Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hi everyone, Malcolm here. The countdown is on on June
Speaker 2: twenty fourth. We'll be back with Season six, the most
Speaker 2: banana season of Revisionist history ever. I finally get out
Speaker 2: of the house. I've got Phoenix, New Orleans, and I
Speaker 2: go metaphorically to the Magic Kingdom on a mission of mischief.
Speaker 2: Season six is so fantastic. I don't want to give
Speaker 2: too much away. Just hang tight, It'll be here soon.
Speaker 2: It's been an especially busy time for me working on
Speaker 2: season six and promoting our new book, The Bomber Mafia.
Speaker 2: One of the events on my book tour was a
Speaker 2: conversation on Clubhouse with my good friend Adam Grant. He's
Speaker 2: an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School the University of Pennsylvania,
Speaker 2: and he hosts the podcast Take for Granted from the
Speaker 2: Ted Audio Collective. We've actually both had new books out
Speaker 2: this spring. Adams is called Think Again, which I really loved.
Speaker 2: It seems he and I are always crossing paths on
Speaker 2: the book tour circuit, and we always challenge each other
Speaker 2: and we always have fun. I wanted to play you
Speaker 2: some snippets of our recent conversations forgive Me by the Way,
Speaker 2: for stating the obvious, but books make great Father's Day gifts.
Speaker 2: Why not make it both? Get the Bomber Mafia audiobook
Speaker 2: from Bombermafia dot com and then think again from wherever
Speaker 2: you get your books, and I'll see you very soon
Speaker 2: for season six of Revisionist History. Okay, here's our clubhouse
Speaker 2: discussion about the Bomber.
Speaker 3: Mafia thrilla to welcome Malcolm Gladwell back to clubhouse. Malcolm
Speaker 3: glad you're here.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you. I was going to say, not a
Speaker 2: week passes when I'm not engaged in some kind of
Speaker 2: public conversation with you.
Speaker 3: Be careful what you wish for. Yes, I wanted to
Speaker 3: kick off by just asking you to tell us a
Speaker 3: little bit about the Bomber Mafia. I think it's anybody
Speaker 3: who's listened to Revisionist History the last couple of seasons
Speaker 3: knows how obsessed you are with it. But for those
Speaker 3: who are not initiated, give us the teaser.
Speaker 2: Bomber Mafia is the story of a group of pilots
Speaker 2: in southern Alabama in the nineteen thirties who believed that
Speaker 2: they had and could reinvent warfare. That they could through
Speaker 2: the use of technology particularly the bomber and means of
Speaker 2: dropping bombs with accuracy. They could render every other part
Speaker 2: of the military obsolete, and they could turn wars from
Speaker 2: something that where hundreds of thousands of civilians died as
Speaker 2: a matter of course, to a kind of clean and
Speaker 2: surgical exercise. And they took that dream with them into
Speaker 2: the Second World War and tried to make it real.
Speaker 2: And it's the story of it's the story of that attempt.
Speaker 2: What happens when a group of people with an idea,
Speaker 2: fired by morality and technology meet the real world.
Speaker 3: This is a very different kind of book than you've
Speaker 3: written before. First and foremost because the cover is not white,
Speaker 3: which threw me, but also also because it's a history book,
Speaker 3: and because despite your going back in history decades and decades,
Speaker 3: it's also more personal, I think than anything you've ever written.
Speaker 3: And I'd love for you to share with us a
Speaker 3: little bit about the seeds that were planted in your
Speaker 3: own life that got you curious about this topic.
Speaker 2: Well, my father, who was English, grew up in Kent
Speaker 2: in which is the which was called bamb Ally because
Speaker 2: the German bombers on their way to bomb London during
Speaker 2: the Blitz would pass over my father's little town in Kent,
Speaker 2: and he, as a child, would be instructed by my
Speaker 2: grandmother to sleep under his bed, which was the only
Speaker 2: plausible defense against a bomb dropping on her house, and
Speaker 2: he would He had all these stories like a bomb
Speaker 2: once landed in her backyard and luckily didn't explode. He
Speaker 2: was once out picking strawberries with my grandmother and German
Speaker 2: planes passed overhead and my grandmother hid my father and
Speaker 2: my uncle under newspapers for reasons that no one really knows.
Speaker 2: She thought maybe she hid them from the pilots they
Speaker 2: wouldn't bomb them. But it was like a He would
Speaker 2: tell these stories and to me, at you know, the
Speaker 2: age of five or six, these stories were unbelievably excited.
Speaker 2: You know, I was. I was in We were in
Speaker 2: rural southwestern Canada, maybe the most boring part of the
Speaker 2: western world, and my dad was telling me nothing happened.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a great good thing. And my father
Speaker 2: was telling me these stories about you know, like bombs
Speaker 2: dropping in his backyard when he was my age, and
Speaker 2: I you know, I think that probably instilled in me
Speaker 2: a kind of romantic love of this era.
Speaker 3: It shows and I know that you're a huge fan
Speaker 3: of spy novels, and you've read all the fiction you
Speaker 3: can find about war. I think you've done something more
Speaker 3: impressive than writing a page turner of fiction in this book,
Speaker 3: which is you have brought these real life characters and
Speaker 3: their stories to life in a way that feels like
Speaker 3: I'm reading a thriller. I could not put it down.
Speaker 3: I've read now the print version and listen to the
Speaker 3: audio version, and I'm still hooked. And I wonder if
Speaker 3: you could talk a little bit about how you got
Speaker 3: into the minds of these people that you've not been
Speaker 3: able to meet.
