Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Malcolm Gladwell Returns

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

Author Malcolm Gladwell has mixed feelings about being Conan O’Brien’s friend.Malcolm sits down with Conan once more to discuss his latest book Revenge of the Tipping Point, Malcolm’s observations as a new parent,  the opioid epidemic, why Harvard has so many sports teams, and much more. For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com.Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone]. Get access to all the podcasts you love, music channels and radio shows with the SiriusXM App! Get 3 months free using this show link: https://siriusxm.com/conan.

Hi, my name is Malcolm Gladwell. Well, I didn't think about this. Well, I have mixed feelings about being Conan. Now, wait a minute. Why would you say that? I'm a huge admirer of your work. Can I do a long explanation of why I have... Is it going to be another book?

No, no, no, no. Sure. Hi, and welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. I've got Matt Gorley with me right here. Scribbling away something, I don't know what he's doing. Last Will and Testament. And I've got Sonam Avsesian here. Yes. You know, we're getting into the holiday seasons.

Yeah, we are. And I have a question for you, because this is something that hit me recently. I don't often reveal my interior life, my emotions, but I'm gonna get vulnerable here for a moment, which is, as you guys know, I'm an empty nester now. Both my kids are in school. You're also an empty soul guy too, aren't you?

Yeah, empty soul, yeah, yeah. But that's been, you know, a whole life. But I didn't expect to feel this way, but I remember feeling this way at Halloween. I walked by some houses and they were all decked out with, you know, skeletons and witches and things like that. And one of them had, there's this spider that plops down if it senses a presence.

Have you seen that? Yeah. It just goes, oh, it makes a little noise and its eyes light up a little bit. And I just had this really strong memory of my kids watching me put all that stuff out and being really excited and saying, where's the spider? And me going and getting, you know, there's the, you can get the fake graves

and you can get the skeleton hand that comes out of the ground. My excitement came from their excitement of watching me do it. And, you know, they're not, they're in college now. And so we're not doing that to our house. And then I walked around and I had that pang of, it made me sad. Do you know what I mean? I had a moment of, oh, that's done.

That's over. I like not decorating. I'm not a decorator. And now I have to, cause I have boys, my boys, and I'm just like, come on. Oh really? It's fun. I gotta go get a web.

Gotta get a web and like a spider and stuff. No, I don't wanna do that. Also, where are you gonna put all of it? There's just so much storage. You're a terrible person. You gotta get bins. It's not even that, it's just, do you like it? You can't like it.

We're big decorators for holidays. But I will say that when we had free time before Glenn, it was so much easier. Now it's harder to decorate because we don't have time and energy. We still do it. And we go big. We go pretty big.

Are you that house on the block? I wouldn't say we're that house. We're of those houses. What? Okay, so. Those houses. Why would we drive around, a lot of houses in Altadena do it,

and some of them like, they'll let people into their houses and they do a haunted house. They go all out. Yes. Well, there are, I mean, this is something that blew my mind because I grew up in, you know, suburb of Boston and I think a fairly normal street

and people would put out Christmas decorations or Halloween decorations and then much later in my life, but nothing that crazy, literally just a string of lights here and there. My brother Neil was the one that really went for it. He found in a junkyard, a giant light up Santa and without my parents' permission, he lit it up and hung it on the front of our house.

My parents were very like tasteful people and they were freaked out. And he was like, you know, and I think it also, it ran on some, you know, now, or even then outlawed gas. He was from like the twenties. I think real flames came out of the Santa. It was just, and it shot asbestos and viruses around.

I think it, polio, it had polio in it. It carried candy canes made of polio. Anyway, the point being that I then got out to LA after not seeing much. And there are these streets here in LA, set designers live there. Affluent people that make movie sets and they'll spend months and they'll bring in Union crews and you'll see this insanity.

Yeah. And you can't believe it. And I think, oh, we just plugged in some candles. I like people who decorate their house for holidays they shouldn't decorate for. What do you mean? Like, why isn't there like a big Valentine's Day thing outside your house or a big St. Patrick's Day thing? Or like, you know. Well, some people go, I don't know,

some people go big on St. Patrick's Day. As an Irish person, I don't like St. Patrick's Day. I think it's, I'm just, you know, I'm self-loathing Irish. So when a bunch of Irish people run around hitting each other with the head with green beer and saying, St. Spigoras, I'm not having it. And they're always like one 15th Irish. So, you know, when someone from the Czech Republic

is saying, ah, me gosh, me gora, you know, I'm not having it. Did you ever wear a shirt that said, kiss me, I'm Irish? No. Ever in your life? No. Ever in your life? No. Did you ever wear a shirt that just said, please kiss me?

Yeah, well into my late 30s. Okay. Please hold me, I think it said. Even stutter. Please affirm my masculinity. I had a shirt that I wore for 35 years that was, oh, to feel a woman's touch. But oh, apostrophe.

Oh, yeah, oh, apostrophe.. O to feel a woman's touch. By the way, that's going to be a new seller for our merch. O to feel a woman's touch. Conan O to feel a woman's touch. No, I think a lot of young people wear that shirt. I love the holidays, man. I can't get enough. Well, first of all, you and your wife both worked at Disney back in the day.

What's that got to do with it? What I'm saying is- Dorks. No, no, no. Not at all. That's a big corporation, which I'm sure advertises with us in some way. My point is this.

You go to Disney all the time. Yeah. No, my thing is that you guys come from the world of, yay, let's, you know, let's put on some costumes. No, no, hold on, time out. Maybe she does. I was- She was a princess.

She was, but I- She was a Disney princess. I was very cynical about working there. I did not like working there. Oh, well, oh, you were, you worked at Disney, but you were in the resistance. I was the cool guy. You're like the French waiter when the Nazis occupied,

who brought the soup out a little slowly Here you go. You German generals. Here's your soup. It's VCS was but I warmed it a little bit Take that you Nazis. Wow, you showed them I worked for Disney, but I was in the resistance How many wigs do you have be honest in your house? I don't have any wigs. You're lying. You must have like, oh, we're goofy, we got wigs. No, that's the thing.

