On Purpose with Jay Shetty - Malcolm Gladwell ON: How To Communicate Effectively During Overwhelming Situations & Mistakes You Make Reading People

Episode Date: August 24, 2020

You can order my new book 8 RULES OF LOVE at 8rulesoflove.com or at a retail store near you. You can also get the chance to see me live on my first ever world tour. This is a 90 minute interactive show where I will take you on a journey of finding, keeping and even letting go of love. Head to jayshettytour.com and find out if I'll be in a city near you. Thank you so much for all your support - I hope to see you soon.Jay Shetty’s favorite author is Malcom Gladwell. On this episode of On Purpose, the teacher and author chats with fellow book lover, Shetty, about communication, the power of humanity and what freedom looks like.Are you looking for fresh insight into events of the past or just a calm voice of wisdom for these uncertain days? Gladwell offers both. Malcolm shares deep thoughts with Jay about what it means to be human & how to listen effectively. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, it's Debbie Brown, host of the Deeply Well Podcast, where we hold conscious conversations with leaders and radical healers and wellness around topics that are meant to expand and support you on your wellbeing journey. Deeply well is your soft place to land, to work on yourself without judgment, to heal, to learn, to grow, to become who you deserve to be. Deeply well with Debbie Brown is available now on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Namaste. The one you feed explores how to build a fulfilling life admits the challenges we face. We share manageable steps to living with more joy and less fear through guidance on emotional resilience, transformational habits, and personal growth. I'm your host, Eric Zimmer, and I

speak with experts ranging from psychologists to spiritual teachers, offering powerful lessons to apply daily. Create the life you want now. Listen to the one you feed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. The world of chocolate has been turned upside down. A very unusual situation. You saw this tax-appasion in our office. Chocolate comes from the cacountry, and recently, Variety's cacao, thought to have been lost centuries ago,

were rediscovered in the Amazon. There is no chocolate on Earth like this. Now some chocolate makers are racing deep into the jungle to find the next game-changing chocolate, and I'm coming along. OK, that was a very large crack it up. Listen to obsessions while chocolate on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Those two things exist inside of me and my attempt to make sense of that inside of me and my attempt to make sense of that apparent contradiction is what makes me a writer, you know, what makes me

someone I think that other people want to read. And I don't, there's no, I feel under no compulsion to resolve that tension. Rather, the opposite, I should explore that tension. I should explore that tension. Hey everyone welcome back to on purpose the number one health podcast in the world Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back to listen learn and grow and I am so excited to be talking to you today I can't believe it my new book eight rules Love, is out and I cannot wait to share with you. I am so, so excited for you to read this book. For you to listen to this book,

I read the audiobook. If you haven't got it already, make sure you go to EightRulesOfLove.com. It's dedicated to anyone who's trying to find, keep, or let go of love. So if you've got friends that are dating, broken up, or struggling with love, make sure you grab this book. And I'd love to invite you to come and see me for my global tour. Love rules. Go to jsheddytour.com to learn more information about tickets, VIP experiences, and more. I can't wait to see you this year. Now, it's not every week that you get to sit down with someone who's inspired you since your teens and someone's books that really form so much of your decision making, your psychology

growing up and someone's books who've had such a deep impact in my life that I know I've recommended a ton of them to each and every single one of you. And so today's guest is none other than Malcolm Gladwell. He's a journalist, a speaker, and the author of six New York Times bestsellers, including the tipping point, Blink Outliers, what the dog saw, David and Goliath and talking to strangers, which we'll be diving in today.

Now he's been a staff writer for the New York Times since 1996, and foreign policy has three times named him one of their top global thinkers, and he's been named one of times hundred most influential people. He's a co-founder and president of Pushkin Industries, and Pushkin Industries is an audio content company that produces the podcast Revisionist History if you haven't listened to it, I highly recommend it, which we consider things both overlooked and misunderstood. I'm so excited to discuss how to be a better communicator and revisit some history today. Welcome to the show, Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm,

thank you for doing this. Not at all, my pleasure. Yeah, it's honestly an honor to have you here and I'm a fan of I believe Laurie Santos' podcast sits under your, yes, she is one of ours most definitely yeah. And Laurie and I've spent some really quality time together and she was actually a big part of helping me research for my book. It's a big fan of everything you're doing over there but I wanted to start by asking you about something and I'm going to dive straight in here but I've heard you say that when you visit the Lincoln Monument, you're always moved to tears.

And I wanted to know why is that? Oh wow, so many reasons. I mean, part of it is just the simplicity of, you know, the, if you read the words inscribed on the wall of the monument, it's, I've forgotten how many words, it's an absurd, it's this almost absurdly short speech, right? His most famous speech, it's over in two minutes, I don't even know. And yet it manages to say everything it needs to be said about one of the most one of the greatest and most important moments in American history and that idea that you could communicate

so powerfully about something so important in such a small number of words, I just find overwhelming and it's such a beautiful sentiment as well. I don't know. Yeah, it's true. I didn't, I'd forgotten I'd said that, but it is true. I find that monument extraordinarily moving. Yeah, no, that's beautiful. One of my favorite thoughts that I believe is attributed to Albert Einstein is that if you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough. Yeah. And I think the art of communicating with few words in a poetic way is super powerful. I think one of the things that I find, and I've visited before, that never been moved to tears,

but when I think about that, I often feel more moved to tears, even beyond words, but by people's behavior. And in a positive sense, it's almost like when you're in this space of someone who embodies those words, that can definitely be something that's been seen abroad me to tears. I don't know if you've ever experienced that or been in the space. You may be picking up on the fact that I am a little weepy, so I think I think I can be moved to tears by that as well. So I make it move to

tears more than I'm you know, would care to admit. So yes, those kinds of I am hopelessly sentimental in any ways. Well, when I can very much relate, maybe that's why I love your book so much. I can definitely connect that. I wanted to switch to the other side. And I was like, you said that you love spiked rivers. And I wanted to ask you, what is it about spiked rivers that you love so much, or that get your mind engaged? I don't know. It's a really good question. I read enormous numbers of mysteries

and thrillers of all kinds. And but my particular love is for the spy thriller. I think I've never gotten over the kind of dark romance of the Cold War. I don't know if I have a good explanation for it. About like espionage and people creeping around undercover and pretending to be something they aren't and layering layering lie upon lie and deception upon deception that I find just incredibly engrossing But I'm a huge I don't read you know, I read serious nonfiction, but the fiction I read is always of this genre, espionage, and thriller fiction. I don't read anything serious. You won't catch me reading