Speaker 2: Well you write it is a departure for me. So
Speaker 2: I've never done a book which is so much of
Speaker 2: a kind of first of all, a single narrative. Usually
Speaker 2: I hop around, you know, I tell all kinds of
Speaker 2: different stories. But I also have never written a book
Speaker 2: which was so singularly focused on two characters. This book
Speaker 2: is the story of the conflict between two kind of
Speaker 2: legendary World War Two Air Force generals, Curtis Lamey and
Speaker 2: Heyward Hansel, and.
Speaker 1: I really do you know.
Speaker 2: They're incredibly vivid characters, and we because we started this
Speaker 2: project as an audio project. I was always thinking that
Speaker 2: this first is an audiobook, and the reason for that
Speaker 2: was that we have so much incredible archival tape of
Speaker 2: these generals in the Second World board there's Maxwell Air
Speaker 2: Force Base in Alabama. There's a room full of tape
Speaker 2: of interviews with virtually every major figure in the Air
Speaker 2: Force in that period. And once you know you can
Speaker 2: hear them, you I think you have a lot more
Speaker 2: confidence that you could bring them to life. And you know,
Speaker 2: like particularly le May, who is this kind of unbelievable,
Speaker 2: cold blooded, you know, bulldog of a man. When you
Speaker 2: hear his voice, you feel like you you know who
Speaker 2: he is because he has this kind of guttural grunt.
Speaker 2: And that just gave me confidence that I could they
Speaker 2: would be more than two dimensional characters on the page,
Speaker 2: if I could, If I could, you know, use a
Speaker 2: do a kind of enhanced audiobook that would bring them
Speaker 2: to life.
Speaker 3: Well it shows And I thought one of the other
Speaker 3: interesting features of the book was the way that you
Speaker 3: almost tantalize us with these questions of morality. Early on
Speaker 3: you ask us to consider what would I have done
Speaker 3: and which side would I have been on? And I
Speaker 3: want to hear your answer to this because you avoided
Speaker 3: it the whole book. But first, can you just walk
Speaker 3: us through the central moral dilemma of the bomber Mafia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the barmber Mafia. One of the reasons I was
Speaker 2: so attracted to this story is that they are they
Speaker 2: are obsessive, and they are their technological obsessives. They're they're
Speaker 2: a very familiar figure for us now there are They're
Speaker 2: young men who are in the grip of a kind
Speaker 2: of passion that has been fired by a technological innovation.
Speaker 2: They would not be out of place in Silicon Valley today.
Speaker 2: They would, in fact, you know, be be utterly They're
Speaker 2: utterly familiar in one sense, but in another sense, they're
Speaker 2: not because they're they have a moral vision. The reason
Speaker 2: they are so passionate about what bombing can do and
Speaker 2: how bombing can transform more is that they are desperate
Speaker 2: to avoid the carnage of the First World War, and
Speaker 2: that part of them I love. I love that they
Speaker 2: considered the the moral implications of their dream were as
Speaker 2: important to them as the kind of technological implications. That
Speaker 2: that's not something I see today, and so that I
Speaker 2: thought that they were this extraordinary role model for how
Speaker 2: you can bring together moral desires with technological obsession. But
Speaker 2: it doesn't work, right. You know, the story of this
Speaker 2: book is the story of the failure of this dream,
Speaker 2: and so you, you know, you, I don't know if
Speaker 2: it is possible. I do not you. You're quite right.
Speaker 2: This book does not give you an easy answer to
Speaker 2: which side should we be on? Because there is no
Speaker 2: easy answer. All I can say is I like the idea.
Speaker 2: I like the fact that they tried to bring a
Speaker 2: moral vision to h to their way of fighting wars.
Speaker 2: And I'm sad that they failed. But that's as far
Speaker 2: as it goes. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of I'm kind of overbooks that give you
Speaker 2: a neat little conclusion. I find that condescending almost.
Speaker 3: I respect that. I also think, Malcolm Gladwell, that you
Speaker 3: are letting these people off the hook awfully easily to
Speaker 3: say that, Yeah, of course, they come in with a
Speaker 3: moral vision. They have a sense of almost ideological superiority,
Speaker 3: that they are going to fix all the problems with
Speaker 3: war while still fighting a war and essentially torturing countless people.
Speaker 3: And okay, you know what, good that they had a
Speaker 3: sense of morality, even though they did so much harm. Really,
Speaker 3: are you okay with that?
Speaker 2: Well? I don't know how much choice you have once
Speaker 2: you are committed to a conflict. I mean, part of
Speaker 2: the reason the story I think is so compelling is
Speaker 2: that the deep way you get into the story the book,
Speaker 2: the more you're aware of how constrained the choices available
Speaker 2: to the characters are. You know, you think about the
Speaker 2: kind of second half of the book is all about
Speaker 2: what happens when my two protagonists Curtis lemanne heywould Hansel
Speaker 2: come into conflict in On in January of nineteen forty five,
Speaker 2: when the focus of the war has turned from Europe
Speaker 2: to the war against Japan to the Pacific theater, and
Speaker 2: they are given the task by the Allied leadership of
Speaker 2: bringing Japan to its knees and they get to choose
Speaker 2: how they will do that, and neither of the options
Speaker 2: available to them are any good. And I don't know,
Speaker 2: I really don't know whether you can It's not their fault.
Speaker 2: The options are no good, right, war is there's no
Speaker 2: kind of easy moral solution in these situations. It's like
Speaker 2: you're support you have to win a war, and if
Speaker 2: you don't win the war, many many, many, many, many,
Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands of people will die, right, There's just
Speaker 2: no doubt about that. When wars drag on, they exact
Speaker 2: an enormous human toll. So everybody's agreed we need to
Speaker 2: get this war over with. But there's basically, actually there's
Speaker 2: three options. And you know, Heyward Hansel has one option.