He does look like a guy who has a bunch of wigs in him. I know, certainly you're the person with all the wigs. Hey, when I wear a wig, it's to pass a bad check, okay? When I wear a wig, it's not to have fun, it's to pass the check that doesn't have my name on it. That's right. Hi, Mrs. O'Hurley Now give me the fucking money. I'm a Croatian man Anyway, I don't you have a wig we got rid of her wigs In fairness to him one week ago they threw out the wig bin We got rid of our wigs. Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! That's right. Yes!

So now, in fairness to him, one week ago, they threw out the wig bin. So you had no right accusing him. Anyway, I miss it. I miss it. I miss my kids. I miss, I miss, I don't know. I miss that part of life.

So you should enjoy it now. I guess. It's fun to go out and buy the spider webs or the other way to do it is just don't clean during the year. Get the real spider webs. You know what I'm saying in real time. He he he he he.

No one's doing anything. None of us are reacting. Did you want us to giggle? No. Did you want to giggle? No, I just thought I'd be. Did you want something? I really thought we had something there.

I think we got a segment. Except it's an intro. It's an intro. Oh, fuck, that's right. Yeah, so what were we saying? We had something really funny. Oh, we're not gonna cut out that part where you didn't get your giggle.

You didn't get your giggle. Honey Hoos, I love the holidays, and I say that D-A-Z-E. There's a funny little something for you. My guest today is a New York Times bestselling author of books such as Outliers, The Tipping Point and Blink. He also hosts the popular podcast Revisionist History and his latest book Revenge of the Tipping Point is out now.

I'm thrilled he's here with us today. Malcolm Gladwell, welcome. Malcolm Gladwell, welcome. Why do you have mixed feelings about being my friend? I hope you take this in the right spirit. A walk in and you come and say hello to me and I see the famous hair. You for your entire career have been the king of the flamboyant hair club. You've been, and I'm someone who has flamboyant hair. Yes. All of us have looked towards you. Thank you. As a kind of leader in the flamboyant hair. Thank you.

And I look and it's not that flamboyant today. No. I felt a little let down. I was like here I was to get a kind of dose, a kind of feeling that I'm on the right track, that when I let the whole fro thing go crazy, there's someone else out there doing it from the Irish perspective. And- Yeah, I have an Irish fro.

You do. That's what it's called. But those famous, there's just, it's just kind of- I'll tell you exactly what's going on. What's going on? My, and again, this could be a book for you, Malcolm Gladwell, this could be a book for you, Malcolm Gladwell, this could be a book, but unintended consequences,

you write about all these kinds of things, what's really happening behind a phenomenon that we all take for granted, what's really happening. My hair is very susceptible to the weather and there needs to be some moisture in the air. And I'm really not kidding. My hair is a barometer. So when I'm in places like Seattle, Boston,

where I'm from, when there's some humidity in the air, my hair is absolutely fantastic. It's on fire. It's big and springy and it shoots out. So moisture in the air is the Viagra for my pompadour. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But I'm trying to use a medical terminology. Are you insinuating that you have thousands upon thousands

of tiny little erections growing out of your head? You don't have to say little, but sure. But what I'm saying is today, it's been very dry. And I'm noticing lately, I get up in the morning and my hands are like scales and my hair is just collapsed onto my head. And I could have done artificial things to pump up my hair this morning,

but I didn't wanna do that. What, artificial things? What do you mean? Various chemicals and bombs. But I didn't wanna do that, Malcolm. I didn't wanna be fake with you. So I come in and I could see your face. You sensed my disappointment. Sense, you said, shit, I'm unhappy, out loud.

I didn't know, I should say, my feelings of disappointment are, they're moderate. Uh-huh. I'm not. Wow, for me, that's pretty good. Yeah, no, it's just a little- My feelings of disappointment are they're moderate Wow for me that's pretty good. Yeah. No, it's just a little take that it's just I came all pumped up Yeah, cuz like I said, you know in every generation has a kind of flamboyant Yeah hair leader Einstein in his day. Thank you Angela Davis in the 60s. Yeah, right. We can go down the list

There's always someone those of us who are trying to do something with our hair look towards. I took a stand. My hair has never been the popular hairstyle. It basically is the Bob's big boy. It is, you know, it's a combination of Elvis. It's the, you know, star of Hawaii Five-O, Steve McGarrett. Yeah, it's a little Steve McGarrett.

There was a lot of influences to my hair, it's got some rockabilly to it, and I let you down, and I apologize. And you're gonna really admire, this is a professional level segue, you did not let me down because you've written another fantastic book, Revenge of the Tipping Point, where you revisit.

You're really anxious to change the subject from your hair, aren't you? Well, because it's coming from a place of disappointment. And we're gonna talk about the Revenge of the Tipping Point in just a second, but I wanted to start with something else that I just happened to know about your own life, which is that you're now in the world of being a parent.

I am. And what fascinates me is that I'm obviously very impressed and intrigued by the way your brain works. And to be honest, somewhat intimidated. And then I come in today thinking, that's one area where I've got 21 year headstart on Malcolm Gladwell. You do.

What was that? You do, no. I do. What was that? You do, no. I do, and I feel like, yes! And not only you guys as well, we can kick this guy around with our knowledge of parenthood. Yeah, we're better! Yep.

Does that know? No? You took it too far. Oh, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry. But no, no, you're such an original thinker. Before we even get into the book, part of me wanted to say, hey, what's your take on parenthood?

Because I bet it's fairly original and unique. No, no, no. In fact, the exact opposite. And the thing I realized really early was that every observation I had about my children, every other parent in the history of parenting had already had about their children. So my entire life, I had been burdened

by the obligation of originality. The burden has now been lifted. And as a parent, I am free to say the most banal thing about my kids. And everyone's like, oh yeah, no one has ever, ever said, because I've turned into the person I once despised. All they do is show people pictures. Non-stop, non-stop.

By the way, in fact. Oh, let me see. There they are. Oh my God, beautiful, look. Adorable. Oh my God. Adorable, adorable. Oh, they're so cute.

Okay, very, very cute. I could go on, I could sidetrack this whole thing. No, no one has ever said when I make my observations, no. They always say, yeah, that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But you know what's funny, I bet, oh, here's Malcolm Gladwell.

