WEBVTT - Live Episode: Noah Feldman and Malcolm Gladwell 0:00:15.396 --> 0:00:23.476 Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show 0:00:23.516 --> 0:00:26.516 where we explored the stories behind the stories in the news. 0:00:26.916 --> 0:00:30.676 I'm Noah Feldman. This time we have a special episode 0:00:30.676 --> 0:00:33.356 for you, which we recorded live on stage here in 0:00:33.396 --> 0:00:35.436 Boston in front of an audience of more than a 0:00:35.516 --> 0:00:39.516 thousand people. My guest was none other than Malcolm Gladwell. 0:00:39.636 --> 0:00:41.956 He's a staff writer at The New Yorker, the author 0:00:41.956 --> 0:00:45.996 of best selling books including Blink, The Tipping Point, and Outliers. 0:00:46.556 --> 0:00:49.716 He's also the co founder of Pushkin Industries, the company 0:00:49.756 --> 0:00:53.596 that makes this podcast. Malcolm just published a new book 0:00:53.716 --> 0:01:00.196 called Talking to Strangers. We started there. Thank you all 0:01:00.276 --> 0:01:03.316 very much for coming. Thank you Malcolm for coming to Boston. 0:01:04.676 --> 0:01:08.196 I want to start by just asking you about the 0:01:08.236 --> 0:01:12.716 person to whom this book is dedicated, Yes, namely your father. Yes, 0:01:12.836 --> 0:01:16.076 the book starts with a very sweet anecdote about him, 0:01:16.076 --> 0:01:18.516 and then somewhere buried in the middle of the book, 0:01:18.676 --> 0:01:21.156 like at the beating heart of the book, isn't actually 0:01:21.236 --> 0:01:24.236 deeply moving and a little bit shocking story in which 0:01:24.236 --> 0:01:26.876 he figures what led you to think that he should 0:01:26.916 --> 0:01:30.276 be the Is he the inspiring figure for this book? Well, 0:01:30.276 --> 0:01:35.116 he was. I lost my father in twenty seventeen, so 0:01:35.756 --> 0:01:40.396 he was clearly on my mind. But he well, I 0:01:40.516 --> 0:01:43.356 you know, I opened the He does in some way 0:01:43.476 --> 0:01:46.396 inspire this book because I tell the story at the 0:01:46.476 --> 0:01:49.316 very very beginning of the book of when my parents 0:01:49.396 --> 0:01:52.516 would come to Manhattan, I would put them up at 0:01:52.556 --> 0:01:54.956 the Mercer Hotel, which is the most sort of celebrity 0:01:54.956 --> 0:01:58.836 written hotel in New York and is a joke because 0:01:58.836 --> 0:02:02.956 my parents. No two individuals know less about celebrity culture 0:02:02.996 --> 0:02:05.756 than my parents, and so it was always a kind 0:02:05.796 --> 0:02:09.036 of inside joke on my part to think of them 0:02:09.156 --> 0:02:11.556 mingling with rock stars Joe and you shared with no 0:02:11.596 --> 0:02:14.596 one but yourself until now, and then you're inside Joe. 0:02:14.876 --> 0:02:16.676 So one time, my dad's staying there and I asked 0:02:16.756 --> 0:02:18.876 him what he had done in the previous afternoon. He said, oh, 0:02:18.876 --> 0:02:22.796 I had a wonderful conversation with someone in the lobby 0:02:22.836 --> 0:02:26.636 about gardening. And so the only problem was that people 0:02:26.716 --> 0:02:29.396 kept coming up to this man and asking him to 0:02:29.396 --> 0:02:32.716 sign bits of paper and taking his picture, and so 0:02:32.836 --> 0:02:34.796 I suppolled, you know, who was it? So I have 0:02:34.836 --> 0:02:38.276 no idea, um, And it was clearly some just being 0:02:38.276 --> 0:02:41.556 the Mercer, some massive celebrity and I've scased the last 0:02:41.556 --> 0:02:43.236 this was ten years ago, the last ten years trying 0:02:43.236 --> 0:02:46.236 to figure out who it was. And you can be 0:02:46.316 --> 0:02:48.756 a pretty big celebrity in the Mercer Hotel and no 0:02:48.796 --> 0:02:50.356 one will come over to you because it's not cool 0:02:50.396 --> 0:02:52.676 to do that. First of all, there's several key facts here. 0:02:53.116 --> 0:02:55.596 What is that it's in the part of a part 0:02:55.596 --> 0:02:58.556 of the Mercer that's only opened guests, and this is 0:02:58.556 --> 0:03:01.716 where they were, so right away, the fact that own 0:03:02.036 --> 0:03:05.476 other celebrities were coming up to this celebrity is brucial. 0:03:07.876 --> 0:03:12.156 Second is my father. How all I can say is 0:03:12.356 --> 0:03:15.516 he had a clear preference for talking with other Englishmen, 0:03:15.836 --> 0:03:19.316 ay and be for people his own age. So I 0:03:19.356 --> 0:03:22.196 think it's someone born in the nineteen thirties in England 0:03:22.596 --> 0:03:26.396 who liked gardening, and he was a major celebrity. So 0:03:26.396 --> 0:03:29.156 so I've been asking people and someone recently said, I 0:03:29.196 --> 0:03:33.556 think a very good guess Michael Caine. Ah. Can you 0:03:33.596 --> 0:03:37.036 can imagine people approaching Michael Caine. You can imagine Michael 0:03:37.076 --> 0:03:39.676 Caine talking about apparently he's a big gardener that I was. 0:03:39.876 --> 0:03:42.596 That actually surprises me. And and also kind of lower 0:03:42.636 --> 0:03:45.316 middle class as my father was. And you know when 0:03:45.356 --> 0:03:49.596 Britt's congregate. Outside of England, they do the class thing 0:03:49.636 --> 0:03:51.796 instantly and then when they realized also do that inside 0:03:51.796 --> 0:03:54.996 of English. Yes, they just do that everywhere. They might 0:03:55.036 --> 0:03:57.556 do it more aggressively outside of him, but like once 0:03:57.756 --> 0:04:00.516 they discover they're from the same narrow slice. Like I 0:04:00.556 --> 0:04:03.196 once saw my father who was chatting with someone who 0:04:03.276 --> 0:04:05.276 was from the same town in Kent that he was from, 0:04:05.796 --> 0:04:08.036 and my father with that they hadn't done the class 0:04:08.076 --> 0:04:10.676 thing yet, and he told it was a woman. He 0:04:10.676 --> 0:04:13.156 told this woman that he used to break into some 0:04:13.556 --> 0:04:16.596 estate and play in the garden, and she paused and said, oh, 0:04:16.716 --> 0:04:19.476 that was my estate, And that was the end of 0:04:19.476 --> 0:04:23.756 the conversation. But what is my father did like to 0:04:23.756 --> 0:04:27.716 talk to strangers, and he um he embodied one of 0:04:27.756 --> 0:04:29.396 the principles of the book, which is he did not 0:04:29.476 --> 0:04:33.796 expect a conversation with a stranger to yield much about 0:04:33.796 --> 0:04:36.676 the stranger. In other words, he could talk for an 0:04:36.676 --> 0:04:39.676 hour with gardening about gardening with Michael Caine and never 0:04:39.716 --> 0:04:43.396 discovered that Michael Caine was a famous actor. And is 0:04:43.436 --> 0:04:46.236 that because talking about gardening is a form of small 0:04:46.276 --> 0:04:48.436 talk or is it the opposite? Is it that talking 0:04:48.476 --> 0:04:53.556 about gardening is so deeply interesting to the gardeners that 0:04:53.556 --> 0:04:56.756 that you can have a deep, substantive, meaningful conversation. It 0:04:56.796 --> 0:04:58.356 never comes up you know, what do you do for 0:04:58.356 --> 0:05:01.916 a living? Or no, it's you've lost your Harrison's outfear. Well, 0:05:01.916 --> 0:05:03.996 it's very English to have a subject that allows you 0:05:04.036 --> 0:05:06.756 to avoid all intimacy, like the weather, like the weather 0:05:06.836 --> 0:05:11.356 or gardening, but also it's something to do genuinely. A 0:05:11.436 --> 0:05:14.556 wonderful fact about my father, which is I think he 0:05:14.636 --> 0:05:18.116 understood that if you spend too much time gathering information 0:05:18.116 --> 0:05:20.116 on a person you're talking to, you're only going to 0:05:20.196 --> 0:05:24.236 find ways of alienating yourself from that person. So my father, 0:05:24.436 --> 0:05:27.236 the more you know, the less yeah, you don't want 0:05:27.236 --> 0:05:29.276 to will be yeah, you don't want to discover it, 0:05:29.396 --> 0:05:32.196 you don't have in common with them. So he was famous. 0:05:32.396 --> 0:05:35.236 So my father was a you know, he was a 0:05:35.276 --> 0:05:39.396 mathematics PhD. Whose head was somewhere up here, but he 0:05:39.436 --> 0:05:42.716 was always falling into conversation with people like his. He 0:05:42.796 --> 0:05:45.356 was great friends with our neighbor who probably had a 0:05:45.356 --> 0:05:48.556 seventh grade education, and it's because they never got past 0:05:49.516 --> 0:05:52.916 They would also talk about Guardian a person now but 0:05:52.956 --> 0:05:54.836 I sort of love that sort of you know that 0:05:55.196 --> 0:05:57.076 I love that, and that's sort of part of where 0:05:57.076 --> 0:05:58.596 I end up in the book, which is that we 0:05:58.716 --> 0:06:02.036 expect to weigh too much from these conversations, and they're 0:06:02.156 --> 0:06:06.796 dangerous when they get too aggressive. But in your book, 0:06:06.796 --> 0:06:09.956 you've got lots and lots of examples of conversations that 0:06:10.076 --> 0:06:12.716 go awry. Yeah. In fact, there's almost there are very 0:06:12.716 --> 0:06:14.956 few conversations in the whole book other than your father's 0:06:14.956 --> 0:06:19.836 conversation with the unnamed Englishmen, that go okay at all. 0:06:20.396 --> 0:06:23.836 So I'm sort of wondering, do you agree with your 0:06:23.836 --> 0:06:26.356 father's idea that, you know, maybe we should just talk 0:06:26.436 --> 0:06:29.476 less to everybody you know, or at least less to 0:06:29.476 --> 0:06:32.316 people whom we don't have immediate and total connection to. 0:06:32.476 --> 0:06:34.156 Or is the whole point that we should talk to 0:06:34.196 --> 0:06:36.396 them but not expect very much from the conversation. I 0:06:36.396 --> 0:06:38.516 think the whole point is that we should talk to 0:06:38.516 --> 0:06:40.956 them and not expect very much in the conversation. Noways 0:06:40.996 --> 0:06:44.156 I've become Then why talk at all? No, because you 0:06:44.196 --> 0:06:47.676 can have a meaningful conversation in the absence of drawing 0:06:48.516 --> 0:06:51.476 aggressive conclusions about the nature of the person you're talking to. 0:06:51.876 --> 0:06:54.636 So I think this is I mean, the real issue 0:06:54.636 --> 0:06:56.596 in the book, and the reason the book begins and 0:06:56.716 --> 0:07:01.076 ends with the story of Sandra Bland, is that the 0:07:01.116 --> 0:07:03.356 thing about that encounter, she's pulled over by the side 0:07:03.396 --> 0:07:05.876 the road in small town taxes by a police officer, 0:07:06.396 --> 0:07:10.156 and the thing that leads that encounter to end in 0:07:10.236 --> 0:07:13.996 tragedy is that the police officer takes it upon himself 0:07:14.636 --> 0:07:18.836 to reach enormously consequential conclusions about Sandra Bland in the 0:07:18.876 --> 0:07:22.036 absence both in the space of thirty seconds and in 0:07:22.076 --> 0:07:24.996 the absence of any real evidence at all. Right, that's 0:07:24.996 --> 0:07:28.556 what what is wrong with what he does, among other things, 0:07:28.836 --> 0:07:31.956 is it is in such a hurry, and his ambitions 0:07:31.996 --> 0:07:36.396 are so enormous he really thinks he pulls her over 0:07:36.476 --> 0:07:39.036 because he thinks there is a chance he pullsoever because 0:07:39.036 --> 0:07:43.756 she's out of state, black and driving a hunday. Right, 0:07:44.196 --> 0:07:46.676 And there are policies covering at least two of those things, 0:07:47.196 --> 0:07:50.476 officially in one of them on officially, yeah, that there are. 0:07:50.596 --> 0:07:53.116 And he has been trained to pull over people who 0:07:53.156 --> 0:07:58.516 are who are you know the phrase what the lovely 0:07:58.516 --> 0:08:03.556 in quotation marks phrase that law enforcement uses curiosity ticklers. 