Speaker 2: He wants to use bombs as sparingly as possible. It
Speaker 2: is a complete and utter failure for reasons outside of
Speaker 2: his control. Curtis L. May has another option. He wants
Speaker 2: to napalm every city in Japan, which is brutal and
Speaker 2: unbelievably horrifying. But he would say, well, I don't have
Speaker 2: any other options now. The third option, of course, is
Speaker 2: the option taken by in August of nineteen forty five
Speaker 2: when we dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Again,
Speaker 2: another thing, another option that leaves us sort of leaves
Speaker 2: all kinds of moral questions dangling. I just you know,
Speaker 2: I have difficulty from my comfortable perch in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: one passing judgment on people who didn't have any good
Speaker 2: options available to them.
Speaker 3: Now, I understand I was trying to figure out as
Speaker 3: I listened as I read why you were so reluctant
Speaker 3: to take a moral stance here because you are not
Speaker 3: shy about moral stances, And I thought, this is not
Speaker 3: at all Gladwellian. You normally have a strong view about
Speaker 3: what's right and wrong. And as I listened to you,
Speaker 3: now it clicked that they were stuck choosing between wrong
Speaker 3: and wrong, and you appreciate and admire the fact that
Speaker 3: they at least tried to do what was right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's this is a side thing, but
Speaker 2: this is an idea that I've become kind of obsessed
Speaker 2: with recently. I've been doing a two episodes of my
Speaker 2: podcast this season, Revision's History, on the dilemma of a
Speaker 2: little small HBCU in New Orleans and the problem of
Speaker 2: if you choose to educate lower income students, and if
Speaker 2: you choose to serve them by keeping your tuition low,
Speaker 2: you create all kinds of problems. Right, can't pay for anything,
Speaker 2: your school is not considered to be prestigious. You, I mean,
Speaker 2: you can go on and on and on and on
Speaker 2: and on. And the president of the school told me,
Speaker 2: he's like, you know, the problem with the way we
Speaker 2: think about higher education is that we we don't consider
Speaker 2: the degree of difficulty. Now, Adam, you know I'm raising
Speaker 2: this with you because you are a former diver and
Speaker 2: the great, the great contribution of diving to the world.
Speaker 2: And I'm not I am not being flipp here. Honestly,
Speaker 2: the one of the great contributions of your sport to
Speaker 2: the world is that it introduced that phrase and that
Speaker 2: concept degree of difficulty into common parlance. And it's a
Speaker 2: crucial idea. It says that you cannot simply judge an
Speaker 2: outcome all by itself. You have to judge the obstacles
Speaker 2: that were that the person pursuing that goal had to
Speaker 2: go through. Right, was faced with and this guy in
Speaker 2: New Orleans, he was like, the problem with HBCUs is
Speaker 2: that no one gives us credit for the degree of
Speaker 2: difficulty involved in what we do. Right. I just thought
Speaker 2: that was absolutely true. And you can go through all
Speaker 2: manner of things in society. The one thing that was
Speaker 2: absent from the debate this past summer about police and
Speaker 2: by the way, a debate that I had been writing
Speaker 2: about and arguing for police reform for twenty five years
Speaker 2: at this point. But the one thing that was absent
Speaker 2: from this summer was a sense of the degree of
Speaker 2: difficulty involved in police work. It's really hard, right, really
Speaker 2: really hard, and I wish that had been a part
Speaker 2: of it, and it wasn't there to the same extent.
Speaker 2: And that's also what I feel about these characters back
Speaker 2: in the Second World War is the degree of difficulty
Speaker 2: was to the roof, and you just have to build
Speaker 2: that into your consideration of their actions.
Speaker 3: I love that lens in part because one of my
Speaker 3: biggest frustrations with diving is that the formula for a
Speaker 3: degree of difficulty is almost completely bogused. How did you
Speaker 3: decide that when somebody does a front four and a half,
Speaker 3: that's a three point eight degree of difficulty on a
Speaker 3: three meter, but when they do an inward three and
Speaker 3: a half it's only a three point four. You could
Speaker 3: change that scale dramatically and we would have different Olympic
Speaker 3: gold medalists, we would have actually completely different dives done,
Speaker 3: and we could have a whole rabbit hole about this,
Speaker 3: which I'm very tempted to do, but I think it.
Speaker 2: Hold on, hold on, hold on, Adam, this is like fantastic.
Speaker 2: Are you saying that there is an underappreciated degree of
Speaker 2: difficulty with the concept of degree of difficulty.
Speaker 3: Minimum, there's an underappreciated degree of difficulty in asking people
Speaker 3: who judge a sport to come up with a meaningful
Speaker 3: quantitative metric for scoring the sport.
Speaker 2: Adam, Adam, you know more about diving than ninety nine
Speaker 2: point nine percent of humanity. You are a You are
Speaker 2: a prominent psychologist who writes no matter of things, and
Speaker 2: you have never written about this. Do I have to
Speaker 2: take this idea from you? Can I interview about this?
Speaker 3: I will give it to you. It's yours right now.
Speaker 2: This is just the most interesting thing that I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: this is like fantastic, This is just amazing that even
Speaker 2: divingt degree of difficulty wrong.
Speaker 3: Well, but isn't that isn't that part of the point
Speaker 3: that Well, I mean, first of all, inventing something almost
Speaker 3: almost always means you get it wrong, because the hard
Speaker 3: work of creating it usually blinds you to the different
Speaker 3: hard work of optimizing it. But also that the concept
Speaker 3: of degree of difficulty is so much more complicated everywhere else,
Speaker 3: and the fact that we couldn't get it right in diving.
