WEBVTT - Malcolm Gladwell and Adam Grant 0:00:15.356 --> 0:00:15.796 Pushkin. 0:00:20.196 --> 0:00:25.076 Hi everyone, Malcolm here. The countdown is on on June 0:00:25.076 --> 0:00:28.916 twenty fourth. We'll be back with Season six, the most 0:00:29.076 --> 0:00:33.076 banana season of Revisionist history ever. I finally get out 0:00:33.116 --> 0:00:36.476 of the house. I've got Phoenix, New Orleans, and I 0:00:36.596 --> 0:00:42.276 go metaphorically to the Magic Kingdom on a mission of mischief. 0:00:42.876 --> 0:00:45.356 Season six is so fantastic. I don't want to give 0:00:45.396 --> 0:00:48.676 too much away. Just hang tight, It'll be here soon. 0:00:49.836 --> 0:00:52.156 It's been an especially busy time for me working on 0:00:52.196 --> 0:00:55.956 season six and promoting our new book, The Bomber Mafia. 0:00:56.436 --> 0:00:58.356 One of the events on my book tour was a 0:00:58.396 --> 0:01:03.436 conversation on Clubhouse with my good friend Adam Grant. He's 0:01:03.476 --> 0:01:07.036 an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School the University of Pennsylvania, 0:01:07.316 --> 0:01:10.556 and he hosts the podcast Take for Granted from the 0:01:10.596 --> 0:01:14.236 Ted Audio Collective. We've actually both had new books out 0:01:14.236 --> 0:01:17.956 this spring. Adams is called Think Again, which I really loved. 0:01:18.636 --> 0:01:20.956 It seems he and I are always crossing paths on 0:01:20.996 --> 0:01:23.716 the book tour circuit, and we always challenge each other 0:01:24.196 --> 0:01:26.716 and we always have fun. I wanted to play you 0:01:26.836 --> 0:01:31.316 some snippets of our recent conversations forgive Me by the Way, 0:01:31.356 --> 0:01:35.956 for stating the obvious, but books make great Father's Day gifts. 0:01:36.316 --> 0:01:39.716 Why not make it both? Get the Bomber Mafia audiobook 0:01:39.756 --> 0:01:43.716 from Bombermafia dot com and then think again from wherever 0:01:43.756 --> 0:01:46.636 you get your books, and I'll see you very soon 0:01:47.036 --> 0:01:52.836 for season six of Revisionist History. Okay, here's our clubhouse 0:01:52.876 --> 0:01:54.996 discussion about the Bomber. 0:01:54.716 --> 0:02:03.076 Mafia thrilla to welcome Malcolm Gladwell back to clubhouse. Malcolm 0:02:03.116 --> 0:02:03.836 glad you're here. 0:02:04.516 --> 0:02:06.156 Yes, thank you. I was going to say, not a 0:02:06.156 --> 0:02:09.676 week passes when I'm not engaged in some kind of 0:02:09.676 --> 0:02:10.796 public conversation with you. 0:02:11.116 --> 0:02:16.436 Be careful what you wish for. Yes, I wanted to 0:02:16.476 --> 0:02:18.596 kick off by just asking you to tell us a 0:02:18.636 --> 0:02:22.236 little bit about the Bomber Mafia. I think it's anybody 0:02:22.276 --> 0:02:24.836 who's listened to Revisionist History the last couple of seasons 0:02:25.436 --> 0:02:28.316 knows how obsessed you are with it. But for those 0:02:28.356 --> 0:02:31.076 who are not initiated, give us the teaser. 0:02:31.516 --> 0:02:36.156 Bomber Mafia is the story of a group of pilots 0:02:36.196 --> 0:02:42.076 in southern Alabama in the nineteen thirties who believed that 0:02:42.196 --> 0:02:47.556 they had and could reinvent warfare. That they could through 0:02:47.556 --> 0:02:51.716 the use of technology particularly the bomber and means of 0:02:51.796 --> 0:02:55.076 dropping bombs with accuracy. They could render every other part 0:02:55.076 --> 0:03:00.836 of the military obsolete, and they could turn wars from 0:03:01.596 --> 0:03:04.516 something that where hundreds of thousands of civilians died as 0:03:04.516 --> 0:03:08.436 a matter of course, to a kind of clean and 0:03:08.516 --> 0:03:13.156 surgical exercise. And they took that dream with them into 0:03:13.156 --> 0:03:15.436 the Second World War and tried to make it real. 0:03:15.516 --> 0:03:19.316 And it's the story of it's the story of that attempt. 