Malcolm Gladwell’s life has changed; he has not

On Tuesday, Malcolm Gladwell’s new book came out. And if history is any guide, it’s bound to be a bestseller. “They tell stories about ideas,” he said. “They have characters. They have plots. I usually try to talk about the world.”

His first book, “The Tipping Point,” published in 2000, created Gladwell’s recipe: he explored themes through anecdotes and little-known scientific studies. “‘Tipping Point’ is about epidemics being an incredibly useful way to understand how ideas move through society,” Gladwell said. “And epidemics have rules. Let’s learn the rules, shall we?”

They are seven New York Times The bestseller has sold 23 million copies in North America alone. The fee for a corporate speech is $350,000. His fans have downloaded a quarter of a billion episodes of his podcast, “Revisionist History,” and he founded a company called Pushkin Industries to produce it.

In other words, Gladwell has come a long way from the small Canadian town where he grew up, the son of an English father and a Jamaican mother, who he describes as “subversive,” someone who would write a note to excuse his son from class. blank space. “I just filled in the date,” said the truant.

He attended the University of Toronto, but his best education was the ten years he spent working for the Washington Post. “I don’t know anything about newspapers,” he said. “I was raw. I was 23, I, or 24. Bob Woodward was two rows away from me. I learned at the feet of the greatest journalist of my generation.”

In 1996, Gladwell joined The New Yorker. He wrote about why, in the 1990s, New York’s crime rate dropped in an article called, “The Tipping Point.” A book followed. It introduces a recurring Gladwellian theme: hidden patterns in the way the world works.

He is a world-class contrarian, about college (“You don’t have to go to the best institution you go to, don’t; go to your second or third choice. your class”); about working from home (“There’s nothing in the best interest of working from home. … If you’re just sitting in your pajamas in your bedroom, that’s the kind of work life you want to live, right? Don’t you want to feel. part of something?” ); about football (“I think sport is a moral abomination”).

Gladwell says he likes to be provocative: “Of course!” said. “I like to poke a bear. I mean, a reporter must remove the bear.”

Gladwell fans love his story, and A-ha! it’s time they bring it. The critic, on the other hand, it has been described his writing as “generalizations that are banal, obtuse, or flat wrong,” and “simple, vacuous truth (clothes) up with flowery language.” “I had the idea that not everyone liked my work,” Gladwell said. “100% of people don’t like anything.”

At “Sunday Morning” interview 2021Gladwell said, “I’d rather be interesting than be right.” He called it “a very provocative way! No, I think that’s what I want, if I’m not right, I’m not broken. I accept it as the price of business.”

Gladwell often turns his mistakes into new chapters or podcast episodes. In “Tipping Point,” he explains that New York’s crime decline is the result of “broken windows policing.” As he explained, “Small crimes are the starting point for big crimes.” But that philosophy led to New York’s “stop and frisk” policy.

“Conducting 700,000 police stops a year of young black and Hispanic males is very problematic,” Gladwell said. “We were wrong. I was a part of it. I’m sorry.”

Which brings us to his new book, “Revenge of the Tipping Point.” “The original Tipping Point was a book that was very optimistic about the possibility of using the law of epidemics to promote positive social change,” he said. “In the last 25 years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the other side of the problem, which is, what happens when people use epidemic laws in a bad or destructive or selfish way?”

The book’s stories are from obscure topics cheetah reproductionfor a story as big as the Holocaust. He writes that almost no one talked about the Holocaust, or even mentioned it, until NBC aired a miniseries called “Holocaust” in 1978. “And what happened was like that. (fingers crossed). I mean, there’s just a tipping point in the understanding of the Holocaust,” he said.

This book comes at a critical point in Gladwell’s own life. Within five years, he was engaged, had two children, was 61 years old, and moved from Manhattan to pastoral Hudson, New York. “It’s a lot to deal with. There’s not a single person alive whose parents haven’t said, ‘That’s a lot!'” he laughs. “I’ve become a person that, you know, I despise, and nobody would be happier.”

He also disparaged Ivy League colleges, accusing them of putting their own reputations ahead of their students.

Does parenthood affect your outlook on things you’ve written before? “Well, it has prepared me for the possibility that I will be a massive hypocrite!” Gladwell laughed. “So, you know, write about what you have to do with your kids when you don’t have them.”

For all his success, Malcolm Gladwell remains unchanged in his approach, work ethic, or contrarianism. “It hasn’t changed what I do,” he said. “I’m not doing my research; I’m still reporting on my travels. It’s not getting old. In fact, my big regret is that I didn’t have time to do more.”

READ EXCERPTS: “Revenge of the Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell

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Story produced by Wonbo Woo. Editor: Remington Corp.