♪ >> Welcome to Canada Files.

I'm Valerie Pringle.

My guest today is Malcolm Gladwell who is the author of eight best-selling books including his latest, Revenge of the Tipping Point .

He is also the co-founder of Pushkin Industries.

An audio content company that produces his podcasts, Revisionists History, among others.

Gladwell is a remarkable story teller who looks for the hidden patterns that help explain modern society.

>> Valerie: Hi Malcolm.

>> Malcolm: Hi.

>> How did you find or create your niche that voice as a cultural interpreter, guru, storyteller?

How did you figure that out?

>> Ah well, it's nice of you to say that I figured it out.

...I think it comes out of being-- I started out as a newspaper writer.

You know you get moved around in newspapers.

So I was a business then science reporter.

Then I was a New York correspondent.

So you get--the whole ethic of a newspaper is, you can write on anything, given the opportunity.

So I got very comfortable writing about a variety of subjects.

Then I went to the New Yorker and did the same thing.

There was no--you weren't assigned to a particular beat if you were a staffer like I was.

You could just wonder around.

So I've been wandering around ever since.

>> You love explaining this.

You say you were born to explain things.

>> A special gift of yours.

>> Yah, I do.

I get a certain pleasure in having the most economical explanation, or engaging explanation for ...

There's always moments when I'm writing something when I try something, when I feel like we're getting super nerdy...

I doubt my audience will let anyone else take them down this particular path.

But I'm going to try.

>> How much distance do you find you need?

Or do you need a lot of distance before you can judge and say here's a pattern or a cause-and-effect and how I put it together.

You talk about COVID and opioid crisis where both things, you covered in Revenge of the Tipping Point.

>> You mean how much distance does one need from the actual event?

>> Yah, or do you need any to start to be able to-- >> You need some.

If you don't-- the hardest part in writing about a current phenomenon is knowing whether it's over.

So in my first book, The Tipping Point , I write about New York City crime and the kind of error I made was in thinking the story was over.

In fact, the story had just begun.

I wrote about New York having two great crime declines.

It's the second decline that's the interesting one.

I wrote about the first decline thinking that was what the story was.

No, the story is the second decline.

I almost wrote-- that crime chapter in that book should really have been written 15 years later.

Because that's when, by 2017 or 2018, we start to understand what actually happened in New York.

In that case, what I'm saying is that decline that begins in the mid-90s does not become legible, we think, for another 20 years.

So in that case, you need a lot of distance.

If you don't--if you're not sure that the phenomenon's over, you need to be very clear to the reader that you're describing something that is on-going.

And you need to communicate a degree of uncertainty about what your conclusions are.

I'm not always sure I did that in my early career.

>> But you don't mind admitting mistakes or incomplete analysis.

>> It's all part of... what it means to be someone who writes about ideas.

You have to be willing to go back & look at what you've done.

And say oh I got this wrong, I got this right.

Lots of professions do that.

It's only...people have difficulty with those kinds of admissions of error in politics and journalism.

But other professions, they do it all the time!

>> Academics... >> Yah, I learned this.

Something changed.

I got a new set of facts.

You're right.

Politicians are not allowed-- you said this, now you're saying this.

>> Not allowed-- journalists, writers, thinkers are not allowed but other people constantly.

Sports fans change their mind every five minutes.

And it's totally fine to like, you'll scream at some pitcher, "You're a bum!"

Then the pitcher strikes out the side in the 9th, and he's a hero.

And no-one has any problem with that.

That is as it should be.

I've never understood why there should be a separate set of rules for writers and politicians.

>> You're known to hold strong opinions too.

You say you love to poke the bear.

You love to take shots.

There are things that get you like elitism .

Or things that are a little too prestigious.

Harvard or Bing Wong.

Or people that sort of put themselves above.

>> Yeah, well that's the Canadian in me, you know.

I feel like there's a gentle levelling impulse if you're Canadian.

Which I like to ... play with a little bit.

I do think there's a-- the thing about American society that I dislike the most is I find it intensely hierarchical.

At the same time, unwillingly to own up to its hierarchical nature.

It's that kind of contradiction that bothers me.