0:08:04.116 --> 0:08:07.436 So she has violated, she has she has activated several 0:08:07.476 --> 0:08:11.436 of his curiosity ticklers by virtue of she and he 0:08:11.436 --> 0:08:13.676 had noticed her while she was turning out of the 0:08:13.716 --> 0:08:18.156 campus of Prairie View University, and he noticed her notices 0:08:18.156 --> 0:08:24.316 that while she's on university territory, she rolls through a 0:08:24.356 --> 0:08:27.196 stop sign. So she has rolled to a stop sign. 0:08:27.596 --> 0:08:30.196 She's black, she's twenty eight, she's driving a Honday, she's 0:08:30.196 --> 0:08:33.596 got Chicago plates. And he says, that's for curiosity ticklers, 0:08:33.716 --> 0:08:36.316 and so he contrives a reason to pull her over. 0:08:36.796 --> 0:08:39.276 He sort of creates the reason, creates the reason by 0:08:39.476 --> 0:08:41.956 driving up fast behind her, which leads her to get 0:08:41.996 --> 0:08:43.396 out of his way, and then she doesn't use her 0:08:43.436 --> 0:08:46.676 turn signal. He has his pretexts, and then he creates 0:08:46.676 --> 0:08:49.756 a fantasy about this person he's pulled over. And the 0:08:49.756 --> 0:08:54.916 fantasy is that she's dangerous. And this comes up later 0:08:54.956 --> 0:08:57.196 in the you know, in the course of the investigation, 0:08:57.236 --> 0:09:02.076 he gives this deposition. And what's weird actually what the 0:09:02.076 --> 0:09:04.516 deposition is that even though the case itself when it happened, 0:09:04.956 --> 0:09:08.476 attracted attention, you know, around the world as far as 0:09:08.476 --> 0:09:11.236 I can find. That was like one minor story in 0:09:11.276 --> 0:09:14.516 the Austin Statesman about the deposition, and that was it. 0:09:14.796 --> 0:09:17.196 The deposition was completely ignored. Even when the deposition is 0:09:17.236 --> 0:09:20.716 like deeply revealing, deeply revealing, and you realize what a 0:09:21.316 --> 0:09:24.916 what a you know, like I said, like this bizarre 0:09:24.996 --> 0:09:27.876 fantasy that he creates in that moment that she is 0:09:28.436 --> 0:09:32.196 dangerous and harboring some deep criminal intent on the basis 0:09:32.196 --> 0:09:36.756 of the flimsiest and most misleading of cues. And it's 0:09:36.796 --> 0:09:40.156 that that I think is problematic and that we need 0:09:40.196 --> 0:09:43.156 to sort of zero in on. One of the fascinating 0:09:43.156 --> 0:09:45.436 things though about your treatment of that whole deposition is 0:09:45.476 --> 0:09:48.436 that you believe him when he says he thought she 0:09:48.556 --> 0:09:51.476 was dangerous. I do. You can imagine that other readers 0:09:51.556 --> 0:09:54.236 might be more skeptical and say, you know, and you 0:09:54.276 --> 0:09:56.116 consider this view in the in the book and passing 0:09:56.116 --> 0:10:01.356 at least, No, he was just a racist, and not 0:10:01.396 --> 0:10:04.676 only an individual way, but also in the production of 0:10:04.716 --> 0:10:07.596 the structural racism of the cops and the stop and 0:10:07.636 --> 0:10:10.956 frisk and so forth, rather the pulling over of supposed 0:10:10.956 --> 0:10:14.316 to traffic violations. And then later in a deposition under oath, 0:10:15.076 --> 0:10:16.956 he wanted to explain why he stopped her, and he 0:10:17.036 --> 0:10:19.836 made up these reasons after the fact yeah, but you 0:10:19.876 --> 0:10:21.596 don't think that you buy what he's saying. And that's 0:10:21.636 --> 0:10:23.556 partly because you're I don't want to say this, but 0:10:23.596 --> 0:10:26.996 maybe you're defaulting to truth and believing his account. I 0:10:27.396 --> 0:10:29.556 am devaulting to truth. I have two the magic thing 0:10:29.556 --> 0:10:31.436 in the book, defaulting to truth. And you're not supposed 0:10:31.476 --> 0:10:34.116 to do it. Yeah, I have. Well, you are supposed 0:10:34.156 --> 0:10:36.156 to do it, but let me explain will to do it. 0:10:36.236 --> 0:10:37.796 You're be able to do it. That makes me why 0:10:37.796 --> 0:10:42.556 I believe him when he says that two reasons. One 0:10:42.636 --> 0:10:44.396 is that if you look at his so we have 0:10:44.596 --> 0:10:48.036 from the Texas how he Patrol has on file, you 0:10:48.076 --> 0:10:51.356 can find it a complete record of every traffic stop 0:10:51.396 --> 0:10:54.716 he ever made as a member of the of the 0:10:54.756 --> 0:10:57.356 police force. And what you see when you look at 0:10:57.396 --> 0:11:02.236 that is that Kim stopping Sandra blend On the flimsiest 0:11:02.236 --> 0:11:05.396 of pretexts was not an anomaly. It was what he did. Yes, 0:11:05.636 --> 0:11:10.036 he was, I mean he is. The further you can say, 0:11:10.116 --> 0:11:13.436 you can say that he is by the standards of 0:11:13.476 --> 0:11:16.036 what we want, what the Texas Harry Patrol wants a 0:11:16.036 --> 0:11:18.716 cop to be. He's not a bad cop. He's an 0:11:18.756 --> 0:11:21.756 ideal cop. They are trained to stop people on the 0:11:21.796 --> 0:11:24.236 flimsiest of pretext and he did exactly as he was 0:11:24.276 --> 0:11:27.396 trained to do. His whole career was stopping people on 0:11:27.396 --> 0:11:30.716 flimsy pretexts. Right. So it's like if you look at 0:11:30.716 --> 0:11:33.796 the list of reasons of first of all, you look 0:11:33.796 --> 0:11:35.916 at the number of people he stopped, he's stopping. He's 0:11:35.996 --> 0:11:39.236 jumping out of his car four or five, six times 0:11:39.236 --> 0:11:41.276 an hour. And to put this in context, if you 0:11:41.356 --> 0:11:44.516 go back twenty five years and you do a similar 0:11:45.116 --> 0:11:48.436 search of what police officers did, you will discover they 0:11:48.476 --> 0:11:50.716 never got out of their car. If you were a 0:11:50.716 --> 0:11:54.156 police officer in smalltown, Texas in nineteen seventy five, you 0:11:54.236 --> 0:11:56.716 get out of your car to get donuts, like you 0:11:56.756 --> 0:11:59.236 did not the last thing you did was pull over 0:11:59.316 --> 0:12:01.996 people who are driving down a road for Note that 0:12:02.116 --> 0:12:04.396 the whole notion of policing was different. You sat in 0:12:04.396 --> 0:12:06.556 your car and you waited for a call after some 0:12:06.716 --> 0:12:08.676 and you reacted to something you could happen. This is 0:12:08.716 --> 0:12:11.356 a whole new way of policing, and he was the 0:12:11.596 --> 0:12:14.756 perfect embodiment of this new philosophy he's starting and you 0:12:14.836 --> 0:12:17.516 look at the list he's stopping people for. You know, 0:12:17.596 --> 0:12:21.356 the light above their license plate is out and he 0:12:21.476 --> 0:12:24.836 pulls you over. Why because he thinks that maybe there 0:12:24.836 --> 0:12:26.716 may be reason to believe that if you're the kind 0:12:26.716 --> 0:12:29.316 of person who didn't attend to the broken bulb above 0:12:29.356 --> 0:12:31.676 your license plate, then you're also the kind of person 0:12:31.876 --> 0:12:34.796 who is smuggling drugs. Right, that's the theory. He never 0:12:34.996 --> 0:12:37.996 found anything. Right, if you look at his long time 0:12:38.036 --> 0:12:42.516 on the force, the man stops, you know, dozens upon 0:12:42.636 --> 0:12:45.596 dozens of people, and the sum total of all of 0:12:45.636 --> 0:12:49.036 that frenzied activity is like, once he stops a kid 0:12:49.676 --> 0:12:53.636 who is I think has a token amount of marijuana 0:12:53.676 --> 0:12:56.316 in his car. He may have got a gun once, 0:12:56.596 --> 0:13:01.476 but basically he's coming up with nothing. So so reason 0:13:01.556 --> 0:13:03.916 number one for me to believe him is that he 0:13:04.036 --> 0:13:06.076 is so. What he does with sangel Blend is so 0:13:06.116 --> 0:13:08.716 a part of who he is. There's not an expression 0:13:08.756 --> 0:13:12.476 of some kind of of latent prejudice. It is an 0:13:12.516 --> 0:13:17.356 expression of his training as a police officer. Secondly, it's 0:13:17.356 --> 0:13:19.996 not inconsistent to say that he's scared of her because 0:13:19.996 --> 0:13:23.076 he's a racist. In fact, it's entirely consistent. That's why 0:13:23.116 --> 0:13:26.116 he's scared of her because she's actually bigger, than he is, 0:13:26.676 --> 0:13:29.356 and she's black, and that makes it And because he 0:13:29.476 --> 0:13:31.956 assumes that big black people are scary, it makes it 0:13:31.996 --> 0:13:34.836 really easy for him to construct a scenario where she's 0:13:34.836 --> 0:13:38.396 a threatening criminal and he is trying to uphold law 0:13:38.436 --> 0:13:41.596 and order. So the racist argument and the argument that 0:13:41.636 --> 0:13:45.316 she's scary are consistent, not inconsistent. And thirdly, there are 0:13:45.356 --> 0:13:50.476 actual things that he does. He approaches her for the 0:13:50.556 --> 0:13:53.476 first time on the passenger side, which is what you 0:13:53.556 --> 0:13:55.996 do when you're not scared, and then he goes back 0:13:56.036 --> 0:13:58.836 to his car, and then the second time he goes 0:13:59.036 --> 0:14:02.196 up after he sits in his car, and he constructs 0:14:02.196 --> 0:14:05.356 this fantasy. He approaches her on the driver's side. And 0:14:05.396 --> 0:14:07.516 that's the only reason you would do that on a 0:14:07.756 --> 0:14:10.796 highway traffic stop. So he exposed himself to the traffic 0:14:10.876 --> 0:14:13.156 by approaching on the driver's side. Is if you think 0:14:13.156 --> 0:14:15.756 the person has a gun, because you can defend yourself 0:14:15.796 --> 0:14:18.276 if you approach on the driver's side, and you are 0:14:18.276 --> 0:14:20.716 a target if you approach on the passenger's side. So 0:14:20.796 --> 0:14:24.916 that all those things make me think, yeah, the man's terrified. 0:14:25.116 --> 0:14:27.476 I mean. And by the way, the way we train 0:14:27.556 --> 0:14:31.396 police officers in the present day is to be terrified, right, 0:14:31.596 --> 0:14:34.596 like that the only way that the reason people who 0:14:34.676 --> 0:14:36.836 deny that, think that he's making up a cover story 0:14:36.836 --> 0:14:41.156 are wholly ignorant of the totally perverse way modern law 0:14:41.196 --> 0:14:44.956 enforcement works. Right, He's trained to be terrified. Of course 0:14:44.996 --> 0:14:53.436 he's terrified. So I'm feeling a little terrified. That was 0:14:53.436 --> 0:14:57.716 a very effective invocation of the experience. When you think 0:14:57.756 --> 0:15:01.716 about people who talk to strangers for a living, yeah, 0:15:01.916 --> 0:15:04.996 cops are an example, and it's particularly egregious because after all, 0:15:04.996 --> 0:15:07.436 he's talked to all those people that he stopped, Yeah, 0:15:07.476 --> 0:15:11.236 and he's tried to make some termination about how dangerous 0:15:11.236 --> 0:15:13.636 they are. But another kind of person, there are two 0:15:13.636 --> 0:15:15.236 other kinds of people who immediate leap to my mind 0:15:15.276 --> 0:15:17.076 when I think about people who talk to strangers. One 0:15:17.156 --> 0:15:22.356 is salespeople. Yeah, because you're often selling to strangers and 0:15:22.396 --> 0:15:26.636 they're it's sort of an interesting counterexample because there you're 0:15:26.676 --> 0:15:29.996 doing everything you can to comprehend them in order to 0:15:30.116 --> 0:15:34.916 produce an effective sale. And I just wonder whether I 0:15:34.916 --> 0:15:37.156 don't I have no idea, I wonder if salespeople do 0:15:37.276 --> 0:15:40.516 better at talking to strangers insofar as they're trying to 0:15:40.556 --> 0:15:42.156 make a sale and in fact, to the extent this 0:15:42.236 --> 0:15:43.956 comes up in your book, it's from the other side. 0:15:44.036 --> 0:15:46.196 It's from the buyer, as it were, you know, the 0:15:46.236 --> 0:15:48.556 person who believes what the salesman is this the pitch 0:15:48.556 --> 0:15:51.036 that the salesman is saying. Yeah. And then the other 0:15:51.076 --> 0:15:52.916 group of people who also come up in the book 0:15:52.916 --> 0:15:57.076 are anthropologists. Yeah, and you take us into the into 0:15:57.236 --> 0:16:03.196 Central America, a very intrepid part of anthropologists to actually Indonesia, 0:16:03.476 --> 0:16:08.516 to Indonesia. Sorry, who go to a village where people 0:16:08.596 --> 0:16:11.076 drink alcohol that turns out to be is it one 0:16:11.156 --> 0:16:13.596 hundred and oh that story? Yes, yeah, I'm mixing up 0:16:13.596 --> 0:16:17.156 my anthropology stories. Yes, there's several anthropologists anthropologies, Yes you are, 0:16:17.196 --> 0:16:20.716 I'm talking about the drunk anthropologists. Yes, yeah, you know 0:16:20.956 --> 0:16:23.076 all of Malcolm's I mean as as you can guess 0:16:23.076 --> 0:16:24.236 and as you will know as soon as you read 0:16:24.236 --> 0:16:27.116 this book. It's a classic, the great read. And every 0:16:27.156 --> 0:16:28.956 you know anecdote could have a name, and this is 0:16:28.996 --> 0:16:32.076 the Adventure of the Drunken Apologists. Yes, every it's like 0:16:32.076 --> 0:16:34.036 every you can play a game where every Malcolm god 0:16:34.076 --> 0:16:35.836 Well anecdote could be turned into the name of a 0:16:35.876 --> 0:16:40.876 Sherlock Holms story. That's sorry. You know, so here these 0:16:40.876 --> 0:16:45.196 anthropologists they do really well and talking to strangers, it seems, 0:16:45.236 --> 0:16:47.476 at least in your I'm sure not all anthropologists do 0:16:47.476 --> 0:16:49.596 do well that that that's what they're trying to do. 0:16:49.916 --> 0:16:52.276 So I wonder is there something we could learn from 0:16:52.396 --> 0:16:56.516 either salesman or anthropologists, Yes, about how to go about 0:16:56.556 --> 0:16:59.156 talking strangers. The end of the salesman part is really 0:16:59.156 --> 0:17:02.996 interesting because what is it that a successful salesperson does. 0:17:03.996 --> 0:17:06.836 They The first thing they do before they size up 0:17:07.476 --> 0:17:11.436 the person they're trying to sell to, is they sell themselves, right. 