Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Malcolm Gladwell On Creativity, Failure, and the Revenge of the Tipping Point

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

Today’s episode is a special one. It wasn’t recorded in our studio, but live from Balboa Theater in San Diego for a Live Talks LA event, where I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with one of the most influential thinkers of our time: Malcolm Gladwell.This conversation was so much fun – we explored his writing process, the lessons he learned from his father about effort and resilience, and big questions about the future—like the real impact of AI and the time it takes to fully understand emerging technologies. We also dive into Malcolm’s latest book, Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering. This was one of those wonderfully refreshing conversations – I think you’ll be really surprised by where Malcolm and I go. It’s full of emotion, insight, and energy. I can’t wait for you to learn from Malcolm’s insights and the way he shapes his words and stories. You’re in for a real treat.With Fire,The FM Team_________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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stay present and engaged with my thinking and writing. If you wanna slow down, if you wanna work smarter, I highly encourage you to check them out. Visit remarkable.com to learn more and grab your paper pro today. Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais by trade and training a high performance psychologist. Today's episode is a special one. It wasn't recorded in our Mastery Lab, but we did it live from Balboa Theater in San Diego for a Live Talks LA event where I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with one of the most influential thinkers of our time, Malcolm Gladwell. This conversation was just so much fun. I mean, we went places. We explored his writing

process, the lessons he learned from his father about effort and resilience, and big questions about the future, like the real impact of AI and the time it takes to fully understand emerging technologies. We also dive into Malcolm's latest book, Revenge of the Tipping Point, Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering. I just want to say that this was one of those wonderfully surprising conversations because I want you to stay tuned for the first bit. I think you'll be really surprised about where Malcolm and I go. I think you're going to love it. It's full of emotions and I'll keep it there. And this whole thing was electric. And it's just, you know, it's fun to do it with a live audience. There's a

different type of thing there, but I'm excited for you to listen to the way that he shapes his words, where he's coming from, the emotions and the thinking that collide. Like, I think you're in for a real treat. I know I was when I was with him. When I listened back, I was like, oh my God, this is so good. So with that, let's dive right into this incredible conversation with the one and only Malcolm Gladwell. So you've been blazing the trail of mastery for some time now. And what I thought that we would do is just have a conversation about how you work, your big ideas that you have, and how you think about the future. And so when I think about applying the psychological lenses on you, it gets really interesting because you're a really interesting person.

So let's start at the beginning. How did you come to write? How did I come to write? Yeah. Well, my mom was a writer uh and i thought that was kind of cool um i didn't really have you know i'm and i continue to this day i'm not much of a planner so as a kid kid, I wasn't that kid who said, when I grow up, I want to be X. I don't think I ever said the phrase, when I grow up, I want to be. And I, to this day, never talk about what I want to be when I grow up.

So I didn't really, everything I've ever done, I've always stumbled into. And I kind of stumbled into writing. I got a job in writing out of college just entirely by accident. I was trying to get a job in advertising. Failed. It was, I can't, a friend of mine was a, I had no, it was senior year of college.

I had no job prospects, but I was untroubled by this for reasons I don't know why. And a friend of mine used to subscribe to this conservative magazine called The American Spectator, which I'd never heard of. And he said to me one day, I know you don't have a job lined up, but they're advertising for an assistant managing editor. And I'd never read this magazine ever. And so I wrote away to get the application. And the application came back a couple of pages. And the big question was, why do you want to work at The American Spectator? Of course, I'd never read it. So I just put, why do you want to work at the American Spectator? Of course, I'd never read it. So I just put, doesn't everyone want to work at the American Spectator?

And I got the job. And that was the beginning of my career in journalism. It just seemed like a lark. You are clever. You are really clever. So it's really refreshing to hear you announce that you didn't have this grand plan. And here you are, one of the more influential thinkers and writers of our time, that you didn't have this idea that one day I'm going to. And I think that what we see for our children now is that we are hammering them on where do you want to go to school? What do you want to do when you grow up?

And we're asking the question more about what and where as opposed to who do you want to be? Did you entertain that question, who do I want to be? Well, I wanted to, let me ask that question two ways. Somebody, I was doing some podcast interview as part of this book tour, and it was with some British person who was very interested in probing my psyche and was very interested in discovering whether I had had moments of crisis. And the short answer is yes, of course, but not that I would share with some random British podcaster. But finally, in frustration, I said to her, I'm a male born in the 1960s into a happy, educated, middle-class family in the most stable democracy in the world. The entire world was set up for me to succeed. I had zero obstacles in my path, right? It's not like I was born into poverty

in sub-Equatorial Africa. It's not like I was born with a handicap. It's not like I was a woman. Where if you're a woman born in the 60s, your life is hard, right? Like people, I just said to this person in frustration, I'm like, no. For me to say I face some great life crisis is an obscenity. It's like, it's the most dishonest thing I could say.

Okay. That doesn't answer your question. Okay, let's, correct. But my experience is that none of us are getting out of this life without trauma without a micro trauma or capital t trauma and so like the world is not designed for even somebody like you to thrive yeah but there's, I mean, for someone of my description, I'm like, I'm going to come back to the original question, but when you think about the future, do you see it through an optimistic,

a cynical, or a pessimistic lens? Oh, I'm an optimist. I come from, glabels are optimists. My mom, I was talking to my mom. My mom is 93, and she just turned 93, and I was talking to her,

and it was her birthday, and she's a twin. She was talking to her, And it was her birthday. And she's a twin. She was talking to her. So she just called her twin sister, who lives in Jamaica. And she said to me, she was a little emotional, which is rare for, Gladwell's also not terribly emotional. And she said to me, you know, I look back on my life, and I cannot believe how improbable it was. She was born in like a house that was probably a third the size of this,

a quarter the size of this stage, with no electricity or running water, in the middle of Jamaica. And she ended up, you know, living this wonderful life. And she's like, when I was born in, she said to me, when I was born in Jamaica in the early 1930s, twins rarely survived. So that, even that I survived was a miracle. And if you have parents who think of their lives

as a, my parents have also, my dad is now dead, but deeply religious in, I think, the best possible way. And think of their lives as a gift from God. And when you grow up with that, it is very, very hard to not to not to participate in that spirit. Well, I'm getting a little emotional. I'm in danger. When I talk about my father, I start crying. Yeah. What is that about?