>> Well, it's the land of the free and everybody has an opportunity.

>> The Brits are open about it.

The Brits don't pretend they are some big altarian society.

They relish their elitism.

Americans are just dishonest about their elitism.

>> Do you think being an outsider has helped you observe more?

Or do you feel like an outsider after so long?

>> Well, you have freedom as an outsider to say things.

Because you don't belong to any existing orthodoxy.

I feel like it is always the case that outsiders in any cultural context have a level of freedom that one insider does not.

So comics overwhelming are drawn from outsider groups.

That's for a variety of reasons.

But one of the reasons is we're so much more willing to allow someone to poke fun at us if they're not a member of the majority.

The gay comic can make fun of straight people.

And straight people are not going to mind.

The Black comic can, you know, can make ruthless fun of white people.

And white people will all laugh.

There's a kind of-- for years and years, the huge majority of comics in North America were Jewish.

Still the case, to a large extent.

>> Same thing.

>> A lot of them Canadian too.

It's the same thing.

That status gives you a kind of privilege.

Because you're not threatening.

Once you disarmed your audience by virtue of belonging to an outsider group.

So I feel like I've benefitted, particularly if you're Canadian.

People...they think of you-- they don't imagine you as menacing and intimidating if you're Canadian.

>> You had a perfect upbringing, it seems for your life and work.

You had this Jamaican mom who was a marriage and family therapist-- or have this great mom.

Had a wonderful English dad who was a PhD in advanced math.

So you had the empathy and the science.

Both those things feeding into the kind of brain and work that you had to do.

>> Yeah...itús funny, I have subsequently discovered a number of people, some of them my good friends, who have a mathematician father and a therapist mom.

It seems to be a little bit of a trope .

I wonder whether there's something about those types that seek out-- I don't know whether it's the therapist seeking out the mathematician or the reverse.

>> Probably the mathematician seeking out the therapist.

>> With a kind of recognition that when you're occupying one part of the brain, you need someone who occupies the other part of the brain to feel whole.

So yeah, it was a very interesting combination of intellectual and emotional influences.

>> They found each other in England, at school.

Married.

It was an inter-racial marriage.

Which must have been, still in the UK in the 50s, kind of a thing.

Then you moved to Canada, grew up here.

>> Oh yeah, I had a lovely childhood.

Also, I always say growing up in southern Ontario in the 70s, I think.. you would be hard-pressed to find any place and time in history that was more ideal for raising a child.

Than Southern Ontario in the 1970s.

I mean, you have this wonderful stable, welcoming, safe country.

This kind of--just like at a moment when it's blossoming.

Full of people from all over.

I grew up in Waterloo county.

Full of people from all over the world.

My father would go off to the University of Waterloo.

...the number of different nationalities in his department was kind of staggering.

I remember my father used to-- we had a huge back lawn.

Several acres of lawn.

So raking the leaves every fall was this incredible chore.

My father quickly realized that the best way to do it would be to throw a party which he called the leaf-raking party.

And invite his graduate students who were not Canadians.

They were invariably from India or Africa.

To them, it was exotic to rake leaves.

It became such a popular thing that by the last year before we moved from this house, grad students were coming back.

>> This is like Huckleberry Finn.

>> Exactly.

>> They loved it.

They were volunteering.

They would call my dad up, say when's your leaf-raking party?

I remember our neighbours moved in on the day of the leaf-raking party and there were so many nationalities represented in our little backyard, they thought they had moved next to a commune.

But that was like--tell me where in the world you could find 15 nationalities happy raking leaves in your backyard on an October day.

>> Your dad was responsible for the science and the rigour.

And that your work starts with social science quite often.

Although my mother's also an exceedingly intellectual-organized person.

I would just say very generally, I got from both them, both of them have very tidy minds.

I like that kind of tidiness.

I like the idea that, to my mind, things that require explanations should have explanations.

We don't need to be-- the explanation doesn't have to be the final word.

It's just useful to have some kind of working theory as to why something is the way it is.

You know if you think about, in my most recent book, in the COVID chapter when I'm talking about the pattern of transmission and how a very small number of people are responsible for passing along the virus.