0:17:11.716 --> 0:17:16.836 They established their credibility, their friendliness, their interests there. You know, 0:17:16.836 --> 0:17:19.076 I once seen one of my earlier books, I like 0:17:19.116 --> 0:17:22.236 when you Go to Sell a book. Yes, I had 0:17:22.276 --> 0:17:26.716 a profile of the number one car salesman in America. 0:17:26.836 --> 0:17:30.516 Who was this guy in rural New Jersey. And he 0:17:30.596 --> 0:17:34.236 was really really fascinating and he was his record was 0:17:34.876 --> 0:17:37.556 I mean, he was like an order of magnitude better 0:17:37.596 --> 0:17:40.396 than anybody else. And he was the kind of most 0:17:40.996 --> 0:17:43.916 there was nothing. He wasn't a fast talking, slick guy. 0:17:44.316 --> 0:17:46.516 He was the opposite. He was this guy. When you 0:17:46.556 --> 0:17:51.276 met him, he just oozed authenticity and he impressed upon 0:17:51.316 --> 0:17:53.836 you before he even sized you up. He impressed upon 0:17:53.876 --> 0:17:57.516 you the fact that he was a straight shooting, normal 0:17:57.636 --> 0:18:01.916 guy who was not trying to hustle you. On the contrary, 0:18:02.236 --> 0:18:04.876 he just cared about, you know, serving your interests. And 0:18:04.996 --> 0:18:07.516 he was genuine. I think he actually genuine he believed 0:18:07.516 --> 0:18:09.836 that that's what he was doing. But kinds of genuine. 0:18:09.876 --> 0:18:12.236 There's he genuinely believed that's what he was doing, and 0:18:12.276 --> 0:18:14.316 there's that is genuinely what he was doing. I think 0:18:14.396 --> 0:18:17.236 that's genuinely what he was doing because he pointed out 0:18:17.276 --> 0:18:18.796 he was just doing people the favor of selling them. 0:18:19.116 --> 0:18:21.636 Because because he made this really interesting point, which is 0:18:21.676 --> 0:18:24.116 that if you're a car salesman, and I love the 0:18:24.156 --> 0:18:27.756 fact that we've now detoured into car salesman's but he 0:18:27.836 --> 0:18:30.796 says the thing about the mistake he was I asked 0:18:30.836 --> 0:18:32.796 him to talk about, what are the mistakes your peers make? 0:18:32.996 --> 0:18:35.436 So why what does everyone else do such a bad 0:18:35.476 --> 0:18:37.556 job of selling cars and you are so good? And 0:18:37.556 --> 0:18:39.316 he said, well, the mistake they make is that they 0:18:39.356 --> 0:18:43.876 think it's all about the person in front of them. 0:18:43.916 --> 0:18:45.876 But he said, no, no no, success in this business is 0:18:45.876 --> 0:18:49.836 about referrals. He's like a successful sale for me, is 0:18:50.076 --> 0:18:52.076 whether I don't sell the person in front of me 0:18:52.116 --> 0:18:54.076 a car, But they liked me so much that they 0:18:54.116 --> 0:18:56.796 go home and when their friends are buying a car, 0:18:57.276 --> 0:18:59.196 they say, oh, you should go talk to that guy. 0:18:59.236 --> 0:19:03.596 He was really nice. That's where was a volume business. 0:19:03.676 --> 0:19:06.236 Yes you want, you want, and that person might tell 0:19:06.316 --> 0:19:09.836 four people and you might sell three cars because of 0:19:09.836 --> 0:19:12.396 that one successful. So the other rule he had was 0:19:13.156 --> 0:19:16.956 you can never dismiss so anyone who comes into the 0:19:16.996 --> 0:19:21.356 dealership deserves your full attention. So he never judged anyone. 0:19:21.596 --> 0:19:25.516 If you were a seven year old kid, he would 0:19:25.556 --> 0:19:28.236 treat you as seriously as if you were, you know, 0:19:28.356 --> 0:19:30.436 a millionaire. Why because you don't know who the seven 0:19:30.516 --> 0:19:33.956 year old kid's father or uncle or grandfather is. So 0:19:34.036 --> 0:19:35.836 he would spend this whole afternoon who the seven year 0:19:35.836 --> 0:19:37.196 old kids? I thought it was kind of fascinating. But 0:19:37.196 --> 0:19:41.196 the point was he begins with establishing his own credibility. 0:19:41.276 --> 0:19:44.156 And this is of course exactly what Brian and Cinia 0:19:44.236 --> 0:19:47.076 in the cop in the Sandra Bland case does not do. 0:19:47.876 --> 0:19:51.076 He behaves without regard for his own credibility. In fact, 0:19:51.116 --> 0:19:55.316 he blows his credibility before she even meets him by 0:19:56.116 --> 0:19:59.596 pulling her over on a nonsensical traffic stop. And the 0:19:59.636 --> 0:20:02.956 idea that we have trained police officers to behave in 0:20:02.996 --> 0:20:05.876 such a way that their credibility is destroyed before they 0:20:05.956 --> 0:20:09.956 even meet the person they're pulling over is incredib Right. 0:20:10.556 --> 0:20:13.916 We should be taking the people training cops and sending 0:20:13.916 --> 0:20:16.676 them to meet with this car salesman and he could 0:20:16.676 --> 0:20:20.316 teach them something, right. So, I mean, it's funny because 0:20:21.636 --> 0:20:22.916 I spent a lot of time in a book with 0:20:22.956 --> 0:20:26.836 these two brilliant criminologists who have rethought a lot of 0:20:28.196 --> 0:20:31.996 David Weisbergen and Larry Schreman, and they think endlessly about this. 0:20:32.396 --> 0:20:35.076 It's like the first task of a police officer in 0:20:35.196 --> 0:20:40.476 dealing with any member of the public is to establish 0:20:40.556 --> 0:20:44.756 their credibilion integrity. But you can't do anything before you 0:20:44.796 --> 0:20:48.036 do that, whereas presumably what a lot of people think 0:20:48.076 --> 0:20:51.556 is that they should establish our authority. Yes, exactly, and 0:20:51.596 --> 0:20:54.556 that is there's a huge difference between those two those 0:20:54.556 --> 0:20:58.636 two things. Now, when you talk though about the salesman 0:20:58.676 --> 0:21:03.436 who established his authority, that's also what your spies did 0:21:03.676 --> 0:21:05.676 in the book. Yeah, right, they were really good at 0:21:05.756 --> 0:21:09.196 establishing their authority. Yeah, there's a lot of spies in 0:21:09.196 --> 0:21:10.556 the book In case you loved it, it's a lot 0:21:10.556 --> 0:21:13.916 of spies and a lot of really cool spies. Yeah, 0:21:13.956 --> 0:21:19.036 and so you establish authority and then the other person 0:21:19.636 --> 0:21:22.356 will believe whatever you say. Do you think people believe 0:21:22.396 --> 0:21:25.276 what the salesman said or they discounted what he was saying, 0:21:25.396 --> 0:21:27.156 but they needed to buy a car, and they figured 0:21:27.156 --> 0:21:28.316 he was a nice guy and they might as well 0:21:28.356 --> 0:21:31.876 buy the car from him. No, I think that I 0:21:31.876 --> 0:21:34.076 think they were. They are when they enter a dealership. 0:21:34.116 --> 0:21:39.516 They are desperate to find someone who seems to have 0:21:39.556 --> 0:21:41.676 their best interest at heart. There's I mean, I think. 0:21:41.796 --> 0:21:44.116 I mean his argument was that people enter a car 0:21:44.156 --> 0:21:48.796 dealership and their expectations are really, really low. They've had 0:21:48.796 --> 0:21:51.396 so many bad experiences over the years, and that just 0:21:51.436 --> 0:21:53.916 by being a normal human being he can sell well 0:21:53.956 --> 0:22:00.156 caused anyone else in America ms the stunning thought. But spies. 0:22:00.516 --> 0:22:04.036 So since writing a book, I've the more I think 0:22:04.036 --> 0:22:07.356 about this, the more of a radical position I take 0:22:07.356 --> 0:22:09.676 on spies. Okay, good, let's get let's to the let's 0:22:09.676 --> 0:22:13.516 get into some spy radicalism. So spies and there's I 0:22:13.556 --> 0:22:15.636 was reading this article in one of the you know, 0:22:15.636 --> 0:22:20.116 they are all these journals devoted to spies. We're academic 0:22:20.796 --> 0:22:23.156 and Bertward who writes in there like they're all x 0:22:23.236 --> 0:22:26.876 CIA officers or XMI six officers. And there was one 0:22:26.996 --> 0:22:30.156 really really brilliant essay I read recently by a guy 0:22:30.156 --> 0:22:32.076 who said, you know, if you take the long view 0:22:32.796 --> 0:22:35.236 and you see that, well, during the Cold War we 0:22:35.316 --> 0:22:40.596 had Aldri Shames and m Robert Hansen and a couple 0:22:40.596 --> 0:22:42.836 of other ones. But if you look at all of 0:22:42.876 --> 0:22:46.236 the damage they did, they basically give gave away all 0:22:46.276 --> 0:22:48.196 of our key secrets. It only took a few but 0:22:48.276 --> 0:22:50.516 they gave away all of the secrets because they had 0:22:50.516 --> 0:22:52.356 they were really high up boats in the CI and FBI. 0:22:52.516 --> 0:22:54.556 And on the flip side, we had a couple of 0:22:54.596 --> 0:22:56.796 people who come over from the Soviet side who basically 0:22:56.796 --> 0:22:58.996 gave away all their key secrets. He said, so it 0:22:59.076 --> 0:23:01.916 was a wash in the end, like the Cold War itself, 0:23:01.996 --> 0:23:03.916 the Cold like the Cold War itself. And he's like, 0:23:03.956 --> 0:23:05.716 so this guy was like, who is himself a spy guy? 0:23:05.756 --> 0:23:07.636 He's like, looking at the evidence of the Cold War, 0:23:07.916 --> 0:23:10.756 you should we should just give up, Like we should 0:23:10.756 --> 0:23:14.196 just have saved ourself billions of dollars by by shutting 0:23:14.196 --> 0:23:19.236 down all of the covert covert espionage operations of the CIA, 0:23:19.316 --> 0:23:22.676 like we ended up no further ahead than we then 0:23:22.716 --> 0:23:24.356 we would have been if we had had no spies 0:23:24.436 --> 0:23:26.116 at all. And I tell the story in the book. 0:23:26.236 --> 0:23:27.556 We need a treaty for that though, right, because it 0:23:27.636 --> 0:23:29.596 has to be bilateral doesn't work if we give up 0:23:29.636 --> 0:23:31.116 our spies and they don't give up their spies. It 0:23:31.116 --> 0:23:32.796 has to be you have to sign a treaty. We 0:23:32.836 --> 0:23:35.836 have to total disclosure of every total disclosure, which everyone 0:23:35.836 --> 0:23:41.196 would then lie about. But uh if but if we don't, no, 0:23:41.196 --> 0:23:42.156 no, no no, no, you don't have to do it. You 0:23:42.156 --> 0:23:44.716 can be don't know, think about this laterally. It can 0:23:44.756 --> 0:23:47.996 be done utilaterally because we're shutting. If we shut down 0:23:47.996 --> 0:23:50.676 our spy service, then there is no spy service for 0:23:50.716 --> 0:23:55.036 them to infiltrate. Right, we have removed the post, but 0:23:55.036 --> 0:23:57.796 there's no spies, no no by on the non spots, 0:23:57.796 --> 0:23:59.596 there's no what are they gonna do? So the Soviets 0:23:59.596 --> 0:24:01.876 send a spy like go and spine the Department of 0:24:01.916 --> 0:24:07.076 Agriculture like, go ahead, it's all yours, go right in. No, 0:24:07.116 --> 0:24:09.316 there's no more, well there is the Defense Department. I 0:24:09.316 --> 0:24:10.796 mean I like this. I like that, I like where 0:24:10.796 --> 0:24:13.796 you're going here, and maybe the defense but there is 0:24:13.836 --> 0:24:17.516 like the defense department, I know. But mostly what the 0:24:17.556 --> 0:24:20.276 Soviets are doing is spying on our spies, and we're 0:24:20.276 --> 0:24:21.916 spying on the round. Although I guess the Chinese do 0:24:21.916 --> 0:24:25.076 it differently because they are mostly trying to steal technology, 0:24:25.116 --> 0:24:28.796 technology and secrets. Okay, so let's let's blog and secrets. 0:24:28.956 --> 0:24:31.556 But it's clear that an awful lot of this activity 0:24:31.636 --> 0:24:34.836 is just a merrygo round, yes, and we should sing around. 0:24:34.956 --> 0:24:37.356 And billions and billions and billions of dollars were spent 0:24:37.396 --> 0:24:40.236 on the merrygor around, right, So this is I found 0:24:40.356 --> 0:24:41.996 like for a spy to say this, and like I 0:24:42.236 --> 0:24:45.516 tell the story and of how I opened the book 0:24:45.516 --> 0:24:48.916 with a story of how the there's a defector comes 0:24:48.916 --> 0:24:52.956 over from Cuba and he calls together all the leading 0:24:53.076 --> 0:24:57.956 CIA people running our Cuban espionage operations. It says, um, 0:24:57.996 --> 0:25:00.956 not one, but not two and nuts free, but every 0:25:00.996 --> 0:25:03.636 single spy you have in Cuba right now is a 0:25:03.676 --> 0:25:06.876 double agent working for Castra. The whole thing. Like so 0:25:06.996 --> 0:25:10.756 like it was pointless, why bother shut you know? We 0:25:10.796 --> 0:25:13.556 had an operation in Havana inside the whatever it is, 0:25:13.556 --> 0:25:16.196 the Swiss embassy for years and years years the whole 0:25:16.196 --> 0:25:18.676 thing was a wash, like it worse than a wash. 0:25:18.796 --> 0:25:20.676 But so okay, let me let me try to up 0:25:20.676 --> 0:25:23.876 the radicalism here. So you can imagine someone saying, well, 0:25:23.916 --> 0:25:27.076 this is true of all arms races, right, each side 0:25:27.116 --> 0:25:29.916 goes like crazy. And there is a theory that at 0:25:29.916 --> 0:25:31.836 the point that the way the United States quote unquote 0:25:31.836 --> 0:25:33.836 won the Cold War was just by outspending the Soviets. 