Let's ask him about being a parent. You know, we're gonna get this, and then you say, it makes you really tired. And people are like, what? What? This from Malcolm Gladwell? It can be challenging at times. It's rewarding, but also.

None of those things, none of those things. But I do like, it's the secret club. You know, before you have kids, you're not a member of the club. And then you join the club, and it's like, you get a whole new lease on life. I had one thing that I'm, maybe I've said it to you guys, to Matt and Sona, but I try very hard not to tell

first time expecting parents any kind of, all right, let me tell you, sit, have a seat. Yeah. And let me spin some wisdom for you. I always try and tell them, it's like trying to explain to someone who's never been immersed in water what that feels like. It is such a profound change in your life that you just need to go through it

and then you're gonna look at me and nod. But to try and sit and explain, the only way for someone to understand what it's like to be in a body of water is to jump in a body of water. And until you've done that, the greatest writers in the world cannot explain to you what that feels like.

Yeah. And so you just have to go through it. The only advice I ever give is lots of video. Because when they're 10, 15, 20 years from now, you are going to look at all of it over and over and over again. Oh, video that I'm taking of them. I thought you meant video that I'm showing them.

Lots of screen time. Just set them in front of an iPad. I thought you were just saying. Oh no, you got it exactly. Specifically VHS video. I think it should be all movies from the 80s and late 70s. Lots of murder.

Lots of murder, and just they should be, no. Be funny if that was my advice. Lots of screen time and high fruit toast corn syrup. One season of Revisionist History, we did, we rewrote the ending to The Little Mermaid over the course of four episodes, which is possibly three episodes too many, but it was very fun.

Cause you know, and it's all wrong, the ending, right? Yes. And I had run across this. All wrong because. Well, I'll explain to you, Conan. Thank you. Do you have daughters, by the way? I have a daughter and a son.

Oh, so only two, that's unusual for someone of. What? Oh yes! Oh, and guess what? Guess what? They're both alcoholics! And they dress like leprechauns, Gladwell! Wow!

Guess what? You know what? Ah, little bias there! I guess what, if it had been- Can you resist though? No, no, you can't resist. O'Brien is the last name. You can't resist.

Also, the Irish are the one people where you can say whatever you want and no one gets upset. Not even, particularly the Irish. On that point, first of all, on Irish bias, which is always confirmed, I would have had more kids. And after our second child, my wife said,

you're never to touch me again. Which I've held onto that. But, and the second one, this is a true story. I did it at a benefit the other night. I performed at a benefit for a really good cause. And just before I went up, some guy who was at the benefit in the crowd came up to me, I want to say he was like late 30s, had a little bit of a fratty vibe to him,

maybe 40, and he was like, hey man, so when you go up to perform, do you usually have a couple of hits? Because he was holding a drink, and I went, no, I don't do that, and he went, no, come on, but you probably have at least a drink, and I went, no, and he went, but you're Irish. And he looked really like, I don't understand, you know, how an Irish person cannot be drinking.

It was just fascinating to me that in this age of sensitivity, he's like, nope, and I was like, no, okay, I get it. But you guys are, you're the last group we can sort of open season. Yes, you can. No, it's fine. Yes, you can, and go for it, but.

No, no. But so. Didn't mean to for it. No, no. But so, uh, I didn't mean to offend you. No, no, no. You, I find it, again, you can't offend the Irish. Um, yes, every thought I ever had as a parent has already been said probably by the ancient Greeks. Yeah, no, no, that's great. No, I asked only because you must have seen The Little Mermaid. You have a daughter. And I had read this law review article by this professor who was watching The Little Mermaid. She was a contract law professor with her kids. And she got outraged at the way The Little Mermaid story portrays contract law.

Because of course, the plot twist in The Little Mermaid is that The Little Mermaid is that the little mermaid enters into a contract with Ursula that she will give up her soul unless she gets the hand. There's no way that contract will be upheld by a court of law. And this law professor got very angry that Disney was deliberately perpetrating this kind of injustice on contract law. And so she wrote... She has no issue with there being no such thing as mermaids.

No, no, no, no. Also she points out, a mermaid is underage. You cannot, an underage person can't, so there was so many red flags, so many red flags. So she writes this very angry law review. And I remember I was reading it. Remind me never to watch a movie with this. I know.

No, no, and I was like, I had one thought and only one thought on me and that was this woman is the greatest genius. I'm sorry, I basically ran back to the office and called her up and turns out she was hilarious and she inspired me so then I, turns out there's multiple problems with The Little Mermaid. Oh yeah. I mean, to get into it.

And so I, did you know that the screenwriter actress, Britt Marling, friend of mine, I said, Britt, I have this problem with Little Mermaid. She said, so do I. And so she rewrote, I got her on the case and then we performed it. I got Jodie Foster and Glenn Close to play key roles. And the, and I, what I really wanted, the final piece was I wanted Disney to sue us because I've heard they're famously litigious, and I thought, this is the greatest marketing opportunity in the history of my podcast.

My podcast is not as big as yours. I need to have these kinds of, and so I did everything in my power to bring this to the attention of the attorneys at Disney, nothing. To this day, basically I accused them of everything under the sun. I ripped off their content.

I did everything you're supposed to do to get a lawsuit. No lawsuit. That's disappointing. It is. I think there's nothing sadder than not being sued by Disney. I know. It was like when they, remember they were banning books again in like Florida. Right.

And the first thing I did was like, am I on the list? Am I on the list? Oh please. Oh please, please, please. I wasn't on the list? Am I on the list? Oh, please. Oh, please. Oh, please. Please, please. I wasn't on the list. ["The Last Supper"] ["The Last Supper"] You know, the story that got me writing this book

is I wanted to say something about the opioid crisis, which I think is kind of the most under discussed thing going on in our society right now. And I was very, I wanted to understand how it how it was that Oxycontin makes this enormous, I mean it's not the first painkiller, it's not the first opioid painkiller, it's not the first addicted painkiller, yet it's the one that sets in motion this epidemic that now you know kills over a hundred thousand Americans every year, which is such an astonishing number.