0:03:19.556 --> 0:03:23.436 What happens when a group of people with an idea, 0:03:23.636 --> 0:03:27.436 fired by morality and technology meet the real world. 0:03:27.956 --> 0:03:30.036 This is a very different kind of book than you've 0:03:30.076 --> 0:03:33.556 written before. First and foremost because the cover is not white, 0:03:33.916 --> 0:03:38.516 which threw me, but also also because it's a history book, 0:03:39.156 --> 0:03:45.236 and because despite your going back in history decades and decades, 0:03:45.636 --> 0:03:48.596 it's also more personal, I think than anything you've ever written. 0:03:49.276 --> 0:03:50.676 And I'd love for you to share with us a 0:03:50.716 --> 0:03:53.276 little bit about the seeds that were planted in your 0:03:53.316 --> 0:03:55.476 own life that got you curious about this topic. 0:03:55.876 --> 0:04:01.236 Well, my father, who was English, grew up in Kent 0:04:02.076 --> 0:04:05.996 in which is the which was called bamb Ally because 0:04:06.076 --> 0:04:09.916 the German bombers on their way to bomb London during 0:04:09.956 --> 0:04:13.676 the Blitz would pass over my father's little town in Kent, 0:04:13.796 --> 0:04:16.996 and he, as a child, would be instructed by my 0:04:16.996 --> 0:04:19.916 grandmother to sleep under his bed, which was the only 0:04:19.996 --> 0:04:24.676 plausible defense against a bomb dropping on her house, and 0:04:24.716 --> 0:04:28.316 he would He had all these stories like a bomb 0:04:28.316 --> 0:04:32.196 once landed in her backyard and luckily didn't explode. He 0:04:32.316 --> 0:04:35.676 was once out picking strawberries with my grandmother and German 0:04:35.756 --> 0:04:39.996 planes passed overhead and my grandmother hid my father and 0:04:40.116 --> 0:04:44.356 my uncle under newspapers for reasons that no one really knows. 0:04:44.556 --> 0:04:46.636 She thought maybe she hid them from the pilots they 0:04:46.636 --> 0:04:49.436 wouldn't bomb them. But it was like a He would 0:04:49.476 --> 0:04:52.356 tell these stories and to me, at you know, the 0:04:52.396 --> 0:04:56.436 age of five or six, these stories were unbelievably excited. 0:04:57.796 --> 0:05:00.916 You know, I was. I was in We were in 0:05:01.156 --> 0:05:06.316 rural southwestern Canada, maybe the most boring part of the 0:05:06.356 --> 0:05:09.916 western world, and my dad was telling me nothing happened. 0:05:09.956 --> 0:05:12.476 I mean, it's a great good thing. And my father 0:05:12.556 --> 0:05:15.316 was telling me these stories about you know, like bombs 0:05:15.356 --> 0:05:18.076 dropping in his backyard when he was my age, and 0:05:18.116 --> 0:05:20.116 I you know, I think that probably instilled in me 0:05:21.196 --> 0:05:23.076 a kind of romantic love of this era. 0:05:24.156 --> 0:05:27.156 It shows and I know that you're a huge fan 0:05:27.196 --> 0:05:29.676 of spy novels, and you've read all the fiction you 0:05:29.676 --> 0:05:32.916 can find about war. I think you've done something more 0:05:32.916 --> 0:05:35.916 impressive than writing a page turner of fiction in this book, 0:05:35.996 --> 0:05:38.916 which is you have brought these real life characters and 0:05:38.956 --> 0:05:41.516 their stories to life in a way that feels like 0:05:41.556 --> 0:05:44.436 I'm reading a thriller. I could not put it down. 0:05:45.076 --> 0:05:47.076 I've read now the print version and listen to the 0:05:47.116 --> 0:05:50.836 audio version, and I'm still hooked. And I wonder if 0:05:50.836 --> 0:05:52.996 you could talk a little bit about how you got 0:05:52.996 --> 0:05:54.836 into the minds of these people that you've not been 0:05:54.876 --> 0:05:55.596 able to meet. 0:05:56.156 --> 0:05:58.036 Well you write it is a departure for me. So 0:05:58.036 --> 0:05:59.956 I've never done a book which is so much of 0:05:59.956 --> 0:06:02.076 a kind of first of all, a single narrative. Usually 0:06:02.116 --> 0:06:04.796 I hop around, you know, I tell all kinds of 0:06:04.796 --> 0:06:07.236 different stories. But