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It's getting hotter. Yeah. Definitely am.
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That's a transition, I feel like. Mhm.
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Hey, what's going on everybody?
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From First We Feast, I'm Sean Evans and you're watching Hot Ones.
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It's the show with hot questions and even hotter wings.
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And today we're joined by Malcolm Gladwell.
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He's the author of five New York Times best-selling books, including The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers.
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His latest though is The Bomber Mafia, which is out now.
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And more good Malcolm Gladwell fans, his massively popular podcast Revisionist History returns June 24th.
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Malcolm Gladwell, welcome to the show. Thank you.
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I've seen your deep dive on tomato sauce before.
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How deeply have you explored the world of hot sauce?
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I would say on this range here, I'm probably comfortable down here.
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So, I'm I'm in the 20th percentile, and that's not a place I'd like to be right now. Yeah. Okay.
1:21
No, uh I seem to be okay so far.
1:29
So, I think in part because of your brilliance in packaging them, you know, some of your writing, whether it's the 10,000-hour rule or phrases like tipping point or maven, they've developed such a cultural currency that they get used by people who probably haven't read your books and might not even know who you are.
1:44
Do you have a misapplication of Malcolm Gladwell that annoys you the most?
1:51
Well, I mean, why would you be annoyed?
1:52
Even if somebody is getting you wrong, they're still getting you, right?
1:56
One of my favorite things is Remember the book Freakonomics by For some reason, everyone thought That you wrote I wrote Freakonomics.
2:04
In the beginning, I would say, "No, no, no, you don't understand.
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I didn't write that book.
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That was Stephen Dubner and Stephen Levitt."
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And then after a while, I was like, "You know what? Why am I fighting this?"
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So now, it just happened a couple years ago.
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Some guy said, "I love your books, man. Freakonomics." And I was like, "Yeah."
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I don't fight it anymore.
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That one's quite nice, actually.
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You know what would be a really cruel trick, by the way? Is to mix up the order.
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So you tell me it's going from mild to spicy, but then you put the spiciest one at the beginning, and I'm like, "Oh my god, like this is going to get worse from here."
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Right, or like a Russian roulette where it's like randomized or something.
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can't If you don't tell me, then I'm going to get We don't do that. We don't play that game.
2:46
Yeah, well, that's what you would say if you did do it, wouldn't you?
2:47
Yeah, that's how you would perpetuate the the fraud on me, yeah. That is true.
2:53
So I know that you've been a runner your whole life, and there are some world records in distance running that hold for decades, and others like the marathon that seem to get broken every few years.
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As someone who's thought a lot about the optimal conditions for human achievement, what do you make of sports records that are broken even though there's no rule change or technological breakthrough to drive improvement?
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Well, you know, there is this thing.
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I mean, it's well-remarked thing.
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It was observed after Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile back in 1954, um which is there was a psychological barrier there.
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And once we were aware that oh, you know, a very nice medical student from Oxford, England can run a 4-minute mile, lots of other people realized they could do it.
3:35
There's a similar thing um going on right now in Japan where the times coming out of Japan in the 10,000 m in the marathon are crazy.
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But it's near It's not that the fastest person super fast, it's that insane numbers of people are running like one bit below the fastest in the world.
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They just have numbers that we've never seen before at that level.
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And that's just that's clearly there's some element of psychology there that lots of people realize well I can this is something I can do.
4:05
And then of course we're approaching the Summer Olympics.
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You know that time the one time every four years that track and field gets thrust into the mainstream spotlight.
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What to you is the most fascinating distance race and why? I would say the 5,000 m.
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Now no one except for serious runners thinks the 5,000 m is interesting but it's like the first 10 minutes of that nothing happens.
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And you're waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and then somebody pounces, right? They're all exhausted.
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They've all been playing these micro games for 10 11 minutes and then all of the kind of inner rush like in a horror film like the ending just goes pow.
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Like that's what happens in the fight.
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So you spend I get almost sick to my stomach like waiting in anticipation for the first person to pounce.
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Speaking of sick to my stomach. Appropriate. should bring that up. All right. Tamassa. It says intensely spicy.
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I guess it was intensely spicy.
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I'm going to accept their verdict on that.