I don't know. He was... I'm sorry I'd encourage you to open it wide open and I mean that with great sincerity because this is what modern leadership looks like, working from emotion not trying to hide them I mean I do cry Not trying to hide them. Yeah.

I mean, I do cry every time. He's been gone five years. And a friend of mine said, two friends of mine said two very beautiful things that I've always remembered. One was a friend of mine who was writing something about his father. And he said, my father died 20 years ago today. I know him better today than I did back then. And I think about that nearly every day. Because I think I know I'm better now.

And another thing a friend of mine said in trying to console me was that grief is the way we keep someone alive. And it's a gift, in other words. Yeah. And I think that's, I can't, I think I continue to grieve because I can't, I can't let it go. That's right.

Yeah, grief is complicated and it's overwhelmingly emotional. And if I could just ask a couple more questions about your dad. Thank you for this, by the way. I love talking about it, but I just, I'm going to cry. I think there's a future, just pull up for a moment. I think there's a future where men will be able to not say I'm sorry for crying, but to say this is what it looks like to work with emotion and to still have faculty of my mind. And that's what really, to me, emotional

and mental strength is. And it's somehow we miss that. The greatest in the world are able to use their emotions and their thoughts to navigate a complicated moment or situation, and you're doing it here. So what did your dad teach you? He was an Englishman with a big bushy beard, and he was such a stereotypical Englishman. He liked going for long walks in the rain with dogs. He was a gardener. That's what he loved to do, above all else. He only ever cried when he was reading Dickens to his children.

He was a mathematician, and a very good one, I think, although I have no idea because I could never follow what he was doing. He was completely indifferent to what the world thought. He just did whatever he wanted to do, which I thought as a kid was the most magnificent thing I had ever seen. You know that everyone in this room right now goes, oh, that's where he got it from. Yeah. So that's the big gift that he passed you. I always tell the story. We grew up in an area of Ontario that was full of old Ordo Mennonites. And they would have, you know, they rode horses and buggies. They were 19th century. And when a barn,

they were all farmers, when a barn burned down, they would have a barn raising. And the barn raising, Mennonites would come from miles around and there would be hundreds of horses and buggies and they would raise a barn in a day. And my father,

this is typical Graham Gladwell, decides he wants to help. Now understand that he is a PhD mathematician. No one else at the barn raising has more than a sixth grade education. They're all wearing like Mennonite garb and straw hats. And he drives up in his Volvo with his, he's always wore a jacket and tie, jacket and tie, big beard.

He has 20 years more education than anyone else there. And just, and they never for a moment did he did it occur to him that he was out of place he's like i'm here to help in his english accent and they're like all right yeah it's awesome comes on and he had three sons i was the third he just brought us along yeah and like that was like let's go and like off we went to the barn raising i swear he is the first non-mennonite to attend a barn raising in the history in the thousand year history of the mennonites but he was like had so much fun and like you know they looked at him and they're like you know dude you have no idea how to raise a barn and he was fine with that he was like okay

just i'll just he like carried nails to the he did the most kind of, that was him. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships. It takes more than effort. It takes a real caring about your people. It takes the right tools, the right information at the right time. And that's where LinkedIn sales navigator can come in.

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And when I'm traveling or in between meals, on a demanding day certainly, I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars. And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put them on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of

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So getting enough protein matters. And that can't be understated, not just for strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value, and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. So let's think about how that stitches to two really big ideas that most of us wrestle with, which is purpose and belonging. Now, these are fundamental to the human condition. Belonging is something we're all trying to sort out. And what am I doing

here? What is my purpose? So your dad, it feels like your dad taught you about belonging. Show up because you belong, because you want to do something. And you don't need permission to be invited. He's a man who never asked. So high agency, he had something inside of him and you watched him for, I don't know how long he lived, 60 years, 70 years, 80 years? 81. 81 years pushing in that direction. So when you think about belonging and purpose, and I know you don't write about those two,

but you have a mentor in your father that taught you about those two. Can you talk about purpose for just a moment and what that word means and what you hope others might understand from what you've learned about purpose? Well, he was someone, my father was someone who, and this is something, it's very interesting you bring up. I I never thought about this in this way. He felt that everything of value came through effort. And he found glory in effort. So to give you an example of the extremes to which he took this, he decided, he was full of whimsical declarations. He decided that we really should

heat our house in the Canadian winter with a wood stove. And to feed the wood stove, he decided we should gather wood from the nearby forests. But he didn't like chainsaws. He felt they were, I don't know what his particular argument was, but there was, so we took a large bandsaw and in the, on Saturday mornings throughout the Canadian winter, it's like 20 below outside, we would all dress up and we would trudge out to the woods behind our house and we would saw logs using a bands saw like yeah do you have any idea like what that's like it's 20 below i'm 11 years old and i'm like bundled up and like i'm one i'm on one end of the saw i'm like bouncing all over the place the whole thing yeah that was just the

way it was going to be yeah or his other thing that he would do is, and then we would, on Sundays, we didn't work because we were very religious, but we would go for long walks. And the longer the better. And he would never tell you how long the walk was. But you had to commit before you started. And then invariably it would end in disaster because he wouldn't plan anything. And you would end up, you'd be like 20 below. And he loved like walking down frozen rivers.

And then he would miscalculate and you'd be out for like four hours. And like you'd end up trudging through some field to some farmer's house to call my mom to come and fetch it. I mean, it was just like, that's the way it was. It was fantastic. And I think my two older brothers didn't really get it. I thought it was amazing. And in what ways? What did you pull from those experiences?

I love that he, what he wanted to do was to put his mark. He was going to do what he was going to do. And the fact that it was often half-cocked was not the point. It was like, so what? I think he felt, and this is something else that, and it's a paradoxical thing, but it's something else that is very near and dear to the way I realize I operate, which is he thought his life was low stakes.

In other words, he didn't think it mattered if you like what what was right if you got lost on a walk who cares or if you embarrassed yourself because you were doing some crazy scheme who cares like there was no consequence like you that was just a in your mind right and that idea that it's fine there are no if we were growing up in the 13th century or there's stakes you know your children will if you don't feed your children they'll die of starvation he understood that in Canada in the 70s there are no stakes it's fine and if you totally screw up, the government takes care of you. That's Canada, right? So his view is like, whatever. We can do whatever we want. It's great. He once said, you'll appreciate this. I remember him remembering all his dad stories.