0:25:33.876 --> 0:25:35.756 So then there was a point we just waste more 0:25:35.756 --> 0:25:37.276 money than you do, and since we can afford to, 0:25:37.356 --> 0:25:41.196 we win. Yeah. Depressing, but maybe it's true. But if 0:25:41.196 --> 0:25:43.276 you ask the Defense depart in people, they would say, 0:25:43.516 --> 0:25:47.036 what do you mean intelligence services are expensive? They're really cheap, 0:25:47.756 --> 0:25:50.556 Like you can have an entire intelligence service of thousands 0:25:50.556 --> 0:25:52.796 and thousands of spies for the price of like one 0:25:52.916 --> 0:25:57.636 fighter bomber. Yeah, that the equipment is really expensive, but 0:25:57.756 --> 0:26:01.596 humans are relatively relatively inexpensive, and they don't actually have 0:26:01.676 --> 0:26:04.196 you know, the James Bond, you know flying cars. I 0:26:04.196 --> 0:26:07.236 mean there is no queue strictly speaking, well, so you know, 0:26:07.676 --> 0:26:11.916 after yes, all right, although I will say that remember 0:26:11.956 --> 0:26:16.596 after snowdon and gives away the end at the store 0:26:16.636 --> 0:26:19.436 and at the NSA, there was all this handwringing about 0:26:19.436 --> 0:26:21.836 how much it was going to cost, and the numbers 0:26:21.836 --> 0:26:24.036 were I mean, they were not trivial. They were talking 0:26:24.076 --> 0:26:26.596 about many, many, many billions of dollars, which again raised 0:26:26.596 --> 0:26:29.276 the point like if this thing that you've constructed over 0:26:29.356 --> 0:26:33.396 many many years, costing tens of billions of dollars, can 0:26:33.436 --> 0:26:36.796 be essentially destroyed by one guy working for Dell, not 0:26:36.876 --> 0:26:40.596 even like some random dude way off in the middle 0:26:40.596 --> 0:26:44.436 of nowhere who is a subcontractor for Dell and who 0:26:44.876 --> 0:26:48.556 himself you know, Snowden gets kicked you gore to college education. Yeah, 0:26:48.636 --> 0:26:50.596 and he gets He tries to work for the CIA, 0:26:50.676 --> 0:26:52.276 gets a job because it's like uncle gets him in, 0:26:52.476 --> 0:26:56.476 gets kicked out. Why because he hacks into the personnel 0:26:56.556 --> 0:26:59.556 database and changes his job evaluations so he looks good. 0:26:59.756 --> 0:27:02.916 They discover this, I'm like, oh, this guy is a 0:27:02.916 --> 0:27:05.996 a fraud, be a hacker, and the movies he would 0:27:05.996 --> 0:27:08.676 have promoted him and see and see only got a 0:27:08.716 --> 0:27:10.836 job because his uncle weighs in. So what does he do? 0:27:10.836 --> 0:27:13.076 They fire him? What does he do? He resurfaces at 0:27:13.116 --> 0:27:16.196 del and gets in again. Like if this is the system. 0:27:16.356 --> 0:27:19.716 Is there any point to having the system like there 0:27:19.836 --> 0:27:22.676 is this I you know, there is a point where 0:27:23.076 --> 0:27:26.316 you have to wonder. And it's funny when you think 0:27:26.356 --> 0:27:28.756 about it, how many American institutions are in the grip 0:27:28.796 --> 0:27:33.636 of arms races. I mean, basically, what twenty first century 0:27:33.676 --> 0:27:37.756 capitalism is is a series of I mean, is it 0:27:37.836 --> 0:27:39.716 is a you start with the marketplace, I mean you 0:27:39.836 --> 0:27:43.876 rapidly moved to a an arms race that has no 0:27:43.916 --> 0:27:47.156 productive function. Coke versus PEPSI. I was going to say 0:27:47.476 --> 0:27:51.916 Harvard versus Yale, but that would maybe maybe a better example, 0:27:51.956 --> 0:27:55.236 more expensive, more expensive example, or you know, Harvard Deaconess 0:27:55.356 --> 0:27:58.596 versus you know about SIONI or some I mean, they're 0:27:58.636 --> 0:27:59.996 all of these things. They're all they all have the 0:28:00.036 --> 0:28:02.516 same function, which is they're on the same kind of treadmill. 0:28:02.636 --> 0:28:05.196 And there's no as a point on which the spending 0:28:05.236 --> 0:28:07.636 no longer has any productive function. So the standard I 0:28:07.636 --> 0:28:09.956 mean sent there's a standard aswer to the question of 0:28:09.956 --> 0:28:11.996 why do we bother to compete, even though a lot 0:28:11.996 --> 0:28:15.556 of competition is idiotic and pointless. Usually it's the alternative 0:28:16.236 --> 0:28:19.356 is that we're colluding, and if we collude, we'll have 0:28:19.396 --> 0:28:23.076 no incentive to try to do our jobs. Well, yeah, 0:28:23.156 --> 0:28:26.276 do you think that's just basically a ridiculous Well, you 0:28:26.276 --> 0:28:32.436 can compete on things that matter and what counts well, 0:28:32.476 --> 0:28:35.196 it would be nice, for example, if universities competed on 0:28:35.356 --> 0:28:37.796 how well they were educating children who needed to be 0:28:37.916 --> 0:28:42.916 educated for example. I mean, I mean, I would seem 0:28:42.956 --> 0:28:47.676 to be just we think we are competing on that, 0:28:48.116 --> 0:28:49.956 Like that's what we tell ourselves. That's a sad thing 0:28:49.956 --> 0:28:52.636 about it. Maybe sad institution that you work for. Yes, 0:28:52.756 --> 0:28:54.676 I did hear your I did hear the podcast about 0:28:54.676 --> 0:28:58.596 the LSA TU So yeah, yeah you yeah, I was 0:28:58.636 --> 0:29:00.756 going to tell you, by the way, I'm probably most 0:29:00.756 --> 0:29:03.436 people you ever heard the Malcolm's episode about the LSAT. 0:29:03.636 --> 0:29:08.196 I only give eight hour open open everything. Yeah, I've 0:29:08.236 --> 0:29:10.116 never done the So good for you. Yeah, we're think 0:29:10.116 --> 0:29:12.196 it's because it as you say, it seems were you 0:29:12.236 --> 0:29:14.676 revealed to us what year else's score was. Well, I 0:29:14.756 --> 0:29:16.836 revealed to you what my score was. I got a 0:29:16.876 --> 0:29:18.836 lower score on the l set than I ever got 0:29:18.876 --> 0:29:23.116 on any other standardized test. Okay about that? Is that good? No? 0:29:27.036 --> 0:29:29.916 We were you was impressed by its idiocy, as I 0:29:29.996 --> 0:29:33.716 was deeply impressed by the idiocy. Yeah, I the logic games. 0:29:33.796 --> 0:29:36.716 I just thought were they and truth to be told, 0:29:36.716 --> 0:29:39.756 they bear no relationship to anything that one ever does 0:29:39.876 --> 0:29:41.996 in the wall ye leaving the speed out of it 0:29:42.196 --> 0:29:44.516 speed yea. For those you listen, the episode was all 0:29:44.556 --> 0:29:49.156 about I didn't understand why the while they had time limits. Yeah. Um. 0:29:49.636 --> 0:29:52.196 And then when I went to the people who would 0:29:52.236 --> 0:29:54.276 make an administer the el set and asked that question, 0:29:54.396 --> 0:29:59.116 they h it's like, no, one didn't have a good answer. Well, no, no, 0:29:59.156 --> 0:30:00.836 it was worse than that. It was like they had 0:30:00.876 --> 0:30:02.556 never occurred to him that that was that would be 0:30:02.596 --> 0:30:05.556 an issue, Like so they Well, I think you got 0:30:05.556 --> 0:30:07.196 the right answer. I mean you buried the answer a 0:30:07.236 --> 0:30:09.556 little bit in the episode. But you pointed out that 0:30:10.156 --> 0:30:12.756 law school exams are typically timed and they measure whether 0:30:12.756 --> 0:30:14.156 they else that is any good by saying if it 0:30:14.196 --> 0:30:17.476 predicts predicts first year grades, so that they are. So 0:30:17.476 --> 0:30:19.276 it's really the law school's fault. It's not the fault 0:30:19.316 --> 0:30:21.156 of the exam. It's really involved with the law schools. 0:30:21.156 --> 0:30:23.596 But it was weird to find someone who was engaged 0:30:23.676 --> 0:30:27.436 in doing something and was radically incurious about the reasons 0:30:27.436 --> 0:30:30.556 for doing that thing. Right, that's that's only weird to you, Malcolm. 0:30:31.076 --> 0:30:33.316 Most of the world is people doing whatever they do 0:30:33.356 --> 0:30:35.436 every day and not keeping it. Who it about? What 0:30:35.436 --> 0:30:37.836 it is that they're Yeah, no, it's it's funny. And 0:30:37.876 --> 0:30:40.356 the other thing, um, no, I won't. I was going 0:30:40.436 --> 0:30:43.236 to say something disparaging, but I won't. You can say 0:30:42.556 --> 0:30:47.196 you can be disparaging. No. The other thing this is 0:30:47.236 --> 0:30:52.196 totally um tangential and parenthetical, is that so you have 0:30:52.236 --> 0:30:59.116 an institution which is making constructing these tests and administering 0:30:59.156 --> 0:31:02.676 them and has been doing so for seventy years, and 0:31:02.956 --> 0:31:04.836 by the way, it makes a lot of money doing it, 0:31:05.196 --> 0:31:08.996 and you know, no one's particularly challenging their right to 0:31:08.996 --> 0:31:12.996 do so. Um, and they don't serve any real productive function. 0:31:13.156 --> 0:31:17.236 So the only reason to persist is if they're having fun. Right, 0:31:17.796 --> 0:31:19.436 So that was I was looking. I was like, okay, 0:31:19.476 --> 0:31:21.516 so I can think of no behind the closed door, 0:31:21.516 --> 0:31:23.956 they would all be shortling to themselves, you know. So 0:31:23.996 --> 0:31:26.556 my thought was the only I can't. There's no reason 0:31:26.636 --> 0:31:28.676 for you guys to be doing what you're doing unless 0:31:28.916 --> 0:31:30.556 you wake up in the morning with joy in your 0:31:30.556 --> 0:31:33.076 heart and think I'm going to come up with some 0:31:33.156 --> 0:31:37.236 really like killer quests and I don't even but this 0:31:37.276 --> 0:31:39.996 example actually underscores what I was sort of the question 0:31:40.036 --> 0:31:42.436 I was raising a couple of minutes ago, namely, so 0:31:42.916 --> 0:31:45.276 the lsdas the law school. I don't even know when 0:31:45.276 --> 0:31:48.916 that all stands for. They have no competition, right, I mean, 0:31:48.916 --> 0:31:50.396 as you say, they're doing it for fun. I mean, 0:31:50.436 --> 0:31:52.236 in fact, in recent years, a couple of law schools, 0:31:52.236 --> 0:31:54.716 including mine, I've started experimenting by saying what you could 0:31:54.716 --> 0:31:57.596 take to gre Yeah, I love you. That's what they 0:31:57.636 --> 0:32:01.316 call an experiment. I mean, it's ridiculous thing. One ridiculous 0:32:01.316 --> 0:32:07.396 steridized test. You can take another steridized one which does 0:32:07.436 --> 0:32:09.836 not have logic games on unless we must be forgot. 0:32:10.036 --> 0:32:13.276 But I mean the justification, if there is one for that, 0:32:13.636 --> 0:32:16.196 it would only be if you have two different tests, 0:32:16.516 --> 0:32:19.476 then maybe that would create some competition, and it would 0:32:19.556 --> 0:32:21.876 lead the people who make up to tests in theory. 0:32:21.876 --> 0:32:23.996 I mean, this is all in theory to think about 0:32:24.036 --> 0:32:27.196 whether you know they could do something differently instead of 0:32:27.236 --> 0:32:29.676 just as you say, just being out there to have fun. 0:32:29.756 --> 0:32:31.596 Not that having fun. It's such a bad motive. No, No, 0:32:31.636 --> 0:32:33.476 I thought that's why I'll do my job. If I 0:32:33.516 --> 0:32:35.396 had thought they were having fun, I would have called 0:32:35.396 --> 0:32:37.636 the whole thing off and did not attack them, right 0:32:37.836 --> 0:32:39.916 but right, but they appeared not to be having fun. 0:32:40.196 --> 0:32:42.876 They committed this end of not having fun, unlike the 0:32:42.996 --> 0:32:48.436 drunken Anthropologists. Yes, yes, yes, who did have fun. Yeah. 0:32:48.476 --> 0:32:52.716 I was fascinated by the chapter about alcohol here. There 0:32:52.756 --> 0:32:54.796 was tons. I mean, there's always stuff in every chapter 0:32:54.916 --> 0:32:56.876 that I don't know, but in that chapter, I feel 0:32:56.876 --> 0:32:58.996 like I didn't know anything, Like everything I thought about 0:32:59.036 --> 0:33:03.236 alcohol consumption was wrong. Can you tell the story of 0:33:03.276 --> 0:33:08.956 the drunken Anthropologists? I can't. I can. So that chapter 0:33:10.716 --> 0:33:14.036 began because I was looking for since I was interested 0:33:14.076 --> 0:33:18.196 in this question of conversations between strangers going awry. Naturally, 0:33:18.236 --> 0:33:24.916 I thought that campus sexual assault would be a reasonable 0:33:24.916 --> 0:33:27.636 place to start. Like that's that seems to be albeit 0:33:27.596 --> 0:33:30.796 a highly controversial, highly country but part, some part of 0:33:30.836 --> 0:33:34.396 that problem is about that that clearly conversations are going 0:33:34.436 --> 0:33:37.516 badly awry. Right. So I began to go and talk 0:33:37.516 --> 0:33:39.796 to people who studied this problem, and there are many 0:33:39.836 --> 0:33:42.796 of them, and all of them, five minutes into the 0:33:42.836 --> 0:33:44.956 conversation would say, well, you know, this is about alcohol. 