Proust. The most serious stuff I'm reading is probably John de Cauré. The rest of it is the kind of books you buy in airports. It's just, I suppose it's the way that I relax. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So I want to dive into a ton of different areas today. One is definitely, as you can already tell, I really want to dive into your mind and some of the decisions you make in your life. I want to dive into your incredible book,

talking to strangers that will be putting a link to available for everyone to grab as well. And the third and final things I want to grab dive into your podcast because I think it's fascinating and it's been a fan of that for a while too. But the first thing I want to ask you is I love what you've said about us on how what we do as human beings is exploit our contradictions. We're elaborate on that because I think that that statement in and of itself is just so like it's kind of like a mind bend, but at the same time

there's so much to unpack there. Let's unpack that together. Yeah, well I always find that when you get to know someone or when you listen to someone, really listen, what you discover about them and then ultimately about yourself as well is that we're full of contradiction and that being contradictory

is one of the defining traits of being human. So I was just talking about how I'm incredibly sentimental and weepy, but I'm also, I'm the son of a mathematician. I am, at the same time, hyper rational. Do I think of those two things as being contradictory, of course? But that's me, you know? And in the same way, I can point to, you know,

if I'm sure we could do the same kind of analysis of you, and I can do the same, I can say the same with nearly all of my friends as I get to know them. I understand what parts of their character are formally in conflict, but they're not actually in conflict. What we do with human beings is we navigate our way around those kinds of things. We get pulled in one direction or another

and we kind of split the difference. So we figure out when do I want to be this and when do I want to be that? You know, another version of this is in my case, it's more there's all kinds of interesting dimensions to this. I am the son of my father is was English. My mother is Jamaican. I am biracial, I belong at my foot in two very different heritages. And people ask me, well, which way do you identify?

And the answer is, I don't, I'm both. And being both is, it's a contradiction. You know, I see both sides of, you know, I've written a lot about racial issues in my books. And one of the reasons I'm drawn to them is I feel I see both sides of them. You know, I have a, there's a part of me that's white, that sometimes see the world through the lens of a privileged white man. And part of me is black and sympathizes with the other

side of the equation very easily and readily and appreciates it. Those two things exist inside of me. And my attempt to make sense of that apparent contradiction is what makes me a writer, you know, what makes me someone I think other people want to read. And I don't, there's no, I feel under no compulsion to resolve that tension. Rather, the opposite, I should explore that tension. And I, you know, so that's, that's what I meant by that statement. I think all of us at our best do that. It's actually extremely reaffirming to hit you say that and to do the analysis on myself as you mentioned, I obviously spent three years in my life living as a monk and I spent my time

majority of it in India and now I'm in the world of media and I live in LA and I feel completely at home being a content creator and producer in so many ways. And I love embracing those polarities. Like it excites me and it energizes me to tap into my monk mind and then my media mind and try and connect dots and see patterns where others see anomalies. And I've genuinely embraced that. And I often get asked the same question that how can you still claim to have monk elements

in your life when you live such in one sense, externally driven life. But to me, I don't see them even as transitions. I see them as I love being a paradox. And I enjoy the paradoxical nature of how my mind can go between the two and find connections. And I've only seen that present me with more opportunities. And what you said there was like to engage with that,

to actually connect with that. But I feel like our minds like to simplify in box and that's why we see contradiction as controversy or we see it as a weakness, right? It's almost like what you just said is that if you are teary-eyed and sentimental one moment and you're mathematical the other, it's almost like one of them is a weakness.

Why is it that we have this propensity to judge a contradiction or a paradox or someone who embraces polarities as a weakness or a character flow? There's a strain in the current climate, which makes this worse, which is this idea we have now that we can reduce people's identity to something singular. We say if someone, you know, we see it in the political realm, someone is a Trump supporter and we believe when we say that, that every other fact about them ceases to be of significance.

On the other side, we say there are lots of people, you know, there is a very active, I'll give you an example, and I don't mean this in any way, in a derogatory way, but there is now, there has risen a real activism in recent years around the trans movement. And these are people who define themselves by their sexuality in public debate. And my question to both of those in both of those cases is I accept that identity of yours, but I also want to know more.

And I want to I want to see all of you because even the most ardent Trump supporter is much more than that. I, you know, I had a discussion with someone the other day who's a stepmother and she was talking about how her identity as stepmother is really, really important to who she is. And every time she meets a stepmother, she's reminded of how, in many cases, everything else pales in comparison to the complexities that strikes me is how there is a million other sides to them that I want to know that are equally as important as their sexual identification. And I think we do them a disservice when we have a discussion about trans people in which all we do is talk about that aspect of their lives and neglect the other parts.