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Now I'm wondering does my mouth get numbed?
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We put these sauces together as a way to make that kind of reaction symphony.
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Oh you're so I see you're you're It's very deep. It's very deep Malcolm. It's a science. I like to torture you. Yeah, exactly.
5:21
You ever did you ever have someone from the CIA on and they could compare you guys could compare notes on your different strategies of torturing people?
5:28
No but I'm taking mental notes of all of this stuff Malcolm.
5:32
Always thinking about how we can advance the concept here.
5:35
In the past we've asked guests if they think memes are art.
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With you I'm curious do you think that memes are good tools of communication?
5:42
They're not I wouldn't call them art.
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Memes are a response to the demands of social media.
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Like, you have this opportunity not just to say something but to show something and also to reference popular culture in some way to like build on the shared experience of the people who will read that bit of social media.
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So, there's very very very clever response to those set of constraints.
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Um all storytelling good storytelling is is exactly that.
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Like, why are we so interested in audiobooks?
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It's a response to the fact that people now go around with things in their ears.
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And it's like, well, how can I tell them a story in that moment?
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The answer is, I'm going to tell a story through their phone.
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So, you know, unlike most books, Bomber Mafia was conceived of as an audiobook.
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So, from the very beginning I said, I want to tell a story through sound.
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So, it's a story about the Second World War but we have tape of all these guys interviews with all these player.
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We have, you know, radio clips from the '40s.
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We have documentaries we can wartime documentaries we can pull from.
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So, when I describe a battle, an air battle or something, I can I can bring it to life.
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When I talk, there's a character in the book called Curtis LeMay. You have to hear him.
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He kind of has this guttural grunting way of talking.
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You're like, oh, yes, this guy is ferocious.
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Bomber Mafia was a response to expect I can take you back to the air wars of the 1940s and just make you care about them.
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Like, that's what we're trying to do.
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Seems like the one before.
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Maybe I'm speaking too soon.
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Is this one Is this a Is this a late hitter?
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I think we're still in a a comfortable zone and Malcolm by my math we've already done one full lap around any expectation you had for yourself.
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So, uh Yeah, yeah, but I know you.
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I mean, you're you're like you're stacking Look at these ones.
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I mean I have no illusions.
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You're just softening me up for the kill. That's all this is.
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No, no, I'd never do that to you Malcolm.
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I'd never I'd never set you up like that.
7:45
So in a 2005 New Yorker column titled Brain Candy, you muse about Steven Johnson's theory that video games like Grand Theft Auto 3 may be undervalued in their ability to sharpen certain cognitive skills.
7:56
Where do you fall on that?
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Like do you think kids may be better off playing more Grand Theft Auto and doing less homework? No.
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No, he was pointing at something that's um one of the most interesting and um puzzling phenomenon in social science is that um IQs have been rising pretty steadily over the last 10 hundred years.
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So your IQ is absolutely higher than the IQ of your parents and their IQ is higher than their parents and your grandparents IQ is higher than your great-grandparents IQ.
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It's not because you are inherently smarter.
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It's that every generation seems to be getting smarter.
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We don't know why, but there's certain kinds of abstract reasoning things where we're a lot better, conceptualizing problems and pulling out principles, imagining scenarios.
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And Johnson's argument was that maybe some of that is video games.
8:49
Video games do force you to make predictions about what's happening, to look at data and combine data. You think about it.
8:56
I mean you're constantly thinking about what do I need to do next and you're not making a random guess, you're making an intelligent choice.
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So he said it's a kind of kind of practice that would make you smarter and if you if you had an entire generation of people who were doing lots of these video games, they're going to be better at this kind of rapid data analysis, essentially.
9:15
But when I was a kid, I played a ton of Risk, forming alliances and learning how to persuade people to go along with you and trying to figure out what's going to happen two and three moves ahead.
9:24
I think games in general are a hugely important educational um tool.
9:36
Now it's funny, I'm mildly allergic pineapple.
9:38
I noticed it's pineapple and ginger. Uh-oh. We have reapers in here.
9:41
We have scorpion peppers. We have all this stuff.
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The one that we really need to worry about is the pineapple. Who knew? Yeah, no.