He had this whole thesis about Canadians. He was English. His thesis was that they were lazy. And so he wanted to demonstrate this. So we lived on a long road and there was a line of houses a mile long. And we lived at the end of the mile, right? So he decided he wanted to empirically test how lazy Canadians were. So we had a party. We rarely had parties, but we had a party, and he invited every house along the long road. And then we wagered on how far would you have to go along the road before they drove? Because his position was, I mean, if it was five miles,

he would have walked, right? Absolutely. But he was like, no, no, no. And he was convinced that there was like 25 houses he was convinced that houses 20 through 22 through i'm sorry 3 through 25 would all drive that was his he was like they're all gonna drive they're canadians they're lazy but i just thought this as a kid observing this, like the kind of sense of play and the crazy positions that are held. It's fantastic. It feels to me that like some of the lessons that dad passed on are a bit

about resilience, like stick with it when it's hard, a bit about figuring out how to not be anxious with the untold future, like deal with it. There's something about the work ethic and the funness about it. You know, so it sounds, and I'm so grateful that you shared those insights because it does give us a peek into how you work and to be able to work through hard times when writing. Yeah. Thinking deeply in writing is hard for most people. And so to be able to, when you get stuck, to keep massaging, to keep working through it. Do you have an insight that you can share with us

about how you navigate hard moments in writing? This is going to be, this is sort of an embarrassing thing to say, but I don't really have hard moments in writing. I used to. What happened was, what happened was I worked in a newspaper for 10 years. And every little bit of preciousness you have towards your own prose is beaten out of you if you work at a newspaper

and so you I got there and I was like someone who slaved over things and I remember I was 23 years old and I got a job at the Washington Post and I go there and they're all around me these people just like cranking out stories,

like,, and I'll tell this story to them. There's a guy named, famous guy named Steve Call, legend. One of the greatest reporters of our generation, who, he was just over there when I was, Woodward, by the way, Bob Woodward there, Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon were like right behind me. Like the greats, David Remnick, all these guys were on. David Remnick was like, Steve Cole wouldn't dial,

it was push button phones. He would not dial like this. That would take too long. He just would go. Like, I was like, Jesus, like, these people are serious. serious and i really i can't be this kind of you know like back then you know you gotta get your story in by like 5 30 or it doesn't go in the paper like that's you know when you were just doing this thing he was there and he was there and back there were you using your imagination as you were describing it to us? Well, they physically were. But in this moment, did it come to life for you? Oh, I can remember. It was yesterday.

Literally, Woodward, the single greatest newspaper reporter in American history was, if I'm here, Woodward is right where that speaker is. Remarkable. I'm 23 years old, and I'm just watching him just watching him and trying to by the way eavesdrop It's like he's dealing with state secrets. I mean he just he brings down presidents like I'm not gonna listen in it He was using those guys are amazing so I got I got over my like I Mean and the other thing I do I realize though I'm being a

little cheeky um I don't what I don't do is call problems problems so what I've done I realize is normalize difficulties in writing and so I do many many drafts lots of them tons of them I enlist I do within the podcast for example we do table reads we invite like a ton of people and it's it's like it's open season I say to everyone if you're not gonna if you're not gonna tell me what's wrong you're wasting your time you don't need to be here so like 22 year old interns will say i don't think that works malcolm and like that's part of the fun like we all get into it um and that's like that attitude is really important because it's not once you accept the idea that you can't do it right the first time or even the second time or even the third time

then do i don't i'm not right so a lot of people would call the first draft a problem i don't call it a problem i call it a first draft got it it's like it's not it's no good it's fine it'll get better the power of framing in most of our circumstances or conditions is really an important skill so you're framing it optimistically again and it sounds like you're anchored in a position of gratitude in life like it's not this is not life and death this is something i get to do yeah so people can and people will help you like this is the it's this is the thing that i think is hardest for struggling creative types to understand at the beginning of their particular they don't understand that 95 of help

is genuine it's not somebody trying to impose their will on you or someone trying to take over your project no no they're trying to help that's what people are motive people particularly when you when they're when you can all you have to do if you want help is to communicate your enthusiasm. Like, I'm into this, but I need your help. And they'll give you their help. And it doesn't always work, but it works enough that it makes your life infinitely easier. We are more like a coral reef than we are some other version of an ecosystem. We need each other.

There's nobody in this world can do it alone. I spend time with the best, the single best in the world at what they do, helping them train their psychology to be extraordinary. And they're not alone. We need each other. And to your point, we want to be part of something. We want to help each other.

So again, you're framing input as it's generative it's part of belonging as opposed to an attack on your ego yeah yeah i don't know why this example comes to mind but we did we did a podcast a couple years ago two years ago i think about it was about the uh uh the fourth amendment and it was about the Fourth Amendment. And it's about how all these gun nuts are obsessed with this 17th century English nobleman called John Knight, who they pretended is some hugely important figure in interpreting gun freedoms. And of course, they've gotten the history all wrong.

Surprise, surprise. And so we were doing this podcast. So we did this tongue-in-cheek podcast where I called up all these super right-wing constitutional scholars who are obsessed with this obscure English nobleman to give me their take on John Knight. And they were like, I went to his grave in England. All the nonsense. So we're doing this thing on John Knight. It's hilarious. And then one of my producers, who rarely said anything, and it was always a source of frustration. I was always telling her, you've got to speak up.

You've got to speak up. And she says, we're doing the John Knight table read. And she goes, I hear the name John Knight and I hear an opera singer singing it. And like, that's all she said. The room goes silent

and we suddenly realize, oh my God, that is genius. And the tone, because it wasn't just we suddenly realized that that was the right tone that we needed to be operatic in our it wasn't it wasn't about being sly and smug it was about like it was about giving John Knight this kind of false grandeur so he actually went and got an

opera singer and every throughout the episode every like 10 minutes you hear this guy with this beautiful baritone go john knight john knight and like it changes the whole experience it's all because you know she never said anything but she said something like and i was just like and i told her afterwards like that one sentence improved this thing by 20%. We went from a B to an A because you said one sentence. Yeah, cool. Right? And I don't think you even realize how important it is.