It's a kind of a way in which we allow ourselves to pigeonhole and dehumanize people is to reduce them to a single thing. Now why do we want to reduce people to a single thing? Because as you say, we have this weird desire to want to have this single non-contradictory understanding of someone. It's crazy. I was trying to... I'm a big runner. Yes, yeah, I was going to ask him about that. And I was talking to someone who's just started running. And I was trying to explain the fundamental contradiction of running. Because I observed her, she's my neighbor's wife, and I observed her running down the road. And I was like, she needs my help. her running down the road. And I was like, she needs my help. And she was, she hadn't understood the contradiction of running, which was, you are exerting yourself and pushing

yourself at the same time as you are required to be relaxed, right? And at peace. The only way to exert yourself is to be at peace. And I saw her exerting herself and she wasn't relaxed. She was tense. And I said, I stopped and said, you can't run that way, right? You have to understand fundamental contradiction of running. The only way to push yourself is to be so relaxed in your upper body that if I touch you, you should follow, if I jostle, you should fall over. That's how it looked. You should be. She didn't get she didn't go on that far right, she had to understand that fact. That's true in so many different aspects of our life. I said it was very long when did we have answer in that question. No, no, that's great, that's so true. It's

funny, I literally said that to someone about meditation two days ago. So I've been meditating for a long time and it was the same thing around how so much of meditation is where people are forcing themselves to concentrate or forcing themselves to meditate or to empty their mind or whatever it may be that they're attempting or aspiring to do. And so often it's actually the exact opposite that the point of focusing is to let go so that you can allow yourself to be more present and be more aware. Whereas we're trying to force ourselves in a direction which which so aligns to running. And I know I've heard a lot of people describe running as a meditative state for some people at least. Yeah.

No, it's not a long-winded way. It's very connected to some things I can see. I guess, for me, it's always just how do we, or is there a way of training our minds to entertain and engage in opposing ideas without feeling the pressure to choose or define ourselves by them? Is there a method that we can expand our minds so that we can have both of these ideas co-existing without needing either of them to reflect the whole of us or the truth in us? I think of that as that's my definition of what tolerance is. What does it mean to be accepting and tolerant of others? And I think it is allowing their, giving them room for their contradiction. So allowing them to be, I mean, I was talking about the trans, you know, the trans movement and the trans identity, allowing someone to be that and whatever else they choose to be.

Right? If they also want to be a Republican and they also want to be a rocket scientist and they also want to be a stepmom, you know, to be whatever they want, that's, to me that's what, and accepting the fact that those may be a group of identities and responsibilities and roles that we may be unfamiliar with,

that may trouble us, that may discomfort us, that may strike us as weird. It's our job to get over that. That's what it means to be a tolerant person, is to kind of embrace people in their complexity. I think that's the, and I actually struck one of the big differences between my generation and yours. I'm a generation older than you.

And your generation and the one below you is I am struck when I meet young people at how much better they are at navigating or accepting those kinds of differences then I was at that age. I think a lot of our issues in this society are a holdover from a much kind of more rigid way of appreciating people that comes from earlier generations. You know, the in my company, the 25-year-olds that push in my audio company, our audio company, they sometimes blow me away. They're just so much easier for them to kind of wrap their, you know, to accept people in all of their, you know, glorious contradiction. It's harder for someone of my age.

I'm Dr. Romani and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere and their toxic behavior in words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was loved by the Tinder swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me, but he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did. And that's even way worse than the money he took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissists to abuse myself,

I know how to identify the narcissists in your life. Each week, you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslightings, love bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to navigating narcissism on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Eva Longoria. I'm Maite Gomes-Rajon. We're so excited to introduce you to our new podcast Hungry for History! On every episode, we're exploring some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, beverages from our Mexican culture. We'll share personal memories and family stories. Decode culinary customs. And even provide a recipe or two for you to try at home. Corner flower.

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Big love, Namaste. That's a great definition of tolerance. Tolerance is a word that I don't hear that often, apart from in said in spiritual circles and traditions, but that's definitely a great definition for tolerance. And I really think that it is truly allowing people to, when we say that we want to live in a world where people can be authentically who they are and express every part of them, it demands what you just said because without

that we're almost trying to place them in just another box and a new set of boxes and that we're creating. So no, that's refreshing to hear. It's very refreshing to hear. I want to dive into talking about the book, talking to strangers, because what I find fascinating is you wrote this book before everything happened, and it almost, when I say everything happened, I mean everything that's happened in 2020, and it almost seems like it's been ridden perfectly for this time in so many ways.

There's so much about the book. I remember first coming across it when it was first released and I think I missed an opportunity to interview you at Facebook and New York briefly. And I was thinking, when will I get a chance to interview you? But it almost feels like this is an even better time because there's just these questions

that become so much more compelling and front of mind. I wanted to ask you to start with, because it's called talking to strangers, how do you define, or how can people define who a stranger is in their life? Stranger is just, I think anyone who is not a member of your intimate circle. So I don't have trouble, I mean, I, we all have some trouble communicating with our loved ones, but we have enormous advantages when it comes to communicating with our loved ones, but we have enormous advantages when it comes to communicating with loved ones.

And in many ways, as human beings, we're built to communicate effectively with those in our intimate circle. That's how we evolved as a species. When we have context, when we understand people's, I remember when my dad and I used to be able to, we spoke in this weird language where he would start a sentence and I would know exactly what he meant and he wouldn't have to finish it. And, you know, he could do the same with me and we would literally talk in two word sentences. And that's the beauty of intimacy, right? My mind was structured like his. We shared the same world, and I knew what he was getting at, and you knew what I was getting at. You don't have that luxury

with someone outside your circle. And so this book is all about what happens when the tools that we were given by evolution to deal with our intimates are used on strangers. And the answer is they fail, not all the time, but often. And I wanted to kind of navigate that failure and try and figure out, well, what should we do then if these time-tested strategies for communicating with others no longer work? Because the weird thing is, you know, and I talked about this in the book, the idea that we would have regular conversations with people we don't know is such a modern notion. Like until 100 years ago, or 150 years ago, the odds that I would be having a conversation

with you were zero, right? Zero. I would never have had a conversation with someone of your background. You never have a company that was owned in my background. Wouldn't have happened. I, you know, so it's like, and so if you think about that, are the, you know, very, very short period of time, we've been asked to do something as human beings that we never had to do before.

