0:00
Quick sound check.
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Malcolm, can you tell me what you had for breakfast, please?
0:03
I had a cappuccino and a third of a croissant. Third of a croissant?
0:08
You Do you divvy it up over 3 days, or is that just Was it a bad croissant?
0:12
No, I love croissants, but I feel like one I don't I think you one should eat a minimum the the absolute minimum in the morning.
0:18
I don't think you should eat a lot in the morning.
0:21
Oh, we will we will explore that further. Thank you.
0:25
Optimal minimum At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
0:31
Can I ask you a personal question?
0:33
No, I just ate my breakfast sandwich.
0:35
What if I did the opposite?
0:37
I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.
0:48
This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront, and this is a very unique sponsor.
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That is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000 account, for instance.
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Now, normally, when I have a sponsor on the show, it's because I use them and recommend them.
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In this case, it's a little different.
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I don't use Wealthfront yet because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal.
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They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials, so I couldn't be a user and have them on the podcast.
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But, I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, uh in the team and the company itself.
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So, I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client.
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4:33
Hello boys and girls, ladies, and squirrels.
4:34
It is a late night in New York City and the echo is from within the walls of a fine establishment, otherwise known as a hotel, that I'm calling my bed for this evening. Molly is curled up.
4:49
All the children are snug in their beds with visions of sugar plums.
4:51
No, that's not why we're here.
4:52
This is the Tim Ferriss Show and welcome to another episode where it is my job to deconstruct world-class experts and world-class performers so that we can borrow their habits, routines, tools, test them ourselves, improve how we perform in our personal and professional lives.
5:12
And this episode features Malcolm Gladwell.
5:15
I've wanted to interview Malcolm quite a long time and it finally happened.
5:20
We had a proper sit-down.
5:23
We've bumped into each other before a few times, but this was the first in-depth conversation and we cover a lot.
5:29
Malcolm Gladwell, @Gladwell on Twitter, say hi, is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, mega bestsellers, The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath.
5:39
He's been named one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine.
5:43
He has explored how ideas spread, decision making, the roots of success, the advantages of disadvantages, and in his latest podcast project, Revisionist History, which I highly recommend, Gladwell examines the way the passage of time changes and enlightens our understanding of the world around us.
6:02
He also revisits certain aspects of history that perhaps we should take another look at.
6:08
And in this wide-ranging, in-depth, in-person conversation, we cover a ton, including his research and writing process, how he learned to ask good questions, favorite books, routines, habits, tools, how he puts together, or pulls together rather, seemingly unrelated stories into a cohesive theme and eventually a book, his obsession with the running, why he eats as little as possible in the mornings, and much more. It is highly tactical.
6:35
There are some hilarious and great stories, some very surprising stuff that I am sure you have not heard anywhere else.
6:42
And that is all I have to say about that.
6:45
So, please say hi to him on Twitter at Gladwell, and I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Thanks for listening.
6:55
Malcolm, welcome to the show. Thank you, Tim.
6:57
I really appreciate you making the time, and I know we've bumped into each other a few times over the years.
7:01
I remember, I want to say the first time was at a salon that Peter Thiel put together about like religion, ethics, and morality, or something like that. Oh, right. Yeah. ages ago, and Years ago.
7:15
Years ago, and I remember showing up, and Aaron Hoffman, who had co-hosted the event, who's a friend of mine, was like, "Hey, would you mind just like improvising and speaking at this event for a few minutes about X, Y, or Z.
7:25
We haven't decided on the topics yet." And I said, "Sure."
7:28
Then I showed up, and I see Malcolm Gladwell, I see some award-winning, you know, voted favorite teacher of the decade, Harvard professor, and that's when I started drinking really heavily.
7:37
So, I suspect it was a poor performance on my part.
7:40
In preparation for this, because I've I've been looking forward to it, I pinged uh Steven Dubner for economics, mutual friend.
7:47
And his response was short.
7:47
It was fun, exclamation point. He's a great talker.
7:51
He likes to talk about writing, running, fast cars, not golf, being Canadian. Sorry, I got to run.
7:56
Something along those lines. And he took off.
7:59
And I was planning to speak with you about at least one or two of those.
8:01
And I thought we could start with writing. Okay.
8:05
What have been the easiest and hardest books for you to write?
8:10
Well, uh that's an interesting question.
8:12
Um I don't find writing or to the extent that I find writing, I link hard and fun.
8:18
So, if it's not hard, it's not fun.
8:23
Um so, I never think about writing in terms of hard and easy.
8:25
I think about it in terms of fun and not fun.
8:27
Um So, which one was the most fun? Probably the last two.
8:35
Mostly because I wrote the first book while I was still working pretty much full-time at The New Yorker.
8:40
So, I just was didn't have a lot of time.
8:42
And that makes it less fun.
8:44
You don't really can't really kind of savor it and appreciate it.
8:48
But the last two, I took as much time as I needed.
8:50
And deliberately dragged it out because I was enjoying myself so much.
8:54
So, I think that's probably the last two books were the were the So, that Does that mean the last two were the hardest and easiest? {slash} most fun. Yes, I think they were.
9:03
Cuz I was trying to do tell better stories.
9:07
I became convinced about 15 years ago or so that I if I was to develop as a writer, I had to be a better storyteller.
9:15
Um and so, those the Outliers and What the Dog Saw were books where I was really really trying to do a better job.
9:23
And I'm sorry, and um David and Goliath, where I was really trying to be a do a better job of telling good stories.
9:30
Who do you Are there any people who come to mind, fictional or otherwise, who are good storytellers?
9:36
Yeah, Michael Lewis is the gold standard. Michael Lewis.
9:39
Um and that's I was actually in reading Michael Lewis that I realized that I wanted to be you you can't be him any more than you can you know, you can't say I watched Steph Curry play basketball and I decided that's the kind of basketball player I want to be.
9:53
Like you you know, you can try and uh you can be inspired by him.
9:59
You could pattern your play after him, but you can't be him.
10:03
That only you know, that's impossible.
10:05
So I have tried to I was inspired by Michael Lewis to get better.
10:08
But I am not on his level.
10:12
His uh well, I think both of you are very very good at taking what could be dense, impenetrable material or overwhelming material and making it a story that is easy to consume.
10:21
I mean as storytelling and consuming machines.
10:25
Well, he he tells I tell a million stories in one book. He tells one story. That's so much harder. What makes that harder?
10:34
Cuz you have to go to a a level and complexity and have confidence.
10:39
What happens is that I lose confidence in what The reason I tell lots of stories is I don't have the confidence to keep going with the same one.
10:45
I think oh I everyone must be losing interest.
10:47
I got to switch and do something else now.
10:52
Michael doesn't have that problem.
10:52
I mean he he has the kind of panache to say I'm going to tell you a story about a guy basically trying to do high kind of take on the high speed traders and I will we're going to do this for 200 pages and you're going to love it.
11:08
Like I I don't I can't start with that.
11:11
So that's part of the reason I also write my books in and I'm not in any way comparing myself to you or You have every right to, Tim.
11:21
I I'm a writer who or I'm a teacher who dabbles in writing and sometimes put stuff down that's intelligible, but the way that I tend to non-linearly write my books and encourage people to consume it in a non linear way is precisely for that reason because I worry that if in some cases I can keep something interesting for 15 20 pages but I lack the confidence that I can do it for 200 or 300. Yeah.
11:45
It takes that you got to be you got to be good to pull off that feat particularly with the sorts of topics that he chooses which are you know, esoteric.
11:53
He wrote he wrote a a gripping thriller about credit swaps and derivatives. I mean, it's not easy. Not easy at all.
12:02
I mean, then you have sabermetrics and he's so consistent.
12:05
The next question I want to ask was a related to if it's a perennial topic of course but writer's block and or anything that you might consider something like that.
12:16
And it's related to the kind of module choose your adventure like way in which I write myself which is one way that I can put something on the shelf if I'm having trouble with it and move on to something else.
12:27
It doesn't have to be sequential.
12:29
Do you run into writer's block?
12:33
If if so, how does that manifest and what do you what do you do or do you get stuck?
12:37
Well, I don't you know, I worked for 10 years at a newspaper and if that experience teaches you anything, it's that you can't have writer's block.
12:44
I mean, you quite literally can't.
12:48
I mean, the story will be you'll start the story at 10:30 and it's due at 4:00 or 4:30 or whatever back in those days.
12:55
They were as hard deadlines.
12:55
So, you can't have I mean, it's unthinkable.
12:59
So, you don't have the luxury.
13:01
And if you went to your bosses and you said, "I'm blocked on the story."
13:02
They would look at you like you were insane.
13:07
You know, like Take off your beret, put down your poetry. You have a job to do.
13:12
so, it's like there's not even an issue.
13:14
So, I mean, I I did used to have these issues and then I went to the Washington Post and then you get cured in a hurry of any pretensions you have about your writing.
13:21
You know, you just you just keep typing.
13:23
I mean, it's not there's no kind of alternative and luckily that I have those habits that I called that I learned over though that 10 years at the Washington Post. I've stayed with me.
13:35
And so I I I never I don't so you know, writing to me is only writing a book is maybe 20% writing and 80% organization, logistics.
13:46
So I will think about something.
13:49
For every hour I spend writing, I spend 3 hours thinking about writing.
13:53
So usually when I'm writing it's First of all, it's a tiny period.
13:58
And secondly, it's all worked out already.
14:00
I mean, I'm just putting down on the page what has already been kind of figured out in my head.
14:07
Where does Where do you Now, is that true also for a shorter piece in say the New Yorker?
14:13
Yeah, I will have Not all of it, but uh I know what I'm doing before I start or I know what the pieces are.
14:21
Could you give an example of uh any piece or any book where it started and what the process was for you in getting to the point that you're then putting words down on paper?
14:32
And the reason I ask is that I'm I am fascinated by structure.
14:33
I don't think I'm particularly gifted at it, but I did uh long ago took a class at John McPhee, one of your Oh, yeah.
14:41
colleagues, staff writer at The New Yorker.
14:42
And his his grasp and approach to structure is just incredible.
14:47
Uh at least the way that he visualizes his structure.
14:52
But he has a very particular process.
14:54
I can't follow his say day-to-day schedule, which is basically sitting in front of a blank piece of paper from like 8:00 in the morning to 6:00 p. m.
15:00
Whether anything's written or not, which would lead me to just want to throw my head through a window. Yeah.
15:07
What uh Can you give us any origin story of uh any book or piece?
15:12
uh I mean, some are easy.
15:13
I did a story for The New Yorker last fall about um a school shooter in Minnesota.
15:19
And there I That was super easy because I wanted to write about school shootings.
15:27
I start rooting around on the internet and I find this criminal complaint and transcript transcript of a interrogation of a kid who was caught basically in the act.
15:40
Um a would-be school shooter caught in the act and he gives this it's like 60 pages.
15:46
And it's this absolutely extraordinary account of what he was thinking and what he was planning to do and why he was planning to do it and when you find something like that I mean your job's done, right?
15:57
So you're like, oh, I'm going to tell this story and then I'm going to step away only to kind of put that story in broader context. So those are rare.
16:09
That road itself, that's rare.