It's not all of us.

It's a tiny group of us.

You need to have-- the reason that is so important is if you're thinking about an epidemic and trying to understand why it behaves the way it behaves, you have to have a theory about transmission.

You can't just assume oh, the virus somehow gets from one person to another.

You must have some... >> Somehow isn't good enough.

>> Venture an explanation.

What's the model that makes sense of this one?

Is it different from the way HIV or the flu spreads?

Having a kind of working model in your mind allows you, in some ways, tame the epidemic.

And makes it less scary.

Because I think people-- the fundamental problem we had with COVID from the very beginning as that it was terrifying to many people.

That's because they'd never lived in the middle of one before, in quite the same way.

I always felt, throughout COVID, I was never scared by it.

Because I knew so much about epidemics.

Another very simple rule of thumb, it's not always the case but the general rule about epidemics, the more contagious it is, the less lethal it is.

There's a trade-off.

So when I observed in the beginning, how insanely contagious COVID was, I was like it's not going to kill us all.

>> It killed a lot of people.

>> Given how many people it infected-- it basically infected most of the world.

Which is an extraordinarily active contagion.

>> Obviously, your research is formidable.

From millions of transcript hours of legal cases, dusty textbooks and shelves of libraries.

There's one quote of yours that says, "Success is a function of persistence and dogginess.

And willingness to work hard for 22 minutes to make sense of something most people would give up on after 30 seconds."

>> ...the older I get, the more I've come to believe that kind of persistence and discipline is overwhelmingly the most important element of any kind of success.

In fact, I've kind of lost interest in any abstract notion of intelligence.

If it's divorced from character traits of persistence and discipline.

I just don't--it's not useful.

You can be the smartest person in the world.

But if you're ill-disciplined and lazy, your intelligence is of no use to anyone else.

I don't understand why are we celebrating it?

You're not moving the ball here.

I had this-- six or seven years ago, I started a little audio company with a friend.

So we've been hiring people and working.

For the first time, working in teams.

It'd been struck by the same thing.

It's just about--it's really attitude that I'm interested in.

>> Effort.

Purpose.

>> And enthusiasm.

Some people are enthusiastic and want to work hard.

And they're a delight.

Some people are not, & not a delight.

It has nothing to do with-- if all I had to measure was those two variables: enthusiasm and hard work.

That's all.

I'm quite happy.

>> How did you identify podcasting so early on as something that would be a good place for you to be?

That you had a skill set for.

That you had a performing element to.

You did a lot of speeches so you knew.

And you have a good voice.

>> Well, a very good friend of mine, Jacob Weisberg, was already in the business and came to me and said, "Do you want to do a podcast?"

This would have been 11 years ago.

At the beginning of the podcast boom.

I said yes almost immediately just because I'd been riding the subway in New York.

When I got to New York, I would see people reading.

And I would now ride the subway and see people listening.

I was like, well that's where the people are going.

I would be a fool to neglect this.

>> How do you find your stories?

>> Mmmmm I mean, all over.

It's funny.

As I've gotten older it's gotten easier.

I have a million, a backlog.

The other interesting thing that's happened with story ideas and this is a sad fact.

The collapse of the media world has left a million things uncovered.

In a world where stuff's being ignored, there's no problem getting story ideas.

Everything's just sitting there for the taking.

It's incredibly depressing even as it represents an opportunity.

>> You've written eight books now.

What ideas are you most proud of from those books?

>> That's an interesting question.

What am I most proud of?

What I really love-- the parts of the books, almost all of my books have had some section where they deal with culture, context or place.

The kind of external influences.

The idea that we are formed as much by things on the outside working on us as opposed to things on the inside of us working on the outside.

That idea is the driving idea of almost all of my writing.

I've always thought that we get so consumed with who we are and what's on the inside of us.

That we greatly over-estimate the extent to which we are acutely sensitive to our environment and surroundings.

Like I said, in almost every book, I've had a section where I just sort of pivot to that theme.

And talk about how that theme relates to the particular idea I'm exploring at the moment.

But it's odd.

It always feels like you're fighting an uphill battle when you're trying to make that argument to the general public.