Speaker 3: It's like all you have to do is, you know,
Speaker 3: measure how high people jump, how fast they can spin,
Speaker 3: and you know how much control you have. Actually, there's
Speaker 3: a there's a whole metric of jobs for a degree
Speaker 3: of difficulty, right, we can we can measure job complexity
Speaker 3: and know that when a job has higher degree of difficulty,
Speaker 3: intelligence seems to become more important. And oh, there's there's
Speaker 3: so much we can talk about here, but I want
Speaker 3: to I want to get back to the one of
Speaker 3: the central questions that applying degree of difficulty to moral
Speaker 3: dilemmas raises, which is, once you recognize you're in a
Speaker 3: situation with high degree of difficulty, what do you do?
Speaker 3: What are your what are your takeaways from from studying
Speaker 3: these bombers.
Speaker 2: The great mistake the bomber mafia makes is they is
Speaker 2: they like many technological innovators, by the way, is they
Speaker 2: they they do not have the imagination and it's not
Speaker 2: a fault, but no one would to come up with
Speaker 2: all of the possible complations of their dream. And this
Speaker 2: is the time honor problem of the innovator, right that
Speaker 2: the thing that makes them good at innovating in their
Speaker 2: specific rate region is the narrowness and and intensity of
Speaker 2: their focus. They don't They're not distracted. They're like I
Speaker 2: on the prize, right. But the problem is that when
Speaker 2: they take that idea in the real world, that becomes
Speaker 2: a liability all of a sudden. You've got to think
Speaker 2: about fifty things that never occurred to you tomorrow. So
Speaker 2: the skills that get you to the real world are
Speaker 2: the skills that also impede you once you reach the
Speaker 2: real world.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, so you have a parallel here which I
Speaker 3: didn't see until just now, between the bomber's dilemma and
Speaker 3: how we think about degree of difficulty in diving, which
Speaker 3: is I think the central tension in diving into greed
Speaker 3: difficulty is do you base it on how hard it
Speaker 3: is to do at all or how hard it is
Speaker 3: to do well?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Like, there there are some dives that only a few
Speaker 3: people in the world can even make, and those some
Speaker 3: people would argue those should have the highest degree difficulty,
Speaker 3: and others would say, no, you take the the hard
Speaker 3: dive that everybody does but everybody misses, and that's the
Speaker 3: dive that gets the highest degree difficulty. Your version of this,
Speaker 3: I think is is precision bombing, which is you it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: how you know how many bombs can you drop or
Speaker 3: you know how much? How much can you terrify or
Speaker 3: demoralize a city with your bombs versus can you hit
Speaker 3: your target perfectly? What is what does that teach us
Speaker 3: about what's really difficult? Is it the execution or is
Speaker 3: it the ability to show up in the first place?
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's a really good question.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm going to cop out and say bose
Speaker 2: or it depends. I can tell you what interests me more,
Speaker 2: which is I'm more interested? Particularly this is a weird
Speaker 2: thing to say, particularly as I get older in the execution,
Speaker 2: because more and more I find myself I am interested
Speaker 2: and fascinated and amused by people's obsessive dreams. But what
Speaker 2: impresses me is execution. That you can just do it
Speaker 2: in a way that so everyone starts tries to do
Speaker 2: the same thing, there are three people who pull it off.
Speaker 2: Those are the three. That's what impresses me. Is like,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like, you know, any of us can
Speaker 2: make an attempt at Mount Everest or run a marathon,
Speaker 2: but a handful of people get to the top or
Speaker 2: break you know, two hours and thirty minutes. Those are
Speaker 2: the people I take my hat off to Okay.
Speaker 3: That speaks to something you've alluded to a couple of times,
Speaker 3: and something you made me rethink in this book, which
Speaker 3: is the idea of obsession. I have always thought of
Speaker 3: obsession as something bad. I think of people with OCD,
Speaker 3: I think of an obsessive stalker. And you you have
Speaker 3: a very different take on obsession. I think you even
Speaker 3: see it as a beautiful thing. And I want to
Speaker 3: hear more.
Speaker 2: I do I, and I wonder why I do. I
Speaker 2: don't know if I have a good answer to that.
Speaker 2: I don't. It's not as if the easy thing would
Speaker 2: be to say that I you know, I grew up
Speaker 2: with an example of obsessiveness.
Speaker 1: Actually I didn't.
Speaker 2: Neither of my parents could even plausibly be described as
Speaker 2: even coming close to that standard. My brother is the
Speaker 2: least obsessive, although I mean he's sort of, he's not.
Speaker 1: He's not obsessive.
Speaker 2: Were dabblers my whole but Dad's whole thing was he
Speaker 2: loved doing lots of things, even if he did them badly.
Speaker 2: That was his favorite thing. He built a greenhouse in
Speaker 2: her backyard, and he was so proud of how inexpertly.
Speaker 1: He built it.
Speaker 2: He would show off all of the crazy angles and
Speaker 2: the gaps, and the he thought that was hilarious.
Speaker 3: Okay, I have a few things that I'm curious about then.
Speaker 3: The first one is you called yourself a dabbler, and
Speaker 3: yet you're also an elite runner. I think you once
Speaker 3: beat the Canadian record holder if I remember correctly. Isn't
Speaker 3: running the most obsessive sport ever? I mean you literally
Speaker 3: just do the same thing over and over, step, step.
Speaker 2: The opposite, the opposite. So how many when you were
Speaker 2: diving as a kid, how many hours would you spend
Speaker 2: in the pool?
Speaker 3: I mean, actually in the pool, probably four seconds a dive.
Speaker 2: From the time you left the house to the time
Speaker 2: you got home. Again, what are we talking about time
Speaker 2: devoted to the task?