9:46
My immune system will quickly, I think, be overwhelmed with other bigger concerns. So. Soon enough, Malcolm.
9:53
All right, Malcolm, we have a recurring segment on our show called Explain That, Graham.
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We do a deep dive on our guest's Instagram, pull interesting pictures that need more context.
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So, we'll show you the picture on the monitor.
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You just tell us the bigger story.
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You know, there are some really first-class I don't know if they're on my Instagram, though.
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Um there's one of me with David Hasselhoff. Oh, is there? There it is. THERE IT IS. ME and the Hoff.
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The thing I love about this picture is I have never looked so happy.
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I am so delighted with myself.
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I'm on a talk show in Sweden.
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And in Sweden, the Hoff is a kind of I mean, he's God.
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I mean, he's like He's a He's a You know, as a He's on a level of celebrity that we can't even glimpse.
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And I was just so tickled pink to be on the same, you know, talk show, sitting next to the Hoff the whole time.
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And he's enormously charming, as you can imagine.
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The Swedish were much more reverential towards him than Americans might have been, which created a very interesting dynamic.
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Anyway, by the end of the evening, I was just beside myself with the thrill of this moment.
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And all I could think of is, "Oh my God.
10:56
Like, I just I need the world to see me with the Hoff.
11:00
It just needs to happen." All right. That's getting hotter. Yeah. Definitely, yeah.
11:19
That's the transition, I feel like. Mhm.
11:22
This is a quote of yours that I love, and I'm just wondering if you could expand on it.
11:25
"Critics take a more meta position that isn't reflective of the audience."
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Sometimes I think when I read criticism of not just my work, but of any lots of people's works is that the mistake critics make is they assume the audience is dumb.
11:41
I don't never said why they assume that.
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I consume things all the time where I disagree with the writer, but I'm fine with that cuz I'm learning, I'm learning about the writer, I'm learning about the world, I'm learning I'm being forced to kind of justify my own positions or I'm just being entertained. Right?
11:58
Like those are all legit reasons to read a book or listen to a podcast or listen to what and critics sometimes assume that if you aren't feeding your audience some kind of simple coherent um uh uh uh easy to digest line, you're doing them some kind of a disservice.
12:16
It's just not It's nonsense.
12:16
People The one thing people are not is dumb. Oh god.
12:28
This one I'm just smelling it and I'm I'm seeing Psyching yourself out a little bit?
12:32
I'm just getting So, most people probably know you from your New Yorker articles or your best-selling books, but for me I became a fan from your work your sports takes on the Curious Guy column on ESPN's Page 2. With Bill Simmons.
12:48
Can you enlighten our audience on why you believe that Brett Favre is more likely to make mistakes during a fourth-quarter comeback than Joe Montana or Tom Brady?
12:56
I've obsessed with heart rates.
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They are an under uh appreciated predictor of a wide range of human behaviors.
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When you have these people who are forced to perform under pressure, the ones who really excel, very often they're just lucky enough to have really really low heart rates.
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So, I suspected that the Tom Bradys of the world have lower resting heart rates than the Brett Favres of the world.
13:20
Is there anything that intrigues you about this bizarre last year of athletic competition?
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Like maybe how 13-year-olds missing this year of development, how that might affect the NBA draft in 9 years or anything like that?
13:33
I wonder whether that'll be a good thing.
13:34
I feel very differently about academic preparation, by the way.
13:37
But athletic preparation, it's not such a bad thing, you know.
13:39
I read something about someone who's doing um scans of the tendons of kids coming into the NBA and their knees look like the knees of 30-year-olds cuz they've played so much ball. The mileage.
13:55
Yeah, the mileage is just too much.
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I think it's I think probably should call a halt to that a little bit. Let's do this.
14:14
That's pretty uh That's pretty nasty.
14:18
Um the Um yeah, that's that's like a My father would say, "It's quite hard."
14:28
So you've shared a lot of thoughts on the workplace, whether it's a podcast about hiring assistants or debating the merit or lack thereof in traditional job interviews.
14:37
So what I want to do is hit you with a few commonplace workplace aphorisms, and I'm just curious how they hit your ear as somebody who oftentimes has a contrarian point of view on these sorts of things. Yeah.