And I begin talking to strangers with this an account of one of the most high profile of the encounters between African Americans and police. The Sandra Blanda incident in Texas, a young black woman is pulled over by a Texas white Texas cop and she ends up hanging herself in herself a few days later. But what's interesting about that, interesting, what's singular about that encounter is, for most of us, the idea, like I grew up in a small town. If I was pulled over by a police officer, I knew the police officer and he knew me and he knew my parents and I knew his kids And I went to you know the coffin my small town growing up he went to my church

The odds that so the conversation between if I was doing something I should be doing He pulled me over He would say Malcolm first thing the first thing he would say was Malcolm. What are you doing? And then he would say do I have to call your parents? Right? It's a totally different conversation when you know the person from your community. And he would know whether I was a bad kid or a good kid,

or did I have a, did he pull me over three times before for drinking or not, or was I a good kid who just did something stupid? In the case of that officer in Sandra Bland, he doesn't know anything about her and she's no-ending about him. And that requires of him, principally, a wholly different set of behaviors and strategies. All of a sudden, what things he's holding in his head and what assumptions he's using to understand her and what biases he's carrying are super consequential And that's what I was trying to get out of the book

Yeah, and of course he completely misread in that situation. There is you botches it. Yeah What are those things that we then are what are like the biggest Pitfalls in our assumptions and biases when we're first meeting a stranger. Where is it that we naturally go to wrong? Because in the example you gave of speaking and communicating with your father, it's almost like you're on the same algorithm and the Google auto fills there. And you know, it's like Google reading your mind and knows what you've typed in or what most people type in.

And sometimes I think we think we can do that. We almost have, I feel like, and maybe it's just me, but I feel like we have an intuition where we sometimes feel like just by meeting someone, we know whether they're right for us to marry, date, do business weird, collaborate weird. Like we almost try and we almost trust ourselves enough to figure that out in one meeting. Yeah. Yeah. But in this book, you're almost telling us that it's not that easy. We're off to making mistakes. What are those key mistakes? Yeah. Well, the most is three I talk about, but

the one I'll start with the second that I talk about, and it's what it called the illusion of transparency. And that is this idea that what can I tell about you from observing your facial expressions, your body language, how you carry yourself and hold yourself. We as human beings place a great deal of emphasis on that kind of evidence. We use that evidence to send people jail, to judge guilt or innocence, to figure out whether that people, someone likes this or doesn't like us. And if you ask us, we're pretty confident in the judgments that we make based on that kind of evidence.

But the truth is, we're terrible at decoding people's emotional states from observing the outward manifestations of those states. I cannot look at you right now, Jay. Observe your facial expressions and have the slides clue what you're thinking. You could be, you could think, I can't believe this guy. He's such a moron. You could be thinking, this is so much fun. You could be thinking about what you're going to have for dinner tonight, I have no idea. I can certainly try. I am looking at your face right now. And I'm, you know, some part of my brain is saying, okay, is he interested? Is he not? I think he is. I'm drawn all kinds

of conclusions. But if I am completely honest, I have to own up to the fact, admit to myself, that almost all of those conclusions are false. Or at least I have, I have to own up to the fact, admit to myself, that almost all of those conclusions are false. Or at least I have, I'll put it better, I have no way of knowing what are my conclusions are true. So that's, if it's my, if you're my dad, and I've known you for my entire life, I'm, I'm not bad at making sense. I know that when my father is looks little puzzled and perplexed, it's not that he's angry to anyone. It's just that he's daydreaming. Or I know that when he hems and haws about something,

it's not that he can't make up his mind. It's because he's just weirdly inarticulate sometimes, right? I know that about my dad. I don't know that about you, right? And until I've spent all that time with you, I can't be drawing conclusions from that kind of stuff. I mean, we, it is astounding how many mistakes we make because of this simple assumption that we think we, you know, what's the whole job interview based on?

You meet someone, you ask them a bunch of questions, and most of you, what you're doing is you're looking at their body language, you're looking at a facial expression and you're trying to decide, this is a nice person, is this a non-us person? You can't tell that from looking at them. Right. You got it. Right? So it's like, that's a kind of, that's a big thing that I explored in the book, and that's

what happened in the case of Sandra Blend. The cop observes her behavior and he thinks that she's behaving in a way that is suspicious and dangerous. Is the furthest thing from dangerous and she's not behaving suspiciously. She's upset. She's mad because she got pulled over for no reason and he doesn't understand that. He confuses her being upset with her being dangerous. Those could not be more different, right? That is a, if you're a police officer about to make a consequential judgment about how to deal with someone.

If you confuse those two emotional states, you're making a huge error. And I guess in that situation, of course, the police officer, someone in that role has the pressure of feeling, or there's a feeling of a pressure to make a decision in a short period of time, but in some areas of our life, we don't really have that. We almost place a false pressure on ourselves because we don't really have a window to decide just with the hiring example I was recently reading a Leadership in recruitment book and it there was a few minutes that was called Higher slow fire fast and and it was just talking about like the hiring process needs to be much slower because what we usually do is higher fast and

Fire slow and so saying that there needs to be that shift, but we almost put a pressure on ourselves. Like, well, if I don't know if he or she's the one in this meeting, then I'm gonna be single forever or whatever it is. So is it time? Is it more interactions? Is it what is that that's going to allow us to improve there? Well, time, I mean, time's obviously a big part of this.