16:11
What's harder are things that are have a less of an a less obvious structure.
16:14
So my book Outliers began with there was a chapter in that book about Jewish lawyers.
16:22
About this curious fact that the group the kind of core group of Jewish lawyers in New York City who rose to prominence in the '60s and '70s and basically kind of take over corporate law in the city all had strikingly similar backgrounds.
16:38
And so that's the first chapter I wrote in Outliers and that sort of is where I began that book because I met one of the one of those lawyers was the father of a friend of mine.
16:47
I met him and I talked to him. I was like, oh. Wait a minute.
16:53
They're all of his buddies, they're all from the same part of the Bronx.
16:54
They all were born in practically the same year.
16:58
They all went to City College.
17:00
They all went to NYU Law School.
17:00
They all started in the same kind of firms.
17:01
I mean it's the same story again and again and again.
17:07
And out of if you think about it I mean if if one were I don't know why one would but if one were to study that book Outliers you would discover that almost all of the themes that I explore in that book are present in the story of the Jewish lawyers. So everything is there.
17:21
So I I I reported that story. I wrote that chapter. I thought about it.
17:29
I was like, oh, okay, it's all all the strands I'm interested in are there.
17:32
I'm going to pull out strand after strand and write chapters about them.
17:35
Did it start off in your head as the as a chapter in a prospective book or was it a standalone?
17:43
No, it was I want to write a book about successful people.
17:48
And so it was always going to be a chapter in the book.
17:49
But it was it was just a great I don't know.
17:53
It's just a lucky place to start because when you could start with the with one of those I don't know if that's the best chapter in the book, but it is it is functionally the most important chapter in the book.
18:05
Cuz it had all the macro elements in the micro.
18:07
And that that's the gold standard.
18:07
When you can have that kind of you can begin on that kind of note.
18:12
Um other ones have been much more difficult cuz they haven't had that.
18:17
Now let's say you have that story.
18:19
Uh you have that chapter.
18:19
How do you go out or go about rather collecting And let me take a step backwards.
18:25
How did you what tools were you using to query and find the 60-page transcript of the would-be school shooter?
18:35
I I honestly don't remember.
18:35
I was I was screwing around on the internet.
18:41
Um I was interested in school shootings. I don't even know how.
18:45
I mean this was there was zero coverage of this case.
18:47
It was in the local Minnesota press. That's it. Um I never heard of it.
18:52
He didn't The kid was caught before he did anything.
18:57
So it never made national headlines.
19:00
And the transcript is just on the website of the local DA.
19:04
So it's like and I I know how I found it. I can't remember.
19:11
I just found it, you know?
19:13
God, I'd be so curious to I'd be so curious to other cases, like in my podcast, for example, one of the episodes I like the most, two episodes actually, touch on this question.
19:25
So, one is an episode, I think it's the eighth or ninth episode, it's called Generous Orthodoxy, and it's the story of a 98-year-old Mennonite pastor in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who takes on his church.
19:41
And I come from a very Mennonite area in Ontario.
19:44
Many of my friends and brothers' friends are Mennonites.
19:47
My brother's a Mennonite.
19:49
My parents could have been, you know, I know that world really well.
19:51
I go home at Christmas and my everyone's talking about this guy.
19:56
And when I say everyone, there's only the number of Mennonites in North America is very small.
19:59
It's a very small, you know, evangelical Protestant sect, denomination.
20:06
But they're talking about this letter this guy wrote.
20:09
It's got a lot of Facebook likes for them, you know? And he's 98.
20:10
And so I read the letter and I'm like, "Oh my goodness.
20:15
What an extraordinary letter."
20:17
So, I track down the guy.
20:17
I interview him like a week later.
20:22
Go out to drive out to Lancaster.
20:22
And then I just look at the transcript and I say, "Well, what's this about?"
20:29
And I realize that what it's about is how to protest.
20:34
He's a guy who is so wise and uh it's an extraordinary interview.
20:38
It's like Again, I did nothing.
20:40
It's one of those cases where he's just amazing.
20:41
And I stumbled into this.
20:45
It's a It's 10:00 at night on a cold Saturday night in January.
20:51
I'm in this little tiny house on the turnpike in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, talking to a 98-year-old guy.
20:59
And it's one of these amazing interviews where it just all It's all there.
21:01
I don't have to do anything.
21:03
And he's I'm crying by the end.
21:05
I mean, it's just insane.
21:07
So, yeah, I go home and I look at it and say, "Well, I want to make a show a podcast about this."
21:11
And what's amazing now is I'm not writing this up in print.
21:15
I'm using this man's own words, which because he's so insanely moving, powerful you know, it's just like so much better that I can hear his voice.
21:30
And so, the question is what does his story need to be finished? Not a lot, right?
21:36
Just a little bit to put it in context.
21:38
So, there's a a case where you stumble across something and your role your only role is not to screw it up, right? Don't screw it up. Don't bury it.
21:50
Just put him out there, tell the story, and then just find some other little element that makes it clear what to the listener what it's about.
21:57
Um that's actually it's my favorite Revisionist History um episode for that reason.
22:04
It's just so pure and simple.
22:09
When you have uh let's say in the case of the Outlier chapters or chapter rather on the Jewish lawyers, how do you capture your notes and organize your notes on something like that? Oh.
22:25
What tools do you use if I just uh I mean, it's going to sound so old school.
22:29
I transcribe the interview, print out the transcript, and underline the parts I like, and then move them into a file.
22:39
And do you move uh what Is it a Word file?
22:41
How do you have what type of file is it?
22:42
I know this is getting very It's a Word file, yeah.
22:44
Just like move from one Word file to the next Word file.
22:48
I don't even use Google Docs.
22:48
I mean, I vaguely recently got into Google Docs, but I sort of feel like it doesn't really matter.
22:55
I mean, No, the the tools I I would agree.
22:57
I mean, it's you know, whether it's a pen or a paintbrush or crayons.
23:00
Like the You you still have to know how to use the the writing implement.
23:05
But the process is interesting to me.
23:08
So, if if you take these quotes, how what qualifies and this may seem like a a sort of infantile question, but how do what qualifies as interesting?
23:19
Yeah, no, it's not an infantile question.
23:20
That is, in fact, the core question.
23:22
The whole to the extent that a writer deserves his or her paycheck, it comes down to how good it they are they at looking through at something like looking through a transcript and understanding what's in- interesting. Right?
23:38
If you can't do that, if you can't kind of you're to sort of visualize what the story's going to become before it has become anything.
23:46
So, you might be dealing with a document that is 20,000 words, right? Which is or even longer.
23:52
Could be 30,000 words, which is enormous.
23:53
I mean, a book My books are 75,000 words.
23:56
I mean, so you're dealing with a single interview that might be, you know, a a third of a book in length.
24:03
And you have to distill out of that, I don't know, a couple thousand words.
24:08
So, you know, that process can take days.
24:12
And I initially go through and I simply delete all of the stuff that's clearly that clearly doesn't belong. Just that dead space.
24:20
And then I just take repeated passes, pruning, pruning, pruning until what I'm left with is what until I know the interview almost by heart.
24:28
And then when I'm what I'm left with is the stuff that matters.
24:31
If you don't transcribe it yourself, it's so much harder. Right?
24:35
You really There's enormous benefits to taking the huge amount of time necessary to transcribe it yourself. To transcribe yourself.
24:43
And once you have these nuggets, these various highlights, how do you determine what starts a chapter?
24:52
Well, Or a book, for that matter. Yeah. That's the other thing.
24:55
That's another thing that kind of qualifies you as a writer.
25:01
The truth is that there are so many ways you can do it.
25:04
There's so many answers to the problem that I don't get too hung up on it.
25:08
I sort of think that it's not a math question where there's only one answer.
25:13
So as long as you understand there's only not just one good answer, it takes the pressure off.
25:19
But typically you know, I might try out several openings.
25:24
I don't get They It's so It's made easier by the fact that I don't start at the beginning.
25:28
So once you don't start at the beginning, your life just gets so much simpler.
25:33
So on that point, so I have a tendency to always try the and I think this has become a bit of a crutch for me because it seems to work well, but it's become a bit of a trope if that's the right word for me where I'm always doing in media res, right?
25:46
So I'm always taking some exciting moment right in the middle of Mhm.
25:52
X that then requires explanation.
25:52
And I get into that later in the piece, but I found myself doing that effectively all the time.
25:59
Not to turn this into like a a writer doctor consultation, but do you ever find yourself doing that?
26:04
You're like, you know what?
26:05
This recipe works, but I want to play with other recipes or Well, that's why I wanted to do a podcast like this so much, which was that with a podcast, you're still storytelling, but suddenly the the list of considerations is different.
26:22
It really matters how good your tape is, how powerful the voices are, how meaningful the interaction you have with the person you're interviewing is.
26:31
So all those things, do you have archival tape that is incredibly powerful?
26:36
So, you know, there's a One of the shows is about It's one of the of my favorites. I have two favorites. This is the other one. It's about giving.
26:44
Uh Sounds boring when I say that.
26:48
It's about a university philanthropy.
26:52
And it's a I contrast two very wealthy men.
26:56
One who may reach very different conclusions about where they want to give their money.
27:02
And one of the men is my hero and one is my villain.
27:05
And the hero I'm not going to I don't want to to spoil it, but there was a little bit of tape. The hero had just died.
27:14
And the school that he'd given his money to had a memorial service for him.
27:19
And at the memorial service, a local a cappella group sang a kind of semi-cheesy boy band song and I forgotten the title of it.
27:32
In memoriam of him, but in such a way that it wasn't cheesy anymore.
27:34
It was actually really touching.
27:39
And so you you hear this tape and you hear this boy this a cappella group singing the song and your initial thought is, "Oh my god."
27:47
And then you're like, "Oh." Right? And you get it.
27:50
You The emotion hits you.
27:52
Now, if you're writing about that, it's meaningless, right? All that nuance is lost.
27:57
In a podcast, suddenly you're like, "Oh, wow. That's my beginning." Right? No question.
28:01
That's how I like That's the way in because you want that movement from oh, this is cheesy to oh my god, no.
28:10
It's incredibly meaningful, right?
28:11
That's That little thing.
28:11
So, that's what's lovely.
28:14
It's suddenly I'm after 20 years of doing the pure print thing, I'm take and I have to break out of that and think in a different way about what's powerful.
28:24
You You are a very good public speaker.
28:27
Um I I think you're a tremendous speaker.
28:29
How do How do you plan your keynotes?
28:31
Cuz this is yet a different format. Yeah. Yeah.
28:35
Well, If If you think of your most Let's say your most successful and then perhaps a less successful presentation. Yeah.
28:45
Uh how have they How have they differed? They differ.
28:47
Well, there's First of all, I The breakthrough for me in speaking came when I realized that it required about 10x more work than I was giving to it.
28:58
And that was a huge moment.
28:58
So, I had to decide do I you realize that?
29:03
Sorry, I didn't mean But uh I would say a particular incident or conversation that catalyzed 10 years ago uh when I asked myself the question, "Do I want to continue doing this?
29:15
Because it has its plusses and its minuses."
29:16
And I realized I only want to continue doing it if I uh get much better at it.