14:49
From Guy Kawasaki, "My theory is that A players hire people even better than themselves.
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It's clear though that B players hire C players so they can feel superior to them.
14:58
If you start hiring B players, expect the bozo explosion to happen at your organization."
15:05
Are people who are mediocre afraid of being shown up?
15:10
I mean, I guess sometimes, but most bosses I worked for in the past are like parents.
15:14
They're like, if someone who works with them is a genius, they're just the happiest people in the world.
15:19
They're like constantly jumping up and down about You know, this Oh, you've no idea. This kid's so smart.
15:24
Like, that's what I hear.
15:26
I don't I never hear, "Oh my god, this kid's so smart and it's bumming me out." Like, who says that?
15:29
What kind of boss says that?
15:32
I have the best assistant in the world and I hate her, right? No, no one does that. That's nuts.
15:38
All right, this one's from Simon and Garfunkel.
15:39
Fake it till you make it.
15:42
You know, is there room in life for a little bit of deception from time to time? Sure.
15:46
Every now and again, there'll be something about Someone lied on their resume.
15:56
I just feel like that's the smallest possible crime.
16:00
I had that episode of my podcast on hiring and I said I don't like to I don't like to know where my people I hired went to college.
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That's my response to that problem.
16:09
You don't have to You don't have to lie on your resume when you apply for a job with me cuz I'm I'm not looking at it.
16:17
You can say what you want.
16:17
You can say you did your PhD on the moon. I'm not going to see it.
16:21
So, you know, knock yourself out. One more for you.
16:26
Statistics are like a lamp post to a drunken man, more for leaning on than illumination. That's from David Brent. Well, come on now.
16:33
Depends on the statistic.
16:36
If I asked your previous boss to rate you on a scale of 1 to 10, what's a statistic? Is that meaningful? Probably. Yeah.
16:42
I wouldn't mind knowing that number.
16:42
Um so, it depends, I guess, who it is.
16:46
You're now on to the number nine sauce. How are you feeling? Good.
16:51
Scorpion disco is not an encouraging flavor.
16:55
Now, we've reached that point in the in the interview where they're all just All right.
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This sauce is from Rochester, New York.
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I'm sorry, that lacks credibility. Where's the hots? Oh, there we are.
17:12
Shouldn't add scorpion hot sauce, I see.
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But, as someone, you know, who has is a partial Jamaican heritage A big uh commonly used pepper in the is uh the scotch bonnet.
17:21
Do you ever have like the Yes, yes, I have scotch bonnets in my refrigerator.
17:24
Um we freeze them and then we But, you have to be very careful because most people can't tolerate them.
17:33
Right, but but but you can you you you put yourself in 20 percentile, but here you are freezing scotch bonnets and stuff.
17:39
Yeah, I'm using like a just tiniest bit.
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I mean, I'm exercising extreme my favorite expression of the word I exercise an abundance of caution when it comes to scotch scotch bonnet bonnets.
17:52
So, two of my favorite case studies in the tipping point are the resurgence of Hush Puppies and then the rise and fall of Airwalk as like a cool kid brand.
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And it really had me thinking about sneaker hype today, which has absolutely exploded.
18:05
And now the coolest sneakers are oftentimes these limited releases that get bought up by bots online and then sold in the secondary market at like two, five, 10, 15, 20 times what they cost in stores. Is that tenable?
18:20
I think people have gotten really smart about managing that marketplace and keeping it intimate and I mean, no one's trying to blow these sneakers out and make a million pairs.
18:31
Um they understand, I think I think we people have gotten a lot smarter about how to manage these little kind of you know, these little niche things that people do or that Nike occasionally will do like a you know, some Air Jordan thingy whatever have you.
18:42
But, those are incompatible approaches.
18:45
Um and I you know, I often think about this with my books that uh people who write books like mine have the same decision to make.
18:52
Who are you What are you trying to do?
18:54
Are you trying to appeal to a very narrow band of specialists or are you trying to appeal to um the the kind of the casual reader.
19:04
And that's a choice that conditions a lot of decisions that you make in in how you tell the story and how you write the book.
19:11
And you can't please both groups, right? Got to pick.
19:16
All right, Malcolm Gladwell. It's that time.
