaker 1: He was outrageous. Eddie Anderson, who played Rochester, was was
Speaker 1: his informal title was the mayor of Central Avenue. So
Speaker 1: he's living in that part of Los Angeles where all
Speaker 1: these people were Tom Bradley, Jackie Robinson, Eddie Anderson, and
Speaker 1: Eddie Anderson is the kind of guy you would go to.
Speaker 1: If you were black in l A in the forties
Speaker 1: and you had a problem, you go to Eddie Anderson.
Speaker 1: He lived at a magnificent house not far from Central Avenue,
Speaker 1: and he had he had a kept He must have
Speaker 1: driven around in a fancy cars. Oh my god. He
Speaker 1: had racehorses, famous race horse called Burnt Cork, which was
Speaker 1: his way of of thumbing his nose at um because
Speaker 1: Burt Cork was what people used the black and her
Speaker 1: face is the midst the whole kind of um. And
Speaker 1: he his way of kind of giving the finger to
Speaker 1: that racist tradition. What it was to call his racehorse
Speaker 1: burnt Cork. I mean, he had a sense of humor
Speaker 1: about even that. But that's the world, and that's the
Speaker 1: world I've invented. I have to make a movie. What's
Speaker 1: it called. I haven't come up with the tittle yet
Speaker 1: for the book, but and it changes. I'm only in
Speaker 1: mid book, so it's changing all the time. But I'm
Speaker 1: I'm just interested in this cast of characters and what
Speaker 1: influence they had on the young Tom Bradley, because he's
Speaker 1: a remarkable did you ever meet him? A remarkable, remarkable
Speaker 1: man who has been forgotten? You know. I always say
Speaker 1: they everyone else gets an airport named after them. All
Speaker 1: they need l A X should be Tom Bradley Airport.
Speaker 1: All they named after him was the International Terminal. It's
Speaker 1: such a diss The man was the mayor of Los
Speaker 1: Angeles for twenty years. He is the father of modern
Speaker 1: l A. He revived down town l A. He's the
Speaker 1: first African American to be the mayor of a major
Speaker 1: American city where where African Americans were not the majority.
Speaker 1: He's an incredible figure in twenties century American politics. And
Speaker 1: he's been he's been hidden away um and forgotten, I
Speaker 1: think unjustly in Los Angeles. Okay, well that I cannot
Speaker 1: wait for the new book. And I'm going to make
Speaker 1: sure it's a movie. I have a part for Snoop
Speaker 1: Dogg in that movie. I want to know about Pushkin
Speaker 1: and you're making you're making all kinds of wonderful podcasts
Speaker 1: with this company. And you partnered with one of my
Speaker 1: oldest friends, Jacob Weisberg, who I met in Washington, D c.
Speaker 1: And teen eighty five when he was nineteen, and he
Speaker 1: rented a room from a windowless room, a windowless, un
Speaker 1: air conditioned room for me in the Washington, d C. Summer,
Speaker 1: so he was in retrospect. It was a torturous experience
Speaker 1: for him. But he and I about four years ago,
Speaker 1: three years ago now, UM decided to get together and
Speaker 1: start a little audio company which we call Pushkin and UM.
Speaker 1: It was it's to make my novelist after the novelists,
Speaker 1: actually sort of. I had a dog called Pushkin, who
Speaker 1: was named after So who was named after the the
Speaker 1: Russian poet. So it's it's it's it's the Russian poet.
Speaker 1: By you know, one step removed to a dog with
Speaker 1: my first dog, a delightful uh lab. It was actually
Speaker 1: a nut. But so we started this company and we
Speaker 1: make We do my podcast Revisions History, we make audiobooks.