So I always tell people, you don't know how important what you're saying is. You're not the judge of the importance of what you tell me. I am. Right? So you just, no, because that's why people don't say anything, because they think what they're saying is trivial. And I'm saying, no, whether you think it's, whether the fact that you think it's trivial is irrelevant.

I'm the one who judges, and believe me when I tell you that most things you think are trivial are not. That's interesting. Right? Yeah. And understanding that kind of, people have to understand how flawed their self-assessments are when it comes to helping. They don't appreciate how helpful they are. Yeah, I think my research here is that most people are terrified to bring their ideas forward because there's this, we coined this in a cheeky way, FOPO, fear of people's opinions, that the fear of other people's opinions is one of the greatest constrict judgment of rejection or the critique or maybe the sought-after acceptance by another person is so rich and so unspoken that we'd rather play it safe and not say anything at all.

Your framing is like, no, listen, I think we all want to help. I'm open to ideas. Bring them. And because they're coming this way, I'll let you know. But keep bringing them. Is that how you create creative space? Yeah. I mean, very early on, I realized I observed something which profoundly depressed me, which

was that I looked and saw how many creative people in my community of writers, for example, I think it is widely true. How many writers in my world faded into irrelevance as they hit their 50s? Their careers just or even in their 40s, they hit a roadblock. And I don't know what happened. The cohort of journalists who I ran around with in New York, in D.C. in my 20s and in New York in my 30s are all gone. They're all gone. It's super counterintuitive because that's when you start to really make sense of interesting ideas from life perspectives. I didn't. I couldn't understand it.

And I think what happened is they didn't build a community around them that helped them keep going that's right they were all they were isolated and so when i hit my 50s i was determined to build that's when i started helped to start this audio company and i i realized i had to build a community if i was going to continue to be productive and i it's so the last i think without that, I too would have hit a wall. I don't think I have. I mean, some people think I have. So what do you do with your feedback when it's critical of your writing or your research or when there's being holes poked into your approach.

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But I think that's just a reason to keep going. The more you do it, the more, the easier it is to kind of, you also have to understand that particularly creative work or any kind of high performance it's interesting it's always uneven so the

you know the hitter who goes 3 for 4 one day can go 0 for 4 in the next two games and still be a great hitter like and that idea that failure is not definitive it's just a kind of data point is understanding that and accepting that i think is really crucial if you would like to keep performing at a relatively high level in the, you have to have some way to, to make sense of the inevitable, uh, failures. Um, and if you can't do that, then you're in trouble.

Are you performing or writing for the, the music inside of you or for the applause outside of you? Well, a little bit of both, I think. The podcast, my podcast gives me an inordinate amount of pleasure because it's so immediate. You make it, and then it's out there like a month later. And so that satisfies a lot of my like there's one that aired it's a two-parter and sorry to plug it so shamelessly but episode one aired on it's called the georgetown massacre and i truly believe it is one of the finest things i've ever done when i say finest thing i've ever done i don't mean like it's my mona Mona Lisa no no what I mean is like given what I was

given we I made more out of it than or we made more out of it than anything so it's the story is from a single court case about some guy who got caught up in the Varsity Blues investigation. And he's the only guy who went to trial. And he won. It's hilarious. And the government, which had prosecuted all the other Varsity Blues cases, was unprepared for somebody fighting back. They were like, you know, Lori Loughlin, go to jail. You know, whatever they had to go to jail. They all just pled.

So they got really lazy. And they come after this one guy who gave $200,000 in a paper bag to the Georgetown tennis coach to get his daughter in. And he said, what I did was not a crime. Now that sounds outrageous, but if you listen to the podcast, what I decided to do was to go with the guy.

It was like, yeah, it's not a crime. I believe you. And defend him, right? Which is hilarious. It's hilarious. And he had the two greatest, he goes out, he's a rich guy. He goes and he hires the two greatest defense lawyers in America, Roy Black and Howard Trevnick, who are, as a friend of mine who used

to work for them says, the guys you hire when you're guilty. And actually in the podcast, I make this thing about, I used to know this friend of mine, she was wealthy. We once went hiking and we got lost. And I said, we're in the middle of nowhere. I said, are you concerned that we're in the middle of nowhere? She goes, no, because I had the number. And I said we're in the middle of nowhere I said are you concerned that we're in the middle of our loss she goes no because I had the number and I said what's the number she goes well my it's the my dad has this contract with these ex-Massad guys and if you ever get lost you just call and they come and get you now I have no idea whether that's true it's possible it's probably true yeah she could have been pulling my leg yeah My point is that these two guys, Howard and Roy, are the legal equivalent of the Mossad guys.

Okay. They're the ones you call. So they hire these two. They're all from Miami. So the two Miami guys, who just do nothing but represent drug dealers normally, they fly to Boston. They defend this guy who gave $200,000 in cash to the Georgetown tennis coach, and they get him off.

And it's just so fantastic, the story of how they do it. My point is, who, so what audience was that done for? I mean, it starts with me because I just thought it was hilarious. I remember I was sitting, I was in, I'm now, I have two small children. So I go to Boca all the time. I'm in Florida more than I'm anywhere else. Because that's where you go when you have kids, apparently. So I go to Boca all the time. I'm in Florida more than I'm anywhere else. Because that's where you go when you have kids, apparently. So I'm in Boca. My kids are in the lazy river. And I don't know why, I somehow found out about this case. And I'm reading,

it's like 2,000 pages of transcripts. And I'm reading it. And I can't stop it's just cracking me up so much it's so hilarious my kids are like daddy daddy like does it go by I know I'm on the computer like no no you're saying I got it so that part is just that's just me I mean it doesn't matter what happens at that point because I am just I'm finding this hilarious and i call them up howard and roy because i'm in boca and they're in miami i'm like guys i'm on you know page 950 and this is the best thing i've ever read i have got to come and see you and they're like sure come on down um so like that you know so it starts out of just it's just a caper it's super fun what a fun life you live yeah and then fun life

you live yeah then it turns into something for all of you yeah but like by the time it hits you you know i'm satisfied i don't really you know i want you to listen to it i don't really care if you like it because i've gotten all the joy out of it good to know good to know that's all okay so um let's get into the book because you're talking about Boca and it kind of is a natural segue into Miami. You go after Miami and kind of the fraud that it was built on. And I mean, I do the Miami takedown that I always wanted to do. You did. I think a lot of people did, but yeah, you did it. You did it really well. And so you've got this way. And for those who haven't had the chance to read the book,

it's a great piece of research that you added there about the rise of Miami. And it's your point to take down about what it's built on. And so you've got this beautiful way of being able to find nascent ideas and pull them forward into compelling stories. And so out of all the stories, you've got bank robbers, you've got, you know, the fraud in Miami, you've got doctors who forgot their training, right? And they're diagnosing based on the environment that they're in rather than the training that... So out of all the stories that you shared, and then of course you go after Ivy League, you go after... No book of mine would be complete without an attack on the Ivy League.