Speaker 3: I'm three hours during the school year, probably eight or
Speaker 3: nine in the summer.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: In my entire time as a you know, I was
Speaker 2: a very good age class runner. In my entire time
Speaker 2: as a very good age class runner, I never never
Speaker 2: spent more than an hour a day running never, and
Speaker 2: I never ran more than five days a week. And
Speaker 2: by the way, nor did anyone else I know. In fact,
Speaker 2: and if I had done that, I would have gotten
Speaker 2: I would have gotten hell from my coach, he would
Speaker 2: have said, you are destroying your running is all about restraint.
Speaker 3: You know what.
Speaker 2: The little adage they repeat to you when you start
Speaker 2: out running is trained down, Strain for tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Is another day.
Speaker 2: Running is the op It's the anti obsessives pastime. It's
Speaker 2: all about restraint. It's all about never only when you
Speaker 2: race do you push yourself to the edge. At all
Speaker 2: of the times, you hold yourself in check. Right the coach,
Speaker 2: I have a I'm in training right now for this
Speaker 2: mile race I'm doing, and I have a This guy
Speaker 2: is helping me coach, and he looks at my my
Speaker 2: workouts online. You know what he tells me. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you need to probably take a little more recovery on that,
Speaker 2: or you should take some more days off. He's making
Speaker 2: sure I'm not obsessive runners. You totally misunderstand running. This
Speaker 2: is probably why you don't run. You don't get it.
Speaker 3: That might be true.
Speaker 2: You're bringing your crazy eight hour a day memories from
Speaker 2: childhood to bear on a completely different sport.
Speaker 3: I don't know you have bursts of obsession in running.
Speaker 3: I've heard about your stair routines, for example.
Speaker 2: No, those are it's it's an obsession that I used
Speaker 2: to get together with three very good friends of mine
Speaker 2: and we would do a workout on the stairs in
Speaker 2: Fork Green Park and Brooklyn. To say that was obsessive
Speaker 2: is nuts. It was totally fun. We would like you
Speaker 2: have a long recovery because you jog down the stairs
Speaker 2: and you sprint up them on the job down the stairs,
Speaker 2: you like gossip and ketch up on stuff and chad
Speaker 2: and then you just have a little zip up the
Speaker 2: stairs and it's just like it's the furthest thing. You
Speaker 2: don't know what you're talking about. Meanwhile, you're executing these
Speaker 2: insanely complicated dives that if you if you're off by
Speaker 2: two inches, you lose. This is nothing, there's nothing in
Speaker 2: common with But when what I'm.
Speaker 3: Up to, well, I have to tell you that one
Speaker 3: of your so called friends said that when he went
Speaker 3: with you for the first time, he wasn't sure if
Speaker 3: he was going to vomit or die. So not everyone's
Speaker 3: experience mirror is yours.
Speaker 2: But on every other occasion than he smoked me, So
Speaker 2: I know what he's talking about. Anyway.
Speaker 3: The other the other thing I wanted to ask you
Speaker 3: about obsession is I think about this research by Valoranz
Speaker 3: two kinds of passion. He calls them obsess obsessive passion
Speaker 3: and harmonious passion, and he says, obsessed obsessive passion is
Speaker 3: basically it's it's externsically motivated, is driven by guilt, by pressure,
Speaker 3: by this, you know, compulsiveness that really undermines people's ongoing
Speaker 3: interest and commitment. Whereas harmonious passion, instead of feeling like
Speaker 3: you constantly have to push yourself to do it, you're
Speaker 3: pulled in by the activity. You're interested, You're intrinsically motivated,
Speaker 3: you're curious, you're excited, and your energy is sustained by
Speaker 3: your enthusiasm. And I wonder if if that's part of
Speaker 3: what you're describing, or if you think there's actually still
Speaker 3: an upside to the obsessive part of passion.
Speaker 2: Well, it's funny that the word I was waiting for
Speaker 2: you to say in what you in that in that,
Speaker 2: in that little dichotomy you described, was pleasure. So I
Speaker 2: grant I suppose that there are there are different motivation,
Speaker 2: initial motivations for certain kinds of obsessive pursuits. But to me,
Speaker 2: the real issue is not why you start, but where
Speaker 2: you end up and does the immersion bring you pleasure?
Speaker 2: And it always amazes me how little that word is
Speaker 2: used in particularly in connection with people's work. I always
Speaker 2: ask people, well, do you find you your work fun?
Speaker 2: To mean as simply the most important question, And I'm
Speaker 2: not interested in some people. We have all kinds of
Speaker 2: reasons why we work. Some people work because they have
Speaker 2: a family to support. Some of them will work because
Speaker 2: they would be bored otherwise, I go on, some of
Speaker 2: will work because their parents would, you know, disdain them
Speaker 2: if they didn't. Whatever. The question is, once you're at
Speaker 2: work and immersed in it, are you enjoying yourself? And
Speaker 2: you know, when I think about the people I like
Speaker 2: working with, they're all people I don't. I like working
Speaker 2: with people who do a good job, sure everyone does,
Speaker 2: but I really like working with people who are enjoying themselves.
Speaker 1: That's really what.
Speaker 2: Compels me to and I think of for some people,
Speaker 2: the route to enjoyment is obsession, right, It's like that's
Speaker 2: you get singular in your pursuit because it just brings
Speaker 2: you joy. I don't understand why those words are so
Speaker 2: rarely used in this context. So like to go back
Speaker 2: to the bottom Offie for a moment. They're in the
Speaker 2: middle of Alabama in the nineteen thirties. You could look
Speaker 2: at them objectively and you could say these losers off
Speaker 2: in the middle of nowhere pursuing an idea they'll never
Speaker 2: go anywhere. Or you could say these are a group
Speaker 2: of people who have successfully found a place where they
Speaker 2: can find joy in their passion and work, and that
Speaker 2: makes them winners. No one else is having joy in
Speaker 2: the army in nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 3: Wow. So when you talk about obsession, then you're talking
Speaker 3: about a single minded focus to pursue mastery in a
Speaker 3: way that brings joy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the social aspect is really crucial here. It's
Speaker 2: funny because you know, the this book, The Bar of Mafia,
Speaker 2: is the really the first book that I've ever done
Speaker 2: where from the from the very beginning of this book,
Speaker 2: it was a team effort.