Speaker 1: We do a bunch of other podcasts, um the Happiness Lab,
Speaker 1: Aloi Santos, which has been a big success for us,
Speaker 1: and Michael Lewis's podcast Against the Rules, and UM a
Speaker 1: whole and bunch of broken record this music podcast that
Speaker 1: we do. When we do audiobooks. For example, we did
Speaker 1: something called Miracle and Wonder I went actually lived not
Speaker 1: far from here, no longer does. But with my friend Bruce,
Speaker 1: we did an audiobook with Paul Simon called Miracle and Wonder,
Speaker 1: and we sat down with him for forty I would
Speaker 1: drive from Hudson to New Cayman. He sold his house
Speaker 1: to Richard Geary. I didn't know that Richard bought it.
Speaker 1: It's a lovely house. This is in the middle of
Speaker 1: the pandemic. I would go there. I must have gone
Speaker 1: there seven or eight times, and Paul, who's such a genius,
Speaker 1: would we would meet in his uh in his studio
Speaker 1: and he would just talk and play and we would
Speaker 1: ask him questions, and we use those tapes and created
Speaker 1: this audiobook called Miracle and Wonder, which is one of
Speaker 1: the best things I've ever been associated with. Signing books
Speaker 1: that are not really printed books, but their audio because
Speaker 1: they can incorporate the music, they can incorporate speech. Why
Speaker 1: would you read about Paul Simon when you can listen
Speaker 1: to him? Because you know, the fun part is when
Speaker 1: he'd be talking about something and he'd pick up his guitar.
Speaker 1: I used to always say, I would say to Bruce,
Speaker 1: who I did the book with? Its like Paul has
Speaker 1: to have his guitar in his hands because of the
Speaker 1: musician he thinks with a guitar in his hands right
Speaker 1: and he would so he would be talking and say
Speaker 1: and then I thought of this, and he would play something.
Speaker 1: It was just so magical to have this genius in
Speaker 1: front of you recreating some moment of inspiration from the audio.
Speaker 1: But it could have also been a documentary. It could
Speaker 1: have been, but it would have been Here's my issue
Speaker 1: with documentaries. There's so much more work involved with the
Speaker 1: documentary documentary that he takes you out of the moment.
Speaker 1: I mean, what was fun about us visiting with Paul
Speaker 1: is it was really just his engineer, Bruce, me and Paul.
Speaker 1: There were no cameraman, there were We weren't stopping every
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes to dab someone's forehead and change the tape.
Speaker 1: And just like I agree it sounds it sounds like
Speaker 1: such a great idea. It was just that kind of
Speaker 1: It was so relaxing and fun. So you get a
Speaker 1: different perspective Paul Simon through an audio book. For an
Speaker 1: audio do you see something closer? I think you give
Speaker 1: up something, you don't get to see him, but you
Speaker 1: gain something, which is you gain a kind of intimacy
Speaker 1: because we're also relaxing in a moment. But he'll still
Speaker 1: has he's done a documentary. He is doing a documentary.
Speaker 1: Actually it's I think going to come out this year.
Speaker 1: So you can get you can there's books about get
Speaker 1: everything you want. There's at this point. But and he
Speaker 1: deserves all kinds of all kinds of coverage. I love
Speaker 1: him so much, I think, he said, I truly think
Speaker 1: he is. He is the great twentieth century American song matter.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone else is on his level. The lyrics,
Speaker 1: just the lyrics, like amazing. Yeah. Now I grew up
Speaker 1: in stomping around the house listening to Paul Simon and Funcle.
Speaker 1: It's amazing that he's when you think about he's been
Speaker 1: a part of Yeah, he's been a part of your
Speaker 1: entire life. Oh yes, yeah. I mean it's like how
Speaker 1: many artists do you say of that that they are
Speaker 1: they are relevant to you over decades and decades. Elvis, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's windows but but so powerful. I mean I still
Speaker 1: still and Carol King, she was very important to me.
Speaker 1: I have always wanted to interview Carol King. She's fantastic.