And funnily enough, you know, in the wake of the George Floyd case, a lot of really interesting things that I, I mean, I listened to a number of people who studied law enforcement, law enforcement, to the United States. And one of the most interesting thing I heard was there are an awful lot of police departments in this country that place very strict time limits on officers when they're dealing with the public. You are required to wrap up your encounter

in a given amount of time and you are applauded and rewarded when you deal with people quickly and you are penalized when you're slow. That's crazy. Right? You can't do that. Similarly, with doctors, we make doctors, insurance companies make doctors. They give them clear incentives to be as quickly, to deal with patients as quickly as possible

to the point where doctors feel like they're on an assembly line. That's also a way to create misunderstanding and mistakes. You cannot speed up some of these encounters. So times a big part of it, another big part of that is empathy is you need to be able to put yourself in the shoes of someone else for a moment. And that is both in order to do that, you need both more information about that person, but you also need to be trained in the capacity of sitting outside your own perspective. And, you know, I can't believe I'm saying this to someone who spent time as a monk.

I mean, a lot of what you do when you are in that environment and when you do things like meditate is you train yourself to do that kind of thing, right? To step outside your own consciousness. And you know, a police officer has to be in a way, a social worker, a psychologist, and all of us have to play that role. And that requires, that's a real active humility to do that, to set aside your own feelings and instead ask the question, what would I be thinking if I was in this person's shoes?

And what are the range of possible reasons why this person is behaving the way they are? Yeah, and today we have such an incredible ability to do that because like you said, 100 years, go 150 years ago, we wouldn't be talking and people wouldn't be listening to this or wouldn't have the opportunity to listen to this. And because of that, we're today exposed to more ideas, more cultures, more backgrounds, more walks of life,

which means our compassion and empathy should actually be increasing because we have the ability to hold more knowledge and depth about a number of backgrounds and walks of life, which we've been about before, which naturally closes our mind. But it seems like sometimes the more exposed we get, the more judgmental we can become to, because of the differences. It's almost like you said before, like 150 years ago, or the town you grew up in, where your police officer knew your name, which is insane for me to think about.

I was born and raised in London, and that was definitely not the case. But from going from that, where you feel like you know everyone, you trust everyone, you know everyone's parents, you know where they live, that creates somewhat of a safety net, whereas there's so much more fear in today's society, because there is so much of an unknown. Yeah, I would say that I think you're right that we're get we're better at this than we were and we were, that's what I was talking about earlier, but the problem is that the task is harder. That's sort of what it is. Like 50 years ago in the workforce, virtually everyone I would have dealt with would have been a college-educated white male. Right? From, I can probably go further.

If it was 75 years ago, a college educated white Protestant male. You know, it's not when everyone is cut from the same, coming from the exact same slice of, and middle class to upper middle class. In the media world, that's what it was, right? I'm a journalist. At the Washington Post in 1970. Everybody is a white, pretty much everyone is a white upper middle class male, either Protestant or Jewish

who went to one of 10 colleges, right? Now it's not that way, right? And it's just harder now. And we're battered, but we're, I think the difficulty of the task before us is accelerating faster than our own abilities. You know, it's, I think that's probably the best way to make sense of the dilemma we're in.

Yeah, I think that's been accelerated even more today in digital communication. Like obviously we're not sitting next to each other right now and everyone is missing and watching us is not sitting next to each other right now and everyone is listening and watching us is not sitting next to us right now. And everyone's been forced into this Zoom conversation or digital conversation that they're having right now. And I wonder what your thoughts are on digital communication and how that's.

And hey, let's be totally honest, even before this, when you were referring to my generation or the generation after, especially the generation after and the one after that, most of the communication's happening digitally and potentially not even through face. And it's happening through text and it's happening through words where does that leave us to really feeling like we understand people and and that they understand us and that feeling of feeling understood and understanding? Yeah, well, I mean, I guess

What I would say is I mean, let's talk about this conversation we're having over What is it we can't do over Zoom? Well, I can't see you. What is that we're probably going to hang out less than if I had come to your office. And so we might have chit-chat it before. We might have chit-chat it afterwards. We might have if we'd gone along, we might have had a meal. had it afterwards. We might have if we'd got along, we might have had a meal. Imagine if we'd gone for a walk. And instead of talking face to face, we'd spoken side by side. Now, it sounds like a trivial thing. It's not a trivial thing. You're talking conversations when you walked with someone because you're not looking at them. And all of a sudden, like, people always talk about how these,

they took these, you know, with their best friend, a wonderful car, car trip across country when they were 19 years old and what amazing conversations they had. A lot of that is about being in the same place with someone for hours and hours and then. Well, that is like side by side and not face to face. You could have a different conversation. And then when someone is eating, they're relaxed, and you see a different side of them than you would. And you learn something new, like even something that may seem trivial, like what someone chooses to eat, and how they eat it, what they say about the food they're eating. I mean, these are all like, they just help you fill out the picture a little bit.

And I think what it does is it softens. Like I was listening to an interview with a guy who's a journalist who's made his living doing really, really confrontational interviews with people. And he was being interviewed about his technique and the guy, the interviewer asked him, do you prefer to do these face to face or on telephone or online? He goes, oh, always on the telephone, prefer to do these face to face or on telephone or online?