29:21
And if I change it in a way that it's much more meaningful to me.
29:28
So, then I decided I needed way more material.
29:29
I have to give very, very different speeches.
29:31
I can't just give the same one all the time.
29:34
I have to spend a lot more time thinking about who I'm speaking to.
29:35
And I have to spend a lot more time thinking about my performance.
29:40
And realizing, by the way, that it is a performance.
29:43
That it's not I'm not giving a speech.
29:44
I'm giving a performance.
29:46
And all of those things I thought a lot about all of those things.
29:48
And it took a long time to kind of fully kind of implement them.
29:52
But it has made it much more interesting to me.
29:54
And I now I enjoy it in a way I didn't enjoy it when I was I didn't feel like I was doing it in a kind of halfway manner.
30:04
But I realized in retrospect I was, just because I hadn't understood I thought that what giving a speech was was reading an article.
30:15
And if you think that's what it is, then you just get up and you read your article, right?
30:19
And it's very Once you actually know it's a world that has its own rules and principles, you're really acting, then it you're like, "Oh, wow.
30:26
That's totally different.
30:29
That it That's I got to throw myself into that in a significant way."
30:33
And so, that's what I tried to do.
30:36
Is there anyone in the world of speaking, alive or dead, who is the Michael Lewis for you?
30:43
I once went to a a wedding not a wedding, I'm sorry, a birthday party for an old old friend of mine and it was in in England.
30:51
It's my I can say it's my friend Anne Applebaum and she has all of these she's been in England for years and she has all these sort of kind of fancy English friends but I say fancy you know, not posh but like, you know, historians and just kind of like English intellectuals.
31:07
So, she had this party and this little country house in the middle of England and the the English of course are way better at giving speeches than we are first of all but secondly, we were talking about the creme de la creme of English speech givers like serious kind of uh you know, Cambridge and Oxford debating society kind of people.
31:29
So, Niall Ferguson the historian gave a wedding toast that is uh uh birthday toast which is just the best toast I've ever heard in my life.
31:40
I mean, it was like so much better than anything I had ever heard.
31:42
It's like on another level.
31:44
I was like, oh my god, that's good.
31:46
And part of what made it genius was he really gave you the impression he was making it up on the spot.
31:54
Now, he might actually have done that.
31:56
He may be so good he could do that but he he got up and he just like that was the the conceit was it I'm just this is off the cuff.
32:05
I'm just yeah, this is totally spontaneous.
32:09
And it was so cleverly done and so hilarious and yet the thing that I realized was that it was so charming that it and what was charming about it was the ways in which he was wrong.
32:20
Like that the kind of part of the joke was he was going to make this elaborate hilarious argument about Anne who was turning 50 and half the stuff that he was going to say was not right.
32:31
It was like I mean, that was sort of like wait, did he start off saying that?
32:36
Or was No, no, he of spun a theory about about the weekend and about her birthday and about her friends.
32:41
That was like hilarious because it was not accurate.
32:47
You know, but it was like he he did it with such panache and kind of and I was just like first of all, that would never have occurred to me to like make stuff up in such a dramatic way.
32:57
But also, I can't do the thing I can't do conversational.
33:02
I don't think I ever get to the level where people think I'm off the cuff. Like I'm not.
33:06
It's clear that there's been some effort here.
33:08
But with him, there's just no it was just like so ever since I like worship the guy.
33:13
I mean, I just think I think he walks on water.
33:17
What what are the elements of a good performance for you?
33:20
What are some of the ingredients that make a good performance in your case?
33:26
The thing that I strive for in speaking is authenticity, which sounds corny, but it's really hard to do when you're giving a prepared talk to a group of people who belong to a world that you don't belong to.
33:38
So, if I'm speaking to a group of IT specialists, I don't know anything about IT, right? Nothing. So, I'm an outsider.
33:49
And yet I'm trying to say something that will engage them and be intelligent and make them think.
33:52
Um so, in the context of doing something that is artificial, by artificial I don't mean phony, I mean in a sense that I am I have to make an effort to connect with them.
34:04
It's not I can't just stand up and talk the way I would talk to my friends, right?
34:08
These guys belong to a world I don't know or belong to.
34:12
So, I'm doing something that requires an effort.
34:14
But at the same time, it has to feel like me, right?
34:21
They have to feel like they are connecting with me and that I'm not I can't feel like I'm faking it. Right?
34:28
It's got to So, that's the that's hard and that's in really but it's hard in in a good way.
34:32
It's really That's what makes it interesting.
34:34
So, the question I have I ask myself is I would like to say something intelligent about IT while still remaining true to myself, someone who knows very little about IT. Right? Mhm.
34:48
So, this that and if you pull that off, that's interesting to the audience. So, they get that.
34:54
They don't They're not bringing me in because I'm an IT specialist.
34:57
But they do what they want What would bring What makes them What satisfies them is my attempt to speak to them while being true to myself, right?
35:07
My attempt to bridge the Can I bridge the gap?
35:09
Is the question really that they're asking themselves in the back of their mind.
35:12
And when you can bridge the gap that's really satisfying to someone. It's like, oh. Right?
35:19
That's you know, that I think you you know, you've succeeded.
35:24
When you have and I have just a few more questions about writing because I'm a most likely about to go into as we discussed briefly, crunch writing deadline myself.
35:33
When you have, for instance, one or two stories for a book and you you understand what the theme is going to be or some of the the structural components how do you find the others or is it a case where you've gathered these stories over the span of a time with the inkling of an idea and then you have half of it locked and loaded already?
35:56
Well, there's a good actually example of this from Revisionist History, from this podcast.
36:01
I started out by wanting to I wanted to tell a story about this kid who I had met who was a teenager and lived in LA, came from a poor family and had I don't know what his IQ is, 150.
36:17
I mean, he's a one in a million kid.
36:22
And I thought his story of How does a What happens to you if you're you have an IQ of 150 and you grow up in South Central, right?
36:30
That's sort of interesting.
36:31
So, I was going to tell that story.
36:33
And so, I talked to the kid, and I was particularly interested in how does he get to college? Is it easy? Do you get recognized?
36:41
Is it like you're a great 15-year-old basketball player and they they find they always find you?
36:48
If you if you can dunk a basketball and hit a three-point shot and you're you can dominate your you know, middle school basketball team and you live in Nebraska, they find you, right?
37:00
So, my question was is that what it's like if you got an IQ of 150 and you live in South Central, do they just find you and like adopt you and blah?
37:10
So, I was I went out I had this long conversation with this kid.
37:13
It's incredibly powerful, totally interesting.
37:17
And then, as I tell the story, I realize, oh, so my episodes are 45 minutes.
37:22
And I realized this story is all I need.
37:25
I mean, I don't He's He's the whole thing.
37:27
I mean, I can do little contact contextual things, but there's no room for anything else here.
37:33
Not just room logistically or physically, there's no emotional room for anything else. Right?
37:39
This kid is to You're in tears by the end of I mean, he's and what happened to him and his story is crazy and then there's this other kid we talk about it's like you can't So, then I said, oh, so there's other things I want to say.
37:54
So, I don't So, I do another show.
37:56
Also on the same topic of what happens how good are we at finding at fulfilling the American dream the American promise, which is if you work hard and you have some ability you can make your way up the ladder.
38:06
That's really what So, this part of Revisionist History is revi- is revisiting that promise that we make.
38:14
How good are we at fulfilling it?
38:14
So, I do a second show which is all about do colleges actually how do they find these kids?
38:21
Do they do a good job of finding them? How do they find them?
38:23
What do they Do they spend a lot of time and money on it?
38:25
Do they And the answer is the colleges do a terrible job of finding them.
38:29
So, I guess it's well, why?
38:30
So, I do this show on why.
38:30
Why do they do a terrible job?
38:32
And the answer is a lot of the time they're distracted, but more than that, they're spending their money somewhere else.
38:38
It takes money to find these kids. Not just to find them.
38:42
If the cost of educating a kid is 50 grand, and you want to bring in a kid from South Central, he doesn't have 50 grand.
38:49
So, you got to pay 50 grand.
38:49
You got to You're out 50 grand if you want to bring him to your school.
38:52
So, if you're going to spend 50 grand on him, it's 50 grand you can't spend on something else. Right?
38:59
That starts to get really interesting.
39:01
All right, so what's the thing you can't spend on?
39:04
And if you can't spend on that other thing, how do you compete with other colleges that do spend on the other thing? Right?
39:09
So, that's what the whole episode's about.
39:11
So, then I do that one and I'm like I do that one and like, wait a minute, I'm not done.
39:16
This gets more interesting. Right?
39:16
So, if you have to spend you've got to find the 50 grand, then where do you get the 50 grand?
39:23
So, now we get into philanthropy.
39:26
That's why I did this whole thing on philanthropy.
39:29
So, that was the third one.
39:29
So, then So, these are all stories that grow out of Do you mean you find It all starts with one kid. I find the kid.
39:36
And all of a sudden, I end up with three very different stories, all of which look at the problem of the kid from a different angle.
39:45
And that's very typical of the way books work for me, which is you start with the nugget, and then you just start walking around it, and parts of it just kind of you're like, oh, that deserves its own, you know, that's that's a you know, it's like when you The thing I find myself doing when I interview someone most often is stopping them.
40:08
Saying, wait, wait, wait.
40:11
I If I When I transcribe it tapes, I hear that so many times. Wait, wait, stop.
40:16
And then I make them go back and elaborate on that point, which was like that kind of weird point.
40:21
Wait, is that you know, they they skip over it cuz it's old hat to them and you were like, "No, no, no, no, no, that I can spend hours on that point, you know?" So, it's that Oh, I do.
40:32
I know exactly how that feels. Yeah.
40:35
And it it strikes me that you ask questions as part of that walking around the first story, right?
40:41
And you ask a question that then redirects you or focuses you in into another topic.
40:47
You find a story and then you ask another question, which then leads to, in this case, another episode, but it could have been another chapter of a book. Yeah.
40:56
If you were to credit someone or some people or resources with helping you to get better at asking questions, Mhm.
41:04
who or what would that be?
41:06
My dad is a great question ask asker.
41:08
And my father has this I've spoken about it many times.
41:10
He has uh of his many gifts, one particular, as a kid, always had the biggest impact on on me, which is my father is has zero intellectual insecurities.
41:23
So, this is the only thing he has in common with Obama.
41:27
He and Obama are the same way.
41:27
They My dad has no it has never crossed his mind to be concerned that the world thinks he's an idiot.
41:35
Just doesn't he's not in that game, right?
41:37
So, if he doesn't understand something, he just asks you.
41:40
He doesn't care if he sounds foolish.
41:42
He will ask the most obvious question.
41:45
Like, you know, and it was without any sort of concern about it.
41:50
And maybe it's because he's My dad's a mathematician.
41:52
So, he has his thing that he knows it's he's really good at and so he's like he's home free.
41:59
I think if you have a PhD in math, you're home free. You free.
42:02
Well, it's Well, something is the true or it's false or it's clear or it's not. Yeah.
42:05
And it's like you're not If you look like an idiot cuz you don't know anything about basketball, who cares, right?