Yeah. You found the way to get the Holocaust in there in a surprising way as well. So like, how... Of all those stories that I just mentioned, which are the ones that were most fun for you to really shape? Miami. Miami was the one. Well, because it actually, the story I've most fun for you to really shake? Miami. Miami was the one. Well, because it actually, the story I've just been telling you, and I was also doing research for my Miami chapter at the same time. It was a twofer. Got it.

I was in the area, and I decided that I could get two. I could do the Farsi Booz case. And then I also was hanging out with these members of the federal Medicare fraud strike force, which is... As one does. These two... I found this woman named Yvonne. So from my years in working in Washington, you learn very quickly where power lies. And power lies in the kind of second level media people in government agencies.

They have all the power in the world. And so what you do is... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Power lies in the second level of media. So, yeah. So you want to find out what's going on in something that has to do with the government. How do you do it? Do you call the, try and get an interview with the person running the whole shenanigan? No. That's a waste of time. They're not gonna tell you anything. Do you call up the head person who runs public affairs for the whole thing and try and get an, no, waste of time. You want the person who works for the person who runs public affairs. Got it. So I learned this. So I find this woman named Yvonne.

Love Yvonne. And I call Yvonne and I say, Yvonne, I'm really interested in Medicare fraud and in the fact that basically most Medicare fraud, by the way, is like one of the biggest criminal enterprises in this country. It's huge. Tens of billions of dollars a year. And it mostly takes place in Miami. Which, when I found this out, I was like, this is just the most hilarious thing ever.

So I needed it. Bank robbers in L.A. Yeah, bank robbers in L.A. and Medicare fraud in Miami. So how do I find out about Medicare fraud in Miami? So I learned that there is this thing called the strike force. And so I said, oh, I've got to find out about the strike force. The strike force is U.S. Attorney's Office, FBI, some DOJ people, and some HHS people all together in one room.

And they're supposed to be all over the country, but they're really just in Miami. So I figure out that Yvonne is like the PR person for the strike force. So I call Yvonne. Jack gets to know Yvonne. She's hilarious. We just saw Yvonne. She came to my book tour in Washington. I'm like, Yvonne, I got to go out with these guys.

This is just too good. She goes, let me see what I can do. Now, normally, there's no way that you go out with it. Like, no way. She got me. So I go to Miami to this nondescript office building in North Miami. And I meet up with these two guys. They're in the book.

And they are hilarious. And they spend their entire life. So it's so blatant, Medicare fraud in Miami. In order to rip off, I now know how to do it. I'm not going to tell you. I know how to do it. But in order to do it, the one thing I will tell you is you need, the one thing you need to get registered as a Medicare beneficiary or a Medicare provider, you need a mailing address. So they're like, we'll just do the simple version. We'll take you to the place where the mailing addresses are.

So we go to this office building somewhere in Miami. Looks like normal from the outside. We go inside, and you realize that there are hundreds of offices, each the size of a broom closet. And on the door, it says a grandiose sign like, Greater Miami Medical Surgical Center. And inside, there's just a desk with a disconnected phone, a computer that doesn't turn on, and a person who doesn't speak English. That's the mailing address.

And they just run frauds. And then when they think the strike force is about to get them, they just leave and vanish with cash. Wow. It's fantastic. So these guys, they're like taking me around to these places. And they're like, this one building had literally hundreds of medical offices in it. And they were like, we're the people. There's no one here.

We're the patients. The whole thing one here. We're the patients. The whole thing is just fraud out in the open in the middle of Miami. I guarantee you, in Fargo, there is no building like that. They don't do that in the Dakotas. Canadians would never do this. Oh my God, Canadians, that's unthinkable. Although we don't have this thing. We have national health insurance, so we don't have to. Touche. So if you layer that story with tipping points and over stories, can you unfold your model just a bit for us?

Like what is an over story? How does it impact the tipping point? And then because you've illustrated a great story through the Miami takedown. Layer those two. And so you can frame for us maybe how to think about what you're really pointing to. Yeah. Well, so the question is, why is Medicare fraud only in Miami? Why isn't it in Boca? Just down the road.

Why isn't it in Fort Lauderdale? On the surface, Fort Lauderdale looks like it should be just as congenial a home to criminality as Miami. But it's not. It's just Miami. So that's really interesting. It's so fun, isn't it? So I set out to try and answer the question of, why would fraud stop at the Miami border?

And it gets into this really, really, turns out people have studied this question quite assiduously. And it gets into this thing called small area variation, which is this idea that there are contagious pockets of behavior that are very prominent in the medical world, by the way. It's why your doctor, you know, if you go to a cardiologist in Denver and a cardiologist in Buffalo, they could both have gone to the same medical school, but they will treat you in a way that is profoundly different, just by virtue of

the fact that one lives in Colorado and one lives in Western New York. So this is a quite a common occurrence when you sort of dig into that patterns of contagious behavior are community-based. They seem to be affected by a common set of values and assumptions and behavioral patterns that are defined by the borders of a city. So the question is, what is it about Miami that would lead it to have a peculiar set of contagious behaviors and norms? And so I read this, I found this guy named Nicholas Griffin, or this wonderful book about Miami, who argues that Miami becomes Miami in 1980. In 1980, you have, remember the Cuban boat lift, the Mariel boat lift? Hundreds of thousands of Cubans arrive in Miami overnight, basically, in 1980. Same year, there's a massive race riot,

which causes a huge amount of middle-class flight from Miami. And the cocaine trade explodes in 1980 in Miami. And the argument is that those three events, any one of those events would be enough to shake a city to its core. But the fact that Miami had those three events in the space of a couple of months in 1980 basically shatters whatever consensus the city had about who it was, what it was. And in that vacuum walks in a feeling that anything goes. And what we're seeing with Medicare fraud today is the kind of, a generation later, is the consequence of that kind of makeover in 1980. So you've got- And then by the way- Oh, please. Couple years later, there's Miami Vice.