Speaker 1: It literally.
Speaker 2: I know my name is on the cover, but that's
Speaker 2: a misnomer. There's six people, seven people at Pushkin who
Speaker 2: played as large or in some of thess larger role
Speaker 2: than me and putting this together. I've never done that
Speaker 2: before ever, not I can't even I was not the
Speaker 2: guy in college who you know had a team of
Speaker 2: people we were to No, no, no, no. I never did
Speaker 2: a team. I was never on a basketball team, never
Speaker 2: did any team sports, never teams. Not in my I
Speaker 2: did not. I didn't even I wasn't a kid who
Speaker 2: went home from school and did homework with his dad.
Speaker 2: Never happened, Right, this is not doing stuff with other
Speaker 2: people is not something I have ever done on and
Speaker 2: I did it with this book. And you know what,
Speaker 2: this is most fun book I've ever done. Never had
Speaker 2: so much fun writing a book. It's like fantastic, right
Speaker 2: it's not? And why because everyone else was as into
Speaker 2: this idea as I was, right and pursuing different parts
Speaker 2: of it. And that's so like I. You know, here
Speaker 2: I am writing about a group of people who find
Speaker 2: joy in each other's obsession, and I am with a
Speaker 2: group of people finding joy with each other's obsession. It
Speaker 2: was as lovely at my you know, at my advanced age.
Speaker 2: I'm much older than you, Adam, I get to say
Speaker 2: things like that. At my advanced age, I discovered this
Speaker 2: fantastic thing called, you know, strength and numbers.
Speaker 3: The joy of shared obsession. Yes, I love that.
Speaker 2: That was Grant and Gladwell Clubhouse Part one. After the break,
Speaker 2: we meet again to discuss Adam's book Think Again. Adam,
Speaker 2: can you can you give us an overview of Think Again?
Speaker 3: The core idea it builds on some brilliant work that
Speaker 3: my colleague Phil Tetlock did, and the premise is that
Speaker 3: we spend a lot of our life with these mindsets
Speaker 3: of occupations that we never have worked in. We find
Speaker 3: ourselves thinking like preachers, prosecutors, and politicians more often than
Speaker 3: we would want to admit. When I'm in preacher mode,
Speaker 3: I'm trying to proselytize. When I'm a prosecutor, I'm trying
Speaker 3: to win a case and prove you wrong. When I'm
Speaker 3: a politician, I have a constituent, I'm trying to get
Speaker 3: their approval, so I'm doing all this campaigning and lobbying.
Speaker 3: My big worry with preaching and prosecuting is that people
Speaker 3: are not willing to think again because I'm right, you're wrong.
Speaker 1: You're the one who needs to change. I'm good. When
Speaker 1: people are.
Speaker 3: In politician mode, they look a little bit more flexible,
Speaker 3: but all they're doing is they're flip flopping what they
Speaker 3: say in order to communicate what they think their audience
Speaker 3: wants to hear, and so if it looks like they're rethinking,
Speaker 3: they're doing it at the wrong time for the wrong reasons,
Speaker 3: or they're just towing the party line and appealing to
Speaker 3: their tribe without actually changing their internal beliefs. My hope
Speaker 3: is that people will think a little bit more like
Speaker 3: scientists and say, you know what, I don't have to
Speaker 3: believe everything I think. I don't have to internalize every
Speaker 3: emotion I feel when I start to form an opinion
Speaker 3: that's just a hypothesis. Let me go out into the world,
Speaker 3: run some experiments, observe, talk to people, and test the hypothesis.
Speaker 3: And I should be then surrounding myself with people who
Speaker 3: don't just agree with my conclusions, but actually challenge my
Speaker 3: thought process. And the goal of all that is is
Speaker 3: to try to break us free of overconfidence cycles where
Speaker 3: we take pride in our knowledge, we have too much
Speaker 3: conviction that leads us to confirmation bias, and then we
Speaker 3: become a little bit arrogant. What I want to do
Speaker 3: is activate rethinking cycles where we have the humility to
Speaker 3: know what we don't know. We doubt some of our convictions.
Speaker 3: That makes us curious to go and discover new things,
Speaker 3: and that reinforces this mindset of being a lifelong learner, saying, wow,
Speaker 3: I just learned something.
Speaker 1: There's so much more to learn.
Speaker 2: Well, you have written another, uh wonderful book, and I
Speaker 2: find it. Actually there's so many fascinating things. My only
Speaker 2: critique of this I have a critique of this book.
Speaker 1: By the way, I hope you have more than one.
Speaker 2: I have several, but my my large one, which is
Speaker 2: a is it's four books. I'm reading this book. It's like,
Speaker 2: why you I You're like jumping ahead of the next
Speaker 2: study and I'm not done with the one. You're wrong,
Speaker 2: I I either you either you have to you have to,
Speaker 2: like you know, slow down and write, write and chop
Speaker 2: your ideas into pieces and devote. Oh, you have to
Speaker 2: write longer books. You can't do you can't keep doing
Speaker 2: this and like race it anyway, that's a it's a.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a. It's battery designed is disguised as criticism.