I don't understand how we even wrap our minds around how many Americans die every year of overdoses, but understanding that there was this very, very deliberate Machiavellian brilliant but evil strategy they followed, which was an epidemic strategy, which was all about understanding that they did not need to convince the majority of doctors to prescribe opioids to start an epidemic. They only needed, in fact, they end up, the statistic I was, is at the core of this was, we ended up with a situation at the end of Oxycontin's life where 1% of American doctors

were prescribing 50% of the Oxycontin. Yes. And that's the whole game. They understood, we don't even have to worry about, we can basically ignore 99% of doctors. Our concern is with the 1%. A couple thousand doctors in the whole country will be sufficient to get this thing rolling because those guys at the fringes will prescribe so many prescriptions of Oxycontin, that's all we need.

And so they take a sales apparatus, which typically if you're a drug company you build a sales apparatus to reach the broad middle of doctors and they just deployed it towards these kind of like whack job doctors who were way out of the norm in small town Tennessee and visited them hundreds of times. Wind and dine them. Wind and dine them and convinced them to write thousands of prescriptions for Oxycontin. That is the distillation of an epidemic strategy.

Yeah, it's not the law of the few, it's the law of the very, very few. In an analogous situation, you talk about how they did a COVID study involving hundreds of people and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people got sick and it was from two people. Yeah.

In the study, it was two of them spread it. Yeah. And it's analogous, it's in the same way that with OxyContin, they had, you described, the tragedy of it is that the vast majority of doctors are responsible and there are laws and mechanisms in place to keep something like this happening.

You describe how doctors, there was a rule put in place that if you write someone a prescription for a drug this powerful an opioid, it's on a triplicate form, so there's three copies. And because of that, it keeps everyone in line. There's three copies of it. There's a real record, a lot of dissemination of what I'm doing. Okay, so everyone is gonna be good.

But then these drug companies found out there are some places where that law doesn't apply. Yeah, and that's where they feasted on. And that's where they feasted. And then you talk about what's really disturbing is reading the testimony later on where people are being asked, members of the family.

The Sackler family. The Sackler family. They're being asked, do you feel any kind of responsibility? And it's all passive language. Well, the kind of famous Nixon quote is, mistakes were made about Watergate quote is, mistakes were made. Yeah, yeah.

About Watergate, well, mistakes were made. None of them, you know, none of them went to jail. If you think about it, like, you know, Sam Bankman Fried, who, you know, I guess, committed a fraud and went, you know, although very few of the people who he apparently defrauded actually lost money, he's in jail for how many years? Eight years?

So you can mislead rich people, and you're in jail for eight years, but you can kill a couple hundred thousand Americans, and you're fine. I find that very curious. I don't really understand how. I mean, I realize it was a legal settlement, and blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah. But still, it's kind of shocking.

It is shocking. And then you're talking about when they testified before Congress, they talked as if this whole epidemic had been started by someone else. It wasn't even, it was, or this company, Purdue Pharma, that their family had started and created and run for two generations was a kind of third party

off by the side that they had no connection to. I mean, I just find the whole, everything about the opioid crisis is astonishing to me. I remember it being shocked very recently. One of my children came home from school. Someone came to their school and told them, showed them how to use Narcan. That's how prevalent this is,

that the way we were shown a fire exit and had a fire alarm practice, now kids are being shown how to, you know, young adults are being shown how to use Narcan because, and thank God they are, because that's saving a lot of lives, but that's where we are now. Yeah. It's just standard training for kids.

Yeah. One more welcome to the world of parenting, the one more thing I have to worry about. Well, it's, I mean, something I never thought about, obviously, when I was growing up and didn't have to worry about. And there's so many things that kids have to worry about today.

It does make me profoundly sad that even fairly innocuous things that a kid may experiment with can have been tampered with and kill them. So, you know, that's the world we're in. And I'm gonna end the podcast right there. Oh no! That's not. Conan, you're just bringing us down.

This is you. I know. What happened to your fame is draw to v. Guess what happened? Guess what happened? You came in and you shit on my hair. Is your mood contingent on your hair? Yes!

Yes! And now I'm spiraling. My hair is flat against my big Irish skull, which is loaded with alcohol. Jamison's. Jamison's. And I'm primed for a fight. But you know what, there's so much,

it's really funny like there's, on an upbeat note, because there's so much, it's really funny, like there's on an upbeat note, because there's so many fun puzzles in this book and intriguing things. There's one thing that you brought up in the book and I'm jumping around here because I don't know a better way to discuss it, but you talk about how we all know World War II ends, 1945,

there's the revelation, Nuremberg trials about concentration camps. Sorry, upbeat note? You'll see, we're getting there. We're getting there. All right. We're getting there. This does not end well.

No, this is, if I have a sense. No, no, no, no. This was, not that it's upbeat, but it was fascinating to me that the Holocaust was very little discussed in the late 40s, the 1950s, the 60s. Through the end of the 70s. Through the end of the 70s.

And then there's, was it a movie, it's a television movie. Four part mini series. So if you go back and you look at, I got, when I got interested in this, I got all the textbooks you would read in freshman year European history, in the 60s and the 70s. If you read them and you're reading they got like four chapters on the Second World War, you read all four chapters and

you're looking for when they discuss the Holocaust and you look and you look and you look and there's nothing there. There's like two sentences. There's like and then the Germans created camps where they put displaced persons, gypsies, communists and Jews period and then they go on to something else. You're like, wait, how is this, these are serious textbooks. And then you look, you can keep going, and there's actually been a whole scholarship

about how they weren't denying the Holocaust, they just weren't mentioning it. It wasn't discussed. It just wasn't. There's only one Holocaust museum in this country prior to the 1980s, and that's actually here in LA. And that was one that was created almost by accident. I tell that story in the book, a bunch of survivors are at Hollywood High learning English together and they want a

place to put their stuff, the stuff they can't bear to keep in their house, right? Their uniform from Auschwitz or whatever. And then what happens, so there's this, and if you look at like how often is the word Holocaust used in books, magazine articles, newspapers up until 1979, and the answer is it's almost never used. Then there's a four-part mini-series on NBC starring Meryl Streep and James Woods called Holocaust, which half the country, it has a 50 share, half the country tunes in to watch it and boom, after that, that's when we get all the Holocaust museums.