0:33:45.476 --> 0:33:47.556 They all said this, and I realized, Okay, so maybe 0:33:47.556 --> 0:33:50.356 I should rethink and start talking thinking about more about alcohol. 0:33:52.116 --> 0:33:56.956 And that's interesting on another on a number of levels, 0:33:58.476 --> 0:34:03.116 in part because if you read books about campus assault, 0:34:03.356 --> 0:34:05.956 there are books written about it that don't mention alcohol, 0:34:06.076 --> 0:34:08.996 which is quite incredible. But really, do you see this 0:34:09.156 --> 0:34:11.516 gap between the way an issue is discussed in public 0:34:11.756 --> 0:34:14.556 and luay an issue is discussed by the research community. 0:34:14.836 --> 0:34:18.036 Um anyway, so it led to this long question about Okay, 0:34:18.076 --> 0:34:23.276 so what happens when you're drunk? Um? That would that 0:34:23.396 --> 0:34:28.156 might impair the um the conversation that's being had between 0:34:28.356 --> 0:34:30.916 two strangers at a party or what have you. And 0:34:31.436 --> 0:34:33.956 the common position is that what happens when you drink 0:34:34.076 --> 0:34:37.156 is you become disinhibited, which is what I thought, Yes, 0:34:37.316 --> 0:34:40.676 that you simply then the normal, the kind of surface 0:34:40.756 --> 0:34:45.156 constraints on your um personality melt away, and some kind 0:34:45.196 --> 0:34:48.676 of purer version of yourself emerges in vino veritas right 0:34:48.716 --> 0:34:51.596 for better or words for better fans uh. In fact, 0:34:51.676 --> 0:34:56.636 the contemporary position on alcohol now is on drunkenness is 0:34:56.916 --> 0:34:59.876 very different from that, and that is that drunkenness causes myopia, 0:34:59.956 --> 0:35:02.156 and what that means is that when you're drunk, what 0:35:02.316 --> 0:35:05.956 happens is your higher cognitive functions start to shut down 0:35:06.236 --> 0:35:09.676 and you're capable only of making sense of things in 0:35:09.716 --> 0:35:12.356 the immediate term that are right in front of you. 0:35:12.796 --> 0:35:15.236 And that's a significant That sounds like a subtle difference, 0:35:15.276 --> 0:35:22.076 but it's significant because your personality is your normal personality 0:35:22.476 --> 0:35:25.676 is a function of you, of a careful weighing of 0:35:25.756 --> 0:35:29.956 short term versus long term consequences. Right that, Noah, you 0:35:30.036 --> 0:35:32.316 are who you are because you're not just thinking about 0:35:32.316 --> 0:35:35.116 what's happening now. You're thinking about tomorrow and next week. 0:35:35.196 --> 0:35:39.116 And if you say something rude or stupid or offensive 0:35:39.156 --> 0:35:42.236 to me right now, you know it'll matter tomorrow and right. 0:35:42.956 --> 0:35:46.076 But if you're drunk, that falls away, and what's left 0:35:46.436 --> 0:35:49.396 is not Noah anymore. Because Noah is someone who thinks 0:35:49.396 --> 0:35:51.796 about tomorrow. What's left is the version of Noah that 0:35:51.796 --> 0:35:54.956 doesn't think about tomorrow, which is not Noah. Right, And 0:35:55.036 --> 0:35:57.636 to the extent that we it's a version of Noah 0:35:57.676 --> 0:36:00.876 that doesn't think about tomorrow. Yes, but that's not a 0:36:00.956 --> 0:36:03.916 version you approve of. True, But it's a separate question. 0:36:03.996 --> 0:36:05.716 I think we can discuss it without without a view 0:36:05.716 --> 0:36:09.076 of like, which is the essential Noah? Oh? No no, 0:36:09.276 --> 0:36:11.516 I would say, it's the non essential no yeah, okay, 0:36:14.236 --> 0:36:16.996 isn't your non essential self the portion of yourself that 0:36:17.076 --> 0:36:21.076 you would not willingly choose to be? Well, that would 0:36:21.076 --> 0:36:23.116 be super nice if that were true. But it might 0:36:23.156 --> 0:36:28.476 be the other way around, right, I mean, it could 0:36:28.516 --> 0:36:30.556 be that the portion of myself that I don't want 0:36:30.596 --> 0:36:33.116 to be is actually the essential me, and that to me, 0:36:33.316 --> 0:36:36.276 who goes all the work, goes into producing the public me, 0:36:36.636 --> 0:36:38.876 is the inessential me. Do you want to lie on 0:36:38.876 --> 0:36:42.796 the couch and should? I mean, I'm I'm getting to that, 0:36:42.876 --> 0:36:44.876 Believe me, I'm getting to I'm going to get to 0:36:44.956 --> 0:36:49.196 psychoanalysis and talking to strangers, I promise you, Okay. Regardless 0:36:49.196 --> 0:36:53.676 of whether drunken Noah is the anti Noah or simply 0:36:54.676 --> 0:36:59.756 altered Noah, it's not typical Noah, and it's not ideal Noah. Yes. Right, 0:37:00.316 --> 0:37:04.436 So if this version, if drunken, the drunken version of ourselves, 0:37:04.596 --> 0:37:10.036 is this radically altered, less than altimal verse, then that's 0:37:10.116 --> 0:37:14.316 hugely problematic, right, And it makes it hard to understand, 0:37:14.356 --> 0:37:18.276 for example, how consent can ever be appropriate when people 0:37:18.276 --> 0:37:22.436 are very drunk, because the notion of consent assumes that 0:37:22.476 --> 0:37:24.916 you're it is your self. It is your essential self 0:37:24.916 --> 0:37:28.996 that's consenting, not your altered self. But also it means 0:37:28.996 --> 0:37:33.636 that I think that we have Also it raises the 0:37:33.716 --> 0:37:38.196 question of whether the transformed drunken self is someone who 0:37:38.236 --> 0:37:41.476 is much more likely to engage in criminal behavior, which 0:37:41.996 --> 0:37:44.156 turns out to be true. Right, That's what a lot 0:37:44.196 --> 0:37:47.436 of this sexual assult is about, is that people get very, 0:37:47.516 --> 0:37:55.076 very drunk thinking that it is a harmless, fun state, 0:37:55.396 --> 0:37:57.316 and in fact it's a state that radically increases their 0:37:57.356 --> 0:38:01.476 chances of being criminal sexual predators, right on the one 0:38:01.516 --> 0:38:04.596 side of the equation. So anyway, what does this have 0:38:04.636 --> 0:38:06.516 to do with the drunken anthropologists. Well, a lot of 0:38:06.556 --> 0:38:09.076 this rethinking of drinking begins in the fifties, with all 0:38:09.236 --> 0:38:12.196 the sense of pological work that starts going around the 0:38:12.196 --> 0:38:14.756 world and observing that in other parts of the world 0:38:15.156 --> 0:38:18.636 drunkenness doesn't look like drunkenness in the United States. Right, 0:38:18.636 --> 0:38:22.716 So if if drunken, henkenness is culturally the drunkenness. So 0:38:22.756 --> 0:38:24.836 if drunken that's just how often you get drunk, But 0:38:24.876 --> 0:38:26.996 what you do when what you do when you get 0:38:27.076 --> 0:38:31.236 drunk differs dramatically from culture. So these the the anthropologists. 0:38:31.236 --> 0:38:35.836 So these two lovely this couple um who taught a 0:38:35.876 --> 0:38:38.876 brown for many years. They went to Bolivia in the 0:38:38.956 --> 0:38:41.876 fifties and they observed that this tribe they were living 0:38:41.916 --> 0:38:46.156 with would get would drink essentially grain alcohol, but the 0:38:46.196 --> 0:38:50.756 most potent liquor imaginable. Every Friday night they would get 0:38:50.796 --> 0:38:54.876 together as a group and they would get so wasted that, 0:38:55.076 --> 0:38:58.436 like I mean, they would just drink too. But there 0:38:58.516 --> 0:39:06.396 was no no observable pathology. It didn't lead to fights, 0:39:06.436 --> 0:39:09.356 it didn't lead to you know, absenteeism from work, it 0:39:09.396 --> 0:39:11.676 didn't lead to broken marriages, that didn't lead to and 0:39:11.676 --> 0:39:13.276 they were like so stunned by this, like how could 0:39:13.276 --> 0:39:15.436 this be? And the answer is it goes to this 0:39:15.476 --> 0:39:18.756 question of biopia, that when you are drunk, you were 0:39:18.916 --> 0:39:21.036 at the mercy of your immediate environment. And they had 0:39:21.076 --> 0:39:24.356 constructed an immediate environment that was entirely benign, more than benign, 0:39:24.556 --> 0:39:28.036 that was socially positive. So when they got so, yeah, 0:39:28.076 --> 0:39:30.556 they were surrounded by like happy things. They sang songs 0:39:30.556 --> 0:39:32.716 and they held hands and it was all love. Was 0:39:32.756 --> 0:39:34.516 like a rave, but with grain alcohol. It was like 0:39:34.556 --> 0:39:39.116 a rave with green yes exactly, if that's what frat 0:39:39.156 --> 0:39:42.796 parties were we would not have sexual assaults, right, But 0:39:42.876 --> 0:39:46.196 frat parties are the opposite. They are places where the 0:39:46.236 --> 0:39:49.116 thing that is immediately in front of this of these 0:39:49.676 --> 0:39:53.756 you know, wasted eighteen year olds is not something that 0:39:53.796 --> 0:39:55.796 brings out their best self. It is rather something that 0:39:55.836 --> 0:39:58.476 brings out, in many cases, their worst self. The fact 0:39:58.556 --> 0:40:01.236 that we allow this to happen on campuses and we 0:40:01.276 --> 0:40:05.276 are seemingly oblivious to its consequences enrages me because the 0:40:05.276 --> 0:40:10.036 answer is the answer to engage in some rat cultural 0:40:10.076 --> 0:40:14.636 experiment to change the cultural norms. Because I mean, that's 0:40:14.636 --> 0:40:16.796 the thing about anthropologists, right, they go all over the world. 0:40:16.996 --> 0:40:19.516 They see incredible things, and they report back that what 0:40:19.596 --> 0:40:23.036 we think is intuitive isn't intuitive. But their explanation tends 0:40:23.036 --> 0:40:25.116 to be a teeny bit different from the explanations that 0:40:25.516 --> 0:40:27.676 often come up in the other work of other social scientists. 0:40:27.716 --> 0:40:30.876 They tend to say, it's a different culture. So those 0:40:30.916 --> 0:40:32.636 folks had put a lot of time and effort into 0:40:32.636 --> 0:40:35.076 figuring out a culture. Maybe it was luck, maybe it 0:40:35.156 --> 0:40:37.876 wasn't where getting drunk actually gave them some kind of 0:40:37.876 --> 0:40:41.516 communal solidarity, and so maybe we should be trying to 0:40:41.556 --> 0:40:44.436 produce a culture like that. Yeah, I agree, I think 0:40:44.436 --> 0:40:48.596 we should be. I think the idea of so some 0:40:48.636 --> 0:40:51.196 people have been trying to produce a culture around drinking. 0:40:51.236 --> 0:40:53.196 It's just that the culture that has been produced around 0:40:53.276 --> 0:40:56.756 drinking on campuses in the last twenty five years is 0:40:56.796 --> 0:41:02.116 the most monstrously maladaptive culture imaginable. So we know you 0:41:02.156 --> 0:41:06.036 can produce powerful cultures around it, but we have surrendered 0:41:06.076 --> 0:41:07.716 that task to people who do not have the best 0:41:07.716 --> 0:41:12.036 interests of nineteen year role college students at heart. And 0:41:12.076 --> 0:41:16.396 it's time we went back and took back that particular culture. 0:41:16.676 --> 0:41:19.956 It is quite possible to have fun at a party 0:41:19.996 --> 0:41:24.036 without getting blackout drunk, right at the very least, it 0:41:24.156 --> 0:41:27.996 makes sense. You know, in telling in retelling the story 0:41:28.076 --> 0:41:30.756 of the Stanford rape case, there are many things that 0:41:31.276 --> 0:41:34.196 strike you. One is that here is a party at 0:41:34.236 --> 0:41:36.596 Stanford where there is a lot of very young people 0:41:36.596 --> 0:41:38.436 are getting very very drunk, and there appeared to be 0:41:38.476 --> 0:41:44.116 no adults anywhere, no sober people present. How is that good? Idea? Like, 0:41:44.236 --> 0:41:46.356 here's a college that has not like there are a 0:41:46.436 --> 0:41:49.356 lack of resources at Stanford for this kind of thing. 0:41:50.396 --> 0:41:53.476 When I was at you know, getting drunk in college 0:41:53.516 --> 0:41:55.516 at the University of Toronto in the nineteen eighties. They 0:41:55.516 --> 0:41:58.876 were always sober adults at our parties. It just it 0:41:58.916 --> 0:42:01.716 was the way it was constructed, and so whenever something 0:42:01.716 --> 0:42:03.636 got out of hand, the sober adult came in and 0:42:03.756 --> 0:42:06.636 made sure it didn't go too far. I suspect that's 0:42:06.636 --> 0:42:11.516 why the number of these incredibly problematic incidents in my 0:42:11.556 --> 0:42:14.636 college years was small. I never knew of a single 0:42:14.916 --> 0:42:18.356 person who went to the hospital suffering from alcohol poisoning. 0:42:18.396 --> 0:42:20.836 I never knew of a single person although I got drunk. 