Speaker 2: But I wanted to start. I kept thinking when I
Speaker 2: was reading this book, how does this fit in with
Speaker 2: Adam's previous books? And I'm wondering, do we have a
Speaker 2: kind of emerging Adam Grant's philosophy of life. Can you
Speaker 2: talk about how does this one fit with your previous books?
Speaker 3: I think this it's an interesting question, and I will
Speaker 3: accept your backhanded compliment any day. Thank you for the
Speaker 3: enthusiasm and also the criticism, which I look forward to
Speaker 3: more of. I guess this book is sort of a
Speaker 3: meta book in that in each of the books I've
Speaker 3: written before, what I've tried to do is I've tried
Speaker 3: to get people to rethink something that I think that
Speaker 3: they've gotten wrong, or maybe an assumption that's been incomplete.
Speaker 2: The I mean, but do you What I want is
Speaker 2: whether you think there is a kind of Adam Grand
Speaker 2: ideology that's emerging from writing all these Are you getting
Speaker 2: a kind of sense of well, wait a minute, here
Speaker 2: is how I see the world, and if you read
Speaker 2: all my books you'll get this Grantean vision.
Speaker 3: Yes, although it would be a little ironic to commit
Speaker 3: to an ideology because then I'm not staying open to
Speaker 3: rethinking my opinions and beliefs.
Speaker 2: Am I No, No, you could have a component, you
Speaker 2: could have ideologies, which is that you revisit your ideology.
Speaker 1: That's fine.
Speaker 3: No, I think I think there is a there's an
Speaker 3: overarching thread that runs through all my work, which I
Speaker 3: didn't see until I'd written a couple of books.
Speaker 1: The thread is that the.
Speaker 3: Very things that you think are critical for success in life,
Speaker 3: I can actually be attained through building character. And I
Speaker 3: think that my work has looked at different kinds of
Speaker 3: character strengths and said, you don't have to choose between
Speaker 3: your goals and those virtues. It's generosity, or now it's
Speaker 3: you know, it's humility. And so I guess what I'm
Speaker 3: looking for at large is a way to align character
Speaker 3: with with achievement.
Speaker 1: How's that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: No, that that actually that fits with That's what I've
Speaker 2: always sort of sensed in.
Speaker 3: Well, why didn't you just tell me that a few
Speaker 3: years ago, because then I would have understood who I was.
Speaker 1: And what I was trying to achieve.
Speaker 2: No, No, but I'm curious. I mean, because I'm always
Speaker 2: very attracted to religious themes in things to sort of bear,
Speaker 2: particularly if they're kind of slightly sublimated. But it always
Speaker 2: struck me that there was some there was some kind
Speaker 2: of moral case being made in your books that maybe
Speaker 2: you weren't making explicitly, but that there was something about
Speaker 2: reading a book that felt very comfortable to someone who
Speaker 2: was used to thinking about the world in terms of character, ethics, morality,
Speaker 2: those kinds of things. Like if I was thinking, if
Speaker 2: I had a Bible study of evangelicals and I said,
Speaker 2: this week, we're not reading the New Testament, We're going
Speaker 2: to read the works of Adam Grant. I think actually
Speaker 2: people with that kind of world would be very at
Speaker 2: home with the arguments that you're making.
Speaker 1: That's interesting.
Speaker 3: I love it when ancient wisdom matches up with modern science.
Speaker 3: And I think where the ancient wisdom often leaves me
Speaker 3: short is around you know, Okay, a lot for me
Speaker 3: at least, a lot of the principles and recommendations that
Speaker 3: come out of religious traditions are missing the nuance about
Speaker 3: how do you actually do this in life?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: So, yeah, of course you want to be a generous person,
Speaker 3: but how do you give to others in a way
Speaker 3: that prevents you or protects you from burning out or
Speaker 3: just getting burned by the most selfish takers around. Yes,
Speaker 3: I want to be humble, but I don't want to
Speaker 3: become meek or lack confidence. And so I think, I think,
Speaker 3: I guess what I want to do In a lot
Speaker 3: of my work is try to use evidence to pick
Speaker 3: up where where these these higher principles leave off and ask, okay,
Speaker 3: what does it mean to do this without sacrificing you know,
Speaker 3: our ambitions?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I was struck by because I am, as
Speaker 2: you know, a BlackBerry fanatic user. Not saying too strong
Speaker 2: a word. It's from they make it in my hometown.
Speaker 2: I have a you know, it came out of my
Speaker 2: dad's university. And you have a little thing where you
Speaker 2: talk about Mike Lazaridus who ran rim BlackBerry for many years,
Speaker 2: and he made this error and they went from fifty
Speaker 2: percent market share to whatever it was, five percent in
Speaker 2: five years because they failed to understand the smartphone revolution,
Speaker 2: the typing on a keyboard as supposed, typing on a
Speaker 2: screen supposed, et cetera, et cetera. He was not willing
Speaker 2: to revisit his assumptions about what a smartphone could be.
Speaker 2: And I was thinking about that, and I was like,
Speaker 2: but you know, when I go home sometimes to visit
Speaker 2: my mom, I sometimes see Mike Lazaridis like buying books
Speaker 2: at the bookstore. He doesn't live that far from my mother.
Speaker 2: He's a very happy guy. He didn't have any regrets
Speaker 2: I don't think he built this beautiful house, all these
Speaker 2: trees outside. You know what, I think he's like doing
Speaker 2: cool projects he made himself, I don't know, billion dollars.
Speaker 2: Probably at the end of the day, you know, I
Speaker 2: suppose he could have his shareholders might be upset that
Speaker 2: he didn't rethink his assumptions. But it was very hard
Speaker 2: for me to think of Mike Lazaridis as being a loser.