I also have never written a book 0:06:07.276 --> 0:06:12.436 which was so singularly focused on two characters. This book 0:06:12.516 --> 0:06:16.796 is the story of the conflict between two kind of 0:06:16.956 --> 0:06:20.716 legendary World War Two Air Force generals, Curtis Lamey and 0:06:20.756 --> 0:06:22.156 Heyward Hansel, and. 0:06:23.476 --> 0:06:24.796 I really do you know. 0:06:24.756 --> 0:06:31.236 They're incredibly vivid characters, and we because we started this 0:06:31.276 --> 0:06:33.716 project as an audio project. I was always thinking that 0:06:33.756 --> 0:06:36.716 this first is an audiobook, and the reason for that 0:06:36.876 --> 0:06:41.236 was that we have so much incredible archival tape of 0:06:41.276 --> 0:06:45.076 these generals in the Second World board there's Maxwell Air 0:06:45.116 --> 0:06:49.276 Force Base in Alabama. There's a room full of tape 0:06:49.876 --> 0:06:54.516 of interviews with virtually every major figure in the Air 0:06:54.516 --> 0:06:59.036 Force in that period. And once you know you can 0:06:59.116 --> 0:07:02.436 hear them, you I think you have a lot more 0:07:02.436 --> 0:07:06.276 confidence that you could bring them to life. And you know, 0:07:06.396 --> 0:07:10.276 like particularly le May, who is this kind of unbelievable, 0:07:10.396 --> 0:07:15.836 cold blooded, you know, bulldog of a man. When you 0:07:15.876 --> 0:07:18.516 hear his voice, you feel like you you know who 0:07:18.516 --> 0:07:21.756 he is because he has this kind of guttural grunt. 0:07:22.596 --> 0:07:26.476 And that just gave me confidence that I could they 0:07:26.516 --> 0:07:28.916 would be more than two dimensional characters on the page, 0:07:28.956 --> 0:07:31.796 if I could, If I could, you know, use a 0:07:32.116 --> 0:07:35.476 do a kind of enhanced audiobook that would bring them 0:07:35.476 --> 0:07:35.876 to life. 0:07:36.556 --> 0:07:39.276 Well it shows And I thought one of the other 0:07:39.396 --> 0:07:42.436 interesting features of the book was the way that you 0:07:43.316 --> 0:07:47.556 almost tantalize us with these questions of morality. Early on 0:07:47.676 --> 0:07:50.236 you ask us to consider what would I have done 0:07:50.716 --> 0:07:53.516 and which side would I have been on? And I 0:07:53.556 --> 0:07:56.076 want to hear your answer to this because you avoided 0:07:56.116 --> 0:07:58.916 it the whole book. But first, can you just walk 0:07:58.996 --> 0:08:01.916 us through the central moral dilemma of the bomber Mafia. 0:08:02.636 --> 0:08:05.036 Yeah, the barmber Mafia. One of the reasons I was 0:08:05.036 --> 0:08:08.156 so attracted to this story is that they are they 0:08:08.196 --> 0:08:13.596 are obsessive, and they are their technological obsessives. They're they're 0:08:13.596 --> 0:08:16.196 a very familiar figure for us now there are They're 0:08:16.236 --> 0:08:18.676 young men who are in the grip of a kind 0:08:18.676 --> 0:08:22.836 of passion that has been fired by a technological innovation. 0:08:23.436 --> 0:08:25.876 They would not be out of place in Silicon Valley today. 0:08:25.876 --> 0:08:30.116 They would, in fact, you know, be be utterly They're 0:08:30.196 --> 0:08:32.996 utterly familiar in one sense, but in another sense, they're 0:08:33.116 --> 0:08:37.876 not because they're they have a moral vision. The reason 0:08:37.956 --> 0:08:41.476 they are so passionate about what bombing can do and 0:08:41.476 --> 0:08:44.716 how bombing can transform more is that they are desperate 0:08:44.756 --> 0:08:50.076 to avoid the carnage of the First World War, and 0:08:50.156 --> 0:08:55.516 that part of them I love. I love that they 0:08:55.796 --> 0:09:01.596 considered the the moral implications of their dream were as 0:09:01.676 --> 0:09:06.156 important to them as the kind of technological implications. That 0:09:06.156 --> 0:09:09.276 that's not something I see today, and so that I 0:09:09.596 --> 0:09:12.316 thought that they were this extraordinary role model for how 0:09:12.356 --> 0:09:18.956 you can bring together moral desires with technological obsession. But 0:09:19.036 --> 0:09:22.716 it doesn't work, right. You know, the story of this 0:09:22.756 --> 0:09:25.236 book is the story of the failure of this dream, 0:09:25.556 --> 0:09:28.196 and so you, you know, you, I don't know if 0:09:28.196 --> 0:09:30.796 it is possible. I do not you. You're quite right. 