0:42:20.916 --> 0:42:23.796 Although I have read this is maybe about the early nineties, 0:42:23.876 --> 0:42:26.116 I can't be so different from the late eighties studies 0:42:26.156 --> 0:42:29.836 suggesting that the rate of sexual assault on campuses was 0:42:29.876 --> 0:42:33.996 actually not so different then than it is now, that 0:42:34.116 --> 0:42:40.276 is to say, outrageously, shockingly terribly high. Yeah. Yeah, All 0:42:40.316 --> 0:42:43.556 I know is that the Yeah, the gathering of statistics 0:42:43.556 --> 0:42:46.276 in this area is an incredibly difficult Yes, so safely 0:42:46.276 --> 0:42:49.356 because so much goes unreported. Yeah. All I can say 0:42:49.356 --> 0:42:51.596 for certain is that our best efforts at the moment 0:42:52.796 --> 0:42:56.836 suggests the sexual self problem is way, way, way worse 0:42:56.876 --> 0:43:00.556 than people imagine. I wanted to I promised one question 0:43:00.596 --> 0:43:06.436 about broadly speaking psychoanalysis. So here's the question. You talk 0:43:06.516 --> 0:43:08.796 a lot in the book about default to truth as 0:43:08.836 --> 0:43:11.196 some thing that we do and maybe something that we're 0:43:11.196 --> 0:43:15.556 hard wired to do. Yeah, so you know your spies 0:43:15.796 --> 0:43:18.196 are being spies and they say, oh, I'm not a spy, 0:43:18.236 --> 0:43:19.556 and then people say, oh, I guess you're not a 0:43:19.556 --> 0:43:22.156 spy because we're you know, it's pro social to believe 0:43:22.156 --> 0:43:25.316 people unless you have really strong evidence not too How 0:43:25.356 --> 0:43:28.356 do you distinguish that from the situation where we kind 0:43:28.396 --> 0:43:32.076 of know that you're lying, but we really don't want 0:43:32.116 --> 0:43:35.796 to think that, where we're actually eager on some level, 0:43:36.236 --> 0:43:37.796 and you know, it could be on different levels, but 0:43:37.796 --> 0:43:40.196 it could actually be on a you know, a subconscious level. 0:43:40.556 --> 0:43:42.276 We're eager to believe you because it would be just 0:43:42.316 --> 0:43:45.436 too terrible to believe the truth that my co worker 0:43:45.476 --> 0:43:47.996 in the next cubicle, who's an award winning you know, 0:43:48.036 --> 0:43:51.436 Cuba analyst, is actually you know, piling around personally with 0:43:51.476 --> 0:43:54.476 Fidel Castro, you know, on odd weekends. Yeah, it's it's 0:43:54.556 --> 0:43:56.236 devastating to think that. I mean, in all of your 0:43:56.276 --> 0:43:58.076 cases about the spies, you always have the person saying, 0:43:58.076 --> 0:44:01.116 oh my god, we were just devastated to discover this. Yeah, so, 0:44:01.396 --> 0:44:06.036 how do you distinguish a kind of idea that we're 0:44:06.196 --> 0:44:08.236 just built to believe people, so we believe people from 0:44:08.276 --> 0:44:10.436 the idea that no, it's not that, it's that we 0:44:10.516 --> 0:44:12.516 kind of know they're lying on some level, but we 0:44:13.196 --> 0:44:15.236 but we know and we don't know at the same 0:44:15.236 --> 0:44:19.156 time because we just really, really really don't want to 0:44:19.156 --> 0:44:21.956 be disillusioned. Well, I there's many way stiensers that I 0:44:21.996 --> 0:44:24.556 would say that. So a lot of my ideas in 0:44:24.596 --> 0:44:27.796 this book about why we do such a bad job 0:44:27.836 --> 0:44:31.116 of knowing when others are lying come from the work 0:44:31.116 --> 0:44:34.196 of this psychologist, Tim Levine and levine zanswer would be 0:44:35.556 --> 0:44:38.796 that real liars. So there's a in a psychological literature, 0:44:38.796 --> 0:44:40.756 there is a distinction between there's a big argument about 0:44:40.756 --> 0:44:43.716 what is a lie, and they don't count as lies. 0:44:44.636 --> 0:44:48.316 Untruths that are told with the intent of preserving social 0:44:48.356 --> 0:44:52.516 relationships are not considered lies what we would call white lies, 0:44:52.756 --> 0:44:56.196 but they're the category why life is quite large. Yes, um, so, 0:44:56.276 --> 0:44:59.436 a true lie is a lie that's told deliberately and 0:44:59.476 --> 0:45:04.796 malicious maliciously with the intent of severing or rupturing social relationships. 0:45:04.836 --> 0:45:08.956 The number of the percentage of the population who tal 0:45:09.196 --> 0:45:14.356 large numbers of true lies is really really small. So 0:45:14.396 --> 0:45:16.276 the con style of that with the statistics on the 0:45:16.356 --> 0:45:19.396 number of people who cheat on their spouses, I mean 0:45:19.396 --> 0:45:21.276 that by depending on the numbers you look at, that's 0:45:21.316 --> 0:45:24.116 you know, between a third and sixty percent of you 0:45:24.156 --> 0:45:26.556 know of Americans, depending on which studies you believe. That's 0:45:26.596 --> 0:45:28.356 a lot of people and they're all telling unless you 0:45:28.356 --> 0:45:33.516 think that's a white lie. Now, so is cheating on 0:45:33.556 --> 0:45:38.436 your I mean I'm talking about a cheating on this 0:45:38.676 --> 0:45:43.476 on your spouse. Is an active an active deception, yeah, 0:45:43.516 --> 0:45:46.316 but it may not involve an actual lie. In other words, 0:45:46.876 --> 0:45:49.916 I'm talking about the moment when the two people confront 0:45:49.956 --> 0:45:53.316 each other and one of the fun party says that 0:45:53.356 --> 0:45:55.116 you're having an affair and the other party says, I'm 0:45:55.156 --> 0:45:58.356 not okay. So that's no. I don't know what percentage 0:45:58.396 --> 0:46:00.916 includes that moment. Yeah, I'm more interested in that act 0:46:00.956 --> 0:46:03.636 where they confront each other. I'm not you know, you're 0:46:03.636 --> 0:46:07.916 talking about the commission of a social acts or maybe 0:46:08.156 --> 0:46:11.236 highly social acts, but social acts outside of overly social, 0:46:11.276 --> 0:46:16.996 overly social acts, but um but no deeply malicious acts 0:46:17.196 --> 0:46:20.756 meant to destroy. So made off made off level kinds 0:46:20.796 --> 0:46:24.276 of lies are really really rare. Um. So to add 0:46:24.316 --> 0:46:25.716 to you you, I agree with you. How do we know 0:46:25.796 --> 0:46:29.276 that a lot of so there is a there is 0:46:29.276 --> 0:46:32.076 a healthy literature in psychology and trying to figure this 0:46:32.156 --> 0:46:35.116 question out. Yeah. Um, you know it's hard to tell. 0:46:35.556 --> 0:46:38.956 But you know, we do know that because you know 0:46:38.956 --> 0:46:44.516 what percentage of investment advisors are running massive Ponzi schemes. 0:46:44.636 --> 0:46:47.236 It's actually quite small, right, I mean there's a lot 0:46:47.276 --> 0:46:52.156 of Look, where's your money in like in a sock? 0:46:52.716 --> 0:46:55.956 I you this, No, No, it's in an index fund. Yea. 0:46:56.076 --> 0:46:59.356 The Wall Street Journal is not lying. I mean the index. 0:46:59.396 --> 0:47:01.356 The index is the index. So you know how you're 0:47:01.396 --> 0:47:03.636 you know, well, the person running the index fund, you're 0:47:03.636 --> 0:47:05.956 saying it's not lying. You know, there's don't you don't 0:47:05.956 --> 0:47:07.836 even need a person. It's just an index, I know. 0:47:07.916 --> 0:47:10.316 But so therefore it's not you, whereas a human being 0:47:10.316 --> 0:47:12.116 with a with a you know, with an investment strategy 0:47:12.156 --> 0:47:14.356 could could be the nature of a Ponzi scheme? Is 0:47:14.396 --> 0:47:18.276 that advision it? Actually? Yeah? So we do know that 0:47:18.756 --> 0:47:21.596 there aren't ten madeups out there? Yeah, there are, you know, 0:47:21.596 --> 0:47:24.156 there is a small number. And similarly, when we look 0:47:24.156 --> 0:47:27.636 in you know, what is the incident incidents of Since 0:47:27.676 --> 0:47:29.996 I talk about pedophilia in this book, how many you know, 0:47:29.996 --> 0:47:32.476 what is the real incidence of pedophilia in the population, 0:47:32.516 --> 0:47:37.476 So someone who is systematically deceiving those around him in 0:47:37.476 --> 0:47:39.756 in the in the in the name of pursuing a 0:47:39.836 --> 0:47:43.116 devan sexual agenda. It's actually it's quite small. It's like 0:47:44.196 --> 0:47:48.876 two three percent. That who that's small? Well, two three percent. 0:47:48.916 --> 0:47:51.116 Now we're not saying that these are people who actively 0:47:51.196 --> 0:47:55.036 pursue their pedophilia, but who have those kinds of inclinations, 0:47:55.076 --> 0:48:00.356 But that that's quite small. Sure, yeah, okay, two or 0:48:00.396 --> 0:48:03.516 three people out of one hundred. It's nothing like sounds 0:48:03.516 --> 0:48:05.436 like a lot of people to me. I don't know. 0:48:05.476 --> 0:48:07.556 But it's because I have kids. I don't know. But 0:48:07.596 --> 0:48:10.916 if you but if you have as a baseline position 0:48:10.996 --> 0:48:14.316 that most people you deal with are not pedophiles, that's 0:48:14.356 --> 0:48:16.876 not an irrational position. It's not irrational, not by any string. 0:48:16.956 --> 0:48:19.516 So you can send your kids to boy scout the world, 0:48:19.836 --> 0:48:22.756 and you shouldn't lie awake at night worrying about whether 0:48:22.756 --> 0:48:27.076 the boy scouts. But verify, yes, that's right anyway, So 0:48:27.276 --> 0:48:30.516 I don't think that your position is wrong. But I 0:48:30.556 --> 0:48:34.876 would say that it's it is probably rational to want 0:48:34.916 --> 0:48:37.436 to believe that the person you're dealing with is telling 0:48:37.476 --> 0:48:39.476 the truth, because most people actually are telling the truth. 0:48:39.476 --> 0:48:42.036 That's Slivian's argument. I think that's there's something and it's 0:48:42.036 --> 0:48:47.036 a it's a rationalist argument, presumably built into some evolutionary theory. Right, 0:48:47.036 --> 0:48:49.916 it's rational, and so we've evolved this tendency. You know, 0:48:49.956 --> 0:48:51.636 what are the reasons why so many? And I guess 0:48:51.676 --> 0:48:53.796 my worry is, I'm not sure that covers the cases 0:48:54.156 --> 0:48:56.756 money of which you write about, where there's like stuff 0:48:56.876 --> 0:48:59.116 staring the person in the face, you know, the person 0:48:59.196 --> 0:49:01.396 who suspects the spy and says, gee, I suspect this 0:49:01.476 --> 0:49:03.636 spy and goes and ask the questions and the spy 0:49:03.716 --> 0:49:06.796 gives a lame answer, and the person's like, okay, I 0:49:06.836 --> 0:49:09.436 believe you. And your your answer is you know, this 0:49:09.556 --> 0:49:12.116 kind of evolutionary default the truth. But my instinct, at 0:49:12.156 --> 0:49:14.516 least on reading those anecdotes was that's not enough to 0:49:14.556 --> 0:49:17.596 explain that because the person's doubts were already raised. It's 0:49:17.636 --> 0:49:19.596 really that they just didn't want to face it. They 0:49:19.596 --> 0:49:22.276 didn't want to take on board the painful reality you 0:49:22.316 --> 0:49:25.516 know spies thinking about spies as someone who has consumed 0:49:25.596 --> 0:49:28.516 huge numbers of real and imaginary spy stories. But if 0:49:28.516 --> 0:49:31.236 you just look at the real ones, spies never get caught. 0:49:31.396 --> 0:49:35.196 Like show me a case where the first day that 0:49:35.636 --> 0:49:39.156 Joe Hill decided to turn coat and spy for the 0:49:39.156 --> 0:49:42.236 Soviet Union, even though he was a high ranking CIA officer, 0:49:42.436 --> 0:49:46.516 he was caught by counterintelligence. Never ever happens. If you do, 0:49:46.556 --> 0:49:47.956 like I woudn't want to write a book about it 0:49:47.996 --> 0:49:50.796 because it short no if you talk to these counterintelligence 0:49:50.796 --> 0:49:53.156 officers about their record and uncovering spies. First of all, 0:49:53.156 --> 0:49:55.796 most counterintelligence officers never catch any spies, and to the 0:49:55.796 --> 0:49:58.516 extent they do, they catch them like after ten years. 0:49:58.676 --> 0:50:02.436 Like think about how long Aldrich aims possibly the worst 0:50:02.476 --> 0:50:06.316 by this country ever had. The man is a buffoon, 0:50:06.756 --> 0:50:11.756 he's a drunken His performance reviews are like terrible. He 0:50:11.796 --> 0:50:14.516 starts getting huge amounts of money from the Soviets for 0:50:14.556 --> 0:50:16.396 his spying or what does he do? He spends it 0:50:16.436 --> 0:50:19.356 wildly and shows up at Langley and like a jaguar 0:50:19.436 --> 0:50:22.036 with his teeth capped and wearing a fancy you know 0:50:22.196 --> 0:50:27.716 BRIONI suit and like nobody nobody looks askance so like, 0:50:28.116 --> 0:50:33.116 I'm sorry at a certain boot, President, I'm sorry. At 0:50:33.116 --> 0:50:34.796 a certain point, you have to believe that this is 0:50:34.836 --> 0:50:38.676 something that is I just read this, this book about 0:50:38.756 --> 0:50:42.676 Klaus Fuchs. You know, the so Klaus Fuchs, he's the 0:50:42.716 --> 0:50:45.916 one who betrays the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. 