I was waiting for Don Johnson. Which is, if you go back and watch it, such an astonishingly strange show. Because in the history of television up to that point, when you made a show about a city that was rife with criminality, the notion was the city had a problem. Right?

And if you made a show about corrupt cops, the notion was that the narrative problem the show had to solve was to how to make corrupt cops less corrupt. Miami Vice flips that on its head and says, the fact that Miami is ripe with criminality

is in fact what's great about Miami. And the fact that Crockett and Tubbs are driving Lamborghinis, which if that isn't a red flag. They told us the story. They told us the story. They are. That's all you need to know. And everyone's fine with it.

They're driving around $250,000 cars and wearing like Brioni suits. And they're cops. Yeah. Right? And it's just great. And like that, there is actually a huge literature on Miami Vice that attempts to empirically answer the question of, because Miami, nobody was going to Miami in the 70s. People stopped. It wasn't a tourist

destination. They were going to North, Lauderdale, Boca, Orlando, or they were going to the Caribbean. Miami was dead. And then everyone starts to go to Miami again. And the question is, did they go because they watched Miami Vice? And they thought, oh, this place is overrun with crime, and that's really cool. I think there's something to that. So did the show create a tipping point for the attraction? Or did the criminality create an overstory for the show and or both? I think it's a lot of...

Michael Mann, who makes Miami Vice, goes to Miami in the 80s and he clearly gets a... He falls in love with its kind of raffishness. Raffishness? Is that a word?

You're the word guy. I think so. I think it's... They're all wrapped up in the same thing. They're feeding the same mythology. And I talk in the book about this. I can't get this image out of my head. There was these money launderers in the early 80s who, and back then there were very few restrictions on money laundering.

And there was a famous money launderer who every day would drive up to a bank on Brickell in downtown Miami and would take out a giant suitcase stuffed with cash and a wheelie and wheel it into the bank. And the bank guard would run out and help him. And I can't get around my head the idea that if you were walking down Brickell in 1980 and you observed this happening every single morning, that that left a lasting impact on you. Yeah, for sure. Right? Yeah, of course. You were like, why would I pay my parking ticket if this is going on in my city? Right?

It's like, again, this does not happen in Fargo. That's, you know, that's why you get, that's why Miami's here and, you know, whatever, Minneapolis is over here. Toronto, of course, I don't think a crime has ever been committed in Toronto. We had, growing up, we had, my little town, one police officer, and he was a friend of my mom's. No, my mom knew his wife. And whenever you got in trouble, you would just see John Campbell, his name. John would just show up, and he would give you a talking to, and that was it. It was hilarious. In retrospect, like, it was such such a kind of it was like the 19th century it was really weird when you think about kids growing up right now you have children and there's over stories that are creating a blanket

that is supporting particular behaviors some that like, some that we don't like. How do you think about what you understand and what you wish for the now generation of kids? Well, once you, I would feel more comfortable, have felt more comfortable answering that question before I had kids. Now that I have kids, my willingness to opine about kids is approaching zero. Because I realize, first of all, I take back everything I ever said about kids.

What did I know? Nothing. Turns out you know nothing. Turns out they do whatever they want to do. Turns out I can't, I try and calculate what percentage of my commands are obeyed by my three-year-old. I'm at like 20% right now. And I don't think it's ever going to get higher than that. So I don't know. I mean, there is, the thing that reassures me is that kids are always kids. In other words, I can recognize my own childhood in them. And that reassures me. So that maybe it's because they're still really young. But that's one part. The other thing is that I'm enormously heartened by the fact that they don't listen to me. And I mean that in a serious way.

I realize that's how you survive, that they're living, growing up in an entirely different world that I don't really understand. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that.

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be interested in. A shampoo, conditioner, and a hair hair serum with Caldera lab. It's not about adding more. It's about choosing better. And when your day demands clarity and energy and presence, the way you prepare for it matters. If you're looking for high quality personal care products that elevate your routine without complicating it, I'd love for you to check them out. Head to calderalab.com slash findingmastery and use the code findingmastery at checkout for 20% off your first order. That's calderalab, C-A-L-D-E-R-L-A-B.com slash findingmastery. And they're preparing for a world that will be completely outside my reckoning. And the last thing they want to do is to carry lessons from their out of it dad

into that environment. I mean, when I say lessons, I don't mean values. I mean lessons. I mean, like, I shouldn't be telling them what profession to do, or I shouldn't be telling them how much, how to apportion their time, or those are all things they have to figure out for themselves in the world that they live in. All I can give them, I can give them the same thing I got from my dad, which is enjoy yourself. Don't worry a lot about what people think of you and work hard. That's if I can give them those three things, I will have succeeded as a parent. That's sort of it. It's really cool. My wife and I, we have a 16-year-old, and we did this exercise when he was about the age of your children and said, what are the virtues that we want to pass forward, to water those on a regular basis?

She wrote her list. I wrote my list. We came down with two that we agreed on. And those have just been this kind and strong. Yeah, those are the two. Like to help a young man be kind and strong in a modern world seems... Is he kind and strong? Yeah, he's...

My wife has done a really nice job. Okay, so as we're kind of rounding third base here, you know, I was surprised you didn't go after AI on the tipping point. You know, revenge of the tipping point. I kind of expected that you would have a point about artificial intelligence and where we are. Could you maybe open up a model about what are the precursors to the tipping point and what happens?

So what are the things that we can look for before a tipping point takes place? Are we at a tipping point with AI is the simple question. But I'm more interested in how you think about what leads to the tipping point. When do we identify we're in a tipping point? And then what happens after a tipping point takes place? Didn't talk about AI. Yeah. Remember that famous thing that, you know, a story possibly apocryphal when Zhao Enlai, premier of China in the 70s, goes to a state banquet in France. And they ask him what he thinks of the French Revolution. And he says, it's too early to tell. Famous, famous joke.