0:09:30.956 --> 0:09:33.316 This book does not give you an easy answer to 0:09:34.236 --> 0:09:36.836 which side should we be on? Because there is no 0:09:36.916 --> 0:09:40.916 easy answer. All I can say is I like the idea. 0:09:40.956 --> 0:09:43.556 I like the fact that they tried to bring a 0:09:43.636 --> 0:09:49.996 moral vision to h to their way of fighting wars. 0:09:50.396 --> 0:09:53.476 And I'm sad that they failed. But that's as far 0:09:53.516 --> 0:09:54.636 as it goes. I don't know. 0:09:55.676 --> 0:09:56.396 I didn't want to. 0:09:57.436 --> 0:10:00.436 I'm kind of I'm kind of overbooks that give you 0:10:00.476 --> 0:10:03.556 a neat little conclusion. I find that condescending almost. 0:10:04.596 --> 0:10:07.876 I respect that. I also think, Malcolm Gladwell, that you 0:10:07.916 --> 0:10:11.996 are letting these people off the hook awfully easily to 0:10:12.076 --> 0:10:14.836 say that, Yeah, of course, they come in with a 0:10:14.916 --> 0:10:19.916 moral vision. They have a sense of almost ideological superiority, 0:10:20.236 --> 0:10:22.236 that they are going to fix all the problems with 0:10:22.316 --> 0:10:27.636 war while still fighting a war and essentially torturing countless people. 0:10:28.356 --> 0:10:31.236 And okay, you know what, good that they had a 0:10:31.276 --> 0:10:34.116 sense of morality, even though they did so much harm. Really, 0:10:34.276 --> 0:10:35.076 are you okay with that? 0:10:36.316 --> 0:10:40.156 Well? I don't know how much choice you have once 0:10:40.236 --> 0:10:43.556 you are committed to a conflict. I mean, part of 0:10:43.596 --> 0:10:45.876 the reason the story I think is so compelling is 0:10:45.916 --> 0:10:50.436 that the deep way you get into the story the book, 0:10:50.676 --> 0:10:54.636 the more you're aware of how constrained the choices available 0:10:54.676 --> 0:10:59.436 to the characters are. You know, you think about the 0:11:00.276 --> 0:11:01.956 kind of second half of the book is all about 0:11:01.956 --> 0:11:06.756 what happens when my two protagonists Curtis lemanne heywould Hansel 0:11:07.276 --> 0:11:11.196 come into conflict in On in January of nineteen forty five, 0:11:11.556 --> 0:11:13.756 when the focus of the war has turned from Europe 0:11:14.196 --> 0:11:16.996 to the war against Japan to the Pacific theater, and 0:11:17.036 --> 0:11:22.756 they are given the task by the Allied leadership of 0:11:22.796 --> 0:11:26.556 bringing Japan to its knees and they get to choose 0:11:26.636 --> 0:11:31.756 how they will do that, and neither of the options 0:11:31.756 --> 0:11:35.476 available to them are any good. And I don't know, 0:11:37.556 --> 0:11:41.156 I really don't know whether you can It's not their fault. 0:11:41.276 --> 0:11:44.276 The options are no good, right, war is there's no 0:11:44.436 --> 0:11:48.756 kind of easy moral solution in these situations. It's like 0:11:49.596 --> 0:11:51.396 you're support you have to win a war, and if 0:11:51.436 --> 0:11:54.196 you don't win the war, many many, many, many, many, 0:11:54.276 --> 0:11:56.316 hundreds of thousands of people will die, right, There's just 0:11:56.396 --> 0:11:59.636 no doubt about that. When wars drag on, they exact 0:11:59.716 --> 0:12:03.036 an enormous human toll. So everybody's agreed we need to 0:12:03.036 --> 0:12:06.996 get this war over with. But there's basically, actually there's 0:12:07.036 --> 0:12:10.756 three options. And you know, Heyward Hansel has one option. 