That blew my mind that this was not discussed and that this one TV series that I frankly don't remember watching changed everything, completely changed the dialogue. I remember the same thing happening with, I mean, this is crazy, but there was a, in the eighties, there was a, the day after. Yes, yes, that's it, the day after, about nuclear war.

And there's footage of Ron and Nancy Reagan, President Reagan and Mrs. Reagan watching it, and they're gobsmacked. This is the guy who has the nuclear football is saying, what? This would be bad. And so, Vinnet cut to him meeting with Gorbachev at Reykjavik and saying, well, we have to make sure

this never, you know, and be based on a TV movie that got maybe, what if that hadn't been greenlit? I mean, it's, these things turn on these incredibly. Did Judgment of Nuremberg not land with people? No, I mean, there are these little mentions here. There's Diary of Anne Frank, obviously, which is on Broadway and also a movie. But even that, remember, that's really

about Anne Frank's story in Holland. It's not really about what's going on in the camps in Central Europe. Also, Judgment of Nuremberg is not all, it does not focus on the Holocaust. Do you know what I mean? In a way that you would expect it today, it's very much, it's very much about the prosecution

of evil and these bad Nazis. But it's discussed and there's a famous scene, I think with Judy Garland, but it's- And they show footage. Remember they show it in the courtroom? They show like- But it's not highlighted that way. The average American, when they finally run

that mini series, most Americans had, if they, they were dimly aware that there had been, the term that was used back then was that there had been atrocities, right? But the idea that there was this kind of systematic destruction of European Jewry at the scale that it was, and what that meant on a kind of, it was sort of absent from discussion. And then they take the mini-series and gets resold to German television. And the same thing happens

only times 10, because the Germans had just not mentioned the Holocaust at all. And all of these Germans discover for the first time what their country did. And it has, there's a whole literature about what happened when the Germans finally watched this NBC. I mean, the country was in a uproar. I mean, you cannot imagine, there's almost no analogous media event to what happened when the Germans watched this.

It was on late night cable, and the whole country tunes in. And it just kind of, there was, you know, it was on late night cable and the whole country tunes in. Yeah. And it just kind of, there was, you know, all the major newspapers ran these huge sections discussing what had happened and people were like, and that's when now you have in Germany, a real heightened awareness of their responsibility

for the Holocaust. I have a very, very, it's moving and it's very impressive too that when you go to Berlin, there is, they've not only acknowledged it, but there's a sense that they're going to great lengths to make sure that everyone is aware. And I mean, all the plaques outside of homes that say these people were taken from this home and they were taken to this camp and they were murdered.

And it's just, there are a lot of countries in the world, I don't know if there's any such thing as an innocent country, but many countries have things to own up to and don't. And it's impressive how much Germany has. The whole thing goes to this question of that there can be, I mean, what interested me was that there can be a moment when public opinion

or acknowledgement or knowledge of an event can kind of shift overnight. I mean, that was what attracted me to that story. Well, there is a lighter version of this, which is really got me thinking. You talk about Will and Grace. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. There were these very perceived rules

about if you're going to talk about, let's say you're going to talk about homosexuality or gay couples on a television, here are the rules. And there was this way in which that has to be done responsibly. And Will and Grace didn't follow any of those rules. Yeah, so this is all this work work of I've ran across this really wonderful TV scholar named Bonnie Dow who does this analysis first. She starts with the way that

Hollywood talked about women's issues. So remember that wave of kind of feminist show starting in the 70s Mary Tyler Tyler Moore show, Rhoda, yeah, Cagney and Lacey, yes I think that's part of that. Yeah. And she points out that you would think watching those that those were shows that were kind of pro women's liberation or whatever, feminist, but they follow a very implicit, an implicit set of rules about how a woman is allowed to proceed. She says that in every case, the woman was only allowed to succeed if she was succeeding in a man's world

and all of those heroes were childless and not in a relationship. So the real message of those shows were, yes, you can get ahead if you're a woman, but only if you give up any chance of having a family. Right, there's no domesticity. There's no domesticity. So it's like, so it's not really,

are those shows pro-feminist? Or when you watch them, do you think, oh wow, that's the price I have to pay if I want to participate? Then she says, there's a similar set of rules about the way Hollywood dealt with gay topics. And the rule was, homosexuality was always a problem to be solved.

In other words, the plot surrounding the gay person had to turn on the fact that everyone else in that person's life was trying to fix all of the crisis that had been caused by this person's sexuality. The gay character was only ever seen in isolation. So they didn't have a community, they weren't in a relationship, they were just off by themselves. The typical one would be you find out your 16-year-old son is gay, right? And so the whole family is left to deal with this intense problem. Another rule was no sex. So you can't ever see what this thing is

about. It's always an abstraction. And then the last one was that the gay character cannot be the center of the narrative. They have to be peripheral to the narrative. So you know you add these up and you get, you could watch a made-for-team movie that might be on its face, might be quite sensitive and sympathetic to the gay character. But all these rules are telling the audience that this guy's off in the margins, he's on the fringes, he's incapable of participating fully in modern life. And there's a wonderful book, this film scholar

does a book where he looks at every single film from like 1940 to 1975 that had our 1980 that had a gay character. And he just shows like every single one of them meets a bad end. They either are killed, commit suicide, end up in prison, or like every single one. There's like 48 characters, and like every one of them. And what happens with Will and Grace is that Will and Grace

comes along and breaks every one of those rules. So Will's gayness is not a problem to be solved, right? Never, it's never perceived to be a problem. He's not seen in isolation. It's Will and Grace, so he's number one on the call sheet. He's not peripheral. He's not peripheral. He has Jack, and he has boyfriends. He's part seen in isolation. He's also, it's Will and Gray, so he's number one on the call sheet. He's not peripheral. He's not peripheral. Yeah, yeah.

He has Jack, and he has boyfriends. He's part of a community. Go on and on and on. He's the center of the show. He's not a, and the effect of that, so if you're someone who's watched TV your whole life, and all you've seen is gay characters in this very specific context

where there's something deeply problematic about them. And all of a sudden you're exposed to a show where there's a gay character and there's nothing, I mean, he has problems, but they're not problems related to his sexuality. He's just a neurotic, just another neurotic. He's like the rest of us. He's got problems, we all have, yeah. Living in an apartment in New York, which is what all sitcoms were about in those years,

right? Right. So there's something with that show that kind of, that is a revolutionary show. It completely rewrites the rules. I think, you know, it's always a fun experiment to say what are the five most important television shows of the last 50 years. I think Will and Grace is like, I would put it, I don't know, second, third. I think it's, I don't think it's, I think it's ahead of Archie Bunker.