I'm going to plead the Zhao Enlai defense on AI. I sort of feel like, here's the thing. When I look at, and it's why I'm wary of saying this to be fair or not, and I'll say two things on this. One is that when I look at new technologies, when they enter society, I'm always struck by how long it takes us to figure out how to use them. So we're really quick to figure out how to make them work, right?

To build the technological capacity, to create a gadget that does X, Y, and Z. That happens like that, right? But for us to figure out what we want to do with this thing takes forever. So a good example would be the one that has bearing on my world. So the VCR is invented in... Beta, VCR, Walkman. Okay, good. That's a premature laugh if I ever saw one.

You have no idea where I'm going with this. This is a fair statement. Keep going, please. I think my feelings have been hurt. So it's invented in the late 60s, and the TV industry tries to kill it. They think it's the end of television. There's a famous congressional hearing where the head of the Motion Picture Association says to Congress, you let this thing live, this thing Japanese created,

you let it live, TV's over as we know it, right? Fight it, fight it, fight it, fight it, fight it. Then they realize, they think people are just going to use it to record and skip the commercials, right? Then they realize, no, they think people are just going to use it to record and skip the commercials. Then they realize, no, it's a market opportunity for us. We can sell them movies on a

cassette. It'll be income stream. They do that for a while. Then we get to the DVR and meanwhile, 20 years have now passed. They're like, oh, we can sell them a DVD. That's even better, higher quality. And then finally they realize, oh,

if people don't have to watch a television show, if a television show only appears once, live on the air, but instead you can watch anytime you want, then we can tell stories differently, right? We can tell one continuous narrative because we know you can always catch up. It takes them 30 years to figure out that's the point of the VCR, right? And it's huge.

When they finally do figure that out, all of what we love about contemporary television, every show you love today exists because of the vcr you can't do the sopranos without the vcr you can't do you know any you name it you can't it doesn't work because you you would be every episode has to stand alone so you can't do a continuous narrative so like when i look at that i think oh okay this is huge. This is how we tell stories to each other. And it's this, a technology comes along which revolutionizes storytelling. And it took us a generation to work it out.

So what confidence do I have that we know how we'll use AI? None. I have no idea how we're going to use it. I mean, I think we're going to... All I can tell you is that we won't use it in the way we think now we're using it. Because history tells us... Do you know what happens in the first 25 years of the telephone? The telephone companies try to discourage people

from gossiping on the telephone. The operator would come on and say... They would run ads saying, basically, don't use it for frivolous purposes. This is a serious... They totally misunderstood what a telephone was. They invented it. They're geniuses. They invented this thing that allowed you to talk and...

And they're like, no, no, no. This is for making business calls. And if you try and gossip with your mom, that is way out of line. Right? So what, I mean, like I said, what confidence, I have no confidence that we know. Very cool.

Oh my God, you have what? One more example? I'm looking at it. Well, it's sort of a downer. One more example. I'm looking at the ZF10. Well, it's sort of a downer. Well, because in the original book, The Tipping Point, the chapter about crime, it's all wrong. It's an embarrassment.

So, like, I mean, in a book about tipping points, the central example I use to talk about tipping points was incorrect. Yeah. So how can I opine about AI? Well done. Well done. I mean, it's remarkable that you write about tipping points and you have at some point become a tipping point

in your writings. And so well done on making a difference in the world. Well done on getting your ideas in such a clear, fun way that it just sucks us right in to your point of view and what you want to share with the world. Well done, mate. Thank you. Thank you.

And now before we wrap up, just as a reductionist, which I think is a very hard thing to do. People like you and I like to open ideas up and there's some pros in it. But if you could, in one word or just maybe three words, answer just a handful of questions, it would help us understand you just a little bit better. It all comes down to... Oh, that was the question. But, you know, the problem is that I'm intimidated... Wait, wait, hold on. It was like one word or three words. Here we are.

You intimidated me with kind and strong. I got that in my head now. I'm like, oh, that, hold on. There was like one word or three words. Here we are. You intimidated me with kind and strong. I got that in my head now. I'm like, oh, that's really good. Those are good. I wish I'd thought of that. Yeah, right, yeah. I'm like calling Kate right now. It's like, Kate, all that stuff we've been talking about,

just so it's kind and strong is what we want here. So now I've got to match that. Wait, it all comes down to having fun. Having fun. I always tell people that at work. Just have fun. And then things flow from there. Very cool.

The good life is marked by? Oh, my God. In a couple of words? Sure. Yes, you can do this. Oh, my God. In a couple of words? Sure. Yes, we can do this. It's marked by... Necessary...

Well, I'm thinking about earlier when we were talking about my dad. I think that grief is part of a good life. It is. Like I said, if that's how we keep loved ones alive, then I think it's part of a good life. Beautifully done. If you could sit with a true master, who would that be and where would you sit with them? Oh, my. Well, I'm a runner. I just want to hang out with, like, Jakob Ingebrigtsen or someone like that. Yeah.

And everyone knows who that is. No, I would hang out with the greatest marathoner of all time, Elihu Kipchoge. He is something special. You met him? No, I have not yet, yes. He's like, so, can I talk about Elihu? Yeah.

My people, well, I say that, are, my mom's black. I'm 25% Igbo, right? I'm West African, Nigerian. That's where we come from. Jamaicans are all Nigerians. The Nigerians are like, we're like the exuberant, high-spirited, emotional. The Kenyans, on the other hand, are like the skinny, cerebral.

You know, Obama. Obama's a Kenyan. He's the perfect Kenyan. Tall, blah, blah. Actually, can I name drop? I had to interview him for something recently. And as a joke, I was like, you know, my people are Nigerians. Your people are Kenyans.

If we wanted to improve America with a million extra Africans, who are we picking here? Kenyans or Nigerians? And it was an opportunity. I wanted him to be gracious and say, now, although I am obviously partisan on this question, I understand where you're coming from. And yes, we need a million extra Nigerians. He didn't say that. He's like, Kenyans, of course.

But it's very Kenyan of him to say he would want more Kenyans. You know, but he is, Obama and Elihu Kipchoge are actually, I think of them as being quite similar, right? They have that kind of zen-like calm. You should have, I was, so this is

like three weeks ago and i was like freaking out about the election i was like what do you think like aren't you worried he's like malcolm it's important for all of us to be more zen about this it was like he's just like calmly slides in i was like this is the coolest man who ever lived um what was the question i was talking about canyons your name dropping about president obama the person i love name dropping him listen he's on my bucket list it's the best of all the he's just so special he he's he's he's a piece of work. He is quite something. But wait, you had the question. If you could sit with a true master.