0:12:11.476 --> 0:12:14.556 He wants to use bombs as sparingly as possible. It 0:12:14.636 --> 0:12:18.996 is a complete and utter failure for reasons outside of 0:12:18.996 --> 0:12:23.516 his control. Curtis L. May has another option. He wants 0:12:23.556 --> 0:12:30.356 to napalm every city in Japan, which is brutal and 0:12:31.116 --> 0:12:37.156 unbelievably horrifying. But he would say, well, I don't have 0:12:37.156 --> 0:12:39.836 any other options now. The third option, of course, is 0:12:39.876 --> 0:12:44.556 the option taken by in August of nineteen forty five 0:12:44.556 --> 0:12:48.316 when we dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Again, 0:12:48.356 --> 0:12:53.196 another thing, another option that leaves us sort of leaves 0:12:53.236 --> 0:12:56.396 all kinds of moral questions dangling. I just you know, 0:12:56.836 --> 0:13:02.076 I have difficulty from my comfortable perch in twenty twenty 0:13:02.076 --> 0:13:06.076 one passing judgment on people who didn't have any good 0:13:06.116 --> 0:13:07.356 options available to them. 0:13:07.716 --> 0:13:11.356 Now, I understand I was trying to figure out as 0:13:11.356 --> 0:13:14.236 I listened as I read why you were so reluctant 0:13:14.316 --> 0:13:16.996 to take a moral stance here because you are not 0:13:17.076 --> 0:13:20.396 shy about moral stances, And I thought, this is not 0:13:20.476 --> 0:13:23.876 at all Gladwellian. You normally have a strong view about 0:13:23.916 --> 0:13:26.396 what's right and wrong. And as I listened to you, 0:13:26.516 --> 0:13:31.356 now it clicked that they were stuck choosing between wrong 0:13:31.396 --> 0:13:34.556 and wrong, and you appreciate and admire the fact that 0:13:34.836 --> 0:13:36.436 they at least tried to do what was right. 0:13:37.436 --> 0:13:40.276 Yeah, you know, it's this is a side thing, but 0:13:40.356 --> 0:13:43.996 this is an idea that I've become kind of obsessed 0:13:44.036 --> 0:13:48.876 with recently. I've been doing a two episodes of my 0:13:49.116 --> 0:13:52.916 podcast this season, Revision's History, on the dilemma of a 0:13:52.956 --> 0:14:00.916 little small HBCU in New Orleans and the problem of 0:14:01.076 --> 0:14:07.556 if you choose to educate lower income students, and if 0:14:07.596 --> 0:14:10.596 you choose to serve them by keeping your tuition low, 0:14:11.636 --> 0:14:16.996 you create all kinds of problems. Right, can't pay for anything, 0:14:17.676 --> 0:14:20.836 your school is not considered to be prestigious. You, I mean, 0:14:21.196 --> 0:14:22.316 you can go on and on and on and on 0:14:22.356 --> 0:14:26.196 and on. And the president of the school told me, 0:14:26.276 --> 0:14:29.196 he's like, you know, the problem with the way we 0:14:29.436 --> 0:14:32.516 think about higher education is that we we don't consider 0:14:32.556 --> 0:14:35.516 the degree of difficulty. Now, Adam, you know I'm raising 0:14:35.556 --> 0:14:38.636 this with you because you are a former diver and 0:14:38.676 --> 0:14:42.836 the great, the great contribution of diving to the world. 0:14:42.956 --> 0:14:46.676 And I'm not I am not being flipp here. Honestly, 0:14:46.756 --> 0:14:50.316 the one of the great contributions of your sport to 0:14:50.356 --> 0:14:52.996 the world is that it introduced that phrase and that 0:14:53.116 --> 0:14:57.716 concept degree of difficulty into common parlance. And it's a 0:14:58.036 --> 0:15:03.716 crucial idea. It says that you cannot simply judge an 0:15:03.796 --> 0:15:08.036 outcome all by itself. You have to judge the obstacles 0:15:08.076 --> 0:15:11.916 that were that the person pursuing that goal had to 0:15:11.956 --> 0:15:15.236 go through. Right, was faced with and this guy in 0:15:15.636 --> 0:15:18.756 New Orleans, he was like, the problem with HBCUs is 0:15:18.796 --> 0:15:21.396 that no one gives us credit for the degree of 0:15:21.436 --> 0:15:24.636 difficulty involved in what we do. Right. I just thought 0:15:24.636 --> 0:15:29.076 that was