I think it's, you know, they always say 60 minutes is one. And like- I usually get three. I'm usually three. Your show? Late Night with Conan O'Brien is usually three. Huh. Are we in the real world or in my reality?

Yeah. Because I like my reality. And in my reality, I think mermaid is perfect. I'm a mermaid. I should not have laughed so heartily at your suggestion. No, Conan, I'm sure- Yeah, I don't know why you find so funny.

I'm always like three or four, but I know what you're saying. I think you're top 10. Yeah, thank you. But can I make a peripheral point about late night and the decline, what late night has meant? Oh, sure. So for several generations, this is

not related to my book, all of America, not all of America, a huge chunk of America every night watches some version of either Jimmy Johnny Carson or someone else interview somebody, engage in a conversation with somebody. Yeah. And it's highly entertaining but also what they're seeing is a masterful interviewer interview someone, right? So you're getting, it's kind of like interviewing class conducted on a national basis for everyone in America. That goes away, and I have become convinced that no one knows how to interview anyone anymore.

Or even have, really what Johnny Carson is having is conversations, right? Yeah. Really fun conversations. I think the art of conversation has declined at the same time as the decline of late night. I don't think people, you need a model. No one is a model anymore. They're not, it's like-

You're being incredibly rude right now. I'm interviewing you and you said, they're all done. And you said no one knows how to interview anymore. And I would like you to have a big fuck yourself sandwich. Do we have a fuck yourself sandwich? That's not a good conversation. No, that's a bad conversation. Me make good talk! Me make good talk, not bad talk!

No, you're part of, you grew up on these people, right? You know what I'm talking about. You grew up on, and various versions of that, all of the different late night hosts offered you a different version of how to do it, right? And when that goes away as a model, who's left? Well, there's a lot of things I could say about it, but I do think that the architecture of a late night show for a long time was kill time, meaning when the form comes along

because in the late 40s, early 50s, someone at NBC realizes, we just go off the air at 11 o'clock at night, why do we do that? Yeah. It's like a family that discovers we've got an attic, why don't we go up there, finish the attic, and suddenly we've got three more bedrooms. So the early late night shows are people killing time.

Yeah. And that's what they are for a long time, is killing time. And a lot of good conversation comes out of- Comes out of killing time. Comes out of killing time. Yeah. What happens is, there's a lot of good conversation comes out of- Comes out of killing time. Comes out of killing time. What happens is there's a lot of money in it,

then there's more competition and television and media in general speeds up and there's more and more pressure on them. And then suddenly it's, well, you can't sit and have a long conversation. There needs to be a lot of energy. There needs to be a lot of, it has to be frenetic, the pace of it.

And if you look, if someone ever does a study on late night television, go back and watch Carson and watch early Letterman, even the, you know, earlier versions of my show or early episodes in the early nineties, there is a slower pace. I mean, to some extent, podcasts such as this have filled that void, because we're slowing down, right?

We are. Or choosing. We're basically killing time right now, Conan. I mean. Oh, we are killing time. We are, we are. I mean, I don't have anywhere to be. Do you have anywhere to be?

I don't have anywhere to be. I haven't had anywhere to be in four years. I've noticed that there's a chapter of this book that you have not mentioned at all. Which is? For reasons that I think will become obvious. Okay. It's the chapter where I attack Harvard University. You're on the water. Oh, I'm all in favor of attacking Harvard University. There is an extended assault.

You know that this is a- I was, you know, I wasn't hiding from that chapter. There's so much to talk about, but you talk about how it starts with Harvard has a women's rugby team. Yeah, and I- And you basically say, why? Why? And you go ahead, you take it. And by the way, I was on the women's rugby team. Yeah. And you basically say, why? Why?

And you go ahead, you take it. And by the way, I was on the women's rugby team. I got a scholar, that's how I got my scholarship. First of all, I should say parenthetically that no one spends more time attacking the Ivy League than me. It's my, I was, that's why God put me on the surface, I feel. That's my, I've done it so many times on my podcast that whenever I come up with my new attack,

which I do every year, it's just everyone just in the room just rolls their eyes. That's, we could do a whole put Malcolm on the couch, why is he so obsessed with him? But put that aside, the particular argument here is based on, I'm trying to figure out Harvard University, where you attended, is- I can't hide from that anymore.

You can't hide from that anymore. You can't hide from that anymore. 1981 to 85. Yeah. They plays more division one sports than any other college in the country. No one else is even close. People don't realize this. You always think the big sports school

is like Clemson or something. No, no, no, it's Harvard. They have more student athletes than anyone else. And not only that, they give a massive admissions preference to their recruited athletes. So the easiest way to get into Harvard is not to be the best student in your class. It's to be the best athlete in your class.

But also very specific athletic endeavors. Yeah, so the sports they really, really, really, really care about are, and let's see whether you can detect some kind of common denominator, rowing, fencing, sailing, rugby, tennis, it's country club sports, right? So I do a whole chapter on why would they bend over backwards to participate in all of these country club sports. And not only that, to give massive, basically to do an affirmative action program for the

athletes in the sports. And the answer is because, you know, a sport like tennis, to be a recruited tennis player, you have to play division one tennis. To play division one tennis, your parents have to be willing to spend 50 to 100 grand a year in your game. It's enormously expensive. Enormously expensive. So when I say I'm setting aside four admission slots every year for tennis players, what

I'm really saying is I'm setting aside four admission slots for the children of people who have enough money to spend $100,000 on their kids' groundstrokes. So it's a way of making sure that enough rich kids attend your school. It's really obvious. Yeah. Right? And like this drives me crazy because I'm someone who believes very strongly in the idea of a meritocracy and I

think it's one of the most beautiful things about this country. And the idea that the the reigning symbol of meritocracy in this country is essentially going out of its way to reward kids who play rich kids sports. Like sail, they give it admissions preference for kids who are good at sailing. Like it's just, it's ridiculous. Well maybe they're gonna grow up to be fishermen. Right. Lostermen. You know, I mean, they're gonna probably go to sea

and explore the oceans. I mean, I think most of those kids are gonna end up, right, hauling crab. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, that's why they're doing it. Yeah, I think so. Well, there's another, okay, this brings up another point, which is that, because when I read that,