Elihu Kipchoge. Where would you sit with him? In Kenya. And we would go for a run. One question. One question. If you had one question for him. I would want to know, is he happier training or racing? Cool question.

Because I'm happier training. I hate racing. Cool question. And I would love to know what his perspective is on it. If you get the chance, I would like to know that as well. That's a beautiful question. Listen, what an absolute gift. You've shown us what modern leadership looks like. You've allowed us into your heart, into the rich imagery of your mind.

You've shared some beautiful ideas in your book. And you've captivated us for the last 90 minutes or whatever we've been here and so what a wonderful time can I give you a bit of a parting gift here anything one person agrees I don't know of course I'm nervous are you nervous is it gonna be one of those two word things no no this is not a one word two word three this is kind and strong like it's just so genius. They're so good.

Wait, did you do strong and did your wife do kind? You know, she did both probably. Okay, as a high performance psychologist, like you are just sharing so much of the rich data of what it takes for people to live towards their upper limits. It's just beautifully leaking from you. And I'd love to just to calibrate if I got some of it right. Really high on openness to ideas and experiences. Low on agreeableness. There's an extroverted way about you that you show, but I believe that you're an introverted thinker and feeler, although you shared with us tonight in a different way. I think you're just neurotic enough to push right to the edge, to get to that tension point that allows the

unlock to happen. So just the right amount of neuroticism to make the whole thing work. And your conscientiousness about how you see the world is really high. I think that it would be hard to be coached by you because I think there's an exacting standard that you're looking for, but a community to try to pull it out of you

and to add to it. I would see you as somebody that would be indifferent to how an idea gets expressed. I'm sorry, how an idea comes to be, but meticulous about how it gets expressed. I would imagine that you're able to shift your attentional profile quite a bit, broad big big ideas, and drop right down to the narrow internal expression, which is very, very hard to do. And I think you operate beautifully under pressure, which tells me that you've got great emotional regulation. Does that sound some of... I mean, sure. I mean, I was waiting for you to say you got it. You can't just say good things like neuroticism.

OK, so you want to you want to go a little more on some of the other stuff. Your self-doubt is something that you struggle with earlier, but not no longer. I would think that I'm an old dude. Yeah, I think that you've figured that out. I think optimism, gratitude, and edge pushing comes easy for you. So on the hard side, you haven't shown the dark side to us yet, so that's for our second interview. I look forward to that. Yes.

Malcolm Gladwell. We have a few questions. I have a warm relationship with the city. And in my experience, people from Miami are actually secretly pleased to hear their city described as magnificently dysfunctional. Clive wants to know, whatever happened to your challenge to LeBron James to race you in a mile? I did challenge LeBron repeatedly when I was in shape and younger. I no longer think this is a good idea. But I am convinced, I challenged him

because I believed he would beat me. I believe LeBron could run at least a 430 or 440 mile. I've watched some, I watch these workouts he does on YouTube, and they're workouts that no world-class miler I know could do. So I don't know. I thought it would be interesting for him to beat me, but I think he declined to race me. And for the record, for folks that aren't running, but I think he declined to race me. So not that he-

And for the record, for folks that don't, that aren't running, what was your last time that you, like you were sub five minute miler? Into my fifties. Into your fifties, which is a remarkable thing to do. I'm now in my sixties, so. Yeah, well done.

Yeah, well done. How did you come to find out about the Waldorf school's issue with vaccines? Oh yeah, I have a little bee in my bonnet about the Waldorf School. Because the state of California keeps a precise record of the vaccination rates of every single elementary school in the state. And if you look it up, it's hilarious. You know, you look on the west side of L.A. and you see, like, elementary school A, 98%, B, 98%, C, 99%, D, 97%, F, 21%. Then you ask yourself, what's elementary school F? It's the Waldorf School.

That's true in every, as I say in the book, in every city where there is a Waldorf School. That's true in every, as I say in the book, in every city where there is a Waldorf School, the Waldorf School has the lowest vaccination rates of any school. It's an interesting feature of the Waldorf. My children will not be going to a Waldorf School. Oh my goodness. Final question.

Will the Canucks ever win the Stanley Cup? Will the who ever? Canucks? Oh. There's so many ways to answer this question. I will say they should. The way the NHL is organized is all wrong. There should be two conferences, the Canadian conference and the American conference,

and they should play every year for the Stanley Cup. If we did that, then we would win the Stanley Cup all the time. But it's only because the NHL insists in its wisdom that it wants to put hockey teams in the desert that this doesn't happen. Is that the last question? Is that really the last question? After such a magnificent summation, instead we end on me in a kind of surly tone, talking

about the deplorable state of Canadian hockey. I'll give you one question to wrap us up. With what you understand, what do you hope that we take forward after reading your last book? Always the hardest question to answer because you never know what people will take away from a book. It's very hard to predict. And I guess I would just say there's a little bit. I have recently been sneaking more moral indignation

into my writing and podcasts. And there are moments of high dungeon in this book. And I guess I would like some kind of consideration of that. Like, I'd like people to kind of, like the chapter about Harvard and sports and the kind of corruption of American meritocracy is a very serious argument. And I would like to provoke a serious discussion about, I believe I came to this country because I believe

that there was something very beautiful in this country's willingness to reward people who worked hard and had talent. I believe that that meritocratic premise is a very fragile thing that is easily eroded and it needs to be defended on a regular basis and we've gotten sloppy. And I believe we should get back on our game

when it comes to defending meritocracies. And the chief culprits in the sloppiness, it strikes me, are the schools that pretend to be the sloppiness, it strikes me, are the schools that pretend to be the bastions of meritocracy, the elite schools. And they have to get their act together. And they have to show us the way. And that chapter is about my deep-seated anger at the way that they have behaved in recent generations. You pulled no punches there. Yeah, well done. This talk has ended more times than...

It's like one of those movies where you think it comes to an end and then you look and you realize it's 21 minutes. And you're like, wait, there's like a plot twist coming I did not see. So with that, one more time for Malcolm Gladwell. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community and if you're enjoying the show

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