absolutely true. And you can go through all 0:15:29.236 --> 0:15:31.716 manner of things in society. The one thing that was 0:15:31.756 --> 0:15:35.996 absent from the debate this past summer about police and 0:15:36.036 --> 0:15:40.756 by the way, a debate that I had been writing 0:15:40.796 --> 0:15:44.516 about and arguing for police reform for twenty five years 0:15:44.516 --> 0:15:46.876 at this point. But the one thing that was absent 0:15:46.916 --> 0:15:50.636 from this summer was a sense of the degree of 0:15:50.636 --> 0:15:55.316 difficulty involved in police work. It's really hard, right, really 0:15:55.596 --> 0:15:58.516 really hard, and I wish that had been a part 0:15:58.556 --> 0:16:01.156 of it, and it wasn't there to the same extent. 0:16:01.436 --> 0:16:05.396 And that's also what I feel about these characters back 0:16:05.436 --> 0:16:07.916 in the Second World War is the degree of difficulty 0:16:07.956 --> 0:16:11.476 was to the roof, and you just have to build 0:16:11.476 --> 0:16:13.676 that into your consideration of their actions. 0:16:14.196 --> 0:16:16.956 I love that lens in part because one of my 0:16:16.956 --> 0:16:20.236 biggest frustrations with diving is that the formula for a 0:16:20.276 --> 0:16:24.356 degree of difficulty is almost completely bogused. How did you 0:16:24.436 --> 0:16:28.436 decide that when somebody does a front four and a half, 0:16:28.516 --> 0:16:30.796 that's a three point eight degree of difficulty on a 0:16:30.796 --> 0:16:34.356 three meter, but when they do an inward three and 0:16:34.396 --> 0:16:37.596 a half it's only a three point four. You could 0:16:37.676 --> 0:16:40.596 change that scale dramatically and we would have different Olympic 0:16:40.596 --> 0:16:43.636 gold medalists, we would have actually completely different dives done, 0:16:43.716 --> 0:16:46.316 and we could have a whole rabbit hole about this, 0:16:46.356 --> 0:16:49.116 which I'm very tempted to do, but I think it. 0:16:49.276 --> 0:16:52.636 Hold on, hold on, hold on, Adam, this is like fantastic. 0:16:52.916 --> 0:16:56.196 Are you saying that there is an underappreciated degree of 0:16:56.236 --> 0:16:58.836 difficulty with the concept of degree of difficulty. 0:17:01.276 --> 0:17:05.956 Minimum, there's an underappreciated degree of difficulty in asking people 0:17:06.076 --> 0:17:08.476 who judge a sport to come up with a meaningful 0:17:08.556 --> 0:17:11.236 quantitative metric for scoring the sport. 0:17:11.836 --> 0:17:14.956 Adam, Adam, you know more about diving than ninety nine 0:17:14.996 --> 0:17:19.596 point nine percent of humanity. You are a You are 0:17:19.636 --> 0:17:22.196 a prominent psychologist who writes no matter of things, and 0:17:22.276 --> 0:17:25.116 you have never written about this. Do I have to 0:17:25.156 --> 0:17:28.476 take this idea from you? Can I interview about this? 0:17:28.876 --> 0:17:32.076 I will give it to you. It's yours right now. 0:17:32.316 --> 0:17:34.196 This is just the most interesting thing that I'm sorry, 0:17:34.236 --> 0:17:37.956 this is like fantastic, This is just amazing that even 0:17:38.356 --> 0:17:40.156 divingt degree of difficulty wrong. 0:17:43.076 --> 0:17:46.036 Well, but isn't that isn't that part of the point 0:17:46.276 --> 0:17:50.436 that Well, I mean, first of all, inventing something almost 0:17:50.036 --> 0:17:53.356 almost always means you get it wrong, because the hard 0:17:53.356 --> 0:17:56.356 work of creating it usually blinds you to the different 0:17:56.396 --> 0:18:04.196 hard work of optimizing it. But also that the concept 0:18:04.196 --> 0:18:09.876 of degree of difficulty is so much more complicated everywhere else, 0:18:09.916 --> 0:18:11.556 and the fact that we couldn't get it right in diving. 