He goes, oh, always on the telephone. Never, ever face to face. Because he can't be mean face to face, right? So it's often, I think it's softens the encounter when you can spend time unstructured time with someone. And I think that's what we see in social media is the harshness of the tone has to do with the fact you're never meeting the person that you're attacking. You wouldn't say that if they were sitting next to you, right? That's my worry about these times. I worry that too much of this digital thing is going to remove the possibility for, when we go on a lot of tangent. I've been interviewing for a project

the singer Paul Simon. He's spent many, many hours with him. And I've decided my favorite Paul Simon song is a song which is called Tenderness and the chorus is just try some tenderness beneath your honesty. And my argument to him was that that's the story of his life in some way. He's someone who is trying to convince people to not to be dishonest, keep your honesty but put a little tenderness in it. And I think that what meeting face to face about is all about is it doesn't change the honesty of the conversation. It means it's more tenderness. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know, the one you made about paying off

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including our 20s. The psychology of your 20s hosted by me, Gemma Speg, now streaming on the iHot Radio app, Apple Podcasts or whatever you get your podcasts. Yes. Yeah, and that's definitely something that's missing today. or whatever you get your podcasts. Yeah, and that's definitely something that's missing today. I think you're so right that we've always been talked about before. The accountability of when you're in front of someone versus when you're behind a keyboard, but I think tenderness is such a great word

because we are so much more equipped to communicate in a way that we think we're accountable to and accountable for when we're face to face. And I definitely found that I remember one of my managers saying to me that oh, whenever there was a conflicting conversation to have, it was better to walk together. So you felt you were walking in the same direction, even if you had opposing views. And so that ability to not sit, you know, across from a table across from each other. I love like, that's exactly what I was talking about.

Yeah, no, that's so lovely. I actually had never thought about, that's a beautiful illustration or use of that side-by-side principle. Yeah, exactly, yeah, just, you know, side-by-side walking in the same direction, same vision, even if you have conflicting ideas, but when you sit like this, of course, we're not being confrontational, but an interrogation would always be like this. And therefore, I think so many people feel interrogated in interviews or on dates for that matter. And I agree with you

on the side by side. I remember some of my best conversations with my friends growing up were both of us playing video games together. And so like I were almost conscious mind would be completely switched on to the game. And then our subconscious mind could actually connect with each other because we were just so wired in to this game that we could play without even having to think about it,

that we were able to let go and get beyond a barrier, that guy may never have done if we were sitting having a drink together or a juice together or something like that, it just wouldn't have happened. Yeah, yeah. I've definitely experienced that over video games, or at least I can remember a lot of great conversations that happened over lost games of FIFA and other video games. I was going to say, well, what games you play, FIFA makes sense.

You're gripping London, yeah, there's going to be a lot of FIFA. Yeah, I'm beginning to sports games of FIFA, NBA 2K. I played a lot of assassins creed growing up to his... I don't know if I could handle it anymore. The FIFA football is a big level of mind having grown up in England. to his, I don't know if I could handle it anymore. The football's a big love of mine having grown up in England and you can't not love football. So yeah, did you spend any time in England growing up?

Well, I was born in Kent and we left when I was six. Okay. But we would go back. I mean, I've been, I've been, I go to England once or twice a year and have done so for 30 years. So I'm very, and I feel very at home, you know, going back to the contradictions to part of me. There's all this a part of me that feels very, very, very at home in England. Yeah, talking about going home and revisiting. I wanted to talk about your podcast for vision is history. Again, as I said to everyone, it's an incredible podcast. And a big part of what the podcast is is about looking to history and looking at the overlooked and the misunderstood. If you had to do an episode on a past event in your

life, what do you think can be misunderstood or overlooked by you if you had a reflect on it? if you had a reflect on it. Oh, wow. That's a really, really, really good question. Take your time. Yeah. I mean, I guess I would go back. If I was going to do something like, oh, my life, I would do a lot of what ifs.

I'm not someone I'm very happy with the path that my life has taken. But I'm not someone who thinks this was the only path that I could have taken. And so I really wonder and I'm conscious of the fact that there are crucial moments in my life when I could have broadened I was and burrow deeper. And I, as I've gotten older, I have, I'm more and more convinced that was the wrong strategy. So when I was in my late 20s, I was working at the Washington Post. I had an opportunity to go to Europe and be the Germany correspondent, basically European correspondent for the Washington Post, basically European correspondant for the Washington Post, based in Germany.

Mrs. Early 90s, just after the wall fell, and I didn't do it. And similarly, I thought after graduating from college that I had a notion that I would go to graduate school in Jamaica, and that it would be a really interesting way to explore that part of my heritage and broaden my perspective and live in a very different culture, and I didn't do it. And part of me regrets both those decisions, because I look at myself now and I say,

what is lacking from my life? It is a little bit of that breadth. So those are, those are, those are, I would go back and I would re-examine those decisions and I would try and figure out was I scared, was I, what was going through my mind that kept me making much more conventional decisions than I perhaps should have. Thank you for opening up by the man. Thank you for sharing that. It's always fascinating.

And I never, I didn't think that you had anything that you regret or that you're not happy with where you are. So that was definitely not where the question was aimed at. It was definitely just an intrigue. I think that, especially with how you talk about things being misunderstood and overlooked, I think that's what I love about what you do on the podcast. It's not so much about this is wrong or it's so much of history. And we always hear that history is always told from the winners side and history is always told from the people that benefited from what

you know, the events that took place. I guess, how do you find how do you think that history can be most usefully used? Because I find that because in the past, I think hindsight was such a gift, but it almost feels like, what's that beautiful statement by Mark Twain? History never repeats itself, but it always rhymes. What's that beautiful statement by Mark Twain? You know, history never repeats itself, but it always rhymes. And, you know, it's that kind of feeling of like, I feel like hindsight was such a gift, but it seems even now that because when we do hindsight,

we actually realized so much was misunderstood and overlooked that now we focus so much on that. How have you find history and reflective on history? How is it actually practical and useful in today's world? See, as you do it so much? Well, it goes back to what I was saying before about the importance of empathy in understanding another and how you have to be trained in that particular art. And I think that history is one of the ways in which you train yourself in the art of