I thought, shit, I should have done some fencing. I worked way too hard in high school. That would have been a much easier route. Yeah, I should have been a champion beekeeper. But the bigger point is that people can eventually game anything. That's the way I feel about it, is that because the other point is,

okay, let's set all the rich kids who are playing those sports aside and say, okay, we really want it to be a meritocracy, so we're gonna have it be about the SAT. People can game that because parents hire SAT tutors. There's billions of dollars spent a year making sure that kids are very familiar with that test. I think it still does test people who are, you know,

off the charts and certain, you can obviously, but what I'm saying is that no matter what you do, I mean, we've seen this on Wall Street a million times, you set up these rules, someone will find a small crack. Someone will say, hey, wait a minute, no one ever said anything about mortgage-backed securities. Bang, everybody's doing it. And then the whole system collapses.

And we wonder, wait a minute, why did that guy who works on a garbage truck own nine properties? You know, what is going on? I once, you know, speaking of the SOT, I once challenged my assistant to the LSAT. It was really fun. I got a tutor.

I went through that whole process. And the hilarious thing of course about the tutor was the first thing he said, I had to learn to, quote, process without understanding, which. What? Meaning, which I thought was hilarious, because it's a test designed to measure your aptitude for being a lawyer.

And the test for being a lawyer can only be, you can only do well if you learn how to process without understanding. If my lawyer came to me and said, I processed your case without understanding it, I think I'd be a little bit alarmed. Yeah. But so that it was like, it sounds like a good lawyer though. Yeah. And I have a lot to say about the little mermaid. That's not contract law!

No, but it does. I was part, I never, because you know in Canada we don't have, I'm Canadian, we don't have um, standardized tests. I knew nothing about these. I moved to America after college and I hear people talk about the SAT, You know, in Canada, we don't have, I'm Canadian, we don't have standardized tests. I knew nothing about these. I moved to America after college, and I hear people talk about the SAT, and it sounds like some kind of strange holy rite. You know, it's that I, and I was so kind of curious that at a certain point in my life,

I decided I had to do, and I went, I sat in that big room with hundreds of other people. I was the only person over the age of like 25, and I ended up tying my assistant. Oh, okay. Which I thought was good. The money was on her because she's 24 and the general consensus around the office is I didn't stand a chance because I've obviously lost so many brain cells. What was your score?

I don't remember. It was not impressive. Basically Basically I was headed for a mediocre law school, which that's fine, someone's gotta be a mediocre. Well here's the other thing too, I mean I've said this to everybody I've ever encountered in this business is that I have had the privilege of working with so many talented, amazing, funny people who are great at what they do. And often I don't know where they went to college

because the amount of pressure we put on that is insane. And you talk a lot about resilience and people who are not from a monoculture, but people who are forced to be resilient and the great benefits that that has. And I don't know, I just, I'm always- I thought you were gonna tell us your SAT score. I thought that's where you were headed.

I intentionally forgot my SAT score. I intentionally, if you could, I selected which brain cells I could forget. And I forgot those. No, I have your, I had that chapter, another chapter of the book where I read and I ran across a bunch of articles by these two sociologists, Anna Muller and Seth Arberton, and they were talking about a town they would only call Poplar Grove. And they had been working there, studying it for years,

and it was they described it and I later figured out what they were they what town it was and went there for myself and confirmed it. It's the perfect, it literally is the perfect community. If you went there you would say, it's like upper income, on the water, credibly tight knit. It's like Gilmore Girls or something. It's like, but like, but. Well I'm sorry.

What? Lights in the trees at night. I did not expect you to say Gilmore Grove. My neuron misfired and you laughed. Those are some rich literary illusions that you're working with, Conan. Favorite Bronte novel is Gilmore Girls. No, no, so it's-

So Poplar Grove, yes. You talk about how- High school best in the state. Amazing. You know, every minute Poplar Grove, high school best in the state. Amazing, yeah. Every minute of the end of the sun. And they had had a suicide epidemic at the high school for that had gone on way, way, way, way longer. And it was incredibly heartbreaking.

And these two, Muller and Arberton, so do all this analysis. And their conclusion is that one of the big problems with the town, the reason this has happened, is that it was a high school that only had one culture. So it, you know, I'm sure your high school's too. My high school, like a normal high school, it had like 10 different clicks you could join, you know, the jocks and the nerds and the whatever.

And the point of that is it's powerfully protective that any child coming into that high school, no matter how dysfunctional they may feel, can find a home. There was a place you could go if you were, you know, we called them stoners, but in my high school, which is rural Canada, that meant you smoked cigarettes, which is quite quaint. But if you wanted to be a quote unquote stoner and smoke Marlboro lights, there was a place for you, right? How'd you make it out of there? No, no, yeah, exactly. My high school was so tame in retrospect, I don't even know.

It seems like a kind of fantasy that it even existed. In the same way, I went to a very large public high school. There were kids who weren't gonna go to college. You know what I mean? Their dads worked for the town. There were kids whose parents were, you know, professionals who wanted to go to an Ivy League school. There were, I mean, there was just this large swath of almost every kind of kid you could imagine.

There was something called school within a school where they are very artistic and kids that could set their own schedule. But there was just, and then there was a large immigrant population. We had, this is the late 70s, we had some students whose parents had fled Iran. We had students who were from China.

And so it was great in that, it sounds like the exact opposite of this Poplar Grove. And the thing you understand is, yeah, so imagine what Poplar Grove is, is a city, a town, and a high school where there's only one of those groups, where every child is required to conform to the super sporty, socially successful, on their way to Ivy League model. And so if you don't fit and work in that incredibly narrow description, there's nowhere for you to go. There's only one culture. And the epidemic they had was the result of, was the consequences of that kind of narrowness.