0:18:11.756 --> 0:18:14.156 It's like all you have to do is, you know, 0:18:14.236 --> 0:18:16.676 measure how high people jump, how fast they can spin, 0:18:17.716 --> 0:18:20.476 and you know how much control you have. Actually, there's 0:18:20.516 --> 0:18:22.596 a there's a whole metric of jobs for a degree 0:18:22.636 --> 0:18:25.996 of difficulty, right, we can we can measure job complexity 0:18:26.636 --> 0:18:30.196 and know that when a job has higher degree of difficulty, 0:18:30.396 --> 0:18:35.036 intelligence seems to become more important. And oh, there's there's 0:18:35.036 --> 0:18:36.436 so much we can talk about here, but I want 0:18:36.436 --> 0:18:38.116 to I want to get back to the one of 0:18:38.116 --> 0:18:43.116 the central questions that applying degree of difficulty to moral 0:18:43.116 --> 0:18:46.836 dilemmas raises, which is, once you recognize you're in a 0:18:46.876 --> 0:18:49.916 situation with high degree of difficulty, what do you do? 0:18:50.036 --> 0:18:52.596 What are your what are your takeaways from from studying 0:18:52.716 --> 0:18:54.276 these bombers. 0:18:54.316 --> 0:18:57.076 The great mistake the bomber mafia makes is they is 0:18:57.116 --> 0:19:01.396 they like many technological innovators, by the way, is they 0:19:01.676 --> 0:19:04.876 they they do not have the imagination and it's not 0:19:04.916 --> 0:19:07.636 a fault, but no one would to come up with 0:19:07.756 --> 0:19:14.316 all of the possible complations of their dream. And this 0:19:14.396 --> 0:19:17.036 is the time honor problem of the innovator, right that 0:19:17.556 --> 0:19:19.916 the thing that makes them good at innovating in their 0:19:19.956 --> 0:19:27.836 specific rate region is the narrowness and and intensity of 0:19:27.876 --> 0:19:31.876 their focus. They don't They're not distracted. They're like I 0:19:32.036 --> 0:19:34.316 on the prize, right. But the problem is that when 0:19:34.316 --> 0:19:37.996 they take that idea in the real world, that becomes 0:19:37.996 --> 0:19:40.436 a liability all of a sudden. You've got to think 0:19:40.436 --> 0:19:43.436 about fifty things that never occurred to you tomorrow. So 0:19:43.516 --> 0:19:46.156 the skills that get you to the real world are 0:19:46.196 --> 0:19:48.876 the skills that also impede you once you reach the 0:19:48.876 --> 0:19:49.676 real world. 0:19:50.076 --> 0:19:53.476 Well, okay, so you have a parallel here which I 0:19:53.476 --> 0:19:57.476 didn't see until just now, between the bomber's dilemma and 0:19:57.756 --> 0:20:00.636 how we think about degree of difficulty in diving, which 0:20:00.676 --> 0:20:02.876 is I think the central tension in diving into greed 0:20:02.916 --> 0:20:06.396 difficulty is do you base it on how hard it 0:20:06.476 --> 0:20:09.436 is to do at all or how hard it is 0:20:09.476 --> 0:20:09.956 to do well? 0:20:11.116 --> 0:20:11.236 Right? 0:20:11.316 --> 0:20:13.196 Like, there there are some dives that only a few 0:20:13.236 --> 0:20:16.796 people in the world can even make, and those some 0:20:16.796 --> 0:20:19.356 people would argue those should have the highest degree difficulty, 0:20:19.636 --> 0:20:22.156 and others would say, no, you take the the hard 0:20:22.196 --> 0:20:25.036 dive that everybody does but everybody misses, and that's the 0:20:25.076 --> 0:20:28.276 dive that gets the highest degree difficulty. Your version of this, 0:20:28.436 --> 0:20:34.356 I think is is precision bombing, which is you it's like, okay, 0:20:34.396 --> 0:20:37.116 how you know how many bombs can you drop or 0:20:37.436 --> 0:20:41.196 you know how much? How much can you terrify or 0:20:41.236 --> 0:20:45.276 demoralize a city with your bombs versus can you hit 0:20:45.316 --> 0:20:49.636 your target perfectly? What is what does that teach us 0:20:49.716 --> 0:20:53.596 about what's really difficult? Is it the execution or is 0:20:53.636 --> 0:20:56.076 it the ability to show up in the first place? 0:20:56.716 --> 0:20:58.756 Oh wow, that's a really good question. 