empathy. Because the great luxury of history is you have time has passed and usually many, many, many people, serious people have weighed in on the events that you're interested in. So what you have is a breadth of perspective, a rare breadth of perspective on the actions of others. And if you do it right, you get practiced in the art of empathy. You can look at everyone involved in any consequential moment and see it through their eyes. Now, you may not agree with everyone, but you still have this opportunity to revisit something from another perspective. So, you know, I've been working on this huge project. I did it in

four episodes of my podcast where about the Second World War, this decision made by a general in the Second World War to bomb Tokyo, to, with fire bombs in March of 1945. And then subsequently gone back and I'm now turning it into a much larger book. And, you know, there's all these different characters in that time, all of whom have very different perspectives. And you think when you start, that guy's wrong, that guy's right. This is outrageous. And then six months later, you don't think that way anymore. You, you, you don't even, you don't use that language. You still have a moral perspective, but the language you use is different. What you say is, I understand why that person made the decision that they made, even though

I think I disagree with it. That's the way you phrase it. That's such a much more evolved and important way of phrasing your feelings about someone and their actions. If we could all somehow use that perspective in the way we made sense of each other, I feel like the world would be so much better. That's about, that's I think what the function of history is. Yeah, that's such a great answer, that's a brilliant answer actually because, yeah, if history was used in that way, like you said, it's such a rare opportunity to dive into something

when it's not being defined as we're in it. Most decisions we have to make are at least again, the false pressure or the illusion of pressure that it has to be decided today. But history gives you this complete, you know, kind of stillness of time and just slow down in pace to just re-observe. And I love what you said about that transformational changing perception. Our instinct or intuitive initial understanding

is so much about love or hate, black and white, and it's so divided, even in our reaction and response. But you're so right that you can almost weave it together more, as you let it settle. I wanted to dive into this season's theme, which is attachment. And I think, you know, I talk about attachment in different ways in my podcast, considering my monk background too. But sometimes, obviously, attachment hurt our perceptions of what really is.

And we've heard it before that we get more lost in what, if rather than what is, in this distortion of reality that exists because of our attachment to illusion or ideas or hopes. Can you give an example that you've seen where attachment actually hurts or potentially even benefits us if it does in any way? Yeah. Well, I was focused on the season on the downside of attachments. on the downside of attachments. And by attachments, I was talking about attachments really to ideas and practices that become,

so much of the reasons for why we do what we do are unexamined. And I was trying to examine them. So one of my favorite episodes this season was about a guy. It was the second episode of the year. About a, this guy goes to Bolivia and tries to convince high school students in Bolivia. Why is in Bolivia? It's not Christian story, but he happened to be in Bolivia. He wants high school students to elect their student councils by lottery to choose their leaders by lottery. It makes this very compelling argument about how you get better leaders when you choose

them randomly. That more people are involved. They have a much broader, those of you who choose have a much broader perspective on what issues they want to address. And most of all, what you learn is that there are all kinds of people who are capable of good leaders who you would never have thought before. And so what the current system does,

what democratic elections do instead of opening up possibility to everyone, they actually close possibility to many people. And what was fascinating about that is that's an incredibly incendiary idea that you would do away with an election and we would be better off with a lottery. Why is it incendiary? Because we have this attachment to this particular ritual of choosing our leaders. And we've had it for a couple hundred years and we've told ourselves it's

the best ever. And we won't look at any other alternatives and we have kind of all kinds of myths have grown around this particular ritual which we don't look at either. One of the myths is that we were good at predicting who's going to be a good leader. We are not. We're terrible at it. And we won't. And by the way, there has been a mountain of evidence as to how bad we are at it. And yet we refuse to revisit that question.

We're overly attached to a particular way of choosing our leaders. That's a beautiful, really good example of how our attachments get in trouble. And what I would like people to be is to be freer when it comes to thinking about possibility in the world. Don't know, please, please, go ahead. Another of my favorite episodes was called Hammer, That's Wrong. And that's this notion of famous economist who, and that was his favorite slogan. And what he meant was Hamlet was someone who was paralyzed by his choices, right, to be or not, to be that's the question. He didn't

decide what to, and this guy said, actually, Hamlet had a backwards that when you don't know what's going to happen, you're free to do whatever you want, right? So, you know, that's another way of saying the same thing that freedom is being able is detaching yourself from this desire to predict the future or this phony sense that you know what's around the corner. You don't know what's around the corner and that means you should be you should be free to follow whatever course you want. That's like such a powerful liberating notion. Yeah, no, I think so too. I think sometimes we feel more confined by systems than their

effect. And so one of our excuses to ourselves around questioning ideas or beliefs that we have is because we feel that they are already predefined and pre determined by the world we live in. And so it's almost like an excuse that, oh well, I can't question this because it sits within a bigger construct that won't actually allow me to exercise that freedom. And I'm guessing you're saying that that's actually to some degree false. Yeah, I always had this conversation. I have a lot of friends with high school age kids who are all thinking about going to college, and I always say exactly the same thing to them. I say, well, where are you thinking going to college? And they list the same names, you always name.

And I always say, well, why wouldn't you go abroad? Why don't you go to the, why don't you apply for, you know, I don't know, some school in Johannesburg or you know, or Serbia or I mean, there are English language universities all over the world, you go to, why would you confine yourself to, you know, brown or Williams College or whatever the favorites are at the moment? And they never have a good answer, right? They're like flummoxed by that question. Or I say, you applied to the colleges that you think are that quote unquote best. What if you went to, you know, a, If you went to a big public school in the Midwest instead of some fancy elite coastal private school, you would meet lots of people you would never otherwise meet. It might really expand your horizons.