Speaker 1: You should know her. I know her, Oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: I would love that. You shouldn't do that. I just
Speaker 1: think that and he has that raspy, fabulous voice, and
Speaker 1: she's just she's just an incredible person. So you know
Speaker 1: that she she tutored Paul Simon in in math when
Speaker 1: they were kids in Queen's I didn't know that. They
Speaker 1: go way wait, wait, way back. They were doing things
Speaker 1: together as teenagers. They were they had some part time
Speaker 1: job and her in her play. I don't remember that.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. But they knew each other from,
Speaker 1: you know, from the neighborhood. It's hilarious to think of
Speaker 1: all these people in the same you know, a little world.
Speaker 1: Once at dinner with Bono and Carol Kinge together in
Speaker 1: Ireland and Dublin. What a great night that wasn't I
Speaker 1: didn't even know. I mean, I'm so naive. I was
Speaker 1: sitting there with these people, and you know how you
Speaker 1: think afterwards, oh my god, that's a moment before everybody's
Speaker 1: holding up their phones and taking pictures of everybody. But
Speaker 1: what fun that was. But your your work is so
Speaker 1: interesting and you have time to do the podcast which
Speaker 1: are so valuable to so many of us who spend
Speaker 1: time on a treadmill, on a riding a bike around
Speaker 1: the countryside listening to podcasts. Podcasts I think are turning
Speaker 1: into something very valuable for for the human race, just
Speaker 1: because you do get to know subjects more intimately than
Speaker 1: you would just reading. And sometimes you can't read. You
Speaker 1: can't read and while you're doing something else, but you
Speaker 1: can list into podcasts. And now with the new the
Speaker 1: new little um Ear Buzz, they promise it doesn't hurt
Speaker 1: your ear drums. You know they're promising it. Do you
Speaker 1: believe that kind of I mean, I would be I
Speaker 1: would be, you know, acting against my own interest if
Speaker 1: I discourage people from putting them in. So no, no,
Speaker 1: that I just read a big report that they're not there.
Speaker 1: They are totally harmless to the to the hearing of
Speaker 1: our of our youth. Yeah, the issue is the volume. Yeah,
Speaker 1: ok about itself? Yeah okay, well we'll make a note
Speaker 1: of that for the grandchildren. You don't you want to
Speaker 1: be able to talk to when they get old. So well,
Speaker 1: it's been so much fun talking to you. We could
Speaker 1: go on forever, but I think we've covered a lot
Speaker 1: of territory and I cannot wait for your newest book.
Speaker 1: And I want everybody to know that the latest book,
Speaker 1: The Bomber Mafia, A dream of Temptation in the Longest
Speaker 1: Night of the Second World War is in bookstores right now,
Speaker 1: and of course online you can let's to Malcolm's podcast
Speaker 1: Revisionist History and Broken Record wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: and of course you can keep up with Malcolm by
Speaker 1: following him on Twitter. Is your Twitter as interesting as
Speaker 1: that bunch of strategists and logistic guys? Oh? No, not
Speaker 1: nearly as interesting. But occasionally I have something nice to say,
Speaker 1: I'm sure more than occasionally. And the handle is at Gladwell, Malcolm,
Speaker 1: it has been an absolute pleasure speaking with you today
Speaker 1: and I really enjoyed this. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming all the way from Budson, and I enjoyed it
Speaker 1: as well. I say, you've held one of the great
Speaker 1: collections of cook cooks I've ever seen. Oh it's edited
Speaker 1: to I have thousands more, but I keep editing because
Speaker 1: there's so many cookbooks. Do you how many of these
Speaker 1: do you use? Well? I know where they are. I
Speaker 1: know they're all here, and we've used them over the years.
Speaker 1: We've we've we've created recipes now there, So this is
Speaker 1: this is references reference. If you had to take one
Speaker 1: with you, one book you're going to you can tell,
Speaker 1: really the craziest thing is the joy of cooking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at it. Right there, there's my various editions
Speaker 1: of Joy of Cooking, saying