Speaker 2: And also like, so what if he wrote it all
Speaker 2: the way down like he believed in a certain kind
Speaker 2: of ascetic functionality in a phone like I happened to
Speaker 2: believe that too. Mike chose me over the many millions
Speaker 2: who wanted to phone did everything like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: isn't any different with this solid troupe. I was thinking
Speaker 2: this into context of I'm also a fan of a
Speaker 2: deeply committed, die hard fan of the Buffalo Bills. If
Speaker 2: you know any well football, you know that that is
Speaker 2: just an has been for thirty years in invitation to masochism.
Speaker 3: Starting with Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas four Super Bowl
Speaker 3: zero wins.
Speaker 2: Exactly do I re You know, if I read your
Speaker 2: book one way, I would say, well, Malcolm, you should
Speaker 2: just rethink you your football allegiances. They make no sense.
Speaker 2: Like you got it? This is not working, this Buffalo
Speaker 2: saying there's a certain pleasure in me sticking with them
Speaker 2: through thin and thin, But so like, do you see
Speaker 2: what I'm getting at?
Speaker 1: Like I do. Oh, there's so much to work with here. Okay,
Speaker 1: let me let me start by saying.
Speaker 3: I love that you are rethinking your claim that you've
Speaker 3: made to me several times in this friendship that you
Speaker 3: always for the favorite, because the Buffalo Bills are definitely
Speaker 3: not the favorite. Yes, that's true, So welcome to the underdogs.
Speaker 3: It's about time you came around.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Secondly, on BlackBerry, I still want the keyboard back.
Speaker 1: I hate typing on a screen. I will never be.
Speaker 3: As fast as I was. I'm not worried about Mike
Speaker 3: Lazarid's at all what I'm worried about.
Speaker 1: And Malcolm, where is your empathy?
Speaker 3: Where is your compassion for all the people who lost
Speaker 3: jobs because RIM went under?
Speaker 1: They didn't go under, I mean.
Speaker 3: It basically did. How many people are working there now?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: No, well, actually this is a sidetrack. But years ago
Speaker 2: I wrote this piece about what happened. When I think
Speaker 2: it was General Dynamics had a very large presence in
Speaker 2: Rochester and they shut down their factory and left. This
Speaker 2: is in the seventies, and everyone in Rochester said, oh
Speaker 2: my god, this is the end of Rochester. And then
Speaker 2: this researcher forgot who it was, went back ten years
Speaker 2: later and said, what happened to all the people who
Speaker 2: got laid off from General Dynamics? And he pointed out
Speaker 2: that the resurgence in the tech industry in Rochester was
Speaker 2: a direct result of all the people who were freed
Speaker 2: from General Dynamics and went on to do cool things.
Speaker 2: The exact same thing happened in Waterloo, my hometown. All
Speaker 2: the people who left for Rim are the foundation of
Speaker 2: this incredible tech resurgence in southern Ontario. So do you know,
Speaker 2: Mike just educated a bunch of people about how to
Speaker 2: be entrepreneurs and how to think about I think it's
Speaker 2: it's win win for Waterloo anyway. It's a side point. No,
Speaker 2: I think I think you're right.
Speaker 3: I think that's a great point, and I'm feeling the
Speaker 3: joy of being wrong right now because I think you
Speaker 3: can see the impact on the ecosystem. If you know,
Speaker 3: if you go to Canada, I think there's a part
Speaker 3: of me though that I guess. I also I also
Speaker 3: feel bad for you and me because we want that keyboard, right,
Speaker 3: I would love it if there was an iPhone competitor
Speaker 3: that you know, that worked a little bit more like
Speaker 3: the BlackBerry did. And so I feel like a missing
Speaker 3: out on frankly, some possible technological advances that didn't occur
Speaker 3: because they know they stopped producing products.
Speaker 2: What this book is is a kind of rebuttal to
Speaker 2: don Quixote. Don Quixote is everything that he stands for
Speaker 2: is something this book is refuting. Right that this book
Speaker 2: is saying to persist in tilts and at windmills, to
Speaker 2: persist in you know, the whole story of don Quixotes's
Speaker 2: is don Quixote continues to wage these battles that cannot
Speaker 2: be won. He will not rethink anything. And you know
Speaker 2: that book suggests as a kind of nobility in that
Speaker 2: romantic attachment to a cause, even in the face of
Speaker 2: and you're saying, actually, no, don Quixote is going to
Speaker 2: be much better off if he rethinks this position about
Speaker 2: being this chivalrous knight and starts scientifically examining his options, right,
Speaker 2: Like this is this book is anti It's the anti
Speaker 2: don Quixote.
Speaker 3: I never thought of it that way, but I like it.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying you should always give up on your
Speaker 3: passions or let go of the causes that are important
Speaker 3: to you, right. I want people to stand by their principles,
Speaker 3: their core values. But I would be thrilled if more
Speaker 3: people were willing to say, look, I'm committed to a
Speaker 3: set of principles, but I'm willing to be flexible about
Speaker 3: the best plan to advance those principles. And I think
Speaker 3: that really requires us to think a little bit more
Speaker 3: like scientists and a little bit less like preachers or
Speaker 3: prosecutors or politicians who are convinced I'm right, you're wrong,
Speaker 3: and I'm only going to try to cater to my
Speaker 3: own tribe.
Speaker 2: That's all for now, dear listeners, Thanks for hearing us out.
Speaker 2: Thanks to Adam Grant and his team at TED for
Speaker 2: their help with this episode. My audiobook, The Bomber Mafia
Speaker 2: is available at Bombermafia dot com and Adams Think Again,
Speaker 2: available wherever books are sold. Till we Meet in the
Speaker 2: Clubhouse again, I'm Malcolm Godwell,