42:10
So, he he asks lots and lots and lots of dumb questions.
42:15
I mean, dumb in the best sense of that word. Dumb questions.
42:19
Wait, like he'll say to someone, "I don't understand. Explain that to me."
42:24
Or he'll And he'll just keep asking questions until he he gets it right.
42:28
And I grew up listening to him do this in every conceivable setting.
42:34
You know, my father made friends So, my father who's this guy with his PhD in math, he made friends with all of these farmers who were our neighbors, who were all dropouts. This was in Canada. In Canada.
42:46
They were all They all went They basically maybe seventh grade.
42:49
And he first of all treated them with like equals.
42:51
And secondly, was intensely interested in what they knew that he didn't know.
42:56
And would ask them tons and tons of questions about why they did what they did.
43:00
So, that's what I grew up around, right?
43:02
That And that's what I do.
43:05
I mean, it's There's no It's straight from my dad.
43:07
I don't think there's any I just do And I, you know, when I'm hanging out with my father and someone interesting, we do the same thing.
43:13
We just start asking questions. It's our sort of thing.
43:17
Well, it it strikes me also that the uh the dumb questions or the obvious questions are precisely the questions often times that we should be asking because half of the people in the room, if it's in a group setting, are probably thinking of those questions anyway, but are embarrassed for whatever reason to bring them up.
43:32
you know, what's a good example of this?
43:33
I often imagine my dad meeting Bernie Madoff.
43:38
My father would say he would look at the returns and he would say, "Wow, that's really good."
43:43
Cuz as a mathematician, he would know that you know, the steady, whatever it was, 9% a year, year in year out.
43:48
He would "That's really And then he would say, "How did you do that?"
43:52
And then Madoff had that Remember that stock explanation that didn't that was And my father would just simply continue to ask really, really dumb, obvious questions and until Madoff would either have had to leave or you know, cuz he would have tried his patience and been at risk of but he would never have invested money with him because he would have said I don't understand a hundred times, right?
44:14
I don't understand how that works.
44:17
I don't understand like in this kind of dumb kind of you know, slow voice. I don't understand, sir.
44:27
You know, what is going on?
44:28
So so let me ask a and you feel free to not to not answer this if you don't want but so I I ask a lot of questions.
44:36
I enjoy asking a lot of questions.
44:37
It can drive some people crazy.
44:38
Uh did your mom get the 20 questions about a lot of things or was the relationship different?
44:48
Oh, she asked lots of questions, too.
44:48
I They are neither of them.
44:49
She's not intellectually insecure, either.
44:51
They're not um It wasn't directed at my mother.
44:54
It was directed at the outside world.
44:55
They had a They have a uh an exceedingly harmonious relationship.
45:01
They don't Yeah, they don't they don't do that.
45:05
That's it's all it's reserved for outsiders, really.
45:08
What to what would you attribute the the harmony?
45:10
Cuz there are a lot of non-harmonious, unharmonious relationships in the world.
45:17
Uh there I mean, they were lucky to be well-suited.
45:19
They're also both um incredi- incredibly um uh they're very calm people.
45:28
So there's very very few They have very little conflict because it doesn't They diffuse conflict really well, I think.
45:36
I think it probably would be a good way of saying it.
45:38
So they can speak rationally instead of not interested in They know I've never seen them pick a fight with each other, for example.
45:43
That doesn't interest them.
45:46
So I have so many questions that I want to ask you.
45:47
I'm just going to jump into a rather uncohesive list of miscellanea.
45:54
Going to try some new ones this time around.
45:56
What is the best or most worthwhile investment you've ever made?
46:00
Could be money, time, energy, or otherwise.
46:05
Or just a very good investment.
46:07
It's really interesting question.
46:09
All of the investments that the most worthwhile investments are investments about time.
46:12
They have to do with time.
46:15
And they're all about persevering past point that I would normally have quit.
46:22
So, I can think for example of books where there's no the payoff didn't come until page a thousand.
46:29
And yet it was very getting to that page was incredibly important in some future endeavor.
46:35
Or when I was describing how I ran across that transcript of that school shooter, which that was about an investment of time where I mean, I was sort of screwing around.
46:48
Not screwing around is the wrong word.
46:48
I was looking for much longer than I would normally look.
46:53
I kind of for reasons I don't really understand, put my impatience aside and and committed a much longer period of time to that hunt.
47:01
So, those are I would say those are probably the That's a very broad category, but those are the best investments.
47:08
Now, when you said page a thousand, you you're talking about reading. Yeah.
47:12
But I mean, in any kind of generally speaking, hunting, so many of the really wonderful things that I've uncovered in my life, not just for my writing, but also personally, have come after elongated um hunts.
47:30
So, you never find the thing that is moving moving and powerful in the first five minutes. Just doesn't happen.
47:37
I remember a friend of mine who I didn't really feel very friendly towards when he said this, uh said to me when I was uh 90% done with my second book, for our body.
47:49
And I said, "Wow, well, you know, pretty close to the finish line, 90% done."
47:53
He goes, "Oh, congratulations, you only have 50% left." And It's okay.
47:57
I've heard that from a lot of uh long distance runners also.
47:59
You know, like kind of the race starts at mile 20 or whatever it might be. Yeah.
48:05
Uh going back to the sort of investments and these uh not postponed but like delayed gratification wins like this pays a thousand.
48:18
Uh can you think of any failures that set you up for later success?
48:23
Or a favorite failure of yours? Yeah.
48:25
I mean I mean it's all kinds.
48:29
I when I was a kid I was a uh in just one of many but I was a uh a runner, very serious runner. And I 1500 m and 800 m.
48:42
And I the puking distances. Yes.
48:44
Uh uh uh And I I uh in my third year of running seriously lost races I thought I was going to win.
48:52
I And it kind of what for me at that that age was a quite quite a drama- a traumatic fashion. And I quit running.
49:01
And it it was the first I would regard that as the the of that the first real failure of my life.
49:08
Something I really wanted to do well at, I didn't.
49:11
And um I feel like it was hugely important both because it made me think hard about what my priorities were, what that I had placed running too high in that list.
49:21
Um but more than that it it um I then later in life went back and thought a lot about why I quit and was dissatisfied with my reasons.
49:33
Um so anything that you can this whole notion of circling back, I think it's so important.
49:36
I mean it's this show is God revisionist history so it's explicitly about that but you know, I I would almost obsessively revisit my reasons for quitting running and scrutinize them and say, is it right?
49:53
What did I learn in the intervening 5, 10, 15, 20 years about who I am, what I want, um what it takes to be good at something.
50:02
Um so that was a very valuable a really valuable experience.
50:05
Um uh at exactly the right time cuz that's the age where you know, where decisions um not decisions matter, but where uh I think you reflect on things in your adolescence in a way that you don't reflect on things later in your life.
50:22
What uh what age was this or what grade? I was 15. 15.
50:27
I always thought I was going to go back at some point and be a ninth grade teacher.
50:30
So right around that like 14 to 16 range.
50:33
It seems like there are a lot of very important forks in the road. Yeah, I think there is.
50:37
I think you are because so much is everything is plastic at that age, right?
50:41
So you can mold it whatever way you want.
50:44
Um and so it's just a kind of like I think about what a how confusing and complicated those years are in retrospect.
50:54
What is uh do you have any morning routines?
50:56
What does the first 60 minutes of your day look like?
50:58
Could be any day of the week.
51:00
Let's just say it's a work day.
51:02
I well, I was just saying earlier, I try I think one should eat very little in the morning.
51:08
So So what time do you wake up?
51:10
Typically you know, 8:00. 8:00. Mhm.
51:11
I have a big thing of tea. What type of tea?
51:13
Sorry, I'm going to keep Lapsang souchong. Oh, that's great stuff. Great stuff.
51:19
If you like uh what is it I I remember a friend who was getting off of he loved whiskey and he felt like the smell reminded him of some type of peaty alcoholic beverage.
51:27
So he ended up Yeah, it has an amazing smell.
51:31
Um it's a very controversial tea.
51:34
And then I might I might have a Malcolm here. Wait, wait, wait.
51:36
Why is it a controversial tea?
51:40
It some people smell it and they just run in the opposite direction.
51:42
They think it it they're they don't even think it's tea.
51:46
I mean, I've never seen people have such a kind of And I And there's a There's a little coffee shop where I go often in the morning to have my tea and they have it.
51:55
I I think I'm one of the only people who order it.
51:57
I think they get it because of me.
52:00
And it's like I walk in, they're like, you know, make a bee line for it.
52:03
But it's clear that, you know, I'm in a distinct minority. It smells.
52:07
I mean, you can smell it from quite a ways off.
52:12
I might eat a little bit of oatmeal.
52:14
That's pretty much all I'll eat in the morning.
52:16
That's your go one of your go-tos? Yeah. Um but not a lot.
52:19
And then I look at three websites.
52:23
Okay, so we're going to come back to three of those.
52:24
So, not a lot means like a cupful, a couple of spoons? Like a a cupful.
52:30
Half a cup, something like that.
52:32
Just enough that I'm, you know, have a reasonable something in my stomach.
52:36
Um and then I will look at three websites.
52:40
The first one is a letsrun. com.
52:42
The nerdy runners, all serious runners read letsrun.
52:46
Then I read Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen's column. And then I read espn.
52:48
com just to make sure nothing major happened in the world of sports.
52:55
And then I start my work.
52:57
How do you And what time is that then when you're starting your work?
53:00
So, we're talking We're now We're still before 9:00.
53:04
And then if I have writing to do, I it's best to do it in the next in the 2 hours that follow. So, before lunch? Yeah.
53:12
And what does your routine look like?
53:12
Is there in those few hours when you start your work?
53:16
What does that look like?
53:16
Is there a particular music you listen Sitting in a coffee shop.
53:20
Sitting in a coffee shop.
53:21
I'm uh uh or, you know, some restaurant. I'm not at home.
53:26
Uh and I'm I'm not in an office.
53:28
And I'm um uh working pretty steadily.
53:30
I'm not really easy distractible.
53:31
Then around 11:30 or so, I kind of have to do other things.
53:36
I mean, I I'm I don't stop working, but I stop writing.
53:40
Do you listen to music when you write?
53:43
Do you just take in the ambient?
53:44
on in the I write almost entirely in public places.
53:48
So, whatever I don't listen to music myself.
53:52
But I like the noise cuz I I came of age in a newsroom. So, I need that.
53:56
I mean, I you know, I learned how to write in the middle of When newsrooms are not noisy now, they used to be incredibly loud.
54:01
So, that's what I need to kind of get going.
54:06
And then do you Is Is that when the bulk of your writing is done?
54:09
Is that pre-lunch period or do you write in the afternoons? Late night?
54:12
No, I rarely write in the afternoon.
54:14
If I find Yeah, journalists seem to be very adaptable or former journalists.
54:19
People who have worked in newspapers or had those types of daily deadlines.
54:22
Yeah, we're faster and also Remember, writing is not the time-consuming part.
54:27
It's knowing what to write.
54:28
It's the thinking and the arranging and the interviewing and the researching and the organizing and the That's what takes time.
54:35
You know, writing is blissful.
54:36
I I wish I could do it more.