I think we are-- particularly in the west, very hardwired to think of ourselves as the primary.

Our internal motivations as being the primary force in deciding who we are.

>> When your first book, which had its own tipping point, really, insanely successful.

Was it on the best-seller list for like eight years?

>> For a long time.

>> Oh my gosh!

How did you handle that success?

What did that do?

All of a sudden, speaking here and there.

You were just instant celebrity, Malcolm.

>> I don't remember it as being--first of all, it's not celebrity as we understand it.

No writer has, with very rare exceptions.

It's a kind of... you become well-known but you're not a celebrity.

A celebrity is someone who, when Taylor Swift walks down the street, traffic stops, right?

If you're a well-known writer, it's more like the case you're sitting in a cafe, and someone says-- or you're ordering your coffee and the person ahead of you turns and says, "Hey, I like your books or something".

That's what it is.

It's a very chill kind of renown.

...it didn't change anything.

I still do exactly the same thing at its core that I did 30 years ago.

>> One of the things in your life that never changed, it seems since high school, is running.

>> Yes.

>> Yah, you love running.

What is that?

>> I don't know.

I'm injured at the moment.

Although I think I'm finally healed.

I...it's one of those things.

...it's the thing that I-- this is an odd thing to say.

But I've always felt it's the thing I do best.

It's the thing that comes most natural to me.

It's the thing I've always sort of loved it.

I've been reasonably successful at it.

I don't know.

It's just a kind of-- my father's someone who required a great deal of physical activity to be happy.

And I think I'm the same way.

It serves that very basic need.

>> Well, your life has changed pretty dramatically.

In your late 50s, you have two little girls now.

>> I do.

>> Moved out of the city.

Got your minivan.

>> Yes.

>> Cool hunter that you are.

>> I have a minivan.

>> So your mom must be so happy.

Finally you found someone.

More grandchildren!

>> I see you're speaking as someone who has been through this experience.

>> Yes, my mother is very delighted about... getting more grandchildren.

I don't think...there's no point where you have enough grandchildren.

It is an insatiable desire, I realize now.

>> But for you, to be happy for you.

To have that in your life.

It took you awhile to get there.

>> It took me awhile to get there.

Yes, that's correct.

>> So raising your kids in a small town as you were raised.

Do you think that's a better childhood?

Could you be as great a dad?

Your dad was your role model.

>> I hope so.

So much is you're comparing upstate New York in the 2020s to southern Ontario in the 1970s.

And the gap between those two experiences seems impossibly vast.

I feel there's a lot more.

One of the things that was so bucolic about my childhood was it's an era, from a kid's perspective there is so little to worry about.

Whereas just the fact that we have phones now.

It means their adolescence is going to be so dramatically different from mine.

>> Social media, all these sort of-- >> AI, climate change.

>> My adolescence was a kind of free ride.

I don't expect that of my kids.

Also, even the college experience.

Today when people talk about the college experience, they talk about this sort of on-going mental health crisis among--which is such an astonishing contrast to my own college experience.

Or to the college experience of my peer group.

The idea that there was some kind of impending mental health burden to attending college was just unthinkable in 1970s or 1980s Canada.

>> College was escape.

It was fun.

>> Freedom.

>> It wasn't--the stakes didn't seem that high.

People didn't seem stressed out at all.

It was just a blast.

And apparently there's a huge section of the current population for whom that is no longer true.

I don't where that comes from but that's very different.

>> The final question we always ask is what does being Canadian mean to you?

>> It means many things.

Canada is the--all of my family are immigrants to Canada.

Many of us are immigrants several times over.

The one thing we all in common is we all immigrated to Canada.

It was the country that welcomed us and without reservation.

It gave us opportunity that made my mom feel she was at home.

That educated me extraordinarily well for such a small amount of money.

Which these days, particularly in the US, is an astonishing fact.

So I just have--I feel I was privileged to be part of an extraordinary place at a really kind of special moment.

>> Well, it's been great to spend moments with you.

And pick your brain.

Thank you so much for your time.

>> Thank you.

>> We'll be back next week with another episode of Canada Files.

♪