0:50:46.436 --> 0:50:49.636 I hadn't realized that a Klaus Fuchs. I thought he 0:50:49.676 --> 0:50:52.156 was a kind of minor figure in Los Alamos. He's not. 0:50:52.196 --> 0:50:54.516 He's like a he's one of the greatest nuclear physics 0:50:54.556 --> 0:50:58.476 of his generation. And also his ties to the Communists 0:50:58.516 --> 0:51:01.036 go way back. He's a he's a Communist from the 0:51:01.076 --> 0:51:03.156 get go, which actually a good number of the nuclear 0:51:03.196 --> 0:51:06.836 scientists were deeply sympathetics. So it's like and you know, 0:51:06.876 --> 0:51:08.916 all kinds of people were like raising her hand and say, 0:51:08.956 --> 0:51:12.996 I don't know about Klaus, like Klaus goes. And then 0:51:13.116 --> 0:51:15.716 Klaus was at Los Alamos. They had you on lockdown 0:51:15.916 --> 0:51:17.796 in the trend and you know, where to get out 0:51:17.796 --> 0:51:20.676 of Los Alimos to meet with his Soviet handler. He 0:51:20.676 --> 0:51:24.516 had to construct these elaborate reasons. Shore enough, like Klaus 0:51:24.556 --> 0:51:26.236 is always getting in a car, like driving off to 0:51:26.316 --> 0:51:28.436 the desert, and they're like, oh, where's Claus. I don't 0:51:28.436 --> 0:51:30.956 know he's he's going to, like, you know, where would 0:51:30.956 --> 0:51:33.956 you you're at Lost Alimos? Were you going for? I 0:51:33.956 --> 0:51:36.436 think the supports my theory. I think not you're a theory. 0:51:36.436 --> 0:51:38.836 I think the supports that people say wanted to they 0:51:38.836 --> 0:51:41.156 really didn't want to believe this about classrooms. Of course 0:51:41.196 --> 0:51:43.276 they didn't want to believe it, but they were. But 0:51:43.356 --> 0:51:45.396 they didn't want to believe it because in part because 0:51:45.716 --> 0:51:49.516 most people at Los Alimos were not spies, right Klaus, 0:51:49.516 --> 0:51:53.356 It's Klaus, and like basically Klaus. I mean there's like 0:51:53.356 --> 0:51:55.836 one other guy who's a spy, but maybe someone we 0:51:55.876 --> 0:51:59.796 don't know about, but most of them not spies, right. Um. 0:52:00.756 --> 0:52:02.836 So I want to make sure we ask some of 0:52:02.836 --> 0:52:05.516 the audience questions. And this is the first question from 0:52:05.556 --> 0:52:08.916 Tyler from Westfield in New Jersey, and this question I'll 0:52:09.196 --> 0:52:11.116 you why I'm interesting this question. The question says, you're 0:52:11.156 --> 0:52:13.796 known to be an avid runner. How does running factor 0:52:13.836 --> 0:52:16.036 into your process as a writer and as a thinker? 0:52:16.036 --> 0:52:18.316 And the reason I was especially attracted this question is 0:52:18.356 --> 0:52:20.116 that I didn't exactly meet you, but the first time 0:52:20.116 --> 0:52:23.396 I ever saw you was in the Equinox in the 0:52:23.396 --> 0:52:26.716 West Village when I lived in New York, and there 0:52:26.716 --> 0:52:30.156 were several rows of treadmills, and in the front row 0:52:30.196 --> 0:52:34.356 of treadmills in the center was always Malcolm running at 0:52:34.396 --> 0:52:37.676 like an unimaginable speed, and for a long time he 0:52:37.716 --> 0:52:40.236 was by far the fastest person in that gym. And 0:52:40.276 --> 0:52:43.716 then a early two thousand supermodel. I was trying to 0:52:43.716 --> 0:52:45.636 figure out which one it was, one of the blond ones? 0:52:46.036 --> 0:52:49.676 Was it? Which one was? She was right next to you, 0:52:49.756 --> 0:52:52.356 and she would run right next to you really at 0:52:53.996 --> 0:52:56.716 that now, you'd tell me, at super high speed. This 0:52:56.756 --> 0:52:58.476 happened on more than one occasion. This is like a 0:52:58.516 --> 0:53:00.516 story about you and your father, Like you didn't even notice, 0:53:01.716 --> 0:53:04.116 and she was like pretty much as fast as as 0:53:04.156 --> 0:53:08.916 you are, and comparably skinny. And so I thought to myself, 0:53:09.116 --> 0:53:10.516 first I thought I didn't know who you were. I 0:53:10.556 --> 0:53:12.436 was just like, wow, that guy is incredibly fast. And 0:53:12.516 --> 0:53:14.276 I was like, that guy's incredibly fast and doesn't notice 0:53:14.316 --> 0:53:17.156 the girl next to him, And then later I found 0:53:17.196 --> 0:53:19.796 out that it was you. So here's the question, how 0:53:19.796 --> 0:53:22.636 does that running factor into your process as a writer 0:53:22.676 --> 0:53:25.476 and as a thinker, other than making you oblivious to supermodels? 0:53:27.516 --> 0:53:33.556 I don't know. I suppose, well, you know the you 0:53:33.596 --> 0:53:39.836 know this how iterative writing is, that you never finding 0:53:39.836 --> 0:53:43.756 a way to express what you really mean takes forever 0:53:44.596 --> 0:53:47.356 and that early and an awful lot of kind of 0:53:47.956 --> 0:53:50.116 what you discover when you write something down is how 0:53:50.156 --> 0:53:52.396 difficult it is to put your thoughts into words, or 0:53:53.036 --> 0:53:55.396 how difficult it is to know what you think. And 0:53:55.476 --> 0:53:58.436 so I always think that you running is really, among 0:53:58.516 --> 0:54:01.916 other things, a way in which I can simply take 0:54:01.956 --> 0:54:05.636 time out to ruminate. All writers, I think, have to 0:54:05.676 --> 0:54:09.756 have some space in your life for rumination. Darthy from 0:54:09.796 --> 0:54:12.636 Boston And this is I don't think it means to 0:54:12.676 --> 0:54:14.396 be a mean question, but it's a teeny bit mean. 0:54:15.436 --> 0:54:16.676 When I was on my way over here, I asked 0:54:16.716 --> 0:54:18.356 my daughter what happens if I have to ask Malcolm 0:54:18.356 --> 0:54:20.196 a mean question? She said, you have to do it 0:54:20.236 --> 0:54:25.236 as a compliment sandwich, and I didn't. I didn't know 0:54:25.276 --> 0:54:27.396 what that was, but she explained to me. So I 0:54:27.436 --> 0:54:33.476 wanted to say, Malcolm, that's this is an amazing book. Yeah, 0:54:33.796 --> 0:54:37.036 after the aha moment that birth's a new theory? How 0:54:37.036 --> 0:54:41.676 do you avoid confirmation bias while evidence gathering? And also great, 0:54:41.756 --> 0:54:49.396 great shirt? Did I do it right. Um, well, one 0:54:49.436 --> 0:54:51.556 answer is to say that all journalism is an expression 0:54:51.596 --> 0:54:55.316 of confirmation bias, but then so it confirmed the bio. 0:54:55.516 --> 0:55:00.716 Charthy holds, Yeah, I mean you're I think I guess. 0:55:00.716 --> 0:55:05.436 The defense I would say is that, unlike other forms 0:55:05.476 --> 0:55:09.396 of writing, the kind of journalism that I'm up part 0:55:09.436 --> 0:55:14.436 of is meant to provoke, not convince. That is to say, 0:55:14.516 --> 0:55:17.036 I'm not and what I what I'd like to do 0:55:17.116 --> 0:55:20.996 is to present an argument, maybe an argument that readers 0:55:20.996 --> 0:55:24.116 haven't seen before. Not necessarily because I think I can 0:55:24.356 --> 0:55:27.276 persuade you to adopt it, or necessarily because I believe 0:55:27.276 --> 0:55:29.556 the argument is one hundred percent correct, but because I 0:55:29.556 --> 0:55:33.956 think it's incredibly useful to consider the problem from that angle. 0:55:34.396 --> 0:55:38.676 So an example would be, you know, I don't talk 0:55:38.676 --> 0:55:40.276 a lot, like we went over this, I don't talk 0:55:40.276 --> 0:55:41.996 a lot about race in the case of Sandra Bland. 0:55:42.236 --> 0:55:44.836 Why Because it's really useful to think through the problem 0:55:44.876 --> 0:55:48.036 of what to do about police shootings and put race 0:55:48.076 --> 0:55:50.956 to the side for a moment. Right, that's a good 0:55:51.156 --> 0:55:54.876 do I think that race doesn't belong, No race totally belongs, 0:55:54.916 --> 0:55:58.676 but it's useful to take a couple hours and set 0:55:58.676 --> 0:56:00.916 it aside and say, what if I thought about this 0:56:01.396 --> 0:56:04.916 outside of that of that particular prism, And that's what 0:56:05.796 --> 0:56:10.836 that's what I think useful nonfiction does. And so part 0:56:10.916 --> 0:56:13.516 of the part of the production of that kind of 0:56:13.916 --> 0:56:17.196 argument is confirmation bias, happily confirmation bison. Yeah, let's gather 0:56:17.236 --> 0:56:18.836 all the events we can for a particular point of 0:56:18.876 --> 0:56:21.236 view and want it buy you. Let's see what happens. Yeah, 0:56:21.236 --> 0:56:23.076 and if you default to truth and believe it, that's 0:56:23.116 --> 0:56:25.356 your own fault you have. You got to read a skeptically, right, 0:56:25.396 --> 0:56:29.596 I mean you've got to read skeptically. Yeah. Nicole from Massachusetts, 0:56:29.676 --> 0:56:31.876 This is a very Massachusetts question, and it's kind of 0:56:31.916 --> 0:56:36.476 a deep one. Is Trump derangement syndrome a similar phenomenon 0:56:36.676 --> 0:56:42.076 to the Belgian coke crisis? This question requires a great 0:56:42.076 --> 0:56:46.356 deal of unpacking the Belgian. Nicole is from Massachusetts. Yes, 0:56:46.636 --> 0:56:49.476 coke crisis was something I did a podcast episode about. 0:56:49.516 --> 0:56:54.036 Was an episode in the nineties or eighties in Belgium 0:56:54.036 --> 0:56:58.116 where Belgians became convinced by the way every time I 0:56:58.236 --> 0:57:00.516 say the word Belgian, I'm reminded of that great Monty 0:57:00.516 --> 0:57:03.276 Python episode about they wanted to come up with a 0:57:03.356 --> 0:57:06.116 nickname for Belgian's, remember, and one of them was sprouts, 0:57:06.676 --> 0:57:08.556 one of them was Flems, and then the winner was 0:57:08.636 --> 0:57:16.076 dirty and Belgian best so so fantastic Um. But Belgians 0:57:16.116 --> 0:57:21.036 became convinced that coke was poisoning them and all these 0:57:21.156 --> 0:57:23.916 kids got sick. And then it turns out there was 0:57:23.956 --> 0:57:26.316 not conversions, and yeah it was it was just all 0:57:26.556 --> 0:57:29.916 um hysteria, a moral panic. Anyway, this person wants to 0:57:29.916 --> 0:57:35.756 suggest that people that Trump is somewhat trumped arrangement syndrome. 0:57:36.316 --> 0:57:37.756 You know which is you know that you know that 0:57:37.756 --> 0:57:41.996 phenomenon when um one observes people who and the ques 0:57:42.236 --> 0:57:44.996 the name implies maybe that they're they shouldn't, but that 0:57:45.116 --> 0:57:47.956 people just can't stop thinking about Trump and how angry 0:57:47.996 --> 0:57:50.276 they are about Trump and how they are about Trump, 0:57:50.396 --> 0:57:53.156 and it just distorts their whole like frame of engagement 0:57:53.156 --> 0:57:56.156 with the world. Slash gives them great clarity and accuracy, 0:57:56.196 --> 0:58:01.756 depending on whether you're inside the syndrome or absence syndrome. UM, 0:58:01.916 --> 0:58:08.956 I don't know. Maybe Nicole wins, she gets a freak 0:58:09.316 --> 0:58:10.836 of the well, she already bought a copy of the book. 0:58:12.836 --> 0:58:15.596 This is a serious question, and it connects up to 0:58:16.596 --> 0:58:19.476 the fact that this book really is about very serious things. 0:58:19.756 --> 0:58:21.076 It has it has all of the fun of him 0:58:21.076 --> 0:58:24.236 Malcolm Gottwell book, but it's framed as an inquiry into 0:58:24.356 --> 0:58:26.876 one of the deepest, hardest and most serious questions that 0:58:27.196 --> 0:58:30.476 we're facing as a society. And the question is, do 0:58:30.516 --> 0:58:33.356 you think that we as Americans This is Christina from Boston, 0:58:33.756 --> 0:58:37.396 have improved in civil dialogue in the years, say, since 0:58:37.516 --> 0:58:40.196 nine to eleven, the last almost two decades, or have 0:58:40.276 --> 0:58:45.756 we regressed when it comes to talking to strangers. It's 0:58:45.836 --> 0:58:48.676 kind of a deep question. Well, in some ways we 0:58:48.796 --> 0:58:55.356 have regressed in a sense of um that you know, 0:58:55.396 --> 0:58:58.556 we're in a peculiar moment where we're we're obsessed with 0:58:58.556 --> 0:59:01.276 each other's differences and not what we have in common. 