And it made me, it's interesting because it made me realize, you know, in all of our discussions about diversity, we sometimes make diverse, achieving a diverse environment, make it seem like it's medicine, like it's the right thing to do, but it's hard. Eat your vegetables. But in fact, in this example, diversity is what makes a community resilient. It means that any problem that one group has isn't necessarily going to spread to other groups because they're different, right? They're, um, and I just thought that was really, you know, and the idea that the parents of

this town, this is the community they wanted for their kids. They moved there because it was perfect. They are the ones who supported the notion that we should have this incredibly strong unified set of values about what it means to be a successful student at the school. And then they were somehow baffled by the fact that everything went sideways. And this, coming back to my new parenthood, this is the only observation I will make about parenting, is that this confusion between what we want

and what our children need seems to be the principle. That's the principle conflict of, I always catch myself thinking, and I'll very confidently say to Kate, my partner, I'll say, you know, I think Edie should do this, right? And in fact what I'm saying is, I would like to do this, and I'm using her as a kind of front to- Right. You want a cigarette.

I want a cigarette. Edie? Edie, come on, go down and get a pack. Maybe a toner. Yeah, yeah. But this was the worst, this was the kind of, this was the biggest version of that problem, that like, parents are just, like,

there's this woman who wrote a book, a woman named Linda Flanagan wrote a book called Taking Back the Game, which is all about what's wrong with youth sports. And she's always, she was a coach for many years, it's a really brilliant book. And she has this moment when she talks about like possible fixes and one of her fixes is that parents

need to stop going to games. And it's the same idea that, because what happens, of course it's pleasurable for the parent to go to the game. There's no one's denying that. But the parent is confusing what's pleasurable for them and what's pleasurable for their kids. And the question is, does your child want you there

really like deep down? And you know, by what we're doing when we show up for those games is we are intruding on what should be this kind of this time for kids to play with other kids without the scrutiny of and the pressure that comes from parents watching. Like that's the perfect,'s the perfect example of this. And this made me wonder, how many times do we, is this what, you know, I'm a young parent, is this what parenting turns into, this constant conflict?

Look, well, you talked about this, I think we had a guest here the other day, I think it was Josh Brolin, and we were talking about his upbringing, and I was saying what I would always say to my wife when the kids were little was, remember it's important that they're bored. Because I think one of the things

that's come along with super parenting in this age is that a child needs to be activated and engaged and entertained at all times. And I swear to God, I'm one of six and there was a lot of, you know, I say this, a lot of benign neglect, meaning no one on my ass, not being helicoptered, just because my parents worked, there was a lot going on.

What number were you? Third. Oh, you're right smack in the back. Yeah, and so I just remembered having a lot of time with my brain and it was nightmarish. But. I was bored for the first eight years of my life

and I would complain to my mother and she would say exactly that. She would say, it's good for you to be bored. Yeah. And look at us here. Yeah, here we are. Here we are having the greatest conversation. Well, I have to wrap this up because we've gone-

You've solved it. Well, first of all, I think we've solved the engineering of humanity. And you and I, if we were just put in charge, can fix everything. It's a testament to your book that I read it and it's got me thinking about 700 different things in different ways.

And so- Thank you. And that is- That's intention. That is the power that you seem to have, is just raising these issues. And also it goes back to that concept that I was talking about earlier, which is we can all be tricked, we can all be conned, we can all be manipulated.

It's really fascinating. The more you think about it, I think the more you build up some sort of resilience towards it. Yeah. And a little bit of immunity where you can think, wait a minute, is this what I want or do I want this because this is the way everything has been engineered

by somebody and it probably has. I have a confession to make, which is that the entire time we've been talking, you have your notebook open. I've been trying to read upside down. Cause I wanna know, when you made notes to yourself, were they different from the things where you're like, book's terrible.

Oh, I can read it to you right now. Oh fuck, Gladwell's coming. This is gonna be another shit show. Hair not up to Gladwell's standards. He's probably gonna go after the Irish, parentheses did last time. That's right. He seems to have a real thing. Let's hope he doesn't bring up Harvard. I loved my time

on women's rugby. It was my only way in. Why the fuck has he got such a bone to pick with my favorite sport? That's where I met Tracy. I mean, I don't know. I hate Tracy. Yeah. You shouldn't do that. You should, why do you leave it out like that? You're just distracting.

Oh, I'm sorry. Look, I've got drawings. Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah. 1963. That's the year I was born. That's the year I was born. I did a drawing of Senator Abe Ribbikoff.

Oh, we, oh my God. That is. What year I was born. I did a drawing of Senator Abe Ribicoff. Oh, he's... Oh my God, that is... What the fuck? Why? I'm a strange man. Why? That is so fantastic. Ribicoff, the senator from New York State. Was he New York State or was he...

I want to say he was Connecticut. Oh, he was Connecticut. He was the one in the 1968 convention. Why did I draw Senator Abe Ribicoff? Wait, Conan, we're born in the same year. When's your birthday? April 18th. Okay. I was just checking to make sure we weren't, Conan, we're born in the same year. When's your birthday? April 18th. Okay.

I was just checking to make sure we weren't, in fact, born on the very same day. We were born in the same hospital and switched at birth. What? That's why we both have crazy hair. Turns out you're the Jamaican. Yes, and you're a terrible alcoholic. Yes, and you're a terrible alcoholic.

Ah, Gladwell. I love talking to you and clearly, I mean, this could go on for seven hours, but even podcasts have sped up. But I do hope you'll come back and I hope you'll come back, even if there isn't a book, if we can just chat. I love, I really enjoy it. I really enjoy it.

And if the art of conversation is dead, I don't know what this was, because I really, thoroughly had a great time. As did I. Thank you, Conan. I will, next time I'll be nicer about the, I feel, I'm going to say, I'm going to come up with something really, I'll think, spend the next couple of years coming up with just the right word.

You know? You know what? I think you nailed it the first time. Yeah. Hey, thank you so much, sir. Yeah. Conan O'Brien needs a friend. With Conan O'Brien, Sonam Avsesian, and Matt Gourley.

Produced by me, Matt Gourley. Executive produced by Adam Sacks, Jeff Ross, and Nick Leal. Theme song by The White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair, and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. Engineering and mixing by Eduardo Perez and Brendan Burns.

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