19:25
So, this is the last dab.
19:25
We call it the last dab cuz it's tradition around here to put a little extra on the last wing.
19:32
You don't have to if you don't want to.
19:34
Wait, you just piled it on.
19:35
I'm a little out of practice, you know, this is uh I don't know where it airs in the season, but this is the first shoot that we've had back in the studio since Justin Timberlake more than 12 months ago.
19:45
So, I think I'm just a little out of practice, but um you don't have to if you this?
19:49
I feel this is where this is where I'm going to get my comeuppance.
19:51
I'm going to going to collapse.
19:52
You look like you're sweating and you're in distress. I'm in distress. Somewhat. Somewhat.
20:03
All right, Malcolm Gladwell, we have slayed the hot sauce Goliath, but before we get you on your way, just one more question.
20:08
You've been consistent about your willingness to be inconsistent and change your mind, and I love this quote, "The older I get, the more I understand that the only way to say valuable things is to lose your fear of being correct."
20:21
What do you feel is your biggest, most meaningful flip-flop to date? Oh my god.
20:25
Probably my most meaningful flip-flops are on people.
20:31
Like a number of my friends are people who I did not meet upon did not like upon first meeting.
20:34
Um and that's been and that the trick there is super simple, which is you meet somebody you don't like them, you just don't say anything. Don't tell anyone. Don't tell them.
20:45
Just smile and then go home and think about it and then meet them again and start from zero.
20:49
Um and once you know that all I know is that my first impressions of people are just really terrible.
20:54
So, I just throw that out.
20:56
I mean, just throw that out. Like not helpful.
21:00
Malcolm Gladwell walks in 20% looking at you from across the table putting me to shame, taking on the wings of death and living to tell the story.
21:10
And now, Malcolm Gladwell, there's nothing left to do but roll out the red carpet for you.
21:13
This camera, that camera, that camera, let the people know what you have going on in your life.
21:19
I have uh a book that has just come out called The Bomber Mafia, which is an incredible, I think, audiobook, which you can get at the bombermafia. at bombermafia. com.
21:28
And then I have my new season of Revisionist History coming up June 24th.
21:32
So, lots of things in the hopper. I hope you're okay.
21:35
Little concerned about you over there, but sleep it off.
21:39
Maybe next time you'll have a better experience with THE HOT SAUCE. GREAT JOB, MALCOLM. GREAT JOB.
21:52
I THINK THE PINEAPPLE actually is the thing that I think that threw me for a loop, but uh my mouth just got numb, and so I just stopped tasting anything. That's the hack.
22:01
My my nerve endings just got all dulled. It's quite hot.
22:10
Hey, what's going on, everybody?
22:10
This is Sean Evans checking in with some very exciting First We Feast news.
22:13
Now, when I'm not over here choking down chicken wings on Hot Ones, I happen to be a huge pizza guy.
22:20
Sicilian, Neapolitan, deep dish, dollar slice, frozen pizza, I love it all.
22:26
Which is why I'm excited to announce that First We Feast has a brand new show, Pizza Wars, where pizza master Nicole Russell takes on contenders in a battle royale of different pizza styles.
22:37
I'm on there judging the deep dish episode, naturally, but the show has other great guests as well, including buddies like Babish and Frank Pinello.
22:45
But that's enough chitchat.
22:45
Let's let the sizzle reel do the talking. All right. Roll the tape.
22:55
The misconception is that if you get a lot, it's good.
22:56
Bite for bite, this is the best eating experience I've ever had on one of these things.
23:02
My opponents and I will be taking on a new piece of theme challenge every episode.
23:07
I wish that I could give you both trophies, but they only gave me one.
23:09
Do you guys have an extra?
23:13
They don't have an extra. Don't get it twisted.
23:15
This is a competition and I want to win.
23:16
But I'm also here to catch up with a few of my friends.
23:20
I couldn't have done this episode with nobody else.
23:24
To learn some new tricks to use at home.
23:26
You got to slice the garlic thin.
23:26
So thin that it liquefies in the pan.
23:28
Nona, thank you for that. Thank you, Nona.
23:32
And eat a whole bunch of pizza. SALUTE. OH my god. Wow. So get ready, people. Pizza Wars is coming.