0:59:02.796 --> 0:59:05.956 And you know, at other times, other countries don't have 0:59:06.036 --> 0:59:09.676 these kinds of conversations. Canadians don't get together and enumeered 0:59:09.676 --> 0:59:12.436 all the ways in which they disagree. They do the opposite, right, 0:59:12.676 --> 0:59:16.076 They talk about things they all share. Um, that's the age, 0:59:16.236 --> 0:59:18.036 and they do it nicely. They do it nicely. The 0:59:18.076 --> 0:59:21.996 great Canadian project is this endless search for common ground 0:59:22.276 --> 0:59:26.076 gets a little tedious at times, but um, this country 0:59:26.196 --> 0:59:29.636 has decided, but less shooting each other. This country's society 0:59:29.676 --> 0:59:31.476 doesn't want to do that. I guess that would be 0:59:31.476 --> 0:59:34.276 point number one. But two slash we've never done it. 0:59:34.756 --> 0:59:37.196 Maybe we've never done it. Be to be there. Yeah, 0:59:37.236 --> 0:59:39.356 but I you know, to going to back to the 0:59:39.436 --> 0:59:42.396 theme of this This book is a lot about misunderstandings 0:59:41.956 --> 0:59:46.476 that arise from hasty generalizations about strangers. I'm always struck 0:59:46.516 --> 0:59:51.836 on Twitter about how you know seventy five of what 0:59:51.916 --> 0:59:54.876 are classified as disagreements on Twitter or not disagreements, but 0:59:54.916 --> 0:59:58.316 they are misunderstandings. Yeah that they just people have been 0:59:58.316 --> 1:00:00.556 bothered to figure out what the other person is arguing, 1:00:00.836 --> 1:00:03.396 or they delicated by the medium, which is designed to 1:00:03.436 --> 1:00:05.236 make it impossible for you to explain your argument in 1:00:05.316 --> 1:00:07.396 any depth. It is astonished to me what a bad 1:00:07.396 --> 1:00:10.316 idea of Twitter is, Like if you it's one of 1:00:10.356 --> 1:00:13.156 those things like in retrospect, like who if they were 1:00:13.356 --> 1:00:15.836 so like who thought this was going to end up 1:00:15.876 --> 1:00:18.676 being Remember there was that golden period of a like 1:00:18.756 --> 1:00:21.556 a year and a half when they were serious people 1:00:21.556 --> 1:00:23.156 in this country who thought that Twitter was going to 1:00:23.236 --> 1:00:26.516 save the world from tyranny. And I will say I 1:00:26.596 --> 1:00:29.556 was a skeptic in that moment, and I people were 1:00:29.636 --> 1:00:32.196 so angry with me for not believing in the condemptive 1:00:32.236 --> 1:00:33.916 power of Twitter, and I was like, I don't know, 1:00:34.076 --> 1:00:36.676 like I don't see how you know. And sure enough, 1:00:36.876 --> 1:00:39.196 what happens. It turns out Twitter is good for like 1:00:39.556 --> 1:00:43.036 cat videos. That's useful. But other than that, we had 1:00:43.076 --> 1:00:45.236 Facebook for that. We already had Facebook for that. But 1:00:45.276 --> 1:00:49.316 it is astonishing to me how like pointless it is. 1:00:49.476 --> 1:00:51.716 But it is fascinating then that it has the reach 1:00:51.756 --> 1:00:54.756 that it has. I mean specifically among people who talk 1:00:55.036 --> 1:00:57.956 at length for a living, people who should do the 1:00:58.036 --> 1:01:02.476 best at going deeper conversational at least in principle, seemed 1:01:02.516 --> 1:01:06.356 to have this deep desire to communicate on Twitter, the 1:01:06.436 --> 1:01:08.876 framework in which all of the things that in theory 1:01:08.916 --> 1:01:12.036 make them worth listening to are taken away are stripped away. 1:01:12.076 --> 1:01:13.836 I mean, it's like, you know, your your example of 1:01:14.556 --> 1:01:17.996 in the LSAD podcast, your example of speed chess compared 1:01:18.036 --> 1:01:20.356 to a real chess. All these people who are actually 1:01:20.396 --> 1:01:25.316 supposedly writers, you know, scholars, people who think in larger 1:01:25.476 --> 1:01:28.396 longer than a sentence or two, and that's who spends 1:01:28.396 --> 1:01:29.916 a lot of time yelling at each other. And this 1:01:30.076 --> 1:01:32.436 understand each other on Twitter. I have no answer for 1:01:32.556 --> 1:01:35.116 why we have the impulse to do that, but apparently 1:01:35.276 --> 1:01:38.036 we do, and distinctively that group of people, because it's 1:01:38.036 --> 1:01:40.676 not like Twitter has as many users as one of 1:01:40.676 --> 1:01:44.076 the formats that allows for a longer form communication. Yeah, yeah, 1:01:44.396 --> 1:01:45.916 I don't. I don't get it. It's like the it's 1:01:45.956 --> 1:01:48.556 like the id of It's like the id of people 1:01:48.596 --> 1:01:50.796 who like to express themselves at length. It's like, really 1:01:50.876 --> 1:01:53.036 that they can sum it up in one sentence, which 1:01:53.076 --> 1:01:56.436 actually they can't. Yeah. Yeah, it joins along this I 1:01:56.436 --> 1:02:02.316 always even it should be this everything. Every institution, uh, 1:02:03.356 --> 1:02:05.876 in a kind of functioning society should have a sunset 1:02:05.916 --> 1:02:10.116 clause and then at that moment of sunset, everyone sits 1:02:10.156 --> 1:02:12.796 around and should say, well up or down? Good idea? 1:02:12.996 --> 1:02:15.156 Do we should we start over? Like? Be very imagine 1:02:15.156 --> 1:02:17.476 if we hit like so, if we had a sunset 1:02:17.476 --> 1:02:23.596 clause on I mentioned higher education before, Yeah, super useful 1:02:24.276 --> 1:02:27.596 for us to say. In say, in twenty twenty five, 1:02:27.836 --> 1:02:29.996 we all get together and we say, okay, let's start 1:02:29.996 --> 1:02:32.396 over and see what we come up with. Right, we 1:02:32.396 --> 1:02:34.956 would come up with something very very different. Similarly with Twitter, 1:02:34.996 --> 1:02:37.756 if we decided in twenty twenty Five's go, We're gonna 1:02:37.756 --> 1:02:39.836 shut it down for six months and then have a 1:02:39.876 --> 1:02:42.516 meeting and figure out what we want, whether we want 1:02:42.516 --> 1:02:44.316 to replace it or what we would replace it with. 1:02:44.556 --> 1:02:46.556 We would come up with something very different. There's no 1:02:46.636 --> 1:02:51.436 reason these things persist long past their their useful stage. 1:02:52.076 --> 1:02:57.116 Last question and it connects Canada to the time, when 1:02:57.156 --> 1:02:59.556 and why was the last time you applied your pull 1:02:59.636 --> 1:03:04.156 the goalie rule in real life? Another recond ask that 1:03:04.196 --> 1:03:07.676 because you know we're almost done here, I'm pulling the goalie. 1:03:07.796 --> 1:03:11.156 But this is another friends to one of my podcasts 1:03:11.476 --> 1:03:15.356 where I described the work of this hilarious hedge fund 1:03:15.396 --> 1:03:19.396 guy who published a paper on SSRN rolls quast website 1:03:19.796 --> 1:03:23.236 about when you should what is the optimal time to 1:03:23.236 --> 1:03:25.196 pull a goalie in a hockey game if if you 1:03:25.196 --> 1:03:28.796 are down a goal And his answer is like I forgot, 1:03:28.876 --> 1:03:31.476 it's like with six minutes to go far, far, longer 1:03:31.476 --> 1:03:33.676 than anyone would begin to imagine, and he does all 1:03:33.716 --> 1:03:35.036 the math and then if no one ever does that, 1:03:35.196 --> 1:03:37.316 no one ever does that way. But the idea is 1:03:37.316 --> 1:03:40.996 that you should take big risks, take big way your 1:03:41.076 --> 1:03:43.716 way behind when you're way behind, when all is hopeless. Um, 1:03:44.076 --> 1:03:47.556 when was the last time I took a massive, unparalleled 1:03:47.636 --> 1:03:54.956 risk because I was otherwise almost certain to lose. Yeah, 1:03:55.036 --> 1:03:57.476 it's a really good question. It is a good question. 1:03:57.956 --> 1:04:04.716 Jim from Bridgewater. Well, no, I should add that you're 1:04:04.716 --> 1:04:08.396 willing to share. What about you? Have you ever pulled? 1:04:09.596 --> 1:04:16.636 Do you ever? Um, that's a good question, I think, Um, yeah, 1:04:16.676 --> 1:04:18.196 I think I've I think I've done it in my 1:04:18.276 --> 1:04:22.276 personal life on multiple occasions. Um, you know, gone for 1:04:22.356 --> 1:04:25.676 like the big the big risk. Yeah, um, you know, 1:04:26.316 --> 1:04:29.196 hoping that it would make things work out. But as 1:04:29.196 --> 1:04:31.116 we know from the statistics of pulling the goalie, usually 1:04:31.116 --> 1:04:32.876 what happens is they just score a goal on you 1:04:32.916 --> 1:04:35.356 and it doesn't work out. Yeah, you usually fail. Yeah, 1:04:35.396 --> 1:04:38.316 so that would be me. Elizabeth Thorns politically didn't she. 1:04:39.476 --> 1:04:42.036 I don think Elizabeth Tharos. I don't think Elizabeth what's 1:04:42.036 --> 1:04:50.316 her last name of Paris? Elizabeth Holmes Holmes, Elizabeth Holmes 1:04:50.316 --> 1:04:54.196 of Tharnis was playing without a goalie from the very 1:04:54.956 --> 1:04:58.676 This is not true. So think about her position if 1:04:58.716 --> 1:05:01.356 you think about this rationally. So, she had this idea 1:05:01.636 --> 1:05:05.476 that you could completely take over a huge corner of 1:05:05.516 --> 1:05:10.076 the healthcare market if you could do. Liabel diagnoses from 1:05:10.076 --> 1:05:13.756 a drop of blood. She was, let's say, generously, twenty 1:05:13.756 --> 1:05:16.196 five percent of the way there, right, but we don't 1:05:16.196 --> 1:05:17.836 we don't really know how far she was, and her 1:05:18.156 --> 1:05:20.796 her gamble was I can get to one hundred percent. 1:05:20.836 --> 1:05:23.556 Undergraduate advisor appeared in the at least in the documentary 1:05:23.596 --> 1:05:25.636 and said she was zero percent of the because, okay, 1:05:25.716 --> 1:05:27.956 because I explained to her that it was impossible. Yeah, 1:05:28.036 --> 1:05:29.836 that's right. And then the other guy got it. The 1:05:29.876 --> 1:05:31.836 other advisor from Stanford got on and said, but she 1:05:31.916 --> 1:05:34.796 was a genius, so it was possible. Yeah. So let's say, okay, 1:05:34.836 --> 1:05:36.636 let's say that she was fifteen percent of the way. 1:05:36.636 --> 1:05:39.196 They okay, So she was, in a sense, pulling the goalie. 1:05:39.276 --> 1:05:42.556 So she was faced with an all but impossible task. 1:05:42.636 --> 1:05:44.836 But there was this little glimmer of hope if she 1:05:44.916 --> 1:05:47.436 gambled everything that she could pull it off. And if 1:05:47.436 --> 1:05:50.236 she pulled it off, she would be a mega billionaire. 1:05:50.636 --> 1:05:53.596 I don't know, I mean. So she chose to play 1:05:53.796 --> 1:05:57.036 very very very long odds. So did Bernie Madoff. According 1:05:57.036 --> 1:05:58.636 to that theory, Well no, no no, remember could have had 1:05:58.636 --> 1:06:01.476 the first pay scheme that worked by Bonnie Monoff never 1:06:01.556 --> 1:06:06.316 made an honest attempt to actually invest people's money. But 1:06:06.396 --> 1:06:08.036 he was a fraud from the start. Hers was not 1:06:08.076 --> 1:06:10.316 a fraud from the start. I mean, no one claims 1:06:10.316 --> 1:06:12.916 that she was. Did it was all fictional that when 1:06:13.316 --> 1:06:16.076 all the activity going on in her firm was just 1:06:16.116 --> 1:06:17.916 for show. No people were trying to solve the problem. 1:06:17.956 --> 1:06:20.356 It's just the problem was pertually impossible to solve. But 1:06:20.396 --> 1:06:23.476 there was some little glimmer of not I don't mean 1:06:23.556 --> 1:06:27.156 to defend her, but I do want to point out 1:06:27.276 --> 1:06:30.196 you just there is a kind of little sliver of 1:06:30.236 --> 1:06:33.716 logic to what she was doing. She was classically pulling 1:06:33.796 --> 1:06:36.876 the goalie, like she was down by three goals with 1:06:37.716 --> 1:06:39.676 you know, deep in the third quarter, and she decided, 1:06:39.676 --> 1:06:42.476 I'm going to go for broke. I'm gonna convince a 1:06:42.476 --> 1:06:44.156 bunch of rich people to give me lots of money, 1:06:44.196 --> 1:06:45.356 and I'm going to try and do this thing that 1:06:45.716 --> 1:06:48.756 i'm And had she succeeded, she would be right in 1:06:48.876 --> 1:06:53.276 the pantheon. Well, none of you has pulled the goalie 1:06:53.316 --> 1:06:57.356 by coming here tonight, and you've had a short thing 1:06:57.356 --> 1:07:00.836 from the beginning because you bought the book, and I'm 1:07:00.876 --> 1:07:02.956 thrilled that you did come and thrilled, and Malcolm came 1:07:02.996 --> 1:07:04.716 and joined us, and I'm really grateful to you, Malcolm 1:07:04.756 --> 1:07:06.636 for the conversation and thank you all for coming. Thank you. 1:07:14.596 --> 1:07:17.516 Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our 1:07:17.556 --> 1:07:20.916 producer is Lydia Gancott, with engineering by Jason Gambrell and 1:07:20.996 --> 1:07:24.876 Jason Rostkowski. Our showrunner is Sophie mckibbon. Our theme music 1:07:24.956 --> 1:07:28.196 is composed by Luis GERA special thanks to the Pushkin Brass, 1:07:28.396 --> 1:07:36.076 Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, and Mia Lobell. This week, we 1:07:36.076 --> 1:07:37.756 would also like to give a shout out to the 1:07:37.756 --> 1:07:41.356 Harvard Bookstore my home bookstore, for helping organize the conversation 1:07:41.396 --> 1:07:44.716 between me and Malcolm. I'm Noah Feldman. You can follow 1:07:44.756 --> 1:07:48.356 me on Twitter at Noah R. Feldman. This is Deep Background.