It's still the same person. Plenty of brilliant professors at those schools, but just like, you're going to meet kids just a wider range of, why wouldn't you go to a place where you'd meet the widest range of people? And they don't have a good answer to that question. They're 17 years old and they're already powerfully attached to two notions which have no intrinsic validity, right? And it breaks my heart. By the way, I was the same way at that age. And it breaks my heart, right?

Why was I that way? Why was I conservative at 17? There's the one time in your life when you don't have to be conservative in your choices. Particularly these kids, by the way, their parents are, you know, comfortably off. They get a a their parents can afford to Back them if they want to go somewhere weird and their parents can afford the plane ticket to Johannesburg Get off plane Like you know like I so fascinating to me that like it's weird that as a teenager we are We're terrified of like doing something, you know, out of the ordinary. You know? No, I mean, you did something. I don't know your story, but you did something completely out of the ordinary.

That's super interesting to me, right? That decision that you made. Yeah, I was 22 and I decided to, I thought I was going to be an investment banker or consultant because that was the 18 year old me kind of, I wanted to, I thought I was going to be an investment banker or consultant because that was the 18-year-old me kind of, I wanted to be an art and, you know, I wanted to be an art director or something like that, but I didn't realize, I didn't believe that could be a real career growing up. And so I settled for business and thought, okay, I'll go and, you know, make money and be safe. And then after having interned at companies every summer from 18 to 22, but also spending the other half of my holidays and vacation, spending them in India, training with monks,

I decided at the end of my degree that I should go off and live as a monk instead of joining a company. So that's what I did and Wikipot when I was separately. But yeah, I was really fortunate that I got to meet a monk at 18 that planted a new seed of an idea that I wasn't exposed to. And I think that's the challenge that one side is exposure where we're highly exposed to similar ideas, the same thought processes, and the same things being rewarded in a culture. And I think reward is so important that, if you're only seeing financial fame and powerful reward,

being around certain areas of society, then we naturally gravitate there. Whereas no one is giving me any awards for becoming a monk, or no one is giving me any, you know, there's no incentive to go off and become a monk, but I always feel like, if I wasn't exposed to that person who would have happened and I remember a study that MIT did, which was on creativity and productivity of employees. But they showed two charts and one chart was employees where they knew people, who knew

people, who knew them back. And then the second chart was an employee who knew people who didn't know each other. And they found that people who knew people who knew them back. And then the second shot was an employee who knew people who didn't know each other. And they found that people who knew people who didn't know each other were more likely to be creative and innovative inside an organization. Because going back to how we started, they were able to hold opposing views. And that fascinated me. And then when you look at some of the most brilliant minds in innovation or tech or I'm sure journalism but anyway it's all people who did really random things or at least were exposed to very disconnected random ideas. Yeah and that's yeah I get fascinated by that stuff too so I'm glad. But I want to be mindful of your time Mark I can talk

to you for a lot longer but but we're going to dive straight. And I've got so many questions I want to ask you, but we'll save them for a part two when you write your next book. Hopefully you'll come back on. But this is, yeah, this is something that we do at the end of every episode. It's called the final five. So these are answers in one word or one sentence maximum. I have been known to break rules when I feel like it, but I urge all of our guests to answer in one word or one sentence. So the first question for you is, what do you know to be absolutely true about human behavior

that many people disagree with you? Or would it have been opposing you? Oh. or would it have been opposing view? Oh, that even the worst of us are redeemable. So you believe that even the worst of us are redeemable, right? Okay, great, wonderful answer. Okay, second question. What's something that's socially acceptable that you don't agree with? What's something that's socially acceptable that you don't agree with?

Uh... Smoking pot. Great answer, okay. We have to save that one part too. Question number three. The hardest recent change that you've made in your life, the most difficult. Um... and change that you've made in your life the most difficult. Wow. That's a hard one. Starting a company. Yeah, I'm sure that's super hard. Okay. Question number four, what was your biggest lesson that you've learned in the last 12 months?

That we are, I mean since the pandemic started way more resilient than I would have imagined. I would have thought we were in chaos by this point and we're not. I mean, we've come close a couple times. But man, we've been through a lot of all in this world and in this country over the last seven months and we're hanging in there. Absolutely. Okay question number five. If you could create a law that everyone in the world had to follow what would it be? I'm going to follow I'm going to steal an idea that a friend of mine said the other day that I loved. I keep in mind the friend of mine who's told me this is very wealthy. She said, I would like to pass a law that everyone in the world has to Put their name in a hat and switch everything about your life says the same, but you have to switch homes

With the person who you draw out of the hat permanently Wow That would be amazing. Permanently. Permanently. Wow. That's incredible. That is a first on our purpose.

We've never had such a low-bid past or name. So I appreciate you sharing that with us. Anyway, Markov, that was your first five. Everyone, Markov and Gladwell talking to strangers is the name of the book that we've been discussing today. Going grab a copy, put the link inside. And like I said, I would have to say this categorically. I'm happy and I'm very comfortable saying it. Malcolm Gladwell is my favorite author of all time. And so without a doubt, Malcolm's books have been in a huge influence in in my life. And probably a part of me becoming a monk in somewhere or the other anyway. So I'm very grateful to Malcolm. I will check out any of his books.

Not just this one, but this one's a great one. Please go check it out and his podcast provision is history. As we mentioned before and discussed as well, go and take a listen. And Malcolm, thank you again for coming on the show. I hope this is one of many. And I look forward to getting to know you better as well. And I hope we can do dinner or walk sometime. That will be lovely. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Malcolm.

And look forward to everyone getting to check you out more. Wonderful. Question. When my daughter ran off to hop trains, I was terrified I'd never see her again, so I followed her into the train yard. This is what it sounds like inside the box-top. And into the city of the rails, there I found a surprising world, so brutal and beautiful that it changed me. But the rails do that to everyone. There is another world out there, and if you want to play with the devil,

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