54:38
I mean, it's it's a break from all of the hassle of So, let's just say end of work day to bed.
54:44
What do your wind-down routines look like or do you have then probably.
54:49
Um after the end of the afternoon.
54:51
Uh And although I'm injured now, but um Uh that's really the highlight of the day of the kind of work day.
55:01
Um Some days I'll go to my train with my track club.
55:04
Sometimes I'll go for a long run or I'll go biking or I'll go to a CrossFit workout or something physical What is your favorite movement in CrossFit or exercise? And least?
55:16
Well, I kind of runners, you know, secretly disdain any activity that's not running.
55:20
So, I I know I know I know in a front or still you're right.
55:24
So, I don't I I don't I don't even want to think about favorite in that context.
55:30
It's something I suffer through because it's necessary to ward off injury.
55:35
And um when it's over, I'm very happy.
55:37
Um but uh you know, I'm much happier if I can go and you know, run 8 miles with some friends. Got it.
55:45
Pre-bed, anything in particular?
55:47
You know, I'll eat dinner.
55:47
I might read in the evening.
55:49
I watch sports or TV, you know.
55:52
Do you have trouble getting to sleep or do you generally sleep easily?
55:55
I'm a I come from a family of we are champion sleepers.
55:58
Gladwells are some of our We're at the the best sleepers out there.
56:02
They We are some of the best It is our It is our de defining characteristic um that we're And our definition of a bad night of sleep is so hilarious because it's like, you know, my father will say he had trouble sleeping.
56:13
And what that means is he was up for 20 minutes between, you know, 4:00 and 4:20.
56:19
I mean, that's a bad night of sleep.
56:22
So So if if the Gladwells are heading up the leaderboard in sleep, uh We're really good. you guys not good at?
56:31
We are Or you personally? What are we not good at?
56:33
We're What do you find challenging?
56:36
Um well, we're not great talkers.
56:36
We're all pretty introverted.
56:39
With the exception of my brother, who makes up for it.
56:42
Um we are not uh we're not terribly adventurous, I don't I mean, we're adventurous in certain very very specific ways, but we don't I didn't grow up going we would go on family vacations to either England or Jamaica, where my both my parents are from.
57:00
My father would sort of travel a lot to interesting places, but we never went out to eat or went to the movies or went to concerts or the sort of going out thing was not something we did.
57:10
We were We would I would go entire summers when I basically never left the house, you know.
57:14
So, we're we were not um we didn't sort of ex We're we didn't explore the our immediate surroundings in a way that we might have.
57:26
Uh what is some of the or an example of the worst advice that you hear being dispensed or given.
57:32
Could be could be related to anything.
57:37
Writing, running, doesn't matter. Yeah.
57:39
The worst advice that in general we give in America is that we terrify high school kids about their college choices.
57:47
I mean all all things related to college fall into the category of bad advice.
57:52
As you will find out when you listen to my rants about college in on this podcast, um I think the American college needs to be blown up and they just start over.
58:01
I mean it's to my mind you could not have conceived of a worse system.
58:05
Um so, you know, anything any advice that has to do with you need to work hard and get into the best college you can is just I'm sorry it's just I mean it it is just terrible.
58:18
You should not try to go to the best college you can because particularly if best is defined by US News and World Report.
58:23
You should go to a place that what a college should the sole test of what a good college is is is it a place where I find myself late at night having deeply interesting conversations with people that I like and find interesting.
58:42
If you you go where you can do that, right? That's all that matters.
58:46
So am I so inspired by what I learned during the day that I want to be talking about it at 1:00 in the morning and do I have someone who will have that conversation with me and will challenge me? That's it. That's it.
58:56
Everything else is nonsense, right?
58:58
So, you tell me what that place is.
59:02
Now is So that place could be any number of a thousand places in the in the world.
59:07
Maybe you maybe even that place is unpredictable.
59:09
Maybe it is that what matters is not that some schools can provide that experience and some can't.
59:15
What matters is what happens when I go to that school?
59:18
Do I create that experience for myself?
59:21
And I think that experience could be created at almost any institution in the country, right?
59:27
There are interesting kids everywhere.
59:29
And it's only in our snobbery that we have decided that interestingness is defined by your test scores.
59:34
This is just such It's so It's just an outrageous lie. Right?
59:43
Test scores, sure they matter in some day, but I'm talking about college now.
59:46
What makes for a powerful college experience is can I find someone interesting to have an interesting discussion with?
59:52
And that you can do You can do that if you're curious and you're interesting. That's it.
59:57
Or you're By the way, not that you're interesting, you're interested. Interested. Right? That's all that matters.
1:00:06
It just comes back to the questions, having having the ability and the ammo to ask good questions and follow-up questions.
1:00:13
Probably some of the people that you learn most from in those settings are some of the most flawed people. Right?
1:00:21
People It's not true that you learn the most from the smartest, most put-together people.
1:00:27
You I I think about my college experience, it's the people who had a lasting impact on me were deeply, deeply flawed people, and their flaws were what almost drew them to me drew me to them and what I kind of fixated on and found fascinating.
1:00:46
I had a friend, still one of my very best friends, ended up being very, very successful.
1:00:51
In college, he was a basket case. Complete basket case.
1:00:53
To the point where he was He literally said this to me once.
1:00:58
I said, "Why do you have a library book that's 3 months overdue?
1:01:02
Your fine is going up every day."
1:01:04
He said, "Well, I'm afraid to take it back because I can't afford the fine." He said this to me.
1:01:10
This is a guy and that fascinates, you know, that kind of And yet simultaneously he was actually turned out to be a brilliant student or brilliant professional.
1:01:20
And just the squaring those two sides to his personality, the idea that he was hapless in some really crucial respects, and yet made an incredibly successful place for himself in the world.
1:01:33
Figuring that contradiction out took years.
1:01:37
And when I did kind of figure it out, it so enhanced my understanding of people in the world.
1:01:45
And just of understanding the ways in which he compensated for his haplessness brilliantly. Right?
1:01:50
And also realizing that it doesn't If you're hapless in that kind of logistical sense, common sense sense, he has no common sense.
1:02:00
It If you can If you're If you're thoughtful about it, it won't matter one iota.
1:02:05
What flaws or weaknesses do you have that have turned out to be strengths in some capacity?
1:02:12
This is like a job interview question, isn't it?
1:02:14
I I was going to offer you a position to Tim Ferriss Enterprises, but I think you're too busy.
1:02:20
Um Well, probably uh God uh my uh It's only a job interview if you say it.
1:02:29
Sometimes I just work too hard. Exactly.
1:02:32
Well, in in in in in dealing with my own impatience and my sloppiness uh in to attending to those flaws uh I think I have done that's been a really crucial thing in in helping me achieve what I've achieved.
1:02:53
So, it's just Could you elaborate on that?
1:02:57
Yeah, I mean, I'm sloppy.
1:02:58
How are you in in what in what sense?
1:03:00
You know, I don't Sloppy like like clothes all over the floor or sloppy no.
1:03:04
Sloppy about I'm in a hurry.
1:03:04
Uh I you know, I don't always double-check something I know.
1:03:11
Or I I'll interview someone for 45 minutes when I should interview them for 2 hours or you know, I'm just kind of like I'm a good enough person. I'm not a perfectionist. Like fine, it's fine. Let's do do that.
1:03:28
And so I've become so aware of that now that I've compensated and I have taught myself to be a lot more of a perfectionist or I've forced myself to keep asking questions much longer than I would have.
1:03:40
When I said earlier that it was these investments of time that have been so that's what I'm talking about that I forced myself to invest more time in a lot of activities knowing that um if I did it my normal way, I'd be out the door. Right?
1:03:56
You know, I'd be thinking about what I want for dinner as opposed to So that's sort of a a very uh it's why I buy by the way I so object to So when you when you observe or measure someone's natural inclinations you haven't got a picture of them.
1:04:12
Because you don't know what they do with those natural inclinations. Right?
1:04:13
So it turns out that one of the most important things about me is that how obsessed I am with those two flaws of mine. Right?
1:04:23
So identifying those as my natural inclinations tells you exactly the opposite about me.
1:04:31
Because you're compensating by developing the opposite.
1:04:33
I am massively compensating for them all day long, right?
1:04:35
It's I'm obsessed with compensating for them.
1:04:39
Have you received a lot of bad advice along the way as to what you might do professionally or has that not been the case?
1:04:45
No, I mean I don't I'm not an advice seeker about those kinds of things.
1:04:47
Nor much of an advice giver, so I haven't really gotten a lot of And also my position is you can't know.
1:04:54
I've kind of stumbled into most of things I've been doing.
1:05:00
Um I much prefer to simply to be open to opportunity than to plan my path.
1:05:06
I think that's a better for me anyway. I don't know.
1:05:09
I mean people are different, so some people need to plan.
1:05:12
But, I'm not a I don't think ahead really at all.
1:05:17
You know, that your your comment about the compensation and just that that last mile, so to speak, with the interviews and so on, reminds me of Laird Hamilton, the surfer.
1:05:28
And the advice he gave me, he was trying to teach me with a lot of patience, how to surf at one point a few years ago.
1:05:32
And he said, "When you think you've caught a wave, paddle again."
1:05:36
He's like, "Because if you don't, it's like that last paddle and you think you're there, you're just not going to catch the wave." Yeah.
1:05:42
Uh when you think of the word successful, who is the first person who comes to mind and why?
1:05:48
Well, you know, I'm so deeply obsessed with running these days that I immediately think of runners. That's fine.
1:05:54
There's an American runner, Galen Rupp, who's maybe our silver medalist in the London games in the uh 10,000.
1:06:01
And I really admire him for many reasons.
1:06:04
He's, first of all, a very uh he's a system runner.
1:06:07
That's to say, he was sort of um identified in high school as being someone of promise.
1:06:14
He's been with the same coach ever since, and he had a very thoughtful training path and career path. What was his name again? Galen Rupp.
1:06:21
He's a very also a very beautiful runner.
1:06:25
Both those things matter to me.
1:06:26
What makes a beautiful runner?
1:06:26
You know, is it the up on the internet and you looked at the way he moved, you would say he's like a ballet dancer. He just has grace.
1:06:35
You know, there are ugly runners and there are beautiful runners. He's a beautiful runner.
1:06:37
Those two things in combination, the idea that he is still on an aesthetic level is a deeply pleasing So, he he does the thing that he wants to do, not just successfully by the standard metric. He runs very quickly. He wins races.
1:06:55
But, also by a purely irrelevant aesthetic metric.
1:06:58
He's He He creates beauty as he's doing it. Right? That matters to me.
1:07:03
And it matters to me that he's so thoughtful, purposeful in his to use that overused phrase, in his preparation.
1:07:13
You know, that it's not happenstance or that he's sort of thought about what does it mean for for me, Galen Rupp, to be to bring out the best in myself.
1:07:21
And you know, running is tricky because you running is all about restraint.
1:07:28
Even, especially at the elite level.
1:07:31
You can't be obsessive or perfectionist and succeed as a runner. You'll get injured.
1:07:36
Running is all about good enough because you will have too much training volume. Yeah, you can.