0:21:01.756 --> 0:21:05.796 I mean, I'm going to cop out and say bose 0:21:06.756 --> 0:21:11.476 or it depends. I can tell you what interests me more, 0:21:12.396 --> 0:21:16.276 which is I'm more interested? Particularly this is a weird 0:21:16.276 --> 0:21:19.476 thing to say, particularly as I get older in the execution, 0:21:20.796 --> 0:21:26.116 because more and more I find myself I am interested 0:21:26.156 --> 0:21:31.476 and fascinated and amused by people's obsessive dreams. But what 0:21:31.636 --> 0:21:37.116 impresses me is execution. That you can just do it 0:21:37.156 --> 0:21:40.836 in a way that so everyone starts tries to do 0:21:40.876 --> 0:21:43.996 the same thing, there are three people who pull it off. 0:21:44.716 --> 0:21:48.476 Those are the three. That's what impresses me. Is like, 0:21:48.916 --> 0:21:53.956 you know, it's like, you know, any of us can 0:21:53.996 --> 0:21:57.396 make an attempt at Mount Everest or run a marathon, 0:21:57.836 --> 0:22:00.676 but a handful of people get to the top or 0:22:00.716 --> 0:22:04.596 break you know, two hours and thirty minutes. Those are 0:22:04.636 --> 0:22:06.836 the people I take my hat off to Okay. 0:22:06.956 --> 0:22:09.716 That speaks to something you've alluded to a couple of times, 0:22:09.956 --> 0:22:13.276 and something you made me rethink in this book, which 0:22:13.356 --> 0:22:16.956 is the idea of obsession. I have always thought of 0:22:16.996 --> 0:22:20.356 obsession as something bad. I think of people with OCD, 0:22:21.036 --> 0:22:24.996 I think of an obsessive stalker. And you you have 0:22:25.076 --> 0:22:28.116 a very different take on obsession. I think you even 0:22:28.156 --> 0:22:30.356 see it as a beautiful thing. And I want to 0:22:30.396 --> 0:22:30.796 hear more. 0:22:31.716 --> 0:22:35.836 I do I, and I wonder why I do. I 0:22:35.836 --> 0:22:37.236 don't know if I have a good answer to that. 0:22:37.876 --> 0:22:40.436 I don't. It's not as if the easy thing would 0:22:40.436 --> 0:22:42.916 be to say that I you know, I grew up 0:22:42.916 --> 0:22:44.236 with an example of obsessiveness. 0:22:44.276 --> 0:22:45.636 Actually I didn't. 0:22:47.636 --> 0:22:50.436 Neither of my parents could even plausibly be described as 0:22:50.476 --> 0:22:55.756 even coming close to that standard. My brother is the 0:22:55.836 --> 0:22:58.956 least obsessive, although I mean he's sort of, he's not. 0:22:59.436 --> 0:23:00.236 He's not obsessive. 0:23:01.996 --> 0:23:05.076 Were dabblers my whole but Dad's whole thing was he 0:23:05.076 --> 0:23:07.196 loved doing lots of things, even if he did them badly. 0:23:07.236 --> 0:23:11.876 That was his favorite thing. He built a greenhouse in 0:23:11.916 --> 0:23:18.316 her backyard, and he was so proud of how inexpertly. 0:23:16.516 --> 0:23:17.036 He built it. 0:23:17.076 --> 0:23:20.076 He would show off all of the crazy angles and 0:23:20.116 --> 0:23:23.356 the gaps, and the he thought that was hilarious. 0:23:24.436 --> 0:23:26.636 Okay, I have a few things that I'm curious about then. 0:23:26.796 --> 0:23:30.756 The first one is you called yourself a dabbler, and 0:23:30.836 --> 0:23:33.756 yet you're also an elite runner. I think you once 0:23:33.876 --> 0:23:38.116 beat the Canadian record holder if I remember correctly. Isn't 0:23:38.156 --> 0:23:41.116 running the most obsessive sport ever? I mean you literally 0:23:41.236 --> 0:23:44.636 just do the same thing over and over, step, step. 0:23:44.596 --> 0:23:48.996 The opposite, the opposite. So how many when you were 0:23:49.636 --> 0:23:52.636 diving as a kid, how many hours would you spend 0:23:52.676 --> 0:23:53.116 in the pool? 0:23:53.716 --> 0:23:57.516 I mean, actually in the pool, probably four seconds a dive. 0:23:59.516 --> 0:24:00.996 From the time you left the house to the time 0:24:01.036 --> 0:24:02.996 you got home. Again, what are we talking about time 0:24:03.036 --> 0:24:04.156 devoted to the task? 0:24:04.556 --> 0:24:06.996 I'm three hours during the school year, probably eight or 0:24:07.076 --> 0:24:07.756