1:07:41
The minute you you're walking this fine line between adequately preparing yourself for racing and overtraining, which leads to injury and burnout and all these kinds of things.
1:07:51
And the whole struggle in running is to not get injured, to not cross that line.
1:07:57
And so, in order to not cross that line, you have to rein in all of these tendencies. Your obsessiveness.
1:08:01
You want to do the 10th, you know, repetition.
1:08:05
You know, you're doing 10 times of whatever, half miles.
1:08:09
And you know logically that after nine that that's enough.
1:08:13
You've pushed your body as far as it can go, but your, you know, your kind of anal disciplined self says, "No, do 10 cuz 10 was the workout, right?" You can't do 10.
1:08:24
You have to be tough enough to say, "No, no, no, I've done enough for the day." and walk away, right?
1:08:27
Do you know how hard that is?
1:08:28
Particularly for the kinds of personalities who are attracted to elite running?
1:08:33
I mean, since Same, right?
1:08:36
So, that kind of that notion of how hard it is to say it's good enough and walk away. It's like, he does that.
1:08:44
That's Well, so a couple of things that makes me think about a story I heard related to Charlie Francis, very controversial Yes.
1:08:54
sprint coach, Ben Johnson and so on.
1:08:54
The reality is he he was a he was a brilliant coach. Brilliant coach.
1:09:00
And I I to say it, but I'm not going to point fingers at any specific people, but very likely that all of the top sprinters at that level are using something besides uh Word. spirulina.
1:09:10
I'm not sure it's still true, but go on.
1:09:12
In that era, in Charlie Francis's era, absolutely.
1:09:15
I mean, that was kind of the golden age of of doping in a sense, but the athletes always have more resources than the the water crew in terms of of testing in that cat-and-mouse game, but uh some really interesting things that have come out.
1:09:26
I mean, there just recently, I'll give you an example. Sorry.
1:09:30
So, there was a period of time where uh the the vast majority of world championship or Olympic sprinters had prescriptions uh due to their narcolepsy because they wanted to take modafinil as a stimulant Yeah. pre-race, but I digress.
1:09:44
But, what Charlie said was, in the case of an elite sprinter, if someone said, "How do you push your athletes?"
1:09:51
And he said, "No, no, no.
1:09:51
The last thing I need to do is push my athletes.
1:09:54
It's my job to rein them in.
1:09:54
I always have to rein them in."
1:09:56
And he would have to say, "No, Charlie, you can't do two sets of squats with 600 lbs on your back at 160 or whatever it was. You have to do one set." And uh and so on.
1:10:04
But, the I wanted to come back to plans.
1:10:07
So, you said you're not much for plans, but you are one for systems, right?
1:10:11
So, made me think of It seems, at least in the case of running, made me think of and I'm going to paraphrase here.
1:10:18
There's a quote from I want to say Jeff Bezos, something along the lines of, "You know, we're uncompromising on the vision and flexible on the details." Yeah.
1:10:26
Uh where do you have systems in your life that you rely on?
1:10:33
I wish I had more systems sometimes.
1:10:33
I don't really have a lot of I mean, I've sort of cuz now I'm essentially self-employed and don't go I mean, I have discipline, personal discipline, but it's not Is it that rigid?
1:10:48
I don't know if I have Part of the reason I'm said I think Galen Rupp is successful is because I'm a little bit um envious of the system and structure that he has in place.
1:11:00
Um and it's clear to me that how much can be achieved when you're that kind of thoughtful about what you're doing.
1:11:09
Um I mean nothing as someone, you know, who's obsessed with sports as I am.
1:11:14
The thing that always breaks your heart is that someone who leaves potential on the table. Right?
1:11:19
And I don't think Galen Rupp has. Yeah.
1:11:23
And that is an extraordinary achievement. Right?
1:11:24
To be able to say when he retires, "I ran as fast as I could possibly have run."
1:11:32
That is more important than to say I won a gold medal or I set a world record or right?
1:11:37
I don't mean that in a kind of cheesy I mean that really I really mean that.
1:11:41
To say, "I got at 99% of my ability."
1:11:45
Uh and I huge And I think uh folks would be surprised and you've probably interacted with many more elite runners than I have, but I've I've met people a few of them and I've also interacted with coaches and for instance uh physical therapists who've worked with people like Jackie Joyner-Kersee.
1:12:00
Uh and it it's very common that they would say about that level of athlete, "I just can't get them they've never let it all go and really given 100% because of whether it's fear of a hamstring tear, fear of X, fear of Y, Z, whatever it might be."
1:12:14
So, the fact that this Yeah.
1:12:17
this runner is leaving it leaving it all on the track. Yeah.
1:12:20
So, it's interesting you know, we've been talking there's two um necessarily contradictory things here with runners, which is training is about restraint but racing is not. Right?
1:12:30
So, the that's why we're sort of getting at why the psychology of these elite athletes is so complex.
1:12:39
Restraint, restraint, restraint in preparation.
1:12:41
Get on the track and all of a sudden, no, no more restraint. Go.
1:12:45
All that behavior you've been conditioning, no. Ignore all that.
1:12:48
hard to kind of And you know, I as I I returned to running quite recently in running in a serious way and that's the piece of it that is proving really hard for me to grasp is that idea of turning it on on race day.
1:13:00
So, I train very well and I race less well and for that very reason.
1:13:03
Whereas I look around me you know, really elite runners, the distant difference between their training and racing is astounding.
1:13:11
Like they're just a different animals.
1:13:14
I mean it's it's fascinating to see that.
1:13:18
What books uh besides your own have you gifted to other people the most?
1:13:24
I um there's one book I've given the most in my life which is a book called well, there's several now I think about it.
1:13:32
There's a book by um Timothy Wilson called Strangers to Ourselves which is one of the loveliest most insightful books about social psychology that I've ever read and I I give that a lot to people and uh I give every time I meet and weirdly I'm always meeting um people who work in retail particularly like I always send them particularly if they're Jewish, I send them a book called The Merchant Princes. The Merchant Princes?
1:14:01
Which is is a book about the great Jewish retail families of America.
1:14:04
So, in the 19th century all these people come over from Europe who have have experience in the garment trade or retailing and all of the not all of them but an extraordinary number of the early 20th century late 19th century department stores pop up around America are founded by Jewish immigrants from Europe, right?
1:14:28
You you know, from you know, I mean literally you go to any town in America that's the traditional department store is owned by one of those families.
1:14:38
Well, a guy and I forgotten his name wrote a book about those families and it's called The Merchant Princes and it's called The Merchant Princes. Princes plural, okay. Yes. It's fantastic.
1:14:49
As a kind of It's about everything I'm interested in. It's about immigrants.
1:14:53
It's about people uh figuring out and then conquering an unfamiliar marketplace, right?
1:15:00
It's about all of the brilliant ideas that were that came to these guys in as they as they invented the department store, right?
1:15:10
Ideas that by the way we're still you know, all the internet retailers, they're they're just grandchildren of these guys.
1:15:18
I mean, there's nothing Nothing dramatically new has happened.
1:15:20
They worked it all out 100 years ago.
1:15:21
I mean, it really humbles you about the so-called retail revolution of the last um 10 years.
1:15:28
And they're such extraordinary characters, and I love the way their personality is kind of imprinted on their on their business.
1:15:37
So, there's a fantastic chapter about um Filene's.
1:15:41
The Filene brothers who start Filene's in Boston.
1:15:45
Which and then Filene's basement and so on.
1:15:47
Yeah, at least at least and they invent these they have incredibly interesting ideas about how to hold a sale.
1:15:53
How to generate How to use people's kind of psychological impulses to generate the desire to buy.
1:15:59
These guys are so far ahead of everybody else.
1:16:01
It's you know, it's like 100 years ago, and they are on another level, right?
1:16:05
Just like it's just that it's one story like that after another.
1:16:09
It's like brilliant book.
1:16:11
Uh do you read any fiction? Oh, huge amounts.
1:16:13
I read I read um spy spy novels. Spy novels.
1:16:18
Yeah, if it has the word spy in it, I've read it.
1:16:23
Any uh so, for someone who's unfamiliar with the genre but excited to get started, what what where should they start?
1:16:29
Well, I mean, do we have How many hours do we have?
1:16:30
But we should If you know nothing about it, you should start with John le Carré, of course, and read his first five books.
1:16:36
So, I would read through at least through Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. And you can keep going.
1:16:44
Actually, no, no, read You should read Little Drummer Through Little Drummer Girl or even Russia House.
1:16:50
I like his later stuff less so, but still fantastic.
1:16:52
Um but you must read Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
1:16:57
I mean, that's just kind of like gold standard. in. Yeah.
1:17:03
Um and then uh I mean, I read all the Lee Child books.
1:17:08
They're not spy thrillers per se, but they're thrillers.
1:17:11
Um and those are fantastic.
1:17:11
Um I mean, I I have hundreds.
1:17:14
I have literally hundreds of spy novels spy novels in my in my house.
1:17:23
Uh what $100 or less purchase that I mean, this is ballpark, right?
1:17:27
Meaning just not a Bugatti or something. Yeah.
1:17:29
Uh that is most positively impacted your life that comes to mind.
1:17:35
Probably a piece of music.
1:17:37
I think it was probably an album by Brian Eno um called Another Green World, which is one of his earlier early '70s, I think.
1:17:47
It's ambient music, but not not the kind of really weird ambient music.
1:17:52
There's an adage that says the music you discover when you are 18, I think it's 18 is the magic year, is the music that stays with you for the rest of your life.
1:18:00
Well, I discovered that when I was 18.
1:18:02
And I I sing the songs on that album in my head all the time.
1:18:06
And um I worship Brian Eno.
1:18:10
Um he he's a fascinating guy.
1:18:12
Have you Have you interviewed him? Uh I haven't. I would enjoy it though.
1:18:13
I have I have a collection of cards that he also put out called Oblique Strategies. Yes. Yes. I know all about those. Yeah, yeah.
1:18:21
And I have it right on on top of There's another one called the Whack Pack, which is like a series of odd questions just intended to help you. He's genius.
1:18:28
He's also uh the most articulate person I've ever met. Wow.
1:18:33
You His do I should I should try to get Mr. Eno on the podcast. You should.
1:18:37
Oh, you should because just to listen to him talk it's distracting how perfectly he talks.
1:18:44
So, you're He's one of those.
1:18:46
You just want to listen because it's perfectly done paragraphs.
1:18:52
And It's ready for publication.
1:18:54
It's just Yeah, you just I mean it's I can't explain the experience.
1:18:55
It's just kind of awe-inspiring.
1:19:01
Sounds like I felt that experience when watching Neil Gaiman speak or listening to him speak and also perform. Just incredible.
1:19:08
Uh What is something you believe that other people think is crazy?
1:19:14
Or something that a lot of people believe that you think is crazy aside from the college piece.
1:19:17
Either one, but I'm most interested in things that you believe that other people would raise an eyebrow to. I believe in ghosts. I like this. All right. Tell me more. I just do. I don't understand.
1:19:26
My aunt who lives in Jamaica used to live in this house called Hilton Hill um which was said to be haunted.
1:19:33
There was a particular room that was said to be haunted.
1:19:38
And so, I slept in a room as a kid, like 13, 14. It was haunted. Just ghosts in there.
1:19:44
Who played the guitar in the middle of the night. I don't know.
1:19:46
And I at that age I was like in Jamaica everyone believes in ghosts.
1:19:50
Not everyone, but it's a kind of you know, you people believe in ghosts.
1:19:54
So, do I think the house is haunted?
1:19:54
I actually do think it's haunted.
1:19:56
I also don't understand if you believe in God as I do it's not that hard to believe in ghosts.
1:20:04
I mean So, I believe in the existence of things outside my own direct physical experience. Right?
1:20:12
So, I also I don't believe in why that why that's controversial.
1:20:14
Like why people think that you can only believe in things that you have we have conventional explanations for and that you can see and touch.
1:20:25
Well, that strikes me as being Why would you limit yourself like that? I mean, I'm not crazy.
1:20:30
I don't believe in UFOs, although I don't rule them out.
1:20:34
I mean, I don't I'm not a kind of spiritualist, but it in a kind of purely rational way, I believe there's stuff out there that can't be properly explained. Why?
1:20:45
Because why would we have explanations for everything? Or not yet, right?
1:20:49
I mean, there are it's just just because There's a ways to go.
1:20:52
There are phenomena that we can't currently explain or examine using the scientific method, right?
1:20:57
Which is uh sometimes poorly, sometimes properly implemented.
1:21:03
Uh it doesn't mean we won't.
1:21:04
And there is I mean, you just have to sort of look back in the history books to see many, many, many examples of this. Yeah.
1:21:10
Uh if you if you're My mother's an identical twin, and if you know an identical twin, you witness that they live thousand of one lives in Jamaica, one lives in Canada.
1:21:20
You know, and they do that thing that twins do, which is they call each other and say, "I was so worried about you."
1:21:26
And then the other one will say, "I just had some kind of accident."
1:21:30
Or one will say, "I woke up in the middle of the night with a terrible pain in my stomach."
1:21:33
And my mother's like, "That's because I just had an operation for to get you know, like that kind of stuff."
1:21:38
Which is like that weird thing you read about in It happens. I don't know.
1:21:42
This is the second time this has come up on this podcast.
1:21:43
I had an identical twin on my podcast and we talked about this.
1:21:47
Yeah, it's like So, do I have a rational explanation for that? Does my mother? No.
1:21:52
Does it Is it maybe a coincidence? I don't know. Maybe.
1:21:54
I don't I mean, I don't know.
1:21:56
It just needs explanation. I don't have one.
1:21:57
But I'm open to things that don't have explanation.
1:22:00
So, I I I I the the question the What is something you believe that other people think is insane?
1:22:05
Is actually modified kind of paraphrased um wording of a question that Peter Thiel likes to ask uh I suppose when he's interviewing founders.
1:22:13
What is your What are your What What is your opinion of Peter Thiel, if you have one?
1:22:19
Well, all I know about him is what I know from this whole Gawker thing.
1:22:22
I know that he's of in bad odor among some people.
1:22:27
Um and I never read his book, but I think I think he said he might have taken a shot at me. I don't remember this.
1:22:33
So, the Zero to One, he he takes issue with what he how he interprets your position as it relates to success and circumstantial factors or luck. Oh.
1:22:46
Uh Does he think there's more He thinks more up to the individual?
1:22:50
That would be his position. see.
1:22:51
That's a reasonable position.
1:22:53
I mean, the the irony in part and one of my fans pointed this out is that he talks in the very beginning of the book how uh failing to get a sort of by a string of events outside of his control, failing to get a clerkship led to all these other things that wouldn't have happened had he received the clerkship, but Yeah. Uh There we go.
1:23:13
Are there any uh I'm going to word this broadly, innovators, and that's sort of jumping.
1:23:19
I live in Silicon Valley.
1:23:19
Uh so, there are a lot of real innovators and even more people who like to fashion themselves as innovators.
1:23:26
Uh are there any people do you think are engaged in very interesting innovation at the moment? Oh, wow.
1:23:34
Uh I mean, so many obviously so many people and most of the people doing the interesting stuff we wouldn't even know about, would we?
1:23:41
I mean, they wouldn't have told us. So, have publicists.
1:23:45
Um, yeah, they're I don't know if I have a good answer to that.
1:23:49
I mean, I'm sort of continually We could also take a retrospective.
1:23:52
I mean, because like everything that was old is once new again, right? In terms of the retail.
1:23:56
So, are there other examples of innovators that have had a um that that you've become fascinated by?
1:24:02
For instance, I interviewed Marc Andreessen recently. Incredible tech icon. Fascinating guy.
1:24:07
And he looks to people like Walt Disney and Edison Yeah.
1:24:15
to apply lessons that they learned and habits they developed, rules they developed for themselves to Yeah.
1:24:21
I guess I would say my New Yorker colleague Atul Gawande has done all this work um with checklists. So get such great stuff. Fantastic stuff.
1:24:32
And I I really admire him because it's deeply unpopular work within his own profession.
1:24:38
But it's work that has I mean, extraordinary potential for saving lives and particularly it's one of those things that ultimately I think has far more usefulness in developing world than the developed world.
1:24:51
I mean, the line infection example in the checklist manifesto is just it's just staggering. I mean, the uh Yeah.
1:24:59
But you he took a extraordinary risk uh to his own reputation in domestically in America in the medical profession by doing that.
1:25:08
People doctors do not like checklists.
1:25:11
And they think of him as simplifying, dumbing down.
1:25:14
Well, all they have all these kind of epithets they use against him.
1:25:17
Unfairly, I think because he's not saying all medicine can be reduced to a checklist.
1:25:22
He's saying, "Let's find the parts that can be and do it that way, right?"
1:25:26
So, um I admire the idea, but almost more I I admire the kind of guts that made the idea possible.
1:25:35
I have So, there are a number of books, about 20 or 30 that I have in my living room because I I spend a lot of time there writing.
1:25:42
Often times, although I do like to get out to a third location of some sense.
1:25:46
Uh I I'll go stir crazy, but I have uh but it's about 10 books that are face out to remind me of certain things or to elicit certain emotions.
1:25:55
And the checklist manifesto is one of them. Oh, yeah.
1:25:57
You'd be pleased to hear that.
1:25:59
The other thing by the way tons and tons of people write interesting things.
1:26:02
Atul then went and put his ideas into action on a grand scale throughout the world.
1:26:07
I mean, talk follow through.
1:26:11
So, he's not this kind of intellectual holding forth.
1:26:14
He has the idea, he takes the heat, and then he makes it happen in a real way around the world.
1:26:18
I mean, it's extraordinary. Very commendable.
1:26:23
Uh what advice would you give to your Actually, before we get to that one, we talked about books.
1:26:27
Do you have any favorite movies or documentaries that you've seen multiple times?
1:26:33
No, I'm not really a movie or a documentary guy. No. All right.
1:26:35
Well, then that's an easy easy pass to the advice you would give your 30-year-old self.
1:26:41
I would have left North America. Leave North America. To get out of there. Get out. Why?
1:26:46
Because you'll wake up when you're 50 and realize that you spent your entire working career in North America, which is, despite the fact that it pretends to be the only place that matters, is not the only place that matters.
1:26:56
I just would have been I would have been so much more interesting and thoughtful and wouldn't insightful and whatever if I had experienced particularly in the developing world.
1:27:05
Um I had an idea when I was in my 20s that I wanted to go and study in Jamaica.
1:27:10
You know, a place where I have family and I have some familiarity with it. I should have done it.
1:27:17
Um or some similar kind of thing. Yeah.
1:27:19
Um I just think and I It's always my advice to young people, which is particularly young people of privilege, is just leave. I mean, go away.
1:27:29
You can come back, but you have to You can't stay in the cocoon your whole life. Yeah. Right?
1:27:37
You're It will limit you in ways you cannot even begin to understand at this point. Totally agree.
1:27:42
I was chatting with Sebastian Junger about You got to get out of the bubble. Yeah. Yeah. Repeatedly.
1:27:50
about the system and also any potential remedies, and he felt a mandatory year of, in his case, national service, but it could be volunteering with the Peace Corps after, I think it was, high school, and spending a year exposing yourself to those types of environments before going into the quote real world somewhere in this case, North America.
1:28:09
Two of the religious groups who take a lot of heat, but for which I for whom I have enormous respect, the Mennonites and the Mormons, have an institutionalized practice of sending people to other cultures. Their mission. Their mission.
1:28:23
Um and that's I just you know people who go on those missions come back transformed, not just spiritually, but you know, they have seen the side of the And And by the way, they're not going as American college students do when they do the year abroad to Florence.
1:28:39
Florence does not Going to Florence does not expand your horizons.
1:28:44
Don't do a year abroad in Paris.
1:28:44
Look, this is That notion that oh, I you know, my school I'm going to break out of the box and go and spend the you know, 6 months in the in the 7th arrondissement, you know, that Go somewhere real, right?
1:28:58
That's the That's what the That's the upside of that kind of experience.
1:29:04
Uh what when when people have the means, I mean, I I spent a year in Japan as an exchange student at 15.
1:29:09
It's my first real time outside of the United States and completely rocked my world.
1:29:13
It just called everything into question and I So, when when people have the chance to like, "Well, I'm thinking about going here, here, here."
1:29:20
and if Japan's on the list, I go I I always respond with go to Japan because it will make no sense.
1:29:26
You won't be able to read anything.
1:29:28
And the English that you do read won't make any sense.
1:29:30
People do not speak English well.
1:29:33
And uh you should just walk until you get lost and then try to find your way back because it's safe. You won't get hurt.
1:29:39
And I went there for the first time 2 months ago. Oh, really? Blew my mind.
1:29:42
I mean, it's like, "Oh my god, it's so interesting."
1:29:45
Oh, any any favorite moments or frames that come to so briefly.
1:29:48
I had to come back sadly cuz I was working on this podcast, but uh I was there for like 4 days. I just walked around. Oh, yeah.
1:29:55
And I did what I had to do and then I just like went for It's It's like I went for this I remember once I was at I was walking down some perfectly ordinary random residential street.
1:30:06
I see a little I was thirsty.
1:30:06
I see a little sign, tiny sign called coffee.
1:30:11
So, I look, is there a coffee shop? Can't find it.
1:30:12
Search, finally have to go down some stairs, through doors, up some stairs, through another door, and there's like a room.
1:30:20
And there's like a woman, young woman behind the counter.
1:30:24
And she makes a cup of coffee that is so far and away the greatest cup of coffee I've ever had.
1:30:28
Like, nothing else is even close, right?
1:30:29
And then I tried to tip her as one would, and she got offended.
1:30:36
I think, you know, threw the money back.
1:30:37
It was just like this kind of an impossible to find in the middle of nowhere coffee shop that just kills any other.
1:30:45
But that's that's Japan, right?
1:30:47
Yeah, it's like walking through a fever dream.
1:30:49
I mean, Japan is uh it's so much fun.
1:30:52
Um so the podcast, how did you decide uh no doubt you have had people propose that you do a podcast before. Yeah.
1:31:01
Um I mean, I still I still think we're at the very early stages of adoption.
1:31:06
People I am I think something like 15 or 17% of the people in the US have listened to podcasts.
1:31:11
It's a very relatively Um my yeah, early days, minority group at this point. Why why why now?
1:31:17
I mean, what did you what what led to the decision?
1:31:20
Well, my friend Jacob, uh who runs the Slate Group, an old old friend of mine, um has they have the Panoply as theirs, big podcasting company.
1:31:29
And he said, "Do you want to do a podcast?" I said, "No."
1:31:32
He said, "Come on, do a podcast." So, I said, "All right." That's literally that.
1:31:37
Um and then I got really into it and realized how fun it was, uh and for all the reasons I talked about earlier, just how it was a different way to tell story.
1:31:46
What about it has been the most fun for you?
1:31:49
And we And we maybe we covered it already.
1:31:50
I mean, it is a certainly Well, it's a group One is that I've never done a group experience, group thing before.
1:31:54
So, creating in a group was super novel.
1:31:59
I I I just I don't even go to meetings. Damn it.
1:32:04
There are no meetings in my life.
1:32:04
And suddenly I went to meetings and I didn't realize everyone hates meetings, but I was like, "Whoa, this is this is this is exciting."
1:32:12
Um so, everything was just kind of like uh and then the idea of just the the ability to generate emotion in a way you can't do on the page is was just more than a revelation.
1:32:22
It was a kind of I mean, I was entranced by that possibility. It's transformative.
1:32:27
I mean, for me this podcast started as a um a lark, something to do in between extremely exhausting book projects.
1:32:35
And when people if if if any fans come up to me now when I'm on the street at least nine times out of 10, probably even a higher percentage, talk about the podcast and not the books.
1:32:48
And hopefully that's not because my books are terrible.
1:32:51
That could That could mean that relatively speaking um that is the case, but I I think the emotional bond the emotional response you're able to create and the emotional bond that is forged through the audio medium is just Yeah.
1:33:04
It's it's I have to imagine it's it's some it's a reflective of some hardwiring that we have as Yeah. storytelling machines.
1:33:12
It's kind of an amazingly powerful thing.
1:33:14
Where would you and maybe this is is to be kept a a secret, but where would you in an ideal world, let's say two years from now, what are you doing in audio or not?
1:33:23
What does this or what does the podcast look like?
1:33:25
What is your Well, I imagine I'll do another season. Mhm.
1:33:30
And I had played with the idea of inviting someone to join the Revisionist History rubric and have someone else do have some episodes that try something similar.
1:33:41
I mean, there's no reason why I can't be a kind of if I'm doing a collective project, let's make it just really make it collective.
1:33:47
Like not just me dreaming up the So, I thought about that.
1:33:49
If I could find someone who you know, took it seriously and want to and was of shared my But uh I don't know.
1:33:57
And then, you know, can I make a living doing it? That's another question.
1:33:59
Um So, uh you can certainly talk more about the last last piece offline, but I I would say the answer should be yes.
1:34:07
There's no reason why it shouldn't be.
1:34:10
And that uh on the the second to last piece, uh I would absolutely encourage you to experiment with the format because it's such a lightweight, relatively speaking, Mhm.
1:34:24
uh medium and format for doing that.
1:34:24
I mean, I've I've tried four or five different formats.
1:34:29
Some were complete strike outs. Yeah.
1:34:32
And some in in terms of the sort of cost of creation in terms of energy, time, money, etc.
1:34:38
to the output and impact on listeners was so disproportionately favorable.
1:34:43
I was like, "Wow, I'm really glad I tried those five because these didn't work.
1:34:48
But, like these solo Q&A's that I do sometimes as round twos with guests started off because uh if you want to talk about kind of a I was sick at the time I did the Peter Thiel interview.
1:34:58
And so, it ended up being this solo read of sorts, which was profound and hilarious and great in a bunch of different ways.
1:35:03
And I realized, "Oh, wait a second.
1:35:05
I don't actually have to be there for this to be useful to Mhm. listeners."
1:35:10
And uh so, I I hope you experiment with that.
1:35:12
Uh last uh last real question, and then we'll wrap up here.
1:35:17
If you had a billboard and could put anything on it, what would you put on that billboard?
1:35:22
Probably a picture of one of my favorite runners. On my phone.
1:35:27
I should have it on my phone. Oh, yeah.
1:35:30
Um he's obscured by all the all the icons, but who is that? Asbel Kiprop. World's greatest miler. From Kenya. He's my screen saver.
1:35:37
For on my my picture on my phone. Um I don't know.
1:35:42
I'm obsessed with the idea that uh track and field ought to be one of our most popular sports, and in fact is our least popular sport.
1:35:48
So, I would love to um I want I want to I want a day when America's, you know, when the American record holder in the 5K can walk down the street and everyone will come up to her and say, you know, "Wow, can I have your autograph?"
1:36:01
And she'll be mobbed and, you know, that's what I want to happen one day. So.
1:36:07
Do you have any Do you have any This This could seem like a silly question, but do you have any quotes that you live your life by or mantras in a non woo-woo kind of sense that are meaningful to you?
1:36:18
They might just be like heuristics, rules of thumb, anything like that? Not really.
1:36:23
I mean, kind of in a playful way, I used to love I really like the I keep calling myself going back to that the legal adage, "Difficult cases make bad law."
1:36:36
Which I think it's an incredibly insightful comment about how cuz we're we're drawn to the difficult case.
1:36:44
And we want But you shouldn't generalize from it.
1:36:46
And then we can't That's this problem we run into in the political realm over and over again.
1:36:50
Not just political, many realms, but Can you give an example of that?
1:36:52
I I'm not sure I'm clear. uh 9/11. It's a difficult case. Right?
1:37:00
Incredibly rare, catastrophic event, catches us by surprise.
1:37:04
Should you try to generate policy exclusively from the 9/11 experience? That's what we did. And what did we do?
1:37:13
I think we made a bunch of really terrible mistakes, right?
1:37:17
We spent $2 trillion on a war that went nowhere and made the world worse off.
1:37:22
We subverted our own civil liberties.
1:37:24
We created these monolithic government agencies that God knows what they're doing.
1:37:28
Are we actually safer than we were? I'm not sure.
1:37:32
That's a case where you if if we had exercised some restraint and said, "You know what?
1:37:37
You can't use a single incident, which was this bizarre outlier, and base the whole national security policy of your country on it.
1:37:48
You have to look at the at the long view.
1:37:51
Take the long view, right?
1:37:52
Obama is a very natural that kind of thinking is very natural to him.
1:37:56
And he's a difficult cases bad luck kind of guy.
1:38:00
He's like, let's not overreact.
1:38:00
Let's wait and see that kind of thing which people find very frustrating with him.
1:38:06
Um, but I like that notion.
1:38:06
Um, similarly, you know, it's it's about not overreacting to um, to black swans, you know, to uh, to outlying events.
1:38:17
Um, uh, and also not choosing your your case studies wisely.
1:38:24
That's I think what it's really about.
1:38:27
Well, I suppose you could also generalize it to your personal life in many ways too.
1:38:30
And I mean, just because you're mugged once doesn't mean you should have a fundamental distrust of every human being as you go throughout life.
1:38:37
Yes, exact exactly right.
1:38:37
And yeah, the And we I think we can go fur- further that just because you have been traumatized in some way doesn't mean you are permanently scarred. Right?
1:38:48
That human beings are resilient. They recover.
1:38:53
And I mean, that's something that Sebastian also brought up and you not everyone shares this opinion, but given his extensive experience with vets and soldiers, he felt like they should not be treated like victims when they come back if they suffer from PTSD for a whole host of reasons that I won't get into.
1:39:09
But this has been so much fun.
1:39:09
I I really think we could we could continue talking for hours, but I want to be respectful of your time.
1:39:14
Malcolm, where can people find the podcast?
1:39:15
Where can they find you on social media or elsewhere?
1:39:19
Where would you like them to to check things out?
1:39:23
Podcast is revisionisthistory.
1:39:23
com, but anywhere there are podcasts, you can find revisionisthistory.
1:39:27
And uh, my Twitter handle is just @Gladwell.
1:39:31
I'm the only Gladwell out there.
1:39:34
So, and I but I I tweet I'm an indifferent tweeter, but I I get into little moments when I when I go off.
1:39:42
especially if someone brings up the the the myths and policies of current uh higher education in the United States. Oh, that gets me going.
1:39:51
I remember Po Bronson told me once, I asked at a at a Q&A, this is before I'd written any books, and I asked him what he does when he has writer's block, and he said, "I write about what makes me angry." Occasionally I use that.
1:40:03
It seems to work pretty well, at least to get me get me started.
1:40:07
Malcolm, thank you so much for the time. I really appreciate it.
1:40:11
And uh I I can't wait to to jump into uh the episodes you mentioned of the podcast, and I'll probably just go from start to finish.
1:40:20
That's I think I can be pretty linear that way. Yeah.
1:40:23
And uh to everybody listening, you can find links to Virgin Atlantic history, to everything we discussed, the books mentioned, etc.
1:40:29
in the show notes at 4hourworkweek.
1:40:31
com/podcast, and until next time, and as always, thank you for listening.
1:40:39
Hey guys, this is Tim again.
1:40:39
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Take the risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2 to 5 minutes, and they'll show you for free exactly the portfolio they'd put you in.
1:43:33
And if you just want to take their advice, run with it, do it yourself, you can do that.
1:43:36
Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. And here's why.
1:43:40
The value of Wealthfront is in the automation of habits and strategies that investors should be using on a regular basis, but normally aren't.
1:43:48
Great investing is a marathon, not a sprint, and little things that you may or may not be familiar with, like automatic tax loss harvesting, rebalancing your portfolio across more than 10 asset classes, and dividend reinvestment add up to very large amounts of money over longer periods of time.
1:44:03
Wealthfront, as I mentioned, since it's using software instead of retail locations, etc.
1:44:07
, can offer all of this at low costs that were previously completely impossible.
1:44:11
Right off the bat, you never pay commissions or account fees.
1:44:14
For everything they charge, 0.
1:44:16
25% per year on assets above the first 15,000, which is managed for free if you use my link, wealthfront. com/tim.
1:44:25
That is less than $5 a month to invest a $30,000 account, for instance.
1:44:30
Now, normally, when I have a sponsor on this show, it's because I use them and recommend them.
1:44:33
In this case, it's a little different.
1:44:35
I don't use Wealthfront yet, because I'm not allowed to. Here's the deal.
1:44:39
They wanted to sponsor this podcast, but because of SEC regulations, companies that invest your money are not allowed to use client testimonials, so I couldn't be a user and have them on the podcast.
1:44:51
But, I've been so impressed by Wealthfront that I've invested a significant amount of my own money, at least for me, uh in the team and the company itself.
1:44:58
So, I am an investor and hope to soon use it as a client.
1:45:00
Now, back to the recommendation.
1:45:02
As a Tim Ferriss Show listener, you'll get $15,000 managed for free if you decide to open an account, but just start with seeing the portfolio that they would suggest for you.
1:45:11
Take 2 minutes, fill out their questionnaire at wealthfront. com/tim. It's fast, it's